Christmas. Christmas never changes. Every day this week though, Fallout: New Vegas gets into the spirit of the season as a selection of mods make wishes come true... for better or worse. Today, new friends mean new opportunities, but at what cost? The answer: Pants.

Previously: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4




Zombies sighted. Crush them like they're the democratic spirit that made this country what it was, before we made it a nuclear wasteland with our ancestors' now legendary douchebaggery.









Enemies neutralised harder than that family at the start of Fallout 2, sir. Permission to put on the special power armour with a spacious enough codpiece to handle serious murder erection, sir?



Oh, this couldn't feel more wrong.



Cass, if it's wrong to use an evil paramilitary army as your personal security service to seize control of a casino from its proper owner, turn it into a fortress, and profit from a zombie apocalypse you accident'ly started, I don't want to be right.





Kinda getting that feeling, yeah, Comic Sans. Pretty sure even most folks who'd make deals with the devil would take one look at the Enclave offering to just follow orders and go "Jesus, no! Are you insane!? No! Just... just no! "



Ah, come on-



Last I heard, Satan refused to sign a deal with those guys, saying they were too ruthless. And they're just following your orders? You know there'll be some catch.



Sir! No catch! You have the Command Radio sir! While you have that, you can just phone us and we obey your every whim for reasons that make such obvious sense they hardly need explaining, sir!



Yeah. Like it's that simple. One whim to rule them all, one whim to realign them; one whim to bring them here, and in the weirdness, oh, nuke Black Mountain.



COMMENCING ORBITAL STRIKE!



What? No, wai-





Well, there goes my soul. Right then. Just happened. Burned right away to a sulphurous crisp. Text message from the devil, sayin' "Rose of Sharon Cassidy, be seeing you soon." Thanks for that, boys. Way to go.



Eh, don't go beating yourself up over it. Last I checked, beating up a few of Caesar's Legion-



...



...



Huh. Right then. Or beating up Powder Gangers and other evil sorts can wipe that clean off the ol' karmic slate. Come on. We got a casino to start running.



Yeah, about that, Trajan Pro. Not sure just putting on these fancy business suits is enough to run Mr. House's casino. For starters, pretty sure he's got an army of Securitrons who don't like us much.





Army of Securitrons who don't like you very much destroyed, sir! I shot that cowboy one who looked like he was going to do something really interesting but ended up not!



Right, okay, but it's not like we can just stand about and just act all proprietorial, like we're just role-playing casino ownership while these guys shoot zombies.



No need. Look what I found in the back.





See? Course, I don't reckon even us and our friends here will be able to to run the whole place ourselves. Enclave's good for shooting zombies, not so much at dealing blackjack. First gambler to say 'hit me'...



No shit. You got a back-up plan then?





Mr. House's old robot pets? You sure that's a good idea? They're not even working.



Least if we use these malfunctioning pets, we know they're-



No. Don't even think about it!



House-broken!



*pant* You meant 'Caesar'.



Oh, shush.





Right. So, we're all up and running, more or less, assuming 'not having the money to open any tables or buy any booze' counts as 'less', and I'm thinking it probably does. Any ideas for raising quick money in a zombie apocalypse?



Figured a good starting point would be heading to Freeside, finding all the scrap we can get, then crafting it together into more worthwhile stuff and selling it to the gun runners for starting investment capital.



That actually... sounds quite sensible.



Then I figured, screw that, let's do this.







Of all the things I've ever woken up without my pants to find, I like this one the best. 'Course, technically, we just appeared here with all our stuff still on, like something went wrong. Not sure why you had us take it off anyway.



Seemed the thing to do, I guess. Fair being fair and all that. Think we should get dressed and head back before anyone notices?



Wouldn't do much for our reps to be seen in the least stylish underwear this side of Dragon Age, though I'm pretty sure we could go to church like this and no-one'd care. Come on. We've got a casino to run and the Enclave'll be getting lonely.





Cass, when we started this casino, two long hours ago, you ever think it'd be as successful as this? Caps and chems flowing, the Lucky 38 restored to its old glory, the zombie apocalypse almost never spilling in from outside?



I don't care if the chems are better at Gomorrah. Sod'em! You tell those gamblers that only the Lucky 38 is protected by the Enclave, and- yeah, sure boss. Wonder what Mr. House thinks of how we're running his beloved casino?



Aw, I reckon he's happy to see the old girl full of life again.






My... piss tube... is filled... with impotent rage....





So what's wrong? You look like someone put Bonzi Buddy on your PIPBoy.



I dunno, Cass. Just don't feel right, is all, being in here and not out there like in the old hours.



Even with the zombie apocalypse going on out there?



I guess just sitting around in one place just 'aint for me whatever's out there. I need to feel the sand... the snow, I guess, underfoot. Taste the air, then be sick 'cause it's full of radioactive poison. You know? The open trail, that's the life for me.



And also a million or so zombies.



Point. Still, y'know.



Way I see it, we've got everything anyone could want, right here. At least until the Enclave get back to their old tricks. Come on, let's head to the VIP lounge. Just got in a new shipment of alcohol in need of popping open.



Tell you what, how 'bout you start the popping without me. Just going to go swap the guards outside, okay? Swap the guards, do a few other quick things. Business things. Like a business guy. Be there 'fore you know it.





Courier...





He's not coming back, is he, ma'am?



Depends. Would you and your soldiers likely return to your evil ways and go on a genocidal killing spree if the guy with the Command Radio suddenly vanished, leaving an obvious power vacuum for your insane masters to exploit?



Yup.



In that case, yes.




And so the Courier, who had first seen the Christmas snow in Goodsprings, continued to see Christmas, in a Mojave Wasteland forever changed by strange weather, the hordes of the undead, and some seriously dodgy shit to look up on your own time.


Rose of Sharon Cassidy continued running the Lucky 38, which turned out to be surprisingly boring after a while. Eventually, tired of waiting for the Enclave to turn evil, she packed up her caps and went west. Life was peaceful there.



Unleashed, the Enclave revelled in their ability to conquer the Mojave, before remembering that they were too stupid to do anything without orders, and that the Courier had kept the Radio. Their leader was heard to comment "Arse."



FISTO WROTE AUTOBIOGRAPHY, "CLOSED FIST, OPEN HEART!" IT SOLD SURPRISINGLY WELL!



Still brainwashed, Edward Sallow - better known as Caesar and 'Caesar' - found himself travelling with the Doctor, though was too nerve stapled to appreciate the honour. Sometimes, the Doctor used him as a coat rack.



Xenite continued demanding "Uhmmm... is this supposed to be humorous?" until being randomly flattened by a falling bison on an otherwise uneventful Tuesday.



Trudy, owner of the Prospector Saloon, reverse-engineered the weapons found in her bar, raised an army, and declared herself Boudica, Queen of the Wastes. Anyone describing her horde as "Caes-HERs Legion" was crucified, for funsies.



Mr. House's constant complaining led to the coining of the phrase "The House Always Whines". Proving the point, he spent several years bitching about this to himself until his life support system finally committed suicide.



And so the Courier's holiday season came to an end... for now. In the new world of the Mojave Wasteland, fighting continued, blood was spilled, and many lived and died - just as they had in the old world, and original game. Because Christmas... Christmas never changes.

Today's Mods: Frozen World, Zombie Mod, Enclave Commander, Zombie Apocalypse, Run The Lucky 38, More Perks

Maybe it’s just me, but I never could take Police Quest ($4.99 on GOG) very seriously. I know I probably should. It’s certainly a serious game—an interactive police-procedural adventure written by a real cop, and supposedly used by others as a training tool. For me though, it was always something else—closer to the dreams that good cops probably have after eating too much cheese before going to bed. It’s like a fevered nightmare of repressed paranoia, lessened only by a little guilty wish-fulfillment to round off a long day of being abused and unappreciated.

Police Quest’s goal is to simulate the experiences that a real cop might have on a daily basis. So, like most dreams, it starts out rooted in reality. You’re Sonny Bonds, a regular beat cop, going about his day in the decaying Lytton City (the bigger mystery plot shows up much later). You drive around until your radio tells you something’s going on, then you drive over there and deal with it. You stop speeding motorists. You call in the appropriate authorities at an accident scene. You chat with a hottie who turns into a spitting hellcat if you don’t let her out of a ticket (and gives you the police commissioner’s wife’s phone number if you do). You sort out trouble at a coffee house. In short, you do your job.

Badgered
 


Oh, and you die. A lot. This is where our sleeping cop’s paranoia kicks in. Even by Sierra standards, Police Quest wants you dead. Run a red light? Game over. Don’t call for backup? Bye-bye. Don’t check your gun into a locker before going into jail? The perp will pull it from your belt and pop you. This is a game where you can single-handedly face down a bar full of bikers, only to get cold-cocked by an incorrectly-handcuffed drunk. In the original version, you don’t simply have to check your car before you head off on patrol—you have to manually walk to all four sides and check them each in turn, otherwise you instantly blow a tire. The kicker? If you do the check, nothing is wrong. That’s just cruel!

Both versions of Police Quest are brutal—the original, released in 1987, uses a text-parser interface, the 1992 remake uses icons. You can muddle through the icons, but the only way you were getting anywhere with the text version was to follow the manual’s procedures down to the letter, literally.

Of course, that strict adherence to proper procedure actually makes the moments when Police Quest goes utterly insane all the funnier. For starters, while the story technically takes place over the course of a few days, in practice you never go home or off-duty for more than five minutes, making the whole adventure seem like some bizarre, mirror-universe season of 24 where Jack Bauer is a stickler for due process. Even better: in the text-driven version, you can type “remove uniform,” and Sonny will actually get his little nightstick out in the middle of a crime scene, dying of shame. Yikes.

With a heart of gold
 


Finally, there’s the game’s love interest. Oh boy. Now, I’m not saying a cop and a hooker shouldn't fall for each other. I’m just saying that I can’t not giggle at a by-the-book cop ending up with a callgirl (who happens to be your former high school sweetheart) named Sweet Cheeks. The story only gets sillier from that point too, as you use her prostitute connections to track down the titular Death Angel (a drug dealer called Jessie Bains—Sonny’s nemesis in the sequel, but largely irrelevant until the very end of this story) by going undercover and beating his friends at poker. Alternatively, you can screw up, miss the big game due to sleeping with Sweet Cheeks instead, and lose your career when your boss calls and hears her screaming out in pleasure. Being the single best game-over in Sierra history doesn’t make that feel any less out of place in a “serious” police game!



But Police Quest isn’t serious—not really. It pretends to be, but it’s the clash between its by-the-book attitude and the gamey parts that makes it so charming, and it knows it. The sequels wasted little time upping the stakes, with Sonny moving to the Homicide Department, and a third game involving an evil cult. Still, this first game was always my favorite, especially the more down-to-earth parts that simply try to convey the flavor of being on patrol. A real cop may not find Police Quest to be a realistic simulation of his profession, but at least he can appreciate that by playing it, we learn about the hookers, bar fights, and rigid rules he must abide by in order to keep us all a little bit safer.

On the next page: More Police Quest screenshots from our archive
 

Review by Ben Griffin

Lego Lord of the Rings is an emphatic reminder of just how many iconic moments there are in Peter Jackson’s fantasy epics. Recreated in blocky form – as simple puzzles, short platforming sections and quaint cutscenes – and lifting the trilogy’s score and dialogue wholesale, the Helm’s Deep siege, Balrog showdown, and, er, bit where Gandalf bangs his head on Bilbo’s lamp all make the cut.

The journey begins, as in the films, on the slopes of Mount Doom rendered in toy bricks. As Isildur, you’ll chop down orcs using repetitive prods, then defeat Sauron with three slashes while he’s dazed. It’s simple stuff, and unrevised from the previous fellowship of Lego games. Traveller’s Tales’ formulaic Lego design is feeling a little tired now, but this outing is elevated by detail, ranging from the massive (thousands of individual warriors battle in the background) to the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it (Isildur faithfully wields the Narsil blade).

Middle-earth is a vast and fanciful open world, uncovered region by region until you can roam from Hobbiton to Bree to Helm’s Deep to Isengard without a single load.

It’s a shame you’re given little reason to wander immediately, seeing as most puzzles are unsolvable until you unlock a specific character – of which there are dozens. And, like in past games, your movement is so slow that it seems a ploy by devs who want to artificially extend the longevity. At least mounts make the hikes a little smoother or, if you’re on goat-back, a little bumpier.



The quests you’re given in smaller hubs are better. Early on in Bree, a gardener asks for a Mithril trowel – an effective task because you can tackle it right away, and it introduces weapon crafting. Each character (you can have up to eight on screen) has an inventory, and provided you have enough Mithril bricks, certain items can be shaped by blacksmiths into all manner of mythical swords, daggers and... rope.

Ironically, it’s more than a little Minecraft, a game after Lego’s own heart. Similarly, you won’t always craft weapons – as three hungry Hobbits camping on Weathertop, you’ll also forage sausages, tomatoes and nice, crispy bacon to knock up a mean fried breakfast.

The meat of the game lies in tag-teaming differently skilled characters. Gandalf conjures shields, Hobbits dig holes and light fires, and Gimli, to his dismay, can be tossed as no dwarf should. It’s incredibly faithful: on the Misty Mountains, for instance, you’ll find the fellowship trudging through deep snow as Legolas daintily treads on top, all as Saruman’s voice echoes on the wind in efforts to “bring down the mountain!” In fact, you’re almost discouraged from going solo. ‘Press any button to start’ is constantly flashing in the top corner like a coin-op at the end of a pier, and it can’t be disabled. This just makes the lack of online co-op, or even four-player splitscreen, all the more egregious, especially on PC.



Three films’ worth of standout scenes are made playable with such a deft touch that the game’s tired design can almost be forgiven. Fleeing Ringwraiths en route to Buckleberry Ferry is a mad into-the-camera dash; the dust-up between Gandalf and Saruman incorporates a spot of first-person staff duelling; and when Frodo puts on the ring he enters some cloudy alternate reality.

It doesn’t stray far enough from the tried-and-tested Lego mould to be an unequivocal recommendation, but Lego Lord of the Rings is an authentic, classy and perfectly paced homage. Precious, indeed.

Expect to pay: $57 / £35
Release: Out now
Developer: Traveller’s Tales
Publisher: Warner Brothers Interactive Entertainment
Multiplayer: Two-player
Link: thelordoftherings.lego.com

Ah, the end of the year... That time when we can all reflect on the horrendous errors of judgement we've made since the last time we promised to never drink again. A time for the wearing of jumpers, the watching of classic movies such as Weekend At Bernie's 2 and the consumption of lard sandwiches...

And it's in this hinterland between Christmas revelry and starting back to work/college/school/jail properly that we can also look back on the best games of the year.

That's what the punters at online retailer Green Man Gaming have been doing too. And they've come up with their own top ten list of 2012 which features death, dishonour and plenty of animal slaughter. Afterall, the festive season is a chance for us to slay creatures and feast on their splayed, charred carcasses with family and friends. Happy holidays!

GMG community's games of the year

10. Max Payne 3
9. Dark Souls: Prepare To Die Edition
8. Assassin's Creed III *
7. Hitman: Absolution
6. Guild Wars 2
5. XCOM: Enemy Unknown
4. Dishonored
3. Far Cry 3 *
2. The Walking Dead
1. Borderlands 2

* Only available from GMG in EU.
In association with Green Man Gaming. Read GMG blogger in residence James' take on all this gaming goodness in his GMG GOTY post.

The fact that FTL lets me command a craft called The Space Badger with Don Draper at the helm isn’t the main reason I love it (although it is a factor). Ever since I saw Firefly, I’ve been eager to take charge of a crew and lead them to almost certain death. FTL lets me do that, over and over again.

Your primary objective is to outrun the rebel fleet, which advances like a red wave across every sector. Dozens of jump points form an explorable web in each system. You can encounter anything from a drone guarding treasure to a planetary distress signal or a secret space shop. These quick interludes offer a short list of choices, which may result in a fight, a reward, or nothing at all.

For the first few playthroughs, these little choices formed the narrative of my ship’s journey, but that novelty began to wear off as I saw the same choices repeating. Then I started to game the system. I would always ruthlessly destroy pirates even if they tried to surrender, knowing that the more resources I earned from early sectors, the better my long term chances would be. It soon became obvious that FTL isn’t a game about canned stories or alien encounters, it’s about survival.

Then the important decisions came to the fore. Should I spend precious resources on upgrading my energy drive? Should I repair? Should I buy fuel? FTL’s upgrade systems present a fascinating ongoing conflict between the need to keep the vessel ship shape and a desire to make it better.

It helps that FTL’s most devastating weapons are a joy to use. They let you sketch streaks of laser death across the hulls of your enemies. They can teleport bombs right into your enemy’s engine room. They let you order drones to surgically slice up your enemy’s oxygen supply. You can even see the doors on their ship opening and closing frantically as the crew dash to repair what remains of their vital systems.

Everything you can do, however, can also be done to you. FTL’s campaigns are often tales of continuous, worsening crisis. Like the hero of a hardboiled detective novel, your ship becomes more battered and bruised with every encounter, limping towards the distant final boss with a naïve sense of hope.

FTL’s finely balanced systems deliver great strategy, but it’s in the slow demise of your craft that the game finds its drama. That it manages to do so much in such short bursts of time is remarkable.

Read More: Our FTL review and Tom F's FTL Diary.

Runners Up: Hotline Miami and Thirty Flights of Loving

Come, says the cassowary, turn my hide into a wallet. Come, says the tiger, carve a knapsack from my flanks. Come, says the bear, blow me up with semtex even though you’ve already maxed-out the size of your grenade pouch. You are a hunter. I am your prey. This is Nature.

Assassin's Creed 3 may have had a button which let you tickle sheep under the chin and Black Ops 2 may have single-handedly devalued the price of glue with its laissez-faire attitude to horse welfare, but it is undoubtedly Far Cry 3 which has most profoundly changed my relationship with the animal kingdom. Not only did Ubisoft’s open world shooter prove tapirs to be little more than snuffling jam-bombs, begging to be burst beneath the wheels of a hurtling jeep, but its crafting mechanic has made me view the entire natural world with a newly utilitarian avarice.

Once, I was afraid of sharks. Now I realise that their primary role on this planet is not as ferocious, pitiless predators of the deep, but as floating hand-bag farms, eager to be stuffed full of trombones, saucy photographs of dwarves, traffic cones and other assorted beachcomber tat.

As I stand on the back of my boat, machine-gunning the crystal blue waters, I like to imagine I am Ernest Hemingway.

The downside is that I now can’t help but look at someone’s pet shih tzu and calculate the number of gas canisters it could feasibly hold.

Runners-up: Assassin's Creed 3's sheep tickling, Black Ops 2's Afghani burrowing horse

This preview originally appeared in issue 248 of PC Gamer UK.

On screen, Lara Croft is inching her way up a rock face. She’s wedged in a narrow vertical gap, chimneying her way up. It’s complicated, gruelling work. She grunts as she works her way past outcrops, exerting herself totally with the effort of remaining suspended some 40 feet above the jagged ground below. She slips, losing her footing for a second, before she jams her boot against the wall, steadies herself, and heaves a lungful of air. She climbs on.

In a chair, I’m pushing the thumbstick on my gamepad forward. I’ve been pushing it forward for almost all of Lara’s ascent. When she slips, I take my thumb off the controller for a second. I do this because the game makes it clear that I have no way to stop the event or assist in her righting process, and because my thumb is getting mildly numb from the effort. Three quarters of the way up, I release it again, interested to see what’ll happen to a visibly knackered Lara left to dangle. Nothing. She stays there, wedged in the rock, her superhuman core strength keeping her legs stable for – presumably – eternity. I go back to pushing the thumbstick forward.

“Did I lock the front door...”

A quick note: I’m pushing the thumbstick forward – not pressing W on a keyboard – because journalists are only able to play Xbox 360 code at this stage in Tomb Raider’s development. I’ve been pushing it forward for most of the three hours of Tomb Raider I’ve played so far, from Lara’s shipwreck at the opening, through her escape from local madmen down a perilously narrow and conveniently sized cave, during lengthy climbs up the side of a variety of precarious structures and rock formations.

Sometimes, Lara slips and tumbles as I’m pressing the thumbstick forward: collapsing into a heap after diving past a falling rock, missing a handhold halfway up a radio mast. It’s meant to feel thrilling, moments of near-death to keep the pulse racing. It succeeds instead in frustrating me. I can see the obvious coming, but I can’t avoid it. I can’t do anything but press the thumbstick forward as control is wrested away from me, keeping the scene rolling as Lara finds out about her own survival instincts on her own.

The closest parallel is the PlayStation 3’s Uncharted series. But where the linear leaping of those games was leavened by Indiana-Jones-style humour and silliness, Tomb Raider is pitch black in tone. Lara starts the game by unceremoniously dropping onto a spike, which pierces her clean through and obliges her to clutch her side as she tries to escape from a cave. The idea is to express human frailty, but what it’s doing is hamstringing a character defined by agility. For the next 20 minutes, Lara is left wheezing, gasping, and chattering her teeth, unable to sprint or jump thanks to the low cave roof, until she finds a fire at an island camp.

“Lara!” “Wooden frame building!” It was years since they’d last met.

Tomb Raider opens up at this point. Lara’s first camp is on the side of a bluff, where an overhanging rock provides shelter from the incessant rain. The fire provides a place to upgrade equipment and spend experience points. Upgrades are earned through the collection of salvage – found in containers strewn around the island – and applied to Lara’s survival tools. I turn a makeshift pickaxe into a stronger makeshift pickaxe by applying some metal to it at one of these fires.

A short way on, one of Lara’s shipmates – all of whom seem to have survived the shipwreck and meet up with her shortly after her escape – leads me toward a vast temple door. He’s an archaeologist, and needs Lara’s help to turn the door’s crank. I apply the newly upgraded pickaxe to the relevant hole, and get cranking.

The area around the temple is large and lush. Deer frolic nearby. A few minutes previously, I put an arrow through one of those hart’s hearts when the game told me how hungry Lara was. There’s no obvious debilitating effect to signify hunger, but the story wouldn’t progress until I’d murdered Bambi’s mother, so down she went.

She’ll be fine and killing yetis in a few years.

Lara’s longbow is just as effective a weapon against human targets, and offers the potential for a silent kill. I’m able to clear out a whole camp by loosing arrows into necks as backs are turned, making Lara Croft play like a bruised version of Sam Fisher.

The open areas around the camps can feel more like a staging posts than places to truly explore: regions to collect stuff and gather your thoughts before being funnelled through a cave or a tunnel. Pressing on, I find some welcome offshoots. Tombs are small, self-contained, and optional. I find one and creep in, solving a weight-based puzzle to nick some treasure. Once done, I make my way back and rejoin the main path, pushing Lara’s story forward. Always pushing forward.

Crystal Dynamics want players to guide Lara through adversity, to help her find her strength and will to survive. Her predicament looks harrowing, but such is the lack of meaningful interaction, she might do just fine without your help.

Ever wonder what the PC games of 2012 would be like if they were text adventures? Of course not, no one in their right mind would ever wonder that. In related news: I wondered that! So, rip out your GeForce GTX 680, plug in your dusty 10" CRT monitor, and stuff your programmable eight-button mouse in a stocking, because this week we're going to imagine five of this year's games the way all PC games used to be: as text adventures.

With its addictive soundtrack, nerve-wracking combat, top-down view and 8-bit throwback graphics, Hotline Miami is a slick and challenging action game. Luckily, the violence is so over-the-top gruesome and gory that it's hard to feel repulsed by it until you suddenly feel pretty darn repulsed by it. Throw in unsettling masked characters, an arcade-like scoring system, and some disturbing mindgames, and what do you get? I have no idea. This game is bonkers. Take out the graphics, and what do you get? Hotline Miami: The Text Adventure!

If you've been anxiously awaiting Team Deathmatch mode in Diablo III, you should probably stop. In a blog update posted today by lead designer Jay Wilson, he confirms that the mode (which has been playable at past BlizzCons, even before Diablo III's release) is currently "not up to the quality that Blizzard gamers expect or that we feel you deserve" and that "we will be shelving it for now and exploring other options."

The good news is that simple PvP dueling is scheduled for inclusion in the 1.07 patch, which Wilson vaguely claims will "hit sometime after the new year." In other words, at least eight months after Diablo III's launch.

In regards to Team Deathmatch, Wilson bluntly says that the mode, in its current form, lacks depth. He explains that testers found that "simply fighting each other with no other objectives or choices to make gets old relatively quickly" and that most "didn't feel like it was something they'd want to do beyond a few hours." He goes on to say that, though Team Deathmatch could still see be released "in some form," the team has gone back to the drawing board to look "at new modes that play up to the strengths of the character classes, focus on objectives beyond just defeating other players, and possibly even integrate PvE elements and rewards." Wilson also assures that whatever mode ultimately replaces Team Deathmatch will be released as a free update.

If you played Team Deathmatch at a past BlizzCon, do you agree with Blizzard's decision? And what kind of meatier mode would you like to see replace it?

Now there's even more reason to use that holiday cash Aunt Myrtle sent you on something charitable. The ongoing Humble Indie Bundle 7 has just expanded its indie game offerings to include The Basement Collection of Flash games, the action puzzle platformer Offspring Fling, and the retro 2D platformer Cave Story. The original bundle was packed with indie hits Snapshot, Closure, The Binding of Isaac and its Wrath of the Lamb DLC, Shank 2, Dungeon Defenders and its DLC, Legend of Grimrock, and the documentary Indie Game: The Movie. So, for the next six days, you can snatch up nine full games and one movie for a price that's absurdly close to free.

If you haven't done a Humble Bundle before, here's how it works: You can donate any amount of money and receive Snapshot, Closure, The Binding of Isaac, Shank 2, and Indie Game: The Movie. But if you pay more than the average ($6.41 as of this writing), you'll also get Dungeon Defenders, Legend of Grimrock, The Basement Collection, Offspring Fling, and Cave Story. The folks at Humble Bundle estimate the total value of this collection at $170. You can even choose how you'd like to have your payment divided between the developers and the two benefiting organizations, Child's Play Charity and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

For more information on the games included in the bundle, check out the trailer for Humble Indie Bundle 7 here.