From the main site, Jeanne reports on the 2009 Spike TV Video Game awards, specifically the nominees. With easily over twenty awards up for grabs however, let’s concentrate on the most “important” ones:

Game of the Year

Assassin’s Creed 2
Batman: Arkham Asylum
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
Left 4 Dead 2
UNCHARTED 2: Among Thieves

Studio of the Year

Infinity Ward
Naughty Dog
Rocksteady Studios
Valve

Best Music Game

DJ Hero
Guitar Hero 5
LEGO Rock Band
The Beatles: Rock Band

What are your picks for this year? Given my passion for Valve’s recent work, I’ll let my bias speak for the first two categories: Left 4 Dead 2 and Valve for the win! Oh, …read more

Whether you’ve played the first Left 4 Dead or not, here’s a trio of videos guaranteed to satisfy your curiosity about Left 4 Dead 2.
We begin with the first video, where our hero Criken tests the waters. The new special infected make their debut off-screen, but you can already hear the telltale sounds they make:
The second video is more revealing, at least in terms of gameplay mechanics. Criken intentionally(?) puts himself in bad situations, and shows us how to deal with the new Charger and zombies enjoying bullet-proof protection. He even reveals his “single favorite weapon in all the Left …read more

Quite simply: take advantage of the current fascination with cloud gaming! At least one company promises fantastic gaming on practically any platform, with servers that take care of all the complicated hardware stuff in exchange for a monthly fee. All the user needs is a reasonably fast internet connection to receive a visual feed and control the pre-processed gaming experience without any significant latency loss. User input is sent to the server running the game, which updates the visuals to reflect what’s happening within the gaming world.

More than one person finds the scale of such an undertaking scary. What if …read more

Since I’ve been having so much fun on Left 4 Dead lately, here’s a post simply containing info related to the game, and its upcoming sequel, Left 4 Dead 2 (duh):

You can become a Facebook fan of Left 4 Dead here.
…and for Left 4 Dead 2 here. To paraphrase one supporter: “screw the boycotters”
Hands-on previews of Left 4 Dead 2 are available here and here (includes video). Snippets:
“But on the evidence so far, it’s hard not to be thrilled all over again by the prospect of headsetting it up with chums and pounding through the new locations, with the new …read more

Part of Steam’s appeal must be its regular discounts and price drops. But with so many titles in the catalog, it can be easy to miss out on some of them.

Yet that should now be practically impossible, thanks to the efforts of Steam forum user sciss0rz, who’s taken it upon himself to update other forum members with information on—you guessed it—the latest discounts and price drops on Steam! The list (found here) also includes information on Steam game packs, compilations of multiple titles that are usually available at a lower total price (sciss0rz does not list packs that represent no …read more

If for some reason you haven’t played Team Fortress 2, today’s TF2-for-$10 promo leaves you with no excuses. That’s 50% off the regular price until the day ends, a promo coordinated with the addition of new features to the game. Sure, the Steam platform responsible for serving the game has some kinks that Valve really really really needs to work out, but no one can fault the software company’s games. But don’t take my word for it: TF2 is available to play for free until May 25.

Of course, you could’ve bought The Orange Box, a five-in-1 package featuring three Half-Life …read more

Concurrent with an update announcement for Team Fortress 2 was Valve’s re-explanation of their Steam Hardware Survey. Perhaps noticing the privacy concerns raised regarding their data collection service (which has no opt-out), Valve decided to point out its benefits in their own special way.