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The best PC-gaming gear for students
While many of you will likely make your school computer some sort of all-purpose laptop, a few of you need something that can also withstand extensive gameplay sessions. For that reason, we've included in our back-to-school guide a handful of gaming-specific notebooks along with three GPUs, should your existing rig be due for an upgrade. Already have a system you're happy with? Treat yourself to a mouse, keyboard, or a game or three.
Crazy summer Steam sale includes some fantastic Mac games
The PC gaming community has long enjoyed the ridiculously awesome Steam sales Valve loves to break out during holidays and at other fun times of the year. The sales deliver game bundles for crazy cheap prices, even on AAA current titles. Steam's summer sale kicked off a couple of days ago. For the first time, Mac gamers get to join in on the fun thanks to Steam's recent adoption of OS X. While there are hundreds of Mac & PC titles on sale through July 4th, most of the best deals are found on a few select games featured each day. Today's sales have two good selections that Mac gamers may want to check out. For strategy fans Paradox Interactive's deep historical real-time strategy game Europa Universalis III lets the player control a European nation and rewrite history between 1453 and 1820 AD. For adventure gamers, a bundle of all five episodes of the previously mentioned Telltale Games' Tales of Monkey Island is also available at a great price. The clock is ticking -- but thankfully Valve offsets the time for most US timezones so you can get a chance to pick them up in the morning. If those two games don't belong to any of your favorite genres, there are a bunch of other titles included in the full sale. Right now is a great time to pick up any of Valve's growing list of games released for OS X with first-person shooters Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike: Source, Portal and Half-Life 2. Better yet, grab the Valve Complete Pack for all of them so you're ready to go when Left 4 Dead 2 arrives on OS X.
The Best Of Big Download: June 8-14, 2008
Did you have a good week? We had a terrific one at Big Download but with the release of Spore Creature Creator next week it promises to be an even busier time for our site. In the meantime here are the highlights from the past weekExclusive Features Interview: Vic Davis of Armaggedon Empires: We chat with the creator of the acclaimed indie turn based strategy PC game. MODverlous Monday: This week we examine two custom mad maps for Blizzard's classic RTS game Starcraft. Casually Speaking: We take a look at the "death" of the video arcade. Freeware Friday: This week's free featured game is the nearly graphics-free RTS/RPG title Dwarf Fortress Big Iron: Our regular hardware column takes you through some video card basics
Best of the Rest: Alexander's Picks of 2007
Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword (PC) Please, make the addiction stop! Civilization IV: Warlords, the first expansion for Civ IV, made my "Best of the Rest" last year and Beyond the Sword tops this year's list. The funny thing is I'm not a Civ fanboy, nor am I even that great of a player (Full Disclosure: I still play on Noble level), but Civ IV is a game I can come back to over and over again. Beyond the Sword added much-needed mechanics for culture-prone and passive-aggressive players, with enhancements in espionage and other concepts "beyond the sword." Oh, and just to keep last year's tradition going: Firaxis (2K, Take-Two), please get the rights to Alpha Centauri back from EA and give us a sequel!
