Welcome back to the GearGames weekly video game release feature here at Gear Diary! After a few weeks off as the holidays more or less killed releases, we are starting to see a few new games.

The three big games this week are Jagged Alliance – Back in Action and … oh yeah, that Playstation Vita thing. This week brings the special early adopters bundle, and a bunch of games are hitting stores as well. Early looks are no surprise – great hardware, extremely locked down transfer options, and pretty crappy PSP game compatibility.

Jagged Alliance is one of the great franchises, and although it is also getting a re-make as a shooter, strategy fans are more excited for this great looking strategy game reboot. We might not be getting a true turn-based game – this is the classic ‘Real-Time with Pause’, but it is still a fun addition to the franchise and much better than many feared.

There are a few others worth checking this week – read on to find out! Read the full story

When I was in College–back before the most recent ice age–computer graphics were juuuuust really getting started.  If you look at the graphics of “Project Genesis” in Star Trek II, you’ll see what was, for then, the top-of-the-line:  graphics that were programmed in UNIX on a big ol’ VAX, and then run out on a Cray SuperComputer.  I mean, that was smokin’ for 1982.  Really!

Nowadays?  Now, PC are powerful enough that you can render complicated underwater scenes . . . in games.  You young whippersnappers don’t know how good you have it!… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

As I have said many times, while the mainstream gaming market seems largely bereft of creativity as they churn out sequel after sequel and pretty much every game becomes a cover shooter with a few RPG-lite skill trees, the indie game market is full of excellent games. One of the most highly anticipated games of 2012 for RPG fans is the indie game Driftmoon, and today they have released a demo for the game.… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

Welcome back to another weekend of game deals for you to enjoy! Things seem to be cranking up again on the deals, headlined by the awesome 75% off sale on the Jedi Knight collection at Steam. Take my advice, skip Jar Jar in 3D and spend the weekend with Kyle Katarn and Mara Jade!

As a reminder, I have refocused on only those sites I feel bring great deals AND great customer experience to the table, including Amazon, Beamdog, Desura, DotEmu, GamersGate, Mac App Store and Steam. I have two ‘featured’ games from Get Games because they activate on Steam, so you avoid their silly install limits. Also, I am more tightly focusing on deals of 75% off or more, with occasional 50% sales, but in addition will also be trimming back to fewer than 25 deals per site to keep the list under control.

I am continuing my ‘top weekend deals’ section where I grab my favorite 5 or so deals of the week and provide direct links! For these games I select based on how good the game is as well as how sweet the deal – but each week there are great games at fantastic discounts! And as always thanks to the crew at Deals4Downloads for their help finding everything. This week I am also going to start properly alphabetizing my list by store!… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

Welcome back to the GearGames weekly video game release feature here at Gear Diary! After a few weeks off as the holidays more or less killed releases, we are starting to see a few new games.

The three big games this week are The Darkness II , Jagged Alliance – Back in Action and Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning . The original Darkness game was a bit of a sleeper, getting solid reviews but not immediately gaining the commercial success it deserved. Since then it has become a definite fave for many gamers, making the arrival of the sequel even more exciting.

Jagged Alliance is one of the great franchises, and although it is also getting a re-make as a shooter, strategy fans are more excited for this great looking strategy game reboot.

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is the highly anticipated first title from 38 Studios, headed by former Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling. The demo met with decidedly mixed reviews, with fairly negative feedback particularly from PC gamers. Schilling has been on the forums touting the changes and advances from the demo to the release (and spouting off on just about everything, apparently), so hopefully the troubles with the demo will be rectified.

There are a few others worth checking this week – read on to find out!… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

Welcome back to another weekend of game deals for you to enjoy! You might notice that this week is a bit slower than previous weeks … but there are still some great deals!

As a reminder, I have refocused on only those sites I feel bring great deals AND great customer experience to the table, including Amazon, Beamdog, Desura, DotEmu, GamersGate, Mac App Store and Steam. I have two ‘featured’ games from Get Games because they activate on Steam, so you avoid their silly install limits. Also, I am more tightly focusing on deals of 75% off or more, with occasional 50% sales, but in addition will also be trimming back to fewer than 25 deals per site to keep the list under control.

I am continuing my ‘top weekend deals’ section where I grab my favorite 5 or so deals of the week and provide direct links! For these games I select based on how good the game is as well as how sweet the deal – but each week there are great games at fantastic discounts! And as always thanks to the crew at Deals4Downloads for their help finding everything. This week I am also going to start properly alphabetizing my list by store!

TOP WEEKEND DEALS!

• Brigade E5 – New Jagged Union for $3.75, Save 75% – from Amazon
• Just Cause 2 for $4.99, Save 75% – from Get Games
• 7.62 – High Calibre for $4.99, Save 75% – from GamersGate
• Dungeon Siege III Bundle for $12.49, Save 75% – from Get Games

Welcome back to the GearGames weekly video game release feature here at Gear Diary! After a few weeks off as the holidays more or less killed releases, we are starting to see a few new games.

The two big games this week are Final Fantasy XIII-2 and Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning . The original Final Fantasy XIII was initially met with high review scores, but there was plenty of criticism from a mediocre story to extreme linearity to too many protracted cutscenes and more. Overall it is thought of as one of the weaker franchise games. The sequel is getting early looks that say it definitely addresses the criticism.

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is the highly anticipated first title from 38 Studios, headed by former Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling. The demo met with decidedly mixed reviews, with fairly negative feedback particularly from PC gamers. Schilling has been on the forums touting the changes and advances from the demo to the release (and spouting off on just about everything, apparently), so hopefully the troubles with the demo will be rectified.

There are a few others worth checking this week – read on to find out!… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

For the next 24 hours – 1PM EST (6PM GMT) on January 27th until 1PM EST (6PM GMT) on January 28th – Get Games is having an awesome sale on two Steam-loaded games: Serious Sam 3 BFE and Deus Ex Human Revolution.

Serious Sam is the follow-on to some of the most fun shooters ever made, and although it has gotten average reviews I am finding it fun. Deus Ex, on the other hand, was one of the very best games of 2011 – and an absolute bargain at 75% off!

Serious Sam 3 BFE – 66% off, $13.32 (regularly $39.99)

Deus Ex Human

For the last few days Good Old Games has been teasing a new publisher coming to the classic games service. Many thought it would be Eidos and the older Thief games would be offered up. Instead, we get Square Enix and the first two games offered up are Deus: Ex Game of the Year Edition and Hitman: Codename 47, the former for $9.99 and the latter for $5.99.

Here is the release:

GOG.com is proud to announce that Square Enix is the newest heavyweight addition to our ever-growing GOG.com catalog of great games. SquareEnix is one of the biggest publishers of the modern gaming world with almost 30-years of experience and famous releases for

There were rumors last week about a possible quickie Indie Royale deal … and apparently they were true! Indie Royale just launched the ‘Serious Sam Bundle’ in what they are calling a ‘Lightning Round’ – 100 hours only to grab the deal!

Here is what they say on their Facebook page:

The Indie Royale game bundle website is launching a new series of ‘lightning packs’ – more focused, ‘niche’ collections of PC games with a shorter time-limit to buy.

The first surprise pack, the Serious Sam Lightning Pack, is available to buy immediately, with a starting price of $2.99 and a total of six Serious Sam-themed games, including

Welcome back to the GearGames weekly video game release feature here at Gear Diary! After a few weeks off as the holidays more or less killed releases, we are starting to see a few new games.

The only big game this week is King Arthur II: The Role-playing Wargame. The original game had loads of content and did a great job combining role-playing and strategy, and the expansions added even more great stuff, making this game highly anticipated by RPG and strategy fans alike!

There are a few others worth checking this week – read on to find out!… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

I had planned on reviewing the shooter Rage from id software back in early October – I really did. I had it pre-ordered on Steam, loaded it up when it was released and went to play it that night and … nothing. It simply didn’t work … well, that isn’t completely true. It would seem to want to start, but fail miserably, in spite of rebooting, checking drivers, and so on.

A quick check on the Steam forums – and gaming forums in general – revealed that I wasn’t alone.

How long have PC gamers had to deal with messy releases? Well, 2011 marked the start of my fourth decade dealing… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

Welcome back to another weekend of insane game deals for you to enjoy! Once again, if you haven’t been checking out Steam and Good Old Games and GamersGate on a daily basis … DO IT!

As we go into the New Year I am completely refocusing this list. First off, I am focusing on just a few sites – Amazon, Beamdog, Desura, DotEmu, GamersGate, Mac App Store and Steam. I will explain that in detail in a separate article in the next week, but basically I won’t recommend a site I won’t use, and sites other than those have all moved into that territory. Of course, sometimes other sites will offer a great deal on a Steamworks game – one that activates on Steam and is therefore free of the sites rules – and I will cover that separately (like the $11.99 deal on Serious Sam 3:BFE from Get Games).

As part of trimming back, I will more tightly focus on deals of 75% off or more, with occasional 50% sales (like Good Old Games), but in addition will also be trimming back to fewer than 25 deals per site to keep the list under control. Having a list of 475 games from GamersGate alone at better than 50% savings is really not helpful!

I am continuing my ‘top 5 weekend deals’ section where I grab my favorite 5 deals of the week and provide direct links! For these games I select based on how good the game is as well as how sweet the deal – but each week there are great games at fantastic discounts! And as always thanks to the crew at Deals4Downloads for their help finding everything. This week I am also going to start properly alphabetizing my list by store!

TOP 5 WEEKEND DEALS!

• Grand Theft Auto IV for $4.99, Save 75% – from Steam
• The Saboteur for $4.99, Save 75% – from Amazon
• Penumbra Collection for $5.99, Save 75% – from Green Man Gaming
• Roads of Rome 2 for $3.99, Save 40% – from DotEMU
• Medieval 2 Total War Gold Edition for $2.48, Save 92% – from GamersGate

Welcome back to another weekend of insane game deals for you to enjoy! First off, if you haven’t been checking out Steam and GamersGate on a daily basis … DO IT! I am focusing my lists more on the deals of 75% off or more to keep things manageable … but still have some that are >50% off – but that is my lower limit!

I am continuing my ‘top 5 weekend deals’ section where I grab my favorite 5 deals of the week and provide direct links! For these games I select based on how good the game is as well as how sweet the deal – but each week there are great games at fantastic discounts! And as always thanks to the crew at Deals4Downloads for their help finding everything.

But the biggest thing of the week is that rather than their normal deal, GetGames is doing a bundle! Called ‘littleBIGBunch’, it includes Frozen Synapse, Explodemon, Serious Sam Double D, New Star Soccer and Munch’s Odyssey … and you can choose how much to pay and how to divide the proceeds. Head here to check it out!

TOP 5 WEEKEND DEALS!

• A Farewell to Dragons for $2.00, Save 90% – from Get Games
• Magicka Collection for $4.99, Save 75% – from Amazon
• Crysis 2 Limited Edition for $9.95, Save 75% – from Direct2Drive
• Stronghold Crusader for $2.50, Save 75% – from DotEMU
• Borderlands for $4.99, Save 83% – from GamersGate

Now let’s get straight to the deals!

Good Old Games Enlight Games Weekend Sale

• 50% off on … well, pretty much EVERYTHING!

Welcome back to another weekend of insane game deals for you to ‘gobble’ up! I am sure I’m getting jaded – it seems with each week I am unimpressed by the list of hundreds of games at 50% off or more and have a hard time grabbing five favorites … but when I dig in I still realize how awesome the deals are! I am focusing my lists more on the deals of 75% off or more to keep things manageable … but still have some that are >50% off – but that is my lower limit!

I am continuing my ‘top 5 weekend deals’ section where I grab my favorite 5 deals of the week and provide direct links! For these games I select based on how good the game is as well as how sweet the deal – but each week there are great games at fantastic discounts! And as always thanks to the crew at Deals4Downloads for their help finding everything.

TOP 5 WEEKEND DEALS!

• World of Warcraft Battle Chest for $5.00, Save 75% – from Blizzard Store
• Dungeon Siege III for $4.95, Save 83% – from Amazon
• Killing Floor for $4.99, Save 75% – from Steam
• Cryostasis for $2.00, Save 80% – from Get Games
• Time of Shadows for $3.74, Save 75% – from GamersGate

Now let’s get straight to the deals!

Good Old Games Enlight Games Weekend Sale

• The Witcher 2 with FREE The Witcher Extended Edition – $23.99!