The Hollywood Reporter has a trailer up for what is apparently a US version of the insanely awesome Top Gear. Unfortunately this US version appears to be more awful than awesome. It features a cringeworthy cast of Adam Ferrara, Tanner Foust and Rutledge Wood. Apparently they couldn't be bothered with finding an entertaining individual who likes to talk cars like say...

Marijn Kentie's website has up a Direct3D 10 renderer for games that use the original Unreal engine (Unreal, Unreal Tournament, Deus Ex and Rune). The render patch is designed more for future proofing the old games rather than adding new eye candy, but they still look quite good. Better than the previous non-Glide versions anyway. The above link includes some screenshots and additional info.

PC Gamer has an exclusive first look at Torchlight 2. It is light on text and consists mainly of the concept artwork, but it is still quite interesting. Check it out if you are a hack and slash fan.

I saw over at Blues that the Civilization 5 site carries official word on a demo.

"Many of you have written on the forums and emailed in questions about whether or not there will be a public demo for Civilization V.

Well, today I am excited to get to tell you that yes, there will be!"

The demo should be out in September "before the full game is released" though an exact date is not given.

Slashdot brings word that the gaming IM client Xfire has been bought out.

Xfire was bought by new owners today. Most of the team that has built Xfire over the last six years is leaving. We enjoyed working for you for the last 127 releases and wish we could stay to create the next 127. Good bye, good luck, and game on. — The Xfire Team.

A trailer is up for Codemaster's DiRT 3.

This week Blizzard released StarCraft II, sequel to the smash hit of 1998. In addittion to the regular edition, devoted fans can pick up a collector's edition packed with extra goodies. We got our hands on a copy.

The CE includes:

The Madden 11 demo is now up on Xbox Live for 360 users.

Apple has refreshed the iMac line. The new flagship iMac is quite impressive, all-in-one or not. It features an optional 2.93GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7 processor, up to 16GB of 1333MHz DDR3 memory, and an ATI Radeon HD 5750 1GB. The big jump there is obviously in the graphics department (in which Apple was woefully lacking).