The Old Republic space combat in PCG US
There’s been a great disturbance in the Force! BioWare’s Star Wars: The Old Republic is on the cover of our next issue, and within you’ll find the first details on one of the most-anticipated features of the most-anticipated MMO of all time: space combat. The issue hits newsstands on August 17 (subscribers get it a little earlier, you lucky dogs) so keep your eyes peeled.
New Fable III screens
Four new screens of Fable 3 have spurted out of the San Diego Comic-Con. There’s an airship, more kingly people, and some shiny floaty crystal things. Screens below:
SC2 Week: Top 10 games of 2010 feature
As part of our ongoing celebration of all things StarCraft, we’re hosting a Starcraft smörgåsbord, with a different theme for each of the days leading up to and the week following SC2′s release. This article is a part of the “Everything We Know About StarCraft Day”, the first of the bunch, and marked the third time in a row that SC2 weaseled it’s way into our annual “best games of the upcoming year” feature. Third try’s the charm though, and we know that Wings of Liberty can’t go for four years in a row…right, Blizzard?
SC2 Week: 3-part campaign announced
As part of our ongoing celebration of all things StarCraft, we’re hosting a Starcraft smörgåsbord, with a different theme for each of the days leading up to and the week following SC2′s release. This article is a part of the “Everything We Know About StarCraft Day”, the first of the bunch, and is an online release of Dan Stapleton’s reaction to the announcement that the SC2 campaign would be coming in three parts.
SC2 Week: Superweapon strategy
As part of our ongoing celebration of all things StarCraft, we’re hosting a Starcraft smörgåsbord, with a different theme for each of the days leading up to and the week following SC2′s release. This article is a part of the “Everything We Know About StarCraft Day”, the first of the bunch, and is an online release of Dan Stapleton’s musings on superweapons, including SC2′s nuke, from the October 2008 issue’s Strategy column.
We tried to install StarCraft 2 and this happened
We just got our ridiculously heavy, spectacularly cool collector’s editions of StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty in the office. So of course, we couldn’t resist trying to install it. Blizzard are wise to our sneaky ways, though, and scuppered us at the first hurdle.
PC Gamer US podcast 232 – Why Did You Turn?!
StarCraft 2′s new trailer: analyzed. Valve’s surprise free game, Alien Swarm: talked. ArmA 2: Operation Arrowhead’s incoming British DLC…sconed. Erik “Level 80″ Belsaas, Andy “Cat Murderer” Bauman and Evan “Caramel Nougat” Lahti talk about all this, plus our insight on the often unnecessarily-long lead times gaming publishers make between the announcement and release of a game.
Andy Salisbury, editor at World of Warcraft Official Magazine, also joins us. Listen to the WoW magazine’s new podcast, Editors of Azeroth, here.
Play with us! The PC Gamer Virtual LAN – Saturday, July 31
We like LAN parties. But we hate the massive cost of flying thousands of our readers out on a solid-steel dirigible or winged locomotive just so they can beat us at Team Fortress 2. It’s expensive. So we thought: how can we host a kickass LAN party for any PC gamer that wants to join without (most) of the hard work? As with most of life’s complex dilemmas, the answer was “The Internet.”
Beginning next Saturday at 12 PM Pacific (that’s 3 PM Eastern), we’re hosting PC Gamer’s first Virtual LAN–a day-long binge of multiplayer games on our dedicated servers that you can join. Click within for a full schedule of what you can play with us.
Touching heroics in Alien Swarm
I’m still dazed and slightly buzzing from the game of Alien Swarm I just finished. It was Hard mode, with strangers, and strangers of rank. That means they’ve hit the maximum level, unlocked every weapon, then chosen to start again for the sake of a star next to their name. The party leader even had the Gallium Cross: you have to start again three times to get that. These guys meant business.
TweetTalk: Do Steam MMO achievements matter?
Fallen Earth, the post-apocalyptic MMO prized for its crafting system, gritty setting, and skill-based shooter mechanics, announced this week that they were adding Steam achievements. And in typical MMO “go big or go home” fashion, they rolled out with over 500 of ‘em, ranging from straight forward exploration (“Tourist: Lost City – Take in the view at Lost City”) to skills (“Expert Scrounger – Raise your Scavenging Skill to 164″) to generic grinding (“Curing the Blight – Kill Blight Wolves”).
This got me wondering–are Steam achievements going to catch on for PC games, becoming the wild inferno fueling impulsive game buying for the sole purpose of earning achievements, like they are for the XBOX trophy system? I have my own opinion, but I took the question to Twitter to see what you guys think.
Lead and Gold free weekend
Starting later today, Lead and Gold are having a big old free weekend, according to their official forums. They’re calling for all server owners to up their server counts, batten down the hatches, and prepare for a gold rush.
Company of Heroes Online set to invade Facebook
We had a sit down with Greg Wilson, producer of Company of Heroes Online. He’s revealed some interesting new details about Relic’s plan for taking their intense WWII strategy game online, and making it free to play for everyone.
This is the best PC games collection we’ve seen
We’ve been asking you silly readers a lot of questions on the monstrously popular PC Gamer Facebook group. A couple of days ago, we asked you to post a photo or picture of you PC game collection. This is Brian Smith’s collection. Just look at this lot!
Possible Episode 3 references in Alien Swarm
Let’s just take a deep breath here. Lots of things are episodic – and if you don’t have as many as three episodes, you’re just a two-part TV special. So don’t freak out when I say that some placeable AI hints in Alien Swarm refer to entities tagged with the “ep3″ prefix, right after familiar hints for “hl1″. Here’s a pic:
New StarCraft II trailer delivers monster machinima
T-minus five days and counting. And to celebrate the OH GOOD GOD IT’S SO CLOSE launch Blizzard have just released a new trailer, featuring many, many cutscenes. There’s not even the barest hint of what the game actually looks like. I’m guessing that if you rocked up and bought the game off the back of this trailer, Starcraft’s drawing boxes around tiny men might come as a slight shock. But you know what, I don’t really care at this point.
