Once again, we bring you news of another much anticipated PC game release just hours after scene group RELOADED whacked its copy protection.

Gears of War blends tactical action with survival horror and thrusts gamers into a deep and harrowing story of humankind's epic battle for survival against the Locust Horde, a nightmarish race of creatures that surface from the bowels of the planet. Lead war hero Marcus Fenix and his fire team as they face the onslaught of merciless warrior fiends. A revolutionary tactical combat system and breathtaking, high-definition visuals from the Unreal Engine 3 immerse you in a horrifying story of war and survival. A.I. teammates are indiscernable from human players. Voice recognition and real-time lip synching heighten the experience. The battlefield is a lethal place. To survive, suppress your enemy with blindfire, take cover in interactive environments, or use weapons and teammates to outwit your foes.

Image: DVD cover of Gears of War for the XBO360 console. Version featured in this post is for the PC.

Features

• Engaging and disturbing cinematic story. Movie-like cut scenes, cinematic camera moves and in-game storytelling bring the brutal, emotionally charged narrative to life. Gamers control Marcus Fenix and his fire team as they pit advanced technology against the overwhelming and horrific Locust Horde.
• Unmatched online gaming. Gears of War will tap into the power of Games for Windows - LIVE to deliver online matchmaking for its Gold account members. The service will enable gamers around the world to connect via their PCs, allowing players to experience individualized matchmaking, view player statistics, earn player Achievements, customize games and create personalized profiles.
• New Game Editor. The game will also feature the all-new Game Editor, guaranteeing new user-generated content in the future. The Gears of War community will be able to tap its endless creative potential to develop an unlimited number of user-created levels through complete access to the Unreal Editor. Using the new engine, players can now import custom artwork into the engine, create particle systems, scripted encounters, cinematics and more.
• Astounding visuals in next-generation gaming. Gears of War ushers in the next generation with incredible visuals, pushing DirectX 10 visual designs and bringing out the smallest details in the largest battle. Gamers experience a rich, dynamic world with a supreme level of detail. Characters come to life with unbelievable model quality and a physics-integrated animation system that has them truly reacting intelligently to events unfolding around them.
• Hyper-realistic and intense combat. In Gears of War the battlefield is a lethal place - to foolishly stand out in the open is to invite an untimely demise. To survive, gamers must employ strategy, take cover using the interactive and dynamic environments, and suppress the enemy with blind fire, using their weapons and teammates to outwit and outfight their terrifying enemies.

System requirements:

• OS: Windows Vista or Windows XP
• Processor 2.4+ GHz Intel; 2.0+ Ghz AMD
• RAM 1 GB
• Hard Drive 12 GB free hard drive space
• Video Card NVIDIA GeForce 6600+, ATI X700+

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War rages on in the fourth edition of Activisions acclaimed war
game. For the first time in the series, Call of Duty moves away
from WWII to the modern battlefield. Armed with an arsenal of
advanced and powerful modern day firepower, players are
transported to treacherous hotspots around the globe to take
on a rogue enemy group threatening the world. As both a U.S
Marine and British S.A.S. soldier fighting through an unfolding
story full of twists and turns, players use sophisticated
technology, superior firepower and coordinated land and air
strikes on a battlefield where speed, accuracy and communication
are essential to victory. The epic title also delivers an added
depth of multiplayer action providing online fans an all-new
community of persistence, addictive and customizable gameplay.

Features:

• D-Day on the Modern Battlefield: Watch as your armada of helicopters charges over the rooftops of a bombed-out urban hell, while ground fire and RPGs streak past the open door of your helicopter. Fast-rope down to the streets through a cyclone of choking sand and dust with your Marine platoon and engage the enemy in unrelenting battle.
• High Speed Tactics: Experience intense close-quarters urban combat in the way that only Call of Duty can deliver. Supported by you well-trained squad, rappel down the walls of enemy strongholds, blast out the locks with your shotgun, and then clear the rooms using tear gas grenades, flashbangs, and silenced MP-5 submachine guns.
• Cutting Edge Modern Arsenal: With the help of actual Marines and SAS operatives, all the weapons in Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare have been painstakingly researched and replicated in game, bringing to life the ultimate war experience.
• Global War: Take the fight to the enemy in an epic war across the Middle East, board and storm ships in the North Atlantic, engage in heavy urban combat through the streets of Eastern Europe, and assault terrorist cells in London.
• Next-Generation Multiplayer: Physically alter the environment to your strategic advantage. Open up new flanking routes by blowing through walls and doors. Knock down bridges, close off roads, and blast buildings into rubble. Move furniture and vehicles to block doors and seal up windows with chicken wire to repel enemy grenades.

 

System Requirements:

• OS: XP or Vista
• Processor: 2.6ghz Pentium IV or equivalent (3.2ghz recommended for Vista)
• RAM: 1024mb (1536mb recommended for Vista)
• Video Card: DirectX 9-compliant Shader 3.0 card with 128 MB of DDR Video Memory (256 MB recommended) AGP 8x or PCI-Express x16
• Sound Card: 16-bit DirectX 9-compliant sound card
• DirectX9 for XP and 10 for Vista, 8 gigs HD space + 600mb for swap file.

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Warning: The product featured in this post is an Alpha release. This means that it is still in an early testing phase. Although we found the aopp to work, you may or may not encounter bugs while using it. Use at your own risk.

Kapersky^® Internet Security 8.0 provides you with the same proven anti-virus protection as Kaspersky Anti-Virus together with additional features including Parental Control, a personal firewall, an anti-spam filter, Privacy Control and more.

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mIRC is a full featured Internet Relay Chat client for Windows that can be used to communicate, share, play or work with others on IRC networks around the world, either in multi-user group conferences or in one-to-one private discussions.

It has a clean, practical interface that is highly configurable and supports features such as buddy lists, file transfers, multi-server connections, SSL encryption, proxy support, UTF-8 display, customizable sounds, spoken messages, tray notifications, message logging, and more.

mIRC also has a powerful scripting language that can be used both to automate mIRC and to create applications that perform a wide range of functions from network communications to playing games.

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EarthView is a dynamic desktop wallpaper and screen saver, which displays beautiful views of the earth with daylight and night shadows. It produces colorful, high quality, high resolution images for every screen resolution - even beyond 1600×1200! The program supports map and globe views, urban areas, city lights, atmospheric effects, clouds, local time display and much more. EarthView supports different maps that show our planet earth in different ways, like photographic or artistic. Many options allow total customization of all view parameters. EarthView has won many awards for its absolutely breathtaking images.

EarthView supports four different beautiful maps of the earth, starting at 10 km resolution, which means that at 100% zoom level, 1 pixel on your screen equals 10 kilometers on earth. If you purchase the full version, you’ll get the possibility to download even more detailed versions of some maps, which have higher resolution. This means, they have much more detail, so you can zoom in even further!

Features:

• High detail view of the earth
• Day and night view
• Atmospheric effects
• Urban areas and city lights
• Clouds (internet download possible)
• Map and globe projection
• Several beautiful maps to choose from
• Location and local time of more than 3000 cities worldwide
• Wallpaper and screen saver support
• Multiple monitor support
• Many options for full customization

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Half-Life 2: Episode Two is the second in a trilogy of new games created  by Valve that extends the award-winning and best-selling Half-Life adventure.

As Dr. Gordon Freeman, you were last seen exiting City 17 with Alyx  Vance as the Citadel erupted amidst a storm of unknown proportions. In Episode Two, you must battle and race against Combine forces as you traverse the White Forest to deliver a crucial information packet stolen  from the Citadel to an enclave of fellow resistance scientists.

Episode Two extends the award-winning Half-Life gameplay with unique weapons, vehicles, and newly-spawned creatures.

Minimum system requirements:

• OS: Windows 2000/XP SP2/Vista Pro, DirectX 8.0
• CPU: Pentium 4 / Athlon 1.7 GHz or higher
• RAM: 512 MB or higher
• Steam, DVD-ROM

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ConvertXtoDVD is a video converter software to convert and burn your videos to DVD. With ConvertXtoDVD and a few clicks you can backup your movies to DVD playable on any home DVD player.

Supported video formats: DivX, Xvid, MPEG4, MOV, AVI, WMV, WMV HD, DV, and more?

Supported sources: existing files from digital camcorders, TV/Sat, capture cards

Features

• Can merge up to 4 hours of material from several movies or episodes
• Supported audio formats: AC3, DTS, PCM, OGG, MP3, and more?
• Handles subtitles files (.SRT .SUB/IDX) with color and font selection, and supports tags (italic, bold)
• Video format choice: NTSC, PAL, or automatic and PULL-DOWN
• Picture output: Widescreen, Fullscreen, or automatic
• Create Automatic chapters or edit your owns
• Fast preview mode to check if the source is loaded correctly
• Save the DVD structure on hard drive or burn it to a blank DVD
• Reliable burn engine integrated (supports all DVD formats)
• Fast and quality encoder (typically less than 1 hour for converting 1 movie)
• Variable options and settings for advanced users
• Control of the conversion speed vs quality
• DVD Menu control (auto-start, loop etc)
• DVD Menu edition (background, fond, color)
• Customizable interface (themes, dockable windows)
• Multilingual support (available languages?)

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AnyReader is great for copying files from scratched CD/DVDs or defective floppy/hard disks. Normally when your computer is unable to copy files from a damaged disk it will abort and delete the part of the file it has copied. AnyReader will continue copying the file right to the end; any data that hasn't been recovered after several retries is replaced with blanks. This will allow you to effectively read every byte of information that can be read at all.

Features

• Reads files from disks with physical damage.
• Allows you to copy files from disks with problems such as bad sectors, scratches or that just give errors when reading data.
• Reads data as much as possible.
• Reads data from the erroneous network connections.
• Supports resumed downloads from the remote PC if connection was broken during the copy process.
• Supports file sizes up to file system limits.
• Easy to use, intuitive wizard-driven interface.
  Supports all Windows versions, including Windows® 95/98/ME and Windows® NT/2000/XP/2003.

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GUITAR RIG 3 is the ultimate all-in-one guitar and bass solution. Simply connect your guitar with your computer via the enhanced Rig Kontrol 3 foot pedal and you are ready to go. The on-board studio-quality soundcard routes the signal to your speakers, while the software grants you access to an incredible number of perfectly modeled classic amps, cabinets, mics and effects - all arranged in a super-simple drag-and-drop rack format. Any style, any time - the perfect solution for professional studio and live setups.

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he Vegas Pro collection combines Vegas Pro 8, DVD Architect Pro 4.5, and Dolby^® Digital AC-3 encoding software to offer an integrated environment for all phases of professional video, audio, DVD, and broadcast production. These tools let you edit and process DV, AVCHD, HDV, SD/HD-SDI, and all XDCAM™ formats in real time, fine-tune audio with precision, and author surround sound, dual-layer DVDs.

Edit SD or HD video with drag-and-drop functionality, mouse and keyboard trimming, and ripple editing. Features include ProType Titling technology, multicamera editing tools, 32-bit floating point video processing, customizable window layouts, color-coded snapping, improved HDV/SDI/XDCAM support, Cinescore plug-in support, A/V synchronization detection and repair, and auto-frame quantization.

The Vegas Pro 8 interface provides a fully customizable workspace for accomplishing a wide range of production requirements. Dock multiple windows across multiple monitors, and save your layouts to fit specific editing tasks; nest Vegas projects within the timeline, customize and save keyboard commands, and use application scripting to automate repetitive tasks. System-wide media management produces maximum efficiency. Network rendering saves time by using multiple computers and networked drive arrays to render complex projects. Vegas Pro software also supports 24p, HD and HDV editing.

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