Okay, that was mean. It’s not even April Fools day. I apologize for getting your hopes up, but that’s what happened to me when I first saw this Half-Life 3 shirt, which was initially spotted on a Valve employee at Seattle’s Eastside Industry Night.

However, the tipster with the sharp eye (head of marketing for Monday Night Combat dev Uber Entertainment) has since said that the Valve employee “knew as much about Half-Life 3 as we do, which is nothing.” Given Valve’s colorful sense of humor, I wouldn’t put it past them to crush our souls with this beacon of false hope, and then when we think it can’t get any worse, they release Half-Life 3 underwear for the low, low price of $20. And you know what the undies say on the back? “Butt a guy can hope, right?”

And in equally mysterious, yet slightly less depressing rumors, there’s the following teaser for The Last of Us, a PS3 exclusive that’s set for announcement at the Spike VGAs on December 10th.

That’s about all we know for the moment, other than a brief clip of an ant getting acquainted with its hindquarters on the game’s website. Internet sleuths the world over have linked the clip to the following documentary, which frankly, would have made a far more exciting teaser.

Moving along to slightly more substantiated rumors, recent talk of BioWare’s new game from a new studio (to be revealed at the VGAs) being an entry in the Command & Conquer franchise is being backed up by some domain names that EA registered a few days ago. Signs point to the title being called Command & Conquer: Alliances. No word yet on whether it will be an awful cash-in Shooter with frisky NPC party members that can pledge their alliance to you given a side quest or two.

Lastly (can’t have it all be disappointing news, right?), in a recent interview with GameInformer, Jonathan Blow said that his highly anticipated The Witness might be coming to consoles after all:

My current idea is to launch on PC and iOS, and then maybe one of the consoles which has not been decided, and later to bring the game to all other platforms. We can only do a certain number of platforms at launch, because we’re small. A few months ago, I was doing all these interviews, and I didn’t think we were going to do a console at launch. But we’re hiring two more programmers, which has a huge impact on what we can do. So now the idea is open again, that we might do a console launch, but now what exactly that is depends on all sorts of business things that we just haven’t figured out yet.

Given the phrasing of “one of the consoles” and an explicit mention of the business side of things, I’d say it’s a safe bet that Blow still has some resentment toward Microsoft for XBLA’s business policies, which he has openly criticized before. But hey, at least PS3 owners might get in on the fun.

Now I’m going to go get to work on printing my Half-Life 4 shirts so I can pitch them to Valve and make a boatload of money when Gabe Newell sees the comedic genius in it.

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I’m all for more melee in games, but does this emphasis on run ‘n’ gun and melee not penalize reasonable people who believe in aiming their weapons? And why would you ever start climbing a wall with another guy on it and hope you can melee him off when you could just shoot him from the ground to begin with?

Maybe it’s all perfectly balanced and every move has its time and place (although the beta feedback I’ve heard seems to indicate that that’s not the case), but I have a hard time believing such a fundamental focus on run ‘n’ gun won’t adversely affect multiplayer balance. Although, maybe this sort of close-quarters fighting is just what the game needs to set itself apart and offer a different experience from everything else on the market. It’s hard to say without playing the game personally, but Naughty Dog is certainly walking a fine line.

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Pay no heed to those 8.5s and 9.0s. The presence of SotC alone makes this a 10.0, especially at the low, low price of $40. You heard that straight from the horse’s Agro’s mouth. Now drop whatever you’re doing and go take advantage of this colossal value!

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Given that Uncharted is just about the most cinematic video game experience out there, I happen to find the headline very fitting, thank you very much!

But all silliness aside, Uncharted 3 looks pretty amazing. I don’t think there’s another video game out there that’s as fun to watch; we can only hope it plays as well. Now enjoy the video below to see how that wily treasure hunter got himself in the conundrum above.

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Not really my cup of tea, but there’s certainly a lot going on on-screen at once with no lag. That’s about as complimentary as I’ll get.

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Well, I don’t know if I’d describe an airplane’s retracting landing gear as cozy, but some people might. Personally, I prefer the kind of cozy going on in the Golden Abyss trailer below. Either way, you’re getting an incredible looking game that’ll probably be more entertaining than 95% of adventure films from the past twenty years.

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Whether you knew it or not, Ammy is rather fond of kibbles, bits, and video games. She keeps tabs on all three and wants you to be informed too.

Bark! Hey, friends. First some bad news. From Software’s Dark Souls has been delayed. But only by a week! You can now expect to die again and again, and again on September 22nd.

Woof! Not to get your spirits down even more, but Eat Sleep Play’s Twisted Metal reboot has been delayed as well. Instead of October 4th, all you ragin’ vehicle operators will have to wait until sometime in early 2012 to hurt innocent, well-meaning clowns.

Ruff! But it’s not all bad! According to a job listing (that has since been altered), Epic is working on “a new unannounced IP.” We all love Gears of War here at InsaneBear, but it’s always good to know that studios are branching out with new things!

Roo roo roo! Lastly, there’s not a whole lot to report on here, but we may have our first screen-shot of Bungie’s secret new game, code-named “Tiger.” Gotta give the pups something to chew on, right?

Well, I certainly appreciated Amaterasu’s unique brand of reporting and I hope you did too. Now why don’t you go enjoy some more adorable pictures of our favorite sun goddess/wolf. The third one is especially great.

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Assuming you don’t have the Resistance 3 beta code that came with SOCOM 4, this is probably the only way you’ll be experiencing the game’s multiplayer until its September 6th release. As you can see, you’re missing out on a reasonably fun, yet unoriginal looking experience.

As a side-note, does anybody else feel like the layout of this map is remarkably similar to that of Modern Warfare 2‘s “Rundown” map?

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You heard it hear first. Now if only they’d take some more inspiration from Ratchet & Clank by extending that difference to the color pallet, they might have a real contender for best Shooter of the year on their hands. But you’ve got to give them props for starting this journey out in Oklahoma; a guy could use a cornfield here and there with all of the gosh darn urban combat games out there these days.

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I like to imagine that the Japanese text is saying things like, “Murder innocent colossi in more crisp detail than ever before!” That’s the sort of motto marketing departments go for, right? Anyways, jump past the break to see an equally gorgeous trailer for the Ico half of the Ico and Shadow of the Colossus HD Collection, due out September 27th for the PS3.

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