If you're one of the 5 remaining PC gamers that has never played Team Fortress 2, you can do so for free this weekend on Steam. It's also on sale for just $10, half the normal price. This, along with the fact that they are doing the long awaited class updates for demoman and soldier are likely to have a lot of people playing once more. Go check it out.

I've played games from the Might and Magic universe for many years, and have loved some titles, and hated others. The franchise spans from turn based strategy to FPS and beyond, but it wasn't until this most recent game from a developer I'd never heard of that I really wanted to play a Might and Magic game every free moment that I had in the day.

It might seem strange for me to be posting about a game for a system I don't even own, but I hope that goes a long way to describe how great of a game I really think this is, and how much of an impact it had on me. After playing it at a friend's house, I started doing so pretty much every time they had their DS with them and were not using it. So what makes it so special exactly? Well it's hard to say without looking at everything overall.

As is no surprise for many by now, the PC version of CoD: MW2 has turned out to be a fairly obvious port of the 360 version. IWNet servers are the only servers that people can play on, as dedicated server support was left out. This has led to cheaters and griefers abounds on servers and users with no option other than to simply leave the game, since there are no server admins or bans. In a developer chat, Infinity Ward employees were quoted as stating that the PC version had new features such as "mouse support" and that 100ms pings during their in house testing with people in the same room with one another were "great". Now, I think I can safely say that mouse support isn't new to either PC gaming, or even their own two game franchise and also that 100ms of latency between two people in the same room is not great.

Also, have a look at the popup and you can see that despite not being a game for windows live, MW2 for the PC still contains the 360 code and error screens. I guess it would have been too much work to remove them while they were making the PC port from the console version. All this for the wonderful price of $60 dollars when just about every other PC game ever made has been $50 or less? Do yourself a favor and pass on this one for the computer.

As if the whole of the country has been celebrating 'backwards day' for weeks, the Japanese console charts are almost the opposite of what they had been for so long. While the DS is still in second, it was the undisputed sales leader for an extremely long period, as well as the Wii being the top console. Now we have the PSP outselling the DS, and the PS3 almost doing the same. I am sure that the recent price changes have had a lot to do with the PS3 sales, but as far as the rest is up to anyone to venture a guess.

I find it of interesting note that the 360 only sold slightly more than twice as many units as the PS2 in the most recent week.

01 PlayStation Portable: 45,197
02 Nintendo DS: 38,785
03 PlayStation 3: 38,498
04 Wii: 26,764
05 Xbox 360: 4,124
06 PlayStation 2: 2,031

Greetings once more from the Muse you adore. I know that it's been a while since I've spouted any of my particular brand of madness. As I'm sure millions of people have been missing my entries (perhaps billions!), I thought it'd be a great idea to tell what has happened to me.

It all started many moons ago when I found myself new employment. At the time of this writing in fact, I am enjoying my first free day in a couple weeks. As I'm sure everyone wants to know what kind of secret profession I've taken up, I will reveal it. Come on in to read more.

In case anyone was wondering; no, I haven't dropped off the face of the Earth just yet. I have however, started a new job recently and so I have been very busy adapting to the new work and lifestyle. What kind of amazingly prestigious new job do I have? I take care of pets for people. Look for a new editorial on that, writing news about games, and more coming later this week.

This weekend is an Unreal Tournament 3 free weekend on steam. If you are interested in buying the game, this is a great way to get a feel for it. From now until Sunday, the full game is free to download and play.

Maybe you even just feel the need to let off a little stress from the work week by shooting the heck out of random people (and if so, it's better for everyone to do that in a game).

That's right, a free DLC is already on the way for the latest Batman game, and it's slated to be released September 17. There isn't much information so far as to what exactly will be in it, but it's awesome to hear that they are planning on supporting the game so soon. I'd say that for the most part, anything they'd add would be a big plus, especially when it's free.

The new DLC for FEAR 2 has been released, and features additional singleplayer story and multiplayer game modes. The story follows the actions of a combine soldier through the madness that is left in Alma's wake. The DLC is currently on sale on Steam for $9.99, and for those that don't already have FEAR 2, it is on sale for 25% off until September 10th.

You can also check out the launch trailer, right here.

Now I think just about everyone agrees that Super Mario Bros. 3 is a great game. It was even ported to Super NES as part of the Super Mario All-stars. Well, since then, people have gotten a little bit more creative in their methods of playing through the game. This video displays just about every single kind of bug or trick you that I have ever seen used for SMB. It's a long video, as they play through the whole game with no warp whistles, but you only have to watch for a couple minutes to see some really crazy things.

Enjoy the show.

After hints and teases for months, the Mass Effect DLC has finally gone up on the XBL marketplace for 400 MS.

Edit: After combing the forums a bit, I found an official post as follows from the community manager regarding the PC release.

PC players: the download will be available soon this morning. I believe 10 am PST, but don't quote me on that lol.

EA store (north america)

Of note is the fact that it is $5 USD for the PC as well.

I don't think I can accurately explain how excited I am about this game, and this new Spike special feature goes into the making of the game. I've always been a fan of Batman, and this game promises to be one of the very best Batman games ever made.

This special shows the making of the game, the real life places that inspired Arkham, and interviews with some of the voice actors. (Most notably Mark Hamill and Kevin Conroy.)

[gametrailers=http://www.gametrailers.com/player/54200.html]

Amidst the flurry of news and announcements at Blizzcon this year, there are also a few things that have made their way to us through other means. As seen in this post, the WoW community manager has confirmed that Blizzard's new MMO that is in the works is indeed not going to be based on any of their existing IPs, and that it is still very early in development.

At the convention itself, they have also gone into a bit of detail as to what features Battlenet will have in the future. Battlenet 2.0 as they are calling it will launch with Starcraft II and support many more features than the standing system. The friends list will, for instance, show what games your friends are in and let you join in with them. It seems they are taking a cue from Xbox Live/PSN/Steam in this department, making it much easier for people to get together and stay in touch, as well as just quickly play games together.

After much speculation, it's finally official. Sony has announced that starting tomorrow, the price of the PS3 will drop to 299 USD/299 EUR/249 GBP. Also, they are releasing a new slim model of the console that will retail for the same price coming September 1st, with a 120GB hard drive. The slim model also is about 30% smaller, lighter, and uses less power than the older version.

Many people have certainly been waiting to get a PS3 until after a significant price drop. Starting August 19th, the new price is set to go into effect at all retailers, so the time to strike is coming. It's doubtful that there will be another price drop soon for the next gen platform, so if you're in the market, the time is just about right.

Atari and Cryptic studios announced today that Champions Online has gone gold. This is particularly interesting since the open beta for the very same game begins today as well. While I don't think that anyone was really under the impression that open beta tests right before release were really for anything other than promoting the products, it seems like a very "interesting" time to announce it's gold status.

Of course it's always possible to have big patches on the first day it's open for the retail release, which is currently slated for September 1st.