The times when annual computer upgrades were common practice have long passed. Nowadays most PC games tend to be conservative in the graphics department, which has resulted in years old PCs still handling anything recent quite easily in maximum detail. But the hardware market hasn’t stagnated to the same extent and some of you may be looking to replace your old barrels with something new and shiny that isn’t too expensive.

And that’s where this quarterly Budget Gaming PC article comes in. Within I assemble a reasonably priced gaming PC that can handle anything recent with relative ease. So if you’re not quite up-to-date with the latest advancements in hardware or simply want to assemble a capable gaming PC at low cost, then this is where you want to be.

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Digital distribution platforms feature regular special offers to lure in new customers. These exceptional deals can be used to your advantage as a means to quickly assemble a vast collection of great PC games at very low cost. But that requires regularly checking in on each and every digital download service for their latest deals, which can be a tiresome affair.

That’s where my weekly Discount Drone feature comes in. In Discount Drone I take a weekly look at everything that is on offer and extract the best deals for your perusal. These are formatted by genre and accompanied by short and accurate descriptions, so that you can decide whether a game might be worth having. This includes special offers on: Direct2Drive, GamersGate, Get Games, Good Old Games, Green Man Gaming, Impulse and Steam.

This is the second week of the new genre-based format that I hope brings the games to the forefront instead of the distribution platforms. This week sees some interesting offers as the summer deals continue. Some interesting newcomers are the Apogee Pack, which offers a bundle of classic first person shooters and Mount and Blade: Warband, which is an excellent medieval life simulator/RPG. And some interesting deals from last week remain active, as can be seen with Get Games’ excellent strategic offerings of Commandos Complete, King’s Bounty: Armored Princess and Space Rangers 2: Reboot amongst many others.

And there are many more games to be had this week, so head on down for the full story. And be sure to subscribe to GameDrone for weekly coverage of the best digital download offers!

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These past few days have seen an online shitstorm brewing with regards to Stardock’s latest game, Elemental: War of Magic, which offers a curious mixture between role-playing and turn-based strategy. After actually getting a few hours of play time in myself I’m now going to chime in with my own opinion, but let’s first take a look at what exactly happened.

On monday Stardock unlocked a pre-release version of Elemental on Impulse. This was a day early in response to stores breaking the street date. As a result the day 1 patch Stardock had been preparing arrived too late. Soon after pre-release, PC Gamer editor Tom Francis issued a warning that gamers avoid Elemental for now. At first glance a fair warning for a buggy product, albeit one that saw massive improvements a mere few hours later with two large patches.

The story soon got picked up by other websites, exaggerated and spun out of control. But the launch day patch(es) actually did fix a vast majority of the issues present in the pre-release version of Elemental. And now that I’ve given it a go myself, I’m left wondering why PC Gamer haven’t rescinded their pre-review warning yet.

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The fourth profession revelation for Guild Wars 2 was spoiled at last week’s gamescom 2010 event as the playable demo already included the new profession: the necromancer! But that hasn’t deterred ArenaNet from posting up an in-depth article that details the newly revealed profession and includes several clips of necromancers in action.

The necromancer was easily one of the most popular professions in the original Guild Wars games and judging by the showing at gamescom it looks to be no different in Guild Wars 2. Necromancers promise to be extremely durable casters who use buffs, debuffs and minions to wreak havoc with their enemies. But their main distinguishing feature is death shroud, which makes them take spirit form and gain a new skill bar with powerful abilities.

Necromancers may seem a lot like their predecessors in Guild Wars, but a lot has changed under the hood. I’d go so far as to name it the profession that has changed the most when compared to its Guild Wars variant of the ones that have been announced thus far. So be sure to take a look below as I delve into the information that’s been revealed thus far, both by ArenaNet and their gamescom 2010 demo!

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Last week marked the first time that gamers could actually get their hands on the controls of Guild Wars 2 during the 4 day long gamescom 2010 event in Cologne, Germany. And it didn’t fail to impress as it proved to be the talk of the show and went on to win the Best Online Game of Show award.

But much more importantly for us eager fans who didn’t travel down to Germany, this also resulted in a torrent of new gameplay information and countless gameplay videos all over the internet. I’ve tried to distill some order in this flood of new information and extracted the new and interesting bits for an enormous list of all things new and cool in Guild Wars 2 since gamescom 2010.

Read on for an organized list of a majority of the new information that was revealed at this year’s gamescom. I may have missed a few things, but most of the important stuff is there and that’s already a lot. And I’ve even included links to some particularly interesting videos and the excellent Guild Wars 2 Guru forum topic that includes links to practically all Guild Wars 2 related content resulting from gamescom including dozens of gameplay videos and video interviews.

Also be sure to check back later today for the official reveal of the Necromancer profession. Stay tuned to GameDrone for that and more regular updates on Guild Wars 2. Also keep an eye on the on the official Guild Wars 2 website and ArenaNet company blog for the latest information and media.

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Gamescom 2010 is finally over and has produced a lot of exciting new PC game information over the past four days.

It also resulted in a lot of new game trailers and actual gameplay footage for some very promising upcoming games. So I’ve scoured the web for the most interesting gamescom footage and have embedded it below. Some of this includes excellent gameplay footage of Guild Wars 2 and The Witcher 2, but also featured are interesting trailers for Rift: Planes of Telara, Warhammer 40,000: Dark Millennium Online and more.

All of this footage is accompanied by brief introductions to each game or evaluations of the footage shown. I go into some detail as to the limitations of the newly launched free version of EverQuest 2, for example. So read on for some of the most interesting stories of gamescom 2010 and be sure to also take a look at last week’s coverage of pre-gamescom announcements and trailers.

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Mafia 2 has big shoes to fill and with its recently released demo 2K Czech hopes to convince the series’ fans that it’s up to the task. And the demo better be good, because the introduction of a third person perspective and cover-based shooter dynamics has many fans of the original worried that Mafia 2 will be dumbed down for the consoles.

But these are the creators of Mafia (2002) and they seem to know exactly what makes a good mob game. This may be a mere 20 to 30 minute demo that presents a mission already shown in gameplay videos, but it does include every aspect of Mafia 2 gameplay. So it’s an ideal demo to test the waters and see whether Mafia 2 has the potential to live up to its predecessor.

The demo starts with the protagonist, Vito, standing in his home and the phone ringing. Pick up the phone and he’ll be called in to join his buddies Henry and Joe for a hit on the other side of town. At that point it’s possible to explore a portion of the city within a 10 minute time limit, or head on over to Henry and Joe to actually get that mission underway.

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I stumbled across this review I wrote last year while browsing through my drafts, so I decided to publish it as my first “Playing Catch-up” review. These are reviews of older games that I only got around to playing a fair while after their release, or re-reviews of games that have changed greatly since I’ve previously covered them.

Prince of Persia is Ubisoft’s attempt to reboot their popular platformer franchise in order to appeal to a wider audience. The stilted and punishing platforming segments of the previous trilogy has been removed in favor of smooth acrobatics and very forgiving gameplay. And even the combat has been revamped to see less generic mob-bashing and more engaging fights against powerful and imposing creatures.

But the most obvious departure from previous games in the franchise is the introduction of a sidekick, Elika. This ‘princess’ aids the new Prince in his adventure as they both set out to rid Elika’s lands of the corruption caused by an escaped evil known as Ahriman. And she’s far more than just a random AI-driven hanger-on, as the Prince is regularly forced to rely on Elika in both acrobatics and combat.

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