Gentlemen, the king of the tactical warfare genre (sue me, I made it up. And yes this is the only game in the genre.) has returned. The Total War series from Shogun to Medieval has laid dormant for some time. And now, with an all new fresh lick of paint and many many gameplay additions and changes, Empire Total War is here. With the full release just around the corner (March 3rd, nevar forget etc)  get your tactics on up in the demo.

Packing heat at a whopping 2GB (this is a demo after all..) the two missions included are guaranteed to be beefy with corpses littered atop what was once a perfectly good corn field I’m sure you can’t wait.

For those of you fuddy duddies who are still sitting at home, tin-foil hats firmly upon their heads– the demo only comes in STEAM choo choo flavour, so don’t bother looking because unfortunately gentlemen, you cannot find it.

Look forward to some demo impressions within a couple of days once I’ve had time to explore every nook and cranny and stick my head into every orafice.

A link for the lazy

Gentlemen. I have been to the mountaintop. And upon that same mountaintop I was spoken to- nay, TOUCHED! By the hand of hand of gaming. I crossed my chest from the W, to the S to the A and D and a voice told me that digital distribution is truly the future, and to put faith in those who deliver me from the tyranny of evil shovelware. That voice comes back to me today as I gladly inform you of the Steam Sale this weekend.

Get this fellows. I-Fluid, Multiwinia, Trials 2, Gravitron 2, and Eets all in ONE pack. For the price of £6.95.  80% off. EIGHTY PERCENT.

Just a quick summary for those who have no idea what the hell these are and why they need them. First up, Multiwinia is the fantastic sequel to the wonderous Darwinia, something of an RTS lite. I-Fluid is a lovely little casual game wherein you control a drop of water trying to get to the end of various fun levels attempting to avoid absorption from various substances, such as the dreaded meat. Trials 2 Second Edition is just that, a trials motorbike game. Racing and flipping has never been so fun. Gravitron 2 is the game designed to make you mutilate your keyboard with your face, you know those games where you control a spaceship.. in a cavern and across planetary surfaces (I wonder why these retro games use a goddamn spaceship to explore planets.. on the inside.). Annoying it may be, but it’s really- really fun and wondrously rewarding when a level is done. Eets is a cute little casual game that can only really be described as Lemmings meets The Incredible Machine.

Buy them, get them, play them.

Some of you may remember me mentioning something about Left 4 Dead in the first podcast episode. Specifically, I believe I said something along the lines of “I’m not paying $50 for a mod when I got the entire Orange Box for $40.” If you’re one of the very few people who agreed with me, pop open your Steam store and jump for joy, because Left 4 Dead is 50% off this weekend.

brb, grabbin pills.

This weekend, get your hands on some good old fashioned murdering and street racing in the Rockstar Collection. Everything inside is also separately discounted too Bar GTA1, GT2 and Wild Metal, so if you’re just looking for your GTA4 fix then look no further because this is probably the cheapest you’re going to get it, and with the recent patch stated to have increased performance somewhat significantly, it’s unlikely there’ll be a better time.

Just for the unsure the collection includes GTA1, GTA2, GTA3, GTA Vice City, GTA San Andreas,  GTA IV, Manhunt, Max Payne, Max Payne 2, Midnight Club 2 and Wild Arms.

It’s not all of it – I know, but for the low low price of £38.49/$69.99/€69.99 it’s hard to not buy it.. except for our European bretheren, you might want to find a good trusted friend from either the US or the UK to gift it to you and you send them the money.. Steam is kind of skewed against the europeans at the moment.

Click Here to buy it.

And click here if you feel that 1€ ≠ 1$

It looks like Mount and Blade is on sale right now, and after one of you guys gave it a glowing review, I think I’ll give it a shot.

I’m installing it right now. If you’re looking for something to fill a boring weekend, why not give it a try?

This post is for those of you with a Steam account, or a PC in general. Giant Enemy Blog now has its own Steam group that is open for anyone to join. Now, instead of wishing you could play Team Fortress 2 with the strangers you met on some blogging site, you can actually invite said strangers to a game for a jolly good time!

Steam is a digital distribution service created by Valve. Through Steam, numerous gamers may purchase and directly download a variety of games, mods, demos, and videos. Steam has its own in-game overlay that lets you surf the web and IM your friends without having to Alt+Tab your game!

P.S. If you don’t have steam, and you still haven’t gone to the site, you can download it here.

If you weren’t aware, most of the games available on Steam are now on sale. I just picked up Bioshock for $5, Audiosurf for $5, and Everyday Shooter for $9.

Sale ends on January 2nd, so go buy stuff.

It was inevitable. Eventually we were all going to make the shift to digital distribution and do away with the unnecessary retail, but I never thought it would happen so quickly.

So now it seems that Steam has pretty much all the publishers under their digital distribution belt. I guess I want to be mad, but I can’t seem to be. It’s a great service that doesn’t add any malware other than tying the program to Steam, which is dandy. You can still launch games straight and you don’t have to be connected to the internet to play.

I’m trying to think of ways that this upsets me, but it doesn’t. We won’t have anymore of EA’s intrusive nonsense, and we’ll probably have more deals.

My God . . .

What a glorious occasion!

I don’t have to go into a store anymore to try to haggle a game away from a clerk who’s unfortunately stuck trying to sell me everything at the counter because his brick and mortar location is losing large bills to the recession.

It’s . . . it’s so beautiful!

Alright, I think I feel better now. The important thing here is that this should essentially eliminate the excuse of “we pirate games so that we don’t have to deal with DRM bullshit,” since it seems that now buying a game is as easy as pirating it.