Rock, Paper, Shotgun

You might have noticed. You might have queued up at silly o’clock to get a copy. You might even have got some sort of tattoo to commemorate how excited you are about the prospect of shooting virtual men of assorted ethnic origins. Aye, today was Modern Warfare 2 day – a game that, for a lot of the industry and its consumers, has managed to become pretty much the only game of the year. I was at the UK launch last night – some thoughts on that and some of the rolling PC version problems follow.
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The Big K has news that the major digital download services are boycotting troubled enormo-shooter Modern Warfare 2 because of the inclusion of Valve’s Steamworks. Apparently Direct2Drive were first out with the news, saying they had “told publishers that they’d stop selling games bundled in such a manner until Valve “decoupled its retail marketplace” from Steam’s other services.”

GamersGate and Impulse will also be boycotting the title for the same reason. The implications of this aren’t clear. Does it play into Valve’s hands and given them an even larger grip on the market? Or is this the bell tolling for Steam’s retail service as a part of Valve’s gaming community?

We normally reserve talk of discounted games for Saturday’s Bargain Bucket post, but this one’s too good to leave for then. STALKER: Shadow Of Chernobyl is a title that instantly flickers into the forebrain of both myself and Jim whenever the question of the last few years’ best/most important PC games is raised. It is not a perfect game, but it realises a world, a place, an atmosphere, a dream of what games can and should be that pretty much nothing else even tries to come close to. And it’s £3.50 on Steam (not sure of US price – presumably around $5?) until Monday. I find that almost insulting. On the other hand, it means there’s essentially no excuse to not buy the thing if you haven’t already. What else could you spend that £3.50 on? If you do invest in it, I strongly advise you apply the STALKER Complete 2009 mod compilation for maximum post-apocalyptic prettiness.

As mentioned in the Sunday Papers yesterday, there has been some controversy sparked after remarks made by Gearbox’s Randy Pitchford to Maximum PC regarding Steam, where he stated that the digital distribution service from Valve was “exploiting a lot of small guys.” This was later countered by an article on Gamasutra where Tripwire’s John Gibson retorted, “Ask the Tripwire Interactive employees if they feel exploited, as they move into their new offices paid for by the money the company has made on Steam.”

Interested to see if there were other positions we spoke to 2D BOY and Zombie Cow, who have sold their games on Steam, to find out about their experiences.

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UPDATE: Trailer posted south of here.
Sega send word that they will be releasing a new mini-expansion for Empire: Total War, which should allow you to forge an entertaining alternative history for the US, to be delivered on Steam. It’s a North American campaign that will feature some new native North American playable factions. Sega tell us that a new “Campaign Map expands the Empire: Total War experience, with 5 brand new American Indian factions, new units and technologies.” And that means Shaman and Scout agents to fill out the NPC ranks, and support for multiplayer with these armies. Warpath will cost £5.99/ €6.99 and be out some time in October. There’s also a new patch for the game tomorrow, 1.4, which “fixes some minor issues” and delivers two new historical battles: the Battle of Rossbach and the Battle of Fontenoy.
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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.

The LucasArts comeback wagon just keeps on rolling. It is a wagon laden with wondrous games both old and new, designed to trick us into falling in love with the computeryvideotasticgames arm of the George Lucas Empire all over again, even though it used to keep us locked in the cellar and whipped us with the metal end of its belt on a daily basis. It’s a deception few will grumble about, however. The revisiting of its back catalogue on download services (specifically, Steam and Direct2Drive) continues with the announcement that the Jedi Knight shooter/lightsaber series will fetch up on said services soon. That’s ’soon’ as in ‘tomorrow’. Wootini!
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Just a quick one to say, one of our favourite games of the year is now up on Steam. Time Gentlemen, Please! can now be bought worldwide at £3, $5 and 4€ via Valve’s pipe. Zombie Cow have smartly bundled it with the first game in the series, Ben There, Dan That!, so you can play through both fantastic adventures super-easily. Read Alec’s review here if you’re still hesitating, and check the list of incredible reviews on their site if you think we’re just madfaces.

I’m stuck at this point. The problem is this: for years and years we had to suffer every mention of an adventure game being accompanied by a phrase somehow relating to adventure games being dead. I mean, I wrote them myself when I was young and stupid. They would go, “The adventure game may be dead, but here’s one last gasp,” or more optimistically, “The adventure game’s not dead, but in a coma,” or whatever. The idiocy of these comments was the frequency. Here’s what happened: adventure games, in their abundance, weren’t very good any more. Apart from the good ones. The point of all this is to say how much I want to respond to the news, that following LucasArts’ releasing classic adventure games on Steam, Activision-Blizzard are putting some classic Sierra adventure games on the download service, by writing, “Adventure games may be dead, but their ghosts are coming back to haunt us.” But I cannot, because I’d be One Of Them. So I won’t.

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The most breakingest of breaking news, via the official Lucasarts twitter feed – which has been horribly teasing the poor, frustrated internet for the last few days about what, they promised, was a massively exciting announcement. A Day of the Tentacle remake? A new X-Wing/TIE Fighter game? Officially striking the Star Wars prequels from the record? The Loom 2: Loomier? Nah- they’ve only gone and lobbed a crapload of their classic back catalogue onto Steam. Rejiggered for XP and Vista compatibility too, no less.

What’s that strange noise? It’s thousands of 30-year-old men simultaneously having a Special Wee, that’s what.
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