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For the past few months, Rockstar has been teasing us with gorgeous in-game trailers for its upcoming open-world Wild West action game Red Dead Redemption. Well, today the teasing stops. The developer has thrown open the corral gates and let loose a trailer with actual gameplay -- and we think you'd have to agree it looks pretty amazing.

More than just a bunch of quick cuts between brief action clips, it's fully narrated, describing the goals of the dev team at Rockstar San Diego and backing them up with in-game footage. Besides just talking up how open the open-world is, it goes into aspects such as the ability to play like a hero or outlaw -- do you bring your bounty back alive or dead? -- and also shows quick glimpses of a variety of cool-looking gameplay, from the old "try to stab the table between your fingers without cutting yourself" to dragging a guy behind your horse on a rope. But, mostly, it just looks so damn cool.

We'll stop with the talking so you can commence with the watching. Giddyup!

Mythic Entertainment's Mike "Daarken" Lim and Dreamworks' Leif Jeffers aren't the type of gentlemen to sit around idly while a friend is in need. When Lim's girlfriend (Cat) was diagnosed with breast cancer earlier this year at the age of 25, the two quickly hatched a plan to help her wade through the sea of medical bills that a bilateral mastectomy and 16 weeks of chemotherapy can quickly accrue. That plan quickly turned into an art auction named "beautifulgrim."

Artists from all over the game and film industries have contributed to the project -- from Blizzard and Rockstar on the gaming side to Pixar and Disney on the film side, to name only a few. Lim is hoping to hold the auction "sometime next Spring" in either San Francisco or New York City, though plans are still a bit up in the air. " We are still in the process of looking for a venue, so the date and location of the opening reception is still unknown," Lim told us. He also encouraged people to check out some of the already submitted works on the project's Facebook page. Any money earned in the auction beyond what Cat requires will be given to "a breast cancer related charity to be determined by the artists in the coming weeks."

Though you only have one day left to tell Lim if you'd like to contribute, final art for the show isn't due until February 1. We wish them the best of luck.

Starting Monday through the end of the year, people who bust a funky move on over to Adult Swim's site will be able to download a free mix tape, courtesy of Rockstar's Beaterator. The tracks were hand-selected by both Rockstar and Adult Swim, and two of them -- Cee-Lo's "Hello Miss (Armani XXXChange remix)" and Good Time Guys' "Is That You God? (Dabrye remix)" -- will even be compatible with the PSP game.

Hit the break for the list of all 17 tracks you'll be able to score from December 7 until January 1, 2010.

In a new financial earnings and projection report, Take-Two has dished out news of Max Payne 3's release. The game's been pushed back -- we like to imagine in incredibly slow and dramatic fashion -- to the company's fiscal Q4 2010. In real time, that translates to a three-month period spanning August–October, 2010. The game was previously pegged for an unlikely Winter 2009 release.

Based on what we've seen of Max Payne 3 so far, we'd say that bumping back its release is a good move. Max is in serious need of some Jazzercise and a decent dry cleaner, so this extra time will hopefully get him into better shape to handle the countless waves of bad guys he'll be indiscriminately shooting in the face.

Before you put on some sweats, make a little popcorn and sit down for your sitcoms tonight, you may want to gear up for some The Ballad of Gay Tony multiplayer. Rockstar Games has announced it'll be holding a multiplayer session tonight from 5pm - 8pm ET, allowing prospective Liberty City hoodlums to hang out with some developers in the expansion's new multiplayer modes for a bit of two-on-two action.

If you want to get involved, pack a parachute and send a request to these Gamertags:

• GwRockstar3
• GwRockstar4
• GwRockstar5
• GwRockstar6

And if you fancy yourself a bit of a voyeur or can't get to your Xbox, you can still watch the action from the perspective of one of Rockstar's employees at the Social Club event page here.

Honestly, we blame the rest of the video game industry for our susceptibility to Rockstar trailers. If everybody were putting together ads that were half as stylish and cool as this new Red Dead Redemption trailer, we'd likely be immune at this point. As it stands, this introduction to lead character John Marston leaves us with the gnawing feeling that our lives will be utterly incomplete without its shootouts and horseback chases.

Luckily, the trailer makes our longing finite with the new official release date of April 27 or, as you'll probably come to think of it after watching the clip, "not nearly soon enough."

While announcing a new trailer for upcoming western epic Red Dead Redemption, Rockstar let it slip that the game is slated to arrive in April of next year, according to Videogamer.com. That gives your wallet yet another reason to be terrified of the first third of 2010.

The latest clip of the game, dubbed "My Name is John Marston," will arrive on December 1. Allow us to give you a sneak peek:

John Marston: "I used to be bad, but now I'm good!"

Former bad guy friend: "I wish you were still bad, but you're not, so I'm gonna make you kill me!"

John Marston: "Man, it sure is dusty here!"

[Gunshots]

[Fade to black]

Rockstar has unleashed some brand new Grand Theft Auto IV T-shirts, giving fans of The Ballad of Gay Tony a reason to hit the floor show off their best moves. Available for $20 each, the shirts depict the logos of two of the DLC's nightclubs, Hercules and Bahama Mamas. If you've been looking to make a super hip fashion statement ... well, you probably shouldn't be buying video game T-shirts. If, however, you're looking for some inoffensive gaming apparel -- which can be hard to find -- go ahead and take a look.

Despite a relatively low-key launch on the PSP this past Fall, Rockstar Games' Beaterator is showing back up in the news this week for reasons that we couldn't have seen coming from a mile away. It turns out that kids in some NYC public schools are getting their music education by means of the beat making application and PSPs, with a custom workshop being taught by Dubspot.

CBS2 News reports that students from the East Side High School in Manhattan are being instructed on not just using Beaterator's tools, but also creating fully fleshed out tracks. "They're able to learn music theory in a different format ... it's the same information, just a different way of presenting it," the class' teacher says. Copies of Beaterator and PSPs are being provided for free, as is the classroom. We've contacted Rockstar to see if it plans on expanding the program into other cities.

[Via Rockstar Games]

A slow trickle of information and media on upcoming Old West-em-up Red Dead Redemption has been coming from developer Rockstar Games for some time now. And if it weren't for the game's somewhat unique setting – as well as our (admittedly strained) faith in the game's developer – we might not indulge the it with so much attention. Alas, these screens, much like the screens and video that came before them, keep impressing us. Call it a predilection for Western-themed entertainment ... we're not sure. Peep the screens below and decide for yourself if the game is worth your time during the busy second holiday release season.

According to a post on GTA4.net, a new update for the Games for Windows version of Grand Theft Auto IV has added Achievements from the Xbox DLC, The Lost and Damned. If the details of the update are accurate -- and users on the GFW forums indicate they are -- it looks like the DLC's long touted Xbox 360 exclusivity may be drawing to a close. Of course, as Games for Windows is also a Microsoft platform, it doesn't necessarily mean that PS3 owners will be joining in anytime soon.

We've contacted Microsoft for clarification on the update and will update this post when we receive new information.

[Via CVG]

Time lapse videos were all the rage back in -- actually, we don't think they were ever rage caliber stuff, but in the case of this GTA IV video that shows 15 days go by Liberty City, it's at least reached "oh, that's neat!" territory. The video comes courtesy of DigitalFoundry (you can watch it over at Eurogamer) and reminds us just how much life there is in the virtual sand box, as cars drive along to their respective destinations, pedestrians shuffle about doing their own thing and, in the case of that one lady around the 32-second mark, loaf around the riverside all day and night. We just hope she's not doing what we think she's doing. It'd be such an unbecoming thing of the purest city in all of gaming, amirite?

If you thought Manhunt 2 had reached the pinnacle of mature content in video games, you better guess again. The controversy-garnering title will be re-released on Direct2Drive next week for $29.99 -- only this time around, it's packing an AO rating. As those who lived through Mahuntgate surely remember, that was planned to be the original rating for the game, before the ESRB rolled up, and was all like "what? You want to stick shards of glass into another man's ear? No. No, sir."

Rockstar has remained mum about what the new rating will entail, but our guess is that it will incorporate more graphic forms of violence, and perhaps a few extra dirty words. We've contacted Rockstar to get more specific details on the mature-r content, and to find out when we can expect the Early Childhood version of the game to hit store shelves.

[Via Big Download]

A classy gentleman never needs a reason to grow some over-lip facial hair -- however, Rockstar and the Movember Foundation are offering a pretty good incentive for you to grow a glorious moustache. While the latter is asking all applicable males to grow sweet handlebars to raise awareness and donations for men's health issues (primarily prostate cancer), Rockstar is offering the charity's mouthbrow-growing participants a rare prize: They can end as a character in Red Dead Redemption.

The charity event and contest kicks off tomorrow, so if you're interested in helping out, sign up on the Movember Foundation page, and on Rockstar's contest site. Oh, also, you're going to need to shave that sweet Fu Manchu you're already sporting, and start over from scratch. C'mon, you haven't seen your philtrum in like, three years. It misses you.

With the release of this week's second Grand Theft Auto IV expansion The Ballad of Gay Tony, the game's developer has decided to update the online multiplayer statistics tracking in order to reflect the new multiplayer game types. The addition of "BASE Jump" to the mulitplayer as well as "new, tighter Deathmatch arenas" helped spur the leaderboard overhaul, according to the developer blog. The various new additions being made due to the DLC will even get their own section on the Rockstar Social Club, presumably for the four of you tracking your new GTAIV DLC stats after Modern Warfare 2 releases in a couple weeks.