The developers at Sweden based GRIN are reaping in the praise of their recently release of Bionic Commando Rearmed and today the company announced an expansion . . . sort of. The developer announced that it would team up with Dutch company Streamline Studios for "a strategic agreement that will allow both companies to achieve greater flexibility and game development capacity for AAA titles."

While not exactly a merger of the two companies, the new agreement will allow Streamline to augment "GRIN's development capacities in art, design, and programming." GRIN is currently working on two announced projects; the full blown Bionic Commando retail action game and a title based on the recent action movie Wanted. Streamline has created art content, CGI movies and other content for a wide variety of games including Gears of War, Unreal Tournament 3, Overlord, Battlefield 2142 and others.

The latest video to come out of Multiwinia Monday introduces the King of the Hill mode. All players have to do is amass an army of Darwinians to take and hold as many control points as possible, for as long as possible. Sounds simple until your opponents make a carpet out of your soldiers.

Download the Multiwinia "King of the Hill" HD Trailer (67 MB)

Can you say, "Too much information?" For fans of the long awaited MMO Warhammer Online that phrase doesn't register and today the NDA for talking about the closed beta test for the Mythic Entertainment developed game finally came to an end. That means anyone who participated in the closed beta can chat about their experiences to their heart's content.

Our sister site Massively has a ton of hands-on info on the game ready to check out. Look for info on Destruction tanks, ranged DPS classes for Order, and the Elves of the game. Indeed, look for a ton of info on the game at Massively in the weeks leading to the game's September 18 launch. Big Download will also have our own hands-on preview of the game as well in the near future.

We have to admit, this is probably the silliest unlock we've seen so far. The final unlock revealed as a part of the Heavy update is none other than a sandwich. This is no ordinary sandwich, though. This sandwich is filled with such nutritional delights, such savory meats, that it heals a full 120 health upon consuming. You have to stand still for 4 seconds while eating, though, and you make vigorous consumption sounds when eating, drawing enemies like a picnic draws ants. Overall, it's a humorous and altogether useful addition to the game. Oh, and for those who want a little bit of comedy, scroll down and watch the "Meet the Sandvich" video for some extra hilarity.

If you want to try out the wild and wacky Sandvick in the game you can do so now as Valve has just updated the shooter with all of the updates previously revealed including two new weapons, new achievements for the Heavy class, a new Payload map and the new Arena gameplay mode with five new maps.

Download the "Meet the Sandvich" HD Trailer (10 MB)

For some time we have heard about the development of The Chronicles of Spellborn, an upcoming fantasy MMO from Dutch developer Spellborn NV that will use Epic Games's Unreal Engine 2 (yep, 2) for its graphics. We have always thought of this game as a European only project but today that changed with the announcement that free-to-play MMO publisher Acclaim will take on these duties for the game in the US.

The game will launch in late 2008 in the UD with Acclaim offering a free-to-play zone for anyone to check out with a subscription needed to check out their entire Spellborn world. There's no word yet if Acclaim plans on any beta test for the game before its' US launch.

Sure, Far Cry 2's "The Jackal" trailer looks amazing, but what does it all mean? The trailer flashes by so quickly that it's easy to miss out on some of the details. So, the game developers at Ubisoft deconstruct the trailer for you, highlighting different aspects of the game. Far Cry 2 is scheduled to release in fall of 2008.

Download the HD narrated Far Cry 2 "The Jackal" Trailer (40 MB)

It's our weekly ritual for us. We await word from the NPD Group on what PC games are on the top 10 list of best selling titles in the US. Today NPD announced the latest list of games for the week ending August 9. As you can see there's no new titles on the list this week; just some movement among previous titles to new positions in the top 10. So with that out of the way here's the latest list:

1. World Of Warcraft: Battle Chest - Blizzard
2. The Sims 2 Double Deluxe - Electronic Arts
3. World Of Warcraft - Blizzard
4. Nancy Drew: The Phantom Of Venice - Her Interactive
5. Spore Creature Creator - Electronic Arts
6. Diablo Battle Chest - Blizzard
7. Warcraft III Battle Chest - Blizzard
8. World Of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade - Blizzard
9. The Sims 2 IKEA Home Stuff - Electronic Arts
10. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare - Activision

The latest Far Cry 2 trailer takes us back to the African Savannah, where we get a brief montage of all the different characters players will encounter while playing, along with plenty of combat and explosions. The entire game centers on the player's effort to kill a man named The Jackal. From the looks of things, he should be watching his back carefully by the time you're ready for him.

Download the Far Cry 2 "The Jackal" HD Trailer (565 MB)

Nvidia continues to hype up its support for the PhysX game physics software solution that Nvidia can now support via new drivers for its Geforce series of graphics chips. Today Nividia announced that future versions of Gamebryo, the game graphics engine developed by Emergent Game Technologies, will fully support the PhysX physics features.

Gamebryo is used in a number of previously released and future games including Bethesda Softworks's Fallout 3 and Mythic's upcoming MMO Warhammer Online. While it's too late for those games to intergrate the PhysX support, one of the first games that might use the PhysX features in Gamebryo is the recently announced RPG sequel Divinity 2 from developer Larian Studios.

It's a highly requested and popular race in the Warhammer 40,000 universe but developer Relic and publisher THQ didn't put the Tyranids in the original Dawn of War RTS game nor in any of the expansion packs. Now the Dawn of War II community site has announced (and released a screenshot) showing that the Tyranids are indeed making an appearance in the sequel, due out in 2009.

According to the post, Relic felt that the graphics engine for the original game wouldn't due the Tyranids justice but the new game engine they are using for Dawn of War II (the in-house Essence 2.0 Engine) was the way to bring the race into the game. The deadly species uses sward tactics to defeat their foes (each unit is just a simple cell in a massive Hive Mind) and it will be interesting to see how Dawn of War II uses them.

For some, playing Bionic Commando Rearmed is like walking down a street they grew up on after it goes through heavy renovation. Things seem both familiar and different at the same time. For others, it's like visiting a city for the first time after only hearing about it in conversions, TV/movies, and books/magazines. Everything gets measured against expectations without any sense of nostalgia. We fall into the latter group. But whether you're reliving the "good old days" or experiencing this platform shooter for the first time, Bionic Commando Rearmed delivers excellent and challenging retro platforming action.

Canadian publisher Meridian4 has used Steam to distribute a number of their PC games and their next title is Tank Universal, an arcade-like action game that visually has elements of Tron and the original Battlezone. Developed by Dialogue Design, the game has players engaging in massive tank battles and even on foot missions and will have a number of Steam achievements to unlock.

The game is due for release on August 21, but if you pre-order the $9.99 game now you can get Shadowgrounds, the top down sci-fi shooter from developer Frozenbyte for free via Steam. Like Tank Universal, Shadowgrounds is published by Meridian4.

Several months ago Futuremark, best known for their PC benchmarking software 3DMark, announced their plans to launch a game development studio. Today the developer finally announced the first concrete details on their first PC game, a sci-fi shooter titled Shattered Horizon.

The game, which has yet to secure a publisher, has already launched a teaser web site (complete with a YouTube teaser trailer) which explains the storyline of the game. In the future a massive mining explosion occurs on Earth's moon, sending millions of tons of rock into Earth orbit. Players will battle in full zero gravity in Earth orbit while dealing with all of the moon's debris. So far a release date for Shattered Horizon has yet to be announced.

This narrated video runs through all the gameplay features and classes for the upcoming Free Realms. Free Realms will be a free to play MMO designed for a younger audience with emphasis on casual gameplay and socializing.

Download Free Realms HD Gameplay Trailer (437 MB)

Given the turn-based nature inherent in collectible card games, one might logically presume that a strategy game intent on incorporating CCG mechanics would fall into the turn-based subcategory of the genre. Surprisingly, EA Phenomic's Battleforge sprinkles CCG flavoring into real-time strategy batter, the result of which proved to be a tasty treat I sampled at the recent Electronic Arts Summer Showcase press event.