As if gaming season cannot get any greater with coverage of Prototype, Overlord II just recently published, and the annual WhatIfGaming E3 2009 Awards, WhatIfGaming hosted an enormous giveaway that would make Julius I look like an amateur on Roman Holiday.

WhatIfGaming is graced with a very well educated and enormous readership that has developed throughout the years, and we decided to celebrate them with a special giveaway. The candidates came from our e-mail’s combined which average quite a bit of e-mail that it always takes us a good 5 minutes to load on a T3 connection! Despite this, a winner was chosen.

Criteria: Have to have e-mailed us consistently for 4 months straight.
Prize Winner was given 4 options: Pick any game in the past, present, or future that you want, and we give it to you!

As such, a smart man by the name of Canston Noel in Canada decided to choose Fight Night Round 4, based on our fantastic review of it.

Good choice Canston. Good choice. Enjoy your copy of Fight Night Round 4, with one day-weekend shipping based at our own expense.

Overlord II places players into the skull encrusted, blood stained boots of a ‘Lord’ with glowing eyes and a huge axe and allows you to command minions to do your deeds. Be evil, or be dark (the light form of good) – it is up to you. The interesting thing about the Overlord series is undeniably the diminutive minions that take the primary picture. They are ultimately the ones that run the course of the gameplay, with humor and intrigue that is simply incredible. With the similar and perfect formula from the old game and amazing visuals and upgraded features, Overlord II is one game that anyone needs to take a commanding destruction towards.

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Turn your mouse clickers and scroll wheel timers to WhatIfGaming this upcoming Saturday July 1st, 2009 for an exclusive presentation of our 9th year anniversary of the WhatIfGaming E3 Awards for 2009, with official public listing that celebrated from late 2001.

The WhatIfGaming E3 Prizes had their origins ever since the end of 1999’s E3 ceremony when we revealed to select publishers what our site cherished for their offerings during exclusive press meetings through an official sticker prize from yours truly. Very few gained them, and some were only notified. Over the years, the awards became public but remained even more strenuous in criteria, with no nominees ever being publicly listed until  a future predetermined date. 5 members of our staff in a permanent committee select the winners from a long line of industry related inquiries taken and personal consideration.

Also, feel free to log on Friday June 26th, 2009 for an Overlord II review (with over 46 hours played and timed only from us) and also an exclusive post-release interview with the creative minds behind Overlord II and their future plans!

Fight Night Round 4 has the challenge of improving on the title that helped shaped the generation of gaming ever since the debut of the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. EA Canada had to essentially improve on the game that delivered the first HD gaming experience and is taking the responsibility from the dead EA Chicago studio with plenty of chances to make mistakes, or make another hit title. Does Fight Night Round 4 live up to expectations or does it get knocked out?

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Any game that allows the player to rip humans in half and cut them limb from limb is instantly deemed fun and Prototype is no different. The comparisons to other games of a similar nature are hard to ignore but Prototype does enough to separate it from the pack to avoid the tag of copycat.

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When there is something strange in your neighborhood, who are you going to call..? A copy of Atari’s incredible Ghostbusters title. After literally dozens of cancellation threats on the project, the long-awaited Ghostbusters game is back – and one that I have personally hoped would come out ever since I watched the original back in the day. The iconic quartet return an excruciating 20 years after their last ghost-busting outing, bringing with them the original humour and feel of the Ghostbusters which is perfectly realized perfectly in game form. The original cast (Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, Ernie Hudson and of course the always witty Bill Murray) return to give the game the authentic feel to make it feel like a sequel to the films and it does nothing short of a simply fantastic job at making players literally feel as if they are a part of it.

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E3 2009 produced a terrific display of Aliens vs Predator. We take an in-depth look into the game that has fans of both the British Studio Rebellion and AvP series will get right. While staying similar to its previous titles, Aliens vs Predator comes bundled with multiplayer and a single-player campaign geared for three modes: aliens, predators, and marines. 30 years after the events of Alien 3, Aliens vs Predator takes a chunk of the storyline design from the latest film of the same name, where a group of marines land on a mysterious piece of land to either investigate or research. In this case, the planet dubbed BG-386 is where the marines are going to colonize, but of course things never work out the way they do. The marine’s single-player campaign has a lot of survival-preylistic themes thatr revolve around surviving an onslaught from an unknown group of two differing species. As guessed, both of these will clash into a battle to wage an immense war with marines caught in the dead center.

Predators were the sole aspect of the gameplay for this. As soon as they erupt from the ship, they are greeted with the jungle. This is to be their territory. Predators come equipped with ranged weapons, tech devices, camouflage, thermal imaging and the iconic wrist blades. Aliens will not have advanced weaponry, but they have an abundance of agility that will be a critical fright factor to any choice players embark on. Aliens can latch onto surfaces, including walls and ceilings, and run without any stamina limit to terrorize their victims with their deadly tails.  Each of the species has special abilities that are true to the origins and roots of the films and even the books.

Rebellion is shaping up to make a clearly impressive title that will garner great respect if they can get a concern that a lot of players have been e-mailing us about: balance. Luckily, all the species are balanced so far. The predator has great weapons and jump ability while the aliens can be extremely stealthy with an incredible agility combined with the fact that they can cling to walls and create havoc from the environment and lighting. The marine, however, seems at a slight disadvantage, but it is nothing that the films have not taught us: disadvantage can be an advantage, even for marines. Marines can use their willpower and own innate reflective to fight off the others.

Aliens vs. Predator is going to arrive February 2010, and we will see more of it soon.

Heavy Rain is simply breathtaking. Back at GDC 09, David Cage gave us an exclusive interview as to how the Heavy Rain showcase for gameplay aims and strives for the goals of Quantic Dream: to touch the emotions of any person playing and make a game relate to something never seen before. Simply put: Heavy Rain has been the best thing we have seen at E3 2009 alone, second to Lionhead Studio’s Project Milo. We have been waiting excruciatingly to play Heavy Rain ever since it was announced in 2006 after a simply striking technical demonstration titled “The Casting” in which a realistic virtual actress delivered an emotionally enticing monologue as part of an audition. We has a chance to play the same E3 scene at Sony’s Gamers Day Event back in April, but did not get much time with it to write any solid impressions. Now, we have had more than 20 minutes and are ready to detail every single aspect about it. This preview, for all you worriers, does not spoil the main story and hardly even represents Heavy Rain as a whole according to Cage. Each scene is supposed to be unique, with different ways of interacting, so this is just a snippet of any interaction experienced.

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Mass Effect Commander Shepard is back again in Mass Effect 2. All the rumors of his death have been greatly exaggerated. First off, BioWare intends to make Mass Effect 2 accessible to those new to the series. If you played the original and had the save games left over, you can continue the character from where you left off. All the choices you made, everything still had an effect. This fact alone had our staff simply drooling: the prospect of the sequel directly linking itself to the first half was simply incredible. Gameplay choices and moral standing will carry over into Mass Effect 2, giving a full and continuous experience.

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Alan Wake has been at the epicenter of attention at Remedy Games and Microsoft Games Studios ever since it was announced. Heralded as another notable DirectX 10 game, Alan Wake describes the story of a critically acclaimed author Alan Wake and his tense and dark world that contributes to the atmosphere of this survival horror genre. While the game is primarily about mystery and looking for clues, the overall facilitation lies with exploration and horror. We were given yet another exclusive look at Microsoft’s Meeting Room this year at E3 2009 for a one on one look at Alan Wake after the Microsoft Conference E3 Stage Demo, the primary reason we held off writing impressions. We wanted to bring everyone the real thing, and here it is.

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Sam Fisher is simply not the same in Splinter Cell: Conviction. With a brand new look, amazing hair, and a different attitude, he is simply good looking and an unbelievably anticipated force in the Xbox 360 and PC lineup for 2009. Along with the better structure, Sam Fisher goes rogue and walks away from having an operator in his ear all the time for the forces. His mission: vengeance. His cause: to kill the drunk driver that killed Sarah Fisher in Double Agent. After evading the authorities in Double Agent, Sam is officially undercover two years later. The focus shifts to the theme of daylight and high contrast colors with a brown tone luminance. With his hunt for personal revenge, Sam’s quest will take him across the globe from Malta and then, eventually, Washington in an epic controversy that is not just a simple hit and run after all. As a fugitive on a vendetta, Sam is without his usual Swiss Army Knife or his other gadgets and most notably his suit. Instead, he presents a fashion worthy of ‘Top Sexy Men 2009′ with an Alfani coat, a Versache backpack, and rough collar blazer by Marc &Ecko. This time around, weapons will be gained from downed enemies.

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