Here's the reason why Battlefield 3 is not on
Steam

So a few weeks ago, news broke that EA wouldn't be selling Battlefield 3 on Steam, much to the chagrin of many PC gamers. At the time, there was no explanation given, however we've now got some info as to why EA won't be putting the upcoming FPS title on Valve's service -- and it seems to be related to Steam's patching and downloadable content policies again.

In a forum posting on EA's message board, a staffer claims that "Steam has adopted a set of restrictive terms of service which limit how developers interact with customers to deliver patches and other downloadable content. No other download service has adopted these practices." This does sound consistent with EA's reasoning as to why Crysis 2 and Dragon Age II were withdrawn from Steam a few weeks ago. I wish we knew a bit more about what these supposed "restrictive terms and limits" were all about. 

It's still not so cut and dry, though. The posting does say that Battlefield 3 will be available at "over 100 other digital retailers" so it's not strictly speaking an Origin exclusive. The posting also claims "We hope to work out an agreement where Steam can carry Battlefield 3" so there maybe some resolution to this situation.

Way I see it, gamers like their games on Steam and aren't keen on using other download services. Yes, it may be slightly irrational but I wonder how long EA would keep their games off Steam when they start to look at sales.

EA confirms no Battlefield 3 for Steam [Planet Battlefield]

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Treyarch holds auction for deceased employee's
family

Earlier this year Treyarch employee Donald Barnes was murdered after trying to intervene in a fight outside his California home. To help Donald's grandparents raise the children he left behind, the Barnes family memorial fund has been set up and Treyarch has decided to help with a seven-day eBay auction.

The auction, which has a little over two days left, features a slew of games from Treyarch from all genres and platforms (there is even an autographed prestige edition of Black Ops.) All proceeds of the auction go to the memorial fund for Barnes' children aged 8 and 17.

Barnes, who was 41, was killed in January of this year after he tried to break up a fight between a man and woman at his apartment complex. Donald worked in the videogame industry from 1996, as a character modeler and later a character artist for studios under EA Sports and Activision.

While Donald Barnes' death is tragic (made even more sad since he was trying to do a good deed), the fact that people, including his old employer, are stepping up to help his family is great. It warms my cold, embittered heart to see them trying to help out when they didn't have to. Hopefully this memorial fund will get even more attention and Donald's children will be taken care of.

Father of 2 fatally stabbed near border of T.O., Oak Park; suspect arrested [Ventura County]

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Learn the ways of awesome arcade remakes with
Warlords

So how many of you remember when Atari remade Warlords and it didn't look at all that fun?  Yeah, forget about that and watch this video.  It's really odd for a company to remake a game twice on the same platform, but who cares when the second attempt looks this good?

From what I can tell Warlords is gonna feature a lighthearted medieval theme, epic sounding music, fast 4 player action and genuine strategy elements added in to the original arcade formula.  Honestly, I'm sold.  Something about this particular creative mixture makes me happy.  Warlords is set to come out some time this Summer.

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GenCon 2011: Resident Evil deck building game

by: Russell Archey
NEWS - A lot of day three at GenCon for me was kind of just laid back, making a couple purchases (I'm big into CCGs), getting my butt kicked in a Super Street Fighter IV tournament (never bring a Vega to a fireball fight), so I didn't get much of a chance to check out any software, but I do have a plan set for tomorrow.  Today though, I did check out something gaming related: the Resident Evil deck building game by Bandai.

For those unfamiliar with deck building games, it's basically where you start out with a small hand and can eventually get cards to add to your hand, and those extra cards will help lead to your main goal.  In Resident Evil, you begin with a deck of ten cards.  In the center of the play area you have weapons and actions you can buy, as well as cards to give you more actions or ammunition for your weapons.  Each turn you can play actions (once unless otherwise stated), buy a weapon, action, or other item (again, once per turn), explore the mansion (basically, encounter a zombie...again, once per turn), or any of the three, or even all three.  Any card you buy and actions you use go straight to your discard pile, and at the end of your turn, any cards left go to your discard pile and you draw five more cards.  When your deck empties out, shuffle your discard pile and make it your new deck.  The objective in most DBGs (deck building games) is to gain a certain amount of points.  We didn't get to play a full game, but I'm assuming the same applies to this game.

Bandai did a pretty decent job on the game.  I happen to be a big CCG fan and this is only my second time playing a DBG (I checked out Bandai's Star Trek DBG back at Origins),  If you're a fan of Resident Evil and card games, I suggest you give this a shot.  It's different, but a fun type of different.  Tomorrow I plan to check out demos of a couple Dungeons and Dragons PC programs that can help create characters and run campaigns.  Granted they're only demos, but I'm going to see how they hold up against each other.  I also hope to check out a game I passed a couple times, but constantly had several people waiting to check it out.


Read The Full Article:
http://www.gamingnexus.com/FullNews/GenCon-2011-Resident-Evil-deck-building-game/
Item23743.aspx

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Ken and Ryu face off in stop motion

Evo 2011 is finally over, but that doesn't mean that Ken and Ryu are done fighting. To the contrary, the duo can be found going head-to-head in Counter656's newest stop-motion video. Not only have these two toys been painstakingly posed for an entire three-round fight, they've gone ahead and added some stellar special effects in what amounts to a solid month of work.

The battle gets as heated as you'd expect and, for the most part, sticks fairly close to Street Fighter's actual fight styles; it's an impressive undertaking. The group has also covered Mega Man, Final Fantasty VII, Toy Story, Gundam, and Transformers and, while not as well done as this one, they're all pretty great.

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Written Legends: Nightmare at Sea

A peaceful sea voyage with your father turns into a Nightmare at Sea when your ship is sunk by the legendary Davy Jones. As you begin to explore the bottom of the ocean, you will discover you are not the only one to suffer this fate. Uncover the secrets of Davy Jones as you meet the other lost souls he has trapped for eternity in Written Legends: Nightmare at Sea, an intense Hidden Object game!


Read The Full Article:
http://www.fenomen-games.com/written-legends-nightmare-at-sea.htm

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LIMBO - Acclaimed Puzzle-Platformer Now Available
for Download on Steam and Playstation 3

Independent game development studio Playdead today announced that black & white...

Read the full post at www.gamezplay.org use the search option if there is no link above...

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Team Bondi not done yet

After the Team Bondi scandal first came up in June, and continued to be a thing through July, the future of the studio became unclear. With all the bad press surrounding the team, doubt of their survival became an issue as even their former producer, Rockstar, was rumored to be distancing themselves from the developers. Now, according to another rumor, KMM is stepping in to fill the void left by Rockstar, potentially saving what is left of the studio from bankruptcy.

If this new rumor is to be believed, the remnants of the Team Bondi studio (including Brendan McNamara) may find a new home within Sydney based KMM. Unfortunately for some employees of KMM animation shop Dr. D, the team currently finishing up Happy Feet 2, this possible agreement would mean bad news. Some of the former Team Bondi employees who left the studio because of McNamara and harsh working conditions found a home at Dr. D. If this turns out to be more than just scuttlebutt, I already feel bad for those former Bondi employees.

Rumour: Team Bondi to be absorbed into George Miller's KMM studio in Sydney [Kotaku via Joystiq]
Bankruptcy rumors circle Team Bondi [Develop]

 Kennedy Miller Mitchell

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Minecraft-inspired Lords of Uberdark looks
delightful

video details and more

Minecraft has been a quickly rising hit over the past year. The game centers around mining, and building, and more generally, simply surviving. This has led to one of the few complaints of the game to some people, with the lack of any clear cut goals. My attention was recently brought to the work-in-progress Lords of Uberdark, which seeks to take the mining and building aspects of Minecraft and apply them to a team-based real-time-strategy formula.

A lot of work seems to be done so far, and a lot of donations have been acquired though Kickstarter. The terrain deformation seems to be in place, and looks really smooth based on the teaser videos. The art style also looks nice with its cell-shaded look.

Developer Aaron Bishop has a small list of what he wants to add to the game though, including grappling hooks, an item-making system, Dorfs, Goblins, better collision detection and resolution, and multiplayer support.

So far he's received $17,145 out of a goal of $20,000. Unfortunately, this puts him short for the Kickstarter deadline of August 7th. On the bright side, a single-player alpha is intended for release on August 10th even if the mark isn't met. Donations of at least $10 to the Kickstarter will receive a licensed copy of the game when it is finally completed.

[Thanks, Oskari]

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CPU Wars: AMD A6-3650 review round-up

As many of our more tech-savvy readers surely know, this week saw the launch of AMD's latest salvo in the CPU wars -- the Fusion-based Llano APU line. Only the A6-3650 and the A8-3850 have been released so far, with the other chips slated for release later this year. The 3650 has a quad-core, 2.6 GHZ CPU and a Radeon HD 6530D GPU clocked at 443MHz. The 3850 is about $15 more and sports 2.9GHz CPU clock and an HD 6550D at 600MHz. At that range, Intel's main competitors are the I3-2105 and 2100.

AMD has lost a lot of market share since their heyday as the processor of choice among gamers in the early-mid 2000s. Since purchasing ATI in 2006, AMD has been working on integrating GPU's and CPU's into a single chip known as an APU or Accelerated Processing Unit. The AMD Fusion line has been in development for years, and we are now beginning to see these chips hit retail.

So how has the tech press received this chip?  Check out our round-up of reviews for the the A6-3650.

The Good

"If you're building a new budget-friendly system from scratch that will be used for medium-level gaming, HD movie watching or a long list of other seemingly benign tasks, this new Lynx platform is a no-brainer. The A6-3650 is a terrific all-in-one chip that provides unmatched value when you consider that the integrated GPU is a whole heck of a lot faster than a $45-50 Radeon HD 6450." - HardwareCanucks (Dam Good Value & Dam Innovative Awards)

"I think AMD has the PC Gamer version of Intel’s SandyBridge without breaking the bank." - TechwareLabs

"Stress the CPU cores and the '3650 is good enough to match, and beat, a price-equivalent Intel chip, which is key, and the HD 6530D graphics run rings around Intel's." - Hexus (Rated 4/5)

"Starting with the A6-3650 we have a CPU which offers the same features as the higher specification (and price) A8-3850 but at a level which makes entry into the Llano platform a little easier for those on a budget." - HardwareHeaven (Rated 8/10)

"Now, if you combine all these features with the APU price you'll be surprised, the AMD A6-3650 APU as reviewed today will cost you give or take 90 EUR and in the months to come, that price will only get lower. Honestly we feel that in three months from now this APU will settle at 75 EUR, maybe even lower.  And that's a hard price to beat for all the features and GPU goodness you receive alright." - Guru3D

"We get to review all of the high-end parts that cost a million dollars, but at the end of the day some of the most fun we get to have is with processors like this.  The AMD A6-3650 is a robust little 32nm 'Llano' APU that can do anything it's big brother can if you give it a little extra time. " - LegitReviews (Innovation Award)

The Bad

"This APU has gobs of overclocking room in it, but we did encounter a couple issues that we have never seen before.  The first being that analog displays stopped working after a mild overclock and the second being that once the APU Voltage was increased that the SuperSpeed USB 3.0 ports on the board stopped working." - LegitReviews

"As we mentioned in the Llano launch article, the "Stars" K10.5 cores simply cannot compete with the newer Sandy Bridge microarchitecture when it comes to lightly threaded applications. The A6-3650 does occasionally score the odd victory in highly multi-treaded workloads, but even those victories are by a relatively slight margin. To make matters worse, in all of our gaming benchmarks it was a one-sided victory in favour of the Sandy Bridge processor, but only when using a discrete GPU. " -HardwareCanucks

Bottom Line

As you can probably tell, this chip is a solid piece of hardware for any budget platform. Dollar-for-dollar, it consistently beats out similarly priced Intel set-ups that use IGP. A dedicated graphics card is still preferable, but with the Llano you can run Crossfire for another boost in performance on top of what you gain with the GPU.

You can pick up the AMD A6-3650 for about $120 at Newegg and TigerDirect, but given the minimal price difference we suggest you splurge on the AMD A8-3850 instead.

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