Where do you draw the line on DRM?

Allods Online, the new F2P from gPotato,  is currently in closed beta but from tomorrow afternoon it opens for its thrid phase to everyone and anyone! Here's the lowdown from Gala Networks: "From tomorrow afternoon GMT, servers will reopen with a new level cap of 34. (the level before the Astral Ships quest chain becomes available). We are also doing stress testing of our servers with a series of in-game events going under the name of Slaughter ...

I spend an inordinate amount of time being annoyed, usually on behalf of others. The stakes are lower and more boring when you worry about yourself. What’s the worst that can happen? Dying’s just the rich man’s sleeping in. Some annoyance is good. When properly functioning, it’s man’s natural defense mechanism, keeping him from getting ripped off by the same bear-traps and Ponzi schemes more than once (or, in the case of women, eleven times). It’s also, paradoxically, the gateway to ...

Merry Christmas from Total PC Gaming! We’re all well out of the office by now, and happily munching on Turkey and mince pies, but we just wanted to wish all our readers a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! Have a great holiday and see you in what promises to be an exciting 2010! The Total PC Gaming team

PUBLISHER: SCi Interplay DEVELOPERS: Stainless Games RELEASED: 1997 GENRE: Racing Carmageddon was a long time coming, and didn’t intend to be the “sickly, depraved piece of soul poison” (as Stainless Software founders Neil Barnden and Patrick Buckland called it in the manual introduction) it ultimately evolved into. It began life as a destruction derby game; however, when its marketing potential was realised by publisher SCi, the company had grand ideas of re-engineering it into a Mad Max licence. When this franchise fell apart, a new and equally violent premise presented itself in the shape of an intended fi lm sequel to the 1975 post-apocalyptic movie, Death Race 2000, was announced.

It’s never an easy launching and sustaining a new MMO and the genre landscape is sadly littered with the remains of failed games.  Here TPCG presents the three shortest lived MMOs to date. SEED Developer: Runestone Game Development Publisher: Runestone Game Development Runestone Game Development’s innovative combat-free sci-fi MMO ran out of money and was cancelled on 28 September 2006 after 149 days....

We be you can't guess what's in at number one in our Fantasy MMO round-up?! It rhymes with Cow…

Have you ever wanted to save the world? City Of Heroes plunges you into the wonderful world of the super heroic. This time, though, it’s you who is in control. Forget having to play as set characters from the universes of Marvel and DC, City Of Heroes lets you do the thing you always wanted to as a kid – become a superhero yourself.

The final artwork for Bioshock 2's Big Daddy has been revealed. Artist Colin Fix posted the final concept on his personal blog site, Knuckle Deep. Intriguingly, it's a lot less intimiatding than its predecessor and no doubt that fact that you'll be playing the part of this character has something to do with its humanisation. Also, check out the Bioshock 2 action figures here! Incidentally, I already have a ...

EA has revealed the debut expansion for Sims 3. World Adventures takes the Sims outside Sunset Valley and Riverview into the world beyond,

Obsidian's spy-based RPG, Alpha Protocol, has introduced a new style of GfWL achievements for PC gamers. Programming Producer Nathan Davis describedhow 'perks' are unlocked through pursuing dialogue options and taking certain courses of action, “Perks are there to reward you for your style of play. In fact, perks, Xbox achievements and Playstation Trophies are all linked to perks." He went on to explain how both console and PC gamers can benefit from in-game perk rewards, "There are ...

Microsoft has released Windows 7 to manufacturing (RTM). The final build has passed all its validation checks and will be delivered to Microsoft partners ready for manufacturing and release on 22 October. Read more about it on the Windows Team Blog. Over ten million people have helped test Windows 7 from beta to the release candidate as a part of Microsoft's Customer Experience Improvement Program (CEIP). Windows 7 RC is still available for download until 10 August, ...

I'm not going to be trumped by Sam "n00b" Bandah's visit to feudal France, so here's something just as topical: my photographic tour of Chernobyl and the abandoned city of Pripyat, taken on a S.T.A.L.K.E.R. visit to GSC in my GamesTM days. I didn't find any artifacts, though radiation on average was ten times higher than normal... ulp. [gallery link="file" columns="2"]

Five years and 374 (give or take) expansion packs after the release of The Sims 2, the most successful series in PC gaming history is back for its third installment. This latest addition to the ever-swelling Sims franchise takes the series’ premise of nurturing or destroying virtual peoples’ lives to the next level by expanding its setting to encompass an entire town, Sunset Valley. Before you can start nurturing your Sims you must first create them with a collection of sublime ...

Ben Biggs goes in deep and hard... When we’re lucky enough to visit an important developer in the games industry, we’re used to visiting capitals, or at least a major city: EA Redwood Shores, GSC Kiev, Bioware Edmonton, Ubisoft Montreal… you get the jist. Generally we don’t expect to find the studios inconspicuously stashed away in the centre of a relatively small town. But this is where we discovered Volition, inside a smart office block with no grand façade to speak ...