There’s a ton of free-to-play news this week. In fact, this could be considered the one week of the year where most of the news revolved entirely around games being announced that are free-to-play and games that were once pay-to-play that are now becoming free-to-play. Regardless of how you look at it, City of Heroes and Team Fortress 2 are both going free-to-play. In other news, Robin has joined the cast of playable characters in Batman: Arkham City and some big news drops for Arma 2. These stories and more in this June 25th, 2011 edition of the Gaming Blend Weekly Recap.
Sunday
Innovation Runs Deep With Ubisoft’s From Deep. This is a completely different take on being an overseer.
Green Lantern Rise of the Manhunters Co-op Review. Does evil really shrink in the presence of the galactic Green crusaders or is this just another cheap movie tie-in?
DoTA 2 Free-to-Play? Is it possible that the new version of this game could go the route of being a F2P title? Click the link to find out.
Red Faction Armageddon Co-op Review How well does the game stack up on the co-op front? Well, the kings of co-op give it a rundown over at ,a href=http://www.cooptimus.com/>Co-Optimus.
Magic Done Right: Review of Duels of the Planeswalkers. Does this XBLA title conjure up the right spells and magic or is it just another RPG dud?
Monday
Console Battlefield 3 Runs at 30fps, 720p. 30 less frames than Modern Warfare but still fast enough to get the job done.
Sony Confirms New PS3 Slim Model. It gets even smaller folks.
Halo Combat Evolved Anniversary Supports Kinect. Well why not? It’s not like it all went into the graphics.
GRID Multiplayer Shut Down For PS3 and PC. That’s the cost of playing for free, I guess.
Mass Effect 3 Possibly To Include Four-Player Co-op. New reports nearly guarantee that some form of multiplayer is in store.
BigPoint Has More Registered Users Than Xbox Live, PSN, Wii Users Combined. Just goes to show you the power of the casual gamer, eh?
Sims 3 Generations Review: Latest Sims Expansion Pack Grows On You. So what can you do in the Generations that you can’t do in the others? Well, everything!
Tuesday
Robin Confirmed As Playable Character In Batman Arkham City With Pre-orders. Pick up a copy from Best Buy and you can play Boy Wonder.
Amy No Longer PSN Exclusive, Confirmed For XBLA. Because exclusives are just too overrated these days.
Duke Nukem Forever Demo Hits PC, Xbox 360. You can grab a taste of the Duke in a brief new demo that’s now available for your perusal.
Team Fortress 2 Meet The Medic, Uber Update Going Live Thursday. Some big new changes are on the way, find out what they are by clicking on the link.
Ghost Recon Future Soldier Multiplayer Beta Launches In January. You can try your hand at the new Ghost Recon next year.
Softstep KeyWorx Foot Controller Now Available For PC, Mac. Sometimes you just have to give your wrist a break.
City of Heroes Going Free-to-Play. Following in the footsteps of Champions Online, no less.
FIFA 12 Release Slated For September. You can start prepping your club to head to the World Cup come September.
Razer Orochi Black Chrome Gaming Mouse Now Available. Game in style with the brand new Razer mouse.
Portal 2 Sells Three Million Copies. It’s a big seller and Valve has another iconic game on their hands.
Backbreaker Vengeance Arriving June 29th For Xbox 360. Break some bones in the brand new sports title from NaturalMotion.
Why Activision Cancelled True Crime: Hong Kong. It’s the dumbest reason you could possibly imagine….and maybe even potentially dumber than what you could imagine.
Warrior of Dragon Announced, Featuring Console-Style Combat. Evade buttons, assassinations and more. Sounds like my kind of game.
Heroes of Newerth Servers Suffer Catastrophic Hardware Failure. Oh boy, I hope your level 50 Elves are all safe.
Thursday
Anarchy Online Celebrates 10th Anniversary. Ten whole years without being shutdown…that really is a milestone.
Sonic Generations Demo Now Available For PS3, Xbox 360. Try out the new Sonic in either 2D or 3D.
Elder Scrolls V Skyrim Pre-Orders Earn You Custom Map. A snazzy new map complete with everything you would expect from a snazzy new map.
Arma 2 Free Released. Arma 2 Free Released Today. Try your hand at the close cousin to Battlefield.
Fallout Vegas World Blues Gets Release Date; Trailer Due Next Week. Another new expansion for the popular Fallout Vegas is on the way.
L.A. Noire Coming To PC. It only makes sense, I mean…it is pretty much a point-and-click adventure game.
Friday
Black Prophecy Episode 1 Inferno of Tulima Expansion Announced. The F2P space sim expands its territory with a whole new expansion.
HellGate London, Tokyo Heads Into Open Beta June 30th. The once dead MMO comes back June 30th.
Solatorobo Red The Hunter Coming This Fall Courtesy XSeed Games. A dog and his trusty robot must save the world. Even though something about that sounds kind of weird.
Team Fortress 2 Now Free-to-Play; Meet The Medic Video Released. The popular team-based shooter is now entirely free-to-play, joining the hundred and one other F2P shooters out there.
Saturday
Dead Block Release Date Set For XBLA. It won’t be long before zombies will be getting their heads rocked and rolled.
Brink DLC Agents of Change Free For Two Weeks. Free DLC is never a bad thing.
Star Wars Galaxies Shutting Down In December. They should have taken a page out of Cryptic’s book and turned it free-to-play. Oh well.
Rumor: Xbox 360 Adding Free-to-Play Games. It’s all the rave these days.
Operatoin Flashpoint Red River Co-op Review. Find out how well the game plays while you’re teamed with a few friends.
That wraps up this edition of the Gaming Blend Weekly Recap. You can check out a brand new trailer for Team Fortress 2 called Meet the Medic. Enjoy.
