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NCsoft and Paragon Studios have provided a new update for Going Rogue, the upcoming expansion for the super hero themed MMO, City of Heroes. The update is a new video featuring commentary from the development team about the expansion's storyline, major personalities, character creation options, and Going Rogue's new power sets

The City of Heroes® Development Team is back to share more about the content headed your way in the upcoming Going Rogue expansion. Listen and watch as they not only discuss the characters of Praetoria -- Emperor Cole, Desdemona and Maelstrom, but also talk about the visually stunning new power sets that will be available to players when Going Rogue releases. Go here to view ViDoc #3 "The Consequences of Power"!

City Of Heroes: The Consequence Of Power

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Soldak Entertainment has released beta version 1.004 of its action RPG, Din's Curse. The new version fixes a few minor issues introduced with the 1.003 patch.

In Din's Curse players take the role of an adventurer cursed to walk the lands in a quest for redemption. The game features 141 possible class combinations, an infinite number of dynamically generated towns, and a game world directly impacted by player choices.

Changes in version 1.004:

• fixed a texture animation issue when have 2 textures
  
• added some more info when ChangeDisplaySettings fails
  
• logfile now defaults to on
  
• fixed some of the war against town text (fab)
  
• fixed highlighting minimap dots in perspective view mode (Roswitha)
  
• fixed scroll bars on world map (Caal)
  
• drop down for languages no longer will pick up English twice if zipped and loose files
  
• fixed changing a graphics option that resets the graphics, forgets the current gamma setting
  
• no longer turn towards clicked on enemies when dead (Roswitha)
  
• added alpha to teleport stone icon (Godot)
  
• moved view variables into user vars
  
• now monsters with quests are not solid so they don't trap you places (kaeldragor)
  
• a little bit more UI improvement
  
• improved a few effects

For the full list of changes and download links for the updates head over to the pages listed below.

Din's Curse Change List

Din's Curse Patches

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Inside Mac Games has posted a new preview of Amnesia: The Dark Descent from Frictional Games. The upcoming survival horror title drops players into the depths of darkness in the role of an amnesiac trapped in a foreboding castle. While on the run from unnatural horrors they will have to struggle to survive and remain sane.

A sample from the preview:

On the audio side, there's much more to get scared about. The ambient noise in the mansion is perfectly geared to get you jumpy and looking around. You'll just be walking along the hallway with your lantern out and suddenly hear what sounds like distant footsteps. As they get closer, you quickly douse your lantern and find somewhere to hide while you look for the source. Sometimes it's your imagination, as the wood does creak and insects do skitter all over the place. Other times, you've just saved your character's life. It's an extremely immersive experience, and can easily get you carefully leaning around every corner. It just puts you on edge.

IMG Previews Amnesia The Dark Descent

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Inside Mac Games has posted a new review of Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse from Telltale Games. This time the dog and rabbit duo must uncover the secrets behind a mysterious otherworldly power while battling a variety of unusual foes.

Here's an excerpt from the review:

Like all of the others in this series, Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse is a point-and-click adventure game. The stars of the series are Sam: a large, anthropomorphic dog with a genial love of violence, and his buddy Max: a rabid, sociopathic bunny (think Watership Down). The unusual pair must deal with a variety of unusual experiences as they run a detective agency. You control Sam as he stumbles around trying to solve a series of semi-connected cases using both the various objects he picks up and the assistance of his partner Max.

As always, Sam & Max are well-written and pretty goofy, as is the world around them. There is wonderful satire and stuff gets blowed up real good. In order to truly enjoy the game, I highly recommend you play the two prior games from Telltale Games first, as this one builds on characters and situations introduc

IMG Reviews Sam & Max The Devil's Playhouse

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Games4Mac.de has announced the first public release of Florian Bethke's InGamium. The plug-in for the Adium chat program allows users to receive and reply to instant messages from friends while playing a game, without having to leave fullscreen mode or quit the application. Ingamium currently supports a variety of titles including Aquaria, Bioshock, and Call of Duty.

Ingamium is a plugin for the free chat client Adium. It allows you to receive messages and reply to them while playing a game without leaving fullscreen mode or quitting the game. You´ll simply see the messages on top of the game and in a small chat window you can view the last messages and reply to them.

• Install the plugin with a simple double click –
  thereafter it´s perfectly integrated to Adium, without any further configuration!
  
• No matter whether you use ICQ, MSN, Aim, Google Talk or any other protocol –
  Ingamium supports them all!
  
• Chat with your friends without closing your game
  
• Ingamium supports more than 50 native Mac OS X games,
  but you can add custom ones with a few clicks
  
• Automatically updates the list of supported games when launching Adium
  
• Configure Ingamium to fit your needs: e.g. Position and color and the behavior
  of the chat window are customizable
  
• Use the build-in function to send new games to the developer –
  they´ll be officially included in the next versions!

Ingamium runs on all PowerPC- and Intel-Macs with 512 MB RAM and Mac OS X 10.5.8 or higher with Adium 1.4 Beta, but we strongly recommended an Intel-Mac with Mac OS X 10.6.x.

InGamium is developed by Florian Bethke, who already developed iFire, an unofficial xFire Client for Mac OS X. Games4Mac supports both projects, running the marketing and is hosting the websites. Games4Mac is germany‘s leading mac-gaming site.

InGamium

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MTV Multiplayer has reported that casual games developer PopCap Games recently decided to change the Dancing Zombie character in its popular Plants vs Zombies title for iPhone in response to complaints from representatives of Michael Jackson's estate. A new disco themed zombie has replaced the previous undead dancer in the iPhone version and will be added to future updates of the game on all platforms.

I reached out to a PopCap Games representative about the change, who confirmed that it was brought on by lawyers representing the King of Pop:

"The Estate of Michael Jackson objected to our use of the 'dancing zombie' in PLANTS vs. ZOMBIES based on its view that the zombie too closely resembled Michael Jackson. After receiving this objection, PopCap made a business decision to retire the original 'dancing zombie' and replace it with a different 'dancing zombie' character for future builds of PLANTS vs.ZOMBIES on all platforms. The phase-out and replacement process is underway."

Legally the Dancing Zombie would've probably fallen safely into the realm of parody, but I can understand why PopCap wouldn't want to risk any trouble for a small gag in tremendously successful game.

Multiplayer MTV: Jackson Estate Forces Zombie Removal

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