Welcome, Herr Doktor. No doubt you have at least sampled the waters of the new TF2 update, resplendent in it's new content. However, you are not concerned over the new Gold Rush map, or the new Payload gametype. No, you are most likely aiming to obtain your überweapons: the Blütsauger, Kritzkrieg, and Übersaw. Unfortunately, you have to complete the many new medic achievements, ranging from the incredibly hard to the very simple. Thankfully for you, Herr Doktor, we have compiled a guide to acquiring those achievements in the easiest way possible. We have already given you the first, second, and third part of our guide, so here is the fourth. Keep this in mind the next time we proclaim our love for you.

For those antsy to enter a barren winter wasteland, where the people hunt the eggs of giant homicidal insectoid alien things, you're in luck. Capcom has announced today that their bug-hunting epic, Lost Planet Colonies, has finally gone gold, and will be available to all who wish to partake in its wintry splendor in two weeks. So grab your thermos, gun, and overcoat (which Frank seems to be missing) and prepare for some awesome bug-killing action.

Welcome, Herr Doktor. No doubt you have at least sampled the waters of the new TF2 update, resplendent in it's new content. However, you are not concerned over the new Gold Rush map, or the new Payload gametype. No, you are most likely aiming to obtain your überweapons: the Blütsauger, Kritzkrieg, and Übersaw. Unfortunately, you have to complete the many new medic achievements, ranging from the incredibly hard to the very simple. Thankfully for you, Herr Doktor, we have compiled a guide to acquiring those achievements in the easiest way possible. We have already given you the first and second parts of our guide, so here is the third. Keep this in mind the next time we proclaim our love for you.

Team Rainbow is all patched up and ready to fight for your right to gamble, again. Yesterday Ubisoft released a beefy 90Mb patch for Rainbow Six Vegas 2 which addresses numerous bugs, while adding new features to the popular tactical-shooter.

Most notably addressed in the 1.02 patch is putting a stop to the notorious Crashdump generation problem found in the original patch that horded up as much as 1GB of hard drive space during game crashes.

Added to Vegas 2 with 1.02 are speech recognition features as well as KillCam and SwapTeam options for the SADS (Stand Along Dedicated Server). Other bug fixes included in the patch promise to end game crashes while using customizable weapons and minimizing XP losses during server crashes.

The full list of additions and fixes can be found after the jump.

Download the Rainbow Six Vegas 2 1.02 Patch from Big Download!

Welcome, Herr Doktor. No doubt you have at least sampled the waters of the new TF2 update, resplendent in it's new content. However, you are not concerned over the new Gold Rush map, or the new Payload gametype. No, you are most likely aiming to obtain your überweapons: the Blütsauger, Kritzkrieg, and Übersaw. Unfortunately, you have to complete the many new medic achievements, ranging from the incredibly hard to the very simple. Thankfully for you, Herr Doktor, we have compiled a guide to acquiring those achievements in the easiest way possible. We have already given you the first part of our guide, so here is the second. Keep this in mind the next time we proclaim our love for you.

So why did Digital Illusions decided to try out a free-to-play model for its upcoming multiplayer shooter Battlefield Heroes? According to a new interview at Gamesindustry.biz, one only has to look at piracy in the PC industry as an indirect reason for this move. According to Ben Cousins, the producer of the game at developer Digital Illusions, the dev team looked at how piracy had affected the games industry in Asia and how they moved to a free-to-play model with micro-transactions for their PC titles.

Cousins states that the budget for Battlefield Heroes is relatively small; about a quarter of the size of budget for their upcoming console-only shooter Battlefield: Bad Company. Their business model is such that they expect 95 percent of their players to never use the micro-transactions and that they will make revenues from the remaining five percent. While the game isn't strictly speaking a web browser based title, Cousins believes that ultimately that is where the game industry is going to evolve where gamers play their titles via a web browser, "whether it's running on an iPhone or a Mac or on the PC."

If you're an aspiring modder, than Garry (creator of Garry's Mod) has a list of ten things he'd like you to consider when creating your mod. All ten of the tips seem like solid advice, especially the last one -- which rounds the entire list out quite nicely. We're big -- no scratch that -- huge supporters of mods and their creators here at Big Download. It's the mod community that makes PC gaming so very special. The good kind of special, not the kind of special you tend to encounter in most Xbox Live conversations (NSFW).

We can't count the number of hours we've spent playing everything from Team Fortress and Day of Defeat to Dystopia and Pirates, Vikings and Knights II. Although now that we look at it, there's a strong tendency for FPS mods, which makes us wonder what kinds of mods we'll see after Starcraft II launches.

Jack Thompson would be so ashamed at the sort of violence that is being perpetrated recently. First Fantastic Blood Boy, and now this?! Beltality is a small, quirky game where you control presses with one of two goal: squish people (in showers of square blood, no less!) or assemble robots. It's an amazingly simple game, and a good time waster. There are also leaderboards, for those obsessives who have to show their awesome high scores to their friends.

[Via IndieGames]

You'd think most, if not all, critics would decry the (former) draconian DRM from Mass Effect. Apparently not so. In a piece that is best described as comparing apples to oranges, critic Mike Doolittle manages to wow and astound with statements such as this (which don't even matter anymore, thanks to the DRM removal):

"So let's look again at Mass Effect. Is it really draconian to expect gamers to be connected to the internet? Sure, some people may want to play offline for some arbitrary reason, but is that really going to comprise a significant percentage of players? And what about the three-activation limit? How many times do you plan on re-installing the game? How many friends are you going to 'loan' it to?"

What is he comparing? Well, he's connecting iTunes DRM, which allows for unlimited transfers to iPods and is easily circumvented, to the former Mass Effect DRM, which required you to connect online every 10 days and only allowed 3 installs in total. Maybe he's just a bleary-eyed, out-of-touch dinosaur in regards to the PC gaming scene, but it's very possible to upgrade 3 times within two months, which would indeed require reinstallation. Or maybe he doesn't realize the social nature of gaming because he spends most of his time holed up in an apartment, furiously critiquing single-player games. Either way, if you feel like checking out an article noticeable devoid of logic, check it out.

Welcome, Herr Doktor. No doubt you have at least sampled the waters of the new TF2 update, resplendent in it's new content. However, you are not concerned over the new Gold Rush map, or the new Payload gametype. No, you are most likely aiming to obtain your überweapons: the Blütsauger, Kritzkrieg, and Übersaw. Unfortunately, you have to complete the many new medic achievements, ranging from the incredibly hard to the very simple. Thankfully for you, Herr Doktor, we have compiled a guide to acquiring those achievements in the easiest way possible. Keep this in mind the next time we proclaim our love for you.

So little has changed in recent months -- The Sims 2 and World of Warcraft still completely dominate PC game sales. Sure, now and then something usurps them for a short time, but they always come back. The top 10 PC games in the NPD sales report released this past week:

1. The Sims 2 Kitchen & Bath Interior Design Stuff Expansion Pack
2. The Sims 2 Double Deluxe
3. The Sims 2 FreeTime Expansion Pack
4. World Of Warcraft: Battle Chest
5. World Of Warcraft
6. Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
7. Sins Of A Solar Empire
8. World Of Warcraft: Burning Crusade Expansion Pack
9. Assassin's Creed: Director's Cut Edition
10. Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas 2

That makes four years that The Sims 2 and World of Warcraft have been fairly consistently pwning the industry. The only other PC exclusive on the list is Ironclad/Stardock's runaway 4X RTS hit Sins of a Solar Empire. The others -- Call of Duty 4, Assassin's Creed, and Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 -- are multi-platform titles. WoW's position is no surprise, given the NPD's research with regards to online game revenues. The Sims 2's domination of the charts, however, speaks to a vast, silent market of gamers to whom hardcore games like Rainbow Six don't appeal.

Update after update after update, it seems. Team Fortress 2, hot on the heels of the last patch, has received yet another patch. This one fixes some major issues, such as problems with two achievements, problems with the Kritzkrieg not behaving properly, and problems with players being unable to use the new medic items. Hopefully this has fixed most of the issues with the new patch, but after recent history, it's almost guaranteed there will be more issues.

Developer Gearbox Software and publisher Ubisoft recently revealed that their long awaited WW II tactical shooter Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway has been pushed back to August. Today the publisher released some new screenshots to keep us occupied for a little while longer.

Reportedly the game was pushed back to put in some more multiplayer features and support. Of course it could be that Gearbox has one of the busiest game line-ups around. In addition to Hell's Highway they are working on Aliens: Colonial Marines and the Wii game Samba de Amigo for Sega and Borderlands for 2K Games. In the meantime these terrific looking (and Unreal Engine 3 powered) screenshots from Hell's Highway make waiting for the game just a little harder to take.

The Techalicious blog has a potential fix for those of us (this blogger included) who suffer from simulation sickness, or 'Doom sickness' -- where playing an FPS for too long induces nausea. Apparently, wearing an acupressure wristband, that presses plastic beads against a pressure point on the wrist -- helps to immediately relieve the nausea.

Obviously, your mileage may vary, but it's worth trying. Other solutions include Dramamine, straight infusion of ginger, and not playing any more first-person shooters. Obviously, that last is not a serious option, so tell us: how do you get around the sickness?