audiosurf posts

Gearbox Software's head man Randy Pitchford's statements in a recent Maximum PC magazine interview (recently reprinted on the mag's web site) about his objections to the PC game download service Steam continue to be commented on by in the game industry. Pitchford stated the he feels the ownership of Steam by game developer Valve is a big conflict of interest. He also felt that Valve was exploiting smaller game developers.

We've already reported on what Steam user Tripwire Interactive has said about the service (basically if there was no Steam there would be no Tripwire Interactive). Now Ars Technica has collected some more thoughts from some other smaller dev team. The main consensus is that while there could be conflict of interest, Valve has yet to abuse their power. 2D Boy rep Ron Carmel stated, "Quite the contrary, Valve offers the most developer-friendly terms for digital distribution in the industry." Dylan Fitterer, the creator of the hit indie rhythm game Audiosurf, launched the game via Steam last year and has had massive sales success. He states, "If this is exploitation, more please."

The NVIDIA line of graphics processors are among the most popular (if not the most popular) brand of high-end gaming hardware available today. However, some would argue that these days, graphics cards are offering fewer significant returns with each successive generation. With this in mind, it becomes important for the company to start shifting focus from strictly speed and high resolution frame rates (which are still a very important aspects of PC gaming) to the addressing the gameplay experience itself. One step in this direction was through adopting PhysX technology into its repertoire and having the software run using GPU instead of through a separate card. With PhysX, PC games offer deeper immersion using effects that operate in a realistic non-scripted fashion, like with smoke, cloth and liquids moving in real-time.

NVIDIA's 3D Vision technology takes the game experience even further by bringing games into the third dimension by stereoscoping games in real-time and using special shutter glasses. Unfortunately, not a lot of gamers have $600 to spend on 3D graphics. The glasses alone cost over $100 and the required 3D ready monitors that have a 120Hz refresh rates are very expensive and hard to find, leaving 3D out of the hands of the average consumer. However, NVIDIA has found a way around the prohibitive costs and an easy way to deliver a 3D experience. Not counting the cost of the video card itself, gamers can use NVIDIA 3D Vision Discover for almost nothing... or in some cases, exactly nothing. That's right, by taking the PhysX approach and incorporating 3D technology into the software drivers, PC gamers can literally give their games more depth.

Download the Resident Evil 5 Benchmark

Not to be outdone by Direct2Drive's previously announced indie game sales bundle, the folks at Valve have decided to hold their own sale on Steam that lowers the cost of getting into the indie games scene. From now until Monday you can buy all the games below in one collection for just $29.99. That's a price cut from $119.90 if each game were bought seperately

Audiosurf
Blueberry Garden
Braid
Crayon Physics Deluxe
Darwinia
Everyday Shooter
Gish
Mr. Robot
The Path
World of Goo

If that's just too much indie game action for your blood you can also purchase Blueberry Garden, Braid, Everyday Shooter, The Path and World of Goo together in a bundle for just $19.99. That's compared to a normal $59.95 price

We thought Valve was done with its weekend Steam sales deals this week with its Oddworld game discounts. Nope. Not a chance. Valve has decided to put every indie game in its library on sale this weekend as well, giving some not-so-well-known titles some needed attention.

While some of the games have just a 10 percent discount this weekend, others have larger price cuts. For example all of Meridian4's indie games have a 20 percent discount this weekend. Some titles are priced as low as 33 percent off its regular Steam price this weekend. Among those titles are World of Goo, Defense Grid: The Awakening and Audiosurf. So if you are ready to try out something that's outside the game norm, this might be a good time to do so.

If you are a fan of the great racing-music game Audiosurf (and if you are not, then you need to be) you've got a major new update to download via Steam tonight. The update is more than just a bug fix patch; a number of new features have been added to the popular game.

Among the new additions is full Unicode support, new Russian language support, and if you have one of those netbooks that the kids are talking about a new Minimal detail setting, Freeride in the game also has two new modes; Autopilot and Visualiser, the latter of which brings some new graphics options.

Welcome to the Indie Showcase, a semi-regular column on Big Download that takes a look at games we haven't covered on the site that we really think you should play.

Wow. 2008 sure was a whirlwind year for independent games on PC and console alike. Games like World of Goo, Braid, and Everyday Shooter have defied our expectations and brought forth a sort of indie gaming renaissance. So let's take a look back at all those indie games released or significantly updated in 2008. There's a lot that can be learned from the independent and the auteur, after all. These games will be in no particular order, because I don't want to taint this list with trying to name a best, second best, and so on. They are all great games.

Click on the image above to continue reading about the best indie games of 2008

This Sunday Spike TV will broadcast its annual Video Game Awards ceremony and one of the catagories will be the new Best Independent Game award. Today Spike TV and the award's sponsor Mountain Dew announced that the nominees will be made available for free for a limited amount of downloads. The nominated games include two PC titles, World of Goo and Audiosurf.

Details on how to get the free games will be made available at the end of The Next Great Game Gods, a Spike TV special that will air on Friday at 12:30 am ET. The program will feature Gametrailers.TV host Geoff Keighley interviewing a number of the nominees for the award including Dylan Fitterer, the creator of Audiosurf, and 2D Boy's Ron Carmel and Kyle Gabler, the creators of World of Goo. The special will also feature an interview with Spore creator Will Wright.

So you are looking for a new experience in gaming. But the mainstream market is getting you down with its high price tags and extensive DRM. But there's a lot of great games out there that you can get cheap. The indie market is strong, and some of the best games around can be found for half the price of the price of more mainstream games like Dead Rising or Fallout 3. They've also got far less rigorous specs than their mainstream counterparts, which is also a welcome change of pace. We've got a list of some of the best indie games money can buy, ranging from the puzzle extravaganza World of Goo to the clever and addicting Armageddon Empires. So indulge in the little guy this holiday season. You won't be disappointed with the results you get.

Click on the image above to continue reading Big Download's 2008 PC Game Holiday Gift Guide

Spike TV will once again hold their own awards ceremony devoted to video games this year. Today the nominees were announced for the annual Spike TV Video Game Awards and they have all the usual suspects. The awards themselves will be show on the cable TV network on Dec. 14.

You can head on over to the Spike TV web site to check out all the nominees. The catagory of best PC game has just four games; Left 4 Dead (not yet officially released) Warhammer Online, Crysis Warhead and Spore. We are sure a lot of folks are wondering why games like Sins of a Solar Empire, Far Cry 2, Fallout 3 and others didn't get nominated in this catagory. One interesting new development is the addition of the Best Independent Game where two PC titles got nods, World of Goo and Audiosurf.

It's been the definition of a sleeper hit in 2008 as the acclaimed indie puzzle-music-racing game Audiosurf became a major hit when it debuted on Valve's Steam download service back in February. However there are those folks who haven't learned about this whole "Intertubes" or "Intraweb" or whatever the kids are calling it so they most likely haven't even heard of the title.

Now comes word that Ascaron Entertainment will be releasing Audiosurf to European retail stores beginning in October for the cheap, cheap price of 9.99 EUR. The game, which takes a person's songs and converts them into a digital looking race track, has no US retail release date. However if you are brave you could try this "World Wide Sports" thingie...