Nvidia have hit back in the great bundle wars earlier this week with their own $150 F2P content giveaway. That’s around £100 in 'real' money. If the lure of having a brand new performance pixel-pusher chucking polygons around your PC’s monitron wasn’t enough to entice you to part with your hard-earned cash, Nvidia are hoping that giving you extra pocket-money in three of the top free-to-play games around will sway you their way.

It’s a different take on the game bundle compared with rival GPU manufacturer, AMD. They recently launched their Never Settle Reloaded bundle, offering triple-A games with newly-purchased graphics cards in their HD 7800 and HD 7900 series.

Nvidia though is banking on the explosion in the free-to-play market being more of an attraction than a bundle of new titles.

They’re supporting Planetside 2, World of Tanks and PhysX poster-child, Hawken, with the purchase of a new GTX card. That means anything from a GTX 650 upwards.

There are though two tiers to this bundle, with the purchase of a GTX 650 or GTX 650 Ti giving you $25 worth of in-game items for the three free titles, and anything from a GTX 660 and above giving you $50 value pack each.



In Planetside 2, for example, the lower tier cards will net you the ‘Gear Up’ pack, which includes Infantry Camo, Weapon Camo, Exclusive Gun, 7 Day XP Boost and a 7 Day Resource Boost (equivalent to 2500 Station Cash).

When you buy a GTX 660 or above you’ll get the ‘Premium Gear Up’ pack, which includes Infantry Camo, Weapon Camo, Vehicle Camo, Exclusive Gun, 7 Day Squad XP Boost, 7 Day Squad Resource Boost, 7 Day XP Boost, 7 Day Resource Boost, equivalent to 5000 Station Cash.

That way we avoid any awkwardness in exchange rate fluctuations between different territories.

Exclusive guns for Nvidia-sponsored kills
AMD on the flip side are offering free copies of Crysis 3 and Bioshock Infinite with any purchase of a HD 7900 series card and Bioshock Infinite and Tomb Raider with a HD 7800 series card.
When those games are released, anyways...

It’s going to be interesting to see whether Nvidia’s bundle only serves to entice those who are already card-carrying members of the free-to-play frontier, or whether AMD’s reliance on good ol’ fashioned triple-A titles makes the difference for them.

Our Friday question though is: if you were in the market for a new GPU, all things being equal (and we know they’re really not) which of these two latest gaming bundles would sway you towards either the green or red side of the great graphics card divide?

We were quite taken with The 90's Arcade Racer's modest Kickstarter bid, despite its nostalgia-baiting name and errant apostrophe. The game's developer was looking for a conservative £10,000 to add new tracks and cars into a racing game that was already well into production. Not only has it broken that total - hitting £14,515 with 59 hours to go - but now indie publishing house Nicalis are set to take it under their wing.

"We’re working with Anthony on The ‘90s Arcade Racer," says Nicalis founder Tyrone Rodriguez. "Our collaboration will allow him to realize his vision of the game and make sure that he has the necessary Unity programming and design help he needs so that he can concentrate on art and other aspects."

Nicalis specialise in providing development support, porting and publishing for indie titles. They've previously worked on Cave Story, VVVVVV, Nifflas' NightSky, and are developing the upcoming Binding of Isaac remake.

"For anyone asking about the physics, both Anthony and I know what arcade racers should feel like. I also have experience with racing games and actual track experience; I worked on The Fast and the Furious Tokyo Drift (PS2, PSP), designing its drift physics. and have over 100 hours of real-world track time (open-wheel, street and race cars). Anthony and I won’t stop until we get the tuning just right."

Sounds promising, and hopefully the deal will give the developer the support to push The 90's Arcade Racer beyond its initial scope.

Thanks, Indie Games.

Codemasters might be getting a little carried away. Sure, GRID 2 is all about going ridiculously fast, but they don't have to apply that philosophy to every aspect of their production. Take this trailer - the first dedicated showing of in-game footage. It lasts a scant one minute and ten seconds. Take out all the surrounding logos and you're left with 37 seconds of high-speed action. Guys! It's not a race!

What we do get is cars of various shapes and sizes jostling for position around the Californian coast, Paris and Australia's Red Bull Ring. If nothing else, it's nice to see Codemasters settle back down to a game that seems to be purely about racing. As much as I enjoyed the Dirt series, it did increasingly focus on silly Gymkhana showmanship. With any luck, GRID's tarmac tracks will put the emphasis firmly back on Codies enjoyable race engine.

GRID 2 is due out in May.

Not content with completely shifting the game purchasing paradigm, Hi-Rez have also announced a new content update that will arrive today alongside the "single purchase" option. It brings new maps, a new weapon, turret shields to enhance Generator battles, and additional physics options for custom servers.

Six new maps have been added; three for CTF, and three for Arena. Bella Omega makes a return, hopefully free from the Generator problems that prompted its original removal. There's also Canyon Crusade Revival, a remade version of the classic Tribes map.

The new weapon is the Shocklance, a secondary slot item available to all classes. It does higher damage from behind, which should prompt some close-range balletic jetpacking to manoeuvre yourself into position.

Of course, the patch's biggest change is the Game of the Year unlock itself, giving all existing weapons, maps and perks for a single price. That price is £20.99 for new players, and £13.99 for existing VIPs.

Well, that was fast. Only a little over 24 hours have passed since Aliens: Colonial Marines emerged from its dark alcove, but graphics mods are already becoming available. Two such offerings are the DirectX 10 and SweetFX add-ons which spruce up shadows, lighting, and color palettes for something a bit more reminiscent of the films' murky tones and cool hues.

The DirectX 10 mod softens shadows a bit and tweaks illumination and to bounce and reflect off weapon textures and other surfaces. Installing SweetFX provides a less subtle effect: deeper color saturation, a sharpened texture filter, stronger shadows, and a faint blue gradient for outdoor areas. The latter looks a little extreme in some indoor areas, but it's definitely a darker flavor than the default visuals.

Though Colonial Marines wasn't the Aliens game reboot fans desired for years, it's still nice to see a few dedicated modders pushing for graphical excellence regardless of the quality of the game. Have a look at some sample shots below for both DirectX 10 and SweetFX, and head to Mod DB and DSOGaming to download each one.

DirectX 10 mod

Default lighting and colors

SweetFX enabled

Ether One's mystique first embedded itself in our synapses during our roundup of the best-looking upcoming games. Developer White Paper recently shared an enigmatic new trailer for the first-person adventure, which is themed around the surrealism of dreams, the dangers of mental instability, and repurposing recollections using nothing but a magical camera.

As a Restorer, you're gifted with the ability to shape and change the memories embedded within others to help them rebuild their shattered minds—sort of like Jennifer Lopez in The Cell but with less horse mutilation. Of course, your own memories need fixing as well, and only by delving into the mind of a patient named Jean can you make everything right.

The relationship between the Restorer and Jean seems like an important piece of Ether One's tale, and its strength lies in dangling answers beyond the wonderful juxtapositions dreams pull off so well, such as a paneled doorway at the end of a concrete hall opening to a slice of tropical paradise. The impressive lighting effects and deep colors of the Unreal Engine game only increase the appeal of escaping into explorable abstraction as you walk Jean's mind.

White Paper hopes for an early 2013 release for Ether One. In the meantime, have a look at its website or Greenlight page for more vibrant shots.

If you nab the long-awaited System Shock 2, which just made it to GOG's library, you'll also score the original concept pitch for the atmospheric role-playing scare-fest as a bonus look at the game's early iterations. It describes how the project, first named Junction Point, would skirt the combat-dense designs of the Doom and Quake clones populating the late 1990s in favor of "a moody cross between System Shock and Apocalypse Now."

"Junction Point tells a dark tale set in a very dark place," the pitch reads. "Shock provided players with a unique tension and suspense much more akin to Alone in the Dark and Resident Evil than Doom. Junction Point also is set in a suspenseful futuristic horror setting and introduces a number of themes and game mechanics that support this vibe."

Though System Shock 2's monstrous Hybrids and cyborg assassins occasionally demanded you defend yourself with whatever arsenal you managed to find, the pitch document stressed that Junction Point would focus on role-play and character depth rather than more guns.

"Primarily, Shock was at heart a real role-playing game, not an action shooter," the pitch states. "With Junction Point, we are clearly setting out to make a role-playing game, not only embracing the sense of role-playing that Shock provided, but expanding on it. Junction Point is paced like an RPG, not a Quake deathmatch. The player character grows, not just their gun collection.

"Most PC shooters are essentially games of attrition. Players can take dozens of rounds of shotgun shells, grenades, and BFG fire before they even start feeling woozy. The gunplay in Shock was a much more decisive affair; it was crucial to get the drop on your foe and fire on him before he knew you were there. Junction Point will adhere to this style of gunplay."

If you've played or are playing System Shock 2, how closely do your experiences match up with the Junction Point pitch? Do you charge blazing across the Von Braun, or are you more conservative with the weapons at your disposal?

Thanks, Eurogamer.

Jon Shafer, designer of Civilization V, has successfully funded his upcoming At the Gates on Kickstarter with 22 days to spare. Today, in an update on the Kickstarter page, he took a long and merciless look into the mirror of self-criticism, admitting what he perceives as mistakes in the design of Civ 5 that he hopes to make up for in this new project. Everything from AI programming to unit stacking is dissected.

One particular element of Civ 5 he singled out was the AI design, and the way that many of the computer-controlled leaders would behave somewhat randomly. He pins this on a very complex diplomacy system with lots of moving parts, that often didn't present any kind of outward logic to the player. "The only thing which matters in a game is the experience inside the player's head," he wrote. "It doesn't matter what your intentions are or what's going on under the hood if the end result just isn't fun.

"With I'm staying completely focused on the end goal: results. This means a much simpler AI system, which in turn will result in a much stronger opponent. When you as the developer know exactly what an AI player is doing and why, it becomes much easier to recognize bad behavior and fix it."



He was also very critical of his decision to institute the One Unit Per Tile rule, explaining that it caused issues with everything from AI to production times.

"In Civ 5, every unit needed its own tile, and that meant the map filled up pretty quickly. To address this, I slowed the rate of production, which in turn led to more waiting around for buckets to fill up. For pacing reasons, in the early game I might have wanted players to be training new units every 4 turns. But this was impossible, because the map would have then become covered in Warriors by the end of the classical era. And once the map fills up too much, even warfare stops being fun.

"...The key is the map. Is there enough of room to stash units freely and slide them around each other? If so, then yes, you can do it. For this to be possible, I'd think you would have to increase the maximum map size by at least four times. You'd probably also want to alter the map generation logic to make bottlenecks larger and less common."

If you're in the mood for a long read, you can check out the full essay, which goes through just about every design element in Civ 5 and puts it under the microscope, offering solutions to his perceived problems that will be used in At the Gates. In case you missed it, you should also peruse our interview with Jon about the game.

It's been tested, it's been debated, and it's now available to all: Valve announces the official launch of the Steam Linux client after nearly four months in beta. Expectedly, a sale is going on for all Linux-supported games in Steam's catalog, including Crusader Kings II and Counter-Strike: Source.

The sale lasts until February 21 and takes 50 to 75 percent off the 54 games Linux users can slot into their brand new platform. Team Fortress 2 joins the revelry by automatically awarding a free and tradeable in-game Tux accessory for all Linux mercs jumping into the free-to-play shooter before May 1. Prepare for an avalanche of crates, Ubuntuans.

Grab the Steam Linux client and browse the full list of discounted titles on the sale page. Welcome to Steam, Linux gamers.

Ok, so maybe Vietcry doesn't deviate that steeply from Crysis—they're both about shooting bewildered soldiers in the middle of a jungle—but the Vietnam War is a natural setting for the lush canopies and open maps of the FPS. Skirting the war's more dramatic tussles with morality and politics enshrined in classic films such as Apocalypse Now, the German-made Vietcry hands you the guns but yanks the pivotal Nanosuit and its maximum overpowered-ness.

The mod shows remarkable polish after a lengthy 10 months in boot camp. Though stripping Crysis' sci-fi connections is a nod toward keeping things believable—well, as believable as blowing up a car with just a few pistol shots allows—the changes also bring in old-school FPS mechanics: med-kits and armor jackets replace regenerating health, so you'll need to scrounge for protection and ammo during the mission.

Grab Vietcry from Mod DB. There's also a multi-cultural trailer for viewing, featuring German-speaking American soldiers trading lead with Vietnamese fighters.