The Big Round-up: Wednesday, June 4

Posted Jun 4th 2008 12:00PM by Dan O'Halloran
Filed under: Downloads, Hands-on, Mac, Trailers, Video, Opinion, Modern Warfare 2, Fallout 3

Your daily wrap-up of the hottest stories in PC gaming in the last 24 hours.

	In-Depth: GRID GRID sets up a great mood for racing from the moment you set up your profile and put in an audio name. From that point on, the game greets you by name each time you load it up and refers to you personally with race updates. It seems like a minor addition, but it provides a strong sense of engagement with the game world as you build up your racing reputation, rake in the prize money, and race go on racing tours across the USA, Europe and Japan. The PC version sports great performance and fantastic graphics, but it's worthwhile to purchase a gamepad to play this one in order to get the best experience. More after the jump.
	Big Versus: GRID This week in Big Versus we're tackling Codemasters' latest entry in the Race Driver series, GRID, which hits retail for the PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 today. Shying away from its more realistic racers like other TOCA racing games and the recently released Dirt, Codemasters hopes to capture some of the underground scene with their latest arcade style racing title.
	Two very different Alone in the Dark trailers emerge We have two new trailers for Eden Games and Atari's upcoming reboot of the Alone in the Dark franchise. The videos couldn't be more different. One features gameplay footage and commentary by producer Nora Paloni about the various enemies, weapons, and combat strategies in the game. It's a continuation of an earlier video that focused on fire.
	LEGO Indiana Jones now available in stores As of today, you can go out, buy LEGO Indiana Jones, and re-experience the original trilogy, thereby pushing Crystal Skull's awfulness out of your mind. According to a LucasArts press release Big Download received earlier today via email, "LEGO Indiana Jones presents a tongue-in-cheek take on the first three cinematic adventures of pop culture's most iconic archaeologist."
	Unreal Tournament III 1.3 patch details The 1.3 patch for Unreal Tournament III hasn't been released quite yet, but that didn't stop PlanetUnreal from digging for concrete details. Among the substantial list of fixes and additions are numerous bot improvements, several mod-specific collision detection issues, increased Aegia support, and cut/copy/paste functionality for the game's console.
	Fallout 3 Collector's Edition finally visualized We have reported in the past on Bethesda Softworks' plans to release a collector's edition of their highly anticipated RPG Fallout 3 but today the developer's official blog site has finally given us a visual of what that special edition of the game will actually look like. As promised the Collector's Edition will be housed in a metal Vault TEC lunch box with some great looking artwork (we would love to see the reaction if a kid took that lunch box to school).

	Call of Duty 4 for Mac pushed to Q3 2008 To those Mac users waiting diligently for a great first-person shooter that isn't Marathon, you'll have to wait a little longer. Call of Duty 4's Mac port has been pushed from it's original release date to Q3 2008. Thankfully, this isn't much of a move for the release date, and Mac users will soon be able to kill terrorists as morally questionable SAS thugs (you know, just like real life)
	New Exteel screenshots show off more mech-like action NCsoft has been developing their online mech action game Exteel for some time now. Technically the game is still in open beta testing but you can go ahead and start playing the game right now by downloading the client at the game's official web site. This week NCsoft released some new screenshots from the game showing off the Trooper Mechanaught vehicle which is one of the more powerful mechs you can drive in the game.
	Capcom to launch Neopets Puzzle Adventure this winter Neopets is the cute web based kids game with lots of cuddly creatures to collect and play with. Soon the franchise will expand into more genres thanks to publisher Capcom and developer Infinite Interactive (best known as the creators of the Puzzle Quest series) with their just announced game Neopets Puzzle Adventure.
	College student creates anti-religious game There's two ways to get your point across in any debate: present a rational argument in a gentle and understanding way, or shock the person you are debating with your poor taste so that they have to believe you. A new game in development by a college student seems much more like the latter than the former. An atheistic game, it is your goal to go back in time and kill the prophets of several religions. You read that right. Your goal is to eliminate religions before they start.
	Time Warner Cable testing metered Internet usage There's been a ton of talk lately on the future of PC games and a lot of it is focused on how downloadable games will become more and more important in the industry. Valve, one of the leaders in this movement, stated last week that they feel sales from their Steam download service will overtake sales of their games in retail stores very soon. However, there's a big possibility that there is a snake in the grass that could hamper game downloads (and indeed other media like movies and TV shows).