In advance of releasing their newest BF:BC2 DLC EA and DICE (AFAIK IIRC) have dropped a new trailer for Onslaught.

It looks good. Watch it. Agree.

UP

The word dropped today that Rockstar games would be releasing 3 sets of DLC for its upcoming spurs and spittoons gunfighter Red Dead Redemption. The first of these packs is slated for July, and will be free.

One of three downloadable content packs, the ‘Outlaws To The End’ Co-Op Mission Pack features six all-new multiplayer missions full of outlaws, epic gunfights, and revolution for 2-4 players. The ‘Outlaws to the End’ Co-Op Mission Pack offers additional multiplayer XP rewards and brand new Achievements and Trophies to unlock. These six explosive and epic missions will play out across the game world, including:

“Walton’s Gold”
Walton’s Gang have taken control of a mining camp rich with gold. Fight through the camp and load your mine cart with as much gold as you can carry and get out as fast as you can – Walton’s boys have rigged the place to blow.

“The River”
Ride a raft down river, taking out rebel encampments along the way until you reach the rebel stronghold of Nosalida and a final epic battle for the town’s massive weapons caches. Watch out for Gatling gun-equipped enemy rafts.

“Ammunition”
The Mexican Army has the town of Tesoro Azul under siege. Storm the gates under heavy cannon, Gatling gun and sniper fire to destroy the Mexican artillery placements.

So what’s Rockstar’s real plan here? Do they want to entice you to buy future DLC’s by giving you one taste for free? Or are they simply dangling the carrot of free DLC out there to keep Red Dead from ending up in the used games section of your local retailer?

What does this mean for my excitement level for the most salacious game of the season?  Oh, it’s sky-rocketing.  Most hack-and-slash games that have come out lately have all been well and good, but they haven’t been complete.  Demon’s Souls lacked Content Creation; Bayonetta lacked both.  The entertainment factor was there, but going above and beyond expectations with additional content besides new levels or new abilities was something they all seemed to fall short on.

For just a couple extra dollars to add a little more meat to my bone, I am definitely going to look into Trials of St. Lucia.  [and you should too!]

Designed and written by the same team that brought you Dragon Age: Origins, the Awakening expansion pack offers a brand new area of the world to explore known as Amaranthine, featuring an epic story that will allow players to unravel the secrets of the darkspawn – and their true motivations! Players will face a range of horrific and terrifying creatures including an evolved, intelligent breed of darkspawn and other menacing creatures such as the Inferno Golem and Spectral Dragon. Dragon Age: Origins – Awakening provides exciting new ways for players to customize their heroes and party, including the ability to re-spec their character attributes, allowing even greater customization and replayability. Featuring an increased level cap, new spells, abilities, specializations and items, plus five all-new party members, players can continue their adventures from Dragon Age, or begin with a brand new party.

Dragon Age: Origins – Awakening, BioWare’s next thread in the Dragon Age: Origins tapestry, occurs following the events of Dragon Age: Origins and puts players into the role of a Grey Warden Commander entrusted with rebuilding the order of Grey Wardens. In addition to rebuilding the ranks of the Grey Wardens, you will be tasked with uncovering the mystery of how the darkspawn survive after the slaying of the Archdemon dragon. How players choose to rebuild their order, resolve the conflict with the mysterious “Architect,” and determine the fate of the darkspawn are just some of the many intriguing moral choices that will shape each player’s heroic journey. Players will be able to import their character from Dragon Age: Origins or start out as a new Grey Warden from the neighboring land of Orlais.

The expansion will be priced at $39.99 and drops March 16th on 360, PS3, and PC.

It looks like the new Team Fortress 2 update has just gone live, and it seems that the Soldier and Demoman will indeed be competing with each other.

Along with the new weapon being revealed each day for each class, a la the Spy vs Sniper update, the class with the most kills against the opposing class  (Soldier > Demoman and vice versa) will be getting a super special top secret weapon at the end of the competition.

So get to the killing people, make my Demoman proud and kill some Soldiers for me!

The War Update (TeamFortress.com)

So those of you who regularly keep track of TeamFortress.com, Valve’s development blog for the wonderful class-based multiplayer title will have seen the webcomic teaser posted yesterday linked form the following phrase;

Friendship ends in one day.

So what could this mean? The most likely answer is a Soldier vs. Demoman update, just like the Spy vs. Sniper update from earlier this year. Some other theories are floating around out there at the possibility of only one of the two classes getting the update, dependent on class popularity from how much they are played since the announcement, or through a poll. There has always been one outlandish theory of the engineer getting an update… yeah.

It’s also awesome to finally see The Administrator in person, although I almost feel like I’ve seen her before…

Looks like those who are lucky enough to own a copy of the sublime Borderlands will be getting treated to a vacation on The Zombie Island of Dr Ned on the 24th of this month. It will be available on PS3 and Xbox 360 for $10 (no word on the PC version or how much it will cost yet, much to my dismay).

As excited as I am for the DLC, I am wondering if this new fad for zombie-themed content is going to end any time soon. I know the sheer popularity of Left4Dead is most likely the cause for this, but guys, srsly, there is such as thing as too much.

Also, sorry about the radio silence here at Fall Damage over the weekend. It’s been very busy around here the past few days, what with my day job and the release of Dragon Age and Modern Warfare 2 (more on those soon).

It has recently been brought to my attention (that and Aevan beat me to it last night, but I’m taking all the credit!) that mod-turned-retail mutant/zombie/cyborg smasher slaughtering co-operative survival horror first person shooter Killing Floor is going free for this weekend only! Now hang on a moment, before you think this is positively the best deal ever, this means that you can play the game for free this weekend starting tomorrow through the rest of the weekend. After this period is over, you have to go buy the game (which I highly recommend, it is quite good).

This free weekend deal is coinciding with the new downloadable content for the game, which includes three new maps and seven new weapons, marking this as the largest expansion yet for the co-operative survival horror game. Better yet, you also get to play this new content over the weekend!

So grab five friends, a shotgun and a bag of grenades and get ready to weld those doors shut!

Killing Floor (Steam Store page)

SPOILER ALERT! If you are planning on playing the Fallout 3 DLC The Pitt at all, or do not want to have anything about it spoiled for you, DO NOT READ THIS NEXT SEGMENT. SPOILER ALERT!

This weekend, as any of you who watched my live stream know, I played through Fallout 3′s DLC The Pitt, in which you follow a transmission from a group of slaves in jeopardy somewhere in the city of Pittsburgh. The DLC was surprisingly good for an inexpensive expansion, but I’ll save that discussion for another time. My concern with The Pitt was with the morality choice you are given at the end of the DLC.

The basic story of The Pitt goes like this: You receive a distress call from the people of the former town of Pittsburgh with a sob story of people being kept as slaves and forced to work the steel mill, and a horrible plague is turning people into monsters. Your job is to infiltrate their ranks, work your way up the food chain to the head of the Raider operation there and steal the cure so the people can be freed. Simple right? Steal the cure, fight the raiders, free the slaves. Evil is punished, good job. Or you join the raiders and become an icon of oppression that all other raiders and slavers can look up to. However, the option you are given is nowhere near as black and white as one would assume.

After working your way up to an audience with Ashur, the ‘Lord of the Pitt’ and hearing the slaves side of the story, he informs you that the man who called you for help has not been telling the whole truth and wants you to kill him. Ashur then runs off to take care of some rioting that starts up, and you’re left to take a look around. Upon further inspection of the area you can get into Ashurs safe and fine some audio logs apparently left for his daughter once she has grown up. These logs reveal a story of how Ashur found the city in ruin, with carnivorous beasts and cannibals running amok. He talks of finding a working steel mill in the city, and how he needed workers to work in the mill so the city could have a bright future in devlopment – a ‘chance to build something new in a world of leftovers’. He mentions how the disease here tends to leave people sterile, so once the current generation dies off, so he had to seek outside help for recruitment, stating ‘by force if necessary’ (so yeah, he’s kidnapping people as slaves, which is a bad thing).

Later in these audio logs, he speaks of his daughter ‘being the cure’ for this disease, her holding a natural immunity from this horrible affliction. Wander this area a little more, and you’ll meet Ashur’s wife – a very nice lady who wants you to meet her baby girl. After hearing everything the lady has to say about the baby, how they are looking for a way to share the cure with everybody in The Pitt, and how she is taking great care not to harm the child, I am left with a decision: Do I kidnap the baby to give the slaves the ‘cure’ they are clamouring for along with something they can ransom for they freedom, or let the baby be so Ashur’s wife can develop a cure for everybody and bring with it the prospect of rebuilding civilisation and a future with no more need for slavery? My personal feelings of what would be the better moral decision in the long run – if not instantly gratifying – is to let things be as they are. The future of The Pitt is actually extremely bright with this cure laying here, waiting to be shares with everybody.

If you thought the same as I did, you would be wrong.

Leaving the baby in her crib and not kidnapping her is apparently the bad moral choice. As soon as you leave without the baby, every slae in the area is instantly hostile to you, trying to carve you up with their foul axe buzzsaws, and defending yourself leads to loss of karma. Handing this child over to the slaves as a bargaining chip so they can turn out/fight/kill the raiders effectively is apparently the right thing to do. I don’t care how much of it seemed horrible and wrong to begin with, but if the future of this place is for Pittsburgh to be rebuilt and turned into a bastion of hope for this harsh wasteland, it looks like you’re going to have to break a few eggs to make the perfect omelette.

This frustrated the hell out of me, as the incredibly deep woven plot surrounding all of this turned out to be an absolute black and white choice in Bethesda’s morality system coded into Fallout 3. Instant gratification wins out against the prospect of a hope in a dying world. Since I don’t want that particular character to be any less than the epitome of good in the game, I reloaded a previous save and kidnapped the child, causing me to have to kill Ashur and his very nice lady of a wife in the end.

So screw you, Bethesda. As much as I love what you have done with Fallout 3, and as much as The Pitt was an otherwise amazing expansion to this awesome game, I can’t help but feel you just earned Evil Points on my morality system. Let’s hope things are a little more clearly defined for choices in Broken Steel when I start that next, or if you have attempted another deep choice to make there is something a little more than just right or wrong.

Anybody who happens to be a fan of last years wonderful re-boot to the Prince of Persia series is in for a treat today, as this weeks Deal of the Week on Xbox Live Arcade is Prince of Persia: Epilogue. Epilogue continues after the *SPOILER ALERT* catastrophic mistake at the *SPOILERS OVER NOW* end of Prince of Persia, offering around three hours of additional gameplay.

It is currently on sale this week for 560 Microsoft Points as opposed to the standard 800. Unfortunately, I am completely SOL as I have the PC version of the game, and Ubisoft have stated that the PC version will not be getting this DLC.