If you checked your Battle.net game downloads lately you may have noticed that Blizzard recently made its classic Super Nintendo game Blackthorne available as a free PC download. If you were curious about checking out this Blizzard classic, now is your chance.

I played Rock N Roll Racing and The Lost Vikings but I haven't tried Blackthorne yet. What are you thoughts on this one? Interested in checking it out now that it's free?

Hope they release the original Warcraft: Orcs and Humans for free. Haven't played that game since I had a DOS machine.

https://us.battle.net/account/download/

Or download it direct here:

http://dist.blizzard.com/downloads/blackthorne/5e1a0ce1d84e3ee3005dd26181e14a2f/Blackthorne-Setup.exe

Blackthorne is Windows only at this point.

After the rocky Witcher 2 DRM rollout issues it seems CD Project RED is ditching DRM completely for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. I laud the move and in a nice set of events they are taking time to take shots are DRM in general and offer some great rationalizations as to why DRM is a bad thing for people that buy games.

The issue of DRM being appreciated by gamers is pretty over and done, but it seems some companies are holding fast to a very old policy of treating paying customers badly. In the video CD Project RED states that they are in the business of making life long customers and some people may lack the funds or ability to become paying customers at at some point down the line might pay for the game when it becomes possible.

When I first watched this video I thought "yards need a fence to be viable." Then the music kicked in.

Have a Happy Halloween everyone.

Nice break down of the first Doom game story in a little over a minute. Doom was the first game to ever scare me because of its graphics and use of sound. The original Doom story was re-booted in Doom 3, which changes the original Doom narrative but keeps the blood, guts and carnage.

"Games make us ANGRY. Who hasn't come down to the wire in Street Fighter IV, toe to toe with some jerk named "ryukiller4eva", and suddenly you make a stupid mistake and KO, you are done. What do you do? Take a deep breath, slam your controller against the wall, try to pull it into two pieces, scream? Experiencing anger while we play video games is very real, but why does it happen, and does it help us? There are physiological reasons, emotional reasons, and psychological reasons for our anger, and your crazy drive and steaming ears just might help you succeed. Watch and learn why video games make us so angry!"

Interesting break down from Game/Show of why video games can make us so angry. Whereas I think "video game anger" can be pretty unfortunate when it is aimed at people, being angry at a game has let me to do better at it.

Oh and as an aside, I paused the video at the start and Jamin had an interesting face, thought it worth sharing.

http://i.imgur.com/z7GmZnm.png

"Confederate Express is all about exploration, fighting enemies, and making your way towards the main goal: trying to survive while delivering a package. Packages vary by size, weight and fragility; which makes every delivery a unique experience, ranging from a quick 15-minute tasks, all the way to a challenging journey throughout various events and locations. The more difficult the delivery, the greater the rewards: mercenaries, gear, weapons and ultimately - greater challenges."

Confederate Express has already sailed past its Kickstarter goals but if you want to get early access to it, funding it at the $25 level will get you in. Nice to see the Indie game scene enter the strategic turn based strategy realm.

Steam is having a Halloween sale starting today until November 1st on some awesome games. If you were looking to add a few new games to your collection, now is a good time as any.

A few games on sale that caught my attention:

• I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream


• Plants Vs. Zombies


• 7th Guest


• Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs & A Dark Descent


• Ghostbusters A Sanctum for Slime


• A Wolf Among Us


• The F.E.A.R. Collection


• Alice Madness Returns


• Left 4 Dead & Left 4 Dead 2


• Bioshock 1 & 2


• Alone in the Dark


• Eldritch


• Fallout 3: GoTY


• Limbo


• The 11th Hour


• Costume Quest


• Borderlands: GoTY


• Painkiller Pack


• Fallout New Vegas Ultimate Edition


• Killing Floor


• The Walking Dead


• Don't Starve


• Monaco


• Another World


• Lone Survivor

http://store.steampowered.com/sale/halloween2013

Didn't think i'd be writing about the Starbound beta this year but it looks like it will be coming very soon. Chucklefish recently posted about how the beta will roll out over the upcoming months.

stage 1: progenitor

"Stage 1 will be move at a breakneck speed. This will be the buggiest and busiest stage of the beta. A bunch of unfinished features will be disabled whilst we finish them up. Updates will come thick and fast, sometimes as often as multiple updates a day.

If you choose to take part during stage 1 you should expect bugs, lots of balance changes, you shouldn’t get too attached to your character or universe as we may make changes that require you to start from scratch. You should expect the game to be broken at points as we make sweeping changes but you’ll get to enjoy exciting new content added constantly. The engine won’t optimized during this stage of the beta so performance could be poor on some low end machines."

stage 2: automaton

"Stage 2 will be largely feature complete. You’ll still find the odd bug but they’re unlikely to be game breaking and the chance of you losing your character or save is minimal. The main quest line won’t be in yet but the sandbox experience will be near complete. All sectors of the galaxy will be available including sector X (End game content). Much of the focus in this stage will be on bug fixing, optimization and balance."

stage 3: Bio-organic

"Stage 3 is largely about prepping for v1.0, this means finishing up the main quest line and implementing the post beta content. i.e. the Novakids, fossils. By the time stage 3 is complete Starbound should be ready to launch as a finished game. Worry not however, we plan to keep adding new content for at least a year after release, perhaps a lot longer."

If you are in the Starbound beta are you going to check it out before the release? Are you planning on playing the game heavily at first or wait for the game to be a bit less buggy?

http://playstarbound.com/how-the-beta-is-going-to-work/

A few days ago Blizzard blessed me with access to the Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft beta. Since I have been pretty busy with Terraria 1.2, Monaco and PixelJunk Monsters I haven't given much attention to the Hearthstone beta. That said, I installed it and over the last few days have played most of the practice matches once and tried my hand at two online matches with real live humans.

You start out Hearthstone by playing 5 guided matches. Over these matches they let you know the games rules and slowly acclimate you to how to play. The 5 matches are not optional and they are not skippable. I thought it was pretty nice and they really do usher in the more complex game elements in a way that is not overwhelming. I started the game as Jana Proudmore and remembered her persona from Warcraft III and enjoyed the banter she had with the other heroes I played against.

The basic premise of Hearthstone is that you pick a hero to play as and then have cards that fit under that hero type. So Jana is a Mage and she has a special ability that for two mana she can target a creature or hero and inflict one damage. The goal of the game is use your cards to overpower the other hero and you can do that by casting creatures, spells and having your hero fight as well.

Hearthstone is very Magic: The Gathering-esque but goes off in different directions and as it does that builds up its own style. I really enjoy that by default your creatures can target other creatures or the Hero. Hearthstone has a taunt ability and when a creature card has it, all attacks from other creatures must hit the taunt creature first. Hearthstone has many things like this that really add to the strategy you use in the game but the core game itself is quite simple to understand.

Like most card games online, it is free to play and you can pay money to get booster packs. You can also accomplish in game stuff to get packs too, but if you don't want to wait for that you can drop the cash and get a whole bunch of cards. I don't mind this freemium aspect to the game as, at this point, its not annoying at all. I imagine this will divide up players that have lots of options from other player that have less options, but one can spend the time and get good cards without paying or by only paying a little. Or you could just play with friends that play for free too, since its all on battle.net your friends list carry over.

Hearthstone is a pretty easy to understand free card game I am really enjoying. I can't wait for more people to try it out and if I get some extra beta keys you guys will be the first to know. If you have played Hearthstone, I wonder what you think of it?

PopCap just released Plants vs. Zombies 2 on Android and I serious recommend you pick it up if you have an Android device. PvZ 2 is a freemium game but it isn't annoying. Where as I would have preferred to pay for it all and not have to spend time unlocking things, I never needed to pay for anything and the games increased challenge was a welcomed addition.

If you nab it on Android give it a go and let me know how it goes!

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ea.game.pvz2_row