Midnight on the beat, and I could tell this city has an old heart. Homicide watch wasn't an exciting job—murder stopped becoming a punchline for me long ago—but it kept me on the streets, and that's where you go if you want both a lesson in personality and how to avoid a fender-bender when the garbage man's drunk again.

Me? I came from some spitball of a town further upstate. Figured I'd join the force. Make a difference. Honor, valor, and all that. Everyone I met then were total strangers. Funny—they still seem like strangers now.

This place runs and breathes on oil drills, both a paradise for a man with black blood in his veins and a curse for the schmuck with blood painted on his face. Things were a mess for the longest time. The outside world felt like it didn't exist sometimes, and the city's own problems almost drove the boys and girls down at city hall into a panic. I guess it got to me—I came here for the big-time life, not a tug of war with reality.

I remember a buddy of mine, Calvin Chan, telling me to just "slow it down and look closer to see the more beautiful things in life." It's been a good anchor during dark times. It's a city with warts, after all—but it's my city.

This week's best deals  ►  Mass Effect 3, Trine 2, and 25% off at GMG
The tastiest specials on this week's menu include Mass Effect 3 Digital Deluxe for $20 during Amazon's big Labor Day sale, 75% off the Trine Complete Collection on Steam, and a new Green Man Gaming voucher code for deals on whatever you want deals on.


60% off Mass Effect 3 Digital Deluxe Edition on Amazon - $19.99
67% off Max Payne 3 and LA Noire bundle on Amazon - $29.99
75% off Trine Complete Collection on Steam - $8.74
50% off Resonance on GOG - $4.99
25% off any PC download at Green Man Gaming with code: GMG25-1BW0K-K1A3G
30% off Sleeping Dogs at Green Man Gaming with code: SDOGS-E1V8A-9R1HX



Steam  ►  Trine and Crysis
Everything Trine is on sale at Steam, including the new Trine 2: Goblin Menace DLC. There's also Crysis, but when isn't it on sale?

75% off Trine Complete Collection - $8.74
75% off Crysis Collection - $17.49
33% off Vessel - $9.99
50% off Age of Empires Online DLC: Steam Starter Pack - $9.99 (Friday only)
More Steam deals



Amazon  ►  Labor Day sale
Amazon's big Labor Day sale ends Sunday, so you don't have much longer to get, say, Mass Effect 3 Digital Deluxe Edition for $20.

60% off Mass Effect 3 Digital Deluxe Edition - $19.99
50% off Borderlands: Game of the Year Edition - $14.99
50% off Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 - $29.99
75% off Crysis 2 - Maximum Edition - $9.99
54% off Deus Ex: Human Revolution - $13.81
60% off Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning - $15.99
68% off Mount & Blade - $4.77
60% off Psychonauts - $3.99
50% off Stacking - $7.49
75% off Assassin's Creed bundle - $19.99
67% off Grand Theft Auto IV and Max Payne 3 bundle - $29.99
78% off Spec Ops: The Line and BioShock 1 & 2 bundle - $19.99
67% off Max Payne 3 and LA Noire bundle - $29.99
90% off Square Enix Ultimate Collection - $9.50
More Amazon PC game downloads


Green Man Gaming   ► 25% off everything

There are a couple of new voucher codes at GMG. Ending Monday, use GMG25-1BW0K-K1A3G to get 25% off any PC game download or SDOGS-E1V8A-9R1HX for 30% off Sleeping Dogs specifically.

You can't stack them for 55% off Sleeping Dogs, but you could buy Stacking for 25% off. Actually, you can't. It isn't in GMG's catalog. It is 50% off at Amazon, but that doesn't stop my joke from being ruined.

GOG  ►  Point-and-Click Mix
Point your browser to GOG's adventure-themed weekend deals and click on games like Machinarium, Resonance, and Botanicula. Wow. Did I go too far that time?

50% off Machinarium: Collector's Edition - $4.99
50% off Resonance - $4.99
50% off Gemini Rue - $4.99
50% off Blackwell Bundle - $7.49
50% off The Whispered World - $7.49
50% off Botanicula - $4.99


Get Games  ►  Total War
Nothing huge to report from Get Games. Sleeping Dogs is back up to 25% off, and the perennially on sale Total War series is on sale.


25% off Sleeping Dogs - $37.49
50% off Borderlands - $9.99
75% off Empire: Total War - $4.99
75% off Napoleon: Total War - $4.99
75% off Total War Shogun 2 - $9.99
70% off Total War Shogun 2: Fall of the Samurai - $8.99
More deals from Get Games


GameStop   ► Saints Row and Might & Magic
GameStop's silly long list of deals is largely populated by Saints Row The Third's expansive DLC library and Might & Magic.

GamersGate  ► A bin of bargains

Why can't I hold all these deals? At least GamersGate has gone from 10 pages of scattershot discounts to just two, but there's still a lot to cover. Here's the short version: it has same Trine bundle deal as Steam, 75% off Batman: Arkham Asylum GOTY, and tons of kings, crusades, and iron hearts.

GameFly   ► Bulletstorm and Stronghold 3
GameFly is pretty light on sales this weekend, so I'll just use this space to think about the idea of a real bullet storm. It would be terrible. All those bullets plummeting from angry thunder-shots above. Clearly, we can never allow the gods to acquire firearms.

75% off Bulletstorm - $5.00
50% off Stronghold 3 Gold - $19.99


Let us know in the comments if you find any more great deals, and if you feel like sharing: what are you playing this weekend? I'll continue thieving in Guild Wars 2 on the Tarnished Coast server, though I am disappointed that the Thief class steals abilities instead of what I really want: money. I want to be the richest low-level scoundrel on the server, dammit.

Depending on who you talk to, LA Noire was either a compelling masterpiece or a grand folly. One thing’s for sure, though; its creator Brendan McNamara had an ambitious idea for a game and followed it through.

His next game seems to be taking a similar retro-tact to LA Noire. According to Kotaku, it’s “one of the great untold stories of the 20th century.” Oh yeah, it’s also called Whore of the Orient - but we’re not sure how long that name will stick before a concerned parent makes them change it to “Chinese Detective Story”.

As Kotaku points out, Whore of the Orient is the nickname for Shanghai, which could lead to a lot of sexist jokes we’re not even going to begin to make. Its huge population and dodgy quarters make it comparable to LA Noire’s vision of 1940s Los Angeles.

Of course, Brendan McNamara’s Team Bondi studios were controversially shut down after the release of LA Noire, but it seems McNamara’s got a new chum in the form of Mad Max director George Miller, whose KMM Studios are backing Whore of the Orient. It’s also more than likely that LA Noire’s groundbreaking MotionScan facial animation will return - McNamara owns Depth Analysis, the company behind it.