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Amazon is your cheap THQ download headquarters next week
Starting this Sunday, you'll be able to download a startlingly large number of THQ games from Amazon for prices that are equally startling in their affordability. The Deal of the Week will offer Saints Row 3 for $25, Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War II Retribution Complete Pack for $20, and an assortment of $5 games including Darksiders, STALKER, and Company of Heroes. In addition, tons of DLC is discounted. Find the full list after the break.This could be a good time to see what Warhammer 40K games are all about before the eventual arrival of the formerly MMO Dark Millennium.
Warhammer: Dawn of War 2 soundtrack available May 24
If you were distracted from the fast-paced real-time strategy action of Warhammer: Dawn of War 2 by its own catchy ditties, you can soon allow the game's soundtrack to preoccupy you during your other, non-virtual tasks. THQ has teamed up with Sumthing Else Music Works to release the title's orchestral score on a two-CD collection, all composed by delightfully-named maestro Doyle Donehoo. Oh, that's fun. Doy-le! Done-hoo! The soundtrack will be available in tangible form at select retail outlets, as well as intangible forms on Amazon MP3, iTunes and Sumthing Digital's official site, on May 24. Until then, just keep humming that melody in your head as you shuffle your troops around. Or as you wash your dog. Or as you carry out the recycling.
Itagaki's Valhalla Game Studios sharing tech with Relic for Devil's Third
Among the many things touched on by THQ Core Games head Danny Bilson in his speech this morning was Tomonobu Itagaki's post-Team Ninja home, Valhalla Game Studios. Rather than speak to when we'll hear more about Devil's Third, Bilson outed Itagaki's current location: Vancouver, Canada. Apparently, the head of Valhalla Studios and some of his team are "in Vancouver at Relic Studios, partnering with Relic on a few really cool aspects of the technology in their game." Bilson brought this up in an effort to explain how THQ treats, "all our external teams as internal teams" -- Relic Entertainment is owned by THQ, while Valhalla is self-owned -- and that means sharing technology on a regular basis. We later clarified with Bilson that this means Relic is contributing in some way to Devil's Third (rather than vice versa), leaving us to speculate what this could mean Devil's Third -- an extra space marine or two? Some form of hybrid ninja slash marine thing? Ohhhh, right, that already exists. How could we have forgotten?
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War 2 beta on Jan. 21
click for hugeness Relic Entertainment's Mark Noseworthy has confirmed with Joystiq that the Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War 2 closed beta will begin January 21st if you purchased the original Dawn of War expansion, Soulstorm. Procrastinators, take note: you'll be introduced into the public beta just a week later on January 28th. Or, break the cycle of lethargy and pick up the expansion in order to grab an early beta spot.We got a closer look at Dawn of War 2 during CES, and fans of real-time strategy games will not be disappointed ... unless you don't own a PC (but c'mon, how could you be an RTS buff without owning a PC?). Dawn of War 2 will be a PC-only release with Games for Windows Live features like voice chat and Achievements.
Joystiq hands-on: Dawn of War 2
We learned a valuable lesson at CES last week: Don't demo an RTS game on a trade show floor. Why? Because it's nigh-impossible to hear a developer's instructions over the deafening noise of geek-outs. It turns into something like this dialogue snippet from our hands-on experience with Warhammer 40000: Dawn of War 2:Relic: "So, you'll quickly want to set a rally point here." *taps screen*Joystiq: *clicks on random units* [units march off-screen]Relic: "Okay, so if you look at this icon, you'll see that your character is earning zeal. You might want to build some heavy firepower units for support."Joystiq: *attacks enemy power generator* [cue: bad move!]It was just too darn loud at CES to get good instructions, and Relic only had one demo station on hand, which obviously did not feature any PVP gameplay. Naturally, we had StarCraft 2 in mind as we fooled around with Dawn of War 2, measuring Relic's RTS against what we've played of Blizzard's next blockbuster. We can say that Dawn of War 2 is currently winning in the looks department. As we watched an Imperial Tank literally roll through walls and crush them into powder while Space Marines jumped over the action with jetpacks, we were remiss to have left our drool bib back home in the hamper.We've embedded a pair of videos from our session after the break, including producer Mark Noseworthy blowing stuff up!
