Having enjoyed almost a year’s lead time on the PC and the PS3, the all-time favorite twitch shooter, Unreal Tournament III, has finally made it to the Xbox 360 in India, a fact we wouldn’t even be aware of if not for a chance conversation with the distributor. Less than three weeks after its global launch on the Microsoft platform, Unreal Tournament III is now available (in limited quantities, so get yours ASAP) across stores for INR 2799, which makes this the highest priced official Xbox 360 title to be released in the country yet.

The Xbox 360 version of the game has 5 exclusive maps, 2 exclusive characters, all the DLCs released so far and a splitscreen multiplayer mode, but unfortunately, doesn’t have any support for the keyboard and mouse or user-made content, thanks to Microsoft’s bitchiness when it comes to custom content. The only question is, has it been worth the long wait for Xbox 360 gamers? We’ll answer that one in our review, coming soon, complete with a Necris DarkWalker standing outside your door in case you disagree with us.

Team Fortress 2 may have been the latest addition to Valve’s multiplayer crown jewels, with a lot of Counter-Strike: Source and Day of Defeat: Source gamers temporarily switching loyalties to dealing cartoonish death online. For all those DoD: Source players who have been itching for an excuse to return to the WW2 theater, Valve has just gone and released The Palermo Update to the game.

Along with the Palermo map (a remix of the insanely popular community map, dod_salerno, by Magnar “insta” Jennsen), the update uses the new Steamworks platform to add support for in-game player avatars in the scoreboard and the end-of-round panel, detailed player statistics as well as the revenge/nemesis freeze cam, a la Team Fortress 2. And if all that wasn’t enough to make people come scooching on their asses back to DoD: Source, the game now has 51 new devilish achievements that should keep people tied up with it for quite a while.

And if you’re still not convinced and don’t even own DoD: Source, well, you can still take the game out for a nice test ride, with the free weekend running from July 4th to July 6th. Hopefully that should convince you enough to free up enough credit on your card to get the game.

For more details, check out the Day of Defeat: Source Palermo website here.

When Vijay said Microsoft’s sparing no expense for Halo 3, he meant every word of it. As if it wasn’t enough that other countries were getting massive launch parties for the final installment in the epic Halo story arc, Microsoft UK wants to show them up. Big.

Renting out the biggest theater in London, the BFI IMAX, the Halo 3 launch party for UK is an exclusive event being hosted by musician Pharrel Williams, who will also be taking on members of the public in Halo 3 matches as well as being connected to a number of other cities including Paris, Madrid, Amsterdam and Milan via Xbox LIVE. And you thought the Microsoft India launch event for the game was big! *sigh* When, if ever, will we see something like this in our own little country. For Mass Effect, perhaps? Hello, Mohit? Pretty please with lots of sugar and strawberries on top?

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WHEEEE! And the rockets start flying! After all those juicy videos that we saw of the developers and a select bunch of lucky bastards playing it, everyone who has pre-purchased the Orange Box can now get onto the awesomeness of Team Fortress 2, considering the beta has gone live as of today morning. After getting delayed by a couple of hours and two Steam updates later, I was up and running with the beta, but had to rush it and could only manage about 15 minutes on Dustbowl before running off to complete some pending stuff on my other “uncool” job. We have some screenshots for your viewing pleasure, and will bring you more details on the beta as well as the maps themselves and all that the beta has to offer a lil’ later in the day. For now, enjoy the fact that the beta is here, along with PC Achievements, stats tracking and endless rocket/grenade launcher spamming!

Hit the jump for the screenshots on my newest favorite in the Source multiplayer catalog.

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