In celebration of a new batch of DLC for the game, Killing Floor is free to play for all Steam users for this weekend. If you decide to buy the game, it’s also 25% off. In case you don’t know what the game is about, I suggest you mentally combine Left 4 Dead, Horde mode from Gears of War, and the SAS voice acting from Call of Duty 4.
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We here at Ripten enjoy games quite a bit. (Well, some of us. The jury’s still out on that shifty Naylor character.) In fact, one of our highest-rated games of 2007 was Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. All things considered, you can see why we’re really excited for Infinity Ward & Activision’s latest foray into the Call of Duty series, Modern Warfare 2, and this trailer does nothing to satiate our hunger.

The trailer, titled Infamy, is the newest trailer for Modern Warfare 2, and it’s amazing. No spoilers, but there’s a rather large reveal at the end of the trailer, and I have no doubt that it’s making a lot of people excited. Maybe this is just me, but does this trailer make anyone else wish that there was a Call of Duty movie? Yes?

Good.

It’s not often you get a demo that’s packed with content, but EA have announced that the PC demo for their attempt at a serious racing game has been released and can be downloaded here. The demo includes a lot (for a demo) of cars, and even an unlockable Zonda:

• BMW M3 (E46)
• 2008 Dodge Viper SRT10
• 2006 Lotus Elise 111R
• 2008 Nissan GT-R
• 2006 Pagani Zonda F (unlockable)

A PS3 and Xbox 360 demo is also coming early October, or of course you could just go out and buy the game, if you’re made of money.

The remake of LucasArts’ classic adventure game The Secret of Monkey Island has been bumped down to just £3.49/$5 on Steam today, in honour of International Talk Like a Pirate Day, which is coming up on the Nineteenth. That’s what I like to call a good deal which you should probably take advantage of.

I bought the game on release (hindsight is 20/20), and I can confirm that this is a quality remake, and the art, while perhaps not perfect for everyone, is very high quality and the voice acting is absolutely fine. You can switch at any time to the classic style, too. I heartily recommend this, ye land lubbers and all that.

What you see above is the new special infected, The Spitter. You are forgiven for looking away, as it’s one of the strangest things I’ve seen come out of Valve’s art studio. the gallery below shows some new features of the game off, including some new weapons, the new types of zombie, and generally just the bleak looking swamp level. I can;t wait to get my hands on this game, if only just to shoot the monstrosity that is The Spitter right in the face with a shotgun.
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Shacknews reports that Tripwire’s co-op survival horror game Killing Floor will be receiving a free update ’soon’, followed by some paid content after that. The free content includes a new level (foundry) and some new weapons, the Katana and the AK-47.

the paid content will include “four new playable characters including a Horzine foundry worker and a soldier in prototype Horzine body armor.” I don’t own Killing Floor, but as soon as it goes on sale, I’ll definitely give it a go. It looks like a more frantic and over the top version of Left 4 Dead’s Survival mode, which can only be good in my book.

In this preview of Left 4 Dead 2, some brand new details about the game have been revealed, including some new infected types and more details about the Swamp level. First of all, the level-specific infected, known as ‘common-uncommons’, for the swamp have been revealed. We already knew about the ones with fire-proof suits on, but the swamp level has ‘mud men’, who run quickly on all fours through the swamp, making them difficult to spot.

A new special infected is the ‘Spitter’, who provides a more long-range option for the infected. He spits out an attack (unspecified at this point, probably gob) that damages those who stand in it. The attck isn#t fantastically powerful but can hinder a team who stay in the area of effect too long. Finally, the preview mentions adrenaline and ammo packs (which replace pills and first aid kits). The adrenaline packs allow you to run past zombies without them slowing you down, as well as removing restrictions on your melee attack. Sounds good to me, although removing health packs seems a little odd. I trust Valve, though. They know what they’re doing.

It’s been almost 3 years since the last Star Fox game was released for the DS, and while it was good, Nintendo’s left the series’ fans clamoring for more. Since we haven’t heard anything about a new Star Fox game, we’re led to assume that Nintendo’s not focusing on it for now, but I don’t plan to lose any sleep over that since the team behind a new fan-created Star Fox game, Shadows of Lylat, seem to be doing a better job of continuing the series than Nintendo undoubtedly would’ve done.

Based on the FreeSpace Open game engine, Shadows of Lylat is a high-definition game with a story that takes place between Star Fox 64 and Star Fox Adventures, but it’s not going to be a straight arcade shooter like Star Fox. The creators describe it as more of a simulation shooter, but the trailers give a much better sense of what kind of game it’s going to be. There’s no guaranteed release date for the game yet, but when it’s out, you’ll be able to get it for Windows, OS X, and Linux.

Hit the jump for the second Shadows of Lylat trailer, yo. [Shadows of Lylat]
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The PC version of Capcom’s successful zombie shooter Resident Evil 5 will be coming to American audiences on September 14, and to European ones a few days later on the 18th, Capcom announced today. The game is even more bursting at the seams than the console versions: it includes a new and improved Mercenaries mode with three times more enemies, new costumes, higher resolutions, and support for NVidia’s 3D cards.

This of course means that, provided you have some silly glasses and are rich enough to have a card, you can play Resident Evil 5 as if you were at a tiny IMAX screen! You can download a benchmark tool here to see what it’s like, and if it will run on your system.

In a short four weeks after its release, Battlefield Heroes has managed to get one million players, which isn’t surprising, considering the positive impressions of the game during the beta. EA & DICE’s stylistic Battlefield sequel is also free, which I can only assume helped to entice said one million players.

If you still haven’t signed up for the game, you should probably go do so now- maybe you can be a part of the second million. We got a chance to play the game during the beta, and even with its numerous delays, it was a lot of fun. The game’s multi-player only, so don’t count on a gripping story line or emotionally connected characters- but if you’re all about blowing stuff up and shooting foreigners, this is so the game for you.

In an interview with Kombo, PopCap Games’ PR director Garth Chouteau has noted that the highly acclaimed Plants vs. Zombies will follow its cousin Peggle onto other platforms: XBLA, PSN- even the DS and iPhone. Chouteau is quoted by Kombo on the matter:

…Peggle for XBLA is a good example of a game that we took that was popular on the PC and we spent probably twice as long as anyone else would have figuring how to make that game really good for Xbox and Xbox Live Arcade, and I think you will see that with Plants Vs. Zombies–I don’t know the exact order in which that game will make its way onto other platforms, but it’s certainly been successful enough, quickly enough, that we’re looking at other platforms and deciding where we’ll take that game next…

Since PvZ was such a success, both commercially and critically, it can only be good news that it can come to a bigger audience. I only hope that they make a DS version as good as Peggle DS.

Bethesda have today released the second of the Elder Scrolls series as a free download to all. The game, as with all of the Elder Scrolls series, is set in a huge fantasy land, with the two provinces in Daggerfall being Hammerfell and High Rock, the homes of the Redguards and Bretons. Old games becoming free is always good news; it reminds me of Project Gutenberg- a free collection of books no longer covered by copyright laws.

There is, of course, bad news too. The game only runs under DOS, so there’s a complicated method of getting the game running on more modern operating systems. Luckily, Shacknews have put together a nice guide which can be found here to help you along. Good luck!

RPS reports that the PC demo of the huge open-world racer Fuel is out now for anyone to try- you can download it from here if you’re interested. I’m downloading it as I write this, as I’m eager to see what the game is like. I’ve been playing Burnout Paradise on my PC a lot recently, and I’m hungry for a version on rough terrain; Fuel seems pretty perfect.

Still, there’s no chance that it’ll be better than Burnout, and the generally average review scores it has been getting don’t bode well. Of course, the fact that there’s a free demo means everyone can just see for themselves whether they’re going to get the game or not.

No, silly. That’s not happening in this lifetime.

I joke all the time about Crysis running on a cell phone, but the guys at TechCrunch have managed to do so- or at least make it look like its so. Rather than running Crysis right through the phone, TechCrunch ran the game on a PC then streamed it to OTOY, a mobile streaming server, which then redirected it to the Omnia. Pretty cool, I think.

While the guy demoing the software in the video is controlling the game with an Xbox 360 controller, the controller’s actually connceted to the PC. Don’t get any ideas about Crysis coming to consoles, now.

But it’s gonna happen eventually.

Sure, I posted about Empire: Total War yesterday. This is important enough to warrant another post, though: the game is now 50% off (as is the Special Forces Edition) on Steam. If you like strategy games and don’t own this game, your “it’s too expensive” excuse is now void- this weekend.

Remember, those of us who already own the game are still being treated this weekend: the huge patch includes a load of free units and, perhaps best of all, frame rate optimisations. If there was one thing wrong with Empire, it was the nasty frame rate on grassy maps. Nothing game-breaking, but noticeable- at least on my machine.

True to their word, Valve are going to release a Left 4 Dead update next week, focused mainly on the community maps that have been created, and pushing for more to be made in the coming months. The update includes a much better matchmaking system, support for community maps, the full, non-beta SDK release, and obviously support for new maps, models, and textures (via an “add-ons” section).

This is an important update for PC fans of Left 4 Dead, since we’ll be getting a whole load more maps made by the community. Going on the support for TF2, there’ll be a lot of great maps, both well designed and ridiculously silly. I urge everyone with the skills to make a L4D map to do it!

A huge Empire: Total War update is heading to players on Monday, Shacknews reports. Update 1.3 will include processor optimisations for a better frame rate, 14 brand new units, balance changes, and a host of bugfixes. In short, this is a huge update which has free stuff included, and you should be very happy if you’re a Total War fan. Hit the jump for the patch notes.
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Yes, it’s propaganda to get you to join the armed forces. However, a free game is a free game, and the perfect price tag makes it worth mentioning at least. America’s Army 3 is out now on Steam, free to all. The game features Steam achievements and Steam Cloud support, meaning your keyboard setup will remain across all of your computers. I’ve not had a chance to play it yet, but like I said, a free game is a free game, so I’ll likely at least try it out. If anyone has played it, let us know how you feel in the comments.

Even though Final Fantasy XIII is still not out yet, yesterday at Sony’s press conference Square Enix announced that Final Fantasy XIV was in the works for the PlayStation 3 and the PC. FFXIV will sort of be a sequel to FFXI in a sense that it’s another MMO and not a standard role-playing game. FFXI has been very popular over the last few years since first being released back in ‘04, so I can only imagine how well FFXIV will be received. Check out the trailer to see for yourself.

EA and Crytek announced today that Crysis 2 will be coming to Xbox 360, PS3, and of course the PC. No release date or additional info was announced, but since Crysis was actually a great game hidden under hype about graphical prowess, I’m looking forward to this. Console fans should rejoice too, since the game is damn sure to be fantastic looking. Get your HDMI TV and cable ready for this one, folks. You’ll thank me when Crysis 2 comes out.