The Lector has been decoded and the message reads: From Russia With Love™, starring Academy Award®-winner, Sir Sean Connery has gone gold on the PS2 and Xbox and will be shipping on Tuesday Nov. 1, 2005! A version for the Nintendo GameCube™ will be released shortly after in mid- November.
From Russia With Love, the game, is based on the classic Bond film from 1963 but features new plot twists, gadgets, weapons and characters. Sir Sean Connery, appearing in his first-ever videogame, lent his voice and likeness to the project. Also making their videogame debuts as original Bond girls are movie and TV star Maria Menounos and multi-platinum UK pop star Natasha Bedingfield.

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This morning I met with Activision and saw three games: Gun, Call of Duty: Big Red On, and True Crime 2: New York City. I’m not allowed to write anything about Call of Duty. I’m sorry. I will say that I enjoyed playing it, but that’s to be expected.
Gun is simply breathtaking; it is the first game for Xbox 360 that I’ve seen that is really stunning. There are parts where the sun is setting over the mountains or on another side of a valley and you have to just stop and look at it. The storyline is just like a western movie. It’s 1881 and you and your pappy, Kris Kristofferson, are out hunting. This gives you a chance to learn to shoot. Then all hell pretty much breaks loose. So now you’re on your own and you can ride around the West taking missions and/or following the main storyline. You can go to Dodge City or Empire City where you’ll meet people who will give you quests. You can be a bounty hunter, a miner, ride for the pony express, just about any profession that belongs. There’s even a Texas Hold ‘Em mini game where you can win money.
It’s all about the gun. Quick draw slows down everyone else for a limited amount of time and lets you mow down enemies. The shutgun is just a fun weapon. Enemies take damage in one of 12 body areas and react accordingly. You can blow someone’s foot off and watch them hobble around. You can even shoot someone’s hat off and juggle it with additional shots while it is still in the air. Mounted combat is also pretty cool. That’s riding a horse and shooting, or using the horse to trample people.
Activision estimates that it’ll take about 20 hours to play straight through the storyline. They think if you try all the side missions there’s at least 40 hours there. And it looked like a lot of fun to me. Gun for Xbox 360 will be available November 22, 2005.

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I played a little MKSM this morning. It’s a good fighting game. There’s a storyline to the single play and co-op modes. It’s pretty much a brawler action-adventure game. You smash and bash your way through a tutorial first. The fighting system is directional so you can attack in any direction by pressing the L thumbstick towards the enemy. So it’s possible to chain attacks and get combo bonuses. There are a lot of animated fatalities. You and your character learn them through the course of the game and they just get more and more involved and gruesome. It’s almost reason enough to play through the single player mode.

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