Video Games Live, a show that tours America, is a full sized Orchestra that plays some of the classic arcade game music of the past and present - in front of a big screen showing the game in action. Hearing some of these old classics, expertly re-created is a real treat for the gaming geek!

A quick one for some gaming updates. Crytek’s sequel Crysis Warhead has now gone gold, the game follows on from the first Crysis taking control of the Brit Sergeant Michael ‘Psycho’ Sykes from the point you part in the first game. The game is all on track for a Sept 12th release in Europe and Sept 16th in North America.

Left4Dead has been delayed from its Nov 4th release and is now expected on Nov 20th, so not too long to wait. Valve wanted the Game to come out on the 4th to go with the Left “4″ Dead title but the game will now be out on the 10th anniversary of Half-Life Valves first game and the most important game of PCs time. Cant wait for this one with 4 player co-op.

A quick update on Grand Theft Auto IV for the PC, Rockstar showed off the game behind closed doors at the Leipzig Games convention. While there are no videos of the game, Rockstar are saying it will have better graphics supporting a maximum resolution of 2560 x 1600, also the game will have a reply and editing system that will always be recording so you can get the last 30 seconds of your classic GTA4 moments.

In a quick post, and anyone checking my youtube channel will know, I am eagerly waiting for Spore to hit the shelves - so imagine my happiness when today it was announced that Spore has gone Gold - the American coined term that means the software has been shipped to manufacturers for production. A good sign that means (hopefully) it will be released on schedule (5th September in the UK, 7th September in the US).

Rockstar have finally announced its release date for the PC version of Grand Theft Auto IV. Being released on the 18th November in North America and 21st November in Europe, Sam Houser, founder of Rockstar Games said, “We are very excited to be releasing the PC version of Grand Theft Auto IV, the whole team is dedicated to bringing an amazing gaming experience to the PC. The game looks and plays beautifully on PC and we can’t wait for people to play it.”

Not much else was said but the PC version will feature some new multiplayer elements. If this is a new mode or something completely new is unknown. We all knew it would be making its way to us but at least now we have a date to book off.

Intel have announced their new chip which is going to enter the market late next year. Code named “Larrabee”, the chip will be in addition to their on-board graphics offering they produce at the moment.

With another entrant into the graphics card market, which is dominated by the giants of NVIDIA and AMD (ATi), it should be good for consumers with Intel entering the race. Increased competition which should hopefully drive down prices, but at the very least, push the technology envelope for gamers.

And pushing the envelope is what this new project is all about. Rather than creating faster and faster GPUs, Intel are going to approach it from the multi-core angle: Squeeze as many cores onto a die as possible and let them do the math of a quick GPU. But that isn’t the only consideration for Intel - they are also expecting the technology to kick-start the computing world, preparing everyone for the 100’s or even 1000’s of cores we can expect in tomorrow’s CPUs and GPUs.

The Larrabee platform will initially work alongside DirectX and OpenGL - which hopefully means a good support for other OS’s like Linux in the future - a support that is clearly lacking with the current two big graphics cards manufacturers.

If you’ve been surfing around you might have seen the news of Battlefield Heroes being delayed till later in the year. Well for the next 4 weeks the site will be posting a new article twice a week offering Beta keys, the first 20 comments on these will receive one. Also over those weekends the lucky few will have the chance to win more keys for a friend. Now that’s not too shabby and should hopefully keep us all going until the game hits the shelves, umm nope, Web sorry.

While surfing the waves or the world wide web I came across a very funny video of gaming glitches and just had to share with the people of TechSnake. Enjoy and don’t drink hot drinks while watching

If you’ve played and loved the Max Payne games then no doubt you’ve heard about the Max Payne Movie. It’s down for a 17th Oct release staring Mark Wahlberg as the over the edge drug fighting NYPD cop. Up until now no real news has been revealed on the film but a trailer that seems to be the real deal has appeared on YouTube. The film seems to have the dark Max Payne feel to it. Enjoy!

It seems there are so many social networking sites coming out nowadays that it’s hard to keep up. Well the latest one is a little different, on the face of it, but dig deeper and it’s all too familiar

The ugame network in principle is a good idea. You link together like-minded individuals, who in this case all happen to enjoy the odd bit of gaming, and you let them create clubs, groups, online leagues and form friendships and things. You also have a place to record the games you play on a regular basis - although only the most popular are available. However, if you find yourself with a game that isn’t in the list, rest assured you can request the game be included on their master list. Once done, your profile is available publicly (along with your system specs if you so wish) by default so people can search for you and the games you play.

So is it worth doing? I don’t think the vast majority of gamers need something like this. There is generally at least one website, including forums, for every game you play online - why would you need another one? The only use I could think of for this website is if you have a game that isn’t played anymore very much - so you can go with the law of averages and hopefully find a few people on the planet that still do. If you are one of those people, or you still reckon there might be a use for the network, sign up here - ugame has just been released as public beta.

Playing Portal last night, I found a couple of flaws that I turned into a video and posted on Youtube. Freaky stuff indeed, but makes for some good fun!