“DOOM is part of the id Software DNA and demands the greatest talent and brightest minds in the industry to bring the next instalment of our flagship franchise to Earth,” said Todd Hollenshead, CEO, id Software.

As Id Software is also working on Rage (an action game that will put an emphasis on driving and shooting in a post-apocalyptic world) that is planned for a PS3, Xbox 360 and PC release.  With this in mind I’m expecting Doom 4 will be the same in terms of format, unless Sony or Microsoft come up with significant money to change the course.

Doom 3 was a decent game with some excellent set-pieces that really had your heart racing.  Given the climate of Half Life 2 and F.E.A.R. to name just two games that really pushed the envelope on the FPS front, Doom 4 will need to be particularly impressive.  Will the storyline move on from the ‘failed experiment’ idea or offer anything new?  Hopefully more will be revealed soon.

This is not your ordinary hand bag.  Although it may look like it’s not packing anything, I can guarantee you that this patended bag is packing smart technology that will make your mom say “I want one for Mother’s Day!”.  This post inspired by this blog post and this one too.

Let me serve you more info straitght from the manufacturer’s site:

Marilyn Light Bag LLC is proud of its patented light bags (Patent # USA 6502951 ). Our bags are available in 11 different colors, with Gucci™ and other brand-name lookalikes, and are made of genuine leather. Each bag comes with an authenticity certificate. Our handbags are competitively priced starting at $150 and up, and if you keep your bag for 10 years, you will get a $1,000 rebate check (this only applies to the first-edition bags with a leather sun face).

Furthermore, all bags come with a GPS tracking device, so they can be found anywhere if lost or stolen. The first 2 months of monitoring is free, and then it’s just $15 a month. All handbags have internal Agar™ lights and a sensor switch—if you touch the top of the switch, the light will be activated and it has a 22-second timeout.  This unit is only for people, lost and found or locating purses and luggage if stolen or lost. The device can also has an override feature that will find the unit or person even if off, (only with pre authorization from owner). It has a continual beacon that is on a low frequency band that picks up the signal if on or off as long as battery is in-tact. We provide a lifetime warranty on the Agar light system as well as a 30-day warranty on the bag itself. The lights have to be mailed in if they need repair, and there is a shipping cost of $5 if they need to be fixed.

Fans of the seminal science fiction space hero Buck Rogers rejoice! A possible live action movie is being planned.

Nu Image/Millennium Films has acquired the film rights to the series about a pilot who finds himself in the 25th century and has been tasked to battle intergalactic evil.

Most people would probably be familiar with Buck Rogers through the 80’s TV series that starred Gil Gerrard. But the character has been around since its creation in the 1920s.  Buck has appeared in comic strips, comics, radio, TV and even as a movie serial.

Frank Miller was rumored to have been chosen to direct the movie but Nu Image/Millennium Films said that they are looking at other possible directors.

No word yet on a possible release date.

In case you’ve been living under a rock, BioShock is a solid PC and Xbox360 game.  Some said it was a revelation, giving the player access to weird and wild powers (along with a variety of weapons) in an underwater dystopia with a fully realised back story.  For me, I found it quite repetitive and give up long before the end.  However, some recent news has grabbed me.

The Pirates of the Caribbean director Gore Verbinski is due to direct the game-to-film conversion and he was in fact the keynote speaker at the 2008 DICE summit.  Maybe he didn’t play the Pirates of the Caribbean game, but it was hardly groundbreaking.  Then again, we can’t charge him with that now can we?

Kotaku had the following to report on Verbinski at DICE:
“During his keynote in February, Verbinski admitted that the concept of games as a truly powerful, experiential medium was still a little new to him — but he also seemed to demonstrate curiosity and respect for what he had yet to learn.

He talked primarily about ways to elaborate on game narratives, but encouragingly, he showed a healthy respect for games as their own medium, avoiding the often problematic philosophy that tries to blur the line between the two - usually resulting in both cheesy “summer blockbuster” action games, and films that knock off games while broadly missing what made the source material appealing.”

I guess what we can say is that Verbinski is clearly a far better film-maker than Uwe Boll.  Will he reach the ‘dizzying heights’ of Christophe Gans’ Silent Hill though?  I’m not being sarcastic there, I did enjoy that film.  It wasn’t exactly better than The Omen though.  Well, we’ll have to wait and see.  BioShock is after all a game with a more developed story than say House of the Dead - but then we’re going back into Boll territory there…

Very cool concept!  If you’re a gamer and “getting in with the game” is what you mostly crave for to give you that extra joy in playing, I think this concept is what will complete your playtime.  This lead from TecheBlog .

It’s size definitely fits the gamer’s desk, for scale (look at the keychain) this box is really small.  It would appear that it is almost the size of 3 Mac Minis stacked one on top of the other.  What-a-gear!

The CPU box shows a side panel with what appears to be a floating box to boot.  This gives physical texture to ones imagination.

Check out this tech blurb from TecheBlog:

A Mini-ITX motherboard and slot-loading DVD writer keep the 8.25-inch cube light and manageable. That’s not all, you’ll also find an integrated 6-inch LCD, Matrix Orbital MX222 2×16 character VFD display, TV tuner, and two hard drives. According to its creator, “the illusion section is the focal point of the design and serves to effectively hide all the PC components, almost any symmetrical 3-D object will work as the illusion.”

Blogs around the world are raving about this new Sony “toy” that will be released on May 17.  Well, it’s not really a “toy” per se, but the ease of using it will surely make one think “hey I’m enjoying using it”, hence “toy”. ;)  This digital picture frame is Wifi capable.  To the geeks, this means it will take an IP address from any router and will accept packets from the internet cloud.  One prominent “cloud” this will plug in very easily is your Flickr account.  You will be able to hook it up to automatically show your latest photos.  Too cool eh.

I remember I blogged about things going wifi in the coming days, this does follows the beat.  In my future, I think my refrigerator would be able to order milk for me.  I think that’s a close reality.

This will make its debut in Japan with color variants white and black.  Dubbed as “Sony Canvass Online (VGF-CP1), retails for $258.  It’s just too bad it missed Mother’s day(!) otherwise mom would have enjoyed hooking up to your flickr account without actually being so fussed about the technology how-to’s.

Engadget recently had the opportunity to play a bit with the new Touch and they were quite happy with it, particularly with the VGA screen which is twice as many pixels as most PDAs in the market today. And although I didn’t mention this enough yesterday, this is definitely the best looking Windows Mobile PDA I’ve ever seen. It’s slick, shinny and the interface since much nicer, which is great because it goes perfectly with the device.

And now a video of the device in action:

Another feature that wasn’t mentioned yesterday was that the device has, like the iPhone, has an accelerometer that allows it to act differently depending on the movements you make with the device. You can see a video of the accelerometer in action at the original article.

In the first week of sale, Grand Theft Auto IV has continued to push the boundaries of computer and video games sales, with figures by Chart Track suggesting more than 926,000 copies sold in the first week.  This has earned the creator (Rockstar) an estimated £39.9million – or rather almost $80million dollars.

This is a number that easily dwarves the previous best selling game ever (yes, it was another Rockstar game), GTA: San Andreas.  This was way back in 2004, showing how keen the players of the game are.  Take Two (the owners of Rockstar) are expected to give a press announcement sometime in the next couple of weeks revealing that the game has sold more than six million copies in the first week alone.  Simply staggering.

Apparently, sales were corrected for the first day at the figure of 631,000 – almost as much as GTA: San Andreas sold in the first week.  There was a fairly even split between the two consoles on which the game is available, with a slightly higher market share (55%) going to the Xbox 360.  What this really shows is that a good game on either format will sell.

Unsurprisingly, the game has managed to boost the level of sales for the consoles themselves.  They were up about 125% on the usual levels of sales, proving that a good game will push people to own a console where they wouldn’t have before.  Of course, Grand Theft Auto is a unique gaming proposition – few other games allow you to do what you do, when you want to do whilst having more fun than playing most other games combined.

The reason for that of course is the sheer variety of gameplay on offer.  Whilst at times you might be taking cover and sniping, other moments you’ll be stealing a car or evading cops.  Frankly I can’t wait for my game to arrive and I’m sure that it is something that is very special indeed.

With Iron Man firmly opening the summer blockbuster season with a cool $109 million box office take in North America, the next Marvel superhero movie in the pipeline has its work cut out for it.

A lot of pressure is going to be put on The Incredible Hulk starring Edward Norton and directed by Louis Leterrier and if internal struggles are to be believed that pressure has started even before the final cut has been approved. According to rumors, Norton and Leterrier wanted a cut of the movie that was “meditative”, character driven and will clock in at two and a half hours. But Marvel Entertainment executives wanted the most commercial movie that they can make — one that is filled with action sequences and will run for just an hour and a half. Norton has already issued a statement denying the rumors. But I think there is truth to the infighting. Norton is not the type of guy who would want to appear in a straight popcorn flick. I am a big fan of the Ang Lee Hulk and Norton’s and Leterrier’s take on the big green monster is what I am hoping to see. I don’t want to leave my brain outside the theater when I watch a movie and a dumbed down version is definitely not something I will support.

Even though I’ve never listened to any albums of theirs before, only assorted singles, I found the album surprisingly good with a nice variety of songs and themes. Some are lyrical, others are more instrumental, others are more computerized, but overall, it’s an above average album and I recommend it to anyone who likes alternative/industrial rock.

You can download it from Nine Inch Nail’s official website, simply by entering your e-mail to get the link.