NEWS: Saturday Roundup

Welcome to the Saturday Roundup, a weekly roundup of all the important news going on in the gaming world. If you’re sick of gaming websites' content turning more and more casual, or trying to pass off a single sentence and a link to a cool picture they saw on deviant art as ‘news,’  you've come to the right place. I aim to consolidate and summarize only the stuff that’s most important to gaming enthusiasts. It’s a mix of hard news, interesting features, and other tidbits that I feel like you guys would enjoy. Let’s see what’s been going on this week:

• WarZ released on Steam this week. Don't buy it (well, you can't even if you wanted to*). WarZ, the open-world zombie MMO, is a reskin and redesign of Hammerpoint's failed War Inc. designed to ride on the coattails of hugely popular ARMA 2 mod DayZ. The game is still officially in Beta (alpha?), yet the Steam release was incredibly misleading, with the developers blatantly lying about included features. They have since updated the description after popular internet personality Total Halibut called them out on their bullshit, yet at the same time released a patch that that increased the respawn-timer from 1 hour to 4 hours and added a revive button, where you can spend 50GC (real money) to revive instantly. Stay away from this one guys, and instead keep a close eye on the impending stand-alone version of DayZ.
  *UPDATE: Valve has been listening! The game has been removed from the Steam store and Valve are offering full-refunds for anyone who submits a ticket.

Enter the dog.

• The second DLC pack for Sleeping Dogs, The Zodiac Tournament, will be the closest you will get to a game based on Bruce Lee's Enter the Dragon. Playing homage to the Hong Kong kung fu flicks of the 60's and 70's, The Zodiac Tournament sees Wei Shen invited to an exclusive tournament on a hidden island, where he must overcome the best of the best  fighters from across Asia and emerge victorious. I really enjoyed Sleeping Dogs, and as I am an unashamed fanatic of Hong Kong cinema, I look forward to picking this one up on December 19th.

• Indie games? Indie games. The Humble Indie Bundle is back! After a brief hiatus helping THQ try and get back on it's feet, the Humble Bundle has gone back to its roots with Humble Bundle 7. The games included are: Snapshot, The Binding of Issac (with the recently released DLC),  Closure, Shank 2, and Indie Game: The Movie. You'll also get Dungeon Defenders and Legend of Grimlock if you play more than the average price (at time of writing, $6.16). It's interesting to note that the average price is actually higher than it was for the THQ bundle, which seems to suggest that gamers value indie games higher than triple AAA titles, at least when sold as a part of a humble bundle.
• Remember RAGE? There's some DLC for it. The Scorchers is the first DLC pack for RAGE, and it's available now across all platforms. The package adds a new clan, new weapons, new areas to be angry in, a new "Ultra-Nightmare" difficulty level and the added ability to keep playing the game, even after the story has ended. Am I the only one utterly perplexed by this? RAGE was released over a year ago, and they are only just now pumping out the DLC? Seems like a case of too-little too-late for me.

 Uhhh, Thanks id? RAGE DLC was just what I wanted for Christmas...

• Good Old Games sells games that are both good and old. They are having a sale to 'celebrate' the Mayan Apocalypse that was supposed to happen earlier this week. You can snag up to 75% off 125+ games, including some of my personal favorites, such as Theme Hospital, Duke Nukem 3D and Sam and Max.
• Just when I start thinking 'Hey, I haven't played Team Fortress 2 for a while,' Valve appeases my hat-simulator cravings by announcing a major update to the game. The Mecha update will add a new map to the popular Mann vs Machine horde-mode introduced a few patches ago. Players will get the fight the latest addition to the Gray Mann robot army: The Mecha-Engineer, as well as play with a bunch of new weapons and of course new hats.
  UPDATE: The update is now live! Enjoy fighting robots!
• Valve also announced a partnership with Adult Swim this week, to bring a whole bunch of new hats and misc items to Team Fortress 2. You are now able to dress up your Heavy as Carl from Aqua Teen Hunger Force, or your Scout as a Monarch Minion from The Venture Bros. Previously, TF2 players that signed up for the Adult Swim mailing list received a robot chicken hat.

He solves practical problems.

• The Steam winter holiday sale has begun! As expected, hundreds of games will be up to 75% off, with new daily deals every day, as well as 'flash sales' changing every few hours. There is also a selection of package deals that will be on sale the entire duration of the event. The sale will run until January 4th. Natural Selection 2 will be 40% off for the duration of the sale, which i highly, HIGHLY recommend you pick up!
• iPad user? Interested in Tell Tale Games 'The Walking Dead'? For a limited time only, you can download it 100% free! The Walking Dead is the latest in Tell Tale's series of point-and-click adventure revivals, and is their third foray into an established popular universe, following Back to the Future and Jurrasic Park. I really enjoyed their Monkey Island and Sam and Max games, but I was less than impressed by Back to the Future. I have heard a lot of good things about The Walking Dead though, and I mean... free is free!

So that’s the news for this week. Be sure to subscribe to my twitter for up-to-date news and blog updates, my youtube channel for gaming videos, check out my new digs over at non-fiction gaming for my regular Wednesday article (this week, it's a rather scathing review of Castle Crashers for Steam), and check back here every Saturday for more news!