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Next Dragon Age DLC Pack Coming “This Holiday Season”

Nathan Grayson — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 01:15:27 -0600

In our experience, DLC usually serves as the thin mint after a fulfilling game experience. Problem: At our current rate of progress, we’re on track to finish Dragon Age by next holiday season. But, for those of you who haven’t been diagnosed with chronic slowpoke syndrome, BioWare’s putting a fresh helping of content on your already stacked holiday gaming plate.

The new mini-arc “summons players to a new quest in which they will return to the fateful battleground in Ostagar where the Grey Wardens were nearly wiped out. Players will discover King Cailan’s top-secret political agenda and go behind enemy lines to revisit a place that many feared had been lost to history.”

It’s going for 400 BioWare Points, or $5.00. For now, BioWare’s keeping mum on release specifics, only saying to expect the DLC “this holiday season.”

Now if you’ll excuse us, we’re actually off to go fight the Blight at Ostagar right now. Oh man, that King Cailan is so dreamy. We sure hope nothing bad happens to him!

Borderlands DLC Coming to Consoles November 24, PC “Later”

Nathan Grayson — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 22:28:06 -0600

Borderlands' first DLC expansion, “The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned,” is a couple weeks away from pulling your level 50 Borderlands veterans out of retirement… on consoles. For now, unfortunately, mum’s the word on the first-person shoot ‘n’ loot’s PC DLC.

“We will have information on the PC version at a later time,” a 2K Games spokesperson told Blue's News.

Shame, that. Our guess? The DLC’s hit a snag in the certification process. After all, that’s what caused the main game to trail the console versions’ dates by a week. We’ve gone ahead and asked Gearbox for clarification, though, so hopefully we’ll hear more soon.

Rumor: Mass Effect 2 to Receive Massive Amounts of DLC

Nathan Grayson — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 23:43:02 -0600

The original Mass Effect rocked our socks. Its DLC, though? Not so much. Fortunately, if a Microsoft Expert Zone retailer quiz is to be believed, BioWare’s making up for Mass Effect’s DLC deficiency in a big way with Mass Effect 2.

According to the quiz, planned content includes “episodic combat via DLC, weapon and armor packs, new downloadable characters for the campaign experience, new downloadable worlds, as well as full campaign expansions for download.”

Here’s hoping that BioWare doesn’t also take the EA Renegade route and peddle things like cheat codes and cosmetic upgrades for exorbitant prices.”Exorbitant,” in this case, meaning “anything other than free.”

Left 4 Dead Crash Course DLC Full of Zombies and Free of Charge

Nathan Grayson — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 02:14:16 -0500

Just because a Valve's got a new baby sloshing around in its tremendous, engorged Boomer womb (insert baby Boomer joke here) doesn't mean the developer's going to start neglecting its first undead child. The proof? A brand new, totally free DLC campaign is on the way for stalwart L4D1 supporters.

Titled “Crash Course,” the new campaign fits snugly between No Mercy and Death Toll, chronologically speaking. Along with new Campaign and Survival maps, new character dialogue, a recharge timer for Infected teammates, and rebalanced item spawns also put the C in this DLC.

The new scenarios will, of course, work fine and dandy with Campaign mode, but apparently, Crash Course’s true purpose is to be a “30 minute” showcase for Versus mode. You know, more like a typical multiplayer shooter.

It’s out in September. And it’s free! Unless you’ve been so horrendously wronged by the existence of Left 4 Dead 2 that even Valve’s continued support of L4D1 (the very thing you feared for when L4D2 was announced) isn’t enough to stop your steaming, you’ll play it. You’ll play it and you’ll love it because, well, why not?

Five Things You Need to Know about Fallout 3: The Pitt

Nathan Grayson — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 00:38:52 -0500

If Fallout 3’s Operation Anchorage DLC was its electro-sword-swinging, happily ending “A New Hope,” The Pitt is its “Empire Strikes Back.” Full of depressing realities and potential backstabs, The Pitt isn’t exactly the best place for a vacation if Fallout 3’s gray skies and grayer morals were getting you down. The DLC’s plot sees you dropping your mechanical trousers, donning slave rags, and infiltrating Pittsburgh’s disease-riddled remains, with the hope of freeing its enslaved citizens. Or cracking the whip even harder, if you’re playing a heartless ne’er-do-well. But is it really worth your time to save Pittsburgh when you could be saving $10? Well, here’s our verdict in five easy points. (Granted, we could’ve given you a simple yes or no, but what fun would that be?)

1. Now with made with 100% real Fallout! – Despite its first-person trappings, Fallout 3 isn’t an FPS. Unfortunately, developer Bethesda seemed to have forgotten that when it released Fallout 3’s first run-‘n’-gun-heavy piece of DLC, Operation Anchorage. With The Pitt, though, the game has kicked its identity crisis to the curb. No more snow, no more identical Chinese soldiers, no more strangely out-of-place cyborg ninjas – Metal Gear Solid this ain’t. Instead, The Pitt sends you on a veritable Wasteland safari, full of open areas, colorful characters, and optional side quests. And for the most part, another few hours of the same things Fallout fanatics have been doing for the past 50 make for an enjoyable – if somewhat familiar – experience.

He, uh, fell down the stairs. Yep.

Be warned, though: if you intend to truly plumb The Pitt’s depths, be prepared to spend a few hours collecting an entire steelyard’s worth of steel ingots. Sure, plucking more than ten of the prohibitively well-hidden hunks of junk from their natural habitat is completely optional, but without doing so, the DLC is pretty short. Also, you’ll nab some free stuff from a guy who sounds like Carl from Aqua Teen Hunger Force, and really, when you’re (disguised as) a slave, it’s the little joys in life that keep you going.

2. Get these mothaf***in’ Trogs out of my mothaf***in’ city – I hate Trogs. For the uninitiated, Trogs are The Pitt’s creepy-crawly new mutant type, and as you might’ve surmised, I hate them. They’re The Pitt’s Flood equivalent – mindless, willing to die if it inconveniences you in the slightest, and prone to traveling in (ugh) large groups. Problem is, so far as I can tell, the repulsive little jerks were actually meant to be scary, but they appear so frequently that you might as well just be stepping in gum repeatedly; the effect – both in terms of inconvenience and annoyance – would be the same. Also, Trogs can’t be decapitated, which we’re sure will leave a number of indigenous head-shrinking tribes absolutely heartbroken.

I'd rather not, Ms. - um - Arena?

3. Morals Schmorals – No matter how you choose to roll around in The Pitt, afterward, you’ll just feel dirty. Whether your poison of choice is backstabbing, kidnapping, or some combination of the two, you’ll likely re-enter Fallout 3’s main map wondering, “Did I really do the right thing?” I know I did. Granted, it falls into BioShock’s fair, but far less impactful trap of offering you roughly the same rewards regardless of the path you take, but that’s a small complaint for such a thought-provoking tale.

4. Are you not entertained?! – Every game genre has its own inexplicable little trope that manages to continually defy Father Time, and for the Western RPG, it’s the arena. Whether you look in Fable 2, Jade Empire, or Elder Scrolls: Oblivion (or Elder Scrolls Arena, for that matter), it seems that many game designers secretly aspire to be Russell Crowe, and I’m pretty okay with that. So of course, I welcomed The Pitt’s long-overdue arena with arms just wide open enough to retain my manly aloofness – that is, until I found out it was kind of lame. I mean, sure, it’s a self-contained area where murder is, in fact, encouraged, but the whole shebang’s only three matches long. I’ve seen Food Network shows with more action. Which ties into my next point…

Urge to photoshop a guitar... rising.

5. Potential well wasted – The Pitt is not a bad piece of DLC. In fact, excluding Oblivion’s much maligned equine chic, I think Bethesda – over time – has really helped set the standard for high value, respectably priced DLC. But in this case, that’s a large chunk of the problem. See, The Pitt’s pretty cool for a post-apocalyptic playground, but it doesn’t quite clear the ever-growing hurdle that is expectation. Exhibit one: the steelyard. Yeah, it’s nice and all, but it is, fittingly enough, a one-trick pony. Ingot, ingot, Trog, ingot. Rinse, repeat. And that’s a shame, because the place is huge, mysterious, and just begging for some intrepid adventurer to uncover its secrets. But in the end, it’s all sound and fury, signifying nothing. Exhibit two: every other sentence in this write-up with some form of the phrases “seemed,” “awesome”, and “but actually” in it. The Pitt was delayed earlier this year, and while I’m sure it benefitted from an extra month in development, I feel like another month or two could’ve baked it into something rich and whole, rather than something nice-looking but ultimately shallow.

Recommendation: Buy it – unless your ten dollars are, like, going toward ~~a Maximum PC subscription~~ orphans or food or something. Sure, The Pitt is a bit on the short side, and yeah, it could be a much more impressive product, but it’s still definitely a nice romp. It may not match Operation Anchorage minute-for-minute, but it is – in my opinion – much more enjoyable as a whole. And hey, time flies when you’re having fun.

Steam Now Offering In-Game DLC

Nathan Grayson — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 02:59:52 -0500

Steam’s only one or two artillery shells away from becoming Skynet at this point, we think. First, it gained access to the Internet’s vast wells of knowledge, and now the thing can even purchase DLC, if it’s feeling so inclined. We’d be lying if we said we weren’t a little more worried than we’ve ever been in our entire lives.

“Valve, creators of best-selling entertainment products and advanced technologies, today announced the arrival of in-game downloadable content to Steam, their massively popular PC gaming platform. In-game DLC allows developers and publishers to use their own games as a platform for selling additional content to gamers,” read Valve’s press release.

In other words, no more middleman. Shift-tab, grab a few new items, maybe a war against China, and hop right back into the game. No muss, no fuss – just ~~complete reliance on Steam~~ quick, efficient fun.

GameStop, a bunker. A bunker, GameStop.

Sparkle Proposes Better Heat Dissipation with Diamond Technology

Paul Lilly — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 16:30:00 -0600

Diamonds might be a girl's best friend, but Sparkle's Diamonds Sputtering technology looks to cozy up to videocards in an attempt to offer better heat dissipation.

The company today announced the new technology, which it says consists of outfitting the cooling fins on videocards with a Diamond-like Carbon (DLC) membrane. According to Sparkle and its R&D team, DLC offers high heat conduction capable of dissipating heat much more effectively than copper alone.

"The diamonds do heat dissipation four times faster than copper, it relies on the phonons which is produced by the crystal lattice vibration, to bring heat to lower temperature places," Sparkle wrote in its press release. "Diamond-like Carbon can achieve both functions at the same time, that is, transferring heat to lower temperature places with both graphite metal bond and diamond insulation bond (the covalent bond)."

It gets even more technical and goes on to discuss the process of Plasma Enhanced CVD (PECVD) to plate the DLC membrane on videocards, but the end result is a 5C temperature reduction on a 9500GT, according to Sparkle. But don't hold your breath for diamond-cooled videocards any time soon. Sparkle admits the technology carries a "high" cost and is still mulling over bringing DLC to market.

Image Credit: Sparkle

Left 4 Dead Survival DLC Officially Free

Nathan Grayson — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 22:31:23 -0600

Cool, right? Granted, Valve has never given us reason to fear that it’s into the whole nickel-and-diming thing, but it’s still nice to hear that our dwindling budgets can now go toward more important things like Starbucks coffee, impulse iPhone app purchases, and a replacement iPhone after an ill-advised literal interpretation of DanceDanceRevolution S Lite.

So yeah…

Oh hey, here are some details about the new rides the Survival DLC pack will bring to Valve’s carnal carnival. Apparently, the mode will see “up to four players set records for the longest time surviving hordes of zombies on over 12 maps.” That’s all anyone knows at this point, really.

We’ll let you know when we find out more.