This week's best deals  ►  FTL, Max Payne 3, and more
FTL: Faster Than Light released at 10% off on both Steam and GOG, GameStop opened its trunk in the parking lot to reveal deals on Max Payne 3, Killing Floor, and Amnesia, and Guild Wars 2 is 25% off at Get Games for European customers. That's just the beginning of our weekly savings spelunking expedition, so come along with me for more unnecessary analogies. And weekend deals.


25% off Guild Wars 2 at Get Games - $41.24 (Europe only)
50% off Max Payne 3 at GameStop - $29.99
50% off Killing Floor - $9.99 at GameStop
15% off Battlefield 3 at Amazon - $33.81
10% off FTL: Faster Than Light at GOG - $8.99 (Also on Steam)
30% off Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath HD on Steam - $6.99
25% off PC downloads at Green Man Gaming with the voucher code GMG25-1BW0K-K1A3G



Steam  ►  Sam & Max, Oddworld, and more
Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath HD released today at a 30% discount, and Steam has also put together an Oddboxx bundle with all of the Oddworld games for 10.49. Also, Train Simulator 2013.


30% off Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath HD - $6.99
75% off Deus Ex: Human Revolution - $7.49
70% off Sam and Max Complete Pack - $14.99
10% off FTL: Faster Than Light - $8.99
33% off Vessel - $9.99
10% off Train Simulator 2013 - $26.99!
More Steam deals



Green Man Gaming   ►  25% off everything

Use the voucher code GMG25-1BW0K-K1A3G to receive 25% off a digital download by Monday September 17th at 4 a.m. PDT. Plus, tons of Saints Row: The Third DLC is on sale! Fun fact: if you mush all the DLC together, you get Saints Row: The Fourth, the illegitimate, possibly inbred son of Saints Row: The Third. He eats K-Y Jelly.

Get Games  ►  Guild Wars 2
You can still get Sleeping Dogs for 25% off and Borderlands for 50% off. New this week, Guild Wars 2 25% off codes are back in stock. There's also the usual selection of pre-order and other discounts.


25% off Guild Wars 2 - $41.24 (Europe only)
25% off Guild Wars 2: Digital Deluxe Edition - $56.24
25% off Sleeping Dogs - $37.49
50% off Borderlands - $9.99
More deals from Get Games


GameStop   ► Max Payne 3, Killing Floor, Amnesia
GameStop continues to cross off every price it can, but digging through its pages of sales this week revealed some pretty darn good stuff. Here are some of my favorites:


75% off Age of Empires III: Complete Collection - $9.99
50% off Max Payne 3 - $29.99
50% off Killing Floor - $9.99
75% off Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad - $4.99
75% off Mirror's Edge - $4.99
50% off Amnesia: The Dark Descent - $9.99
67% off Hard Reset - $9.99
More GameStop deals


GOG  ►  Diamonds of D&D
Aside from 10% off FTL: Faster Than Light, GOG has its usual themed sale. This weekend, it's all D&D deals...wait, what's this?! *Spit take.* Something new for GOG: the discounts scale with the number of games you buy. At one game, you'll get 30% off, buy two and get 33% off each, and so on up to all nine games for 65% off each. *Cleans up spit.*

Links to the individual games are below, but if you want the scaling deal, you have to go to the hub.


30% - 65% off Baldur's Gate: The Original Saga - $6.99 - $3.49
30% - 65% off Baldur's Gate 2 Complete - $6.99 - $3.49
30% - 65% off Neverwinter Nights: Diamond Edition - $6.99 - $3.49
30% - 65% off Icewind Dale 2 Complete - $6.99 - $3.49
30% - 65% off Icewind Dale Complete - $6.99 - $3.49
30% - 65% off The Temple of Elemental Evil - $4.19 - $3.49
30% - 65% off Dungeons & Dragons: Dragonshard - $6.99 - $3.49
30% - 65% off Forgotten Realms: Demon Stone - $6.99 - $3.49
30% - 65% off Planescape: Torment - $6.99 - $3.49


Amazon  ►  The Over-The-Top TopWare Bundle
Regular Amazon is way less fun than Labor Day Amazon -- it's pretty much back to the same 'ol, with games like Modern Warfare 2 and Civilization V on sale again. There is a new bundle sale, at least: the Over-The-Top TopWare Bundle includes 13 games. You probably don't want all 13.


85% off The Over-The-Top TopWare Bundle - $14.99
50% off Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 - $9.99
15% off Battlefield 3 - $33.81
50% off Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X 2 - $9.99
21% off Sid Meier's Civilization V - $23.82
51% off Deus Ex: Human Revolution - $14.68
60% off Mount & Blade - $6.03
More Amazon PC game downloads


GamersGate  ► A horde of romance

It's the same deal as last week: a giant, colorful patchwork of box art and red discount stickers. Only a few deals stick out at me. 50% off BioShock? Sure. 20% off To The Moon (Friday only)? Not bad. Miss Chic Romantic for only $7.48? Sounds goo- hey, wait a minute.

GameFly   ► L.A. Noire
L.A. Noire is the highlight of GameFly's sparse list this weekend.

75% off L.A. Noire: The Complete Edition - $7.49
75% off L.A. Noire - $4.99
More GameFly deals


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? It's all FTL: Faster Than Light for me. Well, not all, but lots of it.

Apologies for the delay in getting this week's podcast to you, listeners. We had a technical issue whereby Chris' voice was very very quiet. It took a long time before we realised what was wrong: we knew he was trying to tell us something, but, well, we had no idea what it was.

This week Chris, Rich and Tom Senior gather to discuss Dota 2, Dragon Age 2, Spec Ops: The Line, The Walking Dead games, Killing Floor, Endless Space and more, including the Steam charts and your questions from Twitter.

Tom would like to offer his sincere apologies to oboists everywhere. He doesn't mean a word he said. Really.

Download the MP3, subscribe, or find our older podcasts here.

Show notes:

Tom Francis goes hands-on with Dishonored.
Chris' Rome 2 preview and video interviews.
Our Minecraft server.
The PCG Planetside 2 forums.
Gummy vitamins.

 

The Summer Sideshow event has taken over co-op survival horror Killing Floor, replacing all of your traditional hideous mutants with a freakshow of carnival themed monsters like an overenthusiastic sword eater and the Fleshclown, a monster with a talent for combining words that should never be together. You can find them and shoot them so hard they never come back on a new funfair level set among cardboard façades of heaven and hell. It's called Hellride, the perfect place to try out the five new weapons added by the update, which is free to all who own Killing Floor.

The Summer Sideshow will run until July 23. To celebrate, Killing Floor is half price on Steam, but only for the next 12 hours. If you're looking for something to blast through with friends, Killing Floor is a solid choice. Up to six players can team up to survive waves of mutants on some reasonably large, open levels. You can weld doors shut to manage the flow of the horde. Once you've got them in a bottleneck, you can start using Killing Floor's ultra-satisfying arsenal to turn them into zombie paste. Everything goes into slow motion whenever you or a friend take a headshot, which lets you revel in the carnage. Getting a headshot with a handgun rarely feels this good.

Find out more on the official Killing Floor site, and get more details on the new event on the Summer Sideshow page. If there's not enough zany in your life right now this Summer Sideshow trailer will fix that pretty quickly.



And here are the Summer Sideshow guns.

The Steam fairies are ferrying an updated version of Red Orchestra 2 to PCs today. This is RO2's "GOTY Content Pack," a free patch that includes a new map and a heap of fixes. To commemorate the occasion, Tripwire has sent along a grim bit of video that you can watch above. Bunkers! Ditches! These are the places you'll die.

"One of the things we learned from the fans after the release was that many of them thought the game was too hardcore, not hardcore enough, or just not enough like the original game," Tripwire President John Gibson says in the video above. Most developers absorb an array of contradictory feedback after a game launches, and observing that strange soup of commingled praise and hatred while you decide how to react to it isn't something I envy about game development.

Red Orchestra 2's GOTY Edition Free Content Pack represents Tripwire's response to player feedback, and it seems like a truly comprehensive update to a game we already love. To kick off the roll-out of the update later this week, Red Orchestra 2 will also be free to play on Steam this weekend, beginning on Thursday.

What's in the update?

Mamayev Kurgan, a new multiplayer map lined with bunkers and trenches
"'Action' mode - Featuring a crosshair, easier aiming and toned down recoil, reduced damage and open access to a wide range of weaponry Action mode is the perfect first step for players into the world of Red Orchestra."
"'Classic' mode blends the gameplay innovations of the new game with the tactical and edgy gameplay of the original giving the fans of the first game exactly what they want."
Vehicle improvements, including a toning-down of AI tank accuracy
Machineguns are now "easier to use," according to Tripwire
Performance improvements, including revamp of dynamic shadows, changes to UI rendering, map optimizations, and more
Optional client-side hit detection
Refinement of spawn-on-squad leader, spawn protection, overtime, and Lockdown

Red Orchestra 2 will be free to play on Steam beginning at 10 AM PST on Thursday, May 24 until Sunday, May 27.

I love a good weld. And Killing Floor features my favourite welding mechanics of all! The average Killing Floor player is probably more interested in slo-mo dismemberment and headshots, which also feature, but it's that's not really my bag. I like sealing doors, having a panic, then blowing up said door with a pile of grenades.

Tripwire Interactive have just announced that Killing Floor has sold a million copies. They've even managed to sell two million pieces of DLC. To celebrate, they're knocking 85 per cent discount as part of Steam's Midweek Madness sale. The discount applies to the vanilla version and the bundle that comes with a pile of skins for your characters.

Are you still playing Killing Floor? Everyone has nightmares about the Patriarch, right?

The rather good co-op survival shooter, Killing Floor, will be free to play on Steam from this Thursday through Sunday, giving everyone a chance to try out the new goodies added by this year's Twisted Christmas event. I hope you enjoy nightmares about six foot tall gingerbread men with a taste for human flesh, because Killing Floor will throw hordes of them at your face on the new Ice Cave map.

The event will also give you the chance to shoot Christmas in the face with new weapons, including a vintage revolver, automatic shotgun, a huge sword and a powerful Husk cannon. Find out more on the official Twisted Christmas page (warning: contains large image of nightmarish gingerbread man). The event starts today, and will run until January 4.

The zombiesmiths (okay, okay, technically they're experimented-on freaks) at Tripwire are releasing another free update for Killing Floor, their co-op survival-'em-up FPS. The Summer Sideshow Event, due June 30, will add new map The Abusement Park, more achievements, and an unlockable character skin. Additional skins for KF's seven classes will be available as a $1.99 DLC pack. Read more on the KF website.

I'd like to extend these words to my mortal nemesis, cymbal monkey, who will have a horrific cameo in the update: your reign of percussive terror ends here.

When we took an overview of the remarkable happenings in the potato sack ARG yesterday, the trail was going cold, and it looked as though things were winding down. For a few hours at least, they were, then it all kicked off again. New updates have added Portal 2 themed levels to many of the games in the potato sack sale. The voice of Glados has started appearing in menu screens and secret messages, and to top it all, Bit.Trip Beat creators, Gaijin, dropped a heavy hint that completing the ARG could cause Portal 2 to be released early.

Adding fuel to that theory, today Portal 2 became available to pre-load through Steam. We've collected videos and screenshots of the new Portal 2 themed levels from potato sack sale below.

The Ball



The Ball gets a good extra hour of free Portal 2 levels, including one devoted to bowling over Aperture Science turrets. The team have done a great job of recreating Portal 2's assets in the Unreal 3 engine.
 

Audiosurf



The Portal 2 update in Audiosurf replaces your ship with a portal gun, and adds companion cube blocks to the courses. The best update is the addition of new Portal 2 songs like the one in the video above. After a couple of listens, it really gets stuck in the brain.
 

Bit.Trip Beat



Glados has well and truly invaded Bit.Trip Beat with this difficult new level. Gaijin hinted in their latest blog post that more ARG clues will be revealed to those who achieve perfect completions of the new levels.
 
 
AaAaAA!!! - A Reckless Disregard for Gravity



Glados has a lot to say about falling off tall objects after the latest Portal 2 update to A Reckless Disregard for Gravity. Creators Dejobaan also created a brilliant overview of the progress of the ARG so far, ending with Glados' invasion of the potato sack games.
 

RUSH



What better way to combine Portal 2 with Rush than to add companion cubes? It's almost as cute as the Portal 2 level in Toki Tori below.

Toki Tori



Toki Tori's levels provided plenty of useful clues during the ARG. Their silhouettes formed decipherable codes that helped to unlock the passwords for the Aperture Science login screens. The new level has Glados hanging in the background, watching your every move.
 

Killing Floor

The new Killing Floor map has you fending off waves of zombies in a massive new Aperture Science map. The familiar human vendors have been replaced by a robot that looks just like one of Glados' personality spheres. It looks great, too, with its overgrown test chambers and giant buttons. You'll find their official screens of the new map below.

The potato sack sale is still going, offering 13 great indie titles at 75% off. You can buy each one individually for 50% off while the offer lasts. Head over to Steam to take advantage of the deal

The Potato Sack sale kicked off over the weekend on Steam. The sale knocks 50% off 13 indie games, including Super Meat Boy, Amnesia: The Dark Descent, Killing Floor and more. The whole bundle is 75% off, and you'll get a potato hat in Team Fortress 2.

This isn't just an ordinary sale, thought. There's something weird and potato related happening. Several games in the potato pack have received some unusual updates. Egyptian hieroglyphics have been found in Amnesia, potato references have been found in Defence Grid: The Awakening, and plugging a Razer peripheral in to Kick It! will trigger one of fifteen potato related phrases like this one "never trust a potato...they have eyes everywhere. They are always listening...we never went to space! SPUDnik was a Russet Conspiracy!" What the spud is going on?

VG247 note that a wiki has been set up to collect the mounting clues, though nobody has any idea where any of it is leading. Valve revealed Portal 2 through a series of encoded images and radio messages patched into Portal 1. Could there be another reveal on the cards, or is it all an elaborate, long running April fools hoax?

Here's a list of the games that are part of the potato sack sale. Head over to Steam to take advantage of the deals. There's no end date for the sale yet.

1... 2... 3... KICK IT!
AaAaAA!!! - A Reckless Disregard for Gravity
Amnesia: The Dark Descent
AudioSurf
BIT.TRIP BEAT
Cogs
Defense Grid: The Awakening
Killing Floor
RUSH
Super Meat Boy
The Ball
The Wonderful End of the World
Toki Tori