The 2008 Penny Arcade Expo Omegathon V lineup has been revealed and it feels surprisingly casual. There's no Doom or Quake title like we've seen in every previous Omegathon. Also new: starting the first round with a non-board game (Jenga has been pushed to round 5). Here's the list:

• Round 1: Peggle
  
• Round 2: Boom Blox
• Round 3: Pictionary
• Round 4: Rock Band (Our guess is Rock Band 2)
  
• Round 5: Jenga
  
• Final Round: *** TOP SECRET ***
  

The 20 Omeganauts have already been chosen (congratulations to any Joystiq readers who made the cut!); first prize this year is a trip for two to the Tokyo Game Show with all expenses paid and $5,000 in "walking around money."

While last year's Omegathon skipped the previous tradition of using a classic retro title (Pong, Combat, Tengen Tetris), every year has featured an id Software shooter. With Rage, Doom 4 and the new Wolfenstein looking unlikely, we're trying to think of another potential, unreleased FPS that could top last year's surprise Halo 3 inclusion. If Tycho and Gabe are looking to make our heads explode, maybe they can get Duke Nukem Forever. We won't find out until minutes before the final round on Sunday, August 31 at 4:30 PM PT.

In the meantime, check out the list of past Omegathon lineups, and feel free to make your own and play along at home.

"We have a lot to learn from their success too, they did some very innovative things to keep people going and their experience-rewards system was something that we paid a lot of attention to." Is that any way to talk about your main Xbox Live competitor? Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz, Bungie's Lead AI Programmer, Damian Isla, had quite a few nice things to say about Infinity Ward's ridiculously successful shooter, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.

Isla joins a chorus of reviewers in praising the game's single-player campaign for its tight pacing and scripting, praising the developers for doing "a hell of a job with their set pieces, of scripting certain moments that they were really sure the player was going to actually see and experience first hand." Though Isla notes that Halo 3's gameplay is heavily dependent on simulation (meaning in-game physics and reactions, not reality), it still "has a lot to learn" from Call of Duty 4's tunnel of fun approach.

With Infinity Ward's next project rumored to be a sci-fi shooter, it seems the studios might soon be trading places outside of the Xbox Live rankings.

Details about the next Medal of Honor have allegedly been leaked in a recent survey sent out by EA, according to French site JeuxVideo (translation). The document supposedly refers to the game as "Medal of Honor: Operation Anaconda," which is named for the large-scale military initiative undertaken in the Shahi-Kot Valley and Arma Mountains in March 2002 (finally outside of the WWII comfort zone, are we?). Unlike Call of Duty 4, apparently this version of "modern combat" will focus on historical events, including the Battle of Takur Ghar.

The survey suggests players will engage in a variety of scenarios, including front-line and sniper missions, and a "drone attack." Another tidbit claims the game will feature 60 customizable weapons. While still unconfirmed, the entire report is definitely plausible. But would it be enough to make Medal of Honor relevant again? To stay competitive, EA just might have to look to the stars.

Having foiled countless doomsday devices, monologuing masterminds and aesthetically pleasing assassins, James Bond has felt the bite of reality and become inextricably entangled in a web of legal nonsense. Though an Xbox Live Arcade version of the classic N64 FPS, GoldenEye, continues to make appearances both in dreams and alleged screenshots, nobody's been able to pull the game out of a web spun by numerous lawyers and license holders. "It's kind of locked in this no man's land."

That's according to Rare's senior software engineer, Nick Burton, who recently discussed the game's fate with VideoGamer.com. "It's incredibly hard to solve because there's so many licence holders involved," explained Burton. "You've got the guys that own the license to the gaming rights now, the guys that have the licence to Bond as an IP, and there are umpteen licensees." Last time we checked, "umpteen" was quite a lot ... at least 37 or so.

Burton goes on to explain that the game's release is no longer in Rare's hands -- it's up to the publishers to figure out how Microsoft can get its hands on a Nintendo game starring one of Activision's favorite characters. "It's probably going to go down in the annuls of gaming history as one of the big mysteries."

Wait ... the "annuls" of gaming history? What an appropriate misspelling.

Yes, we're still playing Valve's classy, cartoonish shooter, Team Fortress 2. We'll continue to do so for as long as the game keeps receiving updates -- and there's at least one more on the way. Posting on the official Team Fortress 2 blog, Valve's Jakob Jungels has suggested that our multiplayer mileu may be due for a makeover.

"One of the things we're looking at for the next update is the creation of a new type of environment for our levels to be built in," he wrote. "We're pretty happy with the way our environments have turned out so far, but as we create more and more maps with these achievement packs, we want our level designers to have more to work with in terms of giving their settings a unique look."

Jungels notes that before making it into the game, each potential environment has to satisfy a list of requirements. Does it allow for new gameplay? Does it support existing gameplay types? Is it completely awesome? We anxiously await a chorus of yeses.

It appears that Activision is wasting no time with their bestselling FPS franchise Call of Duty -- though we're still a couple of months from receiving the Sutherland-infused Call of Duty: World at War, Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick recently announced that his company is planning on releasing yet another Call of Duty title sometime in 2009. In equally unsurprising news, gas is still expensive, flan is still delicious, and the sun is planning on rising tomorrow morning.

Kotick remarked that the series would continue its "leapfrog" pattern between developers, making it fairly safe to assume that Infinity Ward, creators of Call of Duty 4, will take the reigns for the next wartime title. Last we heard, Infinity Ward was working on a sci-fi shooter -- could the next Call of Duty unceremoniously swap M4 Carbines for Plasma Rifles? We'll surely find out more about the next next installment as we inch closer to the first next installment this October.

We haven't played Doom RPG, so we're not exactly sure how meshing an id FPS with a role-playing game model will work. But we have to say that after watching the above QuakeCon footage of Wolfenstein RPG, we're at the very least intrigued.

If we have one regret, it's that the game is coming to cell phones instead of Apple's sexy new behemoth. Sadly it seems like we'll have to wait for Carmack's "graphical tour de force" for a portable id game that doesn't look like straight yuck.

Whatever form the next game in the Doom saga takes, it will do so with a name other than simply Doom IV. id's Tim Willits told Big Download during this week's QuakeCon that the previously revealed Doom sequel will still have Doom in the title, but will adopt some form of hellish subtitle instead of a number, roman numeral or otherwise.

The designer noted that the decision was made, at least in part, because the fourth game in the series will not be a continuation of the events seen in Doom III and its expansion. As for what we can expect from the forthcoming Doom something something, who's to say, though it'll probably involve demons, a shotgun and -- if Doom III was any indication -- us wetting the bed.

Straight from QuakeCon 2008 come some piping hot Wolfenstein goodies from the upcoming game, namely the trailer and a gallery of images. It might look like The Ghostbusters Meet Hitler, or the opening scene of the first Hellboy movie, but we're excited about the supernatural side of World War II. Thank you for that, Raiders of the Lost Ark.

This is a lot more footage than what we saw at Activision's "Not An E3 Event" event earlier this month, and it looks like it has some potential. The paranormal parts look decent, but why does some of it make us think of Call of Duty... 1? Hopefully we'll get some better looks in the coming months ahead, culminating in some Halloweenalicious spooky soldiers.

During its quarterly earnings conference call, EA announced that its first-person romp through the popular Command & Conquer universe would not be released until the company's fiscal year 2010. Converting that information into a format your calendar will better understand: Don't expect Tiberium to arrive before April 2009. We expect this delay from the game's previous Fall 2008 release date will better allow the designers to craft exciting weapons, insert formidable enemies and carefully remove any elements which could remind us of the last time someone tried to make a C&C FPS.

The paved, petulant path past purgatory has been politely pushed to September. Speaking to Shacknews, Gearbox president Randy Pitchford said Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway will miss its August 26 release date.

A precise date is as-of-yet undecided, but Pitchford noted that "late September is the anniversary of Operation Market Garden, so I think it would be really poetic if the game launched on the anniversary." Market Garden serves as a basis for Hell's Highway and occured September 17 to 25, 1944. Online retailers Gamestop and Amazon are listing the game's release for September 23.

Ubisoft Executive Director Alain Corre has revealed in an interview with Gamesindustry that Red Steel 2, at one time Ubisoft's worst-kept secret, will support the new Wii MotionPlus attachment (which is exactly what we speculated in our Wii Sports Resort hands-on). "It's true that on Red Steel it's the typical product that will appreciate the new device," said Corre, who also indicated that he found out about the peripheral during Nintendo's press conference, like every other developer.

The first Red Steel launched with the Wii console and met with tepid reviews, and while Corre admits the game was "a bit rushed," he also said the game is still selling well – "at a lower pricer, of course." While the thoughts of precise swordfighting has intrigued, we don't want to get our hopes up.

Following the "Halo Universe" panel at the San Diego Comic Con 08, Eurogamer had a chance to speak with former Bungie content manager Frank O'Connor, who now works with Microsoft to manage the Halo franchise. During the interview, O'Connor stated that a "HaloCon" (that's Halo Convention, for the contextually impaired) is a definite possibility, adding, "Bungie has done fanfests at E3 and it would be lovely to see something bigger, something more ambitious in the future." In addition, we figure a Halo-based expo would also prove an appropriate time to follow through on certain... engagements.

Eurogamer did not let Bungie's seized E3 announcement go unmentioned, and O'Connor responded with an uncrushed spirit, explaining that "someone, somewhere decided strategically that another time is better, and it will be, and there's going to be an announcement and it's going to be awesome." This could mean that they actually know when they'll be following through on their promised E3 megaton, and (if you can wrap your mind around this) -- that they've yet to announce when they're going to announce what they're going to announce.

Joystiq has obtained a video that's set to air at the start of Gamestop's Gears of War midnight tournaments tomorrow. The video contains an introduction by Cliff Bleszinski as well as "never-before-seen footage" from Gears of War 2. Is your interest piqued? Video embedded after the break.