Tonight: Microsoft vs. Zynga in the StarCraft 2 After Hours Gaming League finals
Can Bing’s Banelings best Farmville’s Ghosts? Tonight, Microsoft and Zynga are going to settle their differences in StarCraft 2. The tech competitors face each other in the final of the After Hours Gaming League, a for-charity tournament between top tech companies in Silicon Valley. Starting at 6 PM PST, tonight’s final is the culmination of a month-some of round robin action between Yelp, Amazon, and others.
StarCraft 2′s self-professed “funsmith” Day[9] will be doing the commentary, streamed here and embedded after the jump. To the winner: $5000 for the charity of their choice and immeasurable bragging rights.
I’m running out the door now to attend the tournament. For on-site updates, follow me at @elahti as I make the trip from PC Gamer to Facebook HQ, where the finals are being hosted.
PC Gamer US Podcast #285: Good To Know
Do you know the PCG editors’ deepest, darkest secrets? You may not find out about figurative/literal skeletons in the closets in this week’s podcast, but you will get a heap of podcasting tomfoolery with Chris, Evan, Dan, and Lucas. Get to know the editors’ hobbies, what they think of Battlefield 3, Dota 2, and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, and what they sound like when they’re podcasting on film.
The PC Gaming Reader – read the best of PC gaming writing as an ebook
The PC Gaming Reader is a collection of the best PC games writing from PC Gamer, PC Format, Edge and the now sadly defunct PC Zone. Previously we gave it away with issue 222 of the magazine, but now we’re offering it to everyone in e-book format.
Video interview: Gabe Newell at Gamescom
Owen sat down with Gabe Newell at Gamescom for 20 minutes and 59 seconds of chat about groceries, Half Life 2: Episode 3, EA, Origin, Dota 2 and more. Watch every second in video above.
It’s been an eventful conference for Valve this year. They skipped E3, but returned with a bang, launching a $1 million Dota 2 tournament and a suite of accessible e-sports spectator tools. Just before Gamescom started, they released the first information about Counter-Strike: Global Offensive as well. No Half Life 2: Episode 3 news, though. Perhaps more protesters can persuade Valve to reveal something.
Which version of Deus Ex: Human Revolution should you get?
Deus Ex: Human Revolution comes out next week, and it’s incredibly, ridiculously good. Unfortunately, Square Enix have given retailers a confusing array of different versions of the game that come with different amounts of bonus content. To add to the confusion, Valve just released a huge batch of Deus Ex themed Team Fortress 2 items that you get for pre-ordering the game on Steam. And the ‘Augmented Edition’ means different things depending on where you buy it.
I hate this stuff. Apart from the confusion, it’s annoying to be made to feel like you’re not getting the complete experience when you just buy the game itself. But they’ve done it, so we might as well sort through the mess and figure out where you get the best deal.
And in other PC gaming news…
Our sister magazine Edge have become so vain that they’ve built a shrine to themselves in Minecraft, and they didn’t even have the decency to do it in the PC version. For shame. Well Mr Edge, anything you can do we, or at least the wonderful guys on our Minecraft server, can do better. Behold! The PC Gamer logo in letters ten foot tall! Framed in purest gold! Tremble at it’s magnificent glory!
Inside is a collection of magnificently constructed PC gaming news.
Borderlands 2 Gamescom demo live stream is go
We previously mentioned that Gearbox would be showing Borderlands 2 to the world through a Gamescom livestream. That live stream is broadcasting right now on the 2K uStream. Three men are sitting on a couch talking at the moment, but hopefully there we’ll get to see some in-game footage soon. Until then you can always bring up the Gamescom Borderlands 2 screenshots and wobble them around a bit to simulate movement.
Update: Aaaand it’s over … that was quick.
From Dust DRM requires internet connection to launch, players experiencing bugs and crashes
Three weeks ago, Ubisoft insisted that their god game, From Dust would “not require a permanent online connection” to play. RPS also spotted a forum post from a Ubisoft employee who wrote that From Dust will have “a one time only activation. After which you will be able to play the game offline.”
After a last minute delay, From Dust is finally out, and while it doesn’t require a constant internet connection, you will need to be hooked up to the web to launch the game. RPS note that the Ubisoft forum post has since been changed to say “‘From Dust’ requires an internet connection when you start the game.”
Battlefield 3 PC won’t have in-game server browser, Battlelog is the main menu
DICE’s online stat tracking and matchmaking website, Battlelog will replace the in-game main menu for Battlefield 3 on PC. Eurogamer report that to change servers in the middle of a session, we’ll have to Alt-tab out of the game, and then start another match from the Battlelog website. As if that wasn’t strange enough, console versions of Battlefield 3 WILL be getting an in-game server browser. Whaaat.
Bioware: Dragon Age 3 to be “the best from both games, Dragon Age: Origins and Dragon Age 2″
We caught hold of Bioware CEO Dr. Ray Muzyka on the Gamscom show floor and got a chance to ask him about the polarising effect of Dragon Age 2, and Bioware’s plans for Dragon Age 3. “The team is going to have some things that are going to surprise both sets of fans, both core fans and new fans with a marriage of the best from both games, Dragon Age: Origins and Dragon Age 2,” he says
How many protestors would it take to get Half-Life 2: Episode 3 news? Newell: “If they’d like to come out we could find out.”
Owen has been talking to Gabe Newell at Gamescom about a recent incident at Valve HQ, where two protesters turned up with cardboard signs asking for more news on Half Life 2: Episode 3. Newell went out to meet the protesters, gave them pizza and soda, and then invited them in for a tour of the studio. They ended up sitting down to test Dota 2 and didn’t leave until two days later.
Newell was tight lipped when we asked him about Episode 3. “No, we don’t have anything,” he said. “If the the protesters couldn’t get it out of us…”
Then how many protesters would it take to get some Episode 3 news?
“I don’t know,” Newell replied, “but if they’d like to come out we could find out.”
That sounds like a challenge to us. We also asked Gabe about Origin, EA’s disappearing Steam games and Dota 2, a game he’s played for 800 hours. You’ll find a picture of Gabe Newell with the two protesters below, as seen on Kotaku. Half Life fans, you might need this.
King Arthur 2 trailer has dragons, giants and so many harpies they blot out the sun
We don’t know if the dragons in this King Arthur 2 trailer are unlimited, but they certainly seem numerous, not as numerous as the harpies though, which practically blot out the sun with their colossal numbers. Also on show are the giants, who one of the toughest units in the previous King Arthur game and look suitably smashy and stompy in the sequel.
The monster units were one of the best parts of the original King Arthur, but they weren’t many of them and they were often difficult to obtain. The sequel seems to be putting a lot more emphasis on them, which can only be a good thing. If you want to know more about King Arthur 2, check out our preview.
Trackmania 2: Canyon trailer loops the loop
A simple video of Trackmania 2: Canyon’s colossal loops is enough to make our stomachs go a bit wibbly. We can’t wait to dive in and make our own ludicrous tracks using the included course editor. You can pre-order Trackmania 2: Canyon now to grab a spot on the beta. It’s out on September 14.
Deus Ex: Human Revolution items hit Team Fortress 2
If you pre-ordered Deus Ex: Human Revolution on Steam, your Team Fortress 2 backpack will now be bursting with some of Deus Ex’s beautiful, high-tech weaponry. The Manno-Technology bundle has landed, adding Human Revolution themed hats, bionic arms and some slightly mad weapons to TF2.
Take the Widowmaker. It’s a gun that you never have to reload. 100% of your damage is turned into ammo instead. Then there’s the Short Circuit, a blaster that can damage rockets in mid-air. There’s also a fantastic bionic arm for the Heavy. We’d like to see Valve make more mech parts so we can turn the Heavy into Gunther Hermann, one item at a time.
If you haven’t pre-ordered Deus Ex: Human Revolution, don’t worry. All the items in the Manno-Technology bundle can be found, crafted and bought from the Mann-Co store. Read on for pictures of all the items, and descriptions of what they do.
DC Universe Online Trailer shows glowing green stealth bomber made of pure willpower
This new trailer for DC Universe Online shows us some footage of the upcoming Green Lantern pack while the developers explain the reasoning behind it. The new light powerset does look pretty swish, with the trailer showing off a bunch of the powers Josh described earlier, such as glowing green chainsaws, giant fans and what appears to be a a stealth bomber made of pure will. There’s also a brief glimpse of Oa, with the dev team explaining that they’re using this pack to take the game to DC locations beyond Earth.
Sadly the blood vomiting Red Lanterns are nowhere to be seen. Shame, they seemed such charming fellows.
