The parkour driven multiplayer shooter, Brink will be free to play through Steam this weekend to celebrate the addition of Clan and Tournament support. That’ll let you create and keep track of clans on the Brink site. From there you’ll be able to challenge other clans and battle for position on the global clan ladder. The clan hub will also let clan members set up tournaments with custom rulesets, and keep track of each battle online.
Brink never quite got off the ground when it launched back in May, though it showed plenty of promise, with characterful avatars, spectacular settings, varied classes and some destructive gadgets. Find out more in our Brink review. It’ll go free at 10AM PST, in about an hour, giving everyone the opportunity to find out how Brink plays six months on. If you like it, Brink will be on sale at 75% off for the duration of the free trial.

New ships, Tech 2 items, rebalancing, station environments and nebulae are just some of the dozens of features and updates that have arrived in the recent release of the Crucible expansion. Log in, start downloading, and get in game! Be sure to also check out the feature site for the latest dev blogs, video links, feature information and gallery images on what's been packed into this amazing new release.

World of Warcraft: Hour of Twilight, which is the third content update for Cataclysm, is available today for all World of Warcraft players. We have also released the official World of Warcraft: Hour of Twilight (patch 4.3) trailer! To recap, patch 4.3 provides players with a ton of newcontent:

· Raid Finder – Players canquickly and easily form a raid for a specifically tuned version of the Dragon Soul raid; works muchlike the Dungeon Finder feature.

· Dragon Soul –The most epic 10- and 25-person raid encounter Blizzard has ever designed.

· Transmogrification – Customize the appearance of your weapons and armor.

· Three new 5-person dungeons – Continue the storyline of Thrall and Deathwing as players embark on all-new adventures in End Time, Well of Eternity, and Hour of Twilight.

· Void Storage – Players of all levels can now open up 80 slots of long-term storage space.

· Fangs of the Father – Legendary rogue quest line.

· The all-new Darkmoon Faire – Darkmoon Faire has been completely redesigned and offers all-new games and rewards for players to experience.

Regards,

Blizzard PR

As reported on Eurogamer, a Tribes Ascend closed beta is due to kick off on November 4. You can sign up for the beta on the official Tribes Ascend site.
The info came from Cyberlink‘s interview with COO at Hi-Rez Studios, Todd Harris.

There are three ways to get in the beta. Apply on the website and wait for a code, keep an eye on the Hi-Rez Facebook and twitter pages or pre-order. That’ll give you access to the VIP Starter Kit, which includes beta access, a 33% cost saving, and some bonus VIP features. We’ll update as soon as you’re able to lay down the cash.

Todd highlights that the VIP Starter Kit won’t be a “buy one get everything pack” but “a way to get VIP status in the game which will put you in a more elite set of queues.” Players will also get a bunch of in-game gold and some form of booster. “It gives you a pretty compelling starter experience,” he says.

DICE have posted on the Battlefield blog with a list of issues that the beta has thrown up which they say will be addressed in the full release of Battlefield 3.

First up, there will be “improved squad functionality in the retail game (including but not limited to): the ability to create squads prior to launching into a game, sticking with your squad when joining a game and continuing together through future games (If team balance on the server allows it), inviting friends to a squad and changing squads once in game.” Hooray!

Sensibly, we’ll also be able to access the settings menu from the deployment screen. That means no more finding a quiet spot to hide while tweaking graphics or control options. Issues with “terrain stability” and “falling into the map” on Operation Metro “has been fixed for the beta via a server side update” as well.

Addressing complaints about hit detection, DICE say that this is a server code issue that should be improved by the time Battlefield hits shelves later this month. They say that other bugs like one that stops people from running will also be fixed.

That trailer for a new MechWarrior game caused a stir among BattleTech fans when it came out, but since then there has been precious little news about the project. Now Blue’s News (hat tip: Rock, Paper, Shotgun) has seen some signs of BattleMech-related activity from Piranha Games’ Russ Bullock.

Want to play Star Wars: The Old Republic forever and ever? Each copy comes with a month of free game-time, but if you want to play after that, you’ll need money: it’s $14.99/£8.99/€12.99 per-month. That’s exactly the same pricing structure as World of Warcraft.

Even the bulk costs are identical: a three month subscription comes to $13.99/month (paid as a one-time charge of $41.97/£25.17/€35.97), while a six month subscription costs $12.99 per month (paid as a one-time charge of $77.94/£46.14/€65.94).

So: here’s a good game for your Saturday. You can afford to pay for one subscription game per month. What do you pay for?

Pro gamers and invited guests will make it onto the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive closed beta early in October. Valve’s Chet Faliszeck told The Reticule that they’re planning to grow the beta in the coming months, and he hopes everyone will have a chance to play by the end of the year.

Counter-Strike pros have already had a chance to go hands on with Counter-Strike: Global Offensive when they were invited to Valve HQ for testing earlier this year. A Counter-Strike: Global Offensive hands-on account from one of those testers uncovered new weapons like the molotov cocktail, and a tweaked and updated version of the Counter-Strike classic, de_dust.

Hi-Rez Studios seem to develop only games with jetpacks in, and I’m OK with that. I like to imagine they jetpack around the office while they’re working. I picture them having jetpacked their way through jetpack MMO Global Agenda first, before jetpacking over to acquire the venerable Tribes licence and jetpacking home, before starting work on a sequel to the grandfather of jetpack shooters.

The fiery gates leading to the Burning Hells have begun to swing open, and the Diablo III beta test is officially underway. Invitations to participate in the beta test are now being delivered to the chosen heroes. As with beta tests for other Blizzard Entertainment games, the testing process for Diablo III will occur in phases. In addition to selecting players who have opted in via their Battle.net accounts, we’ll also be providing keys through beta promotions and giveaways -- stay tuned for more info. We welcome those invited to provide feedback or report bugs on the official forums.



If you have a beta license, you are free to show, share, or talk about any portion of the beta content to which you have access, as this beta test is not confidential.



We’d like to remind those looking forward to an invite to be wary of phishing attempts. If you believe you’ve received an invite to the Diablo III beta test, it’s best to refrain from clicking on any links in the email, and instead log in to your Battle.net account to see if a Diablo III beta game account was granted. Or, if you were sent a key, attempt to add it manually by going to the Add or Upgrade a Game section of the Battle.net account management page.



For those who have received an invite to the beta test, we thank you for helping us test out our server stability and hardware. For those of you still hoping for an invite, we wish you the best of luck and hope you’ll keep an eye out for some of the beta-key giveaways and promotions we’ll have right here on the Diablo III community site.



For more information, please see the beta opt-in announcement and FAQ.

Hold smoke grenades! The Battlefield 3 beta will begin on September 29 and run until October 10. Pre-order the game from Origin beforehand and you’ll get early access on September 27. You also get early access if you pre-ordered Medal of Honor. Yes, that Medal of Honor. We predict Battlefield 3 will be significantly better.

If you’re wondering whether you’ll be able to get a playable framerate, check the Battlefield 3 system requirements.

Players who sign up for the beta will also get access to Battlelog, EA’s new social networking system. We’re not quite as excited about that part which will let you track stats and share progress with chums. You’ll also get the option to join the EA Gun Club. That will provide early access to an M1911 pistol and come special badges. When did buying games get so confusing eh?

The Beta will take place on the Operation Metro Map which will have you sharing bullets across the outskirts of Paris, a bombed out metro station and the city streets. You’ll be playing the Rush mode and attacking and defending M-COM stations, just like in Bad Company 2.

For more on Battefield 3 visit the official site, follow @Battlefield, and read our most recent Battlefield 3 preview. The game’s due for release on October 28. Click through for the most recent trailer.

A lovely bit of news from RPS this morning. If you don’t already own it, you can download Portal for nothing on Steam. It’s being made free to download until September 20. If you download it before then, you’ll own it forever.
It’s all part of Valve’s Learn With Portals initiative, which aims to promote Portal’s reality bending puzzles as an educational tool, and hopes to encourage the next generation to start building a new wave of even more dastardly test chambers. You can see our future tormentors learning the basics at Valve HQ in the video above. You can build your own levels with the free Portal authoring tools, which you’ll find the “tools” section of your Steam library

Some gorgeous new screenshots of Battlefield 3 have parachuted in ahead of part two of the Operation Guillotine trailer, which should hit later on today. There are a couple of shots of the night time single player mission, but most of them show the 64-player Caspian Border map.
Bonus points for spotting the soldier who’s gone charging into the dark city of Operation Guillotine wearing a pair of dark sunglasses, and check out the engineer who seems be carrying a spare rocket launcher on his back for times when there’s just no time to reload, which in Battlefield is ALL THE TIME.

DICE general manager Karl Magnus Troedsson has been talking to Eurogamer about why the PC is the lead platform for Battlefield 3. Console players have been concerned about the fact that the footage and screenshots of Battlefield 3 have mostly come from the PC version so far.

“I have to say that this discussion is a bit over the top because people don’t understand that the PC is more powerful than a console – they haven’t looked under the hood and in detail,” says Troedsson.



“We always want to show a platform that we have chosen to be our lead platform. In this case we did choose PC as the lead platform; it’s the one that has been, mostly, driving development forward. That is the reason why we have spearheaded a lot of the key assets with this as well.”

Troedsson tells Eurogamer that DICE uses PC as the lead platform in order to create the “unique” features that are only possible with the extra power of the PC, 64 player maps being the main one. Troedsson says that large scale battles are “not possible” on consoles because of demanding requirements “like destruction, like scale, vehicles and this kind of thing.”

You can get a sense of one of those 64 player battles from the Battlefield 3 Caspian Border trailer, filmed on a PC of course.

The Lucasarts recruitment site has put out an ad, spotted by Gamespot, looking for a senior gameplay engineer for an aerial combat title. Among the requirements listed, experience in flight sims, “especially space-based shooters” is down as a plus. Lucasarts are of course responsible for some of the best space shooters ever made, X-Wing and Tie Fighter. Dare we hope?

There are also listings for an open world RPG, an action/adventure game and a first-person shooter, intriguing given Lucasarts’ history with the Dark Forces series. None of these projects have been officially announced, so we’ll have to wait and see what Lucasarts are brewing, but we know what we’d like to see. How about it, who wants a new X-Wing game?

The Operation Guillotine single player mission is playable at this year’s Tokyo Game Show. Gametrailers managed to sneak in and film the top left third of the level. It’s a little blurry, and occasionally mostly elbow, but you still get a sense of how good the night time city is looking. Part one of the Battlefield Operation Guillotine trailer was released last Friday, and part two is out tomorrow. Until then, check out part two of the TGS footage, embedded below.

Gamespot bring us some news from the Citi Technology conference, where Activision Blizzard COO Thomas Tippl has said that Blizzard will be producing six “proven property” games/expansions over the next three years.

The announcement reveals plans for two more World of Warcraft expansions over the three years. Could one of these be the Mists of Pandaren expansion we’ve previously heard rumours of? In addition, the first expansion to Diablo 3 will be expected by the end of 2014. The two planned Starcaft 2 expansions, Heart of the Swarm and Legacy of the Void, are expected in the same period.

By choosing to refer only to ‘proven properties’ Blizzard have left the door open for a new ‘unproven property’ to be released in that same period, such as the long rumoured Project Titan

Square Enix have sent over word that their bank accounts have been suddenly augmented by huge sales of the excellent Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Two million “units” have been shipped worldwide. Thanks to a controversy involving Gamestop and some OnLive vouchers inside those copies, many will have been sent straight back, but for the most part that is a large and impressive number. Are you one of the two million? Will you be picking up the Missing Link DLC? If you had the choice, would you replace your regular arms with bionic ones? Let us know in the comments below.

If the launch of the upcoming Dead Island DLC is as controversial as this week’s release madness then we’ll have to break out the extra-strong tea to cope. The Bloodbath Arena pack will add four new survival maps that will let players fight unlimited waves of zombies in order to survive for as long as possible. With no limit to the enemies, you’ll never actually survive the survival maps, but “inevitable death maps” sounds a lot less inviting. Slay zombies! Earn points! Stave off your inevitable demise! The DLC will be released later this month. No price has been announced, but special edition purchasers will get it for free.