Welcome back for another week here at News Pop!. We're getting the second week of 2007 off to a bit of a slow start. As you may have noticed, there was no edition of News Pop! Yesterday. Nonetheless, the show must go on, so here's today's edition.

Michael Chiklis stars in second video game

If you don't watch The Shield or keep track of anything to do with its lead actor, Michael Chiklis, you were probably unaware that he is in a new video game. His second video game to be precise (he appeared in the Fantastic 4 movi e game). The Shield video game began shipping to stores today and includes a large portion of voice talent from the television show. In the game, players are able to dive into frenetic-paced gameplay and interact with the series’ trademark complex characters and unique locations in 15 levels and 33 playable areas. The story of the game follows Vic and the rest of the elite Strike Team as they struggle to keep the streets of Farmington District safe at all costs. Vic lives by his own code of ethics, neither bad nor good, and is a different kind of a cop who is willing to do what it takes to clean up the streets. In order to succeed, players will need to operate outside the rules by intimidating suspects with brute force, accepting bribes, and holding incriminating information over those who don’t agree with Vic’s “ends justify the means” approach to fighting crime. Players can choose to turn in contraband to keep internal affairs off their back or place it in their lockers to build up their retirement fund. How a player chooses to enforce the law can be left out of the police report, as long as they keep their trail and the streets clean. The Shield will be available for Playstation 2 and PC, but pricing is currently unavailable.

Blizzard gives California the midnight release treatment

Those of you following the upcoming release of Blizzard's expansion for World of Warcraft, and we know you're out there, will probably be interested to hear that some of the Blizzard team will be joining midnight release parties for the launch of the title, World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade. Four stores in California will be opening their doors at midnight on the 16^th to begin selling the game, and some of Blizzard's development team will be there. Demand for the game is expected to be so high that a limited number of wristbands will be distributed at each of the four participating retail outlets that will guarantee the holder to a copy of the game. The team members will also be signing copies of the game for those people who would like theirs signed. For complete information on the locations, you can check out www.worldofwarcraft.com/midnight .

Vigor Gaming announces release of its Intel Quad core system

A four core procressor, 1GB of memory, an SLI Quad core ready motherboard, a pair of 10,000 RPM 150GB SATA hard drives and high definition Creative audio are just some of the features that come standard in the new Vigor Force Recon QXN, Vigor Gaming's new system which has a base price of $2,649.00 USD. Vigor Gaming officially announced the release of the system today at the 2007 Internation CES in Las Vegas. “No matter how many applications you run, our Force Recon Core 2 Extreme Quad-based systems will react to user commands quickly,” said Aaron Chen, Chief Executive Officer of Vigor. “The future belongs to High-Definition content and multiple CPU threads, which will be the development basis for the majority of future games and mainstream programs.” All units are loaded with Microsoft Windows XP Professional Edition SP2 with $49 Vista Business upgrade. The Vigor Force Recon QXN is backed by a three year limited parts and labor warranty. Even the price point isn't too shabby. For full information and customization options for the Force Recon QXN, or other Vigor Gaming systems, you can check out www.vigorgaming.com .

Dell moves into the high end market

While it may not surprise some people that Dell has begun its own foray into the Quad Core market, it may shock them to find out that the company has announced a truly high end PC, complete with liquid cooling. The Dell XPS 710 H2Ceramic (H2C) Edition desktop comes in a midnight-black chassis and offers patent-pending cooling technology designed for serious gamers who want to push performance beyond tested limits. Dell’s H2C cooling system is a custom two-stage process. First, a liquid-to-air heat exchanger that works like a car’s radiator removes most of the heat from the processor. Then, a fluid chiller removes more heat with ceramic-based thermoelectric cooling (TEC) modules like those used in space shuttles to transfer heat from the sunny side to the cold, dark side in space. Sensor controls help prevent the formation of frost or condensation by helping to keep the processor slightly above ambient room temperature. The cost for the system is just as extreme. Starting at $5,499 USD, the system is no lightweight, coming standard with the complete cooling system package, the Intel Core Extreme QX6700 quad-core processor factory overclocked to 3.2 Ghz, two NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX graphics cards with quad scalable link interface technology for high-definition gaming resolution, 4GB of 667Mhz DDR2 memory (though to use the full 4GB or more a 64bit Operating System will be required), dual 10,000 RPM 160GB hard drives, a Dell UltraSharp 2007WFP 20-inch widescreen flat-panel monitor with Dell AS501 flat-panel mount speakers, a Razer Tarantula gaming keyboard and Razer Copperhead gaming mouse, Windows XP MCE 2005 and a one-year limited warranty with designated sales service and support queue. The system will be available worldwide, so to find out more, check out your local Dell website.

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