PC News

Borderlands On Sale at Steam

Do you like guns?  Do you like video games with guns? Of course you do, but video games these days have such limited arsenals, offering players a mere twenty or so guns with which to shoot stuff. Some even boast that they have up to a billion guns, but that just isn’t enough for the serious fan.

So, how about a game with 87 Bazillion guns?  Well, Borderlands by Gearbox Software claims to have 87 Bazillion guns.  Surely such a game would cost a fortune, and normally you’d be expected to pay twenty-nine ninety-nine for Borderlands, yet, for a few days you can get it for 66.% off if you download it from Steam. 

RAGE Gets Release Date

id Software has a long history in the first-person shooter genre, masterminding two of the longest running and most popular franchises, Quake and Doom. It’s no surprise, then, that their upcoming post-apocalyptic shooter, Rage, has been on plenty of radars since its announcement three years ago at QuakeCon 2007. Now, id have finally issued a release date for the game: September 13th 2011 for the US and September 15th 2011 for Europe.

Steam Sales Report 8/13/10

PC games sales aren’t monitored by the NPD, so it falls on the shoulders of the Steam Sales Report to monitor how well PC games are doing in the market every Friday at 3:00 PM. Here is where you can see what Steam games are selling well, and I’ll do my best to explain why they sold. This week, there was a QuakeCon 2010 Steam Sale, which overturned a good chunk of the top 10 list.

Irrational Games Announces Bioshock Infinite

Irrational Games has a long, unbroken history of making spectacular games, including System Shock 2, S.W.A.T. 4. and both Freedom Force.  Not to mention the artsy-smartsy shooter Bioshock. For weeks they have been tantalizing gamers with their new project “Icarus” which, as you all know is the name of the Greek hero who doomed himself by foolishly flying too close to the sun. Is that a symbol?  A metaphor?  Are they making a sequel to the old Nintendo game “Kid Icarus”?  Will it be an ancient Greek flight simulator?!

Paragon Studios Giving Away Tickets to PAX Prime

Big things are afoot in the City of Heroes.  Their new expansion pack Going Rogue is just around the corner.  It will feature the obvious graphical upgrades (i.e. Paragon City is shinier and more shadowy), and also has four new power sets. The Dual Pistol and Demon Summoning power sets have been available for months to people who pre-order, but there are two others: Kinetic Melee and Electric  Control which will become available on launch day.

Yet more DLC for Dragon Age

The good folks at Bioware are making games faster than I can play them.  My Steam account tells me that I played Dragon Age for an embarrassingly long period of time, and that was just with the stuff that was available when it first came out.  Even with the enormous amount of time I spent fighting the Darkspawn and avoiding bisexual elf sex, I did not do anywhere near everything that could be done in the game.

Mafia II Demo Released

2K games have released a demo for the upcoming action-adventure-shooter, Mafia II. The demo is available through all appropriate channels, carrying a surprisingly small filesize of 940MB. Mafia 2 is the long-awaited sequel to 2002’s Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven. It will be set in the fictional American City of Empire Bay, a mixture of New York, San Francisco and Chicago. Set between 1945 and 1955, Mafia 2 will follow the story of WWII veteran Vito Scaletta (no doubt a reference to Vito Corleone, Marlon Brando’s character in the Godfather), as he joins a gang in order to pay off debts left by his father. The game will feature authentic weaponry, clothing, cars and music, all in a ten square mile, fully explorable, area.

Black Ops Multiplayer

Now that the future of Infinity Ward is in doubt, Treyarch is pulling no punches in an attempt to permanently snag the Call of Duty franchise. Today they released a multiplayer teaser for upcoming mega-title Black Ops, full of guns, dead men, and most importantly…explosions. PC gamers can rejoice in harmony, as Treyarch has confirmed dedicated server support as well, which caused many PC players to avoid Modern Warfare 2. Teaser below, enjoy.

Machinarium Developer Has “Pirate Amnesty” Sale

Do you own a copy of Machinarium, the award winning point-n-click adventure game by Czech developer Amanita Design?  Did you illegally download it?  Did you?

DID YOU?!

Well about 90% of the people who own Machinarium are software pirates, according to the developers.  If you stole a digital copy of any game, you are filthy thieving scum, a vile scoundrel, a villainous blackguard, and the reason the rest of us have to deal with Orwellian DRM software, and high prices. The only way to redeem yourself is to purchase a legitimate copy of every game you pirated.  

If Machinarium is one of them, you’re in luck; Amanita Design is holding a “Pirate Amnesty” sale.  For a mere five bucks you can get a completely legal download of the game for PC, Mac or Linux, and the Soundrack as an MP3.  The sale is running until August 12^th and is open to everyone, even if you aren’t dirty, stinking, commie, sub-human, savage, pirate filth.

Bioshock 2 DLC Protector Trials Delayed

There’s good news and bad news for Bioshock fans.  The bad news is that the PC version of the Single-Player “Protector Trials” didn’t come out for PC this week, even though it became available for Playstation and Xbox on August 3rd.  The good news is that, according to official posts from Elizabeth Tobey on the 2k forums is it is still on its way although there is no release date set at this time.  The Protector Trials will be available through Games For Windows Live, which some of you will consider to be yet another piece of bad news in of itself.