Ladies and gentlemen, commence with your rejoicing. The holiday rush is over, meaning we're back down to a much saner and much more affordable flow of games.

Hit up the full list, or if you're looking for a particular system, skip right to the PC, PlayStation 2, Xbox 360, Wii, Nintendo DS and PSP sections. Should you want to check out any past release lists, scope out our handy archive.

Barring any unforeseen delays, all of the listed games should be available from North American retailers by Wednesday, November 26.

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Update 2: Pitchford has reiterated to Shacknews that production on Aliens is still ongoing, though he did not go into further detail on the status of the project, only stating that to say it has "halted" is an "inaccurate characterization."

Update: Gearbox president Randy Pitchford has responded to the rumors in a comment post, saying that Aliens: Colonial Marines has not been cancelled.

"Aliens isn't canned," said Pitchford. "We've made some transformative changes and yes, that's meant some talent changes, but that's not the real story. The true relevance of the story will actually be irrelevant until we release our next game, at which time I hope there will be a lot of interest in what we've done that can produce such results."

Original story: Production on Gearbox Software's shooter Aliens: Colonial Marines (PC, 360, PS3), a four player co-op shooter based on the classic film franchise, has been halted, according to multiple sources.

Several sources have also told Shacknews that Gearbox today laid off between 15 and 25 employees, with one putting the number at 26. These sources independently claimed that the poor performance of Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway and the stoppage of work on the Aliens title were contributing factors to the layoffs.

Though specific sales data on Hell's Highway is unavailable, the title debuted on the NPD group's weekly PC sales chart at ninth position, before quickly falling... Read more

Back in September we reported on the sighting of a rather suspicious-looking scientist at CERN, the site of the Large Hadron Collider particle accelerator, which was then in preparation for its historic first test. In the test chamber.

Sensing imminent invasion, alarmed gamers at Reddit took the initiative, mailing CERN a wrecking bar, headcrab hat and Half-Life strategy guide.

The Freeman doppelganger recently found his pickups, and proceeded to defend the facility from alien forces, evidence of which (above, right) was passed along today.

We await the inevitable news that our Freeman has abandoned the world to alien rule after giving up halfway through the Xen level.

The DirecTV guy today really wasnt very friendly at all. Bah.

• Does SearchWiki work?
• Here comes Colbert Christmas
• Technical agriculture
• iPhone 2.2 is here!
• Your next computer may come with Chrome

As for the the videogame news around these parts:

• 7-Elevel serious about game sales
• ArmA 2 screenshots
• Rise of Argonauts delay yet again
• Eidos trying to control the press and failing again
• Far Cry 2 DLC details
• Midway doesnt hate Unreal tech as much as you thought
• Rock Band DLC update
• Harmonix gets Rock Band 2 class action lawsuit
• More Grand Theft Auto 4 PC video and details
• Tabula Rasa shutting down
• Red Alert 3 PC demo next week
• Valve wants to SCAN YOUR BRAIN
• Take-Two settles over M rated game advertisements
• Stormrise screenshots
• Fallout 3 keeps kicking PC ass in sales
• Latest Company of Heroes expansion trailer

Lastly, I changed my mind about the economy. We're all screwed. Get to the bunkers. We have a new guy we can start blaming soon!

Geoffrey Zatkin, president of research firm Electronic Entertainment Design and Research, estimates that just 4% of all released games actually return profits for publishers.

Speaking to Forbes, Zatkin showed that there is truth in numbers. In fact, numbers are EEDAR's specialty. The firm maintains a database of over 6,000 games catalogued by genre, features and sales figures.

That data is used to create models that estimate how well a game will sell based on the way the game is pitched. EEDAR's sells its services to publishers including Electronic Arts, Activision, and Ubisoft.

Zatkin, a former game designer, co-founded EEDAR after experiencing first-hand the stress of making major decisions early in the game design process. "Every game I have ever worked on, we've gone in blind as to which features would... Read more

Fallout 3 has been on the shelves for a few weeks--and it's still selling well--but developer Bethesda isn't stopping its work on the post-apocalyptic RPG, as another patch for the game is on the way.

"We are currently working on a patch for all three platforms," wrote a Bethesda community manager on the studio's official forum, which ActionTrip noticed. Fallout 3 is available on PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

Other details on the patch, such as fixes or a release date, have not yet been made available. "When I've got more details, I'll let everyone know," promised the Bethesda representative.

Fallout 3 has been patched once on the PC, mostly to fix crashes, but the upcoming patch will be the first for console editions.

Valve has announced that the PC port of Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto 4 is now available for pre-order on the Steam digital distribution service.

Those who buy the game ahead of time on Steam will receive the full PC version of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City as a pre-order bonus.

Grand Theft Auto IV has received a few new features in its transition to the PC platform--most notably the video editor, which was detailed in a trailer released earlier today.

The PC version of Grand Theft Auto IV hits stores December 2.

It's an unexpected jump from creepy-crawly to Oscar-caliber as THQ's newest trailer for Deadly Creatures employs the vocal talents of Academy Award winner Billy Bob Thornton and nominee Dennis Hopper.

A Wii-exclusive action game starring phobia-inducing spiders and scorpions, Deadly Creatures hatches later this year.

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Publisher THQ has deployed a trailer for Tales of Valor, the latest standalone expansion in the Company of Heroes series of strategy games. In the trailer players are given a peek at the new tactical control they will have over their units.

Tales of Valor plays nicely by being fully compatible with the original Company of Heroes and the previous Opposing Fronts expansion, and is expected in spring of next year.

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Shackvideo users can use the HD Stream.

Following weekly tradition, market research firm NPD has released the top 10 selling PC games for the week of November 2 to November 8.

To the surprise of few, World of Warcraft has rejoined the weekly top 10 after a one-week break out of the charts. New expansion Wrath of the Lich King, which launched November 13, is expected to dominate next week's list with over 2.8 million copies sold.

For now, Bethesda's Fallout 3 is still going strong in its second week in the number one slot. EA LA's Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 also fared well, staying high in the charts in the same league as EA's guaranteed-seller Spore.

1. Fallout 3 / Bethesda / $49 (Average)
2. Spore / EA Maxis / $48 (Average)
3. Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 / EA LA / $48 (Average)
4. World Of Warcraft: Battle Chest / Blizzard / $32 (Average)
5. Far Cry 2 / Ubisoft Montreal / $52 (Average)
6. The Sims 2 Double Deluxe / EA Maxis / $24 (Average)
7. The Sims 2 Apartment Life Expansion Pack / EA Maxis / $24 (Average)
8. Nancy Drew: The Haunting of Castle Malloy / Her Interactive / $20 (Average)
9. Crysis Warhead / Crytek (Publisher: EA) / $21 (Average)
10. World Of Warcraft / Blizzard / $20 (Average)

Publisher Sega has unleashed a giant, scary-looking monster in a few new screenshots for Stormrise, the futuristic strategy game from Total War series creator Creative Assembly.

The game was originally announced as a console exclusive, made only for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, but hardware maker AMD outed a PC version is also in the works.

Featuring a story with a post-apocalyptic world following a monster invasion, Stormrise will hit sometime next year.

The Chicago Transit Authority will reinstate the Grand Theft Auto 4 ads that it pulled from Chicago buses back in the spring, but after a short run the CTA will no longer accept ads for M-rated games.

A settlement was reached only recently after publisher Take-Two sued the CTA for breach of contract over the incident before the game was released in April, reports Chicago Breaking News as noticed by GamePolitics.

Under the settlement, Grand Theft Auto 4 ads will appear on Chicago buses for the next six weeks. Other terms of the settlement remain confidential.

After that, the CTA will no longer run ads for M-rated games under a new ordinance passed by the CTA board last week. According to Chicago Breaking News, the ordinance "cites a 'demonstrable correlation' between intensely violent video games and violent or aggressive behavior.

The Grand Theft Auto ads, both then and now, include no overtly violent, sexual or otherwise graphic materials that would normally prohibit ... Read more

In the near future, Left 4 Dead developer Valve may take a scientific approach to making games by scanning players' brain waves, co-founder Gabe Newell has explained.

"Right now we have to [observe players] simply by watching them and then we have to guess as to how certain things are affecting the player," Newell stated in an essay appearing on Edge. "We want to take that even further in the future," he wrote.

Getting scientific, Newell wrote, "One of the areas that we're really interested in is testing biometrics on player state." Biometrics is the practice of measuring activity in the human body such as heart rate--or, in this case, brain activity.

"There are new technologies where we can wire players up with EEGs and actually have direct exposure to their physical reactions to the games," the Valve head continued. EEG is the technology that measures brain activity by placing electrodes on the scalp. The product of an EEG is usually a chart with spikes and troughs, like a seismometer.

The benefit to Valve is precise knowledge of what works, and what doesn't, when making a game. "We can know for sure of something is actually frightening the player--their heart rate is going up ... appropriate parts of their brains are being activated," Newell asserted.

Concluding, Newell called the possibility "super exciting."

For those who haven't yet tried EA LA's alternate-history strategy game Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3, their chance will soon arrive: a PC demo will be released on Monday, November 24.

The demo will feature tutorial training missions and two full levels from the game's Allied and Soviet campaigns. Also included will be the game's introductory cinematic sequence, no doubt a masterpiece of film-making.

Red Alert 3 is available now on PC and Xbox 360, and the PlayStation 3 edition was recently brought back from the dead and will arrive at some point in the future.

Tabula Rasa (PC), the MMO designed by industry pioneer Richard Garriott, will shut down on February 28, 2009.

"Unfortunately, the fact is that the game hasn't performed as expected. The development team has worked hard to improve the game since launch, but the game never achieved the player population we hoped for," reads a letter on the Tabula Rasa website.

The team added that the game will become free to play starting January 10 before the game sees the plug pulled at the end of February.

In closing the game, NCsoft will lay off an undetermined number of employees. "We're going to be scaling down the TR team in preparation for the end of live service," said spokesman David Swofford to Kotaku. He added, "We currently don't know how many people will be affected by that."

NCsoft plans to reward the loyalty of remaining players with free ... Read more

Continuing our earlier look at the PC version of Grand Theft Auto IV, publisher Rockstar has issued more in-game movies created with the PC-exclusive Video Editor, along with a number of details regarding its functionality. The port hits stores December 2.

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The all new Video Editor feature allows you to capture in-game footage, make real time edits and render those clips out as WMV movie files. The clips can also be spliced together into a video complete with post effects like music, text and transitions, and other features... Read more

If you're one of the many still on the lookout for a Wii or a copy of Wii Fit, Target has some good news for you. The retailer has informed Shacknews that come Sunday November 23, it will have Wiis and Wii Fit.

Now, how long those Wiis and copies of Wii Fit will be in stock, that's anyone's guess. So if you want one, or both, you may want to be there when they open.

In addition, the retailer will be giving away a $5 or $10 gift card with the purchase of:

• Fable II (Xbox 360) / $10 Gift Card
• Left 4 Dead (Xbox 360) / $5 Gift Card
• Rock Band 2 (PS3, Xbox 360) / $5 Gift Card
• Need for Speed Undercover (PS3, Xbox 360) / $5 Gift Card
• Star Wars The Clone Wars: Lightsaber Duels (Wii) / $5 Gift Card
• PopStar Guitar (Wii) / $10 Gift Card
• Petz Monkeyz House (DS) / $5 Gift Card
• Spectrobes: Beyond the Portals (DS) / $5 Gift Card

Everybody involved in the making of music-rhythm phenomenon Rock Band--developer Harmonix, publisher MTV, MTV owner Viacom, and distributor Electronic Arts--has been hit with a class-action lawsuit stemming from the game's drum peripheral.

Monte Morgan of Kansas alleges that the above four companies conspired to sell defective drum kits after admitting that the drums' kick pedals were defective. Morgan's lawyers noted that the defendants' special warranty extension lasted until October 1--just before the release of Rock Band 2 featuring a new and improved kick pedal.

That timing was not a coincidence, but rather a strategy designed to coax defective Rock Band drum owners into buying a new Rock Band 2 instrument bundle, claim lawyers in court filings obtained by GameCyte.

In less conspiratorial terms, the lawyers also claim that Rock Band's current 60-day warranty isn't enough in case, for example, a parent buys a copy for their child far in advance of Christmas.

Defective instruments have been a thorn in Rock Band's side since... Read more

Per its usual tradition, developer Harmonix today revealed the downloadable Rock Band songs that will debut next week for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 owners:

The Killers 3 Pack / 440 Microsoft Points ($5.50)
• Mr. Brightside / 160 Microsoft Points ($2)
• Smile Like You Mean It / 160 Microsoft Points ($2)
• Spaceman / 160 Microsoft Points ($2)
Yngwie Malmsteen 3 Pack / 440 Microsoft Points ($5.50)
• Caprici Di Diablo / 160 Microsoft Points ($2)
• Damnation Game / 160 Microsoft Points ($2)
• Red Devil / 160 Microsoft Points ($2)
Singles
• "Jesus Christ Pose" - Soundgarden / 160 Microsoft Points ($2)
• "Pretty Noose" - Soundgarden / 160 Microsoft Points ($2)
• "Laid To Rest" - Lamb of God / 160 Microsoft Points ($2)

As always, the songs are fully compatible with both Rock Band and Rock Band 2.

Unlike normal, the tracks will hit PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on the same day: Tuesday, November 25. The PS3 release usually follows on a Thursday, but the PlayStation Store is updating early next week due to the Thanksgiving holiday.

Following news this week that Midway's decision to use the Unreal Engine was implicated in the publisher's rapid decline, Ben Fritz of Variety clarified his original story, stressing that the Unreal Engine itself is not at fault.

"To be direct: my sources are not saying Unreal Engine, and Epic Games, are the cause of its problems," Fritz wrote. "Rather it's the decision by Midway to use UE3 for all its games, and subsequent problems adapting the code, which caused game delays and then cash flow problems," he added.

The publisher had decided to license the engine for its whole portfolio as a cost-cutting measure. The intent was to allow Midway studios to share resources more efficiently, but instead individual projects demanded adapting the engine to their needs.

The tweaks not only negated the supposed benefits of the license, but their complexity caused a host of delays for the publisher, which in turn caused financial losses.

Midway, sensing its hand was forced, then pushed out games in a desperate grab for revenue, but the games' critical and retail failures only worsened the publisher's financial problems.