Prepare for walletocalpyse: new Steam sale begins
Uh oh. Steam has just started a new summer sale. Valve say that the sale will run from today until July 4th, and include “massive savings on today’s top releases, classic titles, and publisher catalogs. In addition, special 1-day sales will offer discounts up to 90% off regular prices.” Worry for your wallet. You can find the latest deals at the Steam store.
Cost of death lightened in Allods Online
If you ever reached a significant level in Allods Online, you’ve spewed profanities at your monitor due to the notorious “Fear of Death” debuff. Well, you don’t have to fear death any longer! New details for the upcoming major patch “Revelations of Gipat”, scheduled to go live July 7th, outline a radically different, much improved death system. Huzzah!
Watch 8 minutes of Brink in action
A while ago we gave you twenty ridiculously beautiful Brink shots, each one a comic book panel of impeccably inked ultra violence. If your bullshot detector said anything along the lines of “MEEEP”, “BOOOP” or “CLANG” at the time, you may prefer this eight minute, high-def video of the game in action, taken by German site Xbox View. Yes, it’s being played on a lowly console, but it’s still a luxuriously long look at how all the clambering, shooting and dynamic objectivising looks and feels.
Square Enix wants to make Free to Play MMOs
Square Enix head Yoichi Wada has told Forbes that some element of multiplayer or social gaming will be incorporated into each title Square Enix produces. They don’t give the exact quote, so it’s not certain whether he means the internally developed series they’re known for, like Final Fantasy, or everything they publish – which would include Deus Ex: Human Revolution. He seemed particularly fond of free-to-play games with a cash shop, referencing Tencent, a company that makes F2P games. He compares their games to Square’s own “highly polished” games available for top dollar. “What is polished is in the eye of the beholder. Our games’ graphics are very polished, but Tencent is actually very polished in terms of the experience.”
Dev Diary: City of Heroes’ Mutant Pack
PCGamer.com routinely features Developer Diaries: tales of what goes on behind-the-scenes in the development studios making your favorite games. This Dev Diary is titled “The Making Of: Super Booster V: Mutation” and was written by David Nakayama, City of Heroes’ Art Lead and Floyd Grubb, Sr. Powers Designer.
We’re celebrating the launch of the Mutant Pack by giving away 10 copies to our readers! Tell us who your favorite super mutant is and why in the comments and we’ll send codes to our favorite ones today. Anyone that doesn’t win can purchase the pack here.
UPDATE: Winners announced in the comments below! Thanks to everyone that participated.
Bioware loves the PC and should marry it
Bioware will keep making PC games forever and ever, they told Tim Ingham of CVG. They say that the PC is “made for games” and that they don’t wonder if PC gaming is dying or whether or not they should support it. “Every two or three years we hear the announcement of fantasy being dead, PC gaming being dead and RPGs being dead,” he said. “And yet, all of the biggest games that ever come out – that set the records – are nearly always PC games, and a lot of them are fantasy games. The biggest game in the world is a fantasy, PC, RPG MMO.” What, Allods Online? What’s he talking about?
[via CVG]
Technology behind Kinect on PC this year
PrimeSense, the company that developed Kinect for the Xbox 360, has already signed deals to put PrimeSense inside home theatre PCs by the end of the year.This might be in a pre-built PC that won’t work with anything more interesting than Windows Media Centre, or it might have a USB on the end and be wide open for developers. Either way, doing a silly dance in your living room won’t be the sole privilege of Xbox gamers for long.
StarCraft II airlines take to the skies
Blizzard have struck a deal with Korean Air to put a big picture of Jim Raynor on the side of two international planes – a B747-400 and a B737-900 – in exchange for… additional pylons? Who knows? Maybe Paul Sams, Chief Operating Officer of Blizzard does: ”As we approach the global launch of StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, this promotion represents a unique, large-scale opportunity to introduce the characters and style of the StarCraft universe to gamers throughout the world.”
Patched: the new Counter-Strike: Source
Valve released its first major update to Counter-Strike: Source in almost four years today. The patch is live and playable to Steam users, and includes a heap of UI improvements, engine updates, and 144 achievements. A full list of changes, and my take on the major updates, within.
Why the PC won E3
PC Gamers don’t get to watch a glitzy press conference at E3. We don’t get a PR firm to pump millions into glossy stage shows, or detailed press releases. We don’t even get a mascot. But we do get incredible games, and a steady stream of hardware innovations that let the PC leapfrog the opposition. Here’s why the PC was the real victor at E3.
Starcraft II event: “everything is being released”
The Starcraft community in Korea has gone into a bit of a tizz. Tomorrow, the local media, Starcraft community, and Blizzard big-wigs have been invited to a private event at a Korean Air hangar in Gimpo Airport. The invitation suggests a major Starcraft II announcement is to take place. Full details below.
Transformers credits: more than meets the eye
The end credits for Transformers: War for Cybertron features a heart warming tribute to the 80s cartoon. While the credits roll, lots of cel-shaded Transformers fight each other and do awesome things, put to a theme written by Stan Bush who wrote some tracks for the 1986 Transformers movie. It’s so 80s, it makes me want to know what love is (and for you to show me). Powerslide through the jump for the footage:
Dungeon Siege 3 E3 Impressions
The newly announced, Obsidian developed Dungeon Siege 3 was on-show in private rooms off the show floor at E3, and I was there to take a look. This new dungeon crawler is an interesting project: the first two games were purely about action and loot. Dungeon Siege 3 does things differently – Obsidian want to add a story and moral complexity to this over-the-shoulder Diablo-inspired orc-em-up. WTF?
Watch the final hours of Looking Glass Studios
Looking Glass were amazing. They were the creative minds behind Thief, Flight Unlimited, Ultima Underworld and System Shock, and pioneers of the first-person simulation style game that led to Deus Ex and Bioshock. Then they died, and we were sad. Now you can take voyeuristic look at their final hours – as uploaded to YouTube. Warning: videos contain extreme haircuts, and scenes of distressing t-shirts.
UK reader survey: review us, win this TV
Here’s a confession: we wish to find out how we can make you buy more magazines. To do that, we’d like to ask you a bunch of questions about how much you love us, and then study those answers and draw graphs plotting love vs time. To enter, visit the PC Gamer survey page (link fixed – apologies for the confusion). You’ll need to enter the special password on page 84 of the latest UK issue, 215. Our competition terms and conditions are here, and remember, it’s UK readers only and you have to be at least 18 to enter.
