The main story mode in Alan Wake’s American Nightmare is part of the ‘Night Springs’ TV show fiction and offers an exaggerated pulp action adventure where the horrors of reality have the all too easy habit of coming true. Alan Wake finds himself stuck in an altered reality filled with dangerous shadows; he must leap into action and pursue his evil doppelganger, Mr. Scratch, across the Arizona mesa towards the town of Night Springs. Scratch, a supernatural serial killer, has his evil plans set on Wake’s wife, Alice. Wake must learn to control reality itself and unravel the secret to Mr. Scratch’s demise while using the power of light to put an end to the darkness.

The previously unannounced “Fight till Dawn” arcade mode places Wake in the battle of his life. Players must survive a full night of enemy onslaughts while racking up their score. With loads of new enemies to battle, players will require a deep arsenal of weapons; from old stalwarts like the flare gun to wild new favorites like the nail gun and old school Remedy favorites like the Uzi. Thankfully, safe havens and unlockable weapons dot the landscape, allowing for a momentary respite from the darkest of nights. Surviving until dawn is only the beginning as online leaderboards pit friends head to head to see who the real champion of light is.

Bunch of Heroes is also on sale right now for 75% off, bringing the price down to a mere $2.49 USD. It's a fun little time waster.

IG: You've been critical of Valve's Steam in the past, but Steam continues to dominate digital distribution. What's your take on their position - do they have a weakness?

TB: I don’t think I’ve been overly critical, but it could appear that way when everyone tends to just hail them. I've said it before and I’ll say it again, Steam's market share can only shrink. Just look at Origin. It came from nowhere and is now a player in the industry. Steam is doing a good job for the super hard-core audience, but everyone knows that's not where the money is. The market is mostly made up of people who buy 2-3 games a year and want a fast, easy and seamless way of buying games. They don’t want a bulky client.

The interview also revealed some good news for the Swedish Digital Distribution firm. Gamersgate grew its sales by 50% in 2011 and is even opening an office in New York City to help foster more growth.

The Boids are a robotic race who have been waiting eons for a mysterious, universe-altering event to occur. Though the Boids continue to wait in ritual, players of the epic space combat MMO no longer have to wait for many widely requested features, including a level cap increase to 50, new story missions, one new warzone, a new open world sector for players level 40 and up, 11 new job missions and a brand new PvE raid system.

Long desired by Black Prophecy players, PvE raids have finally earned a prominent place in the game. Players can form large groups and battle alongside each other through two raids that are the longest, most complex missions the game has seen to date. PvE raids will also culminate in large-scale boss fights that offer unique and epic rewards. 11 new special abilities will also be implemented to bolster team play during each raid. A

long with this major addition, various tweaks have been made to a number of areas, including tutorial mode, missions and mission debriefings, along with improvements to the HUD and mission tracking. With all of these tweaks and new features, "Episode 3: Rise of the Boids" refreshes the overall Black Prophecy experience. While the Boids continue to await the universe-altering events, players will be immediately thrilled with the alterations made to their roles within the Black Prophecy universe.

MULTIPLAYER

• Significant improvements to general multiplayer stability.
• Significant improvements to Hot-Join stability.
• Multiplayer now using the same AI move caching as single player, improving turn-times significantly.
• Lobby improvements: We now display game details in the lobby list (players in each game, map size, map type, DLC required, etc.).
• Host can now kick players from the staging room when loading a save (if a player cannot return to a game, the game can now be continued by the rest of the players).
• Found and corrected additional causes of Out-of-Sync.
• Exploit: Corrected an exploit that allowed players on the same team to trade cities back and forth to auto-heal it.
• Exploit: Corrected an exploit that allowed players on the same team to trade cities back and forth to generate endless City Strikes.
• Exploit: Corrected an exploit that allowed a player to “lag” the UI to gain multiple free techs.

UI

• Change “Load Game” save sorting to be “Last Modified” by default.

BUGS

• When scrapping a unit, make sure any “cargo” units are scrapped as well.
• When a unit is destroyed that is carrying another unit, make sure to kill both (missiles sometimes lingered).
• Corrected a bug that was causing eliminated Civ’s to not generate notifications correctly.
• Changed notification language for when a Research or Trade deal is cancelled due to the AI running out of funds to pay for it (per-turn deal), or are eliminated. It was currently displaying a “because of war” notification which is incorrect.
• Corrected an issue that could cause unhappiness from city count and number of specialists to become incorrect over the course of a long game.
• Changed Frigate obsolete tech to Combustion.
• Fixed Korean science building exploit.
• Fixed a problem with City Strike that gave the user the impression that they could not end their turn, when in reality, city strike was still active.
• Crash: Fixed a crash that could occur in hot-seat when exiting to the main menu.
• Crash: Fixed a crash that could occur when a unit was eliminated by standing too close to a Citadel.