It's not every week you can say that you spent time as a Vampire lord, watched a psycho pyromaniac take out a heavy machine gunner with a lollipop and mused over concept art featuring furry ear muffs, but that time has finally come.
Let's cut to the chase – especially if that chase is being made away from the Pyro in Team Fortress 2. The Valve team are clearly a group of chair-wheeling geniuses (geniii?) and after about a decade-ish of waiting we have finally seen the release of the Meet the Pyro video in the Pyromania update. It's brilliant, but in fairness you couldn't accuse them of rushing it out. [Valve]
Talking of waiting and Valve, Half Life 3 got some attention with the leak of some concept art for the title that 7DiG has been waiting for since what seems like the early '70s. HL3's concept art is broadly believed to be kosher and brings some interesting (and some dull) insights into the potential storyline. For instance: 1) Judging by the ear muffs it's gonna get cold and 2) there are floating islands that suggest a return to Xen. [CVG]
One thing that has arrived on schedule is Dawnguard – the DLC for Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. It lets you pick your sides in a storyline about vampires. Also – crossbows FTW! [CVG]
Crytek had a bit of a pop at game retailers this week (like they aren't already having a tough enough time) which prompted TechRadar to chase down HMV for comment. Upshot: not their fault.
Elsewhere – we've given our PS4 release date, news and rumours piece a major overhaul – making sure we keep you up to date with all the latest gossip around the next generation of PlayStation.
Google suggested that its Nexus 7 tablet was 'the ultimate gaming tablet' boasting a quad core processor and 12 cores of GPU. You can check out the gaming section of the Google I/O launch keynote below at about 50:16.
If all the things you have seen in here today bore you, how about trying to do your own game. Here's our guide to how to create your own games
As always, we finish with the pop-picks from around Future's gaming websites:
CVG
NGamer
The Super Mario Bros. theme played 100 different ways
Project Zero 2: Wii Edition review
ONM
Pokemon Black and White 2 release date UK
Official Playstation
FIFA 13 tips: 5 FIFA 12 tactics you'll need to relearn
Half-life 2: Episode 3 concept art leaked
Games Radar
Max Payne turns 8 innocuous situations into a violent bloodbath
The Best Games of 2012 (so far)
Official XBox
GTA 5 killers? Four games Rockstar needs to worry about
Minecraft Xbox 360 update: 4J hints at Joanna Dark skin, possible server rentals
