Doom 4

id Software made headlines three years ago when it announced Rage, its first game that wasn't based on a previous id property since the original Quake was released in 1996. But it looks like id is going to be sticking to its franchises for a while and not branching out in all new territory anytime soon.

Computer and Video Games quotes Carmack as saying, "We do already have more IPs than we can exploit. " id launched the Wolfenstein, Doom and Quake shooter brands, all of which are among the most well known PC gaming franchises in history." Carmack says don't look for id to add to that line up beyond Rage, saying " It's scary to say it, but maybe not in the next decade even, because we want to support Wolfenstein, Doom and Quake - and hopefully we can add Rage onto that."

Big day today with the announcement of BioShock Infinite, although we are wondering why Irrational Games has announced a title that won't be released until sometime in 2012. Speaking of which, we are a little disappointed that there was no Doom IV news from QuakeCon today. It's been over two years, id. Throw us a bone here:

• As previously announced, Puzzle Quest 2 and Burn Zombie Burn are both now available to download and purchase on Steam.
• A massive new update for Global Agenda is now available via Steam with lots of changes to the Agency Vs Agency system.
• A new update to the beta for Counter-Strike Source is also available.
• Want an open beta for Men of War: Assault Squad? Then get its Steam community page to reach the 10,000 member mark.
• John Carmack and Richard Garriott talk about rockets and space travel.

When id Software first announced its plans for its next first person shooter Rage back in 2007 it also marked the debut of its all new id Tech 5 graphics engine. In the past all of id' Software's graphics engines have been available for license by third party developers. Indeed, in May 2009 id's head man Todd Hollenshead said that they had "seeded tech out to a few licensees" for id Tech 5 already.

Now it looks like there's been an about face on those plans in the wake of id's acquisition by ZeniMax Media later in 2009. Eurogamer reports from QuakeCon 2010 that Hollenshead has confirmed that id Tech 5 will "be used within ZeniMax, so we're not going to license it to external parties." It looks like the only way a third party developer will gain access to the technology will be if its game is published by ZeniMax's publishing arm Bethesda Softworks. Besides Rage, the id Tech 5 engine will be used for id's other big upcoming game Doom IV.

It's going to be a big day tomorrow. Irrational will finally reveal its next game and id might make one or more announcements at QuakeCon 2010. We have our coffee ready.

• id Software's John Carmack says the next Doom game "shouldn't take as long to ship as Rage." Since the next Doom game was announced over two years ago id had better hustle up.
• Carmack has also found out about Twitter. An example post: "AV output on ios devices is giving me some grief." That's pure Carmack speak.
  
• Impulse has just added Plants Vs Zombies Game of the Year Edition to its line-up.
• Pre-order HAWX 2 via Steam and you get Blazing Angels 2 (a $19.99 value) for free.
• Pre-order Kane and Lynch 2 via Direct2Drive and you get Deus Ex Game of the Year for free.
• New Steam updates are available for Killing Floor and Counter-Strike Source Beta.
• Another Elemental dev journal entry has been released.
• A new hero for Heroes of Newerth has been revealed with the great name Flint Beastwood.
• Razer has announced a new (and very green) gaming headset called the Orca.

The 2010 edition of E3 has been over for a week now but we are still recovering from checking out all of the titles that we saw at the Los Angeles Convention Center. There were also lots of games that were there we didn't get to see unfortunately. But most importantly of all were the games we know are being made but still didn't make it to the show.

E3 is unquestionably the single biggest event in the game industry but for a variety of reasons some highly anticipated PC titles were not even shown in trailer form at the event. So which games went missing? We just happened to have created a handy list of titles that we think could have made an appearance of some type at the show.

id Software is still at least a year away from releasing their next game major retail game Rage but they are also working on the next installment in the Doom shooter franchise (which may or may not be called Doom IV). There's next to nothing known about the game (other than it will use the id Tech 5 graphics engine) but id's creative director for Rage Tim Willits already has some high hopes for the title.

In a chat with Xbox360achievements.com Willits states, "It's gonna be cool. It's gonna be awesome. Hopefully, it'll be even more awesome than Rage." High expectations indeed. Perhaps we will learn more about the game when QuakeCon begins in August.

Yep, we have yet another big PC game event to tell you about. This time it's the 2010 edition of QuakeCon, the annual and completely free to attend show sponsored by id Software (and this year their new owners ZeniMax Media). This year's QuakeCon will be held August 12-15 at the Hilton Anatole Hotel, in Dallas, Texas. You may remember that 2009's show was supposed to be held there but that location was changed at the last minute to the Gaylord Hotel.

There's no word yet on when registration for QuakeCon 2010 will begin but naturally we will keep you posted. We suspect id will show off more of their upcoming next game Rage and perhaps they might even offer a glimpse of their next Doom game. ZeniMax and its publishing arm Bethesda Softworks will also likely show off their upcoming games like Brink and Fallout New Vegas.

Last week we did an extensive look at all of the big PC game titles that are currently scheduled for release this year (at least that's the plan; release dates can and likely will change for many of those titles). But there are also many games that have already been announced are not on our 2010 list. The reason? We just don't think they will ship out before the year is over.

However that's no reason to at least hope against hope. We decided to pick 10 previously announced games that we don't think will be released in the next 12 months but we do wish would make it. Of course, one or two of the titles on this list may actually surprise us and come out by the end of 2010. But at the moment the odds don't look good. By the way, we picked 10 games that are all officially announced. We could add a ton of other games that we know are in development but are not yet ready to become public (Blizzard's next-gen MMO, the next Infinity Ward game, etc) but that's a much longer list that we will get to later.

Click on the image above to continue reading 10 PC Games We Wish Were Coming in 2010

Id Software's annual keynote by its co-founder John Carmack at QuakeCon 2009 ran well over two hours with Carmack seemingly not taking a breath as he unloaded on id's plans for the future, his own feelings on next-gen games technology, his rocket company and even his new electric car. Here are just some of the highlights:

• Carmack doesn't see id Software's recent acquisition by ZeniMax Media as a sell out. Indeed he finds it liberating because, "I don't have to attend any more board meetings" which means he can concentrate on doing programming work at the office. id Software has been an acquisition target for a long time; Carmack said that just after Wolfenstein 3D was released, id was almost bought by Sierra Online.
• Speaking about their upcoming game Rage, Carmack referred to it as a "people game". Unlike previous id games which were mostly about monsters trying to kill you, there are real characters that you interact with in the game.
• Carmack is a big believer in the iPhone for games. Indeed he said its likely that all of id's mobile game products will be exclusively made for the iPhone. Carmack sees id making three kinds of mobile games; the classic id game ports, the variant RPG games like Doom RPG and Wolfenstein RPG, and all new original products. Carmack said in that latter category you can expect a Rage tie-in game. Carmack predicted that id will release a new mobile game every other month for the next year or so.

Check out more tibits after the jump:

As the days get closer to the launch of E3 2009 in early June, Big Download has been compiling wish lists of games that we would like to see during the revamped and larger trade show. We start out with a long list of first person shooter games. Some of the games on this list are indeed confirmed as being at E3 this year. Other games on this list are titles we think will be there. There are ever a few that we are just hoping might make an appearance at the show.

With that in mind let's head over to our list. Next time we will give our E3 2009 wish list over to the action game genre

Click on the image to continue reading Countdown to E3 2009: The FPS Games We Want To See

id Software has been promoting it's id Tech 5 game graphics engine as a solid way for third parties to have high-end graphics and features for their future game titles. However it's not planning to go all out to become a huge game engine company like Epic with its Unreal engine business.

In a new chat at Gamasutra, id Software CEO Todd Hollenshead states, "Working on Rage and working on Doom [4], which are both id Tech 5 games, are certainly our top priorities." The game engine supposedly works seamlessly across PC, Mac, Xbox 360 and PS3 platforms which should allow anyone who uses it to create a multi-platform game with little effort in the game engine department. Hollenshead said they have already "seeded tech out to a few licensees" but there's no word yet on which third party game developers are using id Tech 5.

When we first launched Big Download about 10 months or so ago, we knew we could be covering all sorts of titles, from large publishers and developers to small one man indie games. However we also knew there would be games that we, and we hope our readers, would spend more time in covering and playing over the next several months. These games came to be known to us as the BigAss 25.

This list has remained something that's only been known to the Big Download team . . . until now. Today in a special two part article we reveal what games are included in our BigAss 25 list is for the current time period. Our aim is to revise this list every few months, taking some out and putting new ones back in, so that it remains a fresh and relevant look at where the PC game industry is headed.

While we will still cover the entire PC game industry, this list of games represents what we think will be of special interest to us and our readers. You may notice that this list contains games that have already been released. Why? Because those titles continue to generate interest, especially if they have had or will have new downloadable content and expansions that will keep their games fresh in our heads.

Today we are revealing the first 13 games on the BigAss 25 list in alphabetical order. Stay tuned tomorrow as we reveal the other 12 games on our current list.

Click on the image above to continue reading Big Download's BigAss 25 - Part 1

Today is the 15th anniversary of the release of Doom, the sci-fi first person shooter from id Software. On Dec. 10, 1993, the original shareware version was uploaded to a single FTP server. That's all it took for the game, about one space marine fighting an invasion from Hell on the moons of Mars, to spread across the world like wildfire on tens of millions of PC hard drives.

While the game wasn't the first FPS ever made, the release of Doom arguably launched the genre into the mainstream of gaming. The PC shareware version of the title became a massive hit with some people saying the DOS version of the shareware were installed on more PCs at one point than Microsoft's then current version of Windows.

Click on the logo above to continue reading Happy 15th Birthday Doom!

Download the Doom Shareware here at Big Download
Download the Doom III Classic mod (a remake of the original Doom in Doom III) here at Big Download

Those of you who preferred the frantic pace of Doom and Doom II when compared to the slower, survival horror-esque Doom 3 are in luck: the fourth Doom game (which will not be called Doom 4) will return to the more chaotic pace of the originals, Shacknews confirmed in an interview with id genius John Carmack.

Carmack acknowledged the primary complaints of Doom 3, admitting that not being able to wield weapons concurrently with a flashlight, as well as a constant stream of closet monsters, provided the impetus to cancel a survival horror game titled Darkness that id was developing.

Will the id Tech 5-powered Doom once again feature rooms filled with angry Imps and snarling zombies? Most likely. In Doom, players will certainly experience a few tense moments with only one bullet and hordes of enemies to kill, but overall, "you have to be blowing demons all to hell all around you," explained Carmack. The best way to do that? Guns. Lots of guns.

During his annual QuakeCon address, John Carmack divulged his reason for the resurrection of Quake III: Arena via the free web-based shooter Quake Live. Quake III represented the purity of an old school, deathmatch-oriented shooter, Carmack explained. While both fun to develop and to play -- Carmack proudly stated that he used to place first in the in-house Quake III tournaments, then humbly admitted he only survived the first round of a recent Quake Live session -- such a package would not do well as a $50 retail product.

Enter Quake Live, a free-to-play reincarnation of Quake III that can be accessed from any computer with a broadband connection and a web browser. But given Carmack's love of Quake III, Carmack answered the question he must have known was on the mind of all in attendance: might there one day be a Quake Arena 2?

Possibly -- but only if Quake Live fares well. "I'd say probably the success of Quake Live is going to determine whether or not we do another Quake Arena project," said Carmack during his speech.

Even if Quake Live does well, another Quake project would be far down the road. Though id is divided into multiple teams, Carmack has said that Rage is his first priority, and after that, the studio will no doubt gear up for a heavy marketing campaign revolving around its next Doom title. All that combined with Raven's focus on the forthcoming Wolfenstein equals Quake Live as the next big title for Quake-aholics.