Jul 11, 2011

Last call for the Steam Summer Camp Sale. Shoot, build, and grind for cheap

Portal 2

The recent Steam Summer Camp Sale has brought new achievements and in-game rewards, along with a bumper selection of cheap games. Today is "Encore Day!" Unless Valve go for a stadium-satisfying multi-encore finish, it's your final chance to download a bargain. All the games are picked from the week's top sellers.

Battlefield Bad Company 2 for £4.99/$7.50, Terraria for £2.99/$4.99 and Magicka for £2.71/$3.39? Yes please. Click through for more details of today's deals.

You've got just over six hours to grab these bargains:

Borderlands: Game of the Year Edition - £7.50/$7.50

Just Cause 2 - £3.49/$4.99

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 - £5.00/$7:50

Sanctum - £2.49/$3.75

Portal 2 - £14.99/$24.99

Dawn of War: Retribution - £14.99/$14.99

Total War: Shogun 2 - £17.99/$29.99

The Witcher 2 - £23.44/$33.49

Terraria - £2.99/$4.99

Assassin's Creed Brotherhood - £14.99/$19.99

Fallout New Vegas - £8.99/$14.99

Two Worlds 2 - £8.50/$17.00

Grand Theft Auto IV: Episodes from Liberty City - £6.24/$9.99

Magicka - £2.71/$3.39

What's the best bargain you've ever picked up in a Steam sale? Back in 2008, £6.99 was a great price for Team Fortress 2. How naive.

Jul 9, 2011

Paradox Interactive EU giveaway, Win Magicka, King Arthur or Sword of the Stars

Magicka

Free games! Everyone loves free games right? Well we've giving some away! We've got a big stack of Steam codes for Paradox Interactive games sitting here, and we thought we'd share them with you.

Details on how to enter are inside.

There's three different games on offer, choose from:

Magicka - Hilarious isometric game of infinite spells - check out our review
Sword of the Stars: Complete Collection - a massive space based strategy game with an emphasis on fleet combat
King Arthur: The Role Playing Wargame - Total War style strategy mixed with RPG elements and a fantastic setting

To enter, comment below and tell us this:

If you were one of King Arthur's knights, what would you quest for?

European entrants only. Competition ends in one week. If you win you will be notified by private message and your name will appear in this week’s winners. Good luck!

Jul 6, 2011

Paradox sales are 90% digital, “we don’t really need retailers any more” says CEO

PC Gamer

Recently, at E3, we got the chance to catch up with the CEO of Paradox Interactive, Fredrik Wester to discuss the company's recent success with Magicka, Mount and Blade and King Arthur. Wester revealed that 90% of Paradox' revenue is now made through digital distribution sales. He describes the company's lack of reliance on retail as "a release," saying that store chains have "not been good for the creative part of the industry."

Wester told us that "this year we’re close to ninety percent of our revenue being digital. Retail sales are like a bonus for us now. We don’t really need retailers any more and that is a release because retailers have not been good for the industry. They’ve not been good for the creative part of the industry, for finding new cool games."

"People complain to publishers that there are only sequels on the market, but that’s because retailers want to see sequels, because they can do their chart diagrams for how things sell and things like that. So one of the things preventing more creative gaming has been the retail challenge."

"I can only say this now because we’re not depending on them, so it’s really relieving to be able to say that."

Wester told us that Steam is Paradox' main partner, followed by Gamersgate. Paradox has recently had big success with Magicka, which as sold more than 600,000 copies since release, and is set to hit a million sales before the end of the year. The entire Paradox catalogue is currently enjoying a 90% as part of the Steam summer sale. You can grab the lot for $74.99 / £55.

Jun 30, 2011

Magicka Update Released

Magicka - Valve

Features

Added to camera tracking an influence towards enemies in the immediate vicinity.
Added Polish localization.
If any versus game has one or less players it will automatically end.
Added an ethereal state to newly respawned players in versus mode.
Added two new achievements

Fixes

Versus network games now properly synchronize spawn positions, this prevents characters from spawning in the same position during a Krietor mode reset.
When local players are dead the camera will now instead track network players.
Characters charging during a Krietor mode reset are now properly reset to an idle state.
Fixed an issue where if in a rare situation a necromancer area casted with both poison and earth elements a crash would occur.
Fixed an issue where a NPC (ie daemon lord) would drop an item which had not been cached, resulting in a crash.
Self shields are now correctly removed when casting invisibility.
Earth projectiles now gain some deviation on its trajectory whenever they destroy targets.
Added some stability to game start.
Adjusted self casted projectile spells position and direction.
Improved fire efficiency greatly.
Magick and Item packs are now properly hidden in lobby when Krietor’s Tourney is selected.
Fixed a bug where characters casting a spell with their weapons while being feared would not properly reset the spell effect.
Fixed the movement influence on avatars when they are feared.
Krietor versus mode will now properly remove an active Meteorshower magick when it resets.
Nullify will now affect every entity, independent of distance.

Jun 22, 2011

Magicka's PVP Trailer Is Gaming's Greatest PVP Trailer

Magicka

The all wizard, all the time PC game Magicka got its promised dose of all-new player-versus-player combat this week, an event that demanded this trailer that demands your attention for its smart use of absolutely no gameplay whatsoever.

We've already seen gameplay, after all. So what we needed was Tarantino-inspired live action comedy, somehow still a refreshing surprise from the people who brought us Magicka, Magicka: Vietnam and Magicka: The Official Bathrobes.

My point? You really should buy Magicka if you haven't already.

Jun 22, 2011

Magicka’s Excellent PvP Spoof Trailer

Magicka - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Jim Rossignol)

The Paradox/Arrowhead partnership continues to produce some of the best promotional material in gaming. The live action trailer for the new PvP expansion for Magicka is a delight, and you can watch it below.

This new PvP expansion is free, but there are also $.99 map packs, as Paradox explain. There’s “Vulcanus Arena, a sci-fi themed map that doubles as a PvP map and a challenge map,” and “the chilling Frozen Lake map as well as a “stop staring at me, you’re freaking me out” Watch Tower map.” All of which adds up to some solid cheap extras to our favourite comedy mage game. Carry on, Paradox/Arrowhead.
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Jun 22, 2011

Magicka PvP mode out now, new arenas and robes available

Magicka

If you read Arrowhead Game's Magicka dev diary right here on PCGamer.com yesterday, you'll know that the free PvP is out now. However, you might have have missed the Tarantino inspired trailer. It shows just one way in which wizards can fall out. The other is just to play Magicka's story mode, where friendly fire kills almost as many wizards as the hordes of enemies you're trying to obliterate.

The PvP mode comes with free two arenas, the Training Ground and the Havindir Arena. Each can host scraps with three different rule-sets. Classic deathmatch is a fiery free-for-all mode in which the last wizard standing wins. Brawl mode lets you form teams, but limits each player to a set number of lives. Krietor mode unlocks more powerful spells as the round progresses, and is named after the modder who invented it.

Three other maps can also be bought on Steam. The Frozen Lake (guess where that's set) combines unsure footing with a high probability of drowning to create a recipe for Magicka comedy, while The Watchtower map stages a battle at the top of a huge tower. To quote the Steam blurb, "The absense of a railing on a mountaintop ruin provides new environmental hazzard." These maps cost £1.50 / $1.99 each.

The third map is called Final Frontier, and has an extremely familiar sci-fi setting. It comes with an extra wizard robe, a "deadly duel staff" and boasts "fantastic quality props" for "Increased nerd factor." For maximum nerd factor, play this in the background while you fight. The Final Frontier is a little more substantial, thanks to the additional items, so that's priced at £1.99 / $2.99.

There's also a new Party Robes pack that adds three new wizard outfits, designed to improve your wizards' survival rate in co-op. The tank robe turns your wizard into an armoured powerhouse, the rogue robe can cloak on the battlefield and the support robe buffs the spellcasting power of those around the wearer - surely not a good robe to wear to a PvP fight.

As with all Magicka DLC, it's possible to jump into the hosts paid-for maps even if you don't own them yourself. The DLC is also available to buy on Direct2Drive, Impulse, Green Man Gaming and more, you can get the full list here. If you want to get an edge in PvP, check out our pick of Magicka's best spells.