Valve is running a sale of all indie games on Steam — with discounts from 10-33%.

Some of the best selling titles are receiving full 33% discount, games like World of Goo, Darwinia, Defcon and Audiosurf. In addition, several new demos of indie games have been released as well.

The offer expires on March 29.

Nanobot Game Review: Plot Elements As Review–What A Concept!
Spectral Force 3 Game Review–Big Niche Fun For A Handful
‘Early Death’ Campaign Backers Scapegoating Video Games
BioShock 2 Won’t Have Co-op
The Path Released
GarageGames Gets Tribes Property
Blizzard Launches New Battle.net Website
UT3 Titan Pack on PSN Today
Sea Of Dreams Dries Up

Well, I may have found a real winner on Newgrounds, a little game called Nanobot.  I may have, but I clearly didn’t.  Here–check out the clearly dysfunctional plot synopsis, provided, verbatim, by Nanobot itself:

“Your inside some computer monster. Find important system files to this monster, and release them through the monster’s bodily releases”

Yeah.  That’s the whole game. Find two computer files, drop them in its colon and urinary bladder and let nature do the rest.  You have infinite lives in which to accomplish this feat of excretion, and you may need them because the control scheme is unpleasant and the physics are downright tricky. The question of course is WHY.  As in, why bother?  Or, why does this garbage even exist, anyway?  Or, why haven’t this game’s creators been exiled to some small island where they can play with their feces all they clearly wish to?  The only downside is that to compare this game to the “excretory elements” featured throughout the game is both spectacularly fitting and entirely TOO EASY.

Too many unanswered whys for my taste, folks–pass this one on by.

Spectral Force 3 is a study in how games can be interesting but only on a niche level.

A turn-based strategy game for the Xbox 360, Spectral Force 3 does manage to put out some interesting gameplay, just not a whole lot of it.

Way off in the distance, in some place called Neverland (no, neither Peter Pan nor Michael Jackson will be showing up on this one), there are gods that rule in heaven, the dead go to the underworld below, and the rest of the land is constantly warred over by humans and demons and whatever else is handy.  All this ceaseless conflict has made the perfect conditions for mercenaries to thrive, and we join one such unit, the Norius Mercenaries.  Currently working for the Army of Flauster, the Norius Mercenaries will field a great many offers of employment from the humans and demons and seven–count ‘em, SEVEN–other races in play in the Neverland War.  Thus, you’ll be able to decide the outcome of the war by always being in the right place at the right time for somebody, somewhere.  You know that whole “for want of a nail the kingdom was lost” thing?  That’s basically what this is, except now you’re going to try and steal that nail in advance, on a metaphorical level.

Like I said, it’s a turn-based strategy game, where you’ll move your characters around a field arranged like a grid.  You’ll move your characters into position, have them perform attacks until they’ve killed whatever creature or soldier you’ve had them engage, and then repeat the process until the field is cleared of baddies.  You can also direct some of your troops to pick up various treasure chests on the field that contain bonus items.

If you choose to be charitable, then you’ll get quite a bit of fun out of shuffling your units around on the field, and in exchange for this you’ll get plenty of great story development as you get to figure out, singlehandedly, what faction of the Neverland War you’re going to back.  Support humans?  Favor demons?  Or maybe you want more of a coalition government on this planet.  Whatever case you decide, that’s what you can work toward.  There’s a certain sort of satisfaction to derive from the clear and present knowledge that what you do, as a tiny band of mercenaries, will have far-reaching effects across the entire planet.

You can, however, choose to be uncharitable and say that the repetitious gameplay (go here, smack that until either it’s dead or you are, find new enemy, repeat until bored out of your MIND) and lackluster graphics keep this thing from being anything even vaguely resembling a good game.

Most seem to be falling into the middle of these two extremes–I heard somebody say that this would’ve made a SWEET download on Xbox Live Arcade and I can’t say I disagree–so essentially, whether or not I can make a recommendation on this one comes down to your own particular circumstances as a gamer.  Strategy buffs will be able to ignore the graphics and repetition and will instead get a huge fantastic gaming experience.  Action and adventure buffs, however, and also shooter fans, will find this duller than dishwater and twice as unpalatable.

Obesity is a growing problem in the United Kingdom and fingers are beginning to point. Recently a Scottish physician suggested a ‘sin tax’ on chocolates, the precedent being set by a similar tax on tobacco and alcohol products. A different approach was taken by Campaign4Life: the controversial advertisement depicting a young boy sitting on a couch holding a PlayStation controller with the text ‘Risk an Early Death: Do Nothing’ at the top.

Funding for the advertisements comes from a group called Business 4 Life in the hefty sum of 200 million GBP. Who are these businesses that are so concerned about the welfare of British youths? Sports equipment manufacturers who abhor laziness? Football franchise owners hoping to spur a new wave of young athletes to get out and start training so the UK can dominate the World Cup in a few years? Sadly it’s nothing quite so noble or straightforward. UK publication Private Eye (a satirical rag similar to the Onion) has dug up some information about the backers of this campaign. Amongst the main contributors are Nestla, Coca-cola, Pepsico and Kelloggs.

It’s not hard to guess why these companies would be backing this project. If this is in fact true, then these companies are simply mudslinging, trying to shift the blame from the incredibly high calorie snacks, sodas and other unhealthy foods onto a different scapegoat. After all, nobody’s ever taken a lawsuit out against Barnes and Noble or Marvel for making their kids fat, but the cultural and ideological unpopularity of video games makes them a ready spot to shift the blame.

While a number of multiplayer modes are confirmed to be in BioShock 2, publisher 2K Games has confirmed that whatever is included, there won’t be any co-operative mode[s].

"There won’t be any spliced-up rhinos, Soviet invasions, or co-op," reads 2K’s community site for BioShock, The Cult of Rapture. "The internet has been busy these past few days with rumors about what is and is not in BioShock 2."

The initial batch of rumors suggested inclusion of a cooperative multiplayer mode, though most of those rumors turned out to be false. Only one of those rumors have been confirmed to be true – the singular Big Sister.

The shooter sequel is due out later this year on PC, PS3 and Xbox 360.

Slow games are rare in the marketplace, and sometimes it appears that they are nonexistant. Indie developer Tale of Tales has released its surreal PC adventure-horror game The Path through Steam, Direct2Drive and its own site, letting players take control of six different sisters as they stray off the path to their grandmother’s house.

The game consists of exploring the surrounding woods and is said to draw from the tale of the Little Red Riding Hood. It is said to take about six hours to complete for a “satisfying experience.”

"There are no ticking clocks or monsters to defeat," explained the developer. "Most activities in the game are entirely optional and voluntary. The player has all the freedom in the world to explore and experience. The Path is a Slow Game."

Having revealed their plans for a web-based revival of Starsiege: Tribes, developer GarageGames today announced that they now have ownership of the Tribes property and all related Starsiege games. They purchased the rights from publisher Vivendi in the wake of its merger with Activision.

The company further noted that the upcoming shooter has been updated with bug fixes and is still playable as a standalone game, but that it does not have updated graphics.

GarageGames was founded by several veterans of original Tribes developer Dynamix after the studio closed back in 2001.

Blizzard today opened the redesigned website for Battle.net, its matchmaking service for its stable of games. The new site combines several of its game services into an unified portal.

Starting today, players can merge their World of Warcraft accounts with a Battle.net account to create a single consolidated handle. This account also connects with the Blizzard Store.

Users of the new Battle.net will be automatically entered for future Blizzard beta key drawings.

According to the official PlayStation Blog, the Unreal Tournament 3 Titan Pack will be released on the PlayStation Network today.

The free DLC will add new maps, game modes, vehicles and characters, as well as the mutator mentioned in the title.

The new game types are Greed, a “tug of war” team mode game, and Betrayal, a cutthroat style where alliances and teams can shift through a match. The Titan mutator, meanwhile, lets players become a 30 foot tall behemoth in any game mode.

The DLC was released for the PC version earlier this month, leading to a whopping 2000% increase in players.