The highly anticipated release of the PC port of Grand Theft Auto IV has been met with frustration by many gamers who have bought the title starting today. Gamers, especially those who have downloaded the open world action game via Valve's Steam service, have reported a number of bugs and crashes.

Big Download, in trying to review the game for the site, has come across one of the errors mentioned in a Steam forum post (thanks Shacknews): MMA10, which crashes the game to desktop after seeing the title's copyright screen. The temporary solution is not to sign onto the game's Rockstar Social Club online service. The catch is that while you can play the game in single player it deprives you of its multiplayer features.

Other errors we have seen include missing textures which seem to be solved if you don't have the game at super high (1900x1600) resolutions. Another game-loading error, RMN40, seems to be solved in Windows XP if you update the OS to the recent Service Pack 3 upgrade. Big Download has contacted Rockstar Games' PR folks to get a status report on the publisher's plans to resolve these many issues.

Several months ago we reported that the Austin-based game developer Heatwave Interactive had secured $7.5 million in venture capital funding. This week the developer announced who was going to be handling all that money. Patrick Goodwin, formerly the CFO and Treasurer of Valve, has been named as the new CFO of Heatwave.

Also announced as joining the team is Paul Fullwood, formerly of the now defunct Hasbro Interactive, who will be Heatwave's senior VP of business development. Also Jenny Bendel, formerly the marketing manager of ArenaNet. has joined Heatwave as its director of marketing. Heatwave has a number of unannounced game projects in the works but the first isn't expected to be released until 2010.

This trailer for Heroes Over Europe shows some of the World War II era aircraft players will be able to pilot, along with hints of the challenges they'll face.

Download HD Heroes Over Europe Trailer (41 MB)

Sony Online has been somewhat coy about pinpointing a release date for its upcoming super hero MMO DC Universe Online but in a brief article at MTV Multiplayer the game's script writer Geoff Johns states, ""It launches I think in early 2010, it could be late 2009." Johns has written a ton of DC Comics including JSA, Infinite Crisis and Flash among others.

It should be noted that Johns has mentioned that his main role in the development of the game is basically done so he may not be in constant contact with the development team at Sony Online. Still a 2010 release date does sound about right although a late 2009 release may be pushing things.
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Now that Ghost Busters: The Video Game has moved on to Atari as its new publisher, the game can get on with the business of trapping ghosts and averting the occasional apocalyptic event.

Download HD Ghost Busters: The Video Game Trailer (30 MB)

It's not exactly a huge shock but it's still very cool to hear the official news. MTV Multiplayer reports that during a presentation for advertisers at Microsoft's in-game ad division Massive it was revealed that Activision will be releasing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 in the fall of 2009.

While the report had no other details, it's likely that Infinity Ward is the developer for the game. They created the franchise and also were the team behind Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare in 2007 which was by far the most successful entry in the series. The title seems to suggest that the new game will be a direct sequel to the events in Call of Duty 4. The report also has reveals of other upcoming Activision games which are likely console only titles (including a James Bond themed racing game from Bizarre Creations).

This trailer for Codename: Panzers - Cold War, an upcoming real-time strategy game that deals with the conflicts that followed World War II. Judging from the footage, the temperatures may be dropping the this war is definitely still hot.

Download HD Codename: Panzers - Cold War (17 MB)

We've been following the sad tale of Brash Entertainment's brief life as a game publisher. The upstart company shut down last month with a number of movie and TV based titles still in the works. One of those games was actually finished just before Brash's shutdown. The Tale of Despereaux, based on the upcoming CGI film, was pretty much done for the PC and other platforms.

Now Variety is reporting that Atari, who is making a habit of getting games that have been dumped or orphened by other publishers, has grabbed the publishing rights to The Tale of Despereaux game and will quickly ship it to stores on Dec. 19. How quickly was this deal made? It's so quick that the game will still have the Brash Entertainment logo on the front. The fate of other in-development Brash titles is still unknown, however.

As promised a few weeks ago, Microsoft has now released a stand alone client for its Games For Windows Live service. Previously the service was put inside PC games that supported Live but now you can download it and have it ready to go on your desktop without having to start a game up.

At the moment the service is pretty bare bones in terms of content. There's only a handful of game videos to download and just one demo to check out, and it's for the PC version of the year old game Viva Pinata. There's no message center or friends access and there's not even a way to check out your Achievement points. You can add Microsoft Points to your account via the client, however.

Microsoft plans to use Games For Windows Live as a way to offer things like add-ons for titles like Fallout 3 and they have also said that having full games for download (a la Steam and Direct2Drive) is in the works as well. Still this first stand alone client release seems almost like a beta with just a few features implemented.

Update: It looks like the stand alone client was released as a way to update Games For Windows Live for the release of the PC version of Grand Theft Auto IV. Before you can play the game Rockstar's own update client requires that players download the stand alone client before they can play. Shacknews reports that European users have a demo of Kane and Lynch available through Games For Windows Live.

Download Games for Windows Live 2.0 (30 MB)

So you've bought Left 4 Dead, installed it, booted it up, and began a game with three of your best friends. But you are getting your ass kicked by the hordes of bloodthirsty zombies on the easiest difficulty setting. Not to fear! With our guide to the art (and zen) of zombie killing, you and your friends will be shotgunning Tanks and flipping the bird at Hunters in no time! Just try not to triggers any noisy generators or rusty gates on your way through this guide. You wouldn't want a horde of zombies to attack you out of nowhere, now would you?

You've begun to tire of survivors, and you've decided to move on to the scarier side of the fence and try out the awesome might of those special Infected that keep screwing you over in co-op play. Congratulations! You've graduated to Versus, the only competitive aspect of Left 4 Dead and a great gametype in-and-of itself. You won't have what it takes to kill those pesky survivors the first time you play, but with our details on Versus and how it works, you'll be set for a game of slaughtering unsuspecting humans in no time.

I was moved to make this the topic of this week's Big Ideas column after reading a review of Call of Duty: World at War. My first reaction was "Haven't we mined this genre by now?" Looking at a Wikipedia list of over 150 World War II-themed video games made me realize that this could very well continue on for years to come. My second reaction became "Why haven't gamers (and developers) gotten tired of the WWII setting?" Clearly, there is a reason these games keep iterating, and a reason players keep buying them.

That led me to my third and instigating thought: "Do we, as gamers, need the real-world setting to enjoy a game more?" Perhaps the continuing popularity of WWII as an environment is the real draw to these games, despite any innovations in actual gameplay mechanics. If this is true, I can only presume that players respond emotionally to the events contained in that war -- events that they themselves as a whole could not have experienced directly. This leads me to ask "How would a veteran of World War II respond to Call of Duty: World at War?"

Need for Speed Undercover goes back to the Most Wanted formula by combining illegal street racing with pulse pounding police chases. This time, the twist is that you're playing as an undercover agent whose job is to infiltrate an organized crime ring. The only way to get into the inner circle is to improve your reputation as a wheelman and impress people as you work your way up the hierarchy. However, things quickly drive into a wall, and the game becomes too infuriating to play.

Earlier today we reported that a former Half-Life 2 mod turned commerical product called Garry's Mod had generated over $3 million in sales just by being on Valve's Steam service. Today Gamasutra has an article that reveals how many games Valve itself has sold. There's a big catch, however. The numbers are only for retail sales of Valve's products. They don't include the number of units sold from the Steam service.

Valve has always kept specifc numbers related to its Steam service to itself but there have been hints that those numbers are considerable. Even Valve's own CEO Gabe Newell has said he expects Steam sales of its games to surpass retail sales numbers.

So while these figures don't really give the whole picture here are Valve's own numbers on the retail sales of its games so far. The numbers do not include Valve's just released zombie co-op shooter Left 4 Dead. They also, for some unknown reason, don't include sales of the stand alone version of Day of Defeat which Activision released in 2005. Finally they don't include the retail sales of the PC versions of Team Fortress 2, Portal and Half-Life 2: Episode 2 which were released as separate products several months after the release of The Orange Box.

Half-Life: 9.3 million units
Half-Life Opposing Force: 1.1 million units
Half-Life Blue Shift: 800,000 units
Counter-Strike: 4.2 million units
Counter-Strike Condition Zero: 2.9 million units
Counter-Strike Source: 2.1 million units
Half-Life 2: 6.5 million units
Half-Life 2 Episode 1: 1.4 million units
The Orange Box: 3 million units

Normally we don't mention news stories about in-game ad deals because, well, they are usually boring. That's not the case today as Microsoft-owned in-game ad company Massive just announced a major deal with Blizzard that will give them control of ads running on all of Blizzard's web sites, including their popular Battle.net site.

No you won't be seeing in-game ads for World of Warcraft, Diablo III or Starcraft II but this new deal does give Massive a major account since all of Blizzard's sites are among the busiest web sites in the world. In a separate deal, Massive will also be handing in-game ad support for Blizzard's other half, Activision, for 18 of their current and upcoming games. Specific financial terms were not disclosed.

The latest free content update to NCsoft's long running super-hero MMO City of Heroes has now gone live, according to a note on the game's official message boards. As we have previously reported Issue 13, titled Power and Responsibility, adds a number of new features, including the concept of Day Jobs to the game. Basically it means that locations in the game when players log out determine their "secret identity" (log out of City Hall and your offline character becomes a city official, for example). Each job can unlock new rewards once you spent enough time at it.

Other new features include allowing two build-outs for each character, a Leveling Pack that lets you and a friend make characters and have them have the same experience points (even if your buddy plays more than you) along with new Power Sets and other new additions. Our sister site Joystiq has a quick interview with NCsoft's Matt Miller about today's update. NCsoft is also signing up folks to test out the upcoming Macintosh version of City of Heroes. The sign-up page for the beta test announces that the Mac version will have its own exclusive costume set and a Mission Teleporter that will allow players to instantly go their active mission.