I will go ahead and admit it; I am a sucker for Michael Bay films and racing games. Put those two together and you have a “virtual blockbuster” which is what the new Michael Bay-assembled Need for Speed “The Run” trailer essentially is. The Electronic Arts team recently took to the box-office action-movie hit maker Michael Bay, known for directing and producing films such as Armageddon, Transformers series, Bad Boys – etc., and assembled a team to produce the Need for Speed ‘The Run’ trailer.

If I ever had the chance to meet Michael Bay, I may need someone to keep me from smothering him with all types of questions especially since he is known to be a car buff. Check out Michael Bay’s Need for Speed The Run TV commercial below.

Hard-working relaxation engineers ply their trade in Los Santos.

Some would argue that video games that promote violence, car theft, gunplay and vehicular homicide (not to mention the occasional date with a professional relaxation engineer) are a pox on society, and lead to the breakdown of morals. Others argue that it’s better to get your freak on in a virtual world than in real life, where such behavior usually has seriously negative consequences. Regardless of which side of the fence you’re on, there’s no denying this: Rockstar Games has made a fortune with its Grand Theft Auto video game franchise.

GTA V drops next year, and you can check out the first trailer below. The plot of GTA V is pretty basic: a man moves to Los Santos (which looks identical to real-life Los Angeles) to escape his shady past, settle down and raise a family. As the saying goes, you can run but you can’t hide, so our hero (or anti-hero) soon finds himself caught up in the usual mayhem that constitutes day-to-day life in the City of Saints.

Like the other GTA games, it looks like GTA V will be part cinema, part first person shooter and part driving game. Also like the other versions, it looks like it will be a blast to play, as long as you don’t take it too seriously.

If you own Gran Turismo 5 for the Sony PS3, chances are good you’ve seen the Art Morrison 1960 3G Corvette. You may even own it, if you’ve got a bank account big enough, or you may have simply looked it over and opted to buy something more contemporary. After all, who wants a fifty-year-old relic when you can buy something really fast, like a Nissan GT-R, for less money?

Watch Matt Farah drive the Art Morrison 3G Corvette in The Smoking Tire episode below, and you’re likely to come away with an entirely different perspective. First, the only thing the Art Morrison Corvette has in common with an original 1960 Corvette is the body style. Underneath, the 3G Corvette rocks a modern chassis, modern suspension, modern brakes and a seven-liter V-8 good for 538 horsepower. It’s got 50 / 50 front to rear weight distribution and and extremely low center of gravity, so it’s going to hold its own against a lot of cars on the racetrack.

Some would say that cutting up a survivor 1960 Corvette is an act bordering on blasphemy, but I’d beg to differ. Art and Craig Morrison have taken something and improved it in every way, and there are plenty of low mileage, trailered-to-car-shows 1960 Corvettes to gawk at. Their 3G Corvette took over 3200 man hours hours to build, and the result is a one-of-a-kind masterpiece of design and engineering.

Leading up to the official release date of Forza Motorsport 4 (October 11, 2011), the latest Xbox game to compete with Sony’s Polyphony Gran Turismo, a new dramatic trailer filled with true automotive enthusiast passion is released into the wild. In the new trailer, Jeremy Clarkson, host of Top Gear – as if you didn’t know, narrates what is probably one of the best car video game trailers ever called “Endangered Species”. Sure, as Clarkson puts it, it is all about safety and mpg’s but in the confines of your living room you have a safe haven where we can push the laws of physics without negative consequences. Enjoy the video below!

Like many other gamers, I bought into the hype surrounding Gran Turismo 5. I bought a Sony PS3 just for that game (although I told the wife it was for the up-sampling BluRay player), and patiently waited two years for the game to be released. When GT5 hit the market, after a countless series of delays, players began to notice certain flaws. The physical damage, which Polyphany Digital assured us would be just like real life, wasn’t (at least not initially). The detailed images of cockpits and controls were limited to premium cars, which represent a fraction of the total cars available. Even the content seems a bit disjointed: by trying to be all things to all racing fans, Polyphany essentially let down rally fans, NASCAR fans and even TopGear fans. What’s the sense of including the Top Gear test track, when you can only drive it in “special” events?

At this week’s E3 event, Turn 10 released the teaser video below for the upcoming Forza Motorsport 4. If the images from the video are any indication, then all hail the new king of driving games. The visuals are stunning, including lurid detail of both cockpits and engine bays. Turn 10 has scrapped the physics engine from Forza 3, and thanks to a partnership with Pirelli, now has perhaps the most realistic driving experience of any game on the market. Via Microsoft’s Kinect, a camera will track the movement of the player: want to look left? instead of hitting a button on the controller, you simply look left. Just like driving a real car, only without the ridiculously high cost of gas and the paranoia involved with trading paint. Take a look at the video below to see what I mean.

I’m not selling my PS3 just yet, and I can’t afford an X-Box 360 unless I sell a real car or a few duplicate body parts. I’ll be watching the release of Forza 4 (set for October 11th) with some interest, and if it turns out to be as good as the hype, it may be time to start selling blood plasma. Any readers need a new kidney? I may have one for sale.

(Source: IGN Entertainment YouTube Channel)

99.9% of all car enthusiasts have a ‘need for speed’ which is why the ‘Need For Speed’ gaming franchise has been so successful over the years amongst us car guys and has continued that success with the latest release of ‘Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit’. Featured in the video below is some real-life jaw-dropping Italian sports car action with a mean Lamborghini Murcielago LP640 Police car and Pagani Zonda Cinque on the run driven by stunt drivers Marc Basseng and Marc Hennerici. Think of it as another ad push for the Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit game. Have you picked up your copy of Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit yet?

[source: Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit]

With the NEW set release date of November 24, 2010, Gran Turismo 5 begs to be the best racing simulation game ever. All of the hype and speculation around its release date over the past couple years has had everyone up in arms where some were resorting to playing Forza 3 on the Xbox 360 while hope of an actual release of GT5 faded into the background. Now with a confirmed release date, GT5 looks to be ‘awesome’ as the kid in the commercial below puts it. The GT5 commercial below is rather hilarious featuring Kevin Butler as Sony’s VP of ‘Add More Awesome’ says he is not going to give back the press fleet of cars they used for the making of the game. I don’t blame him, GT5 does look like it has plenty of awesome but we won’t know for sure until two days from now. Now if I could only afford that new 3D TV I saw in the store over the weekend so I can enjoy GT5 in full 3D HDTV bliss. Enjoy the commercial below!

While many of us are sick and tired of waiting for Gran Turismo 5 to be released, they have teased us to death with clips of the hot new cars to be included in the new game for PS3. The Toyota FT-86 is another item that we just cannot wait for. GT5 has released a trailer of the FT-86G, a “Sports” Concept version of the FT-86 Concept. The video below shows the FT-86G all trimmed out like you have never seen before in hi-resolution glory on the PlayStation 3. The engine still does not sound like the typical Subaru flat-4 but look at that front-mount intercooler! Hmmm. Enjoy the video and extremely high-resolution (8MP) images below!

[source: GTPlanet]