Welcome to Freeware Friday, a weekly column showcasing excellent games that you can play free of charge!After a few weeks hiatus, Freeware Friday is back and better than ever! And this week, it's to showcase possibly one of the best freeware racing games of all time. Yeah, I know, normally I do action and platforming and whatnot, but this game is incredible to no end! It's freely available just about anywhere, has excellent community support, great modding tools, and is just downright incredibly fun to play. The fact that it's on Steam (meaning you can obtain it incredibly easy anywhere) just furthers its incredible gameplay. I am, of course, talking about the phenomenon that is Trackmania Nations Forever....

We've been waiting for this announcement for a while but now Capcom has finally announced that Bionic Commando Rearmed, the 3D remake of the original side-scroller action game, will be made available for download for the PC on August 14.The title, developed by GRIN, will be priced at $14.99 and will be made available via several download outlets, including Steam, Direct2Drive and Gamergate. This is the game that got an "M" rating due to the fact that it will replicate something from the original game's climax that we won't spoil here. Of course, the full-fledged sequel to the original game, simply called Bionic Commando, is due out sometime in 2008....

Valve just keeps giving customers of its Steam service some extra value in its game collections. This weekend Steam announced the Strategy First collection with a whopping 22 games available to download from the Canadian based game publisher (some of the titles are Empire Interactive games; both companies are owned by Silverstar Holdings).If you bought all of the games separately via Steam it would cost $339.78 but under the Strategy First collection you can get them all for only $69.99. That price is apparently only until August 18; there's no word on what the price for the collection will be after that date....

Gamers interested in a stylistic approach to 2D platforming should note the arrival of Eternity's Child on Valve's Steam digital distribution service. Even better, the visually appealing platformer developed by SilverSphere Studios is currently marked down 10 per cent from its standard price of $4.99, weighing in at only $4.49 until August 7.Boasting "quirky" hand-drawn 2D graphics, Eternity's Child should be a breath of fresh air for gamers tired of the seemingly never-ending swarm of photorealistic shooters. Graphics can only look so realistic, but games such as Team Fortress 2 and Eternity's Child, which feature a unique stylized approach, can seem fresh due to the unique approach to aesthetics. ...

Usually Valve announces which game or games it will have as a heavy discount for the weekend via Steam. However, developer S2 Games has beat Valve to the punch by announcing on their web site that starting sometime today and running through the weekend that the multiplayer fantasy FPS-RTS game Savage 2 will have its price reduced from $29.99 to just $9.99.In addition to the Steam sale, S2 Games is supposed to release a patch for Savage 2 by the end of the week. The web site states the patch will have " . . .lots of improvements, balance, and optimizations. The K2 Engine will run better with additonal enhancements." So it seems like perfect timing for the Steam sale....

If you download your games via Steam, you might be a . . . well, not a redneck but maybe smart. Valve's Steam service continues to gain publishers and this week Steam added seven games from ValuSoft, the budget brand from THQ.All seven games in the line-up cost $19.99 but until August 5 people can download and purchase them for 10 percent off that price. That includes the PC game Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader? This adaptation of the Fox primetime game show lets you embarrass yourself in the comfort of your own home answering questions that you should know the answers to and getting ribbed by the show' host Jeff Foxworthy. That's more terrifying than playing Doom....

Team Fortress 2 is one of the most enduringly great multiplayer shooters of all time. This is in no small way a result of the many frequent updates the game receives to fix glitches, balance maps, and just in general make the game better. Another update has been released, and this one fixes a lot of problems. Some example of the things fixed are: Players can no longer fire through grates, walls, or other thin obstacles Players killing themselves now gives the kill credit to the last player that damaged them Kritzkrieg now works on servers with criticals turned off Backburner no longer gives a health bonus This is only a small sample of the bountiful fixes and tweaks in the new update. To download the patch, simply log on to Steam. Full patch notes can be found at Steam's site....

Every weekend Valve puts up one game on their Steam download service that is sold for 50 percent or more for just a couple of days. This weekend, they have one of the best games in recent years at a bargain price. We are speaking of Bioshock, the innovative and visually terrific first person shooter from developer 2K Boston/Australia and publisher 2K Games.If you haven't experienced exploring the underwater city of Rapture and trying to save or kill Little Sisters, you owe it to yourself to download the PC version of the game via Steam for just $14.99 before Monday. Oh, did you hear there's a sequel and a movie version in the works? Yep, it definately something that all the kids are talking about....

Talk about making a game better on a regular basis. Audiosurf has already received one free, massive update, and now comes another one. This one, though, is interesting. This new update allows the players to make their own game modes by changing the names of the song they are playing. They can do so by adding one or multiple tags after the title of the song. We have to say that this sort of improvements to an already great game just impress us all that much more. An explanation of the system can be found on the Audiosurf forums, and the full list of tags can be found after the break or in the Steam update....

During E3 we managed to miss the fact that Valve's Steam service added a number of new games to its downloadable line-up. The major new additions are all of the PC games in Ubisoft's Ghost Recon series of tactical shooters. Valve has all five games in a special collection pack for $39.99 and until July 22 you can get the pack for the discounted price of $35.99.Also added to the Steam line-up is the Monte Cristo RPG Silverfall and the indie casual puppet themed game The Wonderful End of the World from developer Dejobaan Games. Both titles are currently 10 percent off their regular price this week only...

During an interview at E3, Valve's Doug Lombardi revealed that the company hopes to add a movie making function to Left 4 Dead at some point after the launch of the core game. He loosely described features that would allow players to record, edit, play back, and possibly share their virtual near-death experiences. Sadly, that functionality probably will not be available for a while; we didn't see it in our own hands-on experience with the game.Lombardi also mentioned that Valve went to Microsoft, Yahoo!, and RealNetworks when it was first conceptualizing Steam, but was told by all that such a service would only exist "10, 15 years in the future." Of course, now Microsoft operates the separate and struggling Games for Windows Live service, which shares some features with Steam.And yes, we know the above screenshot features the old, now-replaced Left 4 Dead characters. But how about a little nostalgia?...

Valve Software's Gabe Newell took the stage at EA's E3 press conference to present the cooperative horror game Left 4 Dead. We have the video of that presentation on the other side of the jump, but here are the Cliff's Notes.All four current player character models will be replaced with the above-pictured folks. This was probably a good change; the old ones weren't very likable or varied. In addition to that bit of info, Newell talked about the game's AI director, which will adjust the gameplay to match players' playstyles, positions, and status.He also said the game is coming out on November 4th, but that news ain't new. Anyway, the game seems to be coming along swimmingly. Be sure and check out the video after the break!...

This year's E3 manifests the industry's dearth of creativity via the rampant case of sequel-itis running wild throughout the development world, but that doesn't mean you can't continue creating your own unique creations with flexible tools such as the popular Garry's Mod. A new update to Garry's Mod is now available over Steam and will be applied upon restarting Valve's digital distribution service. The update includes fixes such as the shotgun having unintentionally decreased damage, TF2'2 blood overriding Half-Life 2's, and a crash that occurred "when prop's physics object couldn't be created," according to the official Steam website....

Valve's Steam service has now posted up their weekend sales deal and once again it's a good one. For this weekend only you can download and purchase Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-slick Precipice of Death, Episode One for just $9.99. That's a savings of $10 from the regular $19.99 price.Developed by Hothead Games, the downloadable only title got some mixed reviews but most were fairly positive for the first episode in this "M" rated adventure-RPG series based on the popular Penny Arcade comics. The second episode is currently in development but no release date has been revealed....

PC owners get another new update for Valve's popular multiplayer shooter Team Fortress 2 this week. This update, which as always is available when signing on via Valve's Steam client, is mostly to deal with a number of minor bug fixed in the game.While this update is a small one this week, Valve does have plans to release a more substantial patch in the near future. As we reported earlier this month the Heavy character class will be the next in the game to gain new unlockable achievements and weapons to use in the game. At the moment there's no word on when the Heavy update will be released....