News

Gamescon, August 17th-21st, Valve has put possibly the biggest e-sports prize up for grabs for 16 hand picked Dota teams to battle over in the very first Dota 2 tournament. A massive $1million is the prize for the winner, and for everyone outside of those top 16 teams we have the pleasure of seeing Dota 2 in action for the very first time, with the whole tournament being casted in multiple languages for us all to enjoy.

So in less than 3 weeks time, possibly a landmark e-sports game will be born via the brute force of Valve's wallet - it's certainly a good way to wash aside the competition in the MOBA scene (the game type Dota falls into) such as Heroe's of Newarth, the original Dota, and League of Legends. LoL and HoN have struggled to gain a place in e-sports, with LoL being the more successful of the two, and have never really drawn in much money - definitely no where near $1million. Valve plans to change this, and force Dota 2 into the e-sports scene by dangling a large bag of cash for all the MOBA players to see....quite a good plan actually!

So will Dota 2 be able to keep up with the pace Valve are setting? Only time will tell. The game certainly has a talented development team behind it, and is not to mention the one true sequel to Dota and has promised to stay true to the original, where as games like LoL seem to have watered down the Dota experience and made a new game completely. Hopefully Valve will be willing to support Dota 2 and its venture into the e-sports arena, as failure to have anyone follow up this simply massive tournament could result in 'just another MOBA' floating around the wannabe e-sports scene.

Fingers crossed Dota 2 amazes us all, and best of luck to the 16 teams competing at Gamescon...no pressure on them at all I'm sure :) All eyes on http://www.dota2.com/ for more info!

With the ESL Brink Championship entering a decisive phase, ESL TV has prepared something special for all the supporters.

Today marks the beginning of IGN's Pro SC2 league, the IPL - cunningly named the IPL2.

Back in 2003 I was pretty hooked with a bunch of mates on a game called Planetside. It was the first full on attempt to do the dirty work of merging the terms "MMO" and "FPS" together, and what a cracking game it was.

Recently TF2 has been hitting the headlines with the announcment of its new "Meet The Medic" patch. The patch has the usual host of guns, hats, sticks, knives, swords, bundles, boxes...you name it, the patch has it. Big news of the patch though is you can now login to Steam and find you can download TF2 - for free!

Want a bit more than the parkour in Brink? Take sliding to the extreme in the newest addition to the ever popular PC series Tribes, with Hi-Rez Studios new title Tribes:Ascended.  The Tribes series has always been a straight up shooter concentrating on multiplayer only, with the series gimmik being each player is equipped with a jetpack which they can hurtle themself across the map with, and gaining enough speed allows players to "slide" across the landscape at incredible speeds making for a pretty unique playstyle in every match.

Big change for Tribes:Ascended is....this one won't cost you a penny to play! Yes after the flop Global Agenda was (Hi-Rez's Studios last game which is free to play on Steam), it is good to see the developers still see the great potential behind making a game free to play - and as a gamer on a budget, free is always a eye opening word I'm sure you will all agree. Tribes is also another eye opener, so to see the two together really gets me excited about the game...and did I mention its currently PC only? *shock*

Some intresting Brink news today

The game’s first DLC, Agents of Change, will be FREE for two weeks on Xbox LIVE, PSN, and Steam! The content is currently in submission at Microsoft and Sony, and we expect it to release in early July. the DLC features two all-new environments, five new player abilities, two new outfits, and two new weapon attachments. Check out the screenshots dont it just look lovley

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Heroes of Stalingrad Competitive Support

With BF3 hitting this years E3 we got a first look into some actual multiplayer footage, as well as some information on the some of the features included in the game. Overall the game has been reported to be very smooth for something that is pre-alpha. And the people who tested it never noticed any framerate loss while playing. The game however, has a Battlefield: Bad Company 2 feel, but as many has already mentioned it is a lot more than that. If you try to jump over something you don't just simply jump, you see an animation of your solider leaping over, something that has become quite popular lately in games like Brink and Crysis 2, maybe we will see an interesting movement system in BF3 – nothing has been confirmed yet though. Many described it as Bad Company 2 on crack with a BF2 feel to it, with mind-blowing graphics, more intense gameplay, amazing weapon customization, superb animations, but most important of all people have found it really good so far.

Days of rumours, leaked releases, and the usual mix of lies and missinformation - Blizzard has finally came out and made a full on preview page regarding Starcraft 2's second campaign in the planned trillogy - Heart of the Swam. Big news is - Kerrigan is clearly back, something certainly happend when that Xel'Naga artifact went off at the end of the first campaign - Wings of Liberty - as the Queen of Blades is no more and the Kerrigan you see in the reveal is what we now have. What exactly went on, we may never know, at least not until Heart of the Swarm is released.

In the preview missions which can be found over at Blizzard's official HotS page. Kerrigan can be seen actively trying to regain control of the Zerg Broods, which have scattered into isolation after the demise of the Queen of Blades. Along with gathering the Broods together, there is glimpses of further genetic mutations for Zerg units than what we have ever seen before...while she may no longer be know as the Queen of Blades...has Kerrigan turned into something more dangerous than anyone ever expected? We'll have to wait and see when Heart of the Swarm is release on....well released on typical Blizzard "when its ready" time line - some things never change...