I previously talked about Captain Forever during its pre-launch phase, when you had to pay $20 to access it. The game is now available for free, here.

And I'm still horrendous at it.

Captain Forever is what you might get if you crossed Banjo/Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts with Space Invaders. You build your own ship in realtime by scavenging the parts of enemy vessels and adding them to your own, until you find a baddie with nicer thrusters or shields or blasters, at which point you defeat them in battle and harvest their parts, and so on and so forth until you die.

That's the idea, anyway. Unless I get tremendously lucky and the game spawns a ship made up of nothing but awesome guns and no engines, I still find myself completely unable to build a ship of any strength -- by the time the Echo-level bad guys show up, I'm pretty much screwed. I'm not entirely sure how much of this is my fault, and how much of it is the game's design, but smarter people seem to be having a lot of fun with it.

Either way, the damn thing is free -- not like you've got much to lose. Should you decide to donate $20, however, you'll gain access to Captain Successor, the sequel to Forever which includes a bunch of new weapons and ship types.

Which I also suck at.

First thing's first -- Zipper Interactive has announced that its beta program for the massive online PlayStation 3 exclusive shooter MAG has been extended. It was originally scheduled to end on November 23, but that's so last week.

"MAG Beta 4 program" will continue this week, and the next phase -- "MAG Beta 4.5" -- will re-launch on November 24 with another small download. What that means exactly is unclear, but if you've already pre-ordered MAG with GameStop, you should have received a beta key that will work throughout the beta. (You should still be able to pre-order online and get your working code; Zipper says in-store keys will "no longer support" the beta.")

Want a key? Well, we have 100 keys to give away today. To win, simply comment and tell us which of the game's private military factions you'll join when you sign up and why. You can get more info on the factions from our earlier preview of the game. 

We'll choose our 100 favorite answers (starting at around 5:00pm Eastern), and message you your key using Destructoid's new private messaging system (which is also in beta). Good luck! 

Zombies. Gamers love them. They infest almost every single genre of gaming and then some. There are zombie shooters, zombie survival-horror, zombie platformers, zombie tower defense games, zombie action games. In fact, it's pretty safe to say that zombies have pretty much had a high caliber game in almost every genre out there -- except one.

The zombies in the world of MMOs are surprisingly lacking. Yes, there are a few low-budget, web-based zombie MMOs floating around out there. But unlike every other genre, no one has take a stab at going all out with zombies in an MMO.

Enter Jeff Strain and his new company Undead Labs. If you haven't heard Strains name before, you might not be that into MMOs. But his credits include founding ArenaNet, lead programmer on World of Warfcraft, executive producer of Guild Wars, NCsoft's President of Product Development and throw in some StarCraft, Diablo and Warcraft III credits just for good measure. Needless to say, the man knows his MMOs, and now he's making a zombie one.

Destructoid got the chance to talk with Strain about his upcoming company, his new zombie MMO, and the state of the MMO in general.

Oh, did I mention it's a console MMO. Yea, things are getting interesting.

Last week, I took a trip out to Vancouver to visit United Front Games' studio, and get hands on time with its upcoming PlayStation 3 exclusive, ModNation Racers. While I was there, I used the game's insanely deep editing tools to design my own racer, a bloody mess of an undead ghoul. 

Well, it followed me home. Sort of. 

A physical mini-figure of my creation showed up in the mail today, courtesy of Sony, United Front Games, and Offload Studios, a Canadian company that brings virtual characters to "life" in the form of actualized statues. As you can see, the little bugger fits nicely next to my apple and PS3 controller... where it belongs. 

The process Offload Studios used to bring is pretty incredible, which you can see in the video after the jump. It's a bit of an advertisement, but it's certainly interesting. 

ModNation Racers ships next year, and it looks like I'll be re-creating this dude when I get my hands on it. We have history now.

Videogames: The create murderers. They breed rapists. They warp our children. Now they violate international law and allow gamers to commit heinous war crimes. That's the assertion of two human rights organizations, in any case. They conducted what one could kindly call a ludicrously unimportant study to come to their conclusions and have managed to prove ... well, nothing.

Trial and Pro Juventute are the two groups who played these games under the guidance of humanitarian lawyers, looking at such games as Army of Two, Call of Duty: World at War, Far Cry 2 and many more. It seems that their only real goal in this study was to piss and moan about the results. Piss and moan they did.

"The practically complete absence of rules or sanctions is ... astonishing," states the study. " ... "[We] call upon game producers to consequently and creatively incorporate rules of international humanitarian law and human rights into their games."

Games were chosen over movies thanks to their interactivity, which the study claims blurs the lines between reality and fiction to create a "simulation of real life situations on the battlefield." The report was critical of the fact that characters can be tortured, summary executions can be found and "protected objects" like churches and mosques can be destroyed. Videogames don't wage war according to the Geneva convention, basically.

This is one of the stupidest game-related studies ever.

It’s not hard to become numb while competing in an online shooter. As these components continue to become beefier and more complex, the impact an individual has in the outcome of a match shrinks. But not every upcoming online setup is following this trend: Digital Illusions CE is blending massive team strategy with individual, hard-nosed impact in Battlefield: Bad Company 2.

I’ll give you an example. In a single match of BC2 last evening, I sabotaged two Russian beacons while keeping my feats-in-progress going with a hot barrel and a magazine packed with lead death-dealers. I butchered ten combatants, helped to defend a position from incoming armor, and jolted around six fallen comrades with a vicious blast of electrical current -- all in a span of nine or so minutes.

I didn’t need to kill 20 people in a row or compete for countless hours for the privilege of experiencing success. I just needed to load the BC2's closed beta and hop into a match.

A short while back, Namco Bandai had teased that an RPG will be making a big comeback, and fans excitedly crossed their fingers for a new Xenosaga or other such venerable franchise. If you're a fan of the Xenosaga series, you are to be disappointed bitterly. If you're a fan of the poor man's Pokemon, you are to be thrilled.

Yep, Digimon is coming back.

The big RPG tease was to herald the return of Digimon, Scamco's male-centric Tamagotchi franchise that eventually got its own TV series and became quite a popular Japanese fixture toward the end of the nineties. There is to be no Xenosaga, and no Baiten Kaitos. We should have seen this coming, really.

The new game appears to be called Digimon Story, and it's due for arrival on the Nintendo DS. Yeah I know, this sucks.

[Thanks, Miles]

I remember being in college. It seemed like everything that involved money was a hassle. I had to be that guy. I had to almost always interject that I did not have enough money to go out and eat. Or see a movie. Or buy deodorant. Being poor as sh*t is almost a rite of passage into adulthood.

The folks at Goozex knows all about the college money situation. If you're that guy, to help you out, Goozex is waiving their fee for selling videogames and movies on their fantastic games trading service. Buy and sell for free, if you're a college student. Nice, huh?

All you need to get this fee-less trading going on is a .edu email address. That's it! The promotion runs from now through January 31st.

There's already a savings in buying games at Goozex, and now you save a little bit more. Put that toward cheap beer, condoms, and Dollar Menu items for lunch.

Shocker: Bioware might be developing an original IP.

According to once-Bioware producer Daniel Roy’s Linked In profile, the studio was working on an “unreleased original IP” between the January 2008 and June 2009. Roy was a senior producer on the project.

We assume that the IP is still being developed, but haven’t the slightest idea what it is, when it could hit shelves, be teased, or even be announced. We do know, though, that sugar free jam on low carb, chemically twisted toast served alongside a cup of steaming black coffee is a great way to start a morning.

[via Eurogamer, Super Annuation]

It’s Monday morning. Aside from meaning that I need a lot more coffee, fat strippers, and protein to operate than on a normal day of the week, it means a whole new host of Nintendo digital downloads are available for purchase across the publisher’s various platforms. Get excited or something.

This week we see the release of BIT.TRIP.VOID, an important videogame as noted by its profuse punctuation and all capitalization, and the venerable Super Mario Kart.

But that’s not all -- Nintendo continues to hack Electroplankton into even smaller chunks for download via DSiware, and several other developers have various releases across all three platforms. Check below the fold for a cute, short list of all the available titles and don’t forget to tell us what you’re downloading this beautiful, need-more-protein-and-coffee Monday morning.

Crackdown 2 does not even have a release date yet, but let's not stop Ruffian from talking about Crackdown 3. Talking to VG247, Crackdown 2's developer has jumped the gun to let us know that Crackdown 3 will "alter" the game's location, rather than return to Pacific City as Crackdown 2 has done.

"When we go to Crackdown 3 things’ll alter again. But yeah, for Crackdown 2 it made more sense to stick in the same city, because it is pushing on from the idea of the Freak fires and how they’ve affected the city," explains Ruffian creative director Billy Thomson. "It’s not a case of doing it because it’s quicker. If anything it’s taken just as long to re-do what’s already there, because we’ve got to make sure we don’t break what we spent so much time getting right in the first game."

Thomson also confirmed that Crackdown 2 will run at thirty frames-per-second, for those of you who get off on all that graphical stuff: "“We will just keep hitting it until we hit 30. Because it does need to be a constant 30. As soon as we go above that, we need to stop."

Crackdown 2 is set for 2010, but no firm release date has been given. We're all pretty much looking forward to it at Destructoid though, so we eagerly anticipate news of its launch.

Just in time for America's shopping nightmare, Black Friday, Nintendo has announced two Nintendo DSi bundles that will be available on November 27. 

Customers who purchase the Metallica Blue DSi system will find that it will be pre-installed with five Mario titles -- Mario vs. Donkey Kong: Minis March Again, Dr. Mario Express, WarioWare: Snapped!, Mario Clock, and Mario Calendar. Pick up with White Nintendo DSi, and you'll get Brain Age: Express: Arts & Letters, Brain Age Express: Sudoku, Brain Age Express: Math, Clubhouse Games Express: Card Classics, Photo Clock. 

The bundles will retail for the standard $169.99 Nintendo DSi pricing, and Nintendo says the software is valued up to $20. Can't go wrong with either of those, since either way, you're getting a great clock. Oh, and these will be available for a limited time only, so get some sleep after your Thanksgiving dinner... damned the economic climate, people are going to be up early on Friday.

There are young girls buried in the back yards of America that most likely have this image as the last thing they ever saw. It's allegedly a Pikachu ski mask but it looks like something only a perverse sex murderer would wear. I'm fairly certain Albert Fish had a mask just like this.

I really do wonder what possesses someone to create such items as this. I love videogames as much as the next guy, but I'm not prepared to risk being a rape suspect in order to boast my fandom. Oh well, whatever gets people off, I suppose.

This is the most newsworthy thing I've seen so far this morning, by the way.

Somebody stop him, please. I don't want to kill him, just take out a part of the brain that makes directing movies impossible or something. If Bloodrayne 3: Warhammer, a movie based on a videogame that wasn't ever made, gets made as Uwe Boll wants to I will hold each and every person who reads this post responsible because you didn't stop him.

What is wrong with the world that this man keeps on being allowed to make movies? The man made Kirstanna Loken in skimpy clothing unwatchable. Do you know how immensely impossible that is to do simply with bad directing? And yet he did it! Her return in this third film brings me no joy as I know that he will once again turn something beautiful into the film equivalent of burning in hell for five thousand years.

We've had plenty of Boll rants here (some from the man himself), so I'm going to stop now. Just make it go away, for the love of everything holy, make it stop.