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66% off Left 4 Dead 2, today only

Gary McKeon — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 18:09:32 +0000

Today’s Daily Deal on Steam sees 66% off the classic Left 4 Dead sequel.

It’s never been cheaper to club flesh-eating zombies in a variety of environments, with a plethora of different weapons and tactics. Head on over to the store page, if for some strange reason you still don’t own this awesome game.

In other Steam-related news, Alice: Madness Returns, the sequel to 2000′s American McGee’s Alice is now available for pre-purchase.

Return to Wonderland and battle the corruption with all new weapon upgrades as well as 6 new collectible dresses. The new fourth tier of weapons tips the scales into Alice’s favor by unlocking a whole new level of destruction!

Related:
Pre-Purchase Now: FEAR 3

Adobe warns of new Flash Player security threat

Richard Cahill — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 14:22:32 +0000

Over on Adobe’s support page the company has warned of yet another security flaw in their popular Flash Player software.

This new threat can potentially compromise a user’s machine by causing memory corruption and allowing a malicious website to install malware on the affected PC.

Flash versions vulnerable are 10.3.181.23 and earlier for Windows, Mac, Linux and Solaris.

Check to see which version you have installed with Mozilla’s handy plugin check. If you’re not up to date head on over to the Flash Player download page.

Don’t RAGE: id’s upcoming shooter delayed by 3 weeks

Gary McKeon — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 20:22:16 +0000

id Software’s post-apocalyptic shooter was due for worldwide release on September 13th, but now your calender needs to be marked on October 7th.

OK, it’s hardly even worth mentioning. We can all wait 3 weeks longer for a polished game, instead of them rushing bugs out the door with the release.

The official RAGE website has been updated to reflect the delay, but doesn’t give any reasons. Since id tech 5 looks so awesome we’ll let them off the hook.

Hacker group targets Codemasters, steals thousands of personal details

Gary McKeon — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 19:09:06 +0000

In what appears to be a spate of hack attacks in recent months, the latest victim was Codemasters.

Hackers managed to break into the UK games developer’s website, compromising the the personal details of tens of thousands of customers.

Fortunately no financial records were kept on the site, mostly emails, phone numbers, dates of birth and home addresses; still enough for Codemasters to call it a “significant” theft.

It all happened on the 3rd of June. As soon as Codemasters were wise to what was going on they pulled the plug and took their site offline, but it was by then too late.

No entity has since taken responsibility for the attack and Codemasters are at a loss as to why they were targeted. The company has sent out emails to its customers warning them to change passwords on any other websites where they might use the same password, and to be vigilant of potential email scams that might result from the personal details lost in the attack.

“Furthermore, be extra cautious of potential scams, via email, phone, or post that ask you for personal or sensitive information.”

Codemaster.com will be offline for the foreseeable future. Meanwhile users visiting the site are redirected to the company’s Facebook page for the time being.

If you’re worried about your personal information head on over to Codemaster’s forums for more info and advice.

Duke Nukem Forever out now on Steam

Gary McKeon — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 19:31:42 +0000

It may be hard to believe, but if you’re in Australia, New Zealand and parts of Asia you can download Duke Nukem Forever right now on Steam. The much-delayed and anticipated shooter will be unlocking in other regions as the day progresses.

Duke Nukem has been in the hands of several publishers and a plethora of developers until Gearbox Software took the reigns and saw it through.

The system specs for the PC version were released last month, making it appear as though you could run this thing on a old GameBoy.

Minimum:

CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo 2.0 Ghz / AMD Athlon 64 X2 2.0 Ghz
Graphics: NIVIDIA GeForce 7600 / ATI Radeon HD 2600
RAM: 1GB
Hard Drive: 10GB

Recommended:

CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4 Ghz / AMD Athlon 64 X2 2.6 Ghz
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS / ATI Radeon HD 3850
RAM: 2GB
Hard Drive: 10GB

Will Duke Nukem Forever live up to his ass-kicking, steak-chomping explosive reputation? Let’s wait and see.

Activision CEO casts doubt on console versions of Battlefield 3

Martin Murphy — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 19:14:12 +0000

In a short E3 interview Activision CEO Bobby Kotick cast doubt on the upcoming console version of Battlefield 3; saying he’s not entirely confident the game will perform as well as the developers say.

‘So far I’ve only seen Battlefield 3 on a PC, I haven’t seen it on a console where the bulk of our business is,‘ Kotick told CNBC reporter.

‘If it’s just a PC title, as it looks like today, that’s just a small audience to participate,‘ he added.

Battlefield 3 was given an official release date of October 25th, 2 days ago at E3. The game will be released simultaneously on PC, Xbox 360 and PS3, and although the main focus is on taking advantage of modern PC hardware, developer Dice are still promising a stunning looking game on the consoles.

50% off Dead Rising 2 & Resident Evil 5 all weekend

Richard Cahill — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 18:29:51 +0000

Valve’s Weekend Deal sees 50% off both Dead Rising 2 and Resident Evil 5, from CAPCOM. Offer is good until Monday at 10AM Pacific Time.

You can also find Civilization IV with 75% knocked off the price-tag, today only.

Corsair recalls dodgy Force Series SSDs

Gary McKeon — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 14:54:39 +0000

If you’ve been having problems with your shiny new Corsair Force Series SSD, you’re not alone.

Corsair say they have identified a number of stability issues with the 120 GB variant CSSD-F120GB3-BK, and are urging customers to return their faulty SSDs for a replacement drive.

Unfortunately the problem can’t be fixed with a simple firmware upgrade alone; it also requires changes to the hardware. Corsair are footing the shipping bill so at least it won’t cost you any money.

Even if you haven’t experienced any issues thus far, Corsair insist you return the drive immediately.

Head on over to Corsair’s forums for more info on their remediation plan.

Preowned 20GB Xbox 360s for $99 at Gamestop

Rob Jones — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 18:02:30 +0000

Gamestop’s latest offer is a straight $99 for a preowned 20GB Xbox 360 bundle. The offer is a full $100 off their normal price of the console – in comparison Amazon are selling the 4GB version for $199.

The other offers Gamestop have on Xbox 360 bundles include $120 off the Fable III bundle and $130 off the Pro Game bundle which comes with Fable III and Halo Reach.

Check out the deals here, and bear in mind they are only available as long as stocks last.

iTunes 10.3 available with iCloud beta

Gary McKeon — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 17:23:18 +0000

Apple have rolled out iTunes 10.3 which includes a beta of their upcoming iCloud, Apple’s online storage solution.

iCloud, which is a replacement for MobileMe will not have full functionality until a later release but some of its features are being introduced now; like ‘Automatic Download’ to ensure all your music, apps and everything else you purchased from iTunes is downloaded/synced to all of your devices running version 10.3.

This new release also lets you download previously purchased material (at no extra cost), depending of course if the music, app or whatever it may be is still available. For more of the nitty gritty head on over to Apple’s support page.

Download iTunes here (64-bit version here).

Facebook chick tattoos 150 “friends” on her arm

Gary McKeon — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 16:53:57 +0000

This right here is why I tend to limit my time on places like Facebook.

A YouTube user by the name of ‘susyj87′ has tattooed 150 of her friend’s Facebook profile pics onto her right arm in an attempt to represent who she is in her life right now, or something like that.

These are not all my friends. Just the people I care most about. I got their permission and they were very proud to be on it. To me it represents who I am right now and the time we live in.

I guess this might come in handy never. But worst of all, doesn’t it require all kinds of maintenance work when her “friends” change their damn profile pics. I guess you could look on the bright side, if one existed.

Kids seriously don’t try this at home!

Carmack planning RAGE sequel

Richard Cahill — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 15:52:47 +0000

In a short interview with PC Gamer id co-founder John Carmack enthusiastically hinted at a followup to RAGE.

RAGE is not due out until September 13th but it seems Carmack is already banking on its success. While discussing the various aspects of the post-apocalyptic shooter, Carmack spilled the beans about his plans for a sequel:

While we have corridor shooter maps in Rage, there’s much more to it. It has all of the driving and the exploration and the towns that come in..it doesn’t detract from the shooting at all. It can still be an incredibly fast, guns blazing action shooter, but when you’re taking a break from that you can kit yourself out with extra stuff. All of the towns, driving and exploration have turned out to be very beneficial to the game. I’m very excited for where we’ll go with this in Rage 2.

RAGE is going to incorporate id’s brand new gaming engine id Tech 5, which was first demonstrated at WWDC 2007. id Tech 5 will also be powering the 4th iteration of Doom, which is yet to get a release date.

Chrome 12 ‘safer and snazzier’ out now

Gary McKeon — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 14:08:47 +0000

Google announced yesterday a new stable version of their Chrome browser, which netted bug finders nearly $10,000 according to the company’s statistics.

Chrome version 12 dubbed ‘safer and snazzier’ by the developers brings improvements in security, graphics and privacy.

First up they have enhanced the ‘Safe Browsing’ technology within Chrome to alert users to more potentially harmful files they try to download. You can also delete Flash cookies from within the browser.

There are improvements in the graphics department too including support for hardware-accelerated 3D CSS, giving you the potential for tripped out 3D effects on certain web pages.

Chrome should update automatically. If not simply click on the spanner and go to ‘About Google Chrome’; or just download the latest stable build here.

Valve knocks 50% off Modern Warfare series

Gary McKeon — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 19:00:23 +0000

This week’s Midweek Madness on Steam sees Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, Modern Warfare 2 and all DLCs dropped in price by 50%.

Offer is good until Thursday at 4pm PST.

Mass Effect 3 coming March 2012

Richard Cahill — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 15:56:59 +0000

BioWare and EA have announced the release date for the third instalment of Mass Effect. The game will make its appearance on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC on March 6th 2012.

Originally slated for a Christmas release this year, the game was delayed back in May much to the dismay of fans expecting an Xmas to remember.

Check out the embedded E3 trailer above.

Pre-order your retail copy of Mass Effect 3 for PC, Xbox 360 and PS3.

Ubisoft announces Far Cry 3

Martin Murphy — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 14:59:32 +0000

Far Cry will see number 3 sometime in 2012, Ubisoft announced at E3.

In the 3rd instalment there will be a new character introduced in what sounds like a similar storyline to the first game. Check out the embedded video above for an 8 minute walkthrough with Far Cry 3 producer Dan Hay.

When Far Cry was originally released back in 2003 it set a new benchmark for graphical quality on the PC, and scored high with critics and gamers alike. 2008′s followup was however met with tepid enthusiasm compared to the original.

Battlefield 3 gets a release date

Richard Cahill — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 14:46:33 +0000

The latest news from this year’s E3 is that Battlefield 3 will be hitting store shelves on October 25th of this year.

The 3rd instalment in the Battlefield series will be using a new gaming engine, Frostbite 2.0; which will have full support for DirectX 11 and 64-bit processors.

The game was 3 years in development and promises to be a true PC experience, with development set on taking advantage of modern 64-bit CPUs. It will also ship to PS3 and Xbox 360 simultaneously.

Dice is promising to “squeeze every bit” out of the ageing consoles to bring “a stunning looking game on the console”. But make no mistake about it, the PC version is going to be the Mothership as far as Dice and EA are concerned.

You can pre-order a retail copy for PC, Xbox and PS3 from Amazon.

Valve streams Saxxy Awards live tomorrow

Gary McKeon — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 14:33:43 +0000

If you’ve been waiting with anticipation for the winners of Valve’s Team Fortress 2 Saxxy wards, the wait is all but over.

Over on the Team Fortress 2 blog comes word that the winners will be announced live on Wednesday, June 8th at 3:00PM PDT; with a new category winner announced every five minutes.

We’ll be revealing a new category winner every five minutes! That’s one hundred frantic, furious minutes of award-bestowing! As far as we know, nobody has ever attempted to hand out this many awards in so short a time.

No personal data lost in Lulz Nintendo hack

Gary McKeon — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 15:35:10 +0000

Nintendo recently saw one of its affilliate’s servers in the US hacked by the same crew responsible for the massive breach over at Sony.

The company were quick to make clear that no personal data was lost in the breach, carried out by hacking team Lulz Security.

“There were no third-party victims,” company spokesman Ken Toyoda said.

Attacks like this seem to be on the rise, with hackers attacking corporations for one or another greivance. Earlier this year Sony’s PlayStation network was breached and the personal and financial details of over 70 million users was compromised. Luckily for Nintendo they had no personal data stored on the server that was attacked. But they said there was definite malicious intent on the part of the hackers.

The protection of our customer information is our utmost priority …therefore, we constantly monitor our security,” said Tomokazu Nakaura of Nintendo Japan.

Scammers step up phishing tactics on Skype

Gary McKeon — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 15:21:00 +0000

In what is fast becoming a real issue for Skype, phishing scams are now in abundance and showing no sign of letting up.

The latest tactic used by scammers is to call unsuspecting Skype users under the pseudonym of ‘Skype Help’. When a person answers the call they are told that their machines are infected with viruses. A link then appears directing them to what is advertised as the cure, but what is a malware site giving the user software that will inevitably infect their machine with whatever the scammer chooses.

Obviously tech-savvy users won’t fall for such an obvious ploy, but we all know people who are not so versed in the ways of internet scams. Make sure to prepare your less savvy brethren for this latest scam.