Anyone who thinks I’m going to use this review as an excuse to make a string of lame puns about aeroflyFS’s Swiss setting is cuckoo. Clock those screenshots! Excruciating wordplay would be a disgraceful distraction from the real story: that a team of little-known German developers have fashioned the world’s most beautiful flight simulator.



Fondue of flying in gorgeous surroundings? You will adore Ikarus’s breathtaking depiction of the Alps. I’ve been gazing down at polygonal peaks for a quarter of a century and have never seen crags half as craggy, snowcaps anywhere near as crisp or cold. The textures and mesh are of such Heidi tail, there will be moments when you’ll regret you can’t bail out and ski or snowboard your way home.

Does it Matterhorn that the massive massifs can only be ogled at midday, and loom over lowlands not quite as pretty? Yes, it’s a tad disappointing, but the baked scenery shadows and lack of 3D buildings in valleys mean the engine bustles along at a blistering pace, even on a middle-aged rig. In conditions where I’d expect sub-20 framerates in FSX, I enjoy 70-plus speeds in this sim.



Pair the swiftness of those framerates with the swiftness of the fastest flyable – an F/A-18 – and the effect is truly jaw-Lucerne-ing. Were there ruddy-faced hikers or yodelling goatherders wandering the slopes, they’d be totally implausible unless their AI routines included a ‘hurl-yourself-to-ground-whenmaniac- in-a-hurtling-Hornetpasses- overhead-at-insanely-lowaltitude’ behaviour.

Bern-storming valley runs are almost as exhilarating in the aerobatic machines. Like their six hangar chums, the Pitts biplane and Extra 330 come with beautifully crafted but non-clickable cockpits, animated pilots, and flight models flavoursome enough to satisfy all but the stickliest sticklers. While this isn’t the sim to buy if you want to learn to cold-start a Cessna, that doesn’t mean its stall recoveries and crosswind landings aren’t hairier than a barbegazi’s (Swiss version of a Yeti) buttocks.

For now, manually-selected galeforce winds and soupy fogs are as malign as the meteorology gets. As the GPS screens that grace every panel are never splotched by rainbow-hued blizzards and thunderstorms, and dusk and dawn aren’t modelled, dramatic mood changes are not exactly a speciality.



After taking X-Plane 10 to task for such things last month, I think it’s only fair I point out that the newcomer’s airspace is always free of traffic and transmissions, and the terminals, towers and hangars round its runways are usually flatter than rösti. Trees fail to detect collisions. Lakes like Geneva and Constance can be used as landing strips. Like a chunk of creamy Emmental, the sim is absurdly tasty but also full of holes.

Treat this sweet Alpine delicacy as a rival to X-Plane or FSX and it’s deeply inadequate. Treat it as a wonderfully accessible, ludicrously beautiful excuse for frightening ibex, starting avalanches and shaking the shingles off Schlösser, and it’s mana from heaven. This is the kind of a sim I’m proud to Toblerone. You might be too.

This article originally appeared in PC Gamer UK issue 237.

You don’t need to hate the way things are to look forward to change. The Guild Wars 2 hype has set it up as a rebuttal to the way things are done in MMOs: a rejection of unchanging worlds, heroism without consequence and epic battles that are more about logistics than bravado.

These expectations have been generated as much by the gaming community as by NCsoft’s marketing. Simply by promising to do things differently, Guild Wars 2 has found itself nominated as the saviour of its genre. Lead designer Eric Flannum is more modest. “What we tried to do was take a look at what an MMO could be, and try to make it appeal to not only people who love MMOs but also people who maybe haven’t tried an MMO for various reasons.”

As someone who likes MMOs – and who isn’t necessarily convinced they need saving – I’m treating my uninterrupted weekend with the game as an opportunity to see how far it can deliver on its big ideas. If it can convince me that we really have been doing everything wrong since World of Warcraft, then ArenaNet could be on to something.

I opt to play a female human warrior. My choice of race is down to the fact that the human starting area – lush farmland under attack by roaming centaur warbands – is the most frequently cited example of GW2’s evolving ‘events’ system, where quests are thrown out in favour of dynamic objectives based on the independent actions of players, monsters and friendly NPCs. I become a mail-clad warrior, meanwhile, because I want my character to put some bloody clothes on. The land of Tyria is populated by clear-faced underwear models, and it’s an uphill struggle to make a female character who doesn’t look 15 years old. The best I can do is a kind of Disney Joan of Arc, a waif-thin airbrushed beauty wielding a sword bigger than she is. I avoid spellcasters entirely because there’s only so much Renaissance-themed fetish gear I can handle.



It’s a negative first impression, albeit one that’s down to personal preference. The first Guild Wars had a similar look, after all, and it’s classier than Aion or Lineage. As with the rest of GW2’s art direction there’s an obvious investment of thought, detail and style – it just won’t be to everyone’s taste.

I’m asked a series of questions about my character’s life, from the serious – her biggest regret – to the mundane, such as deciding what kind of helmet she wears. These choices are written up as a letter in the first person, describing the kind of person my character is. Signing the letter establishes her name, and we’re off. It’s a lovely system, and successful in making me feel ownership of my character straight away.

After a hand-painted introduction I’m dropped into the village of Shaemoor during a centaur attack. This is an instanced crisis, the kind that many MMOs begin with – but what’s striking is that no one immediately tells me what to do. I rush towards a nearby player and help her take down a spear-wielding centaur. Control-wise, everything is where I expect it to be. I’m equipped with a one-handed sword, and hammering the ‘1’ key makes things die. So far, so MMO.

An NPC shouts at me to get to the inn, and a waypoint appears on my minimap. I start to notice quirks in the combat system: while I can target enemies, I don’t need to do so in order to hit them, and pressing the attack key causes my character to swing her sword regardless of whether she’s in range. Damage is based on stats, but hitting a foe is partly twitch-based – a fact backed up by the evade system that lets you double-tap a movement key to roll out of the way.



When I reach the inn I enter a brief conversation with an NPC. These sequences are presented as oneon- one dialogues against a painted backdrop. Players are voiced, but you don’t have any choice about what they say: it’s not The Old Republic. I’m told to help out at a nearby guardhouse, and off I go again.

On the way, I loot a two-handed sword from a centaur warrior. Equipping it, my abilities immediately change. Every weapon in Guild Wars 2 has its own set of special moves, which range from area-of-effect attacks to throwing a greatsword like a four-foot steel boomerang. Moves are unlocked as you rack up kills with the weapon, so you have to work to access the full potential of a given loadout. It’s very straightforward in practice, and it’s impressive that only a few minutes into the game I’m already playing differently to the hammer-and-shield warrior next to me.

I’m the first player to reach the guardhouse, and as I arrive a message pops up: event started, defend the gate. Centaurs charge in from the hills and, of course, I fight them. I’ve got no kill-quota to hit, and I don’t actually know how long the siege will last. More players join, and the centaur onslaught increases in intensity – I suspect the game is scaling up the encounter to match the amount of defenders, but my focus is on murdering horse-men, not mechanics. I’m paying attention to my goals as a character rather than my goals as a player.

Guild Wars 2’s events system is starting to make sense. “Events are very visual,” Flannum says. “They don’t require a lot of explanation. You run into a city and there are centaurs attacking everyone – you kind of know what to do, right?”





Eventually the gate opens, and I receive a gold ranking for my contribution to the fight. This grants an experience bonus as well as karma, a currency earned through events that can be traded for loot later on. This is GW2’s replacement for traditional quest rewards. The tutorial builds to an encounter on a scale that most MMOs reserve for their late-game, and one I don’t want to spoil.

Three days later, my character wakes up in a land still recovering from the attack. Normally, this is where I’d be given a quest line to start on, or at the very least a crowd of NPCs with icons over their heads. Instead, there’s only one: a scout, whose icon is a spyglass. Talking to him boots up the map, and he highlights various hotspots. These are places where adventurers are always needed, and form the breadand- butter of GW2’s content. Each of these locations has an NPC in need and a range of tasks that can assist them. In the farmlands around Shaemoor, my only objective is simply to help somebody.

A nearby farmer is having trouble with giant worms. I run around stomping their lairs, sometimes whacking the grubs that emerge to defend them. When I can’t find a lair, I pick up bundles of feed and tend to the farmer’s cattle: all this contributes to a progress bar, which when filled indicates that I’ve completed that request. Doing so turns the farmer into a friend, earns me a small pile of coins, and allows me to buy items from him in return for karma.

While I’m at it, the ‘new event’ notification flashes again. The queen worm has surfaced – a gargantuan creature that I work alongside other players to take down. I’m unable to tell whether my grub-stomping is what caused this event to trigger, and in the hours that follow I see the queen frequently whenever I’m passing by – but there’s a tangible sense of moment, albeit one that occurs on a reliable cycle.



Helping out in Shaemoor unlocks the next stage in my personal story, a more traditional quest line that is tied to the choices I made at character creation. As I chose the ‘commoner’ origin, I’m sent to visit friends in a poor area of the city that subsequently becomes my home instance. These are private areas filled with merchants who can’t be found anywhere else, which evolve over time as you progress.

The home instance only takes up a small part of Divinity’s Reach, the human capital city. It’s a huge circular network of plazas, temples and walkways, populated by dozens of wandering NPCs. It feels like a living city in a way that reminds me of older MMOs, particularly EverQuest – and while it provides convenient access to all of the vendors and trainers you’d expect, there are secrets to be found by wandering around. Popping down a back alley, I encounter four familiar NPCs in the middle of an argument: the descendants of Guild Wars 1’s NPC henchmen, squabbling over what adventure to go on next.

Outside the city, I roam the wilds helping out wherever I can. Areas are traversed quickly because there’s no way to max them out, and therefore no reason to dwell longer than the current situation requires you to. There will always be events going on, however, and it’s difficult to fight the temptation to get involved. Also, your level is lowered to match the area you’re in, creating a sense of zones never being truly completed, with the exception of the instanced-off areas in your personal story.

These missions operate differently to the class-locked caves and bunkers of The Old Republic. When it needs to, GW2 will teleport you into an instanced version of the area you’re currently in so that specific events can take place. Other players and encounters are removed, and straying beyond certain boundaries takes you back to the ‘real’ world. When I was playing them, these missions often caused the difficulty to spike – but this is likely to be rebalanced before release.



Emerging from one such instance, I found myself in a monastery under attack from shadowy creatures. Joining the fray, I helped a mob of other players to close the portals that had opened in the courtyard. It’s impressive how quickly spontaneous adventuring like this becomes par for the course – how oblique and boring waiting for a group suddenly seems when there are battles to be fought everywhere.

ArenaNet aren’t worried about throwing players of different skill-levels together and hoping for the best. “I think an MMO needs to accommodate all those different play-styles because it’s not like they’re different players,” Flannum argues, “it’s the same players at different points in time.”

As it turns out, the portal invasion was part of a much longer series of events taking place in a nearby swamp – and one that I almost missed. After the battle I fought solo for a while, killing monsters and rescuing lost explorers. As I was doing this, the group from the monastery were fighting the invasion back to its source. When they did so, an announcement echoed across the zone – “the beast has awakened!”

Off in the distance, I saw something moving through the trees – something big. Emerging in a shallow part of the swamp, I found 20 or so players engaged in a raid-sized fight with the Shadow Behemoth, an enormous half-submerged skeleton that dug its talons into the mud and summoned monster-spewing portals all around us. Without waiting for permission, I waded in. As a melee class, there was little I could do against the monster itself, so I set myself to closing portals and protecting the spellcasters. I had unlocked the ability to place a banner that increased the critical hit chance of my allies, so I used this to boost the damage output of a group of ranged characters who were using guns and bows to attack the beast’s head. Eventually we brought its skull crashing to the ground, where I and the other melee warriors were able to smash it to pieces.





We cooperated wordlessly, matching the capabilities of our characters to the present need without any planning or leadership. When the behemoth fell, a cheer went up. It dropped a glimmering treasure chest, from which everyone received a boon of item upgrades and generalpurpose loot. My gold-ranked contribution to the fight earned me half a level and filled me with genuine pride. What was remarkable about this encounter is that it provided toptier thrills with none of the set-up, none of the stress. This is exactly what ArenaNet are aiming for, Eric Flannum says. “One of the things that we really wanted to avoid was this feeling that the game doesn’t really start until max level.”

What was remarkable about my time with GW2 as a whole is that situations like this one – impromptu mass cooperation, with a real sense of a collective experience – came about several times. I have questions about how events will operate when zones are either over or under-populated, but if nothing else my time proves one thing: the system works.

As with any other modern MMO, comparisons with World of Warcraft are inevitable. But in this case, not because Blizzard laid the groundwork for all its best ideas. Instead, GW2 is worth comparing to WoW because both games attempt to answer the same question: how do you get the largest amount of people to go on the largest possible adventure? Or more specifically: how do you do EverQuest without the nonsense?

World of Warcraft was revolutionary because it moderated EverQuest’s punishing excesses. Instancing removed the need to queue for monsters in dungeons; mob ‘tagging’ gave ownership of a kill to the first player to land a hit, reducing the potential for kill-stealing. GW2’s event system and emphasis on casual co-op are solutions to these same problems. Guild Wars 2 feels less like a successor to WoW and more like a parallel evolution from a common ancestor. It’s an exciting new direction for the genre.



It’s not, however, without issues. GW2’s structure creates a sense of society that WoW – with its emphasis on grouping and private adventure – lacks. Conversely, not needing to find players with particular skill-sets means that in my weekend with the game I hardly spoke to anyone, and made no lasting relationships. The circumstances will have played a role in this, but there was none of the development of trust and respect that goes with knowing, for example, that someone is a great healer. It will be great if players get to become friends without being forced, but it would be nice to see some more robust social incentives on release.

Whether or not GW2 is the saviour some want it to be will be down to the individual. Its big ideas are subtle enough to pass by anyone who isn’t attuned to the way MMOs usually operate, yet substantial enough to unsettle players invested in the status quo. It’s player-driven both in the sense that its users determine the state of its content, but also in that it doesn’t offer the satisfaction of ‘finishing’ an area before moving on to the next. It’s constantly in motion, and as such you’re asked to be far more proactive in seeking out your fun.

What’s exciting about Guild Wars 2 is that it returns the emphasis of the MMO to having fun on your own terms. Even if the range of events you may encounter is fixed, the array of variables and the possibility of encountering those events with any number of other people creates a huge matrix of potential experiences.

The complexity of ArenaNet’s design has resulted in a game that’s deceptively simple to play, and one that returns the promise of the MMO to a straightforward question: would you like to go on an adventure?

The first day of the first MLG Spring Arena was a reminder that StarCraft II sometimes seems to be changing faster than it actually is. Coming into this event, PartinG (Won Lee Sak, Korean Protoss) seemed like he was poised to make a strong challenge to MarineKing's (Lee Jung Hoon, Korean Terran) dominance. Korea's deadliest Zerg, DongRaeGu (Park Soo Ho) was riding a streak of underwhelming performances and looked like he might be teetering on the edge of a major fall.

Not so much. MarineKing dismantled PartinG in the tournament's opening match, taking the first two of their three games easily. He lost the third, but it was the kind of loss that probably helped him more than hurt him. In game 3 he was feeling so cocky that he didn't take the most rudimentary precautions, not even bothering to scout out PartinG's base. As a result, he never saw PartinG's Immortal rush coming, and then he compounded his errors by frittering away his army in a vain attempt to hold his expansion. The defeat clearly served up a much-needed reminder that as good as MKP is, he still needs to take his opponents seriously. MKP went on to win all of this first day matches, narrowly surviving a late challenge from Violet to remain the only undefeated player going into Day 2.



DRG's situation is a little more complicated. He came out of the first day with a 2-1 match record, but it's hard to deny that his form is not quite as dominant as it was just a few weeks ago. DRG lost three straight games to MC, including one that he conceded when the outcome still looked very much in doubt. DRG had never lost to MC before, and so it was a strong indication that DRG has definitely lost ground over these last few weeks. However, he righted the ship with a pair of 2-1 victories over HuK and Violet. He looked very strong against both players, and I'm inclined to think that first set was an aberration. Still, today's games will be telling as to whether the rest of the field has caught up with him.

Heart made a really strong showing at the Winter Championship, and he continued to demonstrate that he's a serious contender. He annihilated PartinG with an almost MarineKing-like combination of early aggression and skillful micromanagement, then went on to beat MC 2-1. The deciding third match went to Heart when MC put down a disastrous force field against an early rush, which used up his sentry's last ounce of energy just before he retreated up the ramp into his main. With no force field to shut the door behind his retreating forces, MC watched as Heart's Terrans stormed up the ramp and into the main. He managed to save his main, but the damage was done. His natural expansion fell to Heart, who then bottled MC up inside his main. MC conceded a few minutes later as Heart made a drop in his main while threatening him with overpowering force at the natural.

One other thing to bear in mind: Ganzi has been playing well, better than his record suggests, but he was also asking for breaks in yesterday's play due to wrist pain. GameSpot's Rod Breslau asked him about it, and Ganzi said he had decided against taking medicine for the injury.

Today's games are just getting started in New York right now (2:20 Eastern). Later tonight, at 10 eastern, there will be a 2v2 mini-tournament among the Arena participants.

(Photo credit: TeamLiquid.net)

The Internet is often a place for things that don't belong on it. Things like a 56-page internal manual written for the people that work at the most private gaming company in the world.

Yep, you can read that now. What appears to be Valve's 2012 Employee Handbook has crept onto the web, and it's just as insightful to read as that incredible blog by Michael Abrash from last week.

It's a rare, detailed self-description of the company that includes mantras like "We are all stewards of our long-term relationship with our customers," policies like "Nobody has ever been fired at Valve for making a mistake. It wouldn't make sense for us to operate that way," and expressions of Valve's independence that include "Fortunately, we don’t have to make growth decisions based on any external pressures—only our own business goals."

Click inside to see the handbook.

The document is also filled with custom illustrations. And at least one Half-Life 3 logo. Sections of special interest include the entries:
"What is Valve not good at?" (p. 52)
"How does Valve decide what to work on?" (p. 13)
"But what if we ALL screw up?" (p. 23)


The handbook (PDF) was originally found here. A bottom-page watermark claims "handbook courtesy Valve." Well, duh. I've uploaded a copy to our server that you can read here.

The danger of blending fiction and interactivity is that both elements could suffer: the fiction gets chopped into pieces and shuffled out of order, while the interactivity becomes the ludic equivalent of page-turning, throwing players the odd puzzle to keep them paying attention, and letting them loose on a decision every few paragraphs to maintain the illusion of agency.

Analogue: A Hate Story circumvents most of these problems with some clever structural tinkering. For one thing, Christine Love’s latest visual novel drops you into the narrative long after the bodies have turned cold: you’re an archaeologist, picking through the human debris, and you bring no real expectations of shaping the story. For another, while Love’s themes touch on everything from epistemology to domestic violence, she shamelessly employs the best techniques of soap opera to express them, offering up melodrama, high tragedy, and a plotline that allows for a game-changing revelation every five minutes. Analogue traps its players within a tabloidy little loop, in other words, and it can be surprisingly hard to break free.

As the names suggest, Analogue is a companion to Love’s previous game, Digital: A Love Story, trading the early days of computer networks for the far future. Out in the cold wastes of space, a starship called the Mungunghwa – previously sent to colonise distant planets and longfeared destroyed – has suddenly reappeared on the radar. Your job is to pick over the craft’s data and uncover its fate, and you’ll be aided by two of the Mungunghwa’s female AIs – both of whom offer radically differing opinions as to what went wrong. From this point on, almost everything is a spoiler; Analogue is short but ingeniously constructed, and watching its narrative clockwork spinning is a huge part of the appeal.



Faced with such a dense story, interaction inevitably takes a back seat; most of the game is spent reading text logs and showing interesting sections to the AIs in the hopes of triggering memories. Your artificial companions are lightly animated but richly characterised, and despite the limitations of your communication (other than highlighting text, you’re generally left steering their conversations with a yes or no) their parallel testimonies help bring angsty life to what could otherwise be a rather drab inquest. To get the entire story you’re going to have to play through the campaign at least twice, and it’s a testament to Love’s skills that this doesn’t feel like a chore.

Switching from brutality to whimsy in seconds, while its narrative hinges on the inadequacies of technology and the reliability of human cruelty, Analogue should be a worthy mess. What rescues it is a flair for the dramatic and an acknowledgement that, even as we reach for the stars, we’re taking the same old problems with us.

Review by Chris Donlan.

I love games that let players create their own content, and City of Heroes is currently experiencing a renaissance of player-made mission arcs, thanks to the switch to free-to-play rejuvenating the playerbase. Paragon Studios does a great job of highlighting top-quality story arcs that it comes across, but there are a lot of awesome adventures falling through the cracks. Here are my five personal favorites currently slipping under the radar. You can find all of them by visiting any of the Mission Architect headquarters in-game.By John Sollitto

This article initially ran in PCG US #217.

1. Doctor Geist and the Scientific Method


Time to finally use everything you learned in high school science class! As Dr. Geist’s bitter new lab assistant, you use espionage and sabotage to destroy another scientist’s reputation. The variety of map locations and the manic quest-giver (along with the sheer enjoyment earned from impersonating another character successfully) propelled me to replay this mission over and over again. It’s a great introduction to the Mission Architect system for new players, and really shows off the potential for building creative stories, not just mindless kill-fests.

2. A Hero in Need...is a Friend Indeed!
Arc ID# 375018 | Creator Wrong Number | Level 5-14 | Play for The wicked fun boss fight


Interacting with iconic characters from CoH’s lore is common fare for player-created missions, but this particular arc puts a big twist on helping Paragon City’s Statesman. While it starts out as a mundane run-and-grab questline, it soon leads to an incredible battle with the Gamester, the evil trickster who plagues CoH’s winter holiday events. Mission objectives are put together well, with misleading clues and comical dialog adding a lot of flair, and the final fight is drool-worthy eye-candy, thanks to the author’s custom-designed NPCs.

3. Captain Skylark Shadowfancy and the Tomorrownauts of Today!
Arc ID# 337333 | Creator The Cheshire Cat | Level 30-40 | Play for Over-the-top boss battles


A maniac is threatening to blast Earth with a giant Fear Ray and it’s up to you and the Tomorrownauts, a team of heroes dedicated to protecting the Earth for future generations, to take him out. You have to smash your way through a lot of robots and parasitic aliens—this arc is overflowing with bosses and vast, cavernous maps that you can easily get lost in. But marching side-by-side with Captain Skylark against the classic villain Baron Doomsday made me feel like I’d reached nerdvana. Reprogramming Doombots to give the Baron a taste of his own laser-rocket medicine is a fun break from the usual tank-and-spank boss fight.

4. By Any Other Name
Arc ID# 337333 | Creator The Cheshire Cat | Level 30-40 | Play for Over-the-top boss battles


Players are so used to fighting the Rikti (an elusive, aggressive alien race), that they’ll be hesitant when one shows up to ask them for help at the start of this arc. But teaming up with this elite agent sets you on a great adventure across farmland, caves, and warehouses. Along the way, you’ll battle a corrupted human and then collect resources across an entire map to restore her to her original state. If you do, she’ll join you as a powerful ally in the final battle. More than any other arc I played, this one provides a unique experience by twisting the game’s well-established lore on its head.

5. The Do-It-Yourself Casino Heist Project
Arc ID# 404549 | Creator Twoflower | Level 20-54 | Play for Shenanigans and clever dialog


Aided by your over-sexed assistant Goldie Digger, you gather a team to heist a prized diamond bust of Marilyn Monroe from the Golden Giza Casino. After extracting and shanghaiing the wacky members of your crew from hairy situations, you end up in a casino map and blast your way to the vault only to find a deadly surprise inside. The arc’s campy dialog and playful feel is fantastic, but the heist gameplay is by far the highlight of the show. Skirmishing with casino guards, defending your safe-cracker as he does his thing, and getting out alive with your prize is perfect fun for any would-be Danny Oceans.

Don’t ask how many people they’ve killed. They hate that,” EA’s representative tells me. “And please stay away from politics.” That’s right, readers. It’s time to find out just how authentic and respectful this year’s other military shooter is. So sit back and get ready to discover just what gun accoutrements are ‘in’ this season.

My cynicism doesn’t last. Once ‘Nate’ and ‘Kevin’ stroll into the room (no surnames given, no interviews allowed) and I hear the tale of how Medal of Honor: Warfighter came into being, it’s hard to keep joking. Likewise I can cock my head to the left so far that it’s practically horizontal, yet I still feel a quiet awe for any one who can look me in the eye and say, “My mind is my weapon. My guns are an extension of my will.”

Warfighter started out separately from Medal of Honor, as a franchise all its own, its origins a ‘vent book’ that Nate and Kevin wrote over a bottle of vodka during a spell in an undisclosed volatile region, frustrated by the dithering politicians back home. In time this became ‘Faceless’ - a document with the juiciest parts removed and a narrative locked in place, which in turn found its way to the desk of (then Vivendi) executive producer Greg Goodrich.



“It was very different in the beginning, that manuscript,” explains Goodrich, now at EA Danger Close. “That story; it had a lot of teeth, it was very aggressive. Very dark in places.” It was pitched to EA, and had been in production for six months before board-level machinations saw the team merged with that of the upcoming Medal of Honor reboot. As such the Warfighter project was hustled beneath Medal of Honor’s camo-coloured umbrella late in the last game’s development, and slated as material for a sequel. “We lifted Mother and Preacher out of their story and dropped them into the last game,” says Goodrich, a man with a rich PC past in both Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Kingpin. “We intentionally kept Preacher very quiet, as we knew his story was something special.”

For the Tier 1 operators providing the authenticity (and by extension, the marketing) this was anything but a smooth transition – to the extent that during the development of Medal of Honor, Goodrich penned two resignation letters to help get their views across to the EA brass. Now though, with the warriors themselves penning the Warfighter storyline and a legion of their ‘brother’ consultants given final edit, Warfighter is finally going to get its time in the sun. Quite the process for a game about crouching behind stuff, in order to shoot the heads of terrorists who are also hiding behind stuff.

In terms of Medal of Honor itself, Warfighter’s biggest departures are that of geography and history. Like Call of Duty, the game is now dispensing with real world battles and frolicking in fiction – chasing the manufacture and distribution of PETN explosives through a global network of locations such as Somalia and the Philippines.



“We’re not jumping around the world just for the sake of jumping around the world,” says Goodrich, a man whose every other sentence is liberally doused in words like ‘honour’ and ‘respect’. “Everything in this game – every mission, every event, every location that we go to – has a dotted line to something that has happened. When gamers Google these locations, they’re going to find a host of bad things that happened to good people.”

To illustrate his point, Goodrich turns to the screen behind him and conjures an example. The mission is a raid on the flooded Capital Building of a typhoon-struck Isabela City, in the Philippines. Now powered by the same engine as Battlefield 3, this is a game destined to make your graphics card sing. Murky water sloshes around your feet beautifully, grenades leave a pleasant fizz in the air and chandeliers swing violently as they catch the blast. It’s a slice of game that screams military shooter, although I’m promised the long-range head pops and stealth of the previous game are still a priority.

“If there’s a gunfight in a confined space with wood panelling and lattice, and it’s half-flooded, what’s that going to look like?” asks Goodrich, as we watch a gunfight set in a half-flooded, confined space with wood panelling being splintered. “It’s going to be messy, it’s going to be dirty, it’s going to be gritty. We tried to get this wonderful ballet between water shooting up, wood coming down and stuff just coming at you at all times.” As the player character Preacher climbs the stairs towards the room where the hostages are, a gentle haze of spent cordite hangs in the air – although you’ll barely have a second to notice it before a PETN charge hurls him backwards, his arms and legs flailing in front of the screen.





For developer Danger Close it’s all about nailing the feeling of personal, situational combat, which engenders their concentration on the microdestruction around you: the splintered banisters and the sheaves of paper hurled upwards and outwards to flutter back down to the water. “You look at the competition and you say, ‘I’m not going too stylised or too Hollywood’. The groove makes itself,” says Chris Salazar, an art director recently purloined from Treyarch’s Call of Duty: Black Ops team. “We’re not making it feel like you’re a camera with a lens in front of you, where we throw grape jelly at you when you’ve been shot.”

In reality, the game’s burly Tier 1 writers patiently explain, they probably wouldn’t go through a door if they suspected there were five Abu Sayyaf militants aiming AK47s at it at head height. This being a game, however, you get a SWAT 4/Ghost Recon-esque choice of breaching manoeuvres (frag grenade, flashbang, or old-fashioned kick) and a splendid slow-motion sequence of bodies being perforated. Note that the buzzword here is ‘authenticity’ rather than ‘realism’, providing a comfortable safehouse for these small moments of magic.

As the rescue mission proceeds, Preacher is presented with a linear ‘big gun on a vehicle’ session, as the player grabs the minigun on the bow of an escape boat. But wait, take back at least half of that sigh – because this is genuinely a high watermark of the ‘big gun on a vehicle’ form. The storm continues to batter Isabela City and the dinghy is caught in unpredictable currents and eddies as water surges through the streets. At one point, two rows of floating houses close in on it, the sides of the boat scratching porches, and I find myself mentally urging it forwards to freedom.



It’s a type of destruction previously unseen in videogames, with power lines collapsing and petrol stations exploding into the murk, and there’s an odd beauty in its chaos. It has to be noted that the foolhardy terrorists aiming rocket launchers at you also look great when they’re bent double in mid-air after your shots connect.

The best thing in the Medal of Honor reboot wasn’t any of its tough guys, but Afghanistan itself: its strange, beautiful landscapes made it a fascinating place to fight. There’s a chance that Warfighter will lose that vital sense of location, but otherwise all signs point towards it being a superior game. There are the technological advances, of course, but there’s also more cohesion in its development – both between the staff and its consultants, and between the teams working on its various constituent parts.

Last time around, DICE built Medal of Honor’s multiplayer – a different team on a different continent building an online rendition in a different engine. This time, enough map designers and network coders have been shepherded into the Danger Close pen to create their own online wares, with the same engine and mission statement as the rest of the game. Details are light, but the focus will be on letting gamers fight under their country’s flag.

That, then, is one dance partner in 2012’s military shooter tango. Medal of Honor is ready to plant a rose stem between Call of Duty’s teeth and do some aggressive twirling. We’ve all seen its moves before – we go through these motions every year – but for many the appeal will never die. And it’s strong praise indeed to underline that Warfighter is as confident, engaging and authentic as it is entirely familiar.

Don’t ask how many people they’ve killed. They hate that,” EA’s representative tells me. “And please stay away from politics.” That’s right, readers. It’s time to find out just how authentic and respectful this year’s other military shooter is. So sit back and get ready to discover just what gun accoutrements are ‘in’ this season.

My cynicism doesn’t last. Once ‘Nate’ and ‘Kevin’ stroll into the room (no surnames given, no interviews allowed) and I hear the tale of how Medal of Honor: Warfighter came into being, it’s hard to keep joking. Likewise I can cock my head to the left so far that it’s practically horizontal, yet I still feel a quiet awe for any one who can look me in the eye and say, “My mind is my weapon. My guns are an extension of my will.”

Warfighter started out separately from Medal of Honor, as a franchise all its own, its origins a ‘vent book’ that Nate and Kevin wrote over a bottle of vodka during a spell in an undisclosed volatile region, frustrated by the dithering politicians back home. In time this became ‘Faceless’ - a document with the juiciest parts removed and a narrative locked in place, which in turn found its way to the desk of (then Vivendi) executive producer Greg Goodrich.



“It was very different in the beginning, that manuscript,” explains Goodrich, now at EA Danger Close. “That story; it had a lot of teeth, it was very aggressive. Very dark in places.” It was pitched to EA, and had been in production for six months before board-level machinations saw the team merged with that of the upcoming Medal of Honor reboot. As such the Warfighter project was hustled beneath Medal of Honor’s camo-coloured umbrella late in the last game’s development, and slated as material for a sequel. “We lifted Mother and Preacher out of their story and dropped them into the last game,” says Goodrich, a man with a rich PC past in both Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Kingpin. “We intentionally kept Preacher very quiet, as we knew his story was something special.”

For the Tier 1 operators providing the authenticity (and by extension, the marketing) this was anything but a smooth transition – to the extent that during the development of Medal of Honor, Goodrich penned two resignation letters to help get their views across to the EA brass. Now though, with the warriors themselves penning the Warfighter storyline and a legion of their ‘brother’ consultants given final edit, Warfighter is finally going to get its time in the sun. Quite the process for a game about crouching behind stuff, in order to shoot the heads of terrorists who are also hiding behind stuff.

In terms of Medal of Honor itself, Warfighter’s biggest departures are that of geography and history. Like Call of Duty, the game is now dispensing with real world battles and frolicking in fiction – chasing the manufacture and distribution of PETN explosives through a global network of locations such as Somalia and the Philippines.



“We’re not jumping around the world just for the sake of jumping around the world,” says Goodrich, a man whose every other sentence is liberally doused in words like ‘honour’ and ‘respect’. “Everything in this game – every mission, every event, every location that we go to – has a dotted line to something that has happened. When gamers Google these locations, they’re going to find a host of bad things that happened to good people.”

To illustrate his point, Goodrich turns to the screen behind him and conjures an example. The mission is a raid on the flooded Capital Building of a typhoon-struck Isabela City, in the Philippines. Now powered by the same engine as Battlefield 3, this is a game destined to make your graphics card sing. Murky water sloshes around your feet beautifully, grenades leave a pleasant fizz in the air and chandeliers swing violently as they catch the blast. It’s a slice of game that screams military shooter, although I’m promised the long-range head pops and stealth of the previous game are still a priority.

“If there’s a gunfight in a confined space with wood panelling and lattice, and it’s half-flooded, what’s that going to look like?” asks Goodrich, as we watch a gunfight set in a half-flooded, confined space with wood panelling being splintered. “It’s going to be messy, it’s going to be dirty, it’s going to be gritty. We tried to get this wonderful ballet between water shooting up, wood coming down and stuff just coming at you at all times.” As the player character Preacher climbs the stairs towards the room where the hostages are, a gentle haze of spent cordite hangs in the air – although you’ll barely have a second to notice it before a PETN charge hurls him backwards, his arms and legs flailing in front of the screen.





For developer Danger Close it’s all about nailing the feeling of personal, situational combat, which engenders their concentration on the microdestruction around you: the splintered banisters and the sheaves of paper hurled upwards and outwards to flutter back down to the water. “You look at the competition and you say, ‘I’m not going too stylised or too Hollywood’. The groove makes itself,” says Chris Salazar, an art director recently purloined from Treyarch’s Call of Duty: Black Ops team. “We’re not making it feel like you’re a camera with a lens in front of you, where we throw grape jelly at you when you’ve been shot.”

In reality, the game’s burly Tier 1 writers patiently explain, they probably wouldn’t go through a door if they suspected there were five Abu Sayyaf militants aiming AK47s at it at head height. This being a game, however, you get a SWAT 4/Ghost Recon-esque choice of breaching manoeuvres (frag grenade, flashbang, or old-fashioned kick) and a splendid slow-motion sequence of bodies being perforated. Note that the buzzword here is ‘authenticity’ rather than ‘realism’, providing a comfortable safehouse for these small moments of magic.

As the rescue mission proceeds, Preacher is presented with a linear ‘big gun on a vehicle’ session, as the player grabs the minigun on the bow of an escape boat. But wait, take back at least half of that sigh – because this is genuinely a high watermark of the ‘big gun on a vehicle’ form. The storm continues to batter Isabela City and the dinghy is caught in unpredictable currents and eddies as water surges through the streets. At one point, two rows of floating houses close in on it, the sides of the boat scratching porches, and I find myself mentally urging it forwards to freedom.



It’s a type of destruction previously unseen in videogames, with power lines collapsing and petrol stations exploding into the murk, and there’s an odd beauty in its chaos. It has to be noted that the foolhardy terrorists aiming rocket launchers at you also look great when they’re bent double in mid-air after your shots connect.

The best thing in the Medal of Honor reboot wasn’t any of its tough guys, but Afghanistan itself: its strange, beautiful landscapes made it a fascinating place to fight. There’s a chance that Warfighter will lose that vital sense of location, but otherwise all signs point towards it being a superior game. There are the technological advances, of course, but there’s also more cohesion in its development – both between the staff and its consultants, and between the teams working on its various constituent parts.

Last time around, DICE built Medal of Honor’s multiplayer – a different team on a different continent building an online rendition in a different engine. This time, enough map designers and network coders have been shepherded into the Danger Close pen to create their own online wares, with the same engine and mission statement as the rest of the game. Details are light, but the focus will be on letting gamers fight under their country’s flag.

That, then, is one dance partner in 2012’s military shooter tango. Medal of Honor is ready to plant a rose stem between Call of Duty’s teeth and do some aggressive twirling. We’ve all seen its moves before – we go through these motions every year – but for many the appeal will never die. And it’s strong praise indeed to underline that Warfighter is as confident, engaging and authentic as it is entirely familiar.

Every week, Richard Cobbett rolls the dice to bring you an obscure slice of gaming history, from lost gems to weapons grade atrocities. This week, as the Leisure Suit Larry Kickstarter races towards the finish line, it's time to take a look back at how this unlikely series got its original kick-start...

Ah, Leisure Suit Larry. PC gaming's ultimate loser, if you don't count Les Manley and the guys who made Limbo of the Lost. He's been the star of six 'proper' games, two obscenities against gaming, and a few spin-offs that are probably best forgotten. The Laffer Utilities, anyone? Thought not.

The thing is though, the games get a bad rap. Some of them, anyway. The first three have more heart than you'd expect, and while things got a bit too sleazy in Larry 5 and 6, Larry 7 is actually a really fun, sex-positive comedy with the focus firmly on laughs. It's a solid series, which is why so many have bothered contributing to a Kickstarter focused on a second remake of his first adventure.

The thing is though that the original Leisure Suit Larry was itself a remake of an even older game, Softporn Adventure. Clearly, with a name like that - why, it must be filth! Let's hit the town!







While calling Leisure Suit Larry 1 a 'remake' of Softporn Adventure is technically accurate, in practice it's more of a complete rewrite verging on being a parody. Softporn isn't much of a comedy, just a short and deeply immature text-adventure. The Larry series, for their sins, go for laughs. Sure, sex always played a part in them, but it was a relatively minor one considering the series' reputation over the years, and they certainly weren't porn. If you bought them expecting anything but minor naughtiness, you were going to be disappointed. Most of the adult content was used as a simple excuse to get Larry into some horrible, humiliating situation, and throw in a few cheap gags and situations regular adventures couldn't.

Even when it wasn't, it was spectacularly tame. If you found an Easter Egg, you might get to see a few pixels of nipple every now and again. The rest of the time, the series lived happily in the land of peek-a-boo, innuendo, and variably naughty jokes. And random stuff like this...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XMeygCieZU

Here's a good example of how the games were misunderstood over the years - the idea that Larry was a sex-mad pervert. He really wasn't. The first game, Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards, has him as a post-middle age, software-salesman virgin who essentially snaps one day and decides to reinvent himself as the coolest thing in the world. Unfortunately, he's about ten years out of date, which is why he ends up standing outside a seedy bar in the even seedier town of Lost Wages with his last few dollars in his pocket, a can of breath spray, and no real idea where to go next.

From there, it's possible to get him laid in about two minutes. Walk into the bar. Solve the puzzle that gets him to a prostitute above it. Enjoy. Sure, if you want him to survive that encounter, you need to take a trip elsewhere to buy a condom first, but never mind. Quest complete, right?



Well, no. In practice, Larry's reaction to finally having sex is, essentially "Meh" - or as the game puts it "Although successful, you feel less than satisfied. Technically speaking, you're no longer a virgin - but for some reason the thrills just wasn't there. You vow to continue your quest until you please your heart, not just your other organs!" And then, if you skipped the condom, his cock explodes. Hey-ho.

This sets a tone for the opening trilogy. Larry isn't really after sex, as much as he and Sierra's marketing pretended otherwise. He's after love and companionship - and if that sounds a bit reaching, it's worth looking at what happens when he finds it. At the end of both Larry 1 and Larry 2, he finds a woman he falls for on at least a slightly deeper level... by 1987 graphic adventure games, at least... and as of the next game in the series is quite content to be with them as a one-woman man... until they kick him out of their lives and force him to don his leisure suit for another game of suffering for our entertainment.

It's largely because of this that he remains a sympathetic character. True, this doesn't really last, and as of Larry 6 he's firmly a guy who'd love to be a care-free hedonist if the cruel universe would just stop murdering him every two seconds, but it's an important part in the first few games.

So... what's the main character of Softporn Adventure like? In fact, let's be specific. How does he react to that exact same situation? With sensitivity? With a moment of carnal regret? Self-realisation?



...

Okay, with a name like "Softporn Adventure" you probably shouldn't expect the best writing in the universe, but even so, this game is jaw-droppingly awful. Even by the standards of the era, when a person would make a porn game and set the mood by calling it Granny's Place, it's bad with a capital oh-good-god-this-is-Baaaaaaaad. It's not simply weak comedy. It's like being faced with comedy's nemesis, mid-way through a covert mission to sprinkle salt in gaming's fertile foundations that no laughs can ever grow there again. It is... and I do not say this lightly... almost worse than Hopkins FBI.

It takes about a microsecond before any idea of getting the main character laid is replaced by wanting him to get into a taxi, have himself driven to the nearest sausage factory and stick his engorged penis into the nearest sharp-bladed instrument as a favour to the gene pool he has thankfully been kept out of. EVERY OTHER SENTENCE IS SHOUTED!, like he showed up after smoking his own body weight in crystal meth. He spends much of the game bouncing between mocking you as the player and trying to nudge you in ways that the average drunken arse at a bar couldn't match if they actually were a giant pair of buttocks squishing into your face. If there's one saving grace in the entire game... and I'm speaking hypothetically here... it's that there are plenty of ways to kill this jackass throughout.



As a cheery aside, when you die, you get a 1/3 chance of him going to Hell. I realise this is meant to be a 1/3 chance of a second chance, but I find that an inferior result. It's a weird system though, which I haven't seen very often in games because it's really stupid. Instead of simply being allowed to reload your last save, you have to pick one of three doors - one of which does nothing, one of which puts you back where you were, unharmed, and one which quits with no chance to reload a save. A minor annoyance, yes, but anything that actively tries to be one is always worse than mere incompetence.

Especially when you know the kind of deaths you can face...



NO I AM DROWNING IN PUNCTUATION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This death is actually in the remakes too, though at least in those one you're rewarded by a full-on refuge in audacity level animated sequence of the whole room filling up with water and stinky poo-poo...



As an aside, finding deaths in Sierra games was actually pretty fun - their designers often spent a lot of time implementing interesting and ridiculously long-winded ones to take the sting out of it. Here's a quick compilation. Watch out for the Factory death especially.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8Cnnhi-m0Q

At this point, I'd usually skip sarcastically through the game to talk about some of the weird stuff that happens... and that was the plan. Unfortunately, playing through to find suitably eye-rolling stuff, there's surprisingly little to say. The quality level is just so crap, it doesn't deserve mockery.

Instead, here's a quick summary. Over the course of one night in this sleazy town, both Larry and Softporn Adventure's hateful main character have more or less the same adventure - a whirlwind romance with a girl from a disco who marries him for his money, then takes his money and leaves him tied spread-eagle to his honeymoon bed... yet somehow still able to cut those ropes with a knife he collected earlier. Picking himself up, he either sleeps with a hooker or doesn't, since it doesn't actually matter, before stealing some drugs from a sleazy apartment, and finally falling head-over-heels for one last woman, Eve, whose heart he wins with an apple... an apple she takes with surprisingly good grace considering that she's naked in a jacuzzi, and dealing with a guy who just broke into her penthouse.



Got that? Good. Then I'll let Softporn Adventure speak for itself. Prepare yourself, if you dare, for the sexiest game of 1981! You are not prepared for this level of sexiness!

Scene 1: Unnamed Guy Meets A Girl In The Disco And Is Annoying About It

Cute and innocent! Just the way I like my women. Oh, this girl is great! She has a beautiful California tan...and pert little breasts...a trim waist...and well-rounded hips! I dream about getting this nice a girl. I hope you play this game well enough so I can have my jollys with her! You could make your puppet a very happy man!

I like to imagine this would go something like this...

Scene 2: Idiot Guy Gives Stolen Pills To Other Girl, Gets Dumber

The blonde looks at the pills and says, 'Thanks! I love this stuff!' She takes a pill...her nipples start to stand up! Wow!! She's breathing heavily...I hope she rapes me!! She says, 'So long, sucker! I'm going to go see my boy friend!' She disappears down the stairs....



Scene 3: OH GOD JUST SHUT UP AND DIE

The elevator doors open. I get in. As the doors close, music starts playing. It's the usual elevator stuff...boring! We start to move...after a few seconds the elevator stops. The doors open and I get out.

Mmmmm. This is a peeping tom's paradise! Across the way is another hotel. Ah hah! The curtains are open at one window! The bathroom door opens and a girl walks out. Holy cow! Her boobs are huge- and look at the way they sway as she strides across the room! Now she's taking a large sausage-shaped object and looking at it longingly! Damn! She shut the curtain!



Scene 4: In Which This Whole Game Becomes Strangely Reminiscent Of That Bit In The 40 Year Old Virgin Where Steve Carrell's Character Accidentally Gives Away That He Has Less Experience Than A Eunuch By Using A Poorly Chosen Description Of Breasts As Being Like Bags Of Sand, I'm Not Saying That This Is Definitely True Of The Designer Of Course, I'm Just Saying Is All

She hops out of the tub- the steam rising from her skin...her body is the best looking I've ever seen!! Then she comes up to me and gives the best time of my life! Well...I guess that's it! As your puppet in this game, I thank you for the pleasure you have brought me.... So long...I've got to get back to my new girl here! Keep it up! Thy quest is over!

Wow. I haven't seen anything this hot since I locked myself in a walk-in freezer!

(Not that the updated Larry was much better, admittedly, ending with a quick fireworks display and a plug for what would turn out to be one of the most surreal sequels ever made...)

Once again, I remind you: this game ended up kicking off one of adventure gaming's longest running franchises. Maniac Mansion? Two games. Quest for Glory? Five. Last Half of Darkness? At last count, about 7,653,124, and none of them the "Last Half", but never mind. Softporn Adventure? Six games, not counting a few festering pools of trouser gravy created by other teams, with at least one more hopefully good one on its way over thirty years later. Makes you think, huh?



(Sigh...)

Except there's a reason. Softporn Adventure is absolutely dreadful and only a moron would defend it even as a product of its time. In parodying it though, Al Lowe created something that deserves to be remembered fondly. For all the crap it gets, Leisure Suit Larry 1 was one of the first graphic adventures to try and take on the real world instead of some fantasy cartoon kingdom. Its version of Lost Wages, no longer just a few scraps of text shat out along with a parser that can't even understand the command "Go North", has a sense of actual place to it. Go into the Casino in the original for instance and you just get a couple of rooms and a bad Blackjack game. In the Leisure Suit Larry version, you can wander into a comedy club by the main elevator, sit down, and 'enjoy' a whole set. Where the original only understood the most basic commands, the sequel was built with a tool that let Lowe see what people were typing and write lines and jokes accordingly, allowing for a world that encouraged experimentation.

(Admittedly, the nature of the game meant that these commands would usually be stuff like "masturbate", but where Larry would kick back "The whole point was to stop doing that!", the best Softporn Adventure can offer is "I don't know how to masturbate something!" Which would explain why the main character is so dribblingly desperate to get laid, I guess - though I still wish he'd gone with good ol' castration.)

What of the new remake? Well, assuming they get their funding (which looks likely at this point), it's intended to be a bit more than a remake - no dead-end situations, more jokes, more silliness. If you want to help make that happen, head here. Either way, here's a quick snapshot of Larry through the ages - from Softporn Adventure to the brand new Lefty's Bar of the latest version. How far he's come... and how often. Yes, I said that. And no, I am not ashamed. Well, not much, anyway. Maybe a little.



Oh, and yes. This is indeed the game with a naked Roberta Williams on the box. I mention this only because someone had to. Here's a more interesting bit of trivia: Roman soldiers in Britain used to rub themselves with nettles to fight the cold. They didn't enjoy it, but at least they had the nettles...

This week, GameFly comes through with 33% off The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, 50% off Anno 2070, and $10 off Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. In other highlights, The Mount & Blade collection is still super cheap on Steam, GamersGate is offering 50% off Assassin's Creed: Revelations, and if you act before the end of Friday, you can still get $20 off The Old Republic.



STEAM
Steam is polearming 75% off the entire Mount & Blade series, putting the original game at $3.74 and the entire collection at only $7.50. It's also cracking 40% off Jagged Alliance: Back in Action, and 25% off the new PC version of Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP. And, if you act fast, the Monkey Island: Special Edition Bundle is 66% off for the rest of Friday.

66% off Monkey Island: Special Edition Bundle - $5.09 (Friday only)
 75% off Mount & Blade Collection - $7.50
40% off Jagged Alliance: Back in Action - $23.99
15% off The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Enhanced Edition - $42.49
25% off Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP - $5.99
10% off King's Bounty: The Legend - $13.49
10% off King's Bounty: Armored Princess - $17.99

 
ORIGIN
As usual, Origin is short on deals, but if you act before the end of today, you can still get $20 off both the Standard and Digital Deluxe versions of Star Wars: The Old Republic. Nothing else to note, but keep in mind that most Amazon EA deals below can be activated via Origin.

 33% off Star Wars: The Old Republic - $39.99 (Friday only)

 
AMAZON
Amazon continues to offer an elephantine list of download deals, and the big promotion this week is 50% off Battlefield 3. If you feel like attending a very-slightly-older school, Battlefield Bad Company 2 is 75%. Also on sale are Crysis 2, Mass Effect 1 & 2, and Deus Ex: Human Revolution:

 50% off Battlefield 3 - $29.99
75% off Battlefield Bad Company 2 - $4.99
75% off L.A. Noire - $4.99
15% off Crysis 2- $25.60
13% off The Sims 3 - $26.23
25% off Metro 2033 - $15.01
22% off Dead Island - $23.42
22% off Mass Effect - $15.58
25% off Mass Effect 2 - $15.03
33% off Wargame: European Escalation - $26.79
53% off Mount & Blade: Warband - $9.42
24% off Shift 2 - Unleashed - $15.13
50% off Tropico 4 - $19.99
23% off Just Cause 2 - $11.55
33% off Deus Ex: Human Revolution - Standard Edition - $19.99

 
IMPULSE
If you want to catch up on Assassin's Creed before ACIII, Revelations is currently only $16.49 on Impulse for the first 500 customers, today only for "Flash Sale Friday." (If you miss that, check GamersGate below.) Oil Rush is also discounted for Friday only, Wargame: European Escalation and Alan Wake are 33% off until Sunday, and Dawn of Fantasy is 70% off until Sunday.

 66% off Assassin's Creed Revelations - $16.49 (Friday only, limited quantity)
50% off Oil Rush - $9.99 (Friday only)
33% off Wargame: European Escalation - $26.79
33% off Alan Wake - $20.09
70% off Dawn of Fantasy - $8.99

 
GAMEFLY
GameFly is offering 33% off The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim this weekend, as well as 50% off Anno 2070 and $10 off Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. Not bad!

33% off The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - $40.19
50% off Anno 2070 - $24.99
$10 off Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning - $39.99

 
GAMERSGATE
GamersGate has a big selection of deals, including 50% off Assassin's Creed: Revelations, 75% off Deus Ex: Human Revolution, and 33% off Alan Wake.

30% off Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood - $20.97
50% off Assassin's Creed: Revelations - $24.98
30% off Anno 2070 - $34.96
75% off Deus Ex: Human Revolution - $7.49
75% off Just Cause 2 - $3.74
75% off Dungeon Siege III - $12.49

 
GOOD OLD GAMES
GOG has 18 games on sale for $2.99 or $4.99 right now, including Gothic 3, Witcher: Enhanced Edition, and Painkiller: Black Edition.

 AquaNox - $2.99
AquaNox 2: Revelation - $2.99
Dark Fall: The Journal- $2.99
Dark Fall 2: Lights Out - $2.99
The Nations: Gold Edition - $2.99
Alien Nations - $2.99
Panzer Elite: Special Edition - $2.99
Chaser - $2.99
Neighbours From Hell Compilation - $4.99
The Guild: Gold Edition - $4.99
Spellforce Platinum - $4.99
Gothic 2: Gold Edition - $4.99
Painkiller: Black Edition - $4.99
The Witcher: Enhanced Edition - $4.99
Spellforce 2: Shadow Wars - $4.99
Spellforce 2: Dragon Storm - $4.99
Gothic 3 - $4.99
Gothic 3: Forsaken Gods Enhanced Edition - $4.99

 

Know of any more game deals this weekend? Drop them in the comments!