id Software is Dooming us like we've never been Doomed before. Publisher Bethesda Softworks has announced the Doom 3 BFG Edition, which will feature the series' entire catalog, including Doom, Doom 2, Doom 3, and Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil, as well as an added "Lost Mission" with seven new levels. The release date and pricing are TBA, but it's coming sometime this year. Check out the trailer inside.



In addition to new content, id has spent the past year addressing complaints about Doom 3's darkness and difficulty (enter the new "armor-mounted flashlight"), tweaking its lighting and rendering, and adding 3D monitor and 5.1 surround sound support. Many of the modifications are bigger news for the console versions, as we've already been blessed with smooth framerates and the famous Duct Tape Mod.



"Doom 3 was enthusiastically embraced by gamers worldwide at its release," said id Software's John Carmack in today's statement. "Today, the full experience has been enhanced and extended to be better than ever, and is delivered across all the platforms with a silky smooth frame rate and highly responsive controls."

If id were working on it, this definitive Doom collection would be an excellent precursor to Doom 4, and Polygon's Russ Pitts made the same leading statement to id's Tim Willits, who repeated back, "If one were working on that, it would be a perfect precursor."

So, yeah, it seems likely that we'll get a Doom 4 re-announcement sometime this year.

Do you have a penchant for all things related to 1996 computer game Quake and its numerous sequels and spin-offs? Do you own a computer that’s reasonably portable, and have an interest in LAN gaming? Are you free on 2-5 August 2012? Do you live in or around Dallas, Texas, or have the ability to get there for said dates? Do you want to get exclusive news and hands-on experiences with upcoming games from the likes of Bethesda and id? Do you enjoy being brainwashed by corporate sponsorship from 22 different companies? Do you? DO YOU?

If so, there is absolutely no event suitable for you occurring in the next year. Apart, maybe, from , which is taking place at the Hilton Anatole in Dallas on 2-5 August 2012. It’s free and run by volunteers, and in 2010 it attracted some 8,500 people. You might even rub shoulders some of the incredibly famous and good-looking people from PC Gamer there.

Welcome to the PC Gamer Ultimate Christmas Giveaway! This is the biggest competition we've ever done: packed with peripherals, games, and exclusive items signed by some very important people. Why are we doing this? Because it's Christmas! And we love you.

The Ultimate Christmas giveaway will run until Christmas Eve. Every day we'll be posting about a new prize that's up for grabs, and you'll have 24 hours after the time of publishing to enter. Sadly, we're only able to open this competition to UK residents.

Ah Christmas, a time for family, a time for giving, and a time for blowing the heads of mutants, at least that's what the guys at id think. So, to wish everyone a Merry Headshotmas, they've sent us a Rage poster signed by their staff, including John Carmack himself! They've also thrown in a copy of Rage and the Rage strategy guide too, that's one hell of a prize.

Check inside for details, plus a closer look at the poster.


She's a beauty isn't she? All this could be yours if you answer one very simple question:

When the world is destroyed in 2012, what is your plan to survive in the harsh post apocalyptic wasteland?

The best, coolest and funniest plan will win the loot. If you win, you'll get a private message via the forums. Let us know your address and we'll send you your prizes shortly after Christmas. Remember, this competition is open to UK readers only. Also, if you don't claim your prize within three weeks of being notified we'll offer it to someone else. Full terms and conditions can be found here.

Good luck out there wastelanders! Don't forget to check back at 4.30 for the next prize, which will involve pointing and clicking.

The Doom 3 source code has been released and is available now on Github. According to John Carmack's Twitter feed, the source code was delayed when lawyers had a bit of a wobble over some patent problems. With the addition of a few lines of code and the tweaking of a few more, the release was good to go. Releasing source code is a bit of a risky move, and takes time and money to do, so it's heartening to see id dishing out the data for free. Indie devs and code enthusiasts, go forth and conquer!

15 years ago, the original Diablo hacked and slashed its way into PC gaming history. Now, on the run-up to Diablo III, we take a trip to Blizzard to look back at how all began, and forward at where it’s going—including insight into the Diablo III that almost was! Plus, we’ve got Battlefield 3 sniper survival tips, a special report on what Windows 8 means for gamers, and an emergency guide to wrestling your accounts back from hackers. Then read our reviews of Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad, Rage, Hard Reset, Driver: San Francisco, and more!

It's all on newsstands now! Or, if you can’t make it to the store, we’re available on Coverleaf.com and Apple Newsstand.

Attention indie devs and modders! John Carmack has tweeted to say that id are releasing the full source Doom 3 source code to anyone who fancies downloading it and having a poke. The news, spotted on RPS, puts id Tech 4 in the hands of game makers looking for some free tech to play with. “Doom 3 source is packaged and tested, we are waiting on final lawyer clearance for release,” Tweeted Carmack. No news on how long exactly that will take. To all the budding devs who will be downloading the new code, please, for the love of our eyes, use more lights than id did in Doom 3.

Update - RockPaperShotgun let us know that Peter Hines has called this rumour 'complete bollocks'.

Kotaku are reporting that id Software's Doom 4 has been put on hold following Rage's launch issues. Kotaku's unnamed source tells them that Bethesda felt that the problematic launch demonstrated a "a serious lack of confidence" in the id management. These rumours are of course just that, and must be taken with a grain of salt.

In our Rage review Rich enjoyed the game, but found it very linear and old fashioned. While opinion was more divided over it during the our recent podcast. What do you think?

Tim's had a baby! That means his ideas about what's been happening in the last couple of weeks in the world of PC Gaming are sketchy at best. Graham, Rich and Owen step in to help bring Tim up to speed, with discussions about Planetside 2, Rage, Battlefield 3, the Project Zomboid disaster and a brief debate about whether or not horses are evil (they are).

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

You may have heard about Gamasutra's slightly contentious interview with id CEO Todd Hollenshead and artist Andy Chang about the direction id took with Rage. Interviewer Brandon Sheffield took a surprising amount of criticism for his tone, and the fact that he questioned most of the answers id gave him. Today, Sheffield explains a bit of the context for that interview, and why he took such a questioning approach.

"I asked these questions to Chang and Hollenshead, because I couldn't figure out why they'd done it this way," Sheffield writes. "This is not some amateur developer, this is id, so they had to have good reasons for their systems, and the makeup of the universe they'd created. The hostile tone people may have picked up on was likely a misinterpretation of my surprise at their responses."

Both the original interview and Sheffield's coda are good pieces and reveal a lot about why Rage might have been an underwhelming game when compared with the expectations surrounding it. But perhaps the most surprising thing is that Sheffield had to write the second piece at all. As he points out, the interview should be entirely unremarkable.

"It was the bare minimum we should expect from journalists," he says. "If something is said that doesn't match what you saw, ask about it. If you're curious about this or that, ask a question, no matter how 'important' the interviewee may be. And sometimes the best answers can be gotten by playing devil's advocate."

On Saturday a massive patch landed for Rage, eagerly awaited by players struggling with blurry, popping textures, low framerates, psychedelic artefacts and more. The mess of a PC launch has been so severe that John Carmack referred to it as "a real cluster !@#$" in a written statement to Kotaku, and attributed the problems to the release of incorrect drivers by AMD and Nvidia.

"When launch day came around and the wrong driver got released, half of our PC customers got a product that basically didn't work," Carmack wrote, adding "we knew that all older AMD drivers, and some Nvidia drivers would have problems with the game, but we were running well in-house on all of our test systems."

This weekend a huge patch hit, adding workarounds and tweaks to counter the most severe crashes. A number of graphical options have been added to the menu as well, letting players take over from the auto-detection system that was supposed to automatically tweak Rage's options to help it run as close to 60 fps as possible. Players can now alter V-sync, Anisotropic filter and texture cache settings manually.

"The original release of RAGE does not expose many video/graphics options for people to tweak because some of these settings, although desirable from a quality perspective, simply will not work on specific configurations either due to hardware limitations and/or driver bugs," reads a note in the Steam patch notes. "Due to popular demand for more video and graphics options, this patch updates the video settings menu and exposes several quality and performance settings. However, not everyone may be able to increase the settings due to hardware limitations and/or driver bugs."

The Steam patch notes have extensive details on how each aspect of the new graphics options will work, and a list of known issues with certain graphics cards. Meanwhile, here's the summarised list of patch notes.

Implemented workaround for AMD driver crash right after intro cinematic
on Win 7 32-bit systems.
Disabled UBOs because they are causing animation issues with AMD drivers.
Don't allow swap-tear to be enabled on AMD while the extension is not
exposed because it may crash.
Support for new video settings: "texture cache", "vsync" and
"anisotropic filter"
Automatically adjust vt_maxPPF based on the number of available cores.
Improved performance for SLI cards when GPU transcode is enabled.
Fix for GPU Transcoding option being disabled after exiting gameplay.
Added safe mode to restore video settings to default values.
Allow g_fov to be changed from the RAGE launch options in Steam.
Server now forwards text chat from clients to all other clients while