L.A. Noire Investigates PC November 8th

PC gamers who love a good mystery will be happy to know that Rockstar is launching L.A. Noire: Complete Edition on November 8th. The complete edition will come with all the already released DLC cases. The cases that were mentioned: “Nicholson Electroplating” Arson case, “Reefer Madness” Vice case, “The Consul’s Car” Traffic case, “The Naked City” Vice case and “A Slip of the Tongue” Traffic case.

With most PC game releases, L.A. Noire: Complete Edition will feature improved resolution, graphic details, keyboard and controller remapping and for those who have it Nvidia 3D Vision support.

Of course max details comes with a cost, the recommended specs quite beefy:

• Operating System: Windows 7 / Windows Vista Service Pack 1 / Windows XP Service Pack 3 / OnLive for PC or Mac;
• Processor: Intel Dual Core 2.2GHz to Quad Core 3.2GHz / AMD Dual Core 2.4Ghz to Quad Core 3.2Ghz;
• RAM: 2GB to 8GB;
• Hard drive space: 16GB;
• Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GT 512MB to NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 1536MB / Radeon HD 3000 512MB to Radeon HD 6850 1024MB;
• Sound Card: 100% DirectX 9 Compatible;
• DVD Drive.

L.A. Noire: Complete Edition will be on out PC, Onlive and Steam platforms for $49.99.

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Sega Super Sale On Steam

Steam is having a weekend sell on all Sega games, marking them from 50-90% off with titles like Alpha Protocol for $2 or Total War: Shogun 2 for $25. Better yet you can buy their mega bundle and get 79 Sega titles for $80.

Steam

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Bunch of Heroes Out On Steam

Bunch of Heroes was released on Steam and I got to say, it looks pretty damn good. Great looking textures with a diverse range of colors to go along with it's cartoon aesthetic make this game pretty easy on the eyes for budget indie title. But even better is the number and variety of zombies to mow down with it's online multiplayer. What more does a man need?

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Moon Zombies Invading September 22nd

Call of Duty players on PlayStation 3 and PC will be glad to know, the zombies map pack will be available on September 22nd.

Four "remastered" maps from World at War will be released for Black Ops, an enhanced sountrack and of course the new Moon map.


Moon will feature the challenge of low gravity, as you and your bouncing buddies take on zombie hordes. It will have brand new weapons and gear to help you combat the forces of evil.

The rereleased maps are Nacht der Untoten, Verruckt, Shi No Numa and Der Riese.

Slaying zombies on the moon will set you back $15

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Wasteland Angel Does Demo

Wasteland Angel an arcade like wave shooter, players drive Angel's car, armed to the teeth with dual machine guns. Released over the Labor Day weekend, a demo was just released today, letting gamers try out the game, before they commit to the $9.99 price tag.

The demo includes 3 tutorial stages and stage 5 which features: 4 levels, 1 boss and 1 challenge bonus.

Anyone wanting to try the demo can get it here: Wasteland Angel Demo or on Steam

Meridian4 is saying an update for the full version has been released with some new features:

• Configurable keys
• Dual monitor support. The game will start on primary display instead of first display
• Game saves now available at completion of each level
• Fine tuned secondary objectives
• Crane of Destruction is now ready to destroy!

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Dead Island Blunders on Steam

Dead Island developed by Tech Land hasn't exactly been off to a great start on the PC. A developer version of the game was released to Steam for North American players.

Tech Land's facebook page released this statement on the matter:


"We deeply regret that an incorrect version of Dead Island was inadvertently made available to players on Steam launch in North America,"

"We are very sorry for any issues you may have experienced while playing the game - the correct, patched version will be made available to North American players ASAP."

Some of the 'features' the developer build had was a 'no clip' mode by press 'y', enabled players to fly around the map and through objects. Quest scripts would randomly break,  making the player to force restart.

A patch was released today, but it added further insult to injury, wide spread reports of (and my experience) that the entire save had to be restarted, due to a quest bug or 0% completion bug.

My own experiences with the dev build were streamed live last night, as I was showing off the 'no clip' mode, flying around the island. Checking out the sites, and areas you are not allowed to get into.

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Steam goes down a Notch?

In a recent blog post by developer Notch, the creator of the hugely successful Minecraft, he was asked at PAX about whether Minecraft would be available on the popular Steam platform.  Steam is well known for carrying a huge selection of indie games.  It’s a great platform that makes game shopping for the PC really convenient and easy.  They also feature great sales and have a "daily deal" that can discount a game as much as 75%.  Lately Steam has been at odds with EA and their online digital download service Origin.  It’s rumored Steam has refused to carry such titles as Battlefield 3 and other major EA releases due to the fact EA games tend to handle DLC in the game itself verses outside sources.

I am not sure how these rumors are effecting Notch's decision to hold off on releasing Minecraft on Steam but in his blog post he says "Being on Steam limits a lot of what we're allowed to do with the game, and how we're allowed to talk to our users. We (probably?) wouldn't be able to, say, sell capes or have a map market place on minecraft.net that works with steam customers in a way that keeps Valve happy".  In my personal opinion Steam has possibly been over stepping their boundaries, almost bullying companies into regulating how DLC is handled.  It seems to be using its market share to dominate the industry, almost forcing companies to offer DLC through there platform and in turn receiving a small percentage of each sale. 

Competition is good!

Every development company should be able to offer DLC how they want, and not be afraid of losing 5 million potential customers on Steam if they don't want to play by their rules.  If Notch is planning on making micro transactions for Minecraft available on Minecraft.net it's going to make it very difficult for the game to be released on Steam.  He does say in his blog they are talking with Valve about it.  Being optimistic Steam does offer games like Sims 3 which feature their own DLC shops not on Steam, but with the way things are going between Valve and EA, I wouldn't be surprised to see Sims 3 taken off Steam.

 "So there's no big argument, we just don't want to limit what we can do with Minecraft. Also Steam is awesome. Much more awesome then certain other digital distribution platforms that we would NOT want to release Minecraft on” Notch makes it clear, that he and Valve are not on bad terms.  He also says there is a certain inherent incompatibility between what the two companies want to do.  So in all likelihood we won’t be seeing Minecraft on Steam and I personally am happy about that.

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Serious Sam 3: BFE Is All Man, No Cover

PC Gaming is about to get Serious. Serious Sam 3 has been announced to be released on October 18th on PC.

Making fun of the normal, cookie cutter format First Person Shooters, Serious Sam 3, is going for over the top, action packed, in your face, old school shoot first ask later gameplay.

Going up for preorder today on Steam, and other digital download services. Croteam is launching a massive pre-order campaign.

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REVIEW - Double Feature! Cthulu Saves The World & Breath of Death VII: The Beginning

I bet you thought the days of 8-bit graphics and sound where gone and forgotten. Maybe some where happy to have moved on past those games and maybe some where sad. Well however you feel about those games Zeboyd Games has brought two 8-bit gems for the gaming world. These games are funny and original and a great throw back to those old days of grindy rpg's and turn based action.  These games are available on the Steam platform and Xbox Live Arcade in the indie section. 

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