PC

New Blood Stone Trailer

Activision has released a new trailer for the upcoming James Bond adventure Blood Stone. Due to MGM’s money troubles, the 23^rd Bond movie is stuck in development, therefore Blood Stonewill not be a tie-in, but rather will be a standalone story – the next chapter in the Bond saga.

The game, a third-person shooter, will star Daniel Craig as 007 and British singer Joss Stone as socialite Nicole Hunter, as they hunt down a missing researcher. The game will feature a global conspiracy involving the UK’s secret biochemical weapons program, and a story stretching across five different locations, including Istanbul (as featured in the new trailer), Athens, Monaco, Bangkok and Siberia.

“Witch Hunt” DLC Announced for Dragon Age

It’s been exactly two weeks since I complained that Bioware is releasing DLC for Dragon Age at a faster rate than we can play it. As if to spite me, those jerks have announced yet more DLC is on the way.  In their defense, they’re saying that this will resolve the last plot thread in Origins, so it might be the last time they harass us with their DLC and let us all get on with our lives (I still have all that Mass Effect DLC to play too, guys).  After all they’re hard at work on Dragon Age 2, and they have to make sure it is so full of content that no one will be able to finish that before Dragon Age 3 comes out.

Torchlight Review

With the announcement of Torchlight II, there’s no better time to get into the original. Torchlight is an action RPG with one hell of a pedigree – designed by Travis Baldree (Fate), Max Schaefer and Erich Schaefer (Diablo and Diablo II) and the team behind Mythos. It’s no surprise then, that the game is of a very high quality. Players take control of a preset character class – Destroyer, Vanquisher or Alchemist (roughly soldier, ranger or mage in generic terms). You then choose a cat or dog to keep you company and you’re ready. Your adventure starts in the town of Torchlight, situated above a complex cave network. In the rock around Torchlight is a magical substance known as ember, and the mysteries surrounding this element provides the meat of the storyline. 

Are Your Children Playing with Killographic Sexboxes?

There’s one good thing about having spent the last four months cleaning up the biggest oil spill in the country’s history; the mainstream media has been too busy with the Gulf to cover frivolous stories like controversial video games.  With an unpopular health care bill, a Hatian earthquake, and The World Cup occupying the headlines, it’s been a good year for us gamers and our killographic sexboxes.

There was a short uproar over the new Medal of Honor game which lets you play as the Taliban, but that died down when the Ground Zero Mosque debate hit the front page. This week I was bracing myself for outrage over the nudity in Mafia II, but the news channels are too busy covering Lindsey Lohan to even notice naked ladies in some game.  In fact, the last time I saw some shrill talking head complain about sex in video games on CNN was last year when Dragon Age had that boy-on-elf gay sex scene.  

Ninja Robots and Indie Games On Sale This Week

This week Steam’s Mid-week Madness sale is the indie action game Plain Sight for a whopping 80% off of its already low price of ten dollars.  If you like ninja robots, and you’re poor, you should have a look.  And speaking of big sales, Gamersgate.com is in the final week of an awesome indie game sale, with 35 games going for up to 75% off.  That’s just three or four bucks to grab artsy-smarty titles like Braid, or Zombie Driver.  Okay, Zombie Driver ain’t gonna impress the wine and cheese crowd, but it’s on sale for a measly two fifty. 

New Left 4 Dead DLC Announced

Left 4 Dead 2 has received a heaping amount of new content in the form of the Mutation mode that provides weekly game variants (most of them good) and DLC campaignThe Passing. Left 4 Dead 1 is going to join the fun too with The Sacrifice, its first DLC since Crash Course last September. The Sacrifice will cover the events leading up to Bill’s death in The Passing, and it will be played from the Left 4 Dead original cast’s perspective.  The Sacrifice can be played from either Left 4 Dead or Left 4 Dead 2, and if you are playing it in Left 4 Dead 2, you can play the No Mercy campaign with all the Left 4 Dead 2 weapons and enemies. All of this can be played on both PC and Mac, so Valve isn’t kidding with the Mac support stuff…

Mafia II Out Now

Mafia II is out for PC and I have to disagree with the preview that my cohorts posted over in the XBox department a couple of weeks ago.  They didn’t care for it based on the Demo, but I quite enjoyed it and think it’s worth a look, for PC gamers at least.

For those not familiar with the franchise, it’s basically a Grand Theft Auto Clone, a really good GTA clone.  The setting is 1945-1955 in a fictional version of New York called “Liberty City”.  I mean “Empire City”.  You can free roam around the city, stealing cars, driving anywhere you want, listening to various period radio stations…