Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Map Pack 1

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is finally getting it's first map pack, but some fans are pretty displeased that Infinity Ward have decided to up the price from $10 to $15 US. A 5 dollar jump is quite large considering this isn't a whole game or even an expansion but only some added multiplayer maps. Tell me what you think of the price hike.

Steam: War and Demos and Betas Oh My!

I've been spending a lot of time lately checking out new games on Valve's Steam download service. There are pros and there are cons with Steam but that isn't what I'm going to get into today. A few games in particular seem to be in the spotlight. Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is way up on a lot of gamers' lists and I've gotta say that after spending quite a few days with the game, despite a few buggy downfalls, is a great game with tons of play time and fun to be had. The single player campaign is deep and engaging, and the multi-player is top notch fun! Call of Duty fans will find many differences between the games and I think there isn't much to compare. They are 2 completely separate games and each shine in their own ways. The vehicle and helicopter combat in BFBC2 is just fantastic. Something you have to try for yourself. Getting into the helicopter for the first time in Multi-player i found myself very unsure of how to control this monster of a copter. All of a sudden 2 other players hop in the thing and start controlling the mini guns on the sides. So the pressure is on not only my own life but the lives of two others! Oh I better not fuck this one up. I shoot the copter up into the air full speed about 50 feet then move forward another 50 when it all went for a shit. I thought I had it.... I didn't have it at all, we came hurtling towards the earth at 3 times the speed i ascended and all I could see were trees. All three of us jumped out before the chopper exploded into smithereens. Too bad i got shot in the head by a sniper soon after landing down on a rooftop deep in enemy territory. Try it out for yourselves folks!

I decided to check out the Just Cause 2 Demo just yesterday and it far exceeded my expectations. I have yet to play the original Just Cause so I wasn't sure exactly what to expect but action. The demo sets you out in a piece of the real game world, which is massive by the way, and pretty much lets you choose to do whatever you want. Lots of great carnage. Blowing up gas stations while para shooting down out of a jeep you drove off a 200 foot cliff while being chased by 20 armed militia is quite satisfying if I do say so myself... It's definitely worth a gander just to see for yourself.

I also played the Fuel demo...

The R.U.S.E. beta also has me a little lacking for words. I'm not sure if its just because I'm not a huge strategy fan but, this game just isn't really for me I guess.

I'm Back, Sort of

I will be continuing to write articles on the site and try to keep up with big PC Gaming news stories.

Europe To Attack The Pirate Bay

In a few weeks, The Medina Report will be voted on by European parliament. The Medina Report entails many new anti-piracy regulations and measures. The Pirate Bay, a popular online BitTorrent tracker, is one of the main targets of these new rules. It is calling for more responsibilty to the internet service providers to filter material that is infringing on any copyright laws.

I will say for any Europeans who may read this that I strongly urge you to write to your members of parliament and tell him how you believe that this is the wrong path to take. This is a step towards ISP's knowing all your information that is on your computer, they want to filter the internet!

Remedy Entertainment Hard At Work On Alan Wake

The development team at Remedy Entertainment is hard at work, preparing their upcoming game Alan Wake. Remedy Entertainment is most famous as the dev. team behind the Max Payne Series, which has now been made into a film starring Markie Mark Wahlberg as Max. Alan Wake is a completely new game that's being billed as a "psychological action thriller".The character of A. Wake is said to be modeled after the Finnish actor Ilkka Villi. It should be released within 2009.

EA Cooking Up A Plethora of Need For Speed Titles

Many gamers agreed that the last of the Need For Speed games was shameful, but EA seem to think it is still a stong franchise and are not giving up. Among a few new Need For Speed titles are two PC games.

One will be a free to play massively multiplayer online game called Need For Speed World Online. Yes, you read it right, free to play. Can't complain with a free game, especially one from a respectable firm, lets just hope they don't screw it up.

The second will be a new game following in the series called Need For Speed: Shift. This will be a first person racing simulation.

EA is basically splitting the brand into a few different genres, which may work out and seems like a decent idea if played out correctly.

Popcap Games Revenues Way Up

Popcap Games, developers of such well known casual games as Bejeweled, Zuma and Peggle, have revealed that their 2008 sales were up 85% compared to 2007. This could be because of the number of new releases. 2008 had 15 new games for Popcap as opposed to 10 in 2007.

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare Gets Map Pack 3

Activision and Infinity Ward have released the third map pack for the PC version of their Modern Warfare Call of Duty game. The list of maps will follow:

MP Pool day Map
MP Pass Map
MP Shipment 2 v1.0 Map
MP Iranian embassy 2 Map
MP Lumberyard 2 final MapMP Spetsnaz base final v1.1 Map
MP Aosta valley v1 Map
MP Coldfront Map
MP Destroyed village Map
Forest beta Map
Freedom bridge Map
MTL Havoc Map
MP ZE Cargo night Map
MP Monastery b1 Map
BP Football Map
BB SMG v1 Map
MP Coldfront Map
MP Destroyed village Map
Forest beta Map
MP MOH Southern France b1 Map
Toybox4 b2 Map
MP Pripyat Exclusion zone v2 Map
MP RVS Streets Map

Stranglehold Version 1.1 Patch Released

Fixes:

* Many resolution bug fixes.

*The movement keys are remapped to the arrow keys, and you can now lean out from cover.

*Fixed default keyboard layout to allow for the movement keys to be remapped to the arrow keys, you can now lean out from cover.

*The animations of the menu items on the change resolution screen now correctly reset after changing resolutions.

Left 4 Dead Patch Released

Valve have released a new patch for their new online shooter Left 4 Dead. A few issues have been addressed. They have fixed an exploit dealing with the melee combat system where switching weapons would allow players to bypass the delay for a swing. In Versus mode, burning tanks will have their hp affect the damage taken. They also fixed an exploit with something to do with the "joinclass" command.

PC users can get the game and the patch through Valve's own digital distribution service, Steam.