plants-vs-zombies posts

It's not really game related but how cool is it that "The Rock" showed up on Monday Night Raw last night? Ah, we are so old.

• Steam has a new automatic update available for the beta of Counter-Strike Source.
• Minecraft's creator Marcus "Notch" Persson is back from a two week vacation and is working on more updates.
• THQ will release a retail boxed version of Frictional Games' Amnesia The Dark Descent to US stores next week.
• As promised the open beta for the upcoming MMO Rift has started and will last until February 21.
• AMD has released the 11.2 driver updates for its Radeon graphics cards.
• There's going to be a Plants Vs Zombies board game in fall 2011.

Another busy day with another early and exclusive game related announcement. We could get used to this:

• Blizzard has decided to hold off on releasing the public 1.2 patch for StarCraft 2 until sometime next week.
• Players of Global Agenda can refer friends to buy the game at 50 percent off for a limited time.
• Lenovo has a prototype laptop case mod that turns a laptop into an arcade fighting machine. Neat.
• Steam has automatic patch updates available for Winter Voices and Arcadia.
• Check out a seven page preview of Dark Horse's next Mass Effect comic book mini-series.
• Plants Vs Zombies in real life. We would love this on our front lawn.

The Steam PC game download site continues to willingly give out some huge one-day price cuts on top of the sales that are already in place as part of its annual holiday sales event. Here's the latest list of games with price cuts that will last until 1 pm Eastern time on Thursday:

Dead Space - $6.80
Plants Vs Zombies Game of the Year Edition - $4
Swords and Soldiers - $2.50
Kane and Lynch 2 - $4.99
Brothers In Arms series - Save 50 percent off all games in series
Hearts of Iron III Complete Pack (game plus all DLC) - $14.10
City of Heroes Going Rogue Complete Collection - $10
Greed Corp - $2.50
The Quake Collection (all games in series except Quake IV and Enemy Territory: Quake Wars) - $10.20
Sniper Ghost Warrior - $7.50
The Ball - $4.99
Amnesia The Dark Descent - $6.80 or $4.80 if you own any game in the Penumbra series.

Once again we will still be updating and posting news and some cool features throughout the next 10 days or so while other sites will shut down completely. However it looks like news from now until January 3 will finally be on the slow side. So if you don't see a news post every hour on the hour you will know what happened :)

• There's a new Natural Selection 2 beta patch available to download on Steam.
• Steam has new automatic updates for Team Fortress 2, King's Bounty Crossworlds, Pirates, Vikings and Knights II, Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee, and Plants Vs Zombies Game of the Year Edition.
• The StarCraft II web site has some more "lost transmissions" to check out.
• Sign ups for beta testing for the upcoming Everquest II expansion Destiny of Velious have started.
• Yes, the Interplay-Bethesda Softworks Fallout court battle is still going on.
• The Desura PC game and PC game mod download service is officially out of beta.

The new Games For Windows Marketplace web site recently had a number of titles sold for just 99 cents for one day only. Ah, good times. But that promotion is over now. However it doesn't mean that Microsoft is setting down now. Today the site revealed a new week long sale for three well known casual games.

From now until December 16, three of PopCap Games' most popular games are on sale on the Games For Windows Marketplace web site for 25 percent off their normal prices. Bookworm, Zuma's Revenge and the major pop culture hit Plants Vs Zombies will be priced at just $7.49 each for the next week.

Black Friday is fast approaching but some outlets are already breaking out the price cuts early. One of them is PopCap Games who today announced that all of the casual game publisher's downloadable titles will be 50 percent off for the rest of the week.

That means terrifically addictive games like Plants Vs Zombies, Zuma, Peggle and Bejeweled should be almost impulse buys for anyone that loves great PC games. The sale ends on November 29. Keep in mind that this deal does not include bundle and game packs. The company's next major game release, Bejeweled 3, is due for release on December 7.

Not to be outdone by GamersGate, the Impulse download site is now offering up its own Halloween-based PC game download sale with price cuts on a number of scary and semi-scary games. Many of the games on sale have had their prices cut by as much as 50 percent off.

Among the games on sale this week include the recent Haunted House remake for just $9.99, the Penumbra Collection for $10, Amnesia: The Dark Descent for $9.99. Plants Vs Zombies Game of the Year Edition for $7.49, Dead Space for $9.99, and the not-very-scary game Sins of a Solar Empire for $8.95.

Publisher Blizzard has teamed up in the past with PopCap Games to offer up free Bejewled and Peggle add-ons for its fantasy MMO World of WarCraft. But it looks like Blizzard has done PopCap an even bigger solid for the upcoming expansion pack World of WarCraft: Cataclysm. As first revealed by the CynicalBrit.com site via a YouTube video, it's been discovered that the beta of the game has an in-game (not an add-on) quest that looks and plays an awful lot like PopCap's hit tower defense game Plants vs Zombies.

It's not actually called Plants Vs Zombies; the "quest" is called Peacebloom vs Ghouls. But as you can see in the above video the quest certainly looks and plays much like PopCap's title. There's no word if PopCap approves of this although we suspect they don't mind. Hopefully this little mini-game will be available when the expansion is officially launched later this year.

[Via Rock Paper Shotgun]

Another busy day brings the work week to a close. Next week is the Tokyo Game Show which should have a couple of PC game-related announcements even though its mostly a console-based show.

• This week's Left 4 Dead 2 Mutation gameplay mode is a repeat of Follow The Lifer.
• Steam bug patches are now available for Plants vs Zombies: Game of the Year Edition, Team Fortress 2, and Worms Reloaded.
• Minecraft and its server also has a new update via its auto-updater.
• Just a reminder: The official StarCraft II custom map contest closes for entry on Saturday.

This week started out a little slow but ended with a ton of announcements and reveals. And with Gamescom coming up next week you can bet there will be lots more to read about in the near future:

• The Penny Arcade web site has started posting up the fictional story for the canceled third game episode for Penny Arcade Adventures.
• Bethesda Games Studios is still working on a game and no, you can't know what it is yet.
• There's an odd little secret in Plants Vs Zombies' achievement screen.
• All of Valve's Left 4 Dead merchandise is on sale on Valve's online store until August 17.
• Victoria 2 is now available on Steam and for the next week you can get Victoria 1 Complete for free if you purchase Victoria 2.
• The upcoming zombie themed tactical RTS game Trapped Dead now has an official web site.
• Check out this video of a StarCraft 2 third person "zombie shooter" map (and we use that term loosely)
• For some reason NBC is promoting the upcoming TV show The Event with a contest that will send five winners to BlizzCon 2010.