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Our Steam Group!

Yes, dear readers, as mentioned in our podcast, we have a Dark Diamond Steam group! If you play any Steam games be sure to join up, perhaps you can meet with us when we’re playing Team Fortress 2, Garry’s Mod or anything else. Its also easier to know when we’ve got a game going on in the official Dark Diamond TF2 server.

Site Updates!

Hope you’ve noticed some of the changes we’ve been making to the site behind the scenes! Most notable is the new DDN-tan drawing that stands on the website header. Isn’t she lovely? Props to Godsh0t, DDN-tans creator for drawing her so well. Other changes are:

• Better search box, more identifiable since it now says ‘search’, that only took us 2 years huh?
• Avatars for authors are back! We’re saying good bye to the uniform Mii avatars.
• A staff list of the recent active members of the DD crew.
• Better contact forms, now there’s a separate form to contact the whole crew for tips and press stuff and one specifically for myself for official business, all in the same friendly contact page.
• Small adjustments to the layout overall.

However, our most important new feature is the Upcoming Releases & Events list on the sidebar! Wonder what games are getting released soon? What anime or manga is premiering? Just load up the site and look at the 10 nearest events!

So tell us what you think of the changes, what else you’d like to see and again, do join our Steam Group!

Now that video games have become accepted as a narrative medium, what do we turn to for the latest innovations in storytelling? The answer, apparently, is in the heads-up displays of video games. In this case, a clever fellow by the name of theminipanda at ubercharged.net has taken it upon himself to retell the summer blockbuster The Dark Knight through those little things that pop up when people die in Team Fortress 2. Once again, the Internet laughs in your face while you think “I wish I thought of that first.” Click here for the full post.

[Kotaku]

After not much in the way of news for quite some time, Valve has come out with some info about the upcoming Heavy update for Team Fortress 2. Thirty-five new achievements will be added, likely with the same tier-unlocking system as the Pyro and the Medic. Here’s some more details of what’s to come:

In addition to the three unlockable weapons and thirty-five achievements for the Heavy, we’ve got a new game mode with five new arenas for it, a new Payload map focusing on more open spaces than Goldrush, and another popular community-made map. Throughout the rest of the week we’ll be giving you the details on all this, and if all goes well, you’ll have your hands on it shortly afterwards.

Here’s hoping this new game mode is a return of Team Fortress Classic’s The Hunted game mode. A more open Payload map will also help avoid problems like the bottlenecking points that cause so many Goldrush games to stalemate. Valve will be unveiling more details every day, so stay tuned as more details unfold!

[TeamFortress.com]