Not to use hyperbole, but the best browser-based game ever has just been released. Have you ever been so infuriated by something you saw on the internet that you wanted to kill the whole web page? Well, now you can with Erik Rothoff’s Asteroids bookmarklet. It puts the tiny triangular spaceship from Asteroids on your browser page, and lets you blast way at the text and images of whatever page you’re reading.
Company of Heroes, by Relic Entertainment has been nearly a gold standard for real-time strategy games for over four years. The gameplay had been refined and defined by earlier releases from Relic in the form of Dawn of War, a Warhammer 40k RTS, and its expansions. Released in 2006, Company of Heroes perfected the system developed in Dawn of War and impressed the gaming world with flawless squad-based unit management and historically accurate scenarios, troops and equipment. It had deformable terrain and a real-time cover creation system, in which squads could take advantage of cover created on purpose of by result of battles. A peaceful French countryside often became a crater-scarred mess, allowing soldiers to automatically hide in the rubble on the fly. By some twist of fate, Relic has seen it appropriate to take the quality of Company of Heroes and make it freely available in the form of Company of Heroes Online.
There’s a tornado warning today in New York City, so I’ll spend the day cowering inside, playing with all the cheap games I’ll buy with these Mid-Week sales. Even if there’s no tornado scare where you live, it’s not a bad idea to stock up… just in case.
It’s Week 4 for PC Digital Download sales, and both Steam and Direct2Drive are shaken up as new releases come out. Civilization V is still there though, because PC gamers love Civilization! There’s also a few other releases that may or may not have been trampled by Civilization V.
Got no life? No friends, no love, no money? Just five dollars left before your Visa card is maxed out? Well that’s all you’ll need for a whole weekend of entertainment with this week’s crop of weekend sales. It’s time to get serious. Serious Sam, that is.
Those nice folks at Good Old Games.com collectively yanked our chains over the weekend. Their website was shut down, replaced with a tearful farewell stating that the company couldn’t continue in its current form, yet offering assurances that customers would be able to download recently-purchased items. Now its clear that it was all a lie! A horrible, horrible lie, and Gog.com will be back in business this week.
Valve’s Portal was a game that broke the rules. A first-person shooter without shooting? This was a game that forced you to consider the environment your challenge, providing you with nothing but a tool to connect two spatial points and an impetus to use your brain to defeat said challenge. Of course, the mind constructing these puzzles for you added a great deal to the mythos and prestige of the title, as GLaDOS kept the player sharply enmeshed with both dark humor and malevolence. The popularity of the game was not in doubt, as even merchandise was created to capitalize on the characters and even inanimate objects; the game itself was shipped to consoles as a package with other valve titles in the Orange Box. Truly, the cake was not a lie. And now, to the happiness of gamers everywhere, Portal 2 has been announced (as a full-length game, no less).
Don’t miss the final day of the Indie Summer of Love Bundle, which will get you up to twelve indie games for 80% off. A great deal on all of those artsy smartsy games you should be playing, like Machinarium, And Yet It Moves, and AaaaAAAaaaA!!!
Today is International Talk Like a Pirate Day, and it is a sad coincidence that the DRM-free game site Good Old Games.com decided to shut down today. Their decision to sell classic games without Digital Rights Management left them wide open for software piracy, and their business venture has closed its virtual doors after two years.
Ahoy Mateys! Sunday be International Talk Like a Pirate Day, and several online game stores be unfurlin’ their Jolly Rogers with pirate-themed sales. So hoist your mainsails, sharpen ye cutlasses, and open yer bootysacks for these Week-End Deals.
