Counter Strike Junkie

The upcoming stand-alone expansion to Crysis, Crysis: Warhead, has a firm release date set of September 16th (September 12th for Europe). They even sent out a lovely press release that you can view. Awesome!

“We think Crysis Warhead is going to offer a tremendous experience to a wide range of gamers,” said Cevat Yerli, CEO and President of Crytek. “Fans of Crysis are going to enjoy more of the open-ended gameplay, cutting-edge visuals and huge, epic battles from the first game, while also finally finding out what kind of havoc Psycho was wreaking on the other side of the island.

At the same time, we designed Warhead to be more accessible for gamers new to the Crysis franchise. It is a game with a story that can stand on its own, it has been optimized to run better on a wider range of PCs, and we are introducing Crysis Wars, a tailor-made experience for multiplayer gamers within the Crysis universe – all at a great value.”

That “great value?” Warhead will retail for just $29.99 in stores or pony up $24.95 for a pre-order from the EA Store. You can find more information at the new Warhead website.

The Steam version of Unreal Tournament 3 has been updated with a number of small fixes. If you’re an owner and avid player of the game and haven’t yet skimmed over the change log, now is your chance!

Hit the break for the full details.[break="change log"]

• Fixed overlay mesh showing up on hidden sniper rifle when un-zoomed

• Added motion blur menu option for PC (defaults to off)
• Fixed zero extent collision bug in octree code (finding nodes in Z axis)
• LOD Hysteresis / LOD Decision making bug fix
• Fixed default mesh not having proper LOD settings
• Fixed rare darkwalker physics crash
• Added player name list to server browser

A pre-order option is now available for the Steam version of Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway! For just $49.99 you can make sure that you have Hell’s Highway the moment it’s released on Steam. Furthermore, as an added bonus anybody who pre-orders will get Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30 for free!

Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway, the latest installment in the popular WWII action franchise, is now available for pre-purchase via Steam. Those who pre-purchase the game via Steam before it is launched in late September will immediately receive the complete version of Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30 free of charge.

You can view the Steam store page for Hell’s Highway by clicking these words and then proceeding to the checkout line for your free copy of Road to Hill 30 and pre-order of Hell’s Highway.

Today’s installment of the Heavy Update introduces the first unlockable weapon, the KGB (Killing Gloves of Boxing). This melee unlockable for the…

Want to get your hands on Left 4 Dead months before its release date? Well, you might be in luck if you happen to find yourself around one of the…

The biggest update since the release of Team Fortress 2 almost a year ago is growing near. Along with the new unlockables and achievements for the…

Valve has just announced the largest update coming for Team Fortress 2 since its release! Maps (yes, plural), achievements, a new “Meet the” video, a new gameplay mode, and the Heavy update are coming next week.

Valve, creators of award-winning games and leading technologies, today announced the unveiling of details for the largest update ever produced for Team Fortress 2, the multiplayer action game that recently topped PC Gamer UK’s “Top 100″ list.

Beginning today gamers may find details of “The Heavy” Update being disclosed via http://steamgames.com/tf2/heavy/. The site will reveal new information and screenshots each day, as well as a special installment to the “Meet the Team” series of video shorts.

“The Heavy” update is the largest update to Team Fortress 2 since it was first released as part of The Orange Box last October. In addition to offering new unlockable weapons, achievements, “The Heavy” update also includes a brand new gameplay mode and a number of new maps.

The rollout culminates next Tuesday, August 19 when the update will be made available to all owners of Team Fortress 2.

To give all gamers a chance to check out the new gameplay introduced in “The Heavy” update, Valve will be running a Team Fortress 2 Free Weekend via Steam, a leading online platform for the delivery and management of PC games. The Free Weekend is open to gamers the world over and scheduled to begin Friday, August 22 at 11 am PDT.

The update centers around the Heavy and you can find the update details starting to be revealed at the Heavy update page.

First up is a new community map, cp_steel.

Don’t go changing your pants just yet, there’s still five more areas to be revealed for this update before it’s even released. Stay tuned!

Left 4 Dead took home a number of awards from this year’s E3 show. How many? A lot, that’s how many.

• E3 Game Critics Awards: Left 4 Dead wins Best Online Multiplayer game.

• Kotaku.com: Kotaku’s Best of E3 Picks: Best PC Game, Best Action Game, Best Online Multiplayer Game
• NY Times: The World’s a Stage for Interactive Entertainment as Creativity Glows
• 1up.com: 1UP’s Best of E3 2008
• UGO.com: Best PC Game – Left 4 Dead
• UGO.com: Best Mutiplayer Game
• IGN.com: Best Multiplayer Experience
• PlanetXbox: Best First Person Action Gaming
• PlatformNation.com: Best Game of Show
• Maxim: The 5 Unsung Games of E3 2008
• Venture Beat: Top 10 Sleepers of the Show
• G4tv.com: Best Best Multiplayer Game

In addition, Valve has added a 6.61MB PDF file of their presentation of “How Valve Connects Art Direction to Gameplay.” The presentation, while highly technical, does include a number of comparison screenshots that really give a great understanding at what Valve and the Turtle Rock Studios team are trying to achieve with Left 4 Dead’s visuals.

The presentation also heavily mentions the art direction of Team Fortress 2 throughout. Even if you don’t always “get” what is being talked about in the slides, it’s amazing to witness just how far the Source engine has come with the little details that have been added over the years.

You can download that file by clicking right here for a direct link.

Google is set to use a Portal-like situation for their annual programming competition. Yes, there will be digital cake involved, in case you were curious.

The Google Code Jam is Google’s annual programming competition that pits programmers from around the world against each other to optimize puzzle solutions using programming algorithms.

Valve’s award-winning puzzler Portal serves as the backdrop for Part B in Round Three of the most recent code-off, with Google recreating a basic room in two dimensions. The game’s trademark cake, yellow and blue portals and the portal gun technology are all included in low-tech form.

Google’s Portal challenge is, “Given the maze, your initial position, and the cake’s position, you want to find the minimum number of moves needed to reach the cake if it is possible.”

Code Jam is open to everyone with cash prizes available to the top 100 finalists around the world. Contestants may download Google’s input data set to test their results. Those who can interpret the game’s graphs and text controls should be proud of their programming prowess.

Sounds like an interesting premise to me! If you’d like to learn more about the Google Code Jam, simply head on over to the Code Jam website for more details. Now you’re thinking with programming algorithms!

The annual Edge award for Interactive Innovation was snatched up by Bungie today for their work with Halo 3. Halo 3 beat out some stiff competition this year that included Portal and Rock Band to take the award.

We hand out this accolade to the title released in the last 12 months that does most to further the creative culture of gaming – in other words, to mark out new directions for the form.

This year’s Edge Award For Interactive Innovation was a closely fought affair, Bungie proving victorious in a shortlist that also included Grand Theft Auto IV, Portal, Rock Band, Super Mario Galaxy and Wii Fit.

Ultimately it is the integration and coherence of Halo 3’s online content that makes the game stand apart. From its Theater mode to Forge, and the way a party playing through Live can seamlessly manoeuvre between them, here is an experience that demonstrates an unparalleled understanding of the potential for console online play. Outside of the game, Bungie.net has been engineered to become a remarkable resource for Halo 3 stats and communities, providing life for the game even when your Xbox 360 is switched off. Halo 3, just as Halo 2 did before it, presents a roadmap for the way online will be integrated in videogames in the coming years.

In the light of its incredible success and the number of fans it has attracted, it’s easy to overlook all of the ideas that are present in Halo 3 and the remarkably robust manner in which they are implemented, but we hope that this award serves to help credit Bungie for its achievements. Naturally, congratulations also go to the makers of the games that also made the shortlist.

I really don’t know what to say here. Congratulations certainly goes out to Bungie for winning the award, but to say that it was more innovative than Portal, Rock Band, or even Wii Fit? The replay theater and Forge options are nice, but beyond that I’m just not seeing it.

Agree? Disagree? Feel free to let Edge know how you feel.