Indie game dev. David Williamson's newest project was officially released to the wilds recently, and I'm definitely digging it. Hack, Slash, Loot is a turn-based dungeon crawler with an objective that could not be more plain: hack, slash, and loot your way to the end. I just spent some quality time with the demo (available here) and I'm definitely a fan of the grid-based movement and combat.

As the title implies, there's loot aplenty with new equipment, weapons, or one-use items - scrolls, potions, and the like - waiting for you around every corner. Dungeons are generated randomly each time you start a quest so it's always a new experience and, much like Binding of Isaac, you can get lucky and things just might go your way or you'll get a particularly difficult draw. In the case of the latter, good luck. 

Take a peek at the trailer and screens, give the demo a try, and, if it's your cup o' tea, you can snag the game for $10 for PC, Mac, or Linux. 

Ed Boon is an enigmatic dude. First of all, he allowed Dan Forden to put the classic "toasty!" taunt into the series, which took us over a decade to decipher the meaning of. Next, he denies then reconfirms the existence of Mortal Kombat Kollection on PC. That guy!

Regardless of what Boon says, Mortal Kombat Kollection is now on Steam, ready to be downloaded -- and it includes online play. So why get it on PC when it's already available on consoles?

Well, you could always hook your PC up to a big screen using an HDMI cable and use any controller you want -- from a USB Super Nintendo controller to a Wii-mote. It also has the added benefit of most likely melting into pennies during a Steam sale. Given these compelling reasons, is anyone going to pick it up? Or are fighting games on the PC dead to you?

Mortal Kombat Kollection [Steam]

MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic continues to grow, now coming in at 1.7 million active subscribers since its launch in December. EA says that over 2 million gamers have purchased a copy of SWTOR in these past six weeks, and they've been playing the sh*t out of it ever since. Right know we stand at about 239 million game hours, or over 27,000 years of in-game time. Over 20 billion NPCs have been killed, and more than 148 billion credits have been spent in the past month or so.

EA credits early success to their uptime record, which stands at 99.5 percent outside scheduled maintenance. They say that the next game update, which will bring new content, systems and guild features, is scheduled for release in Spring 2012.

Okay, we're done here. Back to SWTOR.

Alan Wake will hit Steam on February 16 and will follow a bit later at retail in something they call a "game box." Pricing is confirmed at $29.99 on Steam.

What you'll get with this PC version is high-res graphics and support for both multiscreen and 3D support. Now's your chance to see Alan Wake at every setting maxed. There's graphic support for lots of resolutions and ratios, and a multithreaded engine lets you make use of your fancy-ass quad core CPUs. Both Nvidia's stereoscopic 3D and AMD Eyefinity 3D are supported. Finally, there's new options to hide the hud and/or adjust the field of view.

Of course, on the control side you can use either a Microsoft gamepad, or new keyboard and mouse controls.

I'm really looking forward to giving Alan Wake a second go on my beast of a gaming rig. I'll be sure to let you know how that goes later this month.

A new trailer for Syndicate went up today, detailing the "DART 6" abilities that players will have at their disposal. The video details a lot of the stuff that yesterday's demo simply didn't have, making me feel much more confident in the game again. 

With DART 6, players can ruin enemy guns, turn them suicidal, or even convince them that their allies are the enemy. It's all about screwing with their heads, which sounds like a bloody good laugh. 

I'm still really hopeful that this turns out well.

Trion Worlds has announced Rift Lite, allowing players to try the MMO Rift without any payments or time restrictions for the first 20 levels. The maximum level within the game is 50, so 20 free levels is more than generous if you ask me. Rift Lite is launching alongside a new patch, Carnival of the Ascended, which you can read about here. 

It's been almost a year since Rift launched and I think Rift Lite is the correct move. There are those of us who have always been interested in Rift's world, but not enough to actually shell out the initial investment. Rift Lite fixes this by creating what is, in essence, an extremely long demo. This is a great alternative to the free-to-play model since there aren't any restrictions on what you can do before level 20.

In fact, my experience has shown that the first 20 levels of an MMO are generally the best produced; they're so crucial to the game. If you don't hook the player in this phase, chances are they won't stick around and pay that monthly fee for very long. 

You can get in on this action by heading to the website.

GameStop's digital distribution service, Impulse, now offers a few of Valve's hits for download. This is the first time Valve's games have been made available on a digital service outside of Steam. 

Gamasutra says that Portal 2, Left 4 Dead, Half-Life and The Orange Box are now available via Impulse. You'll still need to register the games through Valve's Steam client, though. Hell, you might as well just buy them on Steam.

Think of the games being on Impulse as a wierd sort of link to Steam, bringing GameStop's customers and their purchases to Valve's service. It seems like Valve is not worried at all about their competition.

Well folks, baseball season is approaching once again and, of course, that means it's almost time to pony up for the newest iteration of MLB 2K12. Just in time to get you hyped up, 2K's released a new teaser.

As is the way with most modern baseball games, the trailer focuses on the intense moments before a pitch. In that respect, they nailed it. It's an intense moment. If you're picking this one up in March, don't forget to take a shot at their million dollar Perfect Game competition.

Back in 1999 the concept of an MMO baffled me and I would have no truck with the genre until several years later. Thankfully, not everyone was as backwards then, or Everquest would not have lasted for the absurdly long time it has. Almost thirteen years and eighteen expansions since its launch, the well aged MMO is all set to make the move to free-to-play, a move its successor has already made.

Free and subscription (Silver) players alike will get a "welcome pack" containing brand new items when Everquest goes f2p in March. SOE has posted an FAQ which details the changes. There's certainly going to be a lot of content for new players to explore, but to be honest I have a feeling I've been spoiled by modern MMOs far too much to get into it. Regardless, it will be free so I might pop my head in and have a look.

2007's The Darkness was a fun, albeit flawed first-person shooter. The Starbreeze-developed title followed the exploits of Mafioso hitman Jackie Estacado on his 21st birthday as a hidden demonic power awakens inside him and he becomes a relentless killing machine.

The game stayed fairly close to its comic roots and offered unique gameplay options such as the controllable demon arms and Jackie's ability to summon darklings to do his bidding. Now, Digital Extremes picks up the license and the groundwork that Starbreeze laid out, and it appears they have improved upon every aspect of the original.

The Darkness II (PC, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 [previewed])
Developer: Digital Extremes
Publisher: 2K Games
Release: February 7, 2012

When speaking with lead game designer Tom Galt, he emphasized to me how he and his team took the criticisms of the original game in mind when working on the sequel. One of the main points they wanted to highlight was the emphasis they had on the story over the last title. They felt that The Darkness was a good origin, but didn't really present a lot to keep gamers interested, story-wise. To that end, this time around the gameplay is more story-driven, a move that aims to keep the players attention while still offering the same style of combat from the original and comic series.

Speaking of the comic, one of the first things players will notice with the new title is how much it looks like the comic. The developers wanted to stress that the look of the game isn't cel-shading, but rather a new art style they've developed called "graphic noir." Cel-shading tends to have thicker black outlines and a flat color to the art, whereas The Darkness II's style features more even colors, crisper tones, and even some hand-painted backgrounds to give it a more comic feel.

But back to the story. When we meet up with Jackie Estacado, he's been suppressing the Darkness within for four years now. He has had a good handle on controlling it, never unleashing it for fear of losing control. However, that doesn't last long, as a mysterious other force has plans for the Darkness itself. The demo that has been released now has some story elements in it, but these actually don't occur until later in the game, and are much more detailed than what's presented in the demo.

If you've played the demo on Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3, however, you've played the first level, where a mob hit squad attacks Jackie at his restaurant. The preview build I played picked up just shortly after the demo ends, with Jackie on the trail of the man who orchestrated the hit, a small-time hood named Swifty. For those that haven't played the demo yet, this is where you first do the quad-wielding. Jackie can hold a small arms weapon in each hand, and the two "demon arms" act as the other two weapons. The left and right bumpers (or L1 and R1) control these arms, and the amount of mayhem you can cause with them is frightening and awesome.

Your left demon arm can grab items, weapons, and even enemies, while the right acts as a striking implement. As you pass through firefights, the arms can be used to pick up ammo, hurl objects at your foes (such as pipes and explosive tanks) and slap around enemies to be taken out up close and personally. These special executions are particularly gruesome to watch, and you can pick up more using the game's talent tree. Essence points are earned through kills and other activities in the environment, and spending essence at portals around the environments yields new abilities (such as special attacks), executions, and more.

These attacks are fluid and fun, and I really got into using a combination of shooting, chucking items at guys behind cover, and then eviscerating foes who got too close. Of course, I also made sure to eat my fallen enemies' hearts along the way, as that refuels health and gives more essence points. One of the strongest differences over the original game is how quick and focused everything is. The animations of the demon arms don't ever interfere with your vision on screen, and even when eating hearts, the animations aren't as long and played out as they were in The Darkness, so you can even get repeated chomps in before moving on.

One of the biggest changes over the original, however, is the need for it to be dark in The Darkness II. Previously, you basically just shot out all the lights and moved on to the next section, using your darkness vision to see in low light, but never having the light be a noticeable issue with gameplay. Now, Darkness mode is always on, but when you enter the light, the arms hide within you, and you're blinded and weakened by the light -- so much so that you often have to take the lights out to advance. Enemies can even use light to try to take you down, so this even plays an active part in stopping Jackie throughout the game (such as in the first boss battle I encountered).

Not to give too much away (spoiler alert and all that) but it's revealed that Swifty is just a patsy, sent by a new character, Victor, created for the game, who leads an altered version of The Brotherhood from the comics: a cult which worships the Darkness, and even has dark armor protecting their bodies. How this all plays out will have to be discovered by the player.

Rounding out the single-player experience is the presence of a darkling, one of the small creatures summoned by the Darkness. There are no longer various darklings used for specific tasks as was the case in the first game. Instead, the one you're paired with acts as a guide, and the AI of this character is actually very helpful, taking out foes and assisting with kills. You'll even have a section where you play as the darkling to unlock areas for Jackie to pass through.

There was mention of two co-op modes, but I sadly didn't get to play them. Vendettas is a story-driven, four-person campaign that runs concurrently to the main story, and offers backstory as to what's happening with Jackie. The characters here don't have the Darkness, but each has a special weapon that can use an ability similar to one of Jackie's special attacks. There's also a mode called Hitlist; neither of these two options are a versus mode. The developers claimed they wanted to keep the focus on story and offer unique co-op modes instead.

With all that I saw, there definitely seems to be a good deal of replay value packed into the game, with artifacts to find and store at your mansion (which serves as the game's hub). The mansion itself offers a wealth of content too, including mini-games and interactions with characters from the comic that help move the storyline along. If you couldn't tell, I'm really anxious to get back into this game when it's released next week.