Joystiq

Video Games Live continues touring with a few special shows during the month of July. On July 10, the National Symphony Orchestra (which did two sold-out shows at the Kennedy Center in DC) will perform at the WolfTrap Feline Center in Virginia. Sid Meier, Civilization IV vocalist Ron Ragin and game composer Grant Kirkhope (Donkey Kong Country, GoldenEye, Banjo-Kazooie, Viva Pinata) will all be in attendance.

For Texans, Halo composer Mike Salvatori will make a "special guest appearance" at the Ft. Worth show on July 14. A few days later, The Houston Symphony will perform the show in its namesake city for two shows on July 18, in collaboration with MusiCON 09. The special afternoon show is entitled "Blizzard Live!" and will showcase songs from the Warcraft, Starcraft and Diablo games. Five Blizzard composers will attend and participate in a Q&A panel.

There will also be a performance at the San Diego Comic-Con on July 23 at the outdoor Embarcadero Marina Park, which will include synchronized fireworks. Tickets are available at the Video Games Live site. Check out the full list of July tour stops after the break.

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My Dearest Felicity,

Prithee, I hope this letter finds thee well. Our distance makes my heart yearn for you, like an A misses Zed. I spend my days contemplating napkins and seeing the colour of your eyes in the tweed jackets of the commoners walking by. The hours are long here in The Colonies. Bennington tells me that, at Her Majesty's University of New Yorkshire, they are on the verge of perfecting a machine that allows one to play games through the telly. Imagine that! To have such a magnificent device in 2009 would be ever so pip-pip hooray in passing the time. I plan to put on my finest wig tomorrow and travel there to experience their first "video game" for this device. What sport are you participating in currently?

Humbly yours,
Sir Robin Woolcott Ellington Spencer of Covington Crossing, Virginia

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Steam is offering an incredible deal on 20 of 2K Games' hottest titles in the 2K Huge Games Pack. Featuring well-known titles such as Bioshock and Civilization IV, the package is a steal at $53.99. In fact, that's only a few dollars more than that bunk Bioshock bundle, so if you've got the extra dough laying around and want some new games to play, we suggest you check this deal out.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in!]

Those lovable scamps from Mega64 are at it again, bringing their own brand of humor to everyone's favorite river-fording, axle-busting game, Oregon Trail. We won't try to break down the comedy of this latest vignette, but will instead offer that everyone in this video is crazy for not trading bacon. Seriously, who doesn't like bacon? Robots?

Head past the break to catch the troupe's latest.

[Thanks, Chris!]

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Worried that those pesky digital shelves are going to put your local brick-and-mortar out of business in the next few weeks? Worry not, friends, as Valve's Doug Lombardi is here to put all your worries to bed. Talking to GamesIndustry.biz, Lombardi claimed that "free weekend" sales on Steam (among others) actually help to bolster sales at physical retail locations as well as online.

"Recently we've seen data that shows Left 4 Dead free weekends increase the sales of Left 4 Dead on Steam, at retail and on the Xbox 360, which we would never have guessed could have happened, but it's just that word of mouth," says Lombardi. Furthermore, he waves off talk of bad blood between Valve and GameStop over the developer's Steam service, saying, "We spent more money at GameStop in the US promoting Left 4 Dead than we did at any other chain ... we sold more copies of Left 4 Dead at Gamestop than we did at any other chain ... for us, whichever cash register you want to pay at, that's fine." Not that it matters to GameStop anyway, given the lack of a threat posed for at least another five years, right?

We'd be lying if we didn't say we're a bit worried about the future of gaming controllers. Between the Nintendo's MotionPlus, Microsoft's Project Natal and Sony's ... erm ... motion thing, our precious game pads get more and more antique looking every day. And according to a recent patent filed by Sony that Siliconera found, our precious controllers have one more thing to fear: everyday objects.

That's right, friends -- in the future, we could be using our real-life keys to open doors, our swords to slice up fools, and our guns (not outside of the US) to shoot up the screen "accidentally." The patent shows off a PlayStation Eye-based system that can recognize 3D objects and use them in-game based on various actions taken by the player -- something Microsoft claims it's Natal is also capable of doing. Various household items will be affected in different ways, the example given being a U-shaped object that, when turned upwards, becomes a sword, versus a U-shaped block when facing downwards (think Halo's Covenant Energy Sword). Apparently the system is able to scan a whole mess of objects and store them in a databank for future use. Like so much future tech we've seen recently, we're taking this one with a full truckload of salt until we get some face time.

"Working on the Nintendo Wii was a pretty exciting thing for us. We were excited about the unique controls and what they brought to the gamer," explains Steve Papoutsis in this new dev diary. Extraction, the Wii-exclusive prequel to Dead Space, as with many Wii games, takes advantage of multiple control modes, depending on whether you use the Wii Remote or Zapper. Either way, the game utilizes some clever Wii-specific tricks, like switching to alt-fire by simply turning the controller on its side.

The footage showcased in the latest dev diary highlights some of the best visuals we've seen on Wii so far. One of the co-op segments highlighted in the video combines puzzle-solving and monster-blasting in a rather smartly designed (and terrifying) way. Even worse, the two players will have to switch off during the puzzle as enemies continue to jump in. With so many clever ideas being thrown about, Extraction may have a shot at making us all scream in terror.

Break out those tattered jeans and torn up flannel, because Guitar Hero: World Tour is getting a new DLC pack for the punk in all of us. Dubbed the Epitaph Punk-O-Rama Track Pack, the download features three tunes from three separate well-known Epitaph artists. It may be a bit more on the mainstream side of punk, but they're good tracks nonetheless.

Here's what you'll get (440 XBL / $5.49 PSN):

• "21st Century Digital Boy" by Bad Religion ($1.99 PSN / 200 Wii Points)
  
• "Linoleum" by NOFX ($1.99 PSN / 200 Wii Points)
• "Ruby Soho" by Rancid ($1.99 PSN / 200 Wii Points)

The track pack is available for download now in the US and Europe. Who's about to rock? We may or may not salute you.

So first thing's first. Where's Half Life 2 Episode 3?

Laughs. Stay tuned! No news on that today.

Worth a try! What's the real deal with PS3 development? At the end of last year you seemed quite up on the idea and then nothing since then.

We're still up on the idea. The thing that we've come to the conclusion on is that we've got to get some PS3 developers at Valve. We always look at everything as if we were customers of our products -- what would we want and what would we expect? If you look at The Orange Box -- PC: 96 on Metacritic, 360: 96 on Metacritic, PS3 like... 84 or something. And then you look at Left 4 Dead, I think it was 89 or 90 on both platforms.

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Telltale has been churning out some fantastic adventure games as of late. The team responsible for Sam & Max, Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People and Wallace & Gromit has found its games on both WiiWare and Xbox Live Arcade. But why no love for the PlayStation Network? It's "easy," explains Dave Grossman to The Guardian. "Our engine doesn't run on the PlayStation yet."

We'd like to think that the developers are working on making the engine that powers these games fully multi-platform. We don't see why Telltale couldn't handle the PS3, especially considering the success found by the folks behind Penny Arcade Adventures.

Apparently EA is working on a sequel to Skate 2, if the Epicly Trife twitter is to be believed. Epicly Trife (NSFW) is a site dedicated to skating, and its twitter account said the following: "I just got told 'tonight we gotta celebrate,' one of the bro's got offered to be in SKATE 3." By no means a confirmation, we're still excited, as Skate 2 was not only a great sequel, but pretty much the best skating sim around. Plus, it's much easier to get up after falling down four flights of stairs in a video game, as gravity is a much more harsh mistress in real life.

We've put in word to EA for comment, but with almost everyone taking the day off today, don't hold your breath for a response. We sure aren't.

[Via Kotaku]

For all the talk of petitions and boycotts over Left 4 Dead 2's sooner-than-expected release, the game doesn't seem to be suffering much. A Valve representative tells Eurogamer that pre-orders for the sequel are currently double that of the original's pre-order figures from the same time last year . Although that sounds impressive, it's possible to see some spin in there -- Left 4 Dead didn't really have its big coming-out party until E3 2008, which technically wouldn't occur for another two weeks from now. Couple that with general sequel buzz and you might have your inflated pre-order figure.

Nitpicks aside, Valve has already stated that it plans to continue supporting Left 4 Dead with more content. The company expects to announce more DLC near the end of summer and has expressed that people will understand the big L4D picture within a year. Assuming it hasn't announced Left 4 Dead 3 by then, of course.