mercenaries posts

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

The Mechwarrior series is one of the better in gaming. Based upon an old board game, they have consistently put players into the cockpits of complicated war machines and told them to, plainly, "figure it out." While the second is one of the most revered classics on the PC, there have been four main series games to date. The last is Mechwarrior 4: Mercenaries, and while it may have not received the attention that Mechwarrior 2 did on release, it's grown considerably in appeal as time has gone on. The folks at MekTek have partnered with Microsoft and the remnants of FASA to bring this excellent game to everyone for free, and with it being free, there's now no reason not to play it. After all, it's a large, commercial-quality game that runs beautifully on modern systems.

In what has to be regarded as a very quick turnaround, Electronic Arts has come on out and admitted that Mercs Inc is indeed in development at its Los Angeles development studios. The game, also known as Mercenaries Inc, will be the third game in the action series that was originally developed by the now shuttered Pandemic Studios. The official word came just a few hours after a leaked trailer showing off gameplay hit the internet.

EA's press release on the game has little info on the title itself, nor any word on the game's platforms or release date. It did hint strongly that the Pandemic name would be used in the branding of the game when it is released even though the team of former Pandemic developers is working out of EALA now.

The shut down last week of Pandemic Studios' Santa Monica offices is not supposed to be the end of Pandemic itself or the original brands that the developer, through Electronic Arts, still owns. Which is why the above and supposedly leaked video might actually be made into a full game one day.

Web site Bitmob states that the above video, supposedly showing off a multiplayer-oriented entry in Pandemic's Mercenaries series called Mercenaries Inc, is real. Their anonymous sources says the trailer itself was made a few months ago at Pandemic. As for the game itself, the site claims that the title is still in pre-production at EA's Los Angeles studio and being made by the few ex-Pandemic staffers that made the transition to their new EALA offices. Even if all of the above is true it will likely be some time before the game itself is released.

Sometimes you just need to sit down, slide a floppy into your A: drive, and enjoy gaming retro style. We know this all too well! That's why we have a list of the best and brightest from days long gone. These are some of our favorite games of all time, and we're sure that you'll love them as much as we do, if not more. Welcome to Boot Disk, and enjoy the retro ride!

When it comes to X-COM: UFO Defense, there have only been two games that have ever truly captured the feel of top-level strategy with bottom-level tactics. The first is X-COM: Apocalypse, which was the only other X-COM game to be made by the original team. The second is Jagged Alliance 2, which was made by a completely different team for a completely different company. Where X-COM is about alien invasions, Jagged Alliance is about private military contractors. They could not be more thematically different. And yet, when you begin to play, you realize that, like X-COM, Jagged Alliance 2 is a truly incredible game that all strategy fans should play.

With the huge success that the New York Comic Con had this past weekend, it's clear that comic books and games have lots of links and a shared audience. We have posted up a feature about comic books that we think should be turned into games but the truth is more and more games are being adapted and expanded in comic book form.

Various publishers have released game-based comics over the years and today in the first part of a two part series Big Download looks at just some of the attempts to turn games into four-color entertainments. Stay tuned as we will have even more examples on Tuesday. Update: The second part of the feature is now up.

Click on the link above to continue reading From Comics to Games: Part 1