Congratulations, soldier: you survived another week. It's Friday afternoon, and instead of going out partying with your friends, you're anxious to get home, sit down at your computer, and play some new games. Sounds fun! Too bad you're broke. Lucky for you, PC gaming has an impressive library of classic games that are available online for cheap. Hang out with us every Friday so we can take you on a guided tour of some of the greatest bargains available throughout the many tubes of the Internet.

Welcome Big Download's Virtual Bargain Bin, the cure for your weekend gaming woes. This week's classics: SiN and SiN Episodes: Emergence.

These trailers for Dark Void, shown at CES 2009, demonstrate different gameplay aspects from the sci-fi themed action adventure game. In Dark Void, players take the role of a cargo pilot trapped in the Bermuda Triangle and must battle against an alien race called the Archon to escape. The video above shows off vertical combat, the game's main feature. The other videos show combat against UFO's and sabotaging massive structures.

Download HD Dark Void Vertical Combat Video (49 MB)
Download HD Dark Void UFO Video (101 MB)
Download HD Dark Void Sabotage Video (103 MB)

If you feel like taking a leap off of a virtual cliff, Microsoft has just the car to drive. As promised earlier this week, Microsoft has now made available the first public beta of Windows 7 to anyone who wants to download the ISO filem, burn it to a DVD and then install it on your PC.

There are always caveats to downloading beta software but early reports from other sites have lots of praise for Windows 7. If you want to give the OS a test drive you had bettter hurry. Microsoft is limited this first Windows 7 public beta to the first 2.5 million downloads. The beta will also expire on August 1.

[Via Engadget]

The past couple of years have seen a number of games translated into comics. We have seen mini-series and regular series based on Mirror's Edge, Gears of War, Bionic Commando and others released and other comics based on games are in the works.

But what about the other side of the equation? Sure there are lots of games based on Marvel and DC super hero characters but there are lots of other lesser known but still terrific comic titles that we think should be made into games. We have nominated 10 such titles as prime candidate for adaptations. Of course there are tons of other comics that could be made into games but we can uses these ideas as a starting point.

Click on the image above to continue reading 10 comics we want to see made into games

Welcome to Freeware Friday, a weekly column showcasing excellent games that you can play free of charge!

Have I mentioned how much I love rogue-like games? The random aspect, the deep and engaging underlying gameplay systems, and the penchant for creating stories out of thin air really set the sub-genre apart from other games. I've already talked about Dwarf Fortress and Nethack before, and there's plenty more where that came from. However, this week is a little known space-combat rogue-like gem called Transcendence. Imagine if Nethack and Star Control 2 got together and had a top-down illegitimate child that went on to bigger and better things. That's Transcendence in a nutshell.

Valve's method of offering free downloadable content for their games is rubbing off on other developers, including Relic Entertainment. In a new chat over at Strategy Informer, Relic's lead designer of Warhammer 40,000 Dawn of War II states that players can expect a bunch of downloadable content for the game after its late February release.

Jonny Ebbert is quoted as saying, "...we're going with the approach that Valve pioneered to just reward the people who actually bought the game with cool stuff. Free downloadable, regularly accessible stuff that enhances the game and then that's an incentive for the people who didn't buy the game to buy it." Details on what it will be like will be released in about a month, roughly when Dawn of War II is due for release in stores.

Updated to release 51, Crayon Physics Deluxe lets players solve puzzles by drawing objects that materialize within the game. This demo includes a handful of levels and the full version may be purchased for $19.95 from the official website.

Download Cryaon Physics Deluxe Demo (25 MB)

A while back Mad Catz bought out the UK based gaming PC controller company Saitek which was best known for their highly advanced flight stick controllers. Mad Catz has continued using the Saitek name for a number of its products and during the Consumer Electronics Show this week they announced a new PC addition to the line-up; the Saitek Cyborg X flight stick.

The new product celebrates the 10th anniversary of Saitek's flight stick brand (hence the "X" in the product name) . It contains a trigger and 11 programmable buttons. Parts of the Cybord X can be folded and detached when not in use which can save space when storing the product. The Cyborg X is expected to ship sometime this quarter for $49.99.

While the Cyborg X is made specifically for PC gaming, Mad Catz has also announced their Saitek Aviator Flight Stick for the Xbox 360 and PS3 are also compatible with the PC.

Technically the final print issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly is the one that's currently on newsstands (the one with the Wolverine game cover story). But before Ziff Davis decided to cancel the nearly 20 year old magazine (which reportedly still had over 500,000 subscribers per month) the staff had time to complete one more issue.

While that issue will never be mailed to subscribers or show up in your local supermarket magazine rack, it looks like you will get to see it in a slightly different form. Now former EGM editor-in-chief James Mielke posted up word on the making of that final issue and states that 1Up.com will in fact bring that final EGM edition online soon. Mielke states, "You will be able to read every hi-res page, ads and all (last time I checked at least) on 1UP, to see the beautiful job that crew did, even with the guillotine hanging over our heads every minute of the day." We can't wait...but we also wish it wasn't the final issue.

Cheating in a PC game is almost never considered a good thing. It can make others upset, ban you from servers, make your wife leave you...well, maybe not that. But developer Wideload and publisher D3 Publishing are hoping people will think cheating is a good thing when they play the upcoming downloadable title Texas Cheat 'Em.

Wideload is known for goofy game concepts like Stubbs The Zombie and last year's console game Hail to the Chimp. Texas Cheat 'Em sounds like a natural progression, Players can do things like "x-ray vision, pre-cognition, chip stealing, card swapping" and more to win a game of Texas Hold 'Em poker from opponants, Cheat attacks are earned by playing mini-games like Roulette, Slot Machines, Dice or Rock, Paper, Scissors. The game will also support up to eight player in online multiplayer. While Texas Cheat 'Em will be released first for consoles this spring it will also be released for the PC "at a later date".

UK based Eidos has been in financial trouble for a while now and today the publisher announced even more bad news as they have cut their revenue estimates for the full fiscal year due to disappointing US sales of Tomb Raider Underworld. Eidos said in a statement that while the game has sold well in Europe, the US sales have not been so lucky, saying, "In a difficult North American economy we have seen retailers restricting inventory levels and triple-A products being price discounted above our expectation."

As a result Tomb Raider Underworld is now estimated to have sold 1.5 million units world wide by the end of 2008, below Eidos' expectations. The company is now saying its full year revenue will be between 160 million-180 million pounds, below their previous estimate of between 180 million and 200 million pounds. Of course, late last year rumors were that Eidos was being considered for acquisition by several different parties.

It's not just Starcraft II that got Blizzard's attention this week. The official Diablo III web site has also posted up a total of five new screenshots from their upcoming fantasy action-RPG sequel. Naturally we have added those shots to our ever growing gallery of visuals from the game.

While there is one rather dull environmental shot in the new batch most of the new shots show off some rather big action. In one shot (the one above in fact) we mean that literally as our player character seems to be fighting a monster about 10 times its size. Blizzard is not likely to release Diablo III in 2009 but at least the new screenshots seem to be coming on a regular basis now.

Nvidia is making a splash this week with the introduction of their newest entries in their graphics chip family, the GeForce GTX 295 and GTX 285. The GTX 295 is Nvidia's new dual graphics chip design and is the company's answer to AMD/ATI's Radeon HD 4870 X2 card. As usual, Nvidia has also released new overall GeForce drivers for all of their currently supported chips. You can download the 181.20 versions at Nvidia's web site.

In addition to supporting the new high-powered GeForce chips, the new drivers also have performace improvements and bug fixes for a number of PC games. For more info you can check out the new release notes for the 181.20 drivers.

We are still very excited about Star Trek Online, especially since Cryptic Studios is behind it. The game, to now be published by Cryptic's new owners at Atari, is still in development for release in 2010 but this week a couple of new screenshots popped up on the game's official web site.

We have added both of them to our gallery but we have to say they are rather odd choices. Well one of the shots is, anyway. You can see the good shot above with a Federation ship exploring an asteroid field that has some bases. The other shot is..well...it's a very empty looking room with a small fire in the back. Not the most exciting shot we would have picked.

If you have been wondering what the so-called "elite" units are going to be in the Special Forces version of Empire: Total War, wonder no more. Valve's Steam service has now revealed the six special units that are included in the $69.99 version of the upcoming historical RTS game from The Creative Assembly and Sega.

Oddly enough, Steam is also offering the elite units as a separate $20 download (although you can just get the Special Forces package which adds the units automatically). What does an extra Andrew Jackson get you in the game? No phasers or jet planes, unfortunately, but you will get four different types of infantry forces along with the Ottoman Organ Gun (does it shoot out ottomans or organs?) and the big one; the HMS Victory.

This is the famous 104 gun sea vessel commanded by Lord Nelson of the Royal Navy. Lord Nelson died while commanding the vessel at the famous Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. She still is a commissioned vessel of the British Navy although she is now dry docked. And that's your history lesson for today.