PC Gamers had an amazing week during the close of October as every online game store held some sort of Halloween sale that all had at least one phenomenal deal. Now, November is getting off to great start as well, with Steampowered.com offering not one, but TWO Mid-week Madness sales on two different franchises.
This week, discounts on games played a huge part in the sales on Steam. The release of Call of Duty: Black Ops topped the Steam list, but that doesn’t compare to the rest of the list, which was populated by great deals on great games. Warhammer 40K, Left 4 Dead 2, Team Fortress 2, and Worms Reloaded got their individual prices halved, while Bioshock and the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Bundle, some of the better games of 2007, got a 75% off discount. Everything else sold either from current popularity or pre-release buzz. Call of Duty will stay on the list for a while, though Bioshock will fall off the second it gets normal pricing again.
With the end of October just around the bend, Call of Duty: Black Ops is on the horizon and has been widely touted as a quality successor to the Call of Duty franchise. As the seventh instalment in the series, Black Ops follows a variety of Special Forces operatives over the length of the Cold War as they participate in secret missions behind enemy lines. The characters players inhabit will have their own voices and shadows, adding a level of development that is commonly not in Call of Duty, a series that often makes the choice to make the player feel like a faceless observer in great historical events (although the new focus on a more individual story in MW and MW2 reflects a change in direction). However, Treyarch’s Black Ops marks a return to the original mold as it seeks to continue the pedigree set by COD: World at War, a Pacific WWII-themed title, a game that is more in line with the missions in Call of Duty 2 rather than the more contemporary and plot-driven Modern Warfare 2.
This year’s Team Fortress 2 Halloween special is filled with a few special tricks and treats for players to discover. Looking at the latest blog post you can get the general idea of whats going to be going down this Halloween. Much like last year there’ll be a new map, Mann Manor, which will feature a Haunted Halloween Gift box which will randomly drop around the map for players to pick up. However, the map also features the Horseless Headless Horsemann. Basically its exactly what it says on the tin, a Horseless Headless Horsemann who’ll run around trying to kill players with his giant axe. Manage to kill him though and you’ll net yourself a tastey achievement for your trouble.
Halloween sales keep coming at PC gamers like the endless armies of the Netherworld. All week we’ve been covering the relentless march of consumerism on Halloween, and today we have yet another horde of sales clawing at your credit cards in search of money. However one game company has actually learned the true meaning of Halloween and is giving us the best kind of treat- A free game! The generous (And attractive) folks at Telltale Games are
Some games just don’t die. Bioware released Neverwinter Nights over eight years ago. Since then there were three Expansion packs, several smaller “Premium Modules” and a sequel. There is also still a highly dedicated modding community for it. The official Software Development Kit included with the game, The Auroroa Toolset, is an easy to use, but still customizable system which lets novice programmers design maps and missions with limited programming skill by using a tile-based map system, and a conversation/ quest system which could be learned in a weekend. So, it’s really no wonder why this game is still popular after all these years.
Halloween is here again and it’s time to bring out the scares! One of the hottest sequels to one of the scariest games of 2008 is set to be released early next year and there couldn’t be a better time to investigate the horror that is soon to be upon us. Dead Space 2 tells the story of Isaac Clarke, an engineer for the Concordance Extraction Corporation, a mining company in the year 2508. Three years after escaping the Hive Mind of the Necromorphs on Aegis VII, Isaac has managed to find refuge on “The Sprawl,” a massive space station built off the moons of Saturn. There, Isaac tries to mentally recover from his experiences onboard the USG Ishimura, hoping that he is finally free of the terrors of the Necromorphs.
