Everybody seems to be celebrating this time of the year. Except us, of course, who’re working harder than ever on the Game of the Year awards and getting those awesome prizes out to you guys. But it looks like the Valve team wants to wish us a very Orange-y Christmas this year, especially if you look at the nice little security camera footage that’s being aired from inside the secret Aperture Science Holiday Vault - complete with the Gnome, the Weighted Companion Cube (aww!), the cake, lots of supply crates and a cute little turret hiding near them all, just begging you to go for the cake.

You can watch the video online here, or download the Flash Video file (Flash Player required) straight off our site here.

Download Aperture Science Holiday Vault 07 Surveillance Video (FLV/20.5 MB)

And that’s not all, you can also buy the official Orange Box OST off the Valve Store now, with great music from Episode Two, Team Fortress 2 and Portal, along with a special version of “Still Alive” by songwriter Johnathan Coulton and singer Ellen McLain, which isn’t available anywhere else. Or if you want to spend just on your games, they’ve even got the greatest holiday promotion going where you can pick up great games at 10% to 50% off their usual prices. Good tidings for everyone!

Mumbai got lucky this time around as well, considering we are seeing so many events going on here, with Sony and Microsoft both vying for our attention. As we had mentioned earlier, the Mumbai Microsoft / EA Game On event was on at The Squeeze and me and my GamingIndians friends were there to take in all they could throw at us.

Sadly though, the whole event was a relatively low-key affair, with maybe just 20 to 25 people in attendence - more television channels and online / print publications than a gathering of gaming fans. Good thing the place was small, making it look crowded enough! Guess Microsoft India E&D Country Manager saw this coming and chose not to attend, even though other Microsoft execs including Sanjoy John and Xbox India’s Product Manager Vivek Kulkarni hobnobbed with the attendees.

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This has been a tough couple of weeks for Indian gaming, what with games delayed every which way. But fear not, according to distributors World Wide CDROMS and Excel Interactive, our games should be here real soon.

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare for the PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 should be available at stores around tomorrow, along with The Orange Box for the Xbox 360, Gears of War for the PC and Age of Empires III: The Asian Dynasties for the PC. According to distributor Excel Interactive, though, Crysis has been delayed by another week, so expect it to be here in the first week of December. The game should retail for INR 999, but there’s no word on whether it will be the regular edition or the Collector’s Edition that will be available here. We tried contacting e-Xpress Interactive and Milestone for comments and release dates, but it looks like they’ve taken an early Christmas vacation or something, since we’re yet to get a reply from them.

To make matters sweeter, Guitar Hero III should also be available in stores at the end of the month, with the Xbox 360 version retailing for somewhere over INR 6,000, along with LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga, which I just can’t wait for, even though I’ve played Lego Star Wars I and II: The Original Trilogy to death!

And let’s not forget the ultra-great Mass Effect, releasing just two days from now! We’ll have a lot more on this soon, including information and impressions from the launch party, as well as a gushing review sometime later this week.

Keep watching this space for updates for more information from other distributors, if we ever get around to getting them!

We have official confirmation! In a press release that was sent to us just now, Microsoft India says that the Xbox Originals service will indeed be available in the country on December 4, along with expectations that Xbox LIVE will cross the 10-million user mark by June 2008.

Each Xbox Original will retail for 1200 Microsoft Points (or approximately INR 590 a pop) and will range from 2GB to 7GB in size, which should take us about, oh, 2 days to download on our crappy 256k lines. (Sorry, Microsoft, that 4 - 8 hour download timeframe is for the lucky people in the rest of the world who have access to great 2Mbps lines!) And yes, we too will get the chance to download Carcassonne (or Hexic 2, we’re not sure) within a 48 hour period as we had previously reported. Also.. wait, what?! That’s not what we reported! We thought it was a 24 hour period, unless my Math is that phenomenally bad. But the press release claims we should be able to download “a free Xbox LIVE Arcade game*, within a 48 hour period starting 15 November 1:30 PM.” Oh well, this one’s better anyway.

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We have been pretty much content living in Bangalore, that is, until now. With our correspondents living up north getting lucky two times in a row, it has become more and more difficult. First, it was the Halo 3 pre-launch party followed up with the XBL India launch announcement party, both in New Delhi. Come 16th November 2007 and these buggers will strike gold again when they get to attend yet another event being organized by Microsoft India.

Touted as the, “Biggest Gamers Night Ever Seen”, the event will be showcasing Mass Effect, PGR 4, Army of Two and The Orange Box besides Age of Empires 3: The Asian Dynasties and Gears of War for the PC. The event is an invite only with limited invitations being sent out to the early birds. But if you hurry, there still might be a few seats open!

Needless to say, we’re invited and are eagerly looking forward to all that will be on show besides the excellent food that our reporters, Vijay and Reggie, have become so accustomed to gorging on. Though NDAs are expected to be in place, rest assured that we will be bringing to you all the details that we are allowed to talk about. Expect to see in-detail coverage of the event with pictures and videos of our stuffed reporters putting their best foot forward as videogame “journalists”.

In the meantime, we will resort to poking needles into voodoo dolls of their likeliness, as we try to get a little love sent to us poor folks in other cities as well.

The Orange Box is already well on top of my list for Game of the Year. Sure, it’s not a game, but what the heck, Portal alone is worth any award heaped upon it, even if you don’t count the excellent Episode Two or the insanely fun Team Fortress 2. With Episode Two wrapping up with a gut-wrenching cliffhanger, fanatics such as yours truly are already salivating over playing Episode Three and Portal 2. That is, provided they are released some time before we die, considering Valve’s infamous release date hijinks.

Talking to Rock, Paper, Shotgun’s John Walker for an interview, Episode Two’s project lead David Speyrer has justified the lack of an Episode Three trailer saying that they are trying something “pretty ambitious” for the project, and didn’t want to overcommit.

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Yes, yes, we all knew this was coming, but now we have pictures, straight from the Steam Update News. Delivering on their promise of giving us all our own lil’ fluffy Weighted Companion Cube for Christmas, Valve has announced that it will soon be taking orders for the plush toy, along with fluffy Companion Cube dice for your car’s rear-view mirror. There’s no mention on the pricing yet, but it should sell for about $30 - around the same price all their plush toys seem to retail for. As for me, I shall call mine Fuzzy and he shall be mine… at least, until they start preorders for the Portal turret toy…