We expect to see a ton of online PC game sales hit the net tomorrow but for now these are the ones to focus on:

• Amazon.com has a one day sale on boxed copies of Dragon Age: Origins and Borderlands for $39.99 each. That's a savings of $10 from their normal cost.
• Steam is selling Plants Vs Zombies for just $4.99 from now until Thursday, November 26. That's a 50 percent cut from it's normal Steam price.
• GamersGate has a number of 3000AD's games (Angle of Attack, All Aspects Warfare, All Aspects War Pack and Universal Combat Special Edition) on sale for 50 percent off their normal prices. The same site has the Europa Universalis Complete Collection on sale for just $29.99, a 65 percent savings. The sale lasts until Sunday.

Fans of the Diablo series know that for the upcoming third installment in Blizzard's action-RPG series the game developers have been working with a tree-style of architecture for their character skill system. Well, that seems to be officially out of the game design now, according to Blizzard's Jay Wilson

Speaking to site Diablo Fans (natch) Wilson states, "About that, we've decided to remove the tree-type architecture and we are moving into a purely skill-based system." Wilson admits that their new skill system is still in the early design stages and that they wanted to try out a few new ideas. He adds, "It differs from the World of Warcraft/Diablo II type hierarchical styles and is more of a skill pool/path than a tree per se." Since Diablo III's release date is at least two years away we think they have some time to come up with something.

[Via Blue's News]

In what has to be regarded as a very quick turnaround, Electronic Arts has come on out and admitted that Mercs Inc is indeed in development at its Los Angeles development studios. The game, also known as Mercenaries Inc, will be the third game in the action series that was originally developed by the now shuttered Pandemic Studios. The official word came just a few hours after a leaked trailer showing off gameplay hit the internet.

EA's press release on the game has little info on the title itself, nor any word on the game's platforms or release date. It did hint strongly that the Pandemic name would be used in the branding of the game when it is released even though the team of former Pandemic developers is working out of EALA now.

It's just been a few days since Razer launched a new gaming PC mouse product but today they have done it again with the announcement of the Razer Imperator. While many of their other mouse products have an ambidextrous design, this new Imperator is made specifically for "righties".

The $79.99 mouse product is designed to be used for both palm and finger-based gaming on the mouse. Besides the features that Razer puts into most of their previous gaming mice (5600 dpi laser, onboard memory) the Imperator has two side buttons that can actually be shifted and adjusted. In theory that should allow right-handed PC gamers a way to have faster access via their thumb to those buttons. The mouse is on sale now at Razer's web site and will be on store shelves in late December.

There are already a ton of major AAA PC games set for release in the first quarter of 2010 (Mass Effect 2, BioShock 2, Star Trek Online, Command and Conquer 4 and Supreme Commander 2 to name just a few) . Today that schedule just got tighter with today's news that the open world action game sequel Just Cause 2 will be shipping to stores in the US for the PC and other platforms on March 23, 2010 (Europeans and other world territories get the game a few days later on March 26).

The Avalanche Studios-developed game was already well in the works before its publisher Eidos got bought out by Square Enix earlier this year. However the game will still be published with the Eidos branding. Will this sequel that promises action over a massive 400 square mile fictional South Asian island.with lots of shooting, driving, exploding and falling be enough to deal with the onslaught of other major game releases in the next few months? Good question.

This patch for Call of Duty: World at War updates the game to v1.7 and addresses a number of gameplay issues. The game must first be updated to v1.6 before applying this patch. The patch works on all regions except Germany, which has its own dedicated version. A new version of the Linux dedicated server is also available for hosting multiplayer games. Patch notes are shown after the jump.

Download Call of Duty: World at War v1.7 Patch (16 MB)
Download Call of Duty: World at War v1.7 German Patch (16 MB)
Download Call of Duty: World at War v1.7 Linux Dedicated Server (1.46 GB)
Check out all Call of Duty: World at War downloads

The shut down last week of Pandemic Studios' Santa Monica offices is not supposed to be the end of Pandemic itself or the original brands that the developer, through Electronic Arts, still owns. Which is why the above and supposedly leaked video might actually be made into a full game one day.

Web site Bitmob states that the above video, supposedly showing off a multiplayer-oriented entry in Pandemic's Mercenaries series called Mercenaries Inc, is real. Their anonymous sources says the trailer itself was made a few months ago at Pandemic. As for the game itself, the site claims that the title is still in pre-production at EA's Los Angeles studio and being made by the few ex-Pandemic staffers that made the transition to their new EALA offices. Even if all of the above is true it will likely be some time before the game itself is released.

While Australia's game ratings system gave an MA 15+ rating to Infinity Ward's shooter Modern Warfare 2, it's now possible that the game could be banned for sale in that country after all. GameSpot reports that South Australian Attorney-General Michael Atkinson is planning to appeal the country's Classification Board's decision to rate the game as MA15+

Atkinson admits that this is the first time that he has decided to intervene in the ratings board's decision on a game release, although he adds, "The Classification Board in Australia does everything to try and get games in under the radar." However his objections to the game clearly show he doesn't know much about the game's content. The web site got an email from Atkinson saying, "this game [Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2] allows players to be virtual terrorists and gain points by massacring civilians." Of course people who have actually played the game know that there are no "points" given during the airport massacre scene and can in fact be skipped as a playable scene entirely. A spokesperson for the ratings board states they have yet to receive an official appeal to their ratings decision for the game. As for Atkinson himself, the spokesperson stated, "The Board has no comment on Mr Atkinson's statements."

Shopping on Black Friday can be maddening but we here at Big Download want to help out at least one reader in our audience with some of his or her gift giving plans (or perhaps just gift plans as the case may be). Today we have a new giveaway where one person will walk away with three very nice PC gaming peripherals from the folks at SteelSeries.

One lucky winner will get the SteelSeries Xai Laser Mouse (shown above) along with the Siberia V2 Headset and a 9HD gaming mouse surface (both shown after the jump). That's a ton of PC gaming hardware goodness for either the winner or someone who's really good friends with the winner.

As with most of our contests, entering the giveaway is simple:

• To enter, post a comment on this contest page.
• The comment must be left before 11:59 pm Eastern Time on November 29
  
• You may enter only once.
• One winner will be selected in a random drawing.
• That winner will be sent a SteelSeries Xai Laser Mouse (valued at $89.99) a SteelSeries Siberia V2 Headset (valued at $89.99) and a SteelSeries 9HD gaming mouse surface (valued at $34.99)
  
• Click Here for complete Official Rules. You must be a resident of the US or Canada (excluding Quebec) who is 18 years or older to enter this contest.

Our huge thanks to SteelSeries for the donation of these prizes. Good luck

The first big PC game to be released in 2010 will the the US debut of Larian Studios' fantasy RPG game Divinity II in the first week of January. The game from publisher CDV is stepping up its marketing plan by offering a sweepstates where the winner gets what you see above; a desktop PC with a custom painted Divinity II art design.

Aside from the case, this gaming PC seems to have a solid system packed inside as well with a DirectX11 supported ATI Radeon HD 5770 graphics card, a 24 inch monitor and more. The contest ends on December 28 so while the winner will have to wait until after the holidays to get his or her prize we have a suspicion it will be worth it.

We really do feel for the Pandemic Studios team members who lost their jobs last week thanks to EA's latest cost cutting move. It's not right that the studio that has made so many great games is basically no more. But geeze....what did that copier ever do to you?

Yeah, yeah . . . we know that the YouTube movie that we can see above this post is supposed to be a "homage" to Office Space, complete with the same gangsta rap music (which by the way is definitely NSFW). But the copier doesn't seem to be the thing to attack in this case. How about a nice EA logo bashing? Or maybe some other object directly linked to the studio shut down? Beating a copier to death just seems so . . . cliche. However the movie is still funny and we guess that, in the end, that's what matters.

[Via Kotaku]

Over a year ago, German movie theater audiences were subject to something that they were likely not prepared for; a movie adaptation of Far Cry directed by none other than Uwe Boll. Now that cinematic "masterpiece" heads to the US but thankfully movie theaters in this country won't have to deal with this piece of celluloid.

Nope. Instead the flick based on Crytek's debut first person shooter is headed straight to the DVD pile (and most likely in heavy rotation on cable channels a few months later). It's a shame. We actually think a Far Cry movie would be entertaining if handled by the right people, but based on trailers that we have seen online, this version looks like one of the bad SyFy Channel Saturday evening movies. The only good news? There's no Blu-Ray version. Seeing this in 1080p would most likely fry your eyes out.

You could create a DeLorean-Back to the Future car mod inside of Crysis if you really wanted to, but that's not particularly news worthy. However, creating a DeLorean-Back to the Future car mod that actually does use the flux capacitor to travel back and forth in time (in the game) . . . now that's worth looking into.

That's just what mod maker Mert Mimaroglu did with his very cool mod that can be used inside Crytek's 2007 first person shooter. The mod not only models the car, both inside and out, in great detail but as you can see in the video above you can use it to time travel in the game itself. All of the effects are spot on, from the electrical burst as the car hits 88 MPH to the frost the is created after a time jump to the fire trails it leaves behind when it moves out of the time line. Make sure Doc Brown and Marty see this.

Download the Crysis 'Back to the Future' DeLorean Mod (22 MB)

The newest incarnation of publisher Atari has been focusing its efforts more on online games such as Champions Online and the upcoming Star Trek Online. So it's not much of a shock to learn that the newly relaunched Atari.com web site has lots of online gaming features.

Not only can you purchase and download a number of older and current Atari-published games from the site you can also play classic Atari games for free via the web browser like Asteroids, Battlezone and others. They are also selling exclusive Atari logo t-shirts. Once more, they have a special t-shirt design (shown above) that will be given away to 100 lucky fans. That design will be limited to the 100 t-shirts that will be made for the giveaway contest.

Uwe Boll. You know him. You love to hate him. Now the director of not just some of the worst video game movies ever made but some of the worst films made, period, is getting things prepped to make a third flick based on the Terminal Reality-created Bloodrayne action-horror game franchise.

DreadCentral.com claims they got the info straight from Boll himself during a chat with the director at the American Film Market earlier this month. According to the article, the movie will be titled Bloodrayne 3: Warhammer and will begin production in January. Actress Kristanna Loken, who starred as the title character in the first Bloodrayne movie, will be wearing her vampire fangs once again for the third movie. Most interesting of all this third movie will be set during World War II which was also the time period for the first BloodRayne game. There's no word yet if the third flick will use any plot elements of the BloodRayne game.