Valve is launching a series of videos promoting the diverse and exciting products of Aperture Science, voiced by none other than Cave Johnson, undead founder of Aperture Science, voiced by none other than K.K. Simmons. I’ll take 12 of those panels please!

Microsoft has tried, unsuccessfully, for a few years now to penetrate the PC gaming industry with their Games For Windows label as well as trying to integrate it all into the Live platform, along with Messenger, Writer, and a bunch of other little apps. The results have been not only lackluster but down right annoying, Games For Windows ends up feeling like a roadblock instead of a an asset to the game. Well, Microsoft seems to want to change this with a revolutionary initiative that will “change the world”! What’s this miraculous new strategy? Make everything look like Xbox Live but with Farmville. Seriously Microsoft? Cute avatars and Bejeweled is the best you can come up with? If this is what it takes to change the world wait until you see what I’ve created in my toilet bowl, it’s going to fucking blow your minds.

I set upon my prey for the fifth time that day. Some stoner freak, name of “Monty Weed”. Dumbest face I’ve ever seen on a guy. I adopted the disguise of a goth rocker chick; best no one knows the rad surfer dude was the one who killed his mark. I went about collecting what high-value weapons I could; a shotgun and a flare gun. Excellent. Just as I started tracking him, I saw the poor sap taking a nap. I almost felt bad about snapping his neck and dancing over his corpse. Almost.

Basically, this is how a round of Bloody Good Time goes. Hit the bump for more info and why I cannot stop playing this game.

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For those who are in the know, we are at war, for those not in the know, Team Fortress 2 is in the process of releasing 2 updates for its classes. Today Valve revealed the first two new weapons for the Demoman and they are the stuff of legends, to say the least.

A cursed sword, the Eyelander, and a buckler shield called the Chargin’ Targe. In conjunction they can deliver a big crit-punch to anyone in the Demo’s way. This is of course begging for a Kilt and some blue face paint. This should prove an incentive to the Demomen who are losing the war against the soldier. These Scotts better step up because in the end… there can be only one. OH GOD OK I’LL STOP WITH THE HORRID IRISH JOKES.

These above are all of the voice clips included in the Nanami Madobe, Windows 7-tan, theme for Windows 7 included in some of the Japanese editions. Sounds for all your basic windows actions, including the dings, the beeps and the system errors. Boy oh boy, I don’t think I’d mind constant system errors with this. This is the official complaint deterrent for obscure errors only found by geeks, it turns errors into features and nerd rage into a moe-induced trance.

Anime merchandise is a dime a dozen (or several hundred dimes anyway), new stuff comes out on a daily basis. Figures, wall scrolls, posters, pillow covers, lets face it, most of it is pretty useless and rarely really carries the ingenuity of the artist. But there was once an exception to this rule a product that was both useful and carried the creativity of the artist! Masamune Shirou, of Ghost In The Shell fame, was commissioned to created a computer mouse back in 2002. The result was the MAPP1-SM from Elecom. This mouse you see above looks like it was brought out straight from GitS or Appleseed. At launch they sold for around $80, finding one now on resale would easily cost up to two or three times that amount.

Frankly I cant think of many more anime pieces of merchandising that are actually functional while still keeping with the aesthetic of the source material. Sure we’ve seen the Evangelion bike and headphones… and I guess Ona Cups, pillow cases and big breasted mousepads do serve some sort of purpose. But really, I challenge you right now to come up with 3 other pieces of merchandise which you might buy even if you had no idea it was anime related.

[Elecom]

I always enjoyed Left 4 Dead but I never really found it terrifying, not even a bit scary, until the Teletubbies came. Left 4 Teletubbies is a L4D mod made by Flameknight7, which replaces zombie models with the Teletubbies, complete with the ‘he-ho’ sound those horrid creatures made. With a few gory zombies left for ambiance this mod turns L4D a lot more sinister and, I have to admit, a bit startling to play.

Now if they’d only substitute the Tank for Barney, the Witch with Baby Bop and the Hunter with IT the clown, we could call it a day and be done with many childhood frustrations.

Today the unexpected and quite welcome First Ever Classless Update for Team Fotress 2 came out. With this latest update we get eighteen new and quite awesome hats. Too bad they are still rare as hell. We also get a new game mode, King of the Hill. The verdict? Like every other KOTH mode on any other FPS… it’s a spamfest, and this is coming from someone who plays Demoman a lot.

The devil, as always, is in the details though. A really big list of small updates to the game were implemented that make the game more enjoyable and for once this all happens without a class getting overused for two weeks. There were really very heavy hints at the next update being for the soldier and there are even conspiracy theorists that claim that Friday Valve will release a fourth day of updates.

Not excited? How about this: There’s a small segmen on GTTV tonight with Valve and apparently they will talk more about TF2 animated clips, the comic and even Half-Life Episode 3. You heard that right, Episode 3. Expect more in the morning.

A behind the scenes look at the story of the upcoming futuristic first person shooter, Section 8 (not to be confused with Niel Blomkamp’s District 9) being published by Southpeak Games and developed by TimeGate Studios.
After viewing the newly released trailer above, it is probably a safe assumption to assume that the game is on schedule for its release PC and 360 release next month on September 1.
Speaking of releases, the Section 8 couldn’t be shipping at a better time as the Xbox 360 received an update earlier today that, along with other social features, encourages users to spend more money on virtual goods in order to deck out their Avatars-perhaps we can expect to see some sweet Section 8 and Arm of Orion armor pop up on the Avatar Marketplace..?

We want to hear what you think about Section 8. Leave your comments below.

Recently some very influential voices in the tech world have been denouncing the death of the desktop PC and, by association, PC gaming. Their claims are not unfounded, Desktop sales went down 23% last year and while a decline is no surprise in the current economic climate; a fall of nearly a quarter of sales is an astounding blow to the market.

I believe rumors of the desktop PCs death have been greatly exaggerated. While laptops are every more popular, cheaper and powerful, most of their innovation still comes from that happening in the Desktop field. On the contrary I propose that the Desktop is not dying but evolving. I’d even venture to say that the only part of the Desktop that’s changing is the Desk part.

Our PC’s are taking the role of hubs and media centers, the best storage, fastest processors and better graphics are all on the PC. With the impending rise of virtualization our PCs will become even more important as they will become the backbone to your local computer. Your very own cloud, if you will.

Will laptops and netbooks continue their rise? Without a doubt, but in the very near future you are going to see many of the capabilities of those devices relying on those of your hub PC. So if you were thinking of shelling out for a high end laptop think again. Laptops depreciate twice as fast as desktops and are many times harder to upgrade. I’ll go out on a limb here and say that we’ll be seeing the resurgence of desktops within 5 years. And PC gaming dead? Don’t even get me started! But we’ll save that for another day. Over and out.