Tripwire has released an update for the cooperative survival horror title Killing Floor. The game should update automatically when you start Steam eradicating bugs and nerfing some exploits. Players will also get a few perk tweaks to balance out those exploit fixes. You’ll find a full list of fixes and tweaks after the jump.

One more thing. There’s still time to get in on the “Killing Floor Grindhouse” custom map making competition. However you’d better get a move on. If you want to score that $10,000 cash prize you have less than a month to get your entry together for Wave 1. The full contest rules are available at the official “Killing Floor Grindhouse” map contest site.

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Freedom Force, the Silver and Gold age super hero game that broke the curse, didn’t feature a licensed universe with Superman or Captain America. Instead, it played like a tribute to the classic comic book story and while it never became a mainstream commercial success it remains an active and cherished game for its fans and their modification efforts.

This weekend, IGN uploaded an interview featuring 2k Boston’s( formerly Irrational Games) Ken Levine, who was executive producer on both games as well as writer, and some key members of the Irrational Games team regarding the past, present and future of the game series. Levine and his team discuss the rough ride the series experienced, their personal favorite characters in the Irrational universe and the passion it requires to get a self-published sequel out on the street.

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Just a quick.. ” Why have you not bought this yet? and if you were waiting.. don’t!” sort of new post regarding this week’s Steam bargain - Sega’s Empire: Total War.

I realize there are a lot of folks out there who don’t have the patience for or interest in a historical strategy title but let me leave you with one really cool detail: Empire has Ship to Ship fighting on the high seas with pixel level physics and modeling.. you can actually shoot through an opponent’s boat and hit another enemy on the far side!

Come on.. who doesn’t think that is one of the most awesome things to even get simulated in an RTS?

So don’t wait, run and pick up the Steam version of the game for 50% off this weekend. Its worth the full price but why not just save yourself some money now? Yes, for the record, this is an official endorsement.. this game rocks!

Fallout 3 is one of those games I can’t stay away from too long.. like Oblivion before it I seem to find myself wandering the DC Metro Wasteland listening to Three Dog’s howl whenever my game review plate thins out a bit. So far Bethesda is keeping up its usual excellent job of supporting their games in the post release cycle with expansions and new content. While the nightmare of Horse Armor may never be forgotten, the content for Fallout 3, including the Broken Steel add-on which removed the games original ending and raised the character level cap, is going a long way toward expanding the game in different ways while not really diluting the core experience of its scripted story.

The latest expansion, Point Lookout, concerns a rural Maryland area in the post apocalyptic world and invites the players to uncover a smaller scale story surrounding some swamp dwellers, cultists and even a steamboat. While the overview for the expansion sounds a bit “Call of Cthulhu” like, another licensed world Bethesda has played around with in the past, one of the most striking thing is the encroachment of more plants and trees into the Fallout 3 setting. Joel Burgess and Nathan Purkeypile, the add-on’s Lead Designer and Lead Artist respectively detailed the evolution of the Point Lookout concept in a recent blog post on the official Fallout website.

With Point Lookout, one of our primary goals was not to create just a quest, but a whole new region for players to explore. Straight away we knew that we wanted to focus on what we felt was one of the great strengths of Fallout 3 –a world too full of stories and surprises, ripe for exploration and adventure.  For us, the world is a main character, and choosing our location was intrinsically tied to the tone of the content.

We knew what kind of geographical features we wanted to showcase, and began scouting real-world locations. We stumbled across the perfect place: Point Lookout, MD. This rural location is situated on the southern tip of Maryland where the Potomac River meets the Chesapeake Bay. The coastal lowland offered the setting that we wanted, and the area has a rich history that we were able to pull inspiration from. The founders of Maryland landed here, a Civil War camp held over 50,000 confederate prisoners, and the Point Lookout Lighthouse is purported to be one of the most haunted places in Maryland.  All this just down the Potomac River, which runs through the Capital Wasteland.

I’ve included some of the recently released screenshots and frankly while Broken Steel might have been about expanding the ending of the game, Point Lookout seems to promise an interesting side trek with some content aside from generic feral ghouls and armored Enclave drones.

You can check out the shots after the jump.

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You probably remember Steve’s post where he talked about the L4D2 ‘boycott.’ Now everyone’s favorite irate TV host, Adam Sessler, is weighing in on the controversy.

I haven’t really weighed in on this one yet, but it’s about time.

WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE? Quite simply, you’re nothing more than a bunch of over-entitled babies.

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Got coding skills? Like the movie WarGames? Like the idea of your “binary baby” killing virtual billions? More importantly, do you like cash?

If you said “You bet.”, then heads up.

Introversion Software has teamed up with the organizers of CIG 2009 to establish a competition aimed to create “the world’s deadliest bot.” The contest, slated for September, is part of an ongoing yearly event that draws in programming talent from abroad in an attempt to create bots from videogames that are “realistic enough into fooling an expert panel of judges that they are actually human players.”

Not surprisingly, the game chosen as the playground for this year’s contest is none other than Introversion’s own nuclear holocaust simulator DEFCON (thumbs up here). And thanks to the concerted efforts of Computer Science geeks over at Imperial College, London, potential contestants now have a practical DEFCON API to prepare with.

Basically, the rules (here) are that programmers will pit their individual DEFCON A.I. against one another in a series (30 actually) of one-on-one matches among each of the possible starting territory configurations. The player with the highest cumulative score wins. Additionally, the grand prize winner’s human creator takes home $500, courtesy of IEEE. At this point, I’m still trying to figure out if you actually have to be physically present to participate.

Anyway, if you are interested in putting your coding skills to the test, you can start by reading here. An important thing to note is that the DEFCON API will also work with the DEFCON demo, which can be freely downloaded here. Again, deadlines and rules for the contest can be found via the IEEE’s CIG website. The press release found after the break contains all sorts of info, links, and contact information.

For those of you chortling “the only winning move is not to play,” I say what’s the worse that could happen? Well, I suppose Barry Corbin could break the bad news to you in person by knocking on your door then announcing his “conclusion that your new defense system sucks.”

Ok, I’ll stop…

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The specter of a world with no physical games available at retail is one that is raised often, especially by executives of traditional brick & mortar stores. In an article at Reuters, author John Gaudiosi raises the question yet again. He makes an effort to simply present the facts about the growing role digital distribution plays in how we purchase games today, and the facts are there. However, I believe that entire premise of the article is flawed.

Digital distribution really offers gamers only two highly positive benefits: First, it’s easy. You can purchase a game without ever leaving your house. Heck, you don’t even have to leave your chair. Second, it’s extraordinarily simple to keep games purchased over a platform like Steam updated. Since the Steam client must be running to launch the game, you simply download the update before you start the game. What could be easier?

The Reuters piece even quotes that great bastion of gaming knowledge, Wedbush Morgan Securities analyst Michael Pachter (seriously, who died and made this guy king? Am I the only one who thinks he talks out his ass most of the time?), who says, “Downloads will become 20 percent of the market within five years, and probably peak at around 50 percent of the overall market in 10 years.”

I’m sorry, but this is not only purest speculation, it’s not even good speculation. Why? Hit the jump, and we’ll examine it.

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In wake of recent announcement that Valve would be releasing Left 4 Dead 2 this November, a small part of its community has responded with reception that would otherwise seem warm only to a zombie’s touch. The Left 4 Dead 2 Boycott Steam Community Group is not only upset with the recent announcement of a L4D sequel, but they feel that, no thanks to Valve, they have literally been Left 4 Dead. The group is not only a representation of L4D fans willing to boycott the full-blown sequel come November, but it also serves as a movement to educate the masses and point out repercussions a timely sequel will have on the present day L4D community.

Glancing at their Steam Community page, the group’s leaders have even gone to the trouble of establishing a manifesto outlining major points in their global argument that having a L4D sequel right now is a bad idea. Major points in the manifesto that stick out are that the group are foremost believers in Valve’s dedication to improving its past and current products, that until L4D2 hits shelves judgment can not be made, and that L4D2 will essentially split the community. I’ve copied and pasted the entire manifesto at the tail of this article.

The Left 4 Dead 2 boycott movement is, as of today, 20,000+ and growing strong. They have sent their manifesto to Valve. They have established a moderated public forum from which anyone can voice their opinions (assuming you behave). While this particular editor (and fellow zombie annihilator) will not be joining their ranks, I do find their sincerity and professionalism quite refreshing. They are off to a good start and I wish them luck.

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I’ll likely get hung for this post but I’m going to vent a bit anyway. Today during the Microsoft Press Conference at E3 2009 there was a reveal trailer for the next Left4Dead installment. Normally I’d be ecstatic about such an announcement, and initially I was - when I watched the trailer along with the Crackdown 2 teaser - but once the high faded a bit I realized how not OK I am with this whole sequel concept.

Left4Dead is less than a year old. It shipped with a very slight amount of content, only got added value with the later Survivor patch and is only now getting mod support from the community and rather than expand it and give us a more reasonably sized game.. we’re being fed a sequel.

More Zombie killing is a goal I subscribe to religiously. I love Left4Dead, I played the heck out of it for months until the 4 basic scenarios wore dry and even the injection of new content with the recent patch didn’t work to vary or sate that apathy much. The original gang isn’t done, I want more adventures, more maps and scenarios and frankly more value from that initial purchase - just as Valve promised.

The trailer and accompanying press release also worry me because the features they tout for the upcoming continuation don’t seem earthshaking or innovative, or like additions that don’t belong in a patch for the original game. What I’m referring to is the addition of more melee-centric weapons and combat, and an upgraded AI Director. Then there is this statement:

“Featuring new Survivors, boss zombies, weapons, and items, Left 4 Dead 2 offers a much larger game than the original with more co-operative campaigns, more Versus campaigns, and maps for Survival mode available at launch.”

Who is responsible for L4D not having a great selection of content, modes or characters?

Well the same people who are now expecting us to shill out full price yet again to support their hype machine. I’m an ardent supporter of Valve over the years but this move really bugs me. We’re still waiting on Half-Life 2 Episode 3 to wrap that story up - 4 years later - and yet they can crank out another money grab in the form of an L4D sequel. Valve doesn’t patch or fix problems with the 360 version of the Orange Box, yet they can produce an entirely new L4D product? Something smells here and while the “freeness” of the Survivor patch is a great move in an industry increasingly based on selling you parts of their completed game after release as a continued revenue stream, I am afraid with the current information in hand I may have to change my position on Valve and its formerly consumer friendly posture.

The new title is scheduled to ship on November 17th for Xbox 360 and PC, just in time for the Christmas rush, and features an apparent Southern US setting and characters including “Inbred Tank” and a multi-ethnic survivor team. I’m sorry but I think I’m going to take a pass here.. until I see something that shows a sequel was needed to the game, and this is not just more than a simple tech upgrade with new maps and re-skinned characters. You can view the full details of the press release after the jump.
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The Resident Evil 5 original soundtrack is in stores today ready to give gamers music to shoot zombies by. The OST features the chilling work of composers Kota Suzuki, Hideki Okugawa, Akihiko Narita and Seiko Kobuchi who bring ‘panic horror’ in the steaming jungles of Africa to life.

Of course the OST has already been pirated of is up on the Internet for download, but if you enjoy the series and the music that makes RE5 that much scarier, please purchase it legitimately. You can get a copy in retail stores, from iTunes, or as a complete digital release or individual tracks from the  Sumthing Else Music Works Distribution site. It’s $9.99 for a 3 CD set with almost 3 hours of music.
More details follow the break.
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