Rock, Paper, Shotgun

And that’s on Steam, obviously. Epic send word that the free weekend is intended to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the release of the original Unreal Tournament demo. Anyway, that means you can download Unreal Tournament 3 Black (which is the 2007 shooter plus add-on packs) and play the game through the weekend for no pennies.

In addition, the original Unreal Tournament will be on sale for $1.99, and both Unreal Tournament 3 Black and the Unreal Deal Pack will be available for 60% off through September 27.

And presumably if you fancy some mod action you can take the opportunity to download Prometheus, The Ball, and The Haunted.

Here’s Cliffy B being a nincompoop about Gears of War 2, the PC and piracy:

The PC right now is a fair amount different to what it was back in the day, with all the badly integrated video chips. Here’s the problem right now; 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 bit torrent to know all the elements so they can pirate software. Therefore, high-end videogames are suffering very much on the PC. Right now, it makes sense for us to focus on Xbox 360 for a number of reasons. Not least PCs with multiple configurations and piracy.

But when the dust has settled, is there any possibility of Gears 2 on PC?

No.

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As the ravages of jetlag cruelly drag me down, I crawl broken and red-eyed from bed to bring you more news of Street Fighter on PC. Was this really worth getting up for? It’s hard to know any more. But it is apparently an EPIC RETURN. That’s good to know. Video below!

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No comment.

God knows when Epic’s hyper-muscular shooter sequel will chainsaw its way through a flimsy format-exclusive to find itself on PC, but here’s the first footage anyway. It’s introduced by the Internet’s favourite Clifford Bleszinski, Clifford Bleszinski, who is the lead designer on the game. By golly it looks a bit exciting: guns, giant machines, flying octopuses ridden by evil aliens. ClickJump for War.

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VG247 have talked to Mark Rein about the Unreal Engine deal with EA. The deal apparently includes use of the latest Unreal tech in more than five different titles. Rein also says some other stuff about Epic’s current position:

““I think what excites me most about the engine licensing business today isn’t just that we’re doing a large number of licenses with companies like EA, but also that we’re finding the smaller companies. Like APB, the MMO game from Real Time Worlds: it looks nothing like any other Unreal Engine 3 game. And we’re seeing companies like Chair Entertainment with games like Undertow. So, what’s exciting to me is that the technology is being used by so many people to do so many different things.”

In other Epic news: Intel are sponsoring the Make Something Unreal competition to the tune of One Million Dollars. Better get modding…

Hell, any day can be round-up day. Rather than Kieron’s regular Sunday collection of notable word-sciences though, instead this is a one-off, rather more hotchpotch grab-bag of happy happenstances that have caught my eye today, as I fight the urge to pretend this has any relevancy whatsoever to Space Week.

First up, we’ve got the announcement of Tom Clancy’s HAWX, which totally sounds like a group of male strippers, but is actually an aerial combat thingum set in the GRAW universe. Which, for all the oppressively heavy branding, is actually kinda appealing – we don’t get too many dogfighters these days, so it’s nice to see a new big-money attempt at making one for a broad audience.
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In case you hadn’t noticed yet, Epic’s Unreal back catalogue – so no Gears of War or Jazz Jackrabbit, unfortunately – has cropped up on Steam. This comes just a couple of days after guys-who-enjoy-opening-squillions-of-data-files-in-notepad spotted what they reckoned were references to Epic games in Steam’s guts, causing web rumour mills to spin themselves into a frenzy.

The sheer breadth of the Steam store is becoming faintly (but agreeably) obscene. If EA, Ubisoft and Microsoft ever end up pledging allegiance to it, I foresee the death of Windows. We boot straight into Steam, we play all our games in Steam, we chat with our friends in Steam and we hack its browser to write and read RPS in Steam. Then the entire planet splits into two opposing camps – the Valvemen and the Googlemen – and we fight to the death for which giant monolithic corporation we want to entrust all our personal data to. Maybe.
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It’s been coming for a while, if we’re honest. Epic have recently been taking it in turns to say disparaging things about the state of PC gaming, to the point that CliffyB’s now considered something of a Benedict Arnold figure in some of the more rabid PC camps.

And now they’re burning another bridge, further confirming that PC is no longer their most beloved (edit – for those misinterpreting, Epic are not abandoning the PC, just confirming they’re developing their next-gen engine for consoles first and foremost). It’s hardly a shock, but allow us a teary moment anyway.
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He’s joking, obviously. Cliffy B’s lovely. Eurogamer mentioned this quote yesterday, but have put up the full interview today. In it, after the terrier of Eurogamer Tom Bramwell stops trying to make him talk about Gears of War 2 for a whole page, he starts talking PC…

“Hey, Cliff is Cliff, and he’s making a console game, and that’s what he’s focused on, so that’s what his thinking is all about. But as a company, we make PC games. We love the PC, it’s our heritage, we want to see it be strong, and we want to sell games like Unreal Tournament III and Gears of War on PC, and have them sell as well as they do on console.”

He goes on to talk about the PC Gaming alliance and his actually positive feelings on the sales of UT3. Jump in here to skip the Gears of War 2 harrying.