The Best of Big Download: November 10-16

The holiday shopping season is about kick into high gear....keep your stress down about buying presents for your mother-in-law by checking out a week's worth of highlights from Big Download:

Exclusive features

• Playing Together: Co-op in PC FPS Games: Doom started the whole co-op mod in PC shooters and we look back at the trend on the eve of the launch of Left 4 Dead.

• Microsoft talks about Games For Windows Live plans: Microsoft's Michael Wolf gives us the 411 on their plans to revamp their Games For Windows Live service include their upcoming Marketplace additions.

• America's Army AA3 screenshot comparisons: America's Army is developing an Unreal Engine 3 revamp of their free multiplayer shooter and we have detailed screenshot comparisons of both the current and upcoming versions.

• League of Legends interview: We chat with Riot Games about their upcoming multplayer fantasy action-strategy game.

• Reviews: We review the latest American McGee's Grimm episode King Midas

• MODMonday: Our mod column this week is about a graphical revamp of Wolfenstein 3D, WolfGL

• Big Iron: Our hardware column this week takes a look at the perils of system restores in PC rigs

• Mac Monday: This week's look at gaming on the Mac takes a look at the recent fantasy RPG Kivi's Underground.

• Independent Minds: Our regular look at the indie game scene takes a look at titles made with the Unity platform.

• Boot Disk and Virtual Bargain Bin: Both our retro gaming and value priced game columns this week are about the turn based strategy game Disciples: The Sacred Lands.

• Big Ideas: Our regular look at trends in gaming is all about game reviews and how useful they really are.

• Freeware Friday: Our regular look at free games this week is about the procedural RTS game Dyson.

• BigCast: Our weekly podcast on PC gaming has some guest chatters this time round from sister sites Joystiq and GameDaily.

• Contests: We are giving our readers a way to win one of three copies of the PC version of Quantum of Solace and we still have beta codes to give out for Battleforge.
  

Downloads

• MotoGP 08 Demo: Try out this latest game in the motocycle racing sim series from Capcom

• FIFA Manager 09 Demo: It's the demo for the latest in the series of soccer management sim games

• Call of Duty: World at War Patch: Download this first patch for the just released Activision WWII shooter

• Virtual Skipper Online Full Game: Check out the full free version of this sailing sim title

• Sacred 2 Intro Trailer: Check out the intro to CDV's new action-RPG.

• Tomb Raider Underworld Sinking Ship Trailer: It's a sinking feeling for this trailer to the Eidos action-adventure game.

News

• Ubisoft buys World in Conflict developer Massive Entertainment

• Oddly named strategy game gets new title

• Richard Garriott departs NCsoft

• Supreme Commander 2 to be published by...Square Enix? Yep.

• The Wheel of Time games, including an MMO, announced

• Games for Windows Live gets long awaited revamp

• Battlefield Heroes beta to shut down until early 2009

• 2D Boy: 90 percent of World of Goo PC players pirated the game

• Rumor: Brash Entertainment done?

• Tropico 3 announced by Kalypso Media

• No Huxley US launch in 2008