DOTA 2:

Valve Software will be revealing their new game Defense of the Ancients 2 (DotA 2) at Gamescom which takes place in Cologne, Germany on the 17th-21st Aug 2011. At the same time as the public unveiling of the game Valve will also be running an International DotA 2 competition to win $1 million. Wow! Unfortunately, the 16 DotA 2 teams that will be taking part have already been chosen. No late entries allowed. Sorry.

The original DotA game started off its life as a custom scenario for the real-time strategy game Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos. Then it became ridiculously popular so Valve Software hired the team that created it and set them to work creating DotA 2. It should be interesting to see what they’ve come up with as there’s been no screenshots or videos of the game available at all. Valve have been so super secret over it.

Rugby World Cup 2011:

The Rugby World Cup 2011 demo is now available to download from Xbox LIVE. It’s a paltry 540mb in size. PlayStation 3 owners will be able to grab the demo from tomorrow. The demo features the first half of a match between England and South Africa in Auckland. Eagle-eyed players will notice that England’s new black change strip isn’t available in the demo as it was only unveiled to the public yesterday by the RFU. However, it will be included in the full game which is released on the 26th Aug 2011.

Gears of War 3:

Unsurprisingly for a Gears of War 3 trailer this one features lots of guns, chainsaw deaths, explosions, violence, gore, swearing and lots of bad guys. This trailer shows off the new and improved horde mode which has the tag line – Fortify, fight and survive. When you watch the video you’ll understand why getting some decent fortifications in place first might be a good idea for your health!

You’ve got until tomorrow (21st July 2011) to pick up Codemasters excellent circuit and street racing game GRID on the PC for the measly price of £2.99 (Steam link). All profits from sales will be donated to industry-supported charities and good causes, so get buying.

In other GRID news, Codemasters has discontinued the online multiplayer for the PlayStation 3 and PC versions of the game. The Xbox 360 version is unaffected, meaning you can still get your multiplayer kicks online. However, all is not lost for PC owners as the free multiplayer gaming service – GameRanger – now supports Race Driver: GRID. Unfortunately, there really is no silver lining for PlayStation 3 owners. That’s it. No more online multiplayer for you.

There’s going to be a lot more Manchester City Football club stuff in FIFA 12 now that the club has signed up with EA. Fans will be able to experience:

• MCFC match simulations prior to the real matches taking place
• Exclusive visuals of the players in action
• A virtual kit launch
• Authentic representations of the players in game after they all got head scanned

There’s a video of the team in action in FIFA 12 and features the first look at their new kit. I wonder what the fans of rival teams are going to make of this announcement?

It’s been announced that The Binding of Isaac will be coming to Steam next month. This is the latest game from the developers of the hit indie game Super Meat Boy. The artist and game designer, Edmund Mcmillen posted some details about the game on his blog last week. It’s going to be a Zelda(ish) dungeon exploring game crossed with Smash TV/Robotron. I think I’m in love with this game already! According to Edmund, Florian the programmer has just made it:

so neutral flys are attracted to piles of shit and if they eat too much of the shit they get fat and become bloated flys that poop blood at you…

How can you not want to play it after hearing about this? ;-) [Umm... okay... *runs away* - Ed]

There’s a super sexy looking trailer for the upcoming Jonah Lomu Rugby Challenge game. Featuring the real life likeness of the All Blacks and Wallabies players. This will be the second rugby game released this year following the Official Rugby World Cup 2011 game, which I got to play recently, so look out for my hands-on preview this weekend. Take it away Mr Lomu….

And finally… remember the limited edition Gears of War Marcus Fenix statue that Debbie got back in 2007? We know a collector that’s trying to track down another one. Do you have one? Do you know someone that has one? Drop us a comment below.

Starting today, like right now, you can download and play the PC version of Black Ops for free until 9pm Sunday 5th June 2011. That’s 3 full days of gaming and achievement gathering. Seems that Activision think weekends start on a Thursday. Well, I’m not arguing.

Head over to Steam now for some free gaming :-)

Call Of Duty: Black Ops is out now on PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

Valve also announced the inclusion of cloud-based storage for game saves on the PS3 version of the game. This will please a lot of PS3 owners, especially those who have suffered the loss of their ‘locked’ saves when trying to move data to a new console.

Finally, they revealed that Steam and PSN accounts will be linked, with purchasers of the PS3 version of Portal 2 also receiving a free Steam copy of the game. Sounds nice, although I’m not sure that my ageing and sadly underpowered PC will be quite so keen on the idea.

Whilst PC gamers might take the joys of Steam for granted, it does seem like a breath of fresh air when compared to the generally more restricted Playstation Network. It will certainly be interesting to see whether any other innovations appear when Steam makes its way on to the PS3. Personally speaking, I would just be happy if I finally got to play some Left4Dead.

From the press release:

“We made a promise to gamers at E3 that Portal 2 for the PlayStation 3 would be the best console version of the product,” said Gabe Newell, co-founder and president of Valve. “Working together with Sony we have identified a set of features we believe are very compelling to gamers. We hope to expand upon the foundation being laid in Portal 2 with more Steam features and functionality in DLC and future content releases.”

“We designed the Portal 2 PS3 experience to be very straightforward for gamers,” said Josh Weier, project lead on Portal 2 at Valve. “PS3 gamers will be able to simply drop the Blu-Ray disc in the PS3, link to their Steam account from inside the game, and all their Steam friends (on PC and Mac) will be visible and accessible for chat and game invites.”

Portal 2 is due for release on the PlayStation 3, PC, Mac and Xbox 360 this April.

For more information, please visit www.thinkingwithportals.com

That’s not to shabby for a $1,200 budget! Wow, very impressive. Kinda makes me want to play Half-Life 2 again.

The full film will be released soon on the Beyond Black Mesa website.

Aren’t you all excited about this game after seeing this trailer?

In the other Portal 2 trailer you get to see some of the ingenious new gameplay elements that Valve have added to the sequel. From what I’ve seen so far, Portal 2 looks far more challenging than Portal, thus addressing practically the only criticism I could find with the original game. Yay.

Portal 2 is scheduled for release on the 9th Feb 2010. I do hope Valve stick to this date. We want Portal 2!

Oh, and this game is free. Yep, totally free.

Alien Swarm features 4 player co-op, 40 different weapons and equipment, tile-based map editing tool and the complete game code and mod tools! Since the people who made this game were hired by Valve from the mod community (they made the Alien Swarm mod on Unreal Tournament 2004), it is nice to see that you will be able to build your own Alien Swarm mods. Hey, you never know, Valve might notice and hire you!

Screenshots:

Update 19th July 2010: Alien Swarm is available now. It’s just under 2gb in size.

As soon as this was discovered, well, here’s a video of what happened:

Apparently Valve have now patched TF2 to kill this exploit. I suppose 119 Team Fortress 2 updates and counting and only 1 screw up ain’t bad!

Filmed guerilla style with no money, no time, no crew, no script, the first two episodes were made from beginning to end on a budget of $500

Secondly, its borked their website www.thepurchasebrothers.com due to the interest in this mini series.

I’m looking forward to the rest of the series after watching this. I do hope the acting improves and there’s a bit more action, that doesn’t just involve running around. But, it’s very impressive stuff all the same.

I hope they will get a lot more money to show what they can really do with some original material or a remake/comic book adaptation as is currently the de facto standard in today’s Hollywood.