With the release of Fallout 3 rapidly approaching, gamers have a few choices to make if they haven’t already pre-ordered.

Valve’s Steam News has announced Fallout 3 is now available for pre-order on its Steam digital download service. If you need the PC version and didn’t want all the swag that is coming with other pre-order bundles this would be a good way to go. The price is a straight $49.99.

Best Buy is hosting Midnight Launch parties Monday, October 27, 2008 at twelve stores across the U.S. The lines start forming at 3:00pm local time for those of you who want to practice for the Black Friday Christmas Holiday kick off. Parties are being held at stores in these locations:

Washington, DC area

• Rockville, MD – 1200 Rockville Pike
• Tysons Corner, VA – 8449 Leesburg Pike

New York Area

• New York, NY – 44th And 5th
• Westbury, NY – 1100 Old Country Rd.

Los Angeles area

• Glendale, CA – 2909 Los Feliz Blvd.
• Pasadena, CA – 3415 E. Foothill Blvd.

Chicago area

• Chicago, IL. – 1000 W. North Ave.
• Downers Grove, IL – 1432 Butterfield Rd

Dallas area

• Plano, TX – 2800 N. Central Expy.
• Fort Worth, TX – 6750 West Fwy.

Minneapolis area

• Roseville, MN – 1643 Country Rd. B2
• Richfield, MN – 1000 W. 78th St.

If one of these stores isn’t in your area or you just detest waiting in lines for several hours, Game Stop has also announced Fallout 3 Midnight Launch parties. There are 1,600 stores participating nationwide with the festivities begining at 10:00pm local time. Check www.gamestop.com to see if your local store is one of the chosen.

Fallout. Descent. Freespace. They can now be yours for a modest sum — without a lick of DRM — thanks to Good Old Games, which has just announced that it’s opened its beta to the public. The site is run by CD Projekt, the same company responsible for the excellent RPG The Witcher, and offers classic PC games for either $5.99 or $9.99 along with extras like wallpapers, artwork, soundtracks, and more.

The beta’s catalog will soon grow to over 50 games, as two new companies — Strategy First and Pluto 13 — join Codemasters and Interplay, who together accounted for the current library of games. That means you’ll soon be able to buy Gothic and Sacred Gold from GOG.

If you’re interested in learning more, Jeff Green interviewed the site’s managing director, Adam Oldakowski, some time back, and that should give you a pretty good indication of what to expect. I’ve been using the site since September and it really is just as awesome as you hope.

If you own a PlayStation 3, there’s a good chance you were ready to buy Little Big Planet this Tuesday. But after the unfortunate delay we learned of earlier today, come next week, you’ll be walking home from the videogame retailer of your choice with one less game than you were planning.

Had the game come out this Tuesday as expected, it would’ve faced some stiff competition — although it seems unlikely that the inevitably huge sales of LBP would have taken much of a hit (and, if anything, these other games should be sighing with relief). With that in mind, here’s what big releases remain for you to come home with next week:

• Far Cry 2 (PC, 360, PS3)
• Fable 2 (360)
• Rock Band 2 (PS3)
• Wii Music (Wii)
• BioShock (PS3)
• Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia (DS)
• Spider-Man: Web of Shadows (PC, 360, PS3, PSP, DS, Wii, PS2)
• Eternal Sonata (PS3)
• Midnight Club: Los Angeles (360, PS3)

If you also happened to come home with a copy of Petz Rescue: Wildlife Vet for Wii, I wouldn’t have judged you. That might not be entirely true, but what is true is that, with Little Big Planet now scheduled for release on October 27 (although with stingy retailers, that likely means Tuesday, October 28), gamers with multiple consoles are looking at another hard week on the wallet. Here’s what you might be picking up along with your copy of LBP:

• Fallout 3 (PC, 360, PS3)
• Guitar Hero World Tour (PC, 360, PS3, Wii, PS2)
• MotorStorm Pacific Rift (PS3)
• Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 (PC)
• SingStar: Vol. 2 (PS3)
• MotoGP 08 (PC, 360, PS3, PSP, Wii, PS2)
• Scene It Box Office Smash (360)

It’s truly going to be one of the most wallet-busting stretches in gaming history over the course of the next several weeks. We should probably be thankful there aren’t any new consoles releasing — unless you plan on picking up the new PSP 3000s or importing a DSi next month.And — tempted as you might be — selling an arm on the black market isn’t as great an idea as it might seem. If nothing else, it’ll make playing that shiny new game of yours much more difficult.

That certainly didn’t take long. Less than 24 hours after it was announced that Fallout 3 had gone gold, a number of torrent sites apparently started showing copies of the game for download. Of course, this is the Xbox 360 version of the game, meaning a modded console would be needed to play it; but that hasn’t deterred thousands of people from already downloading their illegal copy. Gamasutra theorizes that the leak might have come from the manufacturing plant, while commenters say it’s listed as a review copy and could have come from elsewhere.

It’s not unusual for full games to show up online before their release date, but that was still pretty darn quick. There’s a greater issue at hand here than the loss of sales for the publisher though: thousands of people out there are playing this awesome game right now, while the rest of us law-abiding gamers have to wait almost three weeks to get our hands on it. Where’s the justice?

Bethesda announced today that Fallout 3, has gone gold for all formats and will be arriving on store shelves and online October 28 in North America, October 30 in Europe and Australia, and just in time for trick or treat on October 31 in the UK.

At lot of attention has been given to the DLC for the game, what with only the PC and Xbox 360 versions expected to get downloadable goodies in the future, and in the long run that may deter people from purchasing the PS3 version. However, considering the the fact that Fallout 3 is going to be hundreds of hours long, that may be enough to pacify some gamers.

Additionally, Bethesda has revealed the PC specs for their highly anticipated post-apocalyptic RPG. The required specs are pretty standard and even the recommended specs aren’t all that onerous because dual core is pretty much ubiquitous these days; therefore, anyone who wants the game for the PC should have no issues installing and running it. Plus, Pete Hines himself states that the dev team’s goal was for the game to run at 30 frames a second, which means that even your local library’s PC will be able to hang with the rest.

Minimum System Requirements:

• Windows XP/Vista
• 1GB System RAM (XP)/ 2GB System RAM (Vista)
• 2.4 Ghz Intel Pentium 4 or equivalent processor
• Direct X 9.0c compliant video card with 256MB RAM (NVIDIA 6800 or better/ATI X850 or better)

Recommended System Requirements:

• Intel Core 2 Duo processor
• 2 GB System RAM
• Direct X 9.0c compliant video card with 512MB RAM (NVIDIA 8800 series, ATI 3800 series)
• Supported Video Card Chipsets:
  • NVIDIA GeForce 200 and 9800 to 6800 series
  • ATI HD 4800 series to 2400 series
  • ATI X1900 series to 300 series
  • ATI X850 series

NCsoft has promoted Tim Cain to Design Director for the unannounced MMO under development at Carbine Studios.

Cain has 25 years of experience in the games industry. He’s probably best known for his work as a producer and designer of Fallout and Fallout 2 before leaving Interplay to become a co-founder of Troika. The industry vet has several classic PC RPGs his credit including Arcanum, Temple of Elemental Evil and Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines which is still patched regularly by its fan base. Cain has been with Carbine Studios since its inception in 2005.

The games Cain has had a hand in creating are some of my all time favorites. His taking the reins as director of design for Carbine’s MMO is a definite attention getter. I look forward to the big reveal.

Bethesda has assured Fallout 3 fans that the game has been approved for release in Australia. A neutered version of Fallout 3 will be shipping worldwide.

Australia’s highest video game rating is MA15+, so the idea of players shooting up virtual morphine didn’t sit well with its ratings board. Bethesda simply removed the problem from all versions of the game to head off any other regional protests.

According to GamePolitics, we should have seen this one coming.

Fallout 3 has been cleared for sale in the U.K. with no content edits required…

Curiously, a “consumer advice” note posted with the rating decision does not mention the drug use which got Fallout 3 banned in Australia earlier this year. The only reference to content is “Contains very strong bloody violence and gore.”

Gaming Today posted an article on videogame regulation in individual nations eventually forcing global censorship. Oh how I wish we hadn’t seen this ill omen fulfilled so soon. This could be a very disturbing trend in the making.

One of the integral parts of the Fallout series that has claimed so many fans’ total devotion was the storyline. When Bethesda took on the challenge of making a fitting sequel to the these games, they faced a monumental challenge to live up to the expectations of the Fallout community. The company has been slammed over changing the game’s perspective from the established formula. The one thing that could possibly save them from being torn apart by super mutant fans is a solid story firmly grounded in the Fallout tradition.

Writing the story for Fallout 3 required options that allow gamers to choose their own way rather than locking them into a good or evil moral ground. Fallout is all about shades of gray and moral ambiguity. When looking for the best person for the job, Bethesda looked to the writer responsible for Oblivion’s compelling Dark Brotherhood quest line, Emil Pagliarulo.

Pagliarulo reveals in great detail the process of creating the story for the darkly satiric post-apocalyptic world of Fallout in an interview with Gamasutra. Fallout fans won’t want to miss this one.

Fallout 3 is still over a month away from release (must…contain…excitement…) but that isn’t stopping Bethesda from already thinking about some DLC for the game. So how could you possibly add extras to a game of Oblivion-sized proportions? By pretty much expanding the game much like they did with Oblivion. Bethesda VP, Pete Hines, explains:

The type is really–we want stuff that’s going to be several hours. Not just like a one-off thing, but something like where you can download it and play it for X number of hours. It’ll be similar to what we did with Knights of the Nine in Oblivion, where it’s like whole new quest lines, new stuff, that kind of thing.

We want to do stuff like that, where it’s adding hours of tangible stuff to the experience. And it plugs into your existing game, so whether you’re starting a new game, or you’re playing for 40 hours, you can go off and play this.

No word yet on when they might release this new content, but one thing’s for sure: we’re going to be hearing about Fallout 3 long after it hits store shelves.

Via ShackNews

Retailers are getting competitive to earn your pre-order for videogames this Fall. Walmart is offering a Pip-Boy T-shirt with any pre-order of Fallout 3 including the collector’s edition. Yes that is in addition to the Bobblehead, lunch box and all the other goodies that come with the Fallout 3 Collector’s Edition.

As in most special offers, supplies are limited and the offer is only good until the last T-shirt is gone. It sounds like a winner to me. As much as I’d like to get Amazon’s Fallout 3: Survival Edition, I really can’t justify the $130 price tag, even for a Pip-Boy 3000 digital clock. Thanks to Bethesda Blog for the heads up.