The Best of Big Download: January 26-February 1

Wow...everything is so different here. We love what you have done with the place. It's so....you, you know? Well, Big Download hasn't gotten a new site design but we have been extremely busy in the last week, especially on the news side of things. Check it out, check-in-outers:

Exclusive features

• Independent Games Festival: We go over a number of the nominees in the 2009 edition of the biggest indie games awards event. Check out the games in the categories of Technical Excellence, Innovation, Design Excellence, Visual Art Excellence and Audio Excellence.
• Zeno Clash impressions: We go hands on with a preview build of this upcoming first person action-melee game
• Mac Monday: Our regular Macintosh column takes a look at the action shooter Caster.
• Big Ideas: Our column on game themes takes a look at when the virtual world will take over the real world.
• Freeware Friday: Our look at free games this week takes a look at the action shooter TUMIKI Fighters.

Downloads

• World of Warcraft 3.0.8. Hotfix patch: Download this small patch to Blizzard's hit MMO game
• Grand Theft Auto IV PC patch 2: It's the latest patch for Rockstar Games' PC port of their hit open world action game.
• Crysis Warhead patch: It's the first patch for the single player shooter from Crytek
• Stranglehold patch 1.1: It's first patch in a long time for this Midway shooter.
• Section 8 cinematic trailer: It's some CGI footage from Timegate's upcoming sci-fi shooter.
• Red Alert 3 Uprising Talent trailer: Take a look at the first glimpse of the live action cast (including Ric Flair) for EA's upcoming downloadable RTS game.

News

• Sims 3 release date now in question
• No Fable II PC port..for now
• HanbitSoft claims it will continue Hellgate London as free-to-play game
• Big Unreal Tournament III patch in the works; Titan Pack expasion news
• Sins of a Solar Empire: Entrenchment gets final release date
• F.E.A.R. 2 goes gold
• Empire: Total War gets final release date; system specs revealed
• Nexon shuts down Vancouver-based dev studio
• Team Fortress 2 blog reveals update plans
• Blizzard sneaks out eight new Starcraft II screenshots
• Bruce Shelley says farewell to Ensemble in final blog
• Gears of War PC runs out of time..sort of
• Two new Need for Speed PC games announced
• Writer Marv Wolfman joins DC Universe Online team
• Paradox Interactive's future plans; new digital publishing line