Screw Duke Nukem. Sam "Serious" Stone is the real king of first-person-shooter meatheads and if anybody deserved to make a triumphant comeback, it was him. Sure, Sam may not be quite as high profile, and his games may not be quite as refined, but at least Sam's adventures are released on time, and who needs refinement when you've got headless men running toward you with bombs in their hands?

Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter takes us back to Sam's very first adventure, giving the near-ten-year-old shooter a fresh coat of paint, a new Serious Engine, and 16-player co-op. All worthy additions, but is this a case of mutton dressed as lamb, or does Sam still have the stones? Read on as we review Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter.

The Steam sale is still going on people, and if you haven't spent all your money on the previous three days then it's time to spend the rest of it today (and possibly tomorrow when the final day of the sale occurs. Today features the Star Wars pack and the THQ pack that has been available through the entire sale, but also the games below for varying low prices.

• EVE Online: Apocrypha for $4.99 (75% off)
• Battlefield 2: Complete Collection for $14.99 (50% off)
• Lucidity for $2.49 (75% off)
• Trackmania United Forever for 19.99 (50% off)
• Prince of Persia for $14.99 (50% off)
• World of Goo for $4.99 (75% off)
• Guild Wars Trilogy for $24.99 (50% off)

Great deals for all! I might pick up World of Goo finally, though I had been wanting to play it on my Wii instead. What are you getting today?

Steam is pretty much the de facto standard for PC gaming these days. Even the most retail-loyal PC gamers likely have used it in some way, shape or form. Valve's Steam-powered empire also dominates the digital distribution landscape. Brad Wardell of Stardock (which owns the Impulse digital platform) estimates that Steam has roughly 70% of market share.

But it's one thing to be the big kid in the playground. It's another to start locking the other kids out. PC gamers may recall a brief dustup over the sale of Modern Warfare 2, wherein Direct2Drive, Impulse and other digital vendors refused to stock the title due to its native use of Steamworks, which would require the installation of the Steam client, and thus the Steam storefront. 

I can see things from their point of view, certainly. Why sell a game that, once installed, provides a back door for the competition? Valve has also been lobbying hard for third-party publishers (like Activision and EA) to start including Steam's native DRM solution, which again could shut out competing services (like Impulse's Goo DRM).

Then again, the ever-outspoken Derek Smart published a very detailed counterargument on Gamasutra as to why the boycott itself was rather foolish, essentially making Modern Warfare 2 a Steam-exclusive title. The "problem," Smart claimed, was that Steamworks, as a unified suite of services for multiplayer, auto-patching, storefronts, and authentication, offers much more value to the publisher and developer. Essentially, Steam rules because it's simply better. Steam boss Jason Holtman showed the same sentiment on Gamesindustry.biz:

To our minds, we think that if you're making a good game and it's got the services a customer wants it should get out in as many channels as possible. If you have a good portal and you're good at collecting money from folks, and attracting them, there's no reason why you shouldn't be.

And I think he's right, in that sense. I choose Steam because it's awesome, and the closest PC gaming has ever come to a platform like PSN or Xbox Live, with the added advantage of there actually being competition. While the potential for abuse is there (as Randy Pitchford complains), there's always an alternative. Should Valve start to throw its weight around too much, I might just choose Impulse, since it has Sins of a Solar Empire on it. Just, for God's sake, don't sell it on Games for Windows Live. Please.

Someone should charge Gabe Newell and Valve with conspiracy -- conspiracy to relieve PC gamers of their hard-earned cash, since the third day of Steam’s “Five-Day-Long, One-Day-Only” sale offers some more kick-ass, can’t-miss deals. Of course, you can still get the LucasArts Premier Pack and the THQ Complete Pack for $49.99 each; those prices will be in effect through Monday.

But if you missed Wednesday’s and Thursday’s deals, don’t fret -- today’s sale has games set at prices so low, you won’t be able to resist whipping out your credit card. Here are the highlights:

• Trine for $9.99 (50% off)
• Borderlands for $33.49 (33% off)
• Ghostbusters: The Video Game for $9.99 (50% off)
• Resident Evil 5 for $24.99 (50% off)
• Left 4 Dead: Game of the Year Edition for $7.49 (75% off)
• Spore for $19.99 (50% off)

Boy, Randy Pitchford wasn’t kidding when he called Steam a “money grab.” I succumbed to a few of Wednesday’s sales, so I’m going to do my best to hold off on any more Steam purchases, lest I go into debt. I’ve got to save my money for Q1 2010, which may even be more jam-packed with must-have games than this fall was.

By the way, these sales expire at 10 AM EST tomorrow -- in other words, they’ll only be valid for another 17 and a half hours. Go, go, go!

Full from leftovers and bored out of my feeble mind, I did what I always do: scoured the Internet for free, no-nonsense videogames. You know, substance over style. Indie games and the like. That sort of thing.

Thankfully, the hunt was off to a great start once I remembered that IGF's student entries were still relatively fresh, and just begged to be lovingly inspected. Many of the more intriguing games aren't available in a playable form yet, which is admirable.

One game in particular, Cave, both scratched my "hmm, that looks interesting" itch and offered itself up as a download. Score! It's an exploration game in which you play as a boy and a girl, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. There's more to it than that, obviously, but the less I reveal, the better.

Since your sight is extremely limited, and Cave is presented in such a minimalistic way, you often have no idea where you're headed, or how to get back to where you came from and risk trying a different path; I say that as a compliment. Cave knows it's a game about exploring, and it embraces that fact.

Without spoiling anything, I'll say this: damn. More specifically: unless there is only a single ending, and it's an unpleasant one at that, I need to run through the game a second time. Here's the download page again (PC and Mac). Try it out.

A much-needed patch is coming to Lucidity PC and Xbox LIVE Arcade in the near future. According to the latest Lucas Arts Workshop blog post, the Lucidity team is dropping a checkpoint system into the downloadable title, thus allowing the players to continue from somewhere better than the beginning of the f’ing level.

The update launches for the PC version this afternoon, while the XBLA patch is said to launching in “the coming weeks.” Neat.

I, like others apparently, considered the lack of checkpoint system a bummer, but I considered the lottery-style item selection the even bigger bummer in the beautiful downloadable package. This update won't fix the core problem -- the reason why Sofi visits the great beyond the vast majority of the time. Still, it’s nice to know that the game is still being supported. Let's hope they keep it up.

Senior producer of R.U.S.E. Mathieu Girard is about to take you on a journey. A journey in which you learn what the real-time strategy game of ridiculous zooming and deception is all about. And he does all of this while standing in front of a futuristic backdrop. Talk about classy.

The "war" takes place on a massive table, guys. Did you know that? I swear they took the concept from a twist ending to an episode of The Twilight Zone.

The game is still looking impressive as always. A lot of the neat tricks at the game's disposal aren't exactly mind-blowing for the genre, yet they're able to mesh together to form something cool. Also, the thumbnail for the "decoy army" ruse is creepy as all hell. Silent Hill .. is that you?

More videogame-related beans are being spilled in another magazine. According to CVG, the January issue of PC Zone magazine has the first shred of information about Splinter Cell: Conviction’s co-operative component as well as the first details on a lone “brand new mode” planned for the game.

This magazine hits on December 23rd. So, if you’re inclined to read something with actual pages and colorful pictures, go ahead and dig around for it in the magazine aisle later next month. Or don’t. It’s up to you now. Find our car and stop the New Order. And remember: music is the weapon.

Unsurprisingly, the second set of Steam sales during this five-day-long promotion in which a bunch of new deals are activated each day is another attention grabber.

The $50 uber THQ collection that I mentioned last time is still available, and I still think you should purchase it. As for the limited-time-only stuff, there's Left 4 Dead 2 for $37.49, Knights of the Old Republic for $2.49, and Dead Space for $14.99.

There are a few more to pick from, but those were the select ones that really stand out in my mind. Also, there's Majesty 2, which is a lowly $9.99. I think I'm going to get that, for sure. Is that a wise idea, anyone who's played it?

Apparently, several people using the Internet believe that the next iteration in the Deus Ex franchise is destined to be PC-exclusive. The rumors are being fueled by a recent and lone mention of PC-exclusivity in a Bit-Tech article, which sources a Shacknews story spun from an Edge interview with Eidos Montreal project lead Jean-Fancious Dugas in which the man says he's not quite sure what platforms Deus Ex 3 may hit. How that got to exclusivity is beyond me, but hold the bus: Developer Eidos appears to be brushing off the rumor as such -- in a vague way, of course.

In a recent official message board post about the game’s exclusivity, Eidos community manager Rene said, “Only the PC version has been announced so far.” He then listed PC-specific magazine coverage that the game has had before exclaiming, “I dunno where that Web site is getting its info from!”

The PSP and DS versions of Deus Ex 3 are slated to hit retail in February 2010. Both will star Mickey Mouse. Also, dragons.

[via Eurogamer]

Today, Activision Blizzard announced that its Call of Duty franchise has surpased $3 billion in retail sales, taking into account internal numbers, as well as independent tracking sources. 

Keeping this number in mind, and the fact that the games in the franchise have sold more than 55 million units worldwide, expect one or more Call of Duty games a year until the end of time. Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick is pleased.

"Call of Duty has become one of the greatest entertainment franchises of all time," he's quoted as saying in a press release. "If you consider the number of hours our audiences are engaged in playing Call of Duty, it is likely to be one of the most viewed entertainment experiences in modern history."

The games are good, and apparently people like them. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 launched earlier this month, setting records with its five-day sales hitting approximately $550 million. 

If tentative plans hold together, expect the first bit of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 DLC -- an Xbox 360 timed exclusive -- to hit at some point in Spring 2010.

Infinity Ward’s community man, Robert Bowling, tweeted as much on November 25th: “DLC is planned for the wonderfully vague timeframe of Spring,” Bowling said in reply to a fan. He added, “I’ll let you know when we know it’ll be done.”

The tweet shores up a previous report of a Spring 2010 launch date, which was brought to us courtesy of a promotional pack of MW2-themed Monster Energy drinks. Yes. Energy drinks with previously unannounced release windows printed on them. God bless, America.

[via CVG]

People have been playing Aliens vs. Predator. People who are not me. This is clearly not right, but what is right is the fact that it looks bloody fabulous. This brand new trailer shows off the multiplayer aspect of the game, and briefly details a mode where eight marines get to hunt down a single Predator.

I'm simply stunned by the graphics hanging off this thing. The original screens looked like bullshots more than anything else, but the actual video footage seems to show no quality difference whatsoever. This is going to be one of 2010's early jawdropping visual treats, methinks.

Now Sega, let's do something about this whole "me not playing it yet" situation.

Being a space wizard in the original Mass Effect required patience and a knack for navigating radial menus. Not to discount the power, of course. In the end, we just found that space soldering gave us the most redeeming combat experience. But it looks like Bioware has stepped up the Adept in Mass Effect 2, making us excited to give the class another look this January.

For example, and as explained in the latest trailer above, the Adept can now curve his pulls, enabling him to grab enemies from behind cover. The class can also angle pushes, allowing for easier bad-dude-off-of-ledge action. Neat.

Now it looks like the only thing the Adept needs is a pointy hat and the ability to summon a demon or cast Magic Missile. Game’s not out yet, so you never know -- these things could make their way into it. Or not.