For a while we’ve all known that Halo 4 was going to be making impact soon. Now, Microsoft and 343 Industries have announced that the release date for the first post-Bungie Halo game will be November 6th, placing it after heavy hitting sequels like Assassin’s Creed 3 and Bioshock Infinite. It’s also worth noting that it happens to release on the date of the 2012 presidential election here in the U.S., but I’m going to go ahead and say there’s probably not a huge overlap between voters and Halo 4 fans.

For fans of Dan Brown novels, the Vatican Libraries likely represent a treasure hoard of lost secrets. In some ways they, and the Oxford libraries, really are — at least if you’re a professional scholar. Which is why card-carrying book nerds around the world can rejoice at the news that the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana and the University of Oxford’s Bodleian Libraries will be digitizing portions of their collections and placing the works online.

Though the debut of Pokémon Black 2 and White 2 – the latest collectible monster cockfighting game series — is still months away from its June release, a trailer for the game has finally emerged. In it, fans can get a taste of what they’ll have to look forward to in this iteration of the long-running series. Needless to say there will be monsters that fit in your pocket — thanks to some Pokéballs, of course.

It seems like everyone gets a TV show nowadays, and Julian Assange is no exception. A recent announcement reveals that on April 17th, he’ll be airing his own live-to-tape TV show The World Tomorrow. The show will air on some Comcast and Time Warner Cable systems, and on RT, a Russian news network available in the U.S. with Dish Network. Also, of course, you can watch it on the web. We are talking about the guy behind WikiLeaks after all. Web access is kind of a given.

Back in the day, before the whole electricity thing took off, fire was the absolute necessity. Now that we have things like microwaves and electric stoves, electricity is the big one, for most of us. But who’s to say that having fire can’t mean having electricity too? Certianly not the guys behind PowerPot, the first completely usable cooking implement that will generate electricity while it’s boing up some water, letting you charge and operate USB devices with a flame.

Short of playing the new content itself, we’ve finally reached the end of the Mass Effect 3 ending debacle. Bioware already announced they will be releasing ending DLC for Mass Effect 3, but now we know some details. It’s called Mass Effect 3: Extended Cut, it’s coming this summer to the Xbox 360, PS3, and PC and it will be free. It will not change the much derided Mass Effect 3 ending, but it will fix the much derided lack of closure by including epilogues and additional cinematics designed to make your story’s ending feel more personalized. Who knows if it’ll work, but it’s a start.

Because you can’t have enough services that offer movie streaming or rentals, Paramount Pictures has struck up a deal to offer around 500 of its movies for rental on YouTube and Google Play. The offer will be available for U.S. and Canada residents. The movies on offer aren’t exactly fluff either, as hit films like The Godfather and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off are ready to roll.

The first full-length trailer for the impending Total Recall remake debuted over the weekend, no doubt prompting some to think it was an elaborate April Fools’ joke. However, the movie is legit and for the first time we’re finally getting a look at more than a few seconds of the film. See the trailer in glorious HD, after the break.

Here’s something that will make you feel old: Scott Pilgrim Vol. 1: Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Life came out eight years ago. Created by Bryan Lee O’Malley, the comic series was a great success, landing the character a feature film. However, O’Malley’s art has remained in the original black and white in the subsequent reprints of the books. That will be changing this August when Oni Press debuts a color edition of the books called the Scott Pilgrim Color Hardcover, which is pretty much just what it sounds like. 

When it comes to the forthcoming Ridley Scott sci-fi flick Prometheus, the going line has been that it is not really a prequel to the Alien franchise. Sure, it will take place before the events of the original film in the same universe, and Scott is quoted as saying that the new film would contain “strands of Alien’s DNA, so to speak,” but it’s really not a prequel. The latest trailer, however, seems to suggest otherwise. See it, after the break.