Last week, I extolled the virtues of a crazy little platformer/shooter called Cave Story, and how I consider one of the best games of all-time. The problem is, though, that a lot of people aren't really into the whole action-adventure gameplay that Metroid, Castlevania, and Cave Story utilize. There are people who want uncomplicated platformers with left, right, and jump. For those people, there is no greater game than N.

cactus has long been established as a complete beast of a developer. The indie developer has developed complete games in the time it takes the normal person to finish Super Mario Bros, as has done it yet again. Working on a competition where the goal is to create a functional game in 3 hours, cactus has make a quirky little arena shooter with unique mechanics called Kryzta.

Your goal is to kill other ships by luring enemies into shooting their buddies. Once an enemy dies, you can collect his little chunks for points. After a while, you can utilize a special shot as well. It's very simple, like most of his games, but very fun and easy to pick up. Pick up the download off of the competition thread!

[Via IndieGames]

Hot on the heels (or wheels) of the demo being released, Codemasters has released a new trailer for their PC driving game GRID. The trailer shows off some nice cars (as always) going through some of the Japanese circuits in the game, including the never-seen J-Speed circuit. You can check it out, as always, right here through our downloads section. Now all that is left is to wait for the inevitable trailer for Codemasters' new F1 racing game. GRID hits store shelves on June 3rd.

Download the new GRID Japanese circuits trailer!

Ubisoft's decision to remove the DirectX10.1 effects from the PC port of Assassin's Creed has generated a ton of controversy and now the patch has finally gone live. The 1.02 patch is now available to download from us and deals with a number of issues that have cropped up since the release of the game about a month ago. Ubisoft states the patch has "fixed broken post-effects on DirectX 10.1 enabled cards" but that's only kind of true; as we have reported the publisher has removed the DirectX10.1 support entirely.

The full details on the 1.02 patch are after the jump

Download the new Assassin's Creed patch right now

Over a month ago Ubisoft announced they would soon provide over 40 of their catalog PC game titles via Valve's Steam service. At the time only a few games were available (Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, the original Far Cry and Splinter Cell and later Assassin's Creed and Rainbow Six Vegas 2) but it looks like a few more games are now available on the Steam service to purchase and download. Here's a list of the new games added to Steam: Beyond Good & Evil; Blazing Angels: Squadrons of WW II; Blazing Angels 2: Secret Missions of WW II
Brothers In Arms: Road to Hill 30; Chessmaster: Grandmaster Edition; Cold Fear ; Heroes of Might and Magic V; Pacific Fighters ; Rainbow Six: Lockdown

It's rare that we get to see how a game evolves from its beginnings to its final project. Developer Frictional Games is doing just that with its release of an alpha version of Unbirth, a horror themed first person action-adventure game that served as the first step in releasing the first game in their acclaimed Penumbra series.

The game, which was created by Frictional Games founder Thomas Grip a number of years ago, was never finished but because of popular demand by fans, he decided to release a playable (but still unstable) alpha version of Unbirth which should give Penumbra fans an interesting insight into the series. The web site also has some more info on the history of the game's development along with monster sketches, level screenshots and design docs and more. Anyone interested in game development should check this out.

[Via Blue's News]

Only a few days since the release of some new beta drivers, NVIDIA has now released some new official Forceware drivers for its GeForce line of graphics cards.These new drivers bring the version number to 175.16 and the release notes reveal the various changes and fixes in this new release.

These new drivers have the same fixes for games in the previous beta release along with various other non-gaming related performance tweaks and improvements. It also adds support for the new NVIDiA GeForce 9600 GSO and 9800 GTX graphics chips. Make sure you get the right driver for the right OS; these new drivers come in Windows XP 32-bit and 64-bit versions along with Vista 32-bit and 64-bit support.

In much the same vein as the Megami Tensei RPG series, Requiem: Bloodymare is meant to be a horror-fueled post-apocalyptic look at demons and technology. With its massive amounts of gore and giblet physics, Bloodymare definitely sets itself apart, at least graphically, from the horde of World of Warcraft lookalikes.

For those antsy to dip their hands into the gallons of blood present in Bloodymare, good news for you. The game has entered open beta, allowing anyone to sign up and play the full game for free. While the game will be free later on, it won't have all content available to those playing it for free once it hits the release version. So give it a whirl now! You can sign up for and download the beta at the official site.

Flying Lab Software's MMO Pirates of the Burning Sea has been online for a few months now but very soon players in the game will be able to choose what type of pirate he or she can play in the game. The upcoming 1.4 update will actually split the current Pirate nation faction into two groups.

One group is the Cutthroat; they are basically the typical nasty and dirty types that have been promoted in so many movies; they will steal ships and engage in combat quickly. The other type of pirate is the Buccaneer. They are being designed as more of a suave type of character who can help others out rather than just be a loner. They are also being designed as being more of an advanced type of character with a recommendation that they be played by experienced players of the game. The 1.4 update will also include new missions, skills and other new content. It's currently in testing but there's no word on a release date.

The Lego Star Wars games have been a surprise hit since they first started, first for Eidos who published the first game in the series developed by Traveller's Tales and then by LucasArts who have published all the other Lego Star Wars games since. Now LucasArts and Traveller's Tales are teaming up again to bring another of George Lucas' franchises to the family friendly Lego world with the release of Lego Indiana Jones

The PC demo of the game was just released and features the first section of the full game where you experience a loose adaptation of the opening scene from the debut Indiana Jones film Raiders of the Lost Ark. It also contains a free play mode. The full version of the game, which takes the player through the first three Indiana Jones movies, is due out in early June.

Grab the Lego Indiana Jones demo now

Xbox 360 owners got access to this game first but now PC owners can have the thrill of playing their own version of . . . wait for it . . . Boogie Bunnies. What is Boogie Bunnies, you might be asking yourself? Well you are in luck my friend because we can tell you. Boogie Bungies is a casual puzzle game developed by Artech Studios and published by Vivendi Games' Sierra Online brand. It's full of oddly designed "bunnies" (and we use that term loosely) all in rows that have to be taken out when you match three of each color.

The web site has the the full game. The odd thing is that the PC version is priced at $19.95 while the Xbox 360 version costs 800 Microsoft points which currently is worth $10. How do Xbox 360 owners get the same game for half the price? We haven't a clue. If you want to check out the free demo (which gives you one hour of playtime) you can grab it right here at Big Download.

Download the Boogie Bunnies PC demo today

A few days ago we reported that Microsoft had finally allowed folks to download the final service pack update (SP 3) for the Windows XP operating system. The release was delayed due to SP 3's incompatibilities with the Microsoft Dynamics Retail Management System program. Well, according to a News.com story some PC owners with AMD based chips are reporting that installing SP 3 is causing their systems to be put into an endless reboot cycle.

A Microsoft rep states that the reason for this issue is because of " . . . OEMs improperly placing a Windows XP image created for an for Intel-based computer onto machines with non-Intel chipsets." If this unfortunate issue happens to you it looks like your only recourse is to contact Microsoft's support line. Hopefully no more bugs will be found in this final update to Windows XP; the formal support for the operating system is suppose to end in June although some PC makers are finding loopholes to continuing selling XP based PCs.

The music-puzzle-racing game Audiosurf had already received a bunch of critical acclaim before Valve released it on its Steam download service earlier this year. Now the Invisible Handlebar developed game has become both a critical and sales success and it looks like others want to jump on its considerable bandwagon.

Today the UK based music publisher Aardvark Records announced a deal that will give Audiosurf access to the music publisher's lineup of songs. The inital deal includes 160 songs from bands like Yahel, Zetan Spore, Jeff Alford, Eric M, Little Spitfire and others and the game will allow links to the bands' websites as well as other info on their songs. It seems that Rock Band and Guitar Hero might have to start getting worried that Audiosurf might take away some of their thunder.

A few weeks ago Ubisoft announced that it would release a patch for their PC ports of their highly successful stealth action game Assassin's Creed. However, instead of fixing bugs or adding new features, the patch is to remove the support for DirectX10.1 graphics. According to the initial announcement about the patch the DirectX10.1 support in the game added "a render pass during post-effect which is costly."

While the patch has yet to be released as of this writing, some are accusing Ubisoft of playing hardware politics with this proposed DirectX10.1 removal from the game. Why? Because at the moment the only graphics cards in stores that support DirectX10.1 are cards from AMD's ATI unit (specifically the Radeon HD 3000 hardware). Performance issues with Assassin's Creed were reported on NVIDIA graphics cards. The problem is that Assassin's Creed is part of NVIDIA's "The Way It's Meant To Be Played" marketing program where the company makes deals with game publishers to add their logo and ad support for a number of PC games.

So did NVIDIA ask Ubisoft to remove the DirectX10.1 feature from Assassin's Creed? Officially the answer is, "No." TG Daily contacted both Ubisoft and NVIDIA reps and both denied any sort of external influence, saying that the decision was made by the game's development team. The author feels that the game simply was not finished in terms of proper code and that the programming team put in the DirectX10.1 support without making sure the game would work on normal DirectX10 hardware. It just goes to prove that developing PC games without taking the tons of different hardware combinations can still be tricky.

Well that didn't take long did it? Following a massive public outcry earlier this week, BioWare and Electronic Arts have caved in and eliminated the need for people who purchase the upcoming PC version of Mass Effect to validate their copy via a Internet connection every 10 day. The official announcement came, as usual, from BioWare's official forums.

The developer's community manager Jay Watamaniuk stated that after listening to the many messages on their forums protesting this move, they decided to change their minds "to ensure we are delivering the best possible experience" for their fans. The game will only ask for an Internet connection if the user chooses to download any patches or additional content such as the free Bring Down The Sky expansion. Hopefully this will be a good compromise for people who were concerned about this type of copy protection.