Alice: Madness Returns
This is a sort of scary trailer for Alice: Madness Returns, the next installment in the Alice-in-wonderland-but-everything’s-screwed-up saga. It’s not as scary as the last one, which was just Alice letting teeth sail out of her mouth on a sea of blood, but it is kinda scary.
Mafia 2 DLC: Joe’s Adventures announced
2K Games have just announced that Vito’s second-fiddle Joe Barbaro is getting his own DLC later this year. It’ll continue Joe’s story in some new areas in Empire Bay, where he’ll go on an Enid Blyton-style mystery adventure jape to get to the bottom of Vito’s prison sentence. Don’t tell me: he was set up.
Steam updates your AMD drivers automatically
Your Steam client updated today with an important new feature. Valve’s digital distribution platform now handles the drivers for AMD graphics cards automatically. We’re one step closer to PCs that grow new parts and enslave people with brain-jacks.
PCG’s World of Warcraft guild: September update
Each month, Akee will be bringing you updates on the kind of crazy king-slaying japes our brave band of adventurers get up to in the PC Gamer UK World of Warcraft guild. To see what we’ve been up to this month, read on.
Ride a rocket in the new Deus Ex: Human Revolution trailer (HD)
The Tokyo Game Show starts today. It’s not usually a font of PC gaming news, but Deus Ex: Human Revolution publisher Square Enix just put out a Japanese language trailer with some startling new bits. Including- is that a rocket? With player character Adam Jensen in it? In a space suit? Is that what the Icarus wings motif running throughout these trailers has been about? See for yourself.
Lord of the Rings Online is free, has funny video
Lord of the Rings Online is now free to play, with a cash shop and nifty benefits for subscribers just like they said. They’ve announced it with a humorous video. Look!
Why Realtime Worlds failed – an ex-dev’s account
Luke Halliwell, a former employee of Realtime Worlds who was let go when they went into administration, has posted the first in a series of his attempts to explain the circumstances surrounding the company’s catastrophe earlier this year.
Relic ditch Games for Windows Live for Steam
Relic have just announced that they’ve dropped Games for Windows Live for Dawn of War II: Retribution, their upcoming expandalone campaign for their strategy/co-op tactics hybrid set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe. They’ve prepared a statement, copied below. We also innocently asked them the obvious question: what was wrong with Games for Windows Live?
We ask Gabe Newell about piracy, DRM and Episode Three
I was at Valve last month to interview pretty much everyone I could find, and play one of the most exciting PC games on the horizon: Portal 2. The preview I wrote, and the profile on Valve themselves, is in the new issue of PC Gamer in the UK. But we’ve also been putting up the interviews here on the site, one a day for the last week.
Today’s is the final part, in which I ask Gabe and co the big questions: what’s the point of Steamworks? Is piracy a solved problem? And where’s Episode Three? I wasn’t optimistic that they’d be willing to talk about it, but I couldn’t leave without asking. I’m afraid it didn’t go any better than I expected, but I’ve included the transcript so you can read for yourself. What they did tell me was how Steam revived the Russian games market, why Valve’s competitors actually help their sales, and how not to do DRM.
The best GTA IV mods add a gravity gun, first person
Sometimes vanilla isn’t enough. Perhaps you’ve finished the game and grown bored, or maybe it wasn’t quite your taste to begin with, but you’ve reached a point where you need more. That’s what mods are for: they’re the chocolate sauce of games, making new what was old, and building a more perfect way to play. I’ve recently discovered the perfect way to play Grand Theft Auto IV, and it involves leaping between islands, playing in first-person, and using a gravity gun. Yes. I’ve included videos of my shenanigans and instructions on how to get those mods working below.
Vikings of Thule adds quests, giant wyrms
People either love ‘em or hate ‘em, but Facebook games provide 10-second increments of gaming fun in between work for a lot of gamers trapped in an office every day. There are a mind-boggling number of options out there, so even if you hate farming and think the Mafia can fight its own wars for all you care, you can probably find a Facebook game that you’d enjoy. One of the games that I’ve been playing on and off for the past few months is a Vikings-themed RPG called Vikings of Thule (main site, facebook page, which just launched its first expansion. I sat down with the game’s Senior Producer, Íris Kristín Andrésdóttir, to discuss the update and where she wants to take the game in the future.
Giveaway: Leave a comment telling us where you would pillage if you were a Viking in today’s world and guaranteed to succeed to be entered to win one of 20 Vikings of Thule Posters (picture at the end of the article). This contest is open to everyone, everywhere (yes, even Canadians).
Left 4 Dead comic is up
What are you doing up? Get to bed! But if you can’t sleep, a relaxing comic about zombies will sooth your addled brain and totally won’t keep you up because you’re scared of zombies. In the morning, I’ll pore over it and expand this post if there’s anything relevant to add. For now, though, start reading the comic here.
AI Wars developer bankrupt by November
There are a lot of indie gaming success stories, but for every World of Goo, Minecraft, or Garry’s Mod, there are a lot of small companies that struggle to make a living from their games. Chris Park, developer of space strategy AI War, is one of them. He’s just revealed that Arcen Games will be out of money by November unless things change. Maybe you can help? More info and a trailer about Arcen and their 86% rated (in PC Gamer Issue 205) game below.
MMO strategy game SAGA goes free-to-play
What once cost $20, now is free. Silverlode Interactive has turned its swords-and-sorcery real-time strategy MMO, SAGA, into a completely free-to-play game. You can sign up and download the game here. SAGA launched with a free mode in 2008, but now all of the tournaments, guilds, trade and friends list features enabled for all players. The game does look a bit clunky, though graphics obviously aren’t everything. Who wants to be our guinea pig and try this sucker out?
Other free-to-play RTS options:
Company of Heroes Online (Beta)
BattleForge
Check out the SAGA trailer below
Blizzard promises swift retribution against SC2 cheaters
Not all’s fair in three-way inter-species war. Blizzard PR sent out a warning today to all of those who would use unscrupulous means to win in StarCraft II. The gist: if they catch you cheating or hacking in any way, you’re in violation of the terms of service and your Battle.net account will be banned. It’s a tough-on-crime, one-strike-you’re-out policy that sounds good in principle – there’s nothing worse than being unfairly slaughtered in SC2, especially considering how often I lose legitimately.
But, false-positives aside (remember the Steam/Modern Warfare 2 banning fiasco?) there’s a slightly chilling part about this: with StarCraft II, you must sign into Battle.net just to play the single-player campaign or skirmish against the AI. If you’re banned from Battle.net, you would lose access to your game entirely, and your $60 purchase would be flat-out gone. Not that I feel sorry for cheaters, but is it perhaps a disproportionately cruel and unusual punishment? Should bad multiplayer behavior cost you your single-player fun too?
Update: Blizzard PR confirms
“If a Battle.net account is banned, a player will no longer have access to the single and multiplayer content.”
Update 2: Blizzard PR clarifies on WoW ramifications
“If you are banned from StarCraft II, you will still get access to WoW.”
Read Blizzard’s full statement after the jump.
P.S. Yes, I know that’s WoW art, but there’re no hammers in StarCraft.
