Gaming news out of Japan is often a bit strange.  The latest has showed up in a trailer seen sometime this morning at Xbox Japan’s Capcom event…

Apparently, Gears of War heroes Dominic Santiago and Marcus Fenix will be featured in Capcom’s upcoming Lost Planet 2.  Rumor has it that Lost Planet 2 designer Jun Takeuchi has much love for Epic’s GOW and has collaborated with the American developer to feature the two chainsaw-happy characters in his new game.  The big fellas will most likely be available as exclusive characters for the Xbox 360 version of the game and will probably be available via download only.

Luckily a diamond in the rough has revealed itself that not only does what it claims, but exceeded expectations. The FPS Freek, from Kontrol Freek, is an analog stick enhancement designed to offer gamers a greater degree of control and motion sensitivity to improve a player’s accuracy. Sitting atop the standard analog sticks for either the Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3, the adaptor snaps into place with a bit of pressure minus awkward or obtrusive changes to the appearance of the controller.

At the most basic level the controller has taller analog sticks. With this simple adjustment the controller has more sensitive analog sticks that either lessen or remove many of the complaints commonly levied against first person shooters on console. The extra height decreases the amount of force a player uses to push the sticks, thereby limiting the amount of overthrow a player could experience in a heated firefight. The greater degree of accuracy can be appreci ated by any serious  first-person shooter player, but  the improvements aren’t exclusive to that genre alone; FPS Freek also works well with any game that makes use of the right analog stick.

Due to added height the FPS Freek adds to the controller there is a definite learning curve players will experience when they first adopt the product. It took about three hours before we really became comfortable using the device and another three to when shots had markedly improved and surpassed prior FPS prowess. This becomes all the more evident when the FPS Freek is removed. There was an immediate decrease in performance. Shots were less accurate and we regularly overthrew our reticles and required quick adjustments. The Freek was quickly snapped back on.

Players looking to step-up their performance quickly and efficiently need look no further than Kontrol Freeks’s FPS Freek add-on.

By this time, most of you serious Halo fans have probably read the new issue of Game Informer with its 10-page Halo: Reach story.  Hell, some of you have probably even memorized it, framed it or had it transferred to your arm in tattoo form.  So, if you’re wearing Master Chief Underwear right now, you may want to move along, as there is nothing new here that I can tell you.  For the rest of you, I have written this summary of the Game Informer article to introduce you to some of the cool new things coming when Halo: Reach launches later this year.

Reach will have you starring as Noble 6, the newest member of Noble Team.  You are a Spartan III, a cheaper and more expendable member of the Spartan family.  You’re not quite the badass Mr. Chief is but you’ve got some friends to help you on your way.  Noble Team consists of 4 more Spartan III’s and one old Spartan II who acts as your heavy weapons specialist.

The Covenant you know-and-love-to-kill return but will reportedly be a bit more menacing this time around.  That means the signature cutesy remarks from the Grunts will probably be absent in favor of a more serious, darker tone.  Covenant Elites finally make their return as the alpha-dogs of the Covy forces; and early screens have them walking more upright than you’ve seen them previously.  A new species of Covenant has also been announced.  Cousins of the Jackal, Skirmishers, hunt in packs and flank your squad with tactical prowess.

Bungie has told G.I. that many of your favorite weapons will return but have been “re-imagined” to be more realistic in their look and sound.  You will also get to wield some new firepower like the DMR (Designated Marksman Rifle) and the Needler Rifle, with the former being somewhat of a cross between a Battle Rifle and a Sniper Rifle.  Gone will be the Flame and Spike grenades, leaving you with only the original duo of Plasma and standard UNSC Frag.

Reach’s health system will be similar to that of Combat Evolved, where Health Packs are needed to restore your health.  There will too be some armor abilities that you can pick up and activate.  There is a Sprint Ability that lets you run at high speeds for short intervals, and Master Chiefs’ favorite, Active Camouflage, makes a comeback.  Speaking of Active Camouflage, context sensitive melee kills using a Combat Knife can occur if you’re sneaky enough and hold the melee button behind your foe.

Maybe the most exciting details revealed by G.I. are the ones about the new tech upgrade promised by Bungie.  In Reach there will be far more detail all across the board—guns, characters, water, rocks, vehicles, lighting,  effects and textures have all been given a new layer of polish that the Halo series has been needing for a while.  The new tech also allows for larger spaces for exploration and twice the number of enemy AI that can be on screen at once—allowing Bungie to increase the scope and size of the battles you’ll be fighting in.  Player and character animation is set to be much better this time, too.  Motion capture is being implemented by Bungie for the first time in franchise history and some animation duties are even being handled out-of-house for Reach.  Employing Image Metrics to handle some of the facial animation duties should ensure the days of fugly-faced NPC’s in the Halo games are finally gone.

Well, there you have it.  Everything known so far about Halo: Reach in summary.  Now you don’t need to spend money on this month’s issue of Game Informer.  You can now donate that money to Haiti or get a hooker or something...

Anyway, Reach should definitely be 2010’s biggest exclusive Xbox 360 game.  Bungie seems hell-bent on proving that they can continue to make great games even in the AC (After Chief) era.

I can’t wait for Reach’s beta to start (hopefully really soon) and the full release later this year.

It’s no doubt that by now, if you own a PS3, you’ve downloaded the MAG open beta and run it through its paces a bit.  And by this point you’ve probably made the decision if you are going to buy it or not when it comes out on January 26^th.   And chances are, if you played the game for less than an hour-or-two, you’ve decided to not purchase the game and have gone back to playing MW2.

So if I’m right and that’s your story, I have written this mini-review on the beta just for you in hopes that you’ll give MAG a little more time—because if you haven’t put in a good bit of time getting to know the game, you haven’t really uncovered many of the things that make MAG so addictive.  Sure, once the full game comes out later this month my little review will probably mean squat, but it should at least give you an idea of what to expect with the full release.

Let’s first start out by addressing the pink elephant in the room:  MAG’s graphics don’t look to be on par with a certain shooter that came out a few months ago.  Frankly, Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 makes MAG look like a PS2 game.  But once you consider the amount of action going on and the ridiculous number of players on the screen at once, you see that the subpar graphics are justified.  If MW2 had as many players as MAG does playing in one game at the same time, you could bet your noobtube you’d have complete network failure.

Zipper Interactive has really raised the bar in terms of player-count on consoles.  Gears Of War 2 maxes out at a mere 10 players.  Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 allows only 18.  Battlefield: Bad Company has room for 24.  Killzone 2 boasts 32 players.  MAG lets 256 (TWO-HUNDRED AND FIFTY-FRIGGIN-SIX) players shoot at each other at the same time and runs near-flawlessly while doing it.

Impressed?  You should be.

MAG’s not running perfectly quite yet, though—occasionally servers would go down and drop me from games (usually when I was doing really well, which was maddening).  And sometimes it took a while to get in to a game, but only a few times did I experience lag during play—and it was always very minor.  Of course, these things are to be expected with such an ambitious player-count; and that’s why the beta is public, after all.  By the time MAG hits shelves, most of these issues should be fixed.

Now lets look at the actual gameplay of MAG.  Playing with 256 players is as hectic as it sounds.  In the two game types available in the beta, Sabotage and Domination, your main goal is to either attack or defend control points across the game’s large maps.  Sabotage is like “Domination-Lite”—as you only have three structures to attack or defend and only 64 players playing at once.  Think of it as training for the enormous Domination, which Zipper probably figured was too big to jump right in to and start playing.  Domination, as stated before, is seriously huge.  It has the same basic premise as Sabotage but adds manned-turrets, bombing-runs, UAV’s, advanced squad-perks and a vehicle-or-two that you can control.

Some of the advanced features (like airstrikes and squad-perks) require you to be a Squad Leader, Platoon Leader or Officer in Charge.  Becoming one of these leader-types takes quite a bit of leveling up but gives you abilities that can change the tide-of-war in a second for you and your comrades.

The whole thing sort of plays like a mash-up of Battlefield: Bad Company, Modern Warfare and SOCOM.  And at this point MAG may not be as good as any of those—but it definitely deserves a good portion of your time.  Zipper has crafted a game that finally makes you feel like you’re a small piece in a really large war—which is probably how you would feel in an actual war.  Trust me, MAG will inspire developers to think bigger, and that’s good for all of us.  Can you imagine playing Call OF Duty: Modern Warfare 6 with 500 players?  I can, and it’s all thanks to MAG—the father of Massive Action Games.