Team Racing is an all-new mode for Need for Speed Shift that pits two teams of up to six racers against each other. In team-based races, winning isn’t simply about crossing the finish line. You’ll have to coordinate with your teammates, work out strategies, and yes… sometimes you’ll have to lose in order to win. It’s a difficult concept for some to grasp. I’d suggest watching Talladega Nights for inspiration. If you bought a launch PlayStation 3 you should have a copy. It’s all about the “Shake N’ Bake”.

The Team Racing pack also comes with five renowned racing cars:

1967 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray 427
1967 Shelby GT-500
1969 Dodge Charger R/T
1971 Dodge Challenger R/T
1998 Toyota Supra Mark IV

The Team Racing pack will be available worldwide for the Xbox 360 on December 1, December 3 for European PS3 consoles and December 10 for the North American PS3.

Players can download the “Hyundai Genesis Coupe Car Pack” for free today, adding three different versions of the 300-horsepower Genesis Coupe to their car rosters. The pack includes the Rhys Millen Racing Red Bull Hyundai Genesis Coupe, the HKS Genesis Coupe, and a unique Forza Motorsport 3 Genesis Coupe. I’d say it’s a coupe coup, if I was much cornier than I already am.

Following up the free DLC in December is a paid “Hot Holidays Car Pack”, featuring a selection of 2010’s most eagerly anticipated super and purpose-built race cars. Turn 10 will be slowly revealing the content of the pack leading up to the December 8th release, but it will definitely include the new Ferrari 458 Italia, with the 2010 Audi S4 accompanying the pack as a free sample. Keep an eye on Forzamotorsport.net to see what 400 Microsoft points will net you come next month.

Outside of mod tools included in the PC versions of Gears of War or Unreal games, the only way to get your hands on Unreal Engine 3 technology for free was to date Cliff Bleszinski, and even then odds are you wouldn’t be sharp enough to do anything with it. Now Epic has released the Unreal Development Kit, a standalone game development package available for free non-commercial use.

The Unreal Development Kit, or UDK, contains everything a budding game developer needs to create Unreal Engine 3-powered games. Games like Whizzle from Psyonix Studios, a game crafted in two months using a two-man team of a programmer and artist. You can see the results in the screenshot up top, or head over to the showcase page to download the game for free.

“I’m excited about the possibilities the Unreal Development Kit opens to those who are looking to get into the game business but don’t otherwise have the means to acquire world-class technology and tools like ours,” said Mark Rein, vice president of Epic Games. “UDK is Unreal Engine 3, which has been used to create games in a wide range of genres, as well as military simulations, 3D architectural walkthroughs, animated movies and more. Users are only limited by their imaginations. Go ahead make something Unreal!”

You can download the Unreal Development Kit right now at http://www.udk.com/, where you can also find documentation, licensing terms and a full feature listing.

Everyone who buys Fairytale Fights for the Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 will be getting free downloadable content in the coming weeks, but prove your love for the game and you can get even more. How does one prove their love? Simply register at the Fairytale Fights website, and you’ll be eligible for extra downloadable content, which Playlogic says is valued at $US15. Whether four new playable characters and three new PVP arenas are worth $US15 to you is a moot point really, as you’ll just be getting it for free anyway. Let’s not split hairs here.

To register for the extra DLC, visit http://www.fairytalefights.com/dlc. Details on the content coming to Xbox 360 and PS3 users who don’t register will be announced in the coming weeks.

Humans + Gears consists of 33 arrangements of composer Yasunori Mitsuda’s original score to the 1998 Square Enix game Xenogears from 30 different remix artists. The two-disc project represents the mechanical and human sides of the Xenogears story, with the first disc focusing on natural, soft, human sounds and the second more dark and electronic.

I’ve listened to several tracks off of the project so far, and I have to say that the quality of the work is simply amazing. There is no reason not to own this music.

The entire project can be downloaded right now from the album’s official website either song-by-song or in one massive, 1.07GB torrent.

You might not know where you’ll be going, but you’ll sure know who you’ll be. BioWare has released the entire character creation process for the PC version of Dragon Age: Origins as a free download on the official website. The download is around 370MB or so, and once installed it allows you to completely create your Dragon Age character, save it, and then import it once the full game hits store shelves and digital distribution channels.

I love BioWare for doing this. This is exactly the sort of pre-release application that gets me excited about sinking my time and teeth into an epic RPG. They’ve got versions in German, French, Polish, Russian, Spanish, Italian, Czech and Hungarian, so not being able to read what I am typing here is no excuse.

Character Creator Now Online! [Dragon Age - Thanks PurpleChair!]

With the October 27th launch of Forza 3 just around the corner, Turn 10 and Microsoft are gearing up to release the full list of cars and tracks for the game over at Forzamotorsport.net. Not content with the ridiculous number of rides included in the game, Turn 10 has hand-picked 10 classic cars, bundled them up with two new tracks, and created the Motorsports Legends Car Pack. The pack includes such vintage racers as the ‘60 Chevrolet Corvette, ‘71 Nissan Skyline 2000 GT-R and the ‘65 Shelby Cobra Daytona Coupe, along with the Benchmark High Speed Ring and Sidewinder Proving Ground tracks.

The Motorsports Legends Car Pack will be available on launch day, with a special code inside every new copy of Forza 3 allowing the purchaser to pick up the pack for free. Check out the full list of included cars below.

· ‘65 Alfa Romeo Giulia Sprint GTA
· ‘64 Aston Martin DB5 Vantage
· ‘81 BMW M1
· ‘60 Chevrolet Corvette
· ‘69 Dodge Charger
· ‘57 Ferrari 250 Testa Rossa
· ‘80 Fiat 131 Abarth
· ‘67 Lamborghini Miura P400
· ‘71 Nissan Skyline 2000 GT-R
· ‘65 Shelby Cobra Daytona Coupe

But I’ll make an exception today for Strange Adventures In Infinite Space.

For two reasons: it’s an excellent mix of Master Of Orion-lite strategy and Star Control-inspired arcade combat; it’s now free.

Developer Digital Eel is now offering its six (seven?) year old game as a free download. You can also grab it from publisher Shrapnel Games. Windows and Mac versions are available. Heartily recommended.

Strange Adventures In Infinite Space [Digital Eel]

Fable II: Game Episodes is the full version of Fable II split up into five easy pieces, with all of the achievements, co-operative gameplay and hero-creating joy of the retail release. Xbox 360 owners can download the first episode today for free, taking their hero from childhood to young adulthood in the first volume, and then additional volumes are available at the player’s leisure. It’s the Time-Life Books of gaming.

Additionally, players who purchase the disc edition after downloading the free episode will carry over all of their statistics, experience, and items relatively seamlessly.

If you’ve yet to experience Fable II for yourself, you have no excuse anymore.

Stephen Nichols, putting it bluntly, says “the game just isn’t profitable”. Though the game’s creative team has some ideas for how to inject life back into it, “they’re expensive to implement and pretty risky. Those two facts, coupled with the recent loss of some key developers, make achieving the success we seek pretty much out of the question.”

They’re just a three man team now. (They were five.) So Dungeon Runners is caput when the big ball plops on Times Square. Until then, they put together some parting gifts for the Dungeon Runners community.

First, those with paid memberships as of September 16 get 30 days free in City of Heroes: Architect Edition and Guild Wars: Prophecies. Nichols added that “any of you guys that need refunds for multiple-month membership purchases will be taken care of”.

The other slice of bread in the shit sandwich? “We’re going out in style,” Nichols said, “with a few changes to the game for the coming ‘End Time.’” That means more frequent mythic loot drops, cut rate prices at the King’s Coin vendors, and quintupling XP gains “to help you finish the game before year’s end!”

And what would be a grand finale without a fireworks show? “We’re adding a huge nuke to Townston that will blow up on New Year’s and take the game down with it.”

Dungeon Runners is Shutting Down [Dungeon Runners, thanks Jason J.]