It's been a busy day for Valve's Steam service and we have one more bit of news from the game download service. Today saw the official release for Mosby's Confederacy, the historical strategy game from developer Tilted Mill. The game, which sells for $19.99, is the second such original downloadable title from Tilted Mill (the first was Hinterland).

The game itself combines both turn based strategy in building towns with real time strategic combat and is based on the real life exploits of the real life Confederate general John Singleton Mosby during the US Civil War. You can get a lot more info on the game in our exclusive interview.

Codemasters already has an off-road racing game due out in 2009 (that would be Fuel) but that apparently isn't stopping the UK publisher from releasing another such game next year. IGN has the first word, interview and screenshots on Colin McRae: DiRT 2, the sequel to the 2007 released racing game.

The interview doesn't have a lot of info on the game itself; it does say it will use a enhanced version of the previous game's EGO graphics engine and hints about the single player campaign, the replay feature and the online multiplayer support. Codemasters also retained the Colin McRae name from the late racer's estate and the game's producer says there will be tributes to McRae in the game.

As they are wont to do, Nvidia continues to improve and release drivers for its GeForce family of graphics chips. However the newest official GeForce drivers, released today, are supposedly something special. Nvidia refers to them as "Big Bang II". While perhaps not as huge as the explosion that created the universe, these new 180.48 drivers increase performance in a number of current and older PC games.

Nvidia claims that you will seethings like a 10 percent performance increase in Crysis Warhead, a 38 percent increase in Far Cry 2, a 13 percent increase in Assassin's Creed and a whopping 80 percent increase in Lost Planet Colonies. These drivers are for the GeForce 200, 9, and 8800 families of graphics cards for Windows XP and Vista OSs (both 32-bit and 64-bit versions).

[Thanks FiringSquad]

Yet another PC game has been added to the growing list of titles that support the unique Novint Falcon controller. This time it's for Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, the multiplayer shooter released a year ago from Splash Damage, id Software and Activision. The free mod will be provided by the HaptX team.

The mod will be made available to download on Nov. 21 and will allow the player to feel the recoils of weapons and the feel of driving the various vehicles in the game. This mod also has support for HaptX's Force Balancing System which they claim "...allows for stronger recoils with less camera shakes. This allows the player to experience even more intense action without ever losing aim."

This is the trailer for the PC release of Mirror's Edge, coming in January 2009. The game will use PhysX technology to power its moves.

Download HD Mirror's Edge PC Trailer (77 MB)
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10 years ago this week Valve Software (now known simply as Valve) released their first game, a Quake 1 engine based first person shooter called Half-Life. It's now considered one of the greatest PC games of all time and its success has launched Valve's work with mods like Counter-Strike, the sequel Half-Life 2, their Steam content delivery system and others, including this week's release of Left 4 Dead.

If you have never played the original game before, this is a perfect time to do so. Valve is celebrating Half-Life's 10th anniversary by putting the game on sale via Steam for just 98 cents. Normally the game sells separately for $9.99 The sale expires on Friday at noon PST.

This trailer for Grand Theft Auto IV includes clips assembled using the custom video editor, a feature exclusive to the PC version of the game. Our favorite is the Russian music video. GTA4 is scheduled to release for PC's on December 2nd.
Download HD GTA4 PC Video Editor Trailer (156 MB)
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In what appears to be yet another cost-saving move by Electronic Arts, Variety is reporting through unnamed sources that the game publisher has retired its Blueprint game imprint. Technically EA never officially announced their plans for Blueprint but it was known that it launched over a year ago with the idea of the group developing smaller and more experimental games for the company.

However it appears that the costs of running such a division, which also involved groups from around the world working on EA game projects, were too high. While the games themselves are apparently still in development the Blueprint label itself has been shut down. EA has already retired another of its divisions, EA Casual, and merged their operations within their EA Sims brand.

The game download service Gamersgate doesn't get as much attention as other similar services but the company also has it's share of exclusives. Today Gamersgate added two new games to their line-up. The first is A Vampyre Story, the long-in-development adventure game made by Autumn Moon Entertainment, founded by former LucasArts adventure team members. The storyline has you playing the role of a young French opera star that's being held captive by a vampire. The game costs $29.99 to download. You can try out the demo right here at Big Download.

The other exclusive is for Europa Universalis Rome Vae Victis, the expansion pack to Paradox Interactive's historical strategy game. The expansion concentrates on the Roman Senate where you will have to deal with the many members and parties in order to have your goals as leader of the Roman Empire accomplished. You have to make sure the ruling party votes for issues in your favor and have them pass laws that you want to see past. The expansion will also have things like updated military AI and an overhauled interface. The expansion is only $9.99 to download.

With the release yesterday of Valve's zombie co-op shooter Left 4 Dead, lots of folks are already playing the game online. However, since the game is meant to be played with you and three of your buddies, Valve has decided to give folks a special deal just for those groups.

Valve is offering via their Steam service their Left 4 Dead Four Pack. Basically you pay to get four Steam codes; one for yourself and the other three to give to your friends. The nice thing is that the Four Pack is only $149.99. With Left 4 Dead currently selling for $49.99 that means the 4 Pack gives you one extra free game for the price of just three copies. Of course you could get lucky and win one of the five Steam codes we have for Left 4 Dead.

The last truly frightening movie I ever saw was The Blair Witch Project. Regardless of your particular feelings about that film, it scared the living hell out of me far out of proportion to what I'd been expecting when I went in to see it. Bear in mind that I hadn't seen any trailers promoting it, hadn't been exposed to any of the viral Internet marketing associated with its release, and none of my friends had seen it yet. I was going into it completely cold, the week it opened, expecting nothing more than a Friday the 13th Part 4-level jump-at-you scarefest.

I walked out of the theater numb, and was unable to go near a dark wooded area for weeks afterward. Certain sounds from the movie kept replaying themselves in my head, and even watching television shows or commercials that featured shaky hand-held video evoked that perfect dread. Needless to say, it was one of the most effective horror experiences I've ever had.

I have yet to see a video game affect me the same way.

At long last the massive 1.1 patch for Ironclad Games' space strategy title Sins of a Solar Empire is finally available to download via Stardock's Impulse client. The patch adds a lot of new features to the best selling and acclaimed game including lots of graphical improvements, the new Alloy multiplayer networking tech, game balance and UI changes and lots more.'

In addition, pre-orders are now being on the Impulse web site for Entrenchment, the first of three planned micro-expansions for the game. The $9.99 pre-order will also enable you to try out the expansion in beta form before its planned release which is now apparently planned for early 2009.

With all of the bad news happening to Midway lately, the publisher wanted to make sure that the world knew of a new and solid release date for their upcoming action-driving game Wheelman. Today Midway announced that the game, which "stars" actor Vin Diesel, will ship to stores for the PC and other platforms on Feb. 20, 2009.

The game, made by Midway's UK based studio, uses the Unreal Engine 3 technology. The title was originally set for release this fall but Midway delayed the game to the first quarter of 2009. As a recent Variety report claims, part of the reason for the delay of Wheelman and other Midway games was because the dev teams tried to put in their own technology on top of Unreal Engine 3. Another Midway game, This is Vegas, is also due out in the first quarter of 2009 but no specific date has been announced.

As the typical five-year lifespan of a console winds toward its conclusion, gamers inevitably pose questions of backwards-compatibility. They wonder, as is only logical, whether the dozens, hundreds, or thousands of dollars they invested in their gaming library will be relevant when the new generation of hardware emerges. Sometimes, as with the Xbox 360's update-oriented system, most last-gen titles will still function properly. Other times, as with the PlayStation 3's confusing array of SKUs, the answer alternates between "maybe," "hopefully," and "who knows"?

Despite occasional hardware hiccups and OS woes, the PC platform has managed to retain its awe-inspiring catalogue of titles, thanks in large part to an active community of uber-geeks intent on doing whatever must be done to ensure that disk-based classics don't fade into obscurity.

Welcome to Boot Disk, a weekly column dedicated to covering PC gaming's impressive and length history. Every Tuesday, we'll examine one of the platform's many titles that still lend themselves to eminence five, 10, 15, or decades' worth of years later. This week's Boot Disk spotlight shines on King's Quest.