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Rockstar sent along videos showcasing each of the Red Dead Redemption pre-orders currently available, and we just can't decide which one to go with -- they all look so good. You can see all three of them over on the game's website. Pre-ordering from Amazon, you'll remember, will get you a Golden Guns pack, pre-ordering the game at GameStop will nab you the fan-selected Deadly Assassin Outfit and ordering the game from Best Buy will get you the War Horse, which you can see in the video above.

Wait a minute -- we just decided. We're totally going with the horsie. His name will be Roger and we will hug him and feed him and dodge explosions and shoot bad guys from his back and it will be the awesomest. Roger is the best horse ever. He's tougher than any other horse!

If you've waited this long for Episodes from Liberty City, another two weeks shouldn't hurt, right? Rockstar Games has pushed back the PS3 and PC releases of the long-awaited Grand Theft Auto IV expansions by two weeks due to "a request by Sony Europe to make some minor content changes to the PAL PS3 version of the game." According to the press release, "the minor changes made to the game will not affect the gamers enjoyment of the games, these will not affect any gameplay elements and were not related to any local ratings requirements."

All versions of the add-ons -- including the downloadable episodes "The Lost & Damned" and "The Ballad of Gay Tony" -- have been delayed to April 13th for North America, and April 16th for all other countries. A Rockstar Games blog post further elaborated on the decision to do a global delay, ensuring that "everyone can experience multiplayer simultaneously, take part in online events together, be on level ground on leaderboards, etc."

Based on all the movies and old shows we've seen, we feel like we know exactly how it was in the old west: people sat around all day, drank whiskey from unmarked bottles, hit up the brothel when they had some spare cash and did their best not to get in Clint Eastwood's way. Pretty cut and dry, right?

Well, Rockstar's Red Dead Redemption paints a different picture of the west, one filled with picturesque landscapes and small towns, where clusters of folk tried to earn a living and make a life. A place in the grip of the Industrial Revolution, an uncertain time of transition from the old lawless ways of the west to the modern comforts and progress enjoyed by Americans in the east.

This recreation of life back then isn't just for show, however, as players will be able to go all Ted Nugent on it and hunt and skin animals, selling their hides to merchants for valuable goods or services. There's also the job of ranch protector, should you wish to guard the land from potential night-time rustlers. You can even herd cattle and fight a mountain lion or two, if the idea of mowing down countless NPCs puts a hitch in your giddy-up.

We don't yet know precisely what to make of Rockstar's upcoming L.A. Noire (not that that's necessarily a bad thing), but after poring over a new Edge piece on the game, we think we may be getting a clearer picture.

"With traditional adventure games, everything is based on what the designer wants you to figure out," Jeronimo Barrera, VP of product development at Rockstar, told the publication. "We've kind of gone for a different approach, which is more like real-world detective work."

Developer Team Bondi isn't coming right out and putting it this way, but L.A. Noire sounds like a new genre, caught halfway between the open-world action of a Grand Theft Auto and the brainteaser pacing of a classic adventure game. Could we be witnessing the birth of the true "detective" game? Figure that one out.

As part of its latest financial results report today, Take-Two delayed Red Dead Redemption by several weeks. Previously scheduled to arrive on April 27, the game is now slated to release in North America on May 18 and internationally on May 21. The announcement doesn't specify a reason for the move, though it's worth pointing out that the new date moves Red Dead Redemption out of the publisher's fiscal Q2 (February–April) and into its third quarter (beginning May 1). [Update: During an investor call corresponding with the financial report, Take-Two chairman Strauss Zelnick clarified that the delay was issued to extend the game's pre-release marketing period.]

Take-Two also notes that financial guidance for its fiscal 2010 has been adjusted to take the date change into account. While Read Dead Redemption was at the center of a controversy concerning developer Rockstar San Diego, a barrage of recent media assets and confirmation of retail pre-order bonuses seems to indicate that development is on track.

"Traditional motion capture could never bring to life the subtle nuances of the chaotic criminal underworld of L.A. Noire in the same way as MotionScan," claims Team Bondi's Brendan McNamara, commenting on MotionScan. It's the new motion capture technology being employed first by his studio's moody crime game, L.A. Noire. In a press release yesterday, Depth Analysis announced the new tech and touted its many applications in the forthcoming Rockstar title.

Allegedly, MotionScan uses "32 high-definition cameras to capture true-to-life three-dimensional performances at up to 30 frames per second," thus allowing for the supposedly "emotional performances" that McNamara says make L.A. Noire "a truly unique and revolutionary game." Aside from the claims of higher quality, the mocap system supposedly has lower operation costs due to a streamlined post-production processing time. With any luck, we'll finally see all this big talk in action -- and compare ir with other performance-capture scenes in games like Uncharted 2, Alan Wake and Heavy Rain -- this September when the game arrives on store shelves.

Rockstar has an exclusive -- wait, how can Rockstar have the exclusive on its own game? Anyway, there's a set of screens for Read Dead Redemption over at Rockstar's site.

The screens take a noticeable departure from the usual media we've seen coming from the game, trading in the requisite gunplay and horseback riding for brief bios on some of the world's inhabitants. Above, you can see Nigel West Dickens, the kindly old gentleman who promises to cure what ails you through one of his many tonics. Is there anything that drinking didn't fix back in the old west?

So mosey on down to Rockstar's site to see all them thar screens if you please, cowpoke.

Now, we know what you're thinking. "Oh, Rockstar's released a trailer featuring the female protagonists in Red Dead Redemption. We're guessing there's a scantily-clad burlesque dancer with a heart of gold, a scantily-clad cowgirl with a heart of gold and a fiery, scantily-clad revolutionista with a heart of gold." Well, you're awfully close -- just replace all three instances of "scantily-clad" with "completely badass," and you're a bit closer to the truth.

Check out the trailer above to see Red Dead Redemption's reasonably-dressed femme fatales spit some sass and shoot some dudes.

Take-Two is starting an office in Japan to publish its games. Previously, Take-Two and Rockstar games have been published by partners like Capcom, Cyberfront and, most recently, D3 Publisher. It always seemed a bit weird to see a GTA game with a Capcom label, and now we'll be spared that minor cognitive dissonance.

The first game to be released under the new Japanese branch of Take-Two Interactive is Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City. The publisher has yet to offer a date for this Japanese release, or even specify if it will be on both PS3 and Xbox 360.

Having put to bed a past with Rockstar Leeds -- and helping to turn out a laundry list of triple-A titles, including the portable Grand Theft Autos, while working there -- lead engineer turned studio director Lee Hutchinson and soon to be ex-lead programmer Matt Shepcar recently announced their new development studio: Double 11. Like so many other game devs these days, the two grew tired of big-budget projects with huge staffs, leaving in favor of creating their own smaller, mobile titles. "Our small size also means that every single team member is of paramount importance to their success or failure," the pair told Joystiq in an interview this afternoon.

That isn't to say that the two have any complaints with Rockstar relating to the recent quality of life allegations. "We had a great time working at the Leeds studio and there are a lot of really talented people there," they told us. Hutchinson further expanded on his time at Rockstar to Develop. "Rockstar Leeds and the spouse allegations had no effect on our decisions to leave." In fact, we asked the two how they'd feel about working with Rockstar again in the future, and they told us, "We'd love to work with Rockstar again ... our split was very amicable and we hope Gordon [Hall] would consider working with us again in the future."

To find out more about the studio's plans -- including a prospective Summer release for the its first game and where we might find said game, not to mention an explanation of the "Double 11" name -- join us past the break.

The first batch of screens from Rockstar's long-awaited L.A. Noire have finally surfaced over at Game Informer, likely having enjoyed a lengthy three martini lunch in some dark, smokey bar in Uptown for the past ever. The screens depict things very appropriate to the period -- white wall tires and smart business suits; long shadows and plenty of pistols. As for other details, we won't know until the latest issue hits newsstands.

Both the DS and PSP versions of GTA Chinatown Wars have been well-received by gamers and critics alike, which inevitably spurred a release on the iPhone. And if you're an iPhone fan who's been looking to pick up the Apple platform port, now's a good time: it's on sale for 30 percent off this weekend only in the App store.

That brings the game down to a very manageable $6.99, and you can download it for that price up until 12am ET Sunday night, at the conclusion of Valentine's Day. We'd offer that it's also a good gift idea for that special someone in your life, but we wouldn't want to help produce any modern day Bonnie and Clyde types now, would we?

Download GTA: Chinatown Wars from the App store - $6.99

You're going to watch the above trailer (dubbed "The Law") for Rockstar's upcoming Red Dead Redemption regardless of what we say about it here, so we thought we'd try a little experiment: Don't watch it! That's right, don't watch it ... instead, close your eyes and just listen to it. The voice acting oscillates between excellent and simply serviceable and the dialogue sounds historically appropriate; but the music ... the music is where this trailer sets itself apart. It's like Ennio Morricone himself took the gig. So sling your poncho over your shoulder, close your eyes, and pull the trigger on that play button.

Red Dead Redemption's many, many pre-order bonuses are now detailed on the game's official website, and we can't imagine anyone will be prepared for the barrage of options listed when you click that link. No less than eight different pre-order bonuses, split between ten different US and UK retailers have been dreamed up by marketing. In typical Rockstar fashion, the practice of "exclusive" bonus content has become excessive bonus content.

Among the options listed are the "Golden Guns Weapon Pack" (more "Fame" per kill), from Amazon, which also comes with a $10 Amazon gift card; the "War Horse," a steed that Rockstar claims can't be bested by any other horse in the game, only available from Best Buy and HMV; and the "Deadly Assassin Outfit" from UK retailer Game (and maybe GameStop, if the getup wins the vote -- uh-huh, there's a pre-order vote). So yeah, we're going with the Amazon option, too.

We always assumed that Geoff Keighley's ability to secrete world exclusives only applied video games, but his power/curse seems to extend even to magazines about video games. Keighley says he got an early look at Game Informer's recently teased piece on Rockstar's L.A. Noire and let slip via his Twitter feed that the game is apparently slated to arrive in September.

According to legend, Keighley is often able to see pieces like this even before the electrical impulse makes its way from the "typing synapse" of the brain to the writer's fingers. That's our accurate, scientific way of saying we haven't seen the piece for ourselves yet, so we're going on Keighley's word at the moment. We know, we know, we dislike trusting a guy who misspells "Jeff" too.

Update: A representative from Game Informer confirmed to us that the L.A. Noire issue of the magazine does list a September 2010 release window for the game. And now, we play the waiting game.