(Posted by: Eric Rees)

Battlefield 3 is shaping up to be one of the games to beat this fall, promising huge 64-player battles and damn near fully destructible environments for the PC version of their game. Throw in tanks, planes and helicopters and you've got one hardware intensive game on your hands. But today EA has released the minimum and recommended system requirements for your PC and they aren't really that bad:

MINIMUM SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

• OS: WINDOWS VISTA (SERVICE PACK 2) 32-BIT
  
• PROCESSOR: 2 GHZ DUAL CORE (CORE 2 DUO 2.4 GHZ OR ALTHON X2 2.7 GHZ)
• MEMORY: 2 GB
• HARD DRIVE: 20 GB
• GRAPHICS CARD (AMD): DIRECTX 10.1 COMPATIBLE WITH 512 MB RAM (ATI RADEON 3000, 4000, 5000 OR 6000 SERIES, WITH ATI RADEON 3870 OR HIGHER PERFORMANCE)
• GRAPHICS CARD (NVIDIA): DIRECTX 10.0 COMPATIBLE WITH 512 MB RAM (NVIDIA GEFORCE 8, 9, 200, 300, 400 OR 500 SERIES WITH NVIDIA GEFORCE 8800 GT OR HIGHER PERFORMANCE)
• SOUND CARD: DIRECTX COMPATIBLE
• KEYBOARD AND MOUSE
• DVD ROM DRIVE

Catch the recommended list after the break, that is not too bad either considering the scope of this game.

(Posted by: Eric Rees)

Ok, who honestly thought that a third game in the Dead Space series wasn't in the works already? 

An internet user sent a video to IGN today showing that internally at EA, Dead Space 3 signs and concept art is already strewn about the space. Isaac Clark doesn't get a lot of rest time between his games. We should be seeing this in about this time next year if we're lucky.

(Posted by: Harrison Milfeld) 

We here at Gameshoe have discussed endlessly about Valve’s proverbial elephant in the room, Half-Life 2: Episode 3, since we initially started the site. It’s purely standard practice for any of us to mention the next chapter of Dr. Gordon Freeman at random, be it family gatherings or the workplace. It seemed that no matter how much we cared, Valve would never give fans a single, solitary update.  Or have they?

Recently, a Vietnamese beta tester leaked the beta release of Dota 2 (Valve’s stand-alone sequel to the popular Warcraft III custom map Defense of the Ancients) in which the game’s code was picked apart to reveal some interesting details that could or could not be related to Episode 3. The Dota 2 game code details possible new weapons, such as a flamethrower and an ice gun (Hmm?) alongside the words ep3, which started the inevitable buzz. Team Liquid was the group responsible for decoding the information, which so far has thrown the Internet into a tizzy about Gordon Freeman’s long-awaited return.

We can decipher all we want about the weapons mentioned in the coding (pictured above), but I would say don’t hold your breath. Valve has kept a tight lip about Episode 3’s existence for years, so it’s safe to assume we may be getting ahead of ourselves. Until then, we will continue to name drop Episode 3 whenever we please on the podcast. 

(Posted by: Eric Rees)

Mobile gaming has always had the handicap of having to try and live up to the graphical power of their bigger console brothers. Some games have tried and failed to get these good graphics, others have changed the rules to more stylized looks so all the processing power doesn't have to go to the graphics. 

But coming down the road, NVIDIA hopes to change all that with their "Kal-El" processors. The company has aspirations to produce the world's first quad-core mobile processor to give mobile games a leg up in the mobile department. Hit the break for more details and some very impressive video demos.

(Posted by: Eric Rees)

Everyone is jumping on the tablet bandwagon. If you're a hardware or software company that doesn't have their fingers in a tablet somewhere, you're apparently not cool or something.

Gamestop's president, Tony Bartel has come out and said that they are already testing the sale and distribution of a Gamestop-branded tablet that should be due out next year. The kicker is, this tablet should come bundled with a controller peripheral of some sort so that owners can play full release titles on the tablet. How does Battlefield or Mass Effect sound playing on a tablet? I'm not sure about it either...

Seeing as how Gamestop has been thinking of getting into digital distribution for a while this isn't overwhelmingly shocking, and the fact that mobile processors, quad-core coming soon, that can support fantastic graphics are just around the corner makes this all make sense. I still can't wrap my head around this though, I can't even read a book at the right angle on a tablet, how am I going to play Skyrim? It remains to be seen how successful this bad boy will be.

This week, it's the 69th official episode, and that means dick jokes.  Not many, but some.  We talk about EA, Deus Ex, PS3 controllers and much more!  Plus, we've got Call Of Duty XP information from Kyle, and hot teen girls want to have sex with Gabe Newell while we talk about Valve.  It's all that and an orgy of wonder this week on The Gameshoe Podcast!

(Posted by: Alex Clippinger)

Hype for the third installment in the famous transhumanist series Deus Ex was pouring in months before the release date. After all, if asked to prove whether video games can have legitimate plots or artistic merit, a well-versed gamer would look no further than the Deus Ex franchise, and Human Revolution more than lives up to these expectations.

Let’s look at the latest installment with a ground-up review after the break.

(Posted By: Alex Deckard)

Star Trek Online has had a declining userbase since it went live.  This is a bad thing for any MMO, but Star Trek had a lot of money thrown behind it, with a lot of important investors.  If STO fails, people lose their jobs.  This is why the game will be going free-to-play.  Paid subscription offers you more things, but a free account will still let you play a good amount of the game.  The only problem is that with the free account being so robust, it's a possibility that they'll have trouble converting people to paid accounts.  This will cause a revenue problem, and no matter how good the game is, it's an MMO.  If it's not making money, it gets shut down.  Period.  So head out there and check out this game.  If you like it, buy it.  If you don't, play EVE Online instead.  Then realize that either A) STO wasn't so bad after all, or B) You like EVE and will now spend the rest of your free time playing it.  

Check out Star Trek Online, going free to play by the end of the year!