As a promotion for the upcoming release of Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3, Electronic Arts has announced that C&C: Red Alert, the first game in the series, will be made available as a free download beginning on Sunday. The original game was created by Westwood Studios and released by Virgin Interactive way back in 1996 (EA bought both Westwood and Virgin's US operations in 1998).The alternate history RTS game will be first made available on the official C&C: Red Alert 3 web site at 12 noon PT on Sunday but we will have the download on our ultra fast servers right here at Big Download soon afterward. As we have previously reported, people whe pre-order Red Alert 3 will gain access to C&C: Red Alert 2 for free as well....

Mercenaries 2 is coming out for the PC platform on September 4 and publisher Electronic Arts is doing an interesting promotion for the Pandemic developed open world action game. Today they are giving away free gasoline at a gas station at 8489 Beverly Blvd. in Los Angeles.Of course, the setting for Mercenaries 2 is in the oil-rich country of Venezuela so giving out free gas is a perfect way to make people aware of the game. As you can see from the photos the gas station is full of signage for the game along with actors dressed as the mercs from the game. If you want to see a live feed from the station, Break.com has you covered....

Those who can't get enough explosions, helicopter jacking, or any of the other reasons to love Mercenaries 2 can get psyched to raise some havoc with this launch trailer. Prepare to cause destruction, and bring a friend along for the ride too!Download the Mercenaries 2 HD Launch Trailer (93 MB)...

Will Wright's heavily hyped alien life simulation Spore is getting ready for its September 7 launch but if you own a PC and don't want to fool with buying the retail copy of the game you can go ahead and pre-load your copy on your PC right now via a download from Electronic Arts' online store.The pre-loads will allow you to have nearly all of the game on your hard drive before September 7. When the game launches it will take about 30 minutes to decrypt the game from your hard drive and then you can start evolving your creatures to your heart's content. Keep in mind that this is for the game only; you won't get any of the extras in the retail Spore Galactic Edition. Mac owners can get their copy by going to the Green Tree Online web site where they state that pre-orders will get their download link and activation key via email. There doesn't appear to be any pre-loads for the Mac version....

This trailer shows off some of the unique factions and armies featured in BatteForge. Battleforge blends the action of real-time strategy with trading card strategy by bringing epic sized armies and gigantic creatures to life.Download the BattleForge HD Trailer (167 MB)...

We're fast approaching the final phases before Spore finally releases. The developers give us the low-down on the Civilization Phase, which looks a lot like a trimmed down and Sporified version of SimCity. In this phase, players will need to build up their civilizations based on different themes like war or economics to compete with other rising tribes across the world.Download Spore Civilization Phase HD Video (292 MB)Download Spore Tribe Phase HD Video (55 MB)Download Spore Creature Phase HD Video (28 MB)Download Spore Cell Phase HD Video (225 MB)...

We have a ton of PC games to play in the next three months or so and the first one out of the gate (we hope) is Mercenaries 2, the sequel to developer Pandemic's open world playground of death and destruction (While the original was published by LucasArts, Pandemic's new owners Electronic Arts will handle the sequel). Mercenaries 2 got a lot of attention when it was first announced at E3 2006 (and sometimes for the wrong reasons) but ahead of the game's release for the PC next week we wanted to pick five reasons we think we are going to love playing the game.This isn't a review, by the way; just some reasons why we are eagerly awaiting to have this title in our hard drives this week. Some of the reasons are obvious while one or two are surprises.Click on the image above to see more of "Five reasons why we think we will love Mercenaries 2"...

This Mercenaries 2 trailer starts the way any good game should. This guy yearns for a mission that goes, boom, boom, and boom! Love the smell of napalm in the morning? The day just isn't complete until building explode with huge mushroom clouds? This trailer calls in the air strikes to satisfy those cravings.Download the Mercenaries 2 Airstrikes Trailer (78 MB)...

By now we know that Electronic Arts is going to be pushing hard to hype up the release of the long awaited life simulation game Spore but we didn't know exactly how they would do it. CNet's News.com reports that EA has already been putting up large posters for the game on the side of buildings in San Francisco.EA wants to make this game a huge mainstream success like The Sims but this time they are really making sure people know about this game beforehand. The CNet author speculates about more possible promotions for the game. Will there be TV ads? Yep. Will there be magazine ads? They are already out there. But then he adds speculation about a Spore ARG (alternate reality game) to which we have to say, "Huh?" Isn't Spore a kind of ARG already? That seems kind of pointless....

One of the biggest attractions of the upcoming game Spore is the ability to design and evolve your own alien creatures. People who have used the already released Spore Creature Creator have gone nuts with their own creative monsters and some have had some . . . interesting appendanges. In a new chat about the game for the Associated Press (and posted on Yahoo) Spore's creator Will Wright says he doesn't mind the more adult creations that have been made for his game.Wright states, "Some of it's really good for what they were shooting for. It's amazingly explicit, especially when those creations are animated. We just have to make sure those people aren't messing up the experience for others." Spore will indeed have filtering software to keep people who download new user creator content for the game away from such creations if they so wish. Spore itself is still due for release on September 7....

Electronic Arts is really pushing the marketing of its upcoming survival horror game Dead Space. This week, details were revealed on one of the side projects for the game; the direct-to-DVD animated prequel that's being handled by Film Roman and Starz Media. The DVD will be released on Oct. 28 by Anchor Bay, a week after the game's release.The film will be released in both DVD and Blu-Ray formats and High-Def Digest reports that both versions will have deleted scenes and trailers, a digital copy version that can be transferred (legally) to your PC or mobile video device and two exclusive cheat codes for the game. The Blu-Ray version will have additional downloadable animatics from the movie and a Blu-Ray first; an isolated music score that you can download in MP3 format....

Patches update both the full retail and trial versions of the Spore Creature Creator to v1.01. Patches are for the PC version only. Please download the appropriate one for your version you have installed.Download the Spore Creature Creator 1.01 patch for full retail release (86 MB)Download the Spore Creature Creator 1.01 patch for trial version (86 MB)Spore Creature Creator v1.01 Patch Notes:Patch Fixes * Improved thumbnail resolutions for saved creatures. * Added five new animations, recorded when creating animated GIFs in Test Drive Mode. * Fixed a randomly occurring system hang. * Fixed a crash associated with EADM. * Creatures no longer disappear from the Sporepedia when the save flow is interrupted. * Corrected the Audio buzzing found on systems with nForce2 integrated audio. * Updated Spanish and Polish readme files. * Updated the EULA found in the installer. * Integrated the newest save creature PNG.NOTE: This allows creatures PNGs made with Spore to be drag-and-dropped into the Spore Creature Creator. Spore Creature Creator players who do not patch will not be able to drag-and-drop PNGs created in patched versions of the Spore Creature Creator or Spore. * Improves overall stability....

The latest Mercenaries 2 video shows shows about a minute and a half of someone playing through. Of course, plenty of bullets and explosions follow the player around, showing off the fully destructible environment. If you need a daily dose of explosives, this Mercenaries 2 video delivers.Download the Mercenaries 2 HD Gameplay Video (98 MB)...

It's not a massive shock considering all of the previous announcements (release date, open beta release date, etc) but today the official word came in from Mythic Entertainment and Electronic Arts. Their long awaited fantasy MMO Warhammer Online has "gone gold" meaning that the game's software is being duplicated into disks and being prepared to ship to stores.It's been a long hard road for the game's release to this point. A lot of people don't remember that this MMO adaptation of Games Workshop's war game was actually being developed by the UK company Climax before they pulled the plug in 2004. In 2005, Mythic Entertainment won the rights to develop the MMO game license and a year later EA came in and bought Mythic as a quick way to get the rights to a MMO. The title suffered many development delays before today's announcement. Warhammer Online is now due for release on September 18....

Last week, Electronic Arts let its hostile takeover attempt of fellow game publisher Take Two Interactive expire but stated they were still open to some kind of chat between the two rivals for some kind of deal. Now comes word (via a new filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission) that EA has put a gag on itself on any further public discussion on the subject thanks to entering a confidentiality agreement with each other.We will let EA's own words speak for themselves: "As a result, EA does not intend to make any further announcements regarding the status of any discussions or negotiations with Take-Two unless and until discussions between EA and Take-Two have been terminated or such parties have entered into a transaction." There. That should about do it for now....