Sometimes when searching for inspiration, it just lands right in your inbox.  Check out this brand new trailer for Ghost Recon: Future Soldier that Ubisoft just sent over.

Looks awesome, right?  I mean, are those graphics, or did they just hire a bunch of actors to dress up like Ruskies and get shot at by robots?  Oh. That is what they did...  Well that still doesn't explain the cool robots.  Either way, it's a really awesome trailer.  And I love the fact that the campaign is not going to be set in Mexico again. 

 I guess Ubisoft stole a page out of Bungie's diamond-encrusted advertising book for Future Soldier. We'll see if they can steal some of their success this fall.

Before Call of Duty (or even Halo) ruled the world of online console shooters, Tom Clancy games were all the hotness.  Recently, the Tom Clancy games have suffered somewhat of a decline in popularity—mostly because of the paradigm shift in the industry away from tactical, squad-based shooters and in part because the Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon games just don’t feel as fresh as they once did.

Well, Ubisoft announced today what everyone knew was inevitably inevitable.  Ghost Recon: Future Soldier is officially on its way sometime later this year.  And since it’s Ghost Recon: Future Soldier, you can probably expect some nifty, high-tech weaponry and other future-y gadgets.  Not much more has been revealed at this time but you can bet that co-op and competitive multiplayer modes will be back—both are Ghost Recon staples, after all.

Development duties are being handled by the same team that brought us GRAW and GRAW 2, Ubisoft Paris.  Hopefully, they will be able to bring back Ghost Recon’s glory days and deliver the intense action and story-line gamers have become accustomed to since the last time a Ghost Recon game hit the shelves way back in 2007.  The teaser trailer shows promise, but I’ll wait to see the action for myself when the beta opens for owners of Splinter Cell: Conviction this summer.

I used to be good at Halo.  So when ODST came out I decided to plug in the Halo 3 Multiplayer disk and relive some of my former glory.  Sure, I figured that I’d be bit rusty from not playing for a while, but I never thought that I would still be getting straight-pwned after multiple hours.  Ouch!  This concerned me.  So after a lot of frustration—and maybe even a few tears—I decided to get to the root of the problem.

My first thought was the obvious: I suck.  Then, right before hanging myself, I decided that I wasn’t really as bad as my stats were demonstrating.  I mean, I’m not god’s gift to gaming or anything, but I do have nearly a 2.0 kill/death ratio in Modern Warfare.  My conclusion: everyone must be cheating (well, maybe not everyone--but you can see what I'm getting at).  I have certainly fallen victim to cheaters in the past but it was usually something relatively obvious.  When you are constantly getting shot from outside the map in Call Of Duty, Ghost Recon, Halo, Gears of War, and every other popular game in the history of multiplayer gaming, you know when the C is O (“cheat is on…” stay with me).  But this was different; I was being outgunned—by the same guns that I was using!  I decided that I was being beaten by hardware mods (rapid fire controllers, specifically).  Had this exception to the rule become an epidemic?

Now, I’m all about obtaining advantages (that’s why I use FPSFreeks, after all) but when does this lust for the upper-hand become cheating?   Where do you stand on the issue?  Where do you draw the line in your quest for that tangible edge?