From August 23 through September 4 of 2010, 1UP's Matt Leone and Richard Li left the office and hit the road for our first ever Cross Country Game Tour, visiting the hottest game development studios in the 48 contiguous United States.

With camera in tow, we took an inside look at Bungie's new home, met the actual hand model from the Left 4 Dead cover, got some insight into Thatgamecompany's upcoming Journey, ate tacos with Junction Point's Warren Spector, manhandled id Software's Emmy award, and lots more!

Like many developers these days, BioWare likes to keep tabs on player activity in its games. It's nothing sinister; the studio merely collects anonymous data based on what in-game actions you take (or don't take). But unlike most developers who gather this sort of info, BioWare just went public with some of the user statistics for its biggest franchise.

Executive producer Casey Hudson sat down with IGN to discuss the player stats for Mass Effect 2, revealing some fascinating discoveries about user behavior. For example: Players skipped just 15 percent of conversations in BioWare's sci-fi sequel, with a majority of those skips occurring on the game's hub worlds rather than during climactic story moments.

"If we found that 80 percent or 90 percent of the lines were being skipped, we would have to reevaluate the work that we were putting into the digital acting," Hudson explained.

Microsoft's biggest selling point when it comes to Kinect is that it's a completely controller-free system -- not a single button is necessary to interact with its games. But when Kinect was first being designed inside Microsoft, both Rare and Peter Molyneux weren't convinced such a system could work.

"We were absolutely adamant that we needed a button, something with haptic feedback, that would initiate an action," said Rare creative director George Andreas to Edge magazine (via CVG), recalling his first time seeing the Kinect technology. "It took a long time -- we threw some prototypes together and then we saw you didn't need one."

And it wasn't just Rare that wasn't convinced about buttons-free controls, as Andreas said Lionhead Studios boss Peter Molyneux didn't see the buttons-free system working either. "We were very vocal to Kudo [Tsunoda, Kinect lead] at the time, and Peter Molyneux was as well, that you needed something in your hand," Andreas recalled. But he also says this was ultimately just a case of having to "rein in" their ideas of traditional button-based interfaces, a challenge that remained even after accepting Kinect's buttons-free system could work. "You end up falling back on the [gamepad] control scheme. It's a crutch really."

Looking for a quick preview of Activision's upcoming slate of rhythm games? The publisher just released playable demos for both DJ Hero 2 and Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock on the Xbox Live Marketplace.

Players can hit up the DJ Hero 2 demo to sample the game's brand new multiplayer modes, while the Guitar Hero demo highlights developer Neversoft's attempts at a story-driven quest mode -- complete with narration by Gene Simmons of KISS. PlayStation 3 versions of the demos have yet to be announced.

Each demo includes a selection of four tracks, listed below:

Activision tends to open its wallet to break out big voice talent in the Call of Duty series, and today the company announced Black Ops will be no exception. Gary Oldman and Ed Harris are on tap to play roles in the new game, and filmmaker David S. Goyer will be lending story consultation and support.

Both of the veteran actors have been in countless movies. Oldman is most known recently from his roles in The Dark Knight and The Book of Eli. In Black Ops, he'll be reprising his role as Viktor Reznov from World at War. Harris, meanwhile, is recognized for his roles in A History of Violence and Apollo 13. He'll be playing Jason Hudson, a CIA operative. David S. Goyer has written for both of the recent Batman films, Blade, and the upcoming Superman: Man of Steel.

"Oldman, Harris and Goyer are considered some of the finest talents and they perfectly complement Call of Duty: Black Ops' ambitious and immersive single-player experience," said Treyarch head Mark Lamia in the press release. "Their contributions have helped us to push the boundaries of our story telling and character development far beyond anything we have ever attempted before in the franchise."

Just as the U.S. Open rolls into its second week, 2K Games has announced Top Spin 4, the latest entry in the long-running tennis sim series that started as an exclusive for the original Xbox. But as with Top Spin 3, Top Spin 4 is going multiplatform for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Wii, this time with 2K Czech (the studio behind Mafia II) handling the project.

The announcement is a little light on specific details, instead offering vague promises of "redesigned controls" and "one of the deepest player rosters to date." Specific players aren't mentioned (besides more vague promises of "top athletes and legendary pros"), but one player that is confirmed for the game will only be available as a pre-order bonus. If you reserve Top Spin 4 at GameStop, you'll get a "vintage" version of tennis legend Andre Agassi. And as you can see in the provided screenshot, "vintage" does indeed mean full-on mullet.

"Top Spin 4 is shaping up to be the most realistic and exhilarating tennis game in the Top Spin franchise," said 2K Sports president of product development Greg Thomas. "For this iteration, the development team is focused on delivering a bold new take on the sport of tennis by allowing gamers to experience first-hand an uncanny level of realism in the player and stadium models, authentic audio captured directly from real tennis matches, and all-new innovative controls to dominate the competition."

It looks like administrator Begbies Traynor has found a buyer for Project MyWorld, which formally belonged to the bankrupt studio Realtime Worlds.

Develop reports that the property has been purchased by an anonymous American company, with no word on how the purchase will affect the 23 developers currently working on the game. One of the more optimistic scenarios has the American company temporarily hiring the Dundee-based staff in order to finish the project, but they may also opt to purchase the build and the IP and finish it themselves.

APB remains up for purchase, though interest in the sandbox MMO has reportedly been weaker than it was for Project MyWorld. According to numbers released by Begbies Traynor, appoximately 130,000 registered users play the game an average of four hours per day.

When details of the latest Borderlands DLC, Claptrap's New Robot Revolution, were announced, there was no mention of a level cap increase. Fortunately, one is coming -- and even better, it will be coming free of charge to all owners of Borderlands on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC.

When he wasn't busy discussing the return of Duke Nukem, Gearbox co-founder and CEO Randy Pitchford spent some time at PAX revealing that, around the release of the Borderlands Game of the Year edition (scheduled for October 12), Gearbox will update the game to increase the level cap by eight, bringing it to 69. They decided on an increase of 8 because they didn't want it to be too low, or as high as the 11-level increase that the General Knoxx brought.

Joystiq reports that Pitchford explained that Gearbox opted to make the increase a free update instead of including it in the Claptrap DLC because then "you'd have to buy every previous DLC." Also included in the free update will be a rebalancing of the original game to cater to the new level cap. Given that these are the sort of things you might expect to see in a premium DLC release, it's nice to see Gearbox instead release them to fans for free.

The Gears of War 3 "Fate of Carmine" charity campaign officially closed this weekend at the Penny Arcade Expo. Cliff Bleszinski and Rod Fergusson from Epic Games appeared on video at the G4 panel to drop word that the charity shirts had raised $150,000 for Child's Play. No breakdown was given on the real shirts versus the virtual goods; but either way, that's a lot of votes for Carmine.

The two thanked everyone for buying shirts, whether for their Xbox 360 Avatars or the real life shirts sold by NECA, along with corporate sponsors and partners like Microsoft, G4, and Penny Arcade. "Although the fate of Carmine has been sealed, we can't tell you right now," said Cliff Bleszinski. This being a marketing event as well, we'll have to wait until Gears 3 releases to learn what happens to the poor, doomed schlub.

It looks as if D3 Publisher has a sequel to Earth Defense Force 2017 in the works, if a new website launch is any indication. Located at edfia.com is a logo for a new, unannounced EDF game -- Earth Defense Force: Insect Armageddon.

There's nothing else to be found on the site, but according to Siliconera, the domain was registered by D3 last month, so it doesn't look like a hoax. Most recently, EDF 2017 developer Sandlot was working on the Nintendo-published action game Zangeki no Reginleiv for Wii, which was released this past February. The last EDF game was released for Xbox 360 in March 2007. It wasn't a technical marvel but Scott Sharkey did give the game a B+ in 1UP's review, noting it was "like the best parts of every third-person shooter ever, boiled down to the most mindlessly fun essentials."

Besides a Rating Pending from the ESRB and the logo you see above, there's absolutely no information on the new site; not what platforms we can expect to see it released on or when more information will be released. We'll be keeping an eye on the site for any details that might come up.