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   Game-what? Did they just say "cock"? And there we were thinking that nothing could make us chuckle anymore after the Wii... Well, funny names aside, Gamecock Media Group announced their cocky entrance on the games publishing scene yesterday, and they have already revealed five titles they will be publishing in North America: Hero, Insecticide, Mushroom Men, Hail to the Chimp, and Fury. Their official website also hints at an upcoming sixth title, which will probably be announced very soon. Some of these you may have heard about by now - especially Auran's MMO game Fury - though most of them are something of a novelty for us, so we'll quote a few words about each of them.

   Hero (website) is an action-RPG developed by Firefly Studios (makers of the Stronghold strategy series), slated for release in Spring 2009 on the PC and an unspecified next-gen platform. Hero promises to be "the first game to take you into a real dungeon, one where a shadowy evil has come to feed on despair. This a dungeon at war - not a place with bags of gold just lying around! (...) Master melee, ranged and magic skills and 'Close combat' a totally new, brutal mode of fighting as you battle your way through vast crowds of monsters. Fight alone or have a friend drop in to survive - and maybe even save - the darkest society imaginable!"

   Insecticide (website) is Crackpot Entertainment's first game, expected to ship this holiday season on the PC and some handheld platform(s) - again, unspecified - and they also hope to bring it to other media such as television or film. Insecticide is an action-adventure with a unique visual appeal (reminds me Psychonauts and Beyond Good & Evil), "a hard-boiled, fast-shooting detective game set in a festering future city where bugs have evolved as the planet's dominant race. A murder at a powerful company leads police from the Insecticide Squad on a bug hunt through the city's seedy underbelly, and into a mystery of epic proportions."

   Mushroom Men (website) so far looks like the most interesting project from Gamecock's line-up. It's being developed by Red Fly Studio, by a team whose members worked on games such as Anachronox, Deus Ex, BloodRayne and Star Wars Galaxies. The target platforms are a handheld and a next-gen console, with a release date planned for spring 2008. "Mushroom Men shows gamers the mundane world from the surreal perspective of a three-inch-high Mushroom Man. Unnoticed by humans, a war rages between the spore factions. As a brave Bolete Mushroom Man, players are given the opportunity to wreak havoc by transforming common household trinkets and trash into weapons and tools."

   Hail to the Chimp (website) doesn't look like a title worth writing about right now. And as for Fury, if you don't already know what Auran has in mind for this frantic combat-based MMO, feel free to inspect the game's website - it's a lot more revealing than any of the above.