Phew. I was just about to scribble some rot about the release of free challenge maps for Arkham City, which are only downloadable through Games For Windows Live. As I was staring at the error message that greeted my attempt to install them, a tweet landed ‘pon my shoulder and whispered in my ear: “Why all this effort to clobber villains at the Jokers Carnival, and in the Iceberg VIP Lounge and Batcave? Even if you were doing it using the free Batman Incorporated skin it’d just be fisticuffs. Better to take a top-hatted stroll in the snow.”

By jove, what a grand idea that was. You can watch a slightly interactive documentary of my turn around the environs thanks to Winter Walk, which is as pleasant a way to while away a few minutes as you’ll find today. Thanks to Dan Marshall (@danthat).

It’s all sleigh bells ring-a-ding-jingling and jolly little scamps scurrying about the place in search of the true meaning of Christmas in these latest trailers for The Darkness II. Except for all the evisceration, shooting-in-the-face and limb-lopping, which is what you’ll see for every single second that isn’t a series of logos angrier than Mr Angrylad Furyface from Hateville, Nebraskinforabeating. That actually leaves precisely no room for festive fun of the seasonal variety, but plenty for those who celebrate the cathartic kiss of axe and intestine. These are the murderous folk available in the recently revealed co-op mode.

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Marketing! What can’t/won’t it do? One thing it can and will do is promote a videogame on Twitter with the sweet promise of having your face be transplanted onto an in-game character model. Specifically, a character model in Max Payne 3, which might well mean that the winners will be gunned down by Max on one of his righteous rampages. Let’s just hope it’s suave Max rather than fat Max, eh? (more…)

Father Christmas is a very lazy man. He works one day a year, and spends the rest of his time just sitting there, judging children. What a prick. His elves are the real heroes, and are woefully undersung. For instance, they’re zooming around everywhere, adding Christmas cheer wherever they can. Even reaching the obscurity of ACE Team’s Rock Of Ages. Now featuring snowballs. You can see some lovely pics of that below.

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The gorgeous and utterly charming Windosill, whose gentle and sometimes dream-like interactions play out in what is still> some of the best Flashcrafting out there, has just been released on iPad. And why, pray tell, would that be of interest to those of us who choose a mechanical pointing device over the dubious pleasures of poking at things with out fingers? Settle down and I shall explain all. In celebration of the game’s move into the touchy realm, it has been made available at a price of your choosing. You can still play the first part of the game for free but for a limited time the full version can be unlocked, to play online or as a download, for anything from a single cent upwards. There’s a short video below.

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Edit: We’re reading below that lots of regions outside the UK are being charged a really very much larger sum. Which sucks. Valve will always insist prices are decided by publishers, so yell at Warner. There’s also confusion over the inclusion of Arkham City and War In The North – to be absolutely clear, the Warner Complete Pack definitely> currently includes those games, whether by design or mistake. It also seems that some regions can’t see the deal at all. The solution: move to the UK.

I’m never quite sure whether posting about the Steam sale is doing mindless promotion for the company, or alerting our readers to amazing prices for games. I’m going with the latter in this instance, because bloody hell, this one took me by surprise. Not boasted of on the front page of Steam’s decidedly confusing sales page (not including the names of the games on sale is perhaps an odd choice) is the Warner Complete Pack. Clearly one of many extraordinarily reduced bundles (19 THQ games for £50, 80 Sega games for £70 for instance), the Warner bundle brings 18 games for £40, and one of them is Batman: Arkham City>. So that’s basically “buy Arkham City, get every other Warner game on Steam free.” And one of those is Bastion. And another is the brand new Lord Of The Rings: War In The North. And of course yet another is Batman: Arkham Asylum.

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There’s more of Avalanche’s Renegade Ops appearing today. The breezy and fun (sez Brendan) top-down action gets bigger with two paid-for DLC offerings. You’ve got the Reinforcement Pack (called the Vehicle Pack in the US, for some reason), and the Coldstrike Campaign, and they’re cheaper on PC than anywhere else.

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It’s the season of goodwill. Thus there is no better time to play Terry Cavanagh and Increpare’s Flash game about a family who start off swearing at each other and wind up somewhere far, far darker. Unutterably bleak yet strangely moving with it, Oíche Mhaith is an emotionally brutal but deeply compelling and occasionally perversely funny few minutes. (more…)

I think from now on I will post the news that Steam is not having a sale. Should I manage to type quickly enough during one of those gaps. But for today, the Steam Holiday Sale has begun, and it’s… baffling.

Of course it means lots of games are going to be at those mega-profits-creating teeny prices (imagine if the industry got to grips with that!), a different selection every day from now until January 1st. But alongside that, there’s The Great Gift Pile page, which will be setting objectives for things to be completed in those games. Oh my.

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You’ll likely remember that last week it was revealed that CD Projekt had hired a firm to send out letters to those they believed had pirated copies of The Witcher 2, demanding large sums of money. It’s a practice that is widely despised, due not only to its propensity for threatening the innocent, but more significantly, because it’s based on threats in the first place. A person receives a letter demanding an excessive amount of money (evidence for this story suggests in the region of €750, corrected from 900+ that was previously reported), or the recipient will be taken to court where they may end up paying a great deal more. These apparently necessary court cases will be dropped if the fee is paid. And that’s why I consider it such a serious issue. Never mind the severity of the act of piracy, this process subverts the legal process, avoids actually providing evidence and proving guilt, and depends upon scaring people into paying money they likely can’t afford. This is something I wanted to discuss with CDP themselves, who I thought had given unsatisfactory responses to other outlets who suddenly picked up on the story after RPS reported TorrentFreak’s week-old article. My discussion is below.

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