PLAY WITH SOAP IN CALL OF DUTY MODERN WAREFARE 2 FREE ON STEAM THIS WEEKEND

Downloads are thankfully working on Steam for the free weekend of Call Of Duty Modern Warfare 2 .Having a free weekend was sure to test the servers over at Valves fortress of servitude  underground icecapped dormant volcano hideout/base of operations [ North or South Pole only Gabe knows]....and maybe that's why they have these weekends to test the potential  of Steam.


But you don't care by now your logged onto steam and either playing or downloading ,remember to thank Gabe ! 


So brush aside all the developer publisher squabbles that are currently interweb news , go play the game and maybe the grownups will be shamed into noticing , stop squabbling and get back to publishing and developing modern gamings most [2nd most] lucrative franchise instead of oscar miking  it into oblivion . ALL games franchises , publishers and developers are susceptible to cliff jumping [ala Kratos] into Hades following success .... someone hold on to Hideo...

for collectors : check out the the Limited Edition of what could be the last game written by Infinity Ward as we knew them . [2 left new and sealed with insured delivery to all destinations ]

CALL OF DUTY MODERN WARFARE 2 PRESTIGE EDITION 2 PS3;

UK MAINLAND £299.99 EU AND EUROPE £299.99 USA AND CANADA £399.99

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Download Moon Base Alpha thank NASA and STEAM live out some Moon Base Alpha Space 1999 fantasises for free!

Fans of Moon Basing and Space Exploration  have been bitterly disappointed on the reality and game front for decades , in the 60s a nice Irishman spoke about going to the moon and other planets as well as doing the other things , 1999 came and went and there was no  Koenig commanded Eagle Lander operated Moon Base , as I was promised as a child , in the 80`s the Purple one sang about the cost of sending people to the moon [His best album] and lo a couple of decades later one of his fans now in the Oval office withdrew all funding for sending people to the moon . But all is not lost : 

Get to Steam and download this gift from NASA, a free sim of what Moonbasing would be like .......yeah really !....  You have to consider with all the drastic NASA budget cuts whether there is a bit of reverse psychology going on with this release ,a salvo from NASA to their old funding source ? As it is to make the sim accurate , i.e not science fiction ,  all you need to do is replace the flags/insignias/astronauts with those of India , China , Russia and or Japan and or if you are a follower of William Gibson  Rastafari . The reality is space travel and bases such as this if they are to involve USA input will require , cooperation with other now emerging space powers as well as  private enterprise ,so roll on the Mega Corps ! Until the Vulcans arrive and Cochran wakes up from his latest alco fuelled stupor but in the meantime you can follow the now fading dream of going to the moon and other planets ,with this awesome free gift from NASA 

check  out the absolute awesomeness below  and write to your congressmen now people for better training in languages that you will need to travel to the moon with [Chinese Hindi Russian Rasta etc] or a better way to fund NASA .

NASA itself should seek private funding, after all 12 million people pay money every month to waste time on just 1 MMORPG , Millions more are slave to PSN and XBOX Live  . Why not get these  people to subscribe to NASA and have their names written in history as pioneers of space exploration ! Instead of casting x on y with z for 2000 AP , you could actually be funding the future of man , Sony got gamers to contribute to science with Folding , PC users already contribute to SETI , so how about evolving this to allow actual funding of NASA and International Space projects  removing the government funding shackles altogether. 

Moon Base Alpha is of course just one awesome free Space sim , you will of course be familiar with zero gravity simulation walking/fighting in your home/school playground /college dorm,and 

for those less dedicated there is the excellent ORBITER , totally free and constantly updated , very handy if you find yourself on a Space Shuttle and the pilot has just discovered an allergy to the in flight combo meal or turns out to be some James Bond villain from the 80s .......

for those who collect games involving the final frontier:

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PLAY LEAD AND GOLD FREE THIS WEEKEND ON STEAM

Whilst one can never get bored with listening to  Frankie laine  or  your favourite  Enio Morricone  jingle  whilst   moseying through the prairies of   Read Dead Redemption , there comes a time when you need more dagbnabit , so this weekend saddle up and play through Lead and Gold free on Steam , yes that's totally free  till  Sunday!

And you can thank that  wascally varmint Gabe , yeeehawwwww as the generic Cowboy stereotypes used to say .

And  whilst your free game downloads from here  its time to make the important accessories choices Roy Rogers scarf or warpaint and feathers , as well as selecting the appropriate mood music , is it the classic Blazing Saddles , the evergreen Raw-Hide , the totally insane  Champion The Wonder Horse , or are you so cool you need some Morricone  and Il Buono, Il Cattivo, Il Brutto

For those who remember  how the video games West was won  you should check out Outlaws 

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Free as an Angry Bird .... Android takes takes flight whilst the iOS dodo remains caged

Oh the horror  :a flock of Angry Birds released free of  THE official Google app store peck at the Apple  iOS closed app store model. Is Apple about to fall of its perch ?Could a flock of freed  angry birds do for Android what an angry Steve does for Apple?


This dear audience is not the power of Android ,it is the power of independence , it is something that Apple cannot allow ,  yet .... The release of a major game , for free from a store that is not GOOGLE or APPLE owned is a milestone in the  mobile app software publication world . And soon thanks to the independence of Android from its parent Google ,we will see hundreds from small and major players ....

So if you have  an Android device or are  thinking of getting one someday, say a nice new Samsung Galaxy Tab , then hooray , thanks to independent , i.e not Google , Get Jar you can download straight to your pc ,for later transfer to your phone/tablet  go here get it now , oh and there is no store nonsense to log into you just download it straight to your pc , for the hoarders ....... and for the average Joe  and Joanna you can also of course download it to your phone.


Major players going for Leviathan store independent game delivery now that`s got to rattle Steve's walled garden cage a little hasn't it ? And he thought the Flash dude was all he had to worry about.... 




This public service announcement was brought to you thanks to the genius of Sir Alfred Hitchcock , so check out  The Birds if you missed the riff....

ALAE! THE LORD OF THE RINGS ONLINE PREVIEW EVENT POINTS GIVE AWAY

  

Mae govannen! And presently , Lord Of the Rings Online , MMORPG of Tolkien ,  Game of The Year 2007 , was freed by Turbine from the shackles of cost that held it back so long.  

And so it came to pass that The Lord Of the Rings Online preview email was sent out to all the races of Middle Earth ,  offering participants  500 points for turning up  , a beginning or end to the only real challenger to the unstoppable Blizzard hurled by the Dark Lord and his 11 Million strong army? 

Here fell all resistance to not playing the game as a fellowship of gamers  signed up and presently it  came to pass in the minds and hearts of mortal men and their kin that they have  had almost 30 years of Middle Earth gaming.

Growing up in Tolkien country , NO NOT NEW ZEALAND , I could walk past landmarks that inspired the great man himself , NO NOT PETER JACKSON ,  Anyhoo after finishing the books at too early an age , disappointed with The Silmarilion  apart from you know the old Beren and Luthien Tinuviel chestnut,  I was left with a  thirst for all things Middle Earth  , second only to my thirst for all things Sith and Vulcan... 

Ahh the good olde days Smaug greeting you as you started the game that yellow stuff is colour clash !

Naturally the video game medium came to my rescue . And 1982  was a great time for  Middle Earth gaming . Well ok I exaggerate , but there is a limit to what games developers could do with a 48K colour clashing ZX Spectrum ... on which Melbourne House produced the Adventure gaming milestone The Hobbit ,  a graphical text adventure , with fiendish puzzles and the finest Inglish parser to ever grace a 48k Z80 based machine , it was most impressive to type words on the rubber keyboard , and see the results , the coolest aspect of which was the way the graphics actually drew each scene , complete with impressive colour filling routines 

You can play The Hobbit now from your browser here   is technology not wonderful ? 28 years later no loading times and you can play with a real keyboard![HIT ENTER TO PLAY , and update your Java if you have any problems ,  NB  the ZX Spectrum keyboard incidentally Steve is one of the first examples of Chiclet keyboards now beloved of Macbooks which you and Mr Wozniak would have looked down on from your Apple Macintosh and Lisa at the time..... so play from a Macbook for maximum retro effect..oh the irony  !]

Melbourne House also gave us the first real  Lord Of The Rings Game One /The Fellowship of the Ring , and later The Shadows Of Mordor , but The Hobbit is the one that influenced a generation , the others had ambitions that exceeded the technology at that time .

The next great Middle Earth gaming milestone for me was to be from Mike Singleton  , he of Lords Of Midnight ,Carrier Command and Midwinter  fame , coding hero to the first generation of games fans ...The game? The game was War in Middle Earth and by this time I had progressed to the Commodore Amiga , Mike Singleton also worked on the earlier 1982 C64 Shadowfax yes a game of Gandalf's horse !

Then we take a Scott Bakula leap forwards in time to EAs combat and RTS oriented games coinciding with Peter Jackson movie adaptations. And finally to Turbines Shadows Of Angmar , now why namedrop these games [leaving out the dregs] , because each has something that is needed by The Lord Of the Rings Online as it about to be Free to play in 2010 , almost 30 years after the first Tolkien games fans loaded up The Hobbit!

No one game can capture the greatness of Tolkien ,but  one master games forger could bring the best of these classics together in one game to r... no I am not going there...

Many of those playing LOTRO will have experienced the original Middle Earth games , what would be interesting is if Turbine could turn the MMO away from dungeon crawling grindfests and multiple choice dialogues and incorporate the joy of fiendish puzzles of a seminal Adventure game like The Hobbit , the land capturing RTS elements of War In Middle Earth, or Battle For Middle Earth . So that your Orc . Dwarf ,Elf or Ranger can direct armies including 1000s of NPCS, and the game is no longer simply about levelling up after quests ,but for seizing , controlling, holding and losing  territory that in the books creates that wonderful alternate chapter ending cliffhanger where your heroes seem utterly doomed and in the next chapter the story jumps to another thread which ends on its own cliffhanger with more of your heroes utterly utterly doomed!

Turbine could  have parts of their game playing at the level of the EA LOTR combat games with hand to hand combat ,that is not just click based mouse frenzy, so if your inclined you can take on armies of Orcs individually  with skill and not just casting x on y with z after dressing  your character up with the care a child takes over their prized  Barbie Doll .

To increase longevity and maintain interest more emphasis needs to be placed on  actual events and battles from the lore . If Turbine can take from  the great heritage of Middle Earth based games , then may be ,may be they will have something that differentiates them from Warcraft.

What eventually turns people off Lord Of the Rings Online is the traditional MMO,remember most people are playing it because after the EA games this is the only place left to go for Lord Of the Rings , that it happens to be an MMO is an afterthought , the people who play are so well versed in the lore , that seeing the greatest fantasy world created turned into a grind fest level up dungeon crawl is after a while insulting . The length of time people will devote to it is limited , unless Turbine can hook people into actual events , battles , wars and plot which they can influence . Nothing as drastic as having Thorin sitting round the fire singing about gold is required , but until Turbine evolves LOTRO beyond  World of Warcraft with Tolkien  the potential of its's great setting remains unfulfilled  ...

So presently it has come to pass that in the 7th Age of Man , I find myself preparing to enter a  virtual  Middle Earth as I did 28 years ago sitting waiting for Thorin to stop singing about gold after waiting 20 minutes for the game to load .   28 years of Middle Earth games , and just like the Hobbit , Lord Of the Rings is about to be FREE to play .... the more things change...

Belain na le.......

sign up for Lord Of The Rings Online here

Search Amazon.com for lord of the rings

Humble Indie Bundle 2 Pay what you can help the real world whilst lost in 4 virtual ones

Get the new Humble Indie Bundle osmos ,Braid, Cortex Command, Machinarium and Revenge of the Titans all yours for whatever you can pay and for good causes .

go on dude start saving the world for real! here is the link again

100 Rogues free from iTunes today!

Hankering for some tongue in cheek top down RPG action that  brings back memories of the so bad  it was great Warlock of Firetop Mountain computer game  ? Well it seems they do make them like they used to ! (only better !)

get on over to iTunes and own 100 Rogues , which is an excellent game , for free today only

 

check out 100 Rogues 

and this is Warlock Of Firetop Mountain back in the day ...the day of the ZX Spectrum...

find out more about Warlock of Firetop Mountain here 

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onlive brings 2 weeks of free stream instant gratification no installs games and demos

Wow now this is new a window open on my desktop , with  buttons I click to instantly play full retail games , not on my uber pc , but out there somewhere 2nd star to the right on some server being stress tested for the next two weeks . Pretty much all the expensive hardware in my PC has just been rendered moot by the promise of onlive.

So to Steam or Stream ? Well it certainly is novel to just click and have a game open up without downloading , or waiting , or even really going through all the thought processes associated with what to do whilst waiting for said download . Now I just don't care how big a game is , I can just click and it will launch , fascinating , liberating . This is something totally new , for as someone with 100s of Steam games, and around 30 years of others knocking around , this is frankly the beginning of arm chair game surfing , just like channel surfing 100s of tv programs , I can now start to approach games in the same way .  

Now you can check ANY game demo on the service instantly no more waiting seconds for your 300 MB connection to download the data , well if you are in Korea that is ! 

You may have a monster game collection , but you never have time to install reinstall , etc now do you ? And what about the hard disk space , well fugedaboutit all those worries as onlive promises to do away with those now ancient problems . 

Onlive could offer a cure for my addiction of buying or rather collecting Steam games but never bothering to play them as I cannot be bothered to download them , and even more addictive rush of getting something cheap in the sales .

Whoooah taking a moment here to breathe, is this the end to endless pc and mac hardware upgrades or fanboi arguments ,gaming where the only thing that matters is your Internet connection ?

And you could take your Onlive dongle anywhere where there is a fast enough connection and play full retail games anywhere there is a hdtv , most of which now come with built in wifi modems . 

All of this gameplay shattering game changing promise hinges on one small tiny question....Does it work? Well I am going to find out 

For the next two weeks onlive is free , so if you have an Internet connection that can handle it , go for it , I wonder how fast Crysis will run? Will the big boys and girls desert Steam ? You can see EA and Actiblizzard milking a system like onlive , where you no longer buy Fifa or Call of Duty but you subscribe  , like a phone contract ! But all that nonsense is yet to come ....

And for now  tomorrow I will be testing onlive not on my uber desktop , but my folly of last year Joojoo Windows 7 and Toshiba Libretto tablets ...... Seriously this will let me know if a lowly  netbook can now provide the same gaming experience my uber desktop or your high end gaming laptops do , you gotta love progress now don't cha!

here is the email being sent to onlivers , come on join the party test this thing on anything that can run it!

still here? go sign up here and tell them 3ch3l0n and thegameveda sent you..... 

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Teenager kicks iOS charts in the Bubble Ball(s)

Bubble Ball : wow a game by a 14 year old ! what are you waiting for it is totally free. Now this is going to look good on his c.v. ! Kind of makes doing a degree in video games development look rather pointless now doesn't it?It is ironic that iOS and Apple who are oft berated as being closed off and stifling users freedoms , are in fact responsible for the rebirth of the bedroom coder , and many games types that were deemed unprofitable by larger softcos , both thrive on the iOS App platforms. Here's hoping the media promote this as a positive story for kids mixing with computers and games , out there somewhere there is the next Gates , Jobs , Miyamoto , and they won't emerge from the establishment , but outside it . So time for the press to positively reinforce the connection between video games and kids for a change ! 
In a week where another young coder geohot has been courted by Microsoft , there maybe signs of this already happening . Society needs to nurture and harness talent. Traditional game development cannot satiate the ever increasing video games audience or keep them interested  in sequels ad infinitum . 
The emergence  of iOS , Android and now Google Apps and Windows 7 mobile as open development platforms is absolutely vital to keep the video games industry going and evolving.  Or  games development will be locked into the cycle of sequelitis , with  ever increasing  budgets and team sizes which eventually are shut down as profits fall .  
Game development is in part talent and genius , you cannot buy that with a budget or large dev team , all the great softcos with millions in man hours and resources did not come up with Angry Birds , and they certainly did not come up with  a game that could knock the mighty Angry Birds off its perch , that game is Bubble Ball , all a 14 year old Robert Nay's genius . And that people is simply inspirational...

 

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Sacred Odyssey freemium excelsior Zelda gaming on iOS

Ocarina of what?

Well  are you really going to spend close to £300 just to replay Zelda 64 in pseudo 3D , when they finally release it ? Or having played through it on the 64 , PC , Gamecube and Wii , and deciding that enough time has been devoted to replaying the same , sorry repaying for the same game for over 10  years you could say .. forget the 3DS , and pick up , did I say pick up , I meant App up and download the freemium [read demo] of the Gameloft homage [!] to Zelda that is Sacred Odyssey get it now  FREE on iTunes

get it now @

 

and vive la revolutiOSn!


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Join the party with The Great Gatsby for NES for free of course

So old bean , every one who is anyone , is playing  The Great Gatsby Nes game on the interweb . As long as one's browser is  as Bohemian  and  Flash (10.2 that is ) as the man himself ....  feel free to  get some culture , let's hope they adapt some Shakespeare next , a NES Macbeth would be inThane! Here it is being played on the Joojoo tablet in portrait and landscape orientations .... no Android or iOS required just pure Flash!

768 by 1366 on the joojoo Flash 10.2 Windows 7 and the touchscreen keyboard

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Remedy cure what ails you with Death Rally for free on your PC

Whilst out scouting for surviving rare games , today I uncovered a pristine boxed Death Rally , little did I know it was coded by Remedy ,and left it to decay and fossilize in the great games graveyard , preferring to rescue a Syndicate Wars and Privateer The Darkening ( avec Brian Blessed) instead.


By the power cosmic as I returned home and clicked on Kotaku , there I found an article on the very same game , enlightened by the Kotaku sages I realised my mistake , and that  wonder of wonders Remedy have released the 1996 game updated to run on today's pcs for free , as well as coding an upcoming Apple iOS version to fleece the Apple sheep .. 


So what are you waiting for there is a free Remedy game waiting to  download  here , ( all of 41.6mb!) and this is  going provide an excuse for me  comparing the original running on a Windows tablet to the iphone/iPad version...

here's what they are promising:

and the 1996 version 

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Battlefield PLAY4FREE BETA makes up 4 my iPad 2 disapointment

EA are on a role , with Crysis 2  last week , leading into the Darkspore Beta on Steam this week and now Battlefield PLAY4FREE is ready for Beta testers , check your emails or enlist here . Well it looks like I won't be forgetting my EA log in details anytime soon . 


I cannot say anymore there is an NDA !

Battlefield is of course created and maintained by D.I.C.E , and every gamer needs to  experience racing triplanes off aircraft carriers round the islands  of their classic Codename Eagle  at least once in their gaming life...

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Don't take money don't take fame don't need no credit card to r...play Back To The Future episode 1

There I was having downloaded Telltales Back To The Future first episode , on my PC and PS3 , thinking this would be just a rehash of the movies , but no ,this is intriguing , the voice overs are eerily reminiscent of the original film cast , and in many cases are the original cast. This game is simply fascinating, to any and all Back to The Future fans , like  a great way to go visit with some childhood movie friends/heroes , just a shame the interactive movie genre took 20 odd years to get it's groove on. 


What are you waiting for rev your browser up to 88 mph and prepare to go Back to The Future , from your PS3 or PC .... after all it might just change your life...that's the power of...




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Whilst gaming sheep graze on Brink thegameveda is playing Mechwarrior 4 Mercenaries free on the Toshiba Libretto

All good Mech fans are aware  that Microsoft allowed Mektek to release and distribute Mechwarrrior 4 Mercenaries free .... That's the whole game people , Metek also have their own free to play Battletech off shoot.  But any way above  we see this PC classic , once an entire genre unto itself. being played at a blistering speed on the Toshiba Libretto  ,  now if you have friends who Mech , and have say 4 or 8 Libretto's lying around you could link up and play in the tiniest of places , on the bus home , in the lecture theatre , or whilst being bored at the theatre ..


The Toshiba Libretto has been thegameveda's gaming weapon of choice this week , and a welcome antidote to all the non starting AAA nonsense that we were supposed to be playing according the gaming bigwigs , you know the likes of Brink  , for which there is no PC demo or listing on Steam , I cannot buy the PS3 version as there still is no PSN and I may never use it again in any case , and in a couple of weeks time the Xbox 360 version will be in the summer bargain bins for 50 % or less of its current new value... you know like that other great Bethesda experiment Wet ( which I loved by the way , just the not way it dropped almost 70 % in value after release). And another thing Brink is apparently going to receive free DLC to make up for the Lag Fix that it needs as the lag on its multiplayer component renders it useless , see PSN hackers , the devcos are perfectly capable of taking their own networks down .. even without your efforts. 


Does thegameveda miss Brink , no way  , with fantastic totally legal free games like MechWarrior Mercs on the free internet on the coolest ( well actually it get's quite hot)  ultra portable  the Toshiba Libretto , am I missing PSN or the latest AAA must have ... does it look like I am ?


For mech fans I plan to test many more classic MechWarrior and Battletech inspired games , and some of them in daylight ...... I have about 30 years of this stuff to go through...  for collectors check out some rare Mech games with thegameveda


Video gaming is more than art it is now a culture ... and remember in your limited gaming time , there  is what "they" want you to play and what you could be playing ... the art is in choosing .. so if you are one of  hundred or so thousand  Brink Sheep sitting frustrated waiting for a patch to allow you to play online as expected , or one of the hundred or so millions  waiting for PSN to wake up again .. time to realise you the gamer have the power , free yourself from the herd and get on to the net discover some of the 30 years of  gaming culture out there , and the best of it is not controlled by any of the big boys... or girls.. who as recent events have shown will let you down time and time again.... usually on a weekly basis...

 

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