Posted 11/02/09 at 11:43:02 PM by Nathan Grayson

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.”

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Posted 08/07/09 at 02:14:16 AM by Nathan Grayson

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?   

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Posted 04/07/09 at 12:38:52 AM by Nathan Grayson

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.

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Posted 03/17/09 at 02:59:52 AM by Nathan Grayson

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.

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Posted 02/16/09 at 04:30:00 PM by Paul Lilly

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.

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Posted 02/11/09 at 10:31:23 PM by Nathan Grayson

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.

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Posted 02/07/09 at 02:23:08 AM by Nathan Grayson

Well, that’s that. Every single inhabitant of the Capital Wasteland – be they man, woman, or part-man, part-tree, with-another-person-in-there-somewhere-maybe – has gazed upon our newly acquired invisibility suit, badass lightning sword (technical term), and gauss rifle, and felt envy’s green tendrils grip the Do Want lobe (again, technical term) of their brains. Hell, we even created a separate Fallout 3 save file in order to murder all of said people with said badass lightning sword. Long story short, we’ve encountered the Wasteland’s most intimidating foe: boredom.
 
But sadly, we might just have to expose our virgin minds to other games, because Bethesda recently sent word that Fallout 3’s remaining DLC packs, The Pitt and Broken Steel, have each been delayed for a month.

The Pitt will now go live in March, while Broken Steel and its ten levels-worth of new content won’t emerge from the vault until April.

February, you’re pretty much dead to us now.

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Posted 02/05/09 at 08:48:07 PM by Nathan Grayson

Killing zombies does not get boring. Ever. Complacency – allowing your well-trained, unflinching nerves to put on a nice layer of soft, easily startled flab – is exactly what the zombies are waiting for. However, one can never be too prepared for the decomposed, constantly vomiting end of civilization as we know it, so Valve’s announcement that it intends to continually expand Left 4 Dead is perfectly reasonable.

The game’s first batch of DLC, titled “The Survival Pack,” will slather a new layer of glue onto your computer screen this spring. It’ll include a new multiplayer mode – called Survival, natch – as well as two new campaigns for Versus Mode.

Also hitting shelves this spring is a Critic’s Choice Edition of L4D. Not content to merely repackage the game’s vanilla edition, L4DCCE will lure new players in with a warm mug of glowingly positive review quotes and keep them on the edge of their seats with the aforementioned Survival Pack.
 
Valve’s also tossing a free SDK in there around the same time, giving you the ability to kill zombies in a box, with a fox, in a house – anywhere really!

Hell, we suppose, if you’re a complete madman, you could even cook up something totally ridiculous like zombie Nazis. But that’d just be loony.

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