There were many PC titles this last weekend at PAX08, but out of everything that I got my grubby hands on, Demigod was easily the biggest surprise. The fine folks from Gas Powered Games and Stardock were there in full force and as much as I love Sins of a Solar Empire, it seems like Demigod is my new favorite real-time strategy underdog.

Just as Sins is a strange blend of RTS and Civ-style games, Demigod is a blend of RTS and various PC RPGs. Given my penchant for games that blend RPGs into a genre I already enjoy, I'd always been interested in what Demigod had to offer. After playing it at PAX08, I'm ready to lay down my pre-order directly to Stardock's Impulse service. Follow the image above for plenty of discussion on GPS's newest creation, Demigod.

Anyone could come up with a lot of reasons for why Valve is such a successful company. Ask any two people what makes Valve so successful and they'll probably point to different things. Some will say their cabal style game design and free content updates. While others will point to the Steam platform, mod support and integration of top mod designers. Some may even call out Gabe Newell himself. Oh and don't forget Doug Lombardi, either. We could go on and on about just what made (and continues to make) Valve so very special. Though I doubt it's any single one of those things as opposed to many of them at the right moments in the right way. Or in other words, a lot of chance, determination and some vision.

What I do think can be gleaned from the success of Valve, is where PC gaming will -- or at least should be -- going over the next few years. Hit the image above to take a look at what I think their model of game design and business decisions has to offer the wider PC gaming market.

One of the biggest problems for real-time strategy (RTS) games has been the detached and disinterested attitude many players exhibit when faced with playing them. More often than not, a lot of people who consistently play RTS games are doing so out of their love for the strategy element. That's all well and good, but there's a caveat: The problem continues. Why? It does so because the cache of players who're highly dedicated to RTS games don't count for much of the PC gaming contingent.

I've considered Relic Entertainment a top-drawer developer ever since I casually sat down to play Homeworld 2, only to discover a game that would absorb several tens of hours of my life. So when initial previews revealed that Dawn of War 2 (DoW2) wouldn't focus on player-built structures, I was intrigued. I continued to read up on the game and subsequently found even more provocative information. Players will only control five or so squads in any one battle? These squads are to stay with you over the course of the game? This was a glaringly unprecedented change, and I loved it.

Click the image above to continue reading "Alt-Tab: Can RPG + RTS = cute baby?"

Have you ever spotted information about a game floating around the Internet, practically waving its hands and jumping up and down for your attention? Did you ignore that friendly, lonely information asking you to just give it a chance? Shame on you! Well, sorry, not shame on you, since you're obviously reading this Fallout 3 preview. Actually, calling this a preview would be a bit misleading. Instead, think of this as a look into the reasoning for you to love Fallout 3.

In the spirit of Fallout 3, we've created our own mutant rats. We call them love-rats, which are foot-sized rats possessing shockingly tiny front-legs and disturbing large hind-legs. We hope that you're highly resistant to love-rats, because we're about to unleash them unto your face so they can skitter and nibble you with their filthy infected love-maws!

Download the latest Fallout 3 HD Trailer

Several screens from Treyarch's Call of Duty 5 have found their way to the internet by a few German websites. This NeoGAF thread has them all in one place for your viewing ease. The screens give us our first glimpse of the World War II Pacific Theater setting in all of its jungle-y glory. While the WWII setting is a bit of a letdown after CoD4's much-appreciated move to the modern era, the Pacific Theater is at least a little interesting. We have a feeling that guys hacking around with machetes will be an ongoing theme in CoD5. Oh and don't forget the samurai swords, there's even a screen showing off some possible melee action.

One other thing we can easily derive from the screenshots is that there's going to be a big, nasty flamethrower featured in the game. Whether or not players will actually get to use the flame-gushing weapon is of course unknown. We only hope that for the sake of everyone involved there is some flamethrowing action coming our way.

[via ars technica]

Robin Walker is a Valve game designer who most notably worked/works on Team Fortress 2. He recently spoke at an event about how he sees Valve -- and other developers -- as service providers. It's certainly an interesting thesis to read through and well worth your attention. Walker goes on to explain his thesis, but he also dishes out discussion on Team Fortress 2 as well. The three main goals the team had for TF2 were long-term fun, indefinite free-content and rewards for player investment. Walker goes on to explain how the team reached these goals and their effect on the community and the game. There's some talk about how the medic update affected the player base, which is always an interesting topic for a TF2 player.

For Walker it all comes down to developers thinking about their roles from a community-orientated angle. He also says that it's important for a developer be able to dictate how much of what data from players they want to examine and that having a close relationship to the player base is the best way to do this. It's not an entirely new concept, but one we think developers should continually remind themselves about.

The newest wave of news about Dawn of War II is coming out of Relic and 1up.com has not only a three page interview with the game designers up, but a podcast discussing the game and even a short gameplay video. One of the biggest pieces of new information is that the strategy game will not feature base building. Instead players will control up to about five squads that stick with them throughout the singleplayer campaign. Of course Relic is keeping their lips sealed about whether or not a similar structure exists in the online mode.

Another subject that they're not speaking on is additional races beyond Space Marines and the Orks. Relic has said in the past that they would consider doing Tyranids Zerg Tyranids for DoW2. We're sure that by this point fans of the "Great Devourer" have become an extremely vocal crowd considering their race was the only one never to be officially featured in the original Dawn of War, even after numerous expansions. Maybe we'll see a new playable race revealed at this year's E3 and if fans are lucky they'll finally get .

If you just can't get enough of those super-cute Zerg, then let us direct your attention towards the newest Blizzcast where lead designer Dustin Browder gets chatted up on everyone's favorite carapace menace. Specifically this discussion starts out being all about the Zerg Queen unit and how when playing with her it feels a lot like a game of cat and mouse. Dustin goes on to say that you can think of her as a classic science fiction monster.

Then the discussion moved onto the Ultralisk unit, which is still in a state of flux. It seems like the dev team hasn't quite figured out just what they want the unit to play like and that's to be expected for a late-game unit that doesn't see as much playtime as the rest of the Zerg. There's quite a bit more beyond even that, so if you're a diehard Starcraft II junkie we'll just point you to the page so you can listen in for yourself.

When The Sims first made its foray into the online space via The Sims Online things didn't turn out so good in the end. Even with its less-than-stellar performance the game and its publisher Electronic Arts kept the online world around for a long time. Electronic Arts recently attempted to re-brand the game as EA-Land, although that venture's lifespan was far shorter than The Sims Online's original jaunt into the multiplayer space. So when the head of EA's Sims division Nancy Smith talks about future possibilities with online content in The Sims series, we're a bit skeptical.

Granted, there's apparently a lot ton of money to be made in said online space. So maybe it's not too crazy to think that Electronic Arts could be reassessing their options for a spiritual successor to The Sims Online. Who knows? Maybe The Sims 3 has some online features yet to be divulged. Although we would wager that such an online component would probably be featured in an expansion pack, as per the series' standard stratagem.

Eternal Silence may not be the newest Half-Life 2 mod around but it's certainly one of the more compelling projects. We're always up for some epic space battles, which his what Eternal Silence is all about. ModDB recently ran a preview of the newest beta build (the 3.0 build, if you're curious) and gave their overall impressions.

It seems as though the space environments have been markedly improved, especially the lighting and shading elements. However, being a beta build means there is still work to be done and in the case of Eternal Silence the interiors have yet to be finished. It should be mentioned that indoor visual improvements have been promised by the development team, Crank Shaft, for the next beta build. It's all part of the mod experience and means we have something to look forward to in the near future. There's plenty of screens and even videos towards the bottom of the preview, so check it out if you'd like to see the game in motion.

European players of the free-to-play MMO 9Dragons can finally call a local server their home with Bardo Euro, the first European-based server recently brought to life by publisher Acclaim. "The 9Dragons European server is great news for our European players who can now get the best possible game service quality and lower latency," said Howard Marks, CEO of Acclaim. Everyone hates lag and apparently there are enough 9Dragons players from Europe for Acclaim to have made this move. We're happy for those players, as it means a higher level of quality for all everyone.

Acclaim plans on running plenty of special events between June 3rd and June 9th to celebrate the new server. Players can expect several days of bonus experience events, special monster events and PvP battles with the game masters playing along. Also, in-game fireworks are planned to commemorate the entire shebang. It sounds like players of 9Dragons will be having quite the party over the next several days.

Our sister-site Massively recently got to chat with the president of Trion World, Jon Van Caneghem. If the company and the name don't ring a bell, let us give you a quick overview. Jon Van Caneghem is the original creator of the Might and Magic seres and co-founder of Trion World. The company recently announced a partnership with the Sci-Fi channel that will see them developing and publishing an MMO that will live alongside an upcoming show on the network. Which is a concept that we think is incredibly cool, if they can pull it off.

If you happen to think similarly to us, then it's well worth your time to check out the interview with Caneghem about all things past, present and future for him and his company.

While John Carmack may not care about this piece of news, we're sure there are plenty of you out there that do. If you happen to visit the Crysis official website you'll be welcomed by the image above, which so auspiciously holds the logo for something titled Crysis Warhead. Now we're not one to jump to conclusions here at Big Download, but that does seem like the sort of logo you would associate with an expansion pack of some type. It certainly would explain where all those patches up and went off to.

So is Crysis getting an expansion? We'd love to give you the official word, but all we've got is an image on a website right now. Dont worry though, we'll keep our super-hightech binoculars locked onto the website for any further updates. If that doesn't work, maybe we'll just switch our blogging suits to superspeed and hurl emails at Crytek until we get some information.

Longtime fans of the Penny Arcade webcomic most likely already know what I'm about to say here. You probably know that On The Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness: Episode One is an adventure-RPG set in the steampunk/gothic horror world of New Arcadia where similar-yet-different versions of Gabe and Tycho run their own paranormal investigation firm -- of sorts. But did you know that in this game you'll get to battle robotic juicing machines that copulate with fruits, men, women and sometimes small animals? Oh, you did. Well fine, but don't say we didn't warn you when their little metal protrusions puncture your tibia.

For those of you who don't know every little detail about the game, let us make you au courant on the subject of OTRSPoD:EO. Yes, we just went acronymical on your ass.

Three new videos for Mass Effect PC have parked themselves in our Big Download servers today. Two of the videos feature the much improved user interface in various combat situations. While the third video uses a cutscene to show off the noticeably improved graphics of the PC version. From the looks of the two combat videos it seems like the group who ported the game onto the PC took much into consideration in terms of interface. It really tickles us to see the mysterious player in these movies pause the game and deftly select abilities without any trouble at all.

If you've been on the proverbial fence about getting Mass Effect for your PC, these videos should help make up your mind. At least they'll give you something incredibly pretty to watch, if nothing else. Seriously, we've never seen Krogan skin look so good!

• Mass Effect Combat Video 1
• Mass Effect Combat Video 2
• Mass Effect Tenuous Diplomacy Video