Remember those ice extras that we've reported before that the repackaged Gears of War is set to get? Microsoft has confirmed them and they'e set to come in a couple of discs. More importantly, a price cut has been revealed to make the deal even sweeter. Release and pricing information along with other details follow after the jump.

In an email to Valve, gamer Thomas was able to confirm that a bunch of Valve games (including three games in the Orange Box) will be getting additional achievements, namely: Team Fortress 2, Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2: Episode 1, Day of Defeat: Source and Counter-Strike: Source.

Read Valve's email in the full article.

Roughly a month ago, we reported that Halo 2 Vista was going to be sporting a new achievement system to appease the cravings of the more Gamerscore-conscious players among us. As an update to that teaser, we're reporting that we've picked up a comprehensive list of the said achievements possible in-game.

The achievements list will detail tasks you need to do in both multiplayer and single-player mode, and should give you guys something to plan ahead for before the game launches this mid-2007 for Windows Vista. Forewarned is fore-armed, all the more when you start competing on Live Anywhere. Read on for the list below.

• Cairo Station (30 GS) - Complete Cairo Station at Normal, Heroic, or Legendary
• Outskirts (30 GS) - Complete Outskirts at Normal, Heroic, or Legendary
• Metropolis (30 GS) - Complete Metropolis at Normal, Heroic, or Legendary
• The Arbiter (30 GS) - Complete The Arbiter at Normal, Heroic, or Legendary
• Oracle (30 GS) - Complete The Oracle at Normal, Heroic, or Legendary
• Delta Halo (30 GS) - Complete Delta Halo at Normal, Heroic, or Legendary
• Regret (30 GS) - Complete Regret at Normal, Heroic, or Legendary
• Sacred Icon (30 GS) - Complete Sacred Icon at Normal, Heroic, or Legendary
• Quarantine Zone (30 GS) - Complete Quarantine Zone at Normal, Heroic, or Legendary
• Gravemind (30 GS) - Complete Gravemind at Normal, Heroic, or Legendary
• Uprising (30 GS) - Complete Uprising at Normal, Heroic, or Legendary
• High Charity (30 GS) - Complete High Charity at Normal, Heroic, or Legendary
• The Great Journey (30 GS) - Complete The Great Journey at Normal, Heroic, or Legendary
• Warrior (100 GS) - Complete the game on Normal difficulty
• Hero (50 GS) - Complete the game on Heroic difficulty
• Legend (50 GS) - Complete the game on Legendary difficulty
• King of the Scarab (20 GS) - Acquire the Scarab gun on the Metropolis level, any difficulty
• Silent but Deadly (20 GS) - Kill 7 opponents from behind in a row without being spotted, any level, any difficulty

The complete Halo 2 achievement list is available at the Full Article.

  

You may not know it, but ennui is something you've probably experienced at least once in your life, but have you ever experienced it as a gamer?

Ennui is boredom. The dictionary defines it as a "feeling of utter weariness and discontent resulting from satiety or lack of interest." As gamers, we've all probably gotten bored with a game... but rare is the occasion when we've grown bored of actually playing games or of doing something game related.

For instance, ennui sets in for online gamers when they realize that everything they do inside the game doesn't actually have any appreciable impact on the world around them. For console fans, it's probably come across in the form of frustration, or simply the sudden inability to care about what happens to Link, or to your Gamerscore, or to your plans for another ultimately awesome installment of Ponies and Kittens homebrew. Well, either boredom or despair, but they tend to be the same thing in this sense.

In either case, the feeling of WANTING to play seems to disappear out the window for most of us, and it's a shame, because there's something missing in our play that we don't completely understand. It's not the purpose, because the purpose behind play is always there. It certainly isn't the feeling of satisfaction of downing a boss with a well-timed Tatsumaki Senpuu Kyaku- Shouryuken- Hadouken combo.

In fact, no matter what reason you have for stopping, or whatever feelings you've got inside over your current pasttime, let me tell you something very important: it's okay.

Yep. The world (of Warcraft) will keep running without you, and the games you love, the guilds you cherish, and the respect you pick up from the homebrew community will remain intact even if you're not there for a little while. The important thing about games, which we sometimes forget in this day and age of trying to make games more mainstream and worthwhile, is that the worth of a game and the pasttimes we love come from the fun we derive from it.

Our suggestion: do something you haven't done yet. Your pasttime will welcome you with open arms, and you can tell us what else you've been up to. In the meantime, tell us about your stories of gaming ennui. We certainly would like to know how you got past your period of gaming ennui.

Game Politics put up a unique find that might help immortalize some of the most dedicated players of all time. According to their report, the Guinness Book of World Records will be putting up another videogame-related section with records for players who've picked up achievements for determination, high scores, and long life.

As you can see from the shot above, there are some new records being put up along with the quintessential high scores list that remains mostly the same from its previous incarnation 20 years back. Cody Miller's legendary speed run through Halo 2 on the Xbox is now listed, as well as a record for the guy who pulled off a three-hour speed run through the PS2's GTA: Vice City.

The records also hold some noteworthy people who've managed to get high scores in multiple games, such as Greg Sakundiak's records for Dragon's Lair, Tag Team Wrestling, and Twin Cobra, and Doris Self, our dearly departed mistress of all things Q*bert who got her place in Guinness for being the oldest competitive gamer to date.

Hopefully, they'll include some new categories next year, including "Person with the highest gamerscore ever" and "Most annoying leetspeak phrase used in online games." We'll be betting on "STFU Noob," for that last entry.

Looks like we're not through looking for pitfalls in the microtransactions business model. There was a nagging thought left in my head after concluding the last analysis back in early November, particularly about pay-per-cheat. Yeah, it took this long to get those thoughts consolidated, but after a number of articles landed on our desks in that time, those thoughts have consolidated into this:

How do these pay-for-cheats apply in multiplayer games? (Cue Psycho violin screech)

Many downloadable content (or even "downloadable keys to unlock content") normally don't have an effect on gameplay. It normally doesn't matter if my homie be pimping in a Santa costume through Stilwater - he'll end up just as dead from a drive-by if he was wearing regular clothes, 'ya dig? The game changes - and for the worse - if and when the DLC is (a) something that affects the quality of a player's gameplay, usually by improving it, and (b) if that same DLC can be used in multiplayer. You can cue that violin screech again.

In an ideal world, this issue we just brought up wouldn't be so the drama. We enter a multiplayer challenge, the game asks us to bring it (to bring out the best in our game skills), we all bring it, and let the competition be the judge. Still, baseball players juice up on performance-enhancers, prepare to answer some very uncomfortable questions from reporters, the Commission, or even Congress. Likewise, what would the multiplayer online community's reaction be to multiplay-haxxors in their midst?

Continued at the full article. In an ideal world, full articles wouldn't be needed.

We know, we know. We might've gotten your hopes up by posting this rumor about Epic Games' GoW landing on your PCs, but hey, what can we say? We want Gears of War, too. And it really didn't help that a PC Gamer issue showing a display stand with several upcoming PC games including GoW was being circulated on the web.

Microsoft though debunked this GoW-for-PC rumor.

These images were created using draft templates for the Games for Windows box art and a variety of Microsoft Game Studios cover images. Gears of War was accidentally included by the artist as one of the MGS titles used as examples to show what our retail setup would look like.

That meant nothing else, according to Gamerscore. Too bad, eh? Well, they did say one thing that could mean something too: "We're incredibly excited about the success of Gears of War on Xbox 360, but we have nothing further to announce about Gears of War, or any other platforms it might come to, at this time."

Notice that last part? Yup. But let's not get our hopes high... for now.