Well, looks like PC Zone was saving up its 200th issue for Deus Ex. It's the cover story in the latest edition, which has already landed in subscribers' mailboxes and hits newsstands on Oct. 9. The writeup also features the first screenshots of the game, which CVG scanned and uploaded (above).

"Deus Ex 3's vision of the future sees holographic screens flicker atop ferries moving back and forth in front of the Shanghai skyline, now split into two layers with the rich on the top and the poor in perpetual twilight below," says PC Zone.

The preview says Eidos Montreal promised a "powerful, layered" plot for the game, a prequel set in 2027. Eidos also said it's mindful of reaction to the second game in the series and promises that its mistakes won't be repeated. If you're not a subscriber, CVG has written up a pretty good digest of its high points.

Deus Ex 3: First Details [CVG]

Also in Realtime Worlds' newsletter for fans, which went out this week, is word that Facebook will play a large role in building the community for APB, the long-awaited cops-and-robbers MMO.

And APB's closed beta stage is upcoming, with alpha testing completed in the middle of September, says Realtime Worlds. "Initially this will be a very core, select number of trusted friends of employees, but does mark the start of what can be considered the 'Closed' Beta stage of APB," said Chris Dye, community relations manager.

There were no specifics given on exactly how Facebook will be a part of this. Develop Magazine points out that APB will use social music site Last.fm for its in-game audio, Realtime Worlds has shown a willingness to use existing online services rather than create its own.

The release date is still TBA.

APB to Use Facebook as 'Major Community Tool' [Develop]

Hey, 2009's almost upon us, and TF2Newbs has put out a 12-month zipfile of spies doing the crab walk in Team Fortress 2. My favourite is August, which captures this conversation between Nfreak (the calendar's creator) and his cohorts:

{OSS} |CiC| Andy <3 amvalvo: Nfreak, turn around
Bob Dole's Woodlen Critters >:3: We're trying to do a spycrab calendar
Bob Dole's Woodlen Critters >:3: SS
{OSS} |CiC| Andy <3 amvalvo: Bob, keep walking back and forth

TF2Newbs promises to donate $1 to the National Spy Crab Fund for every download.

(/rushes to establish National Spy Crab Fund).

Rare Endangered Spy Crab 2009 Calendar [TF2Newbs]

To celebrate the launch of MODs on Steam, Valve is giving away five "leading Source MODs" to anyone who owns a Source-based game. The publisher is also offering Half-Life 2: Episode One on steam for $5.

The free MOD pack comes with Age of Chivalry, D.I.P.R.I.P., Insurgency, Synergy, and Zombie Panic.

"Valve has been supporting the MOD community since the company's inception, offering updates to the SDK, holding MOD Expos and being the first to bring a MOD to retail with Counter-Strike in November 2000," said Doug Lombardi, vice president of marketing at Valve. "The debut of these MODs on Steam marks the beginning of a new level of support for the MOD community by putting the leading MODs at the finger tips of over 15 million targeted gamers."

Once the MOD pack, available now, is installed it will appear in the Steam "My Games" list and the MODs will receive automatic updates just like other games on Steam. Also, the MODs support Steamworks, providing stat tracking and tighter integration with the Steam community.

Steam Powered

Yes. It's this again. And yes. It's him again. But hey, if you can spare five minutes for another Peter Molyneux soundbyte and another "oh no PC gaming is rubbish" opinion, read on! Speaking with Videogamer, the Lionhead boss - who, while at Bullfrog, did his best work on the PC - has said the market is "in tatters":

If you look at the gamer market on PC, I'll be quite honest with you, it's in tatters. There aren't that many releases on PC. There are some high points like Crysis and what Blizzard is doing, but other than that you are restricted to The Sims and World of Warcraft, they seem to be dominating the PC side.

You mean it's in tatters if you're not EA or Blizzard, Peter.

PC gamer market in 'tatters', says Molyneux [Videogamer] [Image]

There's lots of gameplay to see in this new Sacred 2: Fallen Angel trailer and you know, everything was going fine until he starting singing. I quickly realised - even the nerd inside of me couldn't filter this out. So if in result of this trailer you must immediately cleanse your ears with something, anything on iTunes, I sincerely apologise. Anyway, if we learn anything from this trailer it's that the game definitely looks pretty, but seems generic at times. Expect Sacred 2 sometime this November for PC. Then it will hit consoles in early 2009.

With all of the furor whipped up in the wake of Spore's restrictive digital rights management system, DRM is a hot-button issue with PC gamers the world over. In an interview with Shacknews, Bethesda spokesman Pete Hines reveals that Fallout 3 - one of the year's most anticipated games for the PC - won't come with any sort of DRM at all.

Pretty similar to what we did for Oblivion, which was—we basically don't do any—we do the mildest form possible. I actually don't know if I even want to get into what it is that we exactly do, but we try to be really noninvasive when it comes to that stuff.

Note that Oblivion only required the disc in the drive, a restriction that even players who buy a copy are likely to overcome with a hack for the sake of convenience. Not as good for Bethesda as something more secure, but the fans will surely appreciate the hell out of it.

The Fallout 3 PC Interview: Bethesda on DRM, Censorship and Consolification [Shacknews via GamePolitics]

Don't look now, but there are real games on the bricks-n-mortar PC sales charts for the week. Real, honest-to-goodness, not-made-by-Maxis-or-Blizzard games. Don't believe me? Check out Warhammer Online at #1. Or Crysis Warhead at #4. Or, bless it, Stalker: Clear Sky, which doesn't just make the charts, it beats out World of Warcraft.

1. Warhammer Online
2. Spore
3. Warhammer Online Collector's Edition
4. Crysis Warhead
5. The Sims 2 Apartment Life
6. WoW: Battle Chest
7. Spore Galactic Edition
8. The Sims 2 Double Deluxe
9. Stalker: Clear Sky
10. World Of Warcraft

[figures courtesy of NPD]

You know how id's John Carmack said that his company's upcoming shooter Rage just wasn't going to work in terms of digital delivery? And how you'd need to buy the game on a disc, like the olden days? Yeah, turns out he was wrong. id's Tim Willits has corrected his boss, telling 1UP:

John Carmack [id co-founder] made a comment about the media size, which unfortunately wasn't exactly correct because we haven't crossed that bridge yet. He said it was going to be too large to download, and I was thinking to myself, "You know, uhhhhh, people can do lots of things." So I want to correct that and say that... Rage won't break the Internet.

Won't break it, but if the thing needs to ship on three 360 discs, it's certainly going to bend it.

id's Growing Pains [1UP]

Epic Games won't be bringing Gears of War 2 to the PC. That's their story and they're stickin' to it. It's "definitely" not happening, swears designer Cliff Bleszinski, pointing to a worsening PC gaming environment.

"The person who is savvy enough to want to have a good PC to upgrade their video card, is a person who is savvy enough to know [BitTorrent] to know all the elements so they can pirate software," says Bleszinski. "Therefore, high-end videogames are suffering very much on the PC."

Hmph! Thanks a lot, assholes. Oh, not you, Cliff. We were talking to the dude stealing your game.

Gears Of War 2 - Cliff Bleszinski Q&A [TVG]

After two underwhelming years spent trying to be just as essential to PC gaming as Xbox Live is to console, Grand Theft Auto IV might just take Games for Windows and kiss away all its tears of frustration. Or, if Microsoft drops the ball, it could be another nail in the coffin of PC gaming, writes Wired. That might piss off PC gamers who are just fine with Steam and are tired of hearing more talk about how their way of life is going extinct. But Microsoft's exclusive control of GTA:IV for the PC does have implications for PC gaming at large.

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Steam's announced that, beginning next week, it'll be hosting five mods that will be freely available for all who own the mod's source game. Additionally, the mods will take advantage of Steamworks' stat tracking and "tighter integration with the Steam community."

The five mods are Age of Chivalry, D.I.P.R.I.P., Insurgency, Synergy, and Zombie Panic. Full announcement on the jump.

Read More »

Yesterday we gave you the cell-phone video of the two Duke Nukem Forever screens that can be found in the XBLA version of Duke Nukem 3D, which released last week. Well, now we've got the .jpgs, via Duke4.net. Get ready for some stripper arse in full size on the jump. There's also a slightly less attractive three-glowing-eyed alien thing.

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Need something to play this weekend? Need it on the cheap? If you're on board with this whole digital distribution through Steam thing, some classic and not-so-classic Rockstar Games titles are being sold at bargain basement prices. Ten bucks for Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas? Five for Manhunt? You could do a hell of a lot worse. The entire Rockstar Games Collection is just $29.99 in U.S. dollars, making corruption by video game violence a steal.

The whole thing is time limited and may very well not be offered in the country of your choosing. For the lucky bargain hunters, have at it.

Rockstar Games [Steam]

Yes, we know, you have a DVD drive in your PC. Most of your buddies will as well. But not everybody has a DVD drive in their PC yet, which is why World of Warcraft still ships on four compact discs instead of a single digital versatile disc. Lich King, though, Lich King will be shipping on DVD only, the first WoW release to do so (Burning crusade shipped on both DVD and CD). So, uh, why does this matter? Being so low-spec-friendly, WoW was the last bastion of the CD in PC gaming, a format that dominated the industry from the mid-90s til the early years of this decade. With Lich King shipping on DVD only, we've probably seen the last of the CD, at least in non-shovelware titles. Goobye, old friend! We had some good, good times.

Wrath of the Lich King Releasing on DVD Only [1UP]

The great thing about Spore is all the stuff we can make. No, make that, the great thing about Spore is all the stuff really talented people can make. Check out these images from Korean site Ruliweb of in-Spore created Starcraft Terran faction buildings and vehicles. Check out the Vulture, Siege Tank, Goliath, Wraith and Battlecruiser! The attention to detail is astounding. There are three words for this and they are "only in Korea". Have a gander in the gallery below.

Sporecraft Gallery
PC 게임 화면 게시판 [Ruliweb Thanks, Torokun!]

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Valve's Doug Lombardi dropped word with the folks at Halflife2.net on the official, 100% legit, absolutely bunkum-free hardware requirements needed for Left 4 Dead. What's it gonna take to run the game? A CPU better the ones in the Kotaku Towers West supercomputers, sadly. It's OK, you kids have fun with all that zombie killing, we'll just do some Peggle. While not steep — though that 7.5 GB install is impressive — we just don't have the video card or central processing power to run the thing.

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What would a big holiday game be without an expensive collector's edition? It'd be nowhere, that's where. So Call of Duty: World At War will be going somewhere with this expensive box of crap limited edition collectibles, which will be available for both 360 and PC versions of the game. For $80 (360) and $70 (PC), you'll get the game, a metal box, a canteen, a week's worth of double-XP in MP and early access to a high-level weapon, which would take cheap bastards 45+ levels of hard work to unlock.

Also unveiled today are the system specs for the PC version of the game, which for XP users are quite generous:

Read More »

If you are looking forward to Fallout 3 but are either too young to remember the original or just fancy reliving a genuine no-messing-about classic, GameTap is offering up Fallout for free.

You will have to sign up with GameTap to get at the goods, and you can expect they will probably ask if you want to start paying for their premium service at some point.

There is a slight bug in GameTap's implementation of the game that means the screen will occasionally go blank (fixable with a few key presses) but whaddaya want? Its free, and its one of the games you need to at least pretend that you have played to avoid embarrassment at dinner parties.

Fallout [GameTap via Shacknews]

You may not have heard of Uwe Boll's 2007 film Seed. Mostly because it wasn't based on a game, and as such, would have received absolutely zero press (as opposed to the slight amounts of press he gets from a strangely-obsessed gaming media). That means that the DVD version of the game's going to be a tough sell! So to sweeten the deal with Boll's primary (only?) fanbase, the DVD box set is going to come bundled with a copy of Advent Rising on the PC. Hopefully because the distributors found a few thousand copies lying around, and not because Uwe Boll is planning on doing an Advent Rising movie.

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After just two weeks and change on the market, EA and Maxis' Spore has sold through over a million copies. The company announced today that Will Wright and team's sim-everything game is, officially, "a hit." That million-plus figure counts sales of the Windows, Mac and Nintendo DS versions of Spore, but not the mobile and iPhone versions.

While EA was trotting out numbers, it wanted to mention that some 25 million things have been uploaded to the Sporepedia, a figure we'll presume includes all the goodies uploaded via the Spore Creature Creator. So, now you know!

Whenever you find large numbers of unhappy people, you're bound to find a lawyer. In this case it's Alan Himmelfarb with KamberEdelson of Vernon, California, who has filed a class-action suit against EA over the DRM in EA's Spore. The suit, filed Monday with the Northern California District Court on behalf of plaintiff Melissa Thomas and "all consumers globally who have purchased the Spore computer game", addresses complaints that consumers are not fully aware of what exactly SecuROM does on their system, and also cites a separate program that installs on the control centre of the computer and can disrupt system functions.

Plaintiffs demand disgorgement of unjust profits and damages for trespass, interference, unfair competition and consumer law violations.

You can see the full suit in PDF form over at Courthouse News. It's rather lengthy, containing excerpts from EA's FAQ as well as quotes from Amazon.com reviews, oddly enough. Looks like someone's done his homework. EA might even have to assign two lawyers to deal with this one.

'Spore' Hijacks Computers, Class Claims [Courthouse News via GamePolitics - Thanks Brendan]

Following the locking of a thread on the official Spore forums, one questioning the moderation policies regarding SecuROM and DRM discussion, along with a rather threatening sounding warning, the EA hate machine booted up. Yes, the admonition from Spore forum mods was scary stuff, warning that "If you want to talk about DRM SecuROM then please use another fansite forum."

Even more frightening? Reopening the SecuROM/DRM wound with new threads on the official boards may put users "at risk of banning which in some cases would mean you would need to buy a new copy to play Spore." Yikes!

Fortunately, that's not true, according to forums mods.

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Is Faramix Enterprises' CellZenith the next Geometry War? According to their website, many of their testers seem to think so. CellZenith is a fast-paced space shooter due out on September 30th for the PC from Direct2Drive and GamersGate for $19.95, which features 35 different ships, 30 campaign levels, powerups, boss battles, dynamic weather, mini-games, and just about everything else they could cram in there. Whether it's the next Geometry Wars remains to be seen, but it at least looks like an interesting shooter for those so inclined to shoot things on their PC. Hit the link below for some screenies, or hit up the game's website for more info.

CellZenith Gallery

We know Crysis Warhead has some odd nomenclature for graphic settings, but how well do those graphics settings actually performed. After all of the complaints about the original game's outrageous system requirements, developer Crytek promised that this side story would be tweaked to run well on a much more affordable computer, but did they deliver? The guys over at TechSpot have gone in-depth to analyse the game's performance, providing benchmarks for 14 different video cards at each of the game's three quality levels, and the results aren't too spectacular. What they basically discovered is that said tweaks are negligible, and only a very high-end video card is capable of breaking past 32 frames per second at the lowest resolution they tested, 1440x900.

Hit the link for the full report on Crysis Warhead's performance, including more comparison shots of the three levels of graphical detail.

Crysis Warhead performance in-depth [TechSpot]