Archived News:

Monday, Oct 22, 2012 INTERNATIONAL CAPS LOCK DAY!

BioShock Infinite: Industrial Revolution Pre-Order Bonus

Irrational Games announces a preorder bonus for BioShock Infinite, their upcoming first-person shooter sequel. The game can be preordered on this page, which grants immediate access to play BioShock Infinite: Industrial Revolution, which can be used to earn in-game rewards for BioShock Infinite as described here. Here's word:
BioShock Infinite: Industrial Revolution is a puzzle game in which you assume the role of a factory worker within the sky-city of Columbia. You complete increasingly difficult puzzles while learning more about the warring factions in the game and earning in-game rewards.

There are nearly 60 puzzles to play, and they are all FREE!

You can only get access to BioShock Infinite: Industrial Revolution by pre-ordering BioShock Infinite at a participating retailer. Head on over to www.preordernow.com to get started!

Worms Revolution DLC This Week

Team17 announces plans to release the Funfair Pack on Wednesday, providing new DLC for Worms Revolution, their invertebrate strategy sequel. Here's what the pack will add to the Windows, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3 editions of the game:

  • New puzzle missions. Five new single-player puzzle missions.
  • Funfair theme. A stunning new Funfair theme for Worms™ Revolution that can be used in local and online matches.
  • 4 additional weapons. Armageddon, Skunk, Napalm Strike and the brand new Knock-Out weapon.
  • Funfair Themed Customization. Two new trinkets (Burger and Ice Cream), two new accessories (Red Nose and Masquerade Mask), a new gravestone (Rollercoaster Track) and a new Funfair soundbank.
  • Voice Over Talent. Matt Berry reprises his role as Don Keystone, the unseen narrator who will guide you through the five new puzzle levels.

Tiny Troopers Free DLC This Week

Iceberg Interactive announces plans to release a patch later this week for Tiny Troopers, which will add free zombie-themed DLC to the Windows and OS X editions of the game. This trailer shows off the new mode, and here's a list of what it includes:

  • Face endless waves of brain-munching zombies, including undead chickens!
  • Utilise air dropped crates of special weapons to lay devastation on the zombie hordes!
  • Use all your favorite Special Forces troopers to take down the undead.
  • Survive as long as you can against unending waves of normal and special zombies!

Painkiller Hell & Damnation Trailers

With Painkiller Hell & Damnation due next week, The Farm 51 now offers a new trailer from the upcoming first-person shooter follow-up. The clip is available as a short but mighty version and as a longer Doctor's Cut with a different audio track. Continue here to read the full story.

New AMD Drivers

AMD Support & Drivers now offers two new releases: New version 12.10 drivers for AMD and ATI graphics cards, certified by Microsoft as "compatible with Windows 8." They also now offer the new version 12.11 beta drivers featured in a bunch of previews earlier today. The beta drivers boast the impressive performance improvements for 7000 series accelerators.

One Year of Steam Workshop

Steam celebrates the first anniversary of the Steam Workshop by offering some statistics about the first year of this home to community-created game content:
It began with Team Fortress 2, and the Workshop has quickly grown to support many others including The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Portal 2, Sid Meier's Civilization V and more with different models of player-created content, exposing many players to the world of modding along the way.

Today, there are 16 shipped game titles supporting the Steam Workshop, with more on the way. Almost 300,000 items are available in the Workshop, ranging between models, animations, maps & levels, scenarios and even full games made in GameMaker Studio. Those items have been consumed through 55 million downloads.

Evening Previews

etc., etc.

Into the Black

Link of the Day: Skyfall Movie Trailer #3. Thanks Ant.

Diablo III Hotfix Tomorrow

The Diablo III Forums have word from Blizzard on plans for a hotfix for Diablo III tomorrow. The intent is to reduce the damage dealt by monsters in Inferno difficulty with Monster Power enabled in the action/RPG sequel. Here's the deal:
As the title suggests, we're going to be reducing the amount of damage monsters do in Inferno whenever Monster Power is enabled. Before I detail what's changing, though, let me first explain why we're making some adjustments.

When we originally designed and implemented the bonus values for monster damage in Inferno, we were unaware that a bug was causing monster abilities (i.e. Rare and Champion affixes) to not scale correctly with each Monster Power level. While this bug was caught during testing and did not make it into the game, the result of it being fixed meant that monster damage -- specifically damage done by monster abilities -- was ultimately higher at MP1 through MP10 than we intended it to be when 1.0.5 released.

So, to bring monster damage back in line with our original goals for the system, we're implementing a hotfix that will reduce the scaling bonus to monster damage in Inferno difficulty by approximately 25% for all Monster Power levels.

Here are the new damage values that will be hotfixed in for each MP setting:
Continue here to read the full story.

Fassbender in Assassin's Creed Film

Ubisoft announces they have partnered with New Regency for their upcoming Assassin's Creed movie, saying the film adaptation of the stealth/action franchise will star Michael Fassbender:
Today, Ubisoft® and New Regency announced that they are partnering on the forthcoming Assassin’s Creed® film.

Ubisoft Motion Pictures, the film and television division of Ubisoft, will develop the Assassin’s Creed film in close collaboration with New Regency. The development of a screenplay is beginning immediately and the project is being fast tracked as the creative pieces come together, while allowing Ubisoft to maintain control of key elements of the movie’s creative direction. Financial terms of the deal are not being disclosed.
Continue here to read the full story.

Gratuitous Tank Battles Expands

The Gratuitous Tank Battles Website now offers Gratuitous Tank Battles: The Western Front, a World War II-themed expansion for Positech's tower-defense game. This is being offered directly for now, and will be added to Steam soon. Here's word:
The original title was set in an alternate universe where world war one continues into the laser age, and GTB:The Western Front focuses on the world war 2 era of the story, pitting American armies against German in the heart of Europe.

Eight new missions are included woven into a completely new single-player campaign. A total of 16 new tank 'hulls' including the Tiger, Sherman and Pershing are available in the expansion, and can be used in the basic game as well, along with all new props and textures from the new campaign for use in the built-in map editor. The first four maps allow WW2 technology only, whereas the later maps allow players to strap laser cannons to Tiger Tanks, which is one of the developers chief ambitions in life.

Loot Drop Drops Kickstarter

The Kickstarter Page for SHAKER admits defeat for Loot Drop's recently announced old school RPG from Brenda Brathwaite and Tom Hall. The project attracted under a quarter of its funding goal as it passed the half-way mark, causing them to apologetically give up, for now:
Ultimately, our pitch just wasn't strong enough to get the traction we felt it needed to thrive. Sure, it may have made it. We could have fought our way to a possibly successful end. In reading your feedback and talking it over internally, however, we decided that it made more sense to kill it and come back with something stronger.

In game design, mercy killing is the law.

So, please accept our thanks and apologies in equal order. Expect something more soon.

Darksiders II DLC Tease

The Darksiders Twitter feed offers a screenshot that seems to be a tease some form of DLC for Darksiders II, Vigil Games' action/RPG sequel. The shot is accompanied by this tease: "A new adventure awaits Death! Retweet if you're excited. #DarksidersII." On a related note, Eurogamer points out that comic book luminary Joe Madureira Tweets he is parting ways with Vigil: "So long @Vigilgames @THQ thanks for all the memories! @Darksiders was definitely a career highlight. Keep on kicking ass I'm a fan for life!"

PAX Australia in Melbourne

The PAX Australia Website announces PAX Australia will be held in Melbourne next summer (winter, in Australia), and that registrations for the game show are now underway:
After much speculation, the first international PAX will be held in Melbourne, Australia from the 19th to the 21st of July.

Registration is now open, with 3 day passes and single day passes available. More details regarding the exhibitors, tournaments, concerts and special guests will be announced during the lead up to the show, so be sure to check back regularly or follow PAX Australia on Facebook or Twitter for the latest updates.

Catalyst Beta Previews

Some previews have popped up for new Catalyst beta version 12.11 "Never Settle" drivers for AMD/ATI graphics cards. The drivers do not seem to be publically available yet, but there are write-ups on the performance improvements they provide, as well as holiday game bundle promotions, on AnandTech, Guru3D, Legit Reviews, PC Perspective, Rage3D, and techPowerUp.

Steam Top 10

Here's Valve's list of the 10 bestselling games on Steam for the past week, which was released a little later than usual:

  1. XCOM: Enemy Unknown
  2. Borderlands 2 Season Pass
  3. Chivalry: Medieval Warfare
  4. Borderlands 2
  5. Football Manager 2013
  6. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
  7. Arma II: Combined Operations
  8. Torchlight II
  9. DOOM 3: BFG Edition
  10. Payday: The Heist

U.K. Sales Charts

GfK Chart-Track offers their list of the twenty bestselling full-priced PC entertainment titles in the U.K. for the week ending October 20th. Dishonored continues to hold down the top spot, while Rocksmith enters the chart at number five and the DOOM 3 BFG Edition debuts at number six. The all-platforms chart sees 007 Legends enter at number 12, DOOM 3 BFG Edition joins at number five, and Skylanders Giants debuts at number two, while FIFA 13 remains in the number one position.

Morning Previews

Game Reviews

Hardware Reviews

  • Aerocool X1 Devil Red Edition Mid-Tower PC Chassis on eTeknix.
  • ARCTIC USB Wireless Gamepad on Test Freaks.
  • Cooler Master Storm QuickFire Pro on APH Networks.
  • G.Skill TridentX PC3-20800 8GB Dual Channel Memory Kit on TweakTown.
  • Genius GX-Gaming Imperator Gaming Keyboard on Test Freaks.
  • GIGABYTE GA-F2A85X-UP4 Socket FM2 on OCWorkbench.
  • GIGBYTE GA-Z77X-UP7 Motherboard on Pure Overclock.
  • GIGABYTE X79-UP4 on Vortez.
  • Mad Catz TRITTON Pro+ 5.1 Surround Headset for X360/PS3/PC on Mad Shrimps.
  • MSI GeForce GTX 660 HAWK 2 GB on Guru3D and techPowerUp.
  • Patriot 8GB PC3-17000 (2133MHz) Intel Extreme Masters Memory on Pure Overclock.
  • Runcore Rocket Air SSD on The SSD Review.
  • Samsung Galaxy Note II on t-break.
  • SilverStone Sugo SG09 Case on AnandTech.
  • Team Group Xtreem LV DDR3 2600MHz 8GB Memory Kit on eTeknix.

etc.

Out of the Blue

Tracking down the takeover ad I mentioned last week was apparently tricky due to lack of details on it, but a couple of you supplied the info needed, and I believe this is in the process of being addressed. If there continues to be a problem finding it, I will pull the ad codes until that's worked out, but hopefully a solution is at hand. Apologies for the intrusion, and thanks to all of you who sent information that helped with this.

Links: Thanks Ant and Acleacius.
Play: Fluffy Steel.
Links: 5 Awful Things You Learn About Yourself Playing 'Dishonored'. Thanks nin.
Programmers, designers, and the Brooklyn bridge.
The History of GIFs. Thanks HardOCP.
Stories: Chipotle Opening First Asian Spinoff. From the Caucasian Mexican food mogul.
Lance Armstrong's Tour titles stripped, says UCI.
Science: Barley Genome Breakthrough May Lead To Better Beer.
Media: Icon Big Tex Fries at the State Fair.
Baboon (Mandrill) vs. Toddler.
'Star Wars' Flash Mob: Symphony Orchestra Surprises Crowd.
The Funnies: Brevity.
Tech Comics- -Tech Job Interview.
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