Contrary to the norm, Hollywood isn't entirely composed of heartless corporate robots. It has people, too, and when not fetching oil martinis for their robot overlords, they like playing games. Take director Guillermo del Toro, for example. Sure, his latest science-fiction epic, Pacific Rim, tips its hat to the Japanese monster films of old with supersized bot-on-brute action, but that's probably not why its debut trailer caught onto gaming circles so quickly. Watch for yourself, but more importantly, listen carefully.

Yep, that's Ellen McLain lending a perfectly replicated GLaDOS voice to the computer systems of Pacific Rim's mega mechs. Someone—perhaps even del Toro himself—on the film crew is an avid Portal fan and decided McLain's modulated tones jives perfectly with punching giant beasts in the face. Considering everyone's favorite evil AI wouldn't ever get caught actually helping humans, that's an impressive feat.

Pacific Rim releases July 12 for the theater platform. McLain has previously trusted us with her delicious Pecan Tassies recipe, which we're still enjoying.

We’ve been able to trade games for Team Fortress 2 items since last year. Expanding on that functionality, today Valve has made TF2 items sellable for real moneydollars through the new Steam Community Market public beta—with the caveat, of course, that Steam Wallet bucks can’t be extracted from Valve’s service.

The Market’s few categories remain limited to TF2 gear (paints, keys, and crates) for now, but Valve says they “may expand to include additional items from TF2 as well as items from other games” after beta. Considering TF2's roaring trade economy already allows you to barter unredeemed game gift codes for items, doling out Wallet dough isn't a major difference.

Also notable: Purchasing items carries a 5 percent anti-fraud transaction fee and a 10 percent TF2 fee collected by Steam, with the latter representing “a game-specific fee determined and collected by the publisher.” For the moment, a $200 limit on the maximum price (no minimum price) of individual items stands in effect. Both are open to change, Valve says, but baseline Market policy entails all purchases being final and non-refundable.

Head into the Market to browse a rapidly expanding listing of nearly 45,000 items. I half-expect some sort of hat tax when they inevitably show up on the Market as part of Valve’s diabolical plan to leave the video game industry and build a monopolistic headwear empire.

Choosing the best thing out of a pile of really good things is always a tough decision, but hey, we're used to it. You too can participate in the careful choicemaking by voting for your favorite mod and indie game of the year over at Mod DB and Indie DB, where the top 100 nominations were just plucked from a gargantuan pool of over 9,000 mods and 5,500 indies.

With friendly vote buttons large and in charge until December 21, each database's 100 selections are sorted by genre and game for easy perusal. Numerous strong contenders vie for your mouse-click's thumbs-up, including noteworthy entries DayZ, The Dark Mod, Chivalry: Medieval Warfare, and Natural Selection 2.

Current favorites leading the pack are Half-Life 2's powerful mod lineup—among which Black Mesa and our own 2011 Mod of the Year No More Room in Hell count themselves among the ranks—and role-playing indie games. You'll find Legend of Grimrock, Dear Esther, Mount & Blade: Warband, and others in the latter category. But like everyone's slowly expanding backlog of shame, plenty of other potentials yearn for your attention. Head to both award pages for the full lists.

Project Cars by Darkdeus

Project Cars may secretly be the best looking game of the year. It's only playable for Project Cars team members at the moment, but there's no shortage of gorgeous screenshots for the rest of us to gawp at. Efforts like this one from Darkdeus demonstrate how much closer racing games come to photorealism than other genres. Humans are safely hidden behind reflective windscreens, which makes it easier for racing games to navigate the uncanny valley and deliver sublime shots like this.





The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim by Chewiemuse

Bethesda's decision to support modders with Steam Workshop support and the Creation Kit have paid dividends in the year since launch. Texture packs, shader tweaks and new character models and armour have turned a good looking game into something a bit special. Chewiemuse shows us how with this shot of a warrior disposing of his foe with the archery equivalent of a triple tap. Boost your own copy of The Elder Scrolls V with the help of our Skyrim mods guide.





Arma 2 by Blackhawk

The Arma 2 engine is certainly powerful, but it's not exactly pretty. It's rare for screenshots to capture the satisfaction of a well executed military manoeuvre, but Blackhawk does it with this shot of a team of soldiers securing a drop zone. Arma is as much about organisation and teamwork as good shooting, and the bleak colour palette is quickly forgotten in the tension and sudden drama of Arma's combat situations. Captured at just the right angle, Arma skirmishes look almost real, as ITV discovered when they accidentally used Arma 2 footage as part of a documentary last year.





Max Payne 3 by Glottis8

Yes, GTA 4 was a shoddy port, but Rockstar have done a much better job with recent releases like LA Noire and Max Payne 3. Glottis8's image of Max surfing an explosive shockwave shows off the improved textures and sharp lines of the PC version in dynamic fashion. It could only be improve if Max was perpendicular to the explosion. And his fingers were wrapped around a pair of handcannons. And he was wearing a trenchcoat. And it was snowing. In New York.

Okay, the third game got away from some of the elements that made Max Payne unique, but that's hardly Glottis' fault. Let's just sit back and enjoy imagining how good that explosion probably sounds.





The Mario Brothers in Garry's Mod
by DOAmaster

What's this, the MARIO BROTHERS on PC GAMER? Thanks to the magic of Garry's mod and DOAmaster's screenshotting abilities, the impossible has come to pass. As pleasing as I find those blazing colours, I still haven't figured out exactly what's going on here. If I don't attach a narrative to this thing I'll never make it to the next page and we'll be trapped here in Nintendo world forever. Let's say that Mario and Luigi are holding a belt (small plank of wood?) and this squad of chipmunks (gophers?) is attempting to limbo (???) under it. Plausible? Good enough! Next.





Sword and Sworcery
by Glottis8

The pristine and ageless pixel art of Swords and Sworcery is excellent subject matter for trigger happy screen-grabbers. S&S was released on iOS systems originally, but the artwork shifts up to larger screens rather nicely. That's lucky, because it's designed as a cohesive audiovisual tapestry, and it would be a shame for poorly upscaled graphics to spoil Jim Guthrie's marvellous soundtrack, Ballad of the Space Babies, which you can hear here. Superbrothers: Sword and Sworcery is available on Steam.





Project Cars again
by Leviathan

Yep, it's more Project Cars, but look at the stupendous detail on show here. The foil folds of the headlights reflect the horizon of the approaching terrain. Every nut and bolt is present and correct. Look, you can even see the tiny silver mouse periscope popping out of the bonnet in front of the windscreen wipers. Impressive. This slot was a toss up between the picture above and this shot of a car carving up a shiny tarmac track. Not bad, eh?





Team Fortress 2
by Rossrox

Remember when Team Fortress 2 turned into a sparkling, cheerful extension of the Pyro's demented psyche earlier this year? I was happy to be reminded by Rossrox' glittery and violent portrayal of the conflict. I especially enjoy the fact that TF2 has chosen this moment to remind players to be respectful to one another, as a soldier lies burning to death on a floor, and another readies a rocket launcher against a charging Pyro. It's important to remain polite in the face of impending doom. Jolly good show.





The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
by Zloth

There was always going to be more Skyrim in this roundup. There's something about that world's frozen peaks that make folks want to take pictures. Screenshots can fail to do justice to the sense of discovery and wonder that Skyrim's most impressive vistas tend to evoke. This grab from Zloth does the job quite nicely, though. Unfortunately it means that any human who looks upon it must endure a sudden urge to jump back into the world and go adventuring again, sinking yet more hours into Bethesda's fantasy juggernaut. The only cure is to look away, so follow me as we go travel onto the next page and absorb the final selection in our round-up of the best screenshots from the PC Gamer community 2012.





Battlefield 3
by RPhilMan1

It's Battlefield! I was a little surprised that there weren't more shots of Armored Kill maps like Alborz Mountain, but this sandy overview of a sprawling industrial warzone will do quite nicely. Look upon it and imagine the different skirmishes that players are having down there. Engineers will be trying to out-ferret each other in the maze of storage crates on the left. The plume of black smoke hints at the presence of a flaming tank corpse behind the tankers in the centre. A small collection of squads will be having their own private war for the squared off mountainous base on the left. It's a good overview that lays bare the variety and complexity of Battlefield 3's maps and drops in a chopper for good measure.

And that's your lot for this year. You can see plenty more on the screenshot thread in our forums. Browse at your leisure, and feel free to drop in a few of your own favourite gaming snaps while you're there. You never know, you might secure a slot in next year's round-up.

Everything can be made better with Lego. We've already seen this theory proved time and time again with the Lego: Well Known Franchise series of games. But if you're still not convinced, here's a selection of scenes from Portal 2, remade brilliantly into a series of Lego built vignettes.



The five minute film was created by Alex Kobbs for Machinima's Interactive Film Festival, and is the first of a two-part project. Other films on the festival's site include a remake of the first GTA 5 trailer, also made from Lego. Ah, Lego... Is there anything it can't do?

Thanks, Kotaku.

Clear your schedule and make room on your hard drive: there are over 9000 mods up for consideration as ModDB's 2012 Mod of the Year award nominees, and only a little over five days to nominate them. A big green button on each mod's page makes it hard to miss the opportunity to give your favorites a bump.

There isn't much time, so we'll get straight to it after this obligatory acknowledgement that we said "over 9000" on the internet: tee hee, references. Moving on, DayZ and Black Mesa are tough to ignore, and The Sith Lords Restored Content Mod was a valiant community effort. Those might be the most talked about and praised mods this year, and we expect they'll secure nominations, but there are so many more that deserve recognition. Which are you voting for?

If you need a refresher, you might want to browse our recent mod coverage to see if you've missed any driving elephants or My Little Pony conversions.

Steam's Big Picture mode, a full-screen interface with controller support, has left beta and entered the top-right corner of your client. To use it as intended, I'd have to run an exceptionally long HDMI cable from my bedroom to my TV and use a wireless controller, but I'm starting to think a mid-range PC in a small case might look real nice in my living room. In the meantime, I'll just use it to launch Peggle from bed.

Along with the launch, the Steam store has been overrun with "controller-friendly" deals. I'm distressed by the inclusion of Left 4 Dead 2 and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive in the list—just because they can be played with a controller doesn't mean they should be—but my typical WASD elitism aside, a sale is a sale. Mark of the Ninja seems more appropriate to me, and I've been enjoying it a ton. At least, I was, until PlanetSide 2 happened, but I'll go back once this match is over. It does end, right?

Team Fortress 2's Saxxy Awards, Valve's celebration of its community's machinima mastery, doesn't have a red carpet. If it did, this year we'd see the Heavy hovering not-so-gracefully through in his new fairy ensemble, the Medic serenely chasing the red pigeon, and the Soldier rooting through the bins in an alley to the side. Four winners have been picked for the second of the now-annual Saxxy Awards, with each winning team receiving a Saxxy - an in-game gold plated Saxton Hale melee weapon that turns anything it kills into a golden statue.

The top prize, in the "Best Overall" category, is being kept under wraps until the Spike VGA's pre-show event on December 7th. The ultimate winner of the competition will be flown over to Valve HQ for a session with the company's own Source Filmmaker wizards.

You can see all of the nominations on the Saxxy Awards' site, and I've embedded the winners in each category below.

Action - Meet the Dumpster Diver



Replay - High-Five Fail



Comedy - Wishmaker



Drama - Bad Medicine



The release of the Source Filmmaker means the bar has been raised much higher this year. It's a powerful utility, and you can watch our picks for the best Filmmaker videos in our Top 10 round-up. Have you got a favourite that you think deserves an award?

Modern art is all about finding the meaning in a collection of abstract shapes, so games are pretty much a perfect match. It's fitting then, that from March 2013, New York's Museum of Modern Art will install an exhibition of 14 games as a precursor to an intended collection of 40. Paola Antonelli, the Senior Curator for the museum's Department of Architecture and Design, has written a lengthy blog post to explain the selection process.

"Are video games art? They sure are," writes Paola, settling that argument. "They are also design, and a design approach is what we chose for this new foray into this universe. The games are selected as outstanding examples of interaction design — a field that MoMA has already explored and collected extensively, and one of the most important and oft-discussed expressions of contemporary design creativity."

The game's selected range from extremely complex simulation, to quick, fun bursts of action, but they all share a singular, driving focus of intent. Unsurprisingly, the majority of them originated on the PC. Here's the list of titles relevant to our interests:


Myst (1993)
SimCity 2000 (1994)
The Sims (2000)
EVE Online (2003)
Dwarf Fortress (2006)
Portal (2007)
Passage (2008)
Canabalt (2009)


The museum is planning to display each game in a way that can do justice to its particular type. For short games like the Passage, that means a playable version, but more in-depth games like EVE and Dwarf Fortress require a different approach. "To convey their experience, we will work with players and designers to create guided tours of these alternate worlds, so the visitor can begin to appreciate the extent and possibilities of the complex gameplay."

The museum hopes to bolster their collection over the coming years, eventually planning to add Minecraft, Grim Fandango and NetHack, among others. You can see the full list at the MoMA website. Any games that you'd like to see immortalised as works of art?

Thanks, Joystiq.

If you walk into New York's Museum of Modern Art in the near future, you might discover that its curators have taken a stance on the issue of "Are games art?" And that stance, it seems, is "Yes." Fourteen games including player-driven space MMO EVE Online, perplexing puzzle shooter Portal, and ASCII graphics-based breakdown of civilization simulator Dwarf Fortress will serve as "the seedbed for an initial wish list of about 40 to be acquired in the near future, as well as for a new category of artworks in MoMA’s collection that we hope will grow in the future."

Other PC titles in the initial collection include Myst, SimCity 2000, The Sims, and Jason Rohrer's Passage. The games will be on display and presumably playable in the museum's Philip Johnson Galleries starting in March. You can read more about the collection on the MoMA official site.

Do games belong in art museums? Let us know what you think.