Dark Horse Comics recently unveiled a 18.5" tall replica of the Reaper Sovereign from the Mass Effect series. The replica is estimated to ship in June 2013 for $350, and can be pre-ordered with a hefty $100 deposit on the BioWare store.

The Reaper statue is in limited production, with fewer than 1,000 being made. It also comes with a code for as-yet-unannounced multiplayer bonuses for the Xbox 360 and PC versions of Mass Effect 3.

A new batch of DLC has been released for Magicka. Entitled "Dungeons & Daemons," it plops the game's enrobed heroes into a dank (probably smelly) dungeon, where they battle monsters and demons. The DLC seems awfully familiar – let's just say that Magicka's wizards (and designers) have been practicing their blizzard spells.

'Dungeons & Daemons' is available now for $4 on Steam.

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Whether you're simply behind on your gaming or have emerged from a block of ice after that hiking expedition in Antarctica went awry ten years ago, you may like to catch up on some of Ubisoft's PC wares. Good Old Games is making it much easier – at least on your wallet – to play catch-up by slashing the price on 36 Ubisoft games.

There are many highlights in this Ubisoft sale, including several games for $3.99 a pop: Far Cry, Far Cry 2: Fortune's Edition, Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, Warrior Within, The Two Thrones, and Beyond Good & Evil included. Rayman and its two sequels are also on sale for $2.39 each.

If you're not into the whole piecemeal thing, you can snag all 36 discounted games for $134.04, a total savings of $201.60.

Metro: Last Light will no longer include a multiplayer component when it launches early next year, developer 4A Games announced today on the game's official blog. Multiplayer had previously been revealed soon after the game's 2011 announcement, something the blog notes was "probably a mistake."

"Throughout the development of Metro: Last Light a small, dedicated team had been working on a number of multiplayer prototypes," the entry reads. "After E3, we decided to fold this multiplayer team back into the main group and focus 100% of the studio's resources on the single player campaign. As a result, Metro: Last Light will not ship with a multiplayer component." 4A Games believes that the game's single-player campaign is "what the fanbase cares about the most."

Whether multiplayer will be added post-launch as DLC or an update is uncertain. "Right now we're 100% focused on the single player campaign and not thinking beyond that. We don't like throwing away work though, it's a project we could potentially return to after Metro: Last Light ships."

This is a weekly column from freelancer Rowan Kaiser, which focuses on "Western" role-playing games: their stories, their histories, their mechanics, their insanity, and their inanity.

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Here's the moment I realized I loved Torchlight 2: It's the screenshot right above this. This is an Engineer. He's actually my second engineer, and probably the sixth or seventh character I made – although most of the others had only been played for a few minutes. In this case, I created him because my previous main character, around level 40, was running into extreme, frustrating difficulty in the third act. He was also intended to be used primarily in multiplayer, built upon the Engineer's more supportive skill tree (Construction) for which hand cannons are the ideal weapon.

Then I bought him a helmet that looked like a mask, and I realized: I'd just made a Big Daddy from BioShock. And playing my Big Daddy was some of the most fun I'd ever had in an action RPG.

Aesthetically, it's good to look at. It's not just the excellent paper doll effects, it's also the way the Engineer carries the cannon and the recoil when firing. I actually found the original Torchlight's aesthetics off-putting, but tweaks in setting, tone, and graphics did just enough that my distaste turned to enjoyment. While that's a necessary component of what made me enjoy my 'Construction' Engineer, it's not the most important aspect.

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You're reading Reaction Time, a weekly column that claims to examine recent events, games and trends in the industry, but is really just looking for an excuse to use the word "zeitgeist." It debuts on Fridays in Engadget's digital magazine, Distro.

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This holiday's unceasing glut of games is a go, with store shelves making room for the onslaught of snarling aliens, sneering assassins, and slow-mo soldiers walking away from large explosions – or sometimes partially melted helicopters. These are the usual, commercially sexy suspects.

It's best not to judge a game by its cover, though, and this week's front-facing embellishments are exceptionally deceptive. At a shallow glance, XCOM: Enemy Unknown may seem like another case of meathead military dudes mowing down extraterrestrials. Dishonored, meanwhile, conveys a stylish stab-a-thon with its masked, supernaturally talented anti-hero out for revenge. Look longer and you'll find that both have roots in classic PC gaming, and both sell something console owners might not even know they want.

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Even though Borderlands 2 bested sales of the first game by 234%, it wasn't able to sell more copies than Madden NFL 13 in September. According to Macquarie Capital analyst Ben Schachter, 1.4 million physical copies of Borderlands 2 were sold in the US at retail since its launch – we've reached out to the NPD for exact September sales. Update: NPD has confirmed with Joystiq that Borderlands 2 sold 1.4 million copies at retail in September.

That figure doesn't take into account copies of Borderlands 2 sold digitally, via Steam on PC or as part of the Day 1 initiative on the PlayStation Network. GI.biz says Schachter forecasted a total of three million in sales during the last three months of this year, accounting for the aforementioned digital distribution channels.

Borderlands 2 recently released its new character class – the Mechromancer – and will get the first of four DLC content packages on October 16. 'Captain Scarlett and her Pirate's Booty' will be available across all platforms for $9.99 and free to owners of the Borderlands 2 content Season Pass.

The Walking Dead Episode 4: Around Every Corner promised us two things in the lead-up to its launch: brilliant writing by Book of Eli scribe Gary Whitta, and a dark, nigh-depressing story. The question now is if it delivers on these promises.

Around Every Corner tackles the extremes of child endangerment and mutilation, forces players to slowly and deliberately bury the recently deceased, and it portrays the thoughtless slaughter of the living, by the living. The writing is fraught with tense pauses and biting, yet humane, dialogue among survivors of the zombie apocalypse.

If the question is, "Does Episode 4 live up to its predecessors?" the answer is, "No, it's even better."

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Datura, with its dreamlike presentation and mysterious storyline, was measurably different from most other games. The latest project from developer Plastic Demoscene Group is so different from other games that it isn't even a game!

Plastic lives up to its "demoscene group" name with Catzilla, a real-time animated short film intended for use as a PC benchmark. Working with Platige Image, Plastic made a short movie about a giant cat attacking a city, something Datura director Michal Staniszewski said he's "dreamt about for some time."

The Vimeo clip above is pre-rendered, of course, but the actual file will be displayed in real time on users' computers to gauge GPU performance. The unusual benchmarking software will go into beta soon. If you want Catzilla to put your computer to the test, sign up here.

Sure, everyone and their mother has made a custom Portal gun at this point, but the fine folks at Hackaday have raised the bar into the stratosphere. The floating Companion Cube effect was accomplished by ripping out the magnets in a floating globe, and the cube itself was created to proper size and weight specifications.

The gun itself is not custom, however – it's store bought. The process of creating the Companion Cube and applying the magnetic housing to the Portal gun itself is pretty interesting, all of which you can check out in the video above and through the source link below.

Despite what plebeians like us may think, shooting giant robots with other giant robots isn't something you can rush into all willy-nilly. In actuality, there are many, many factors to consider: What if this weapon is more effective than originally planned? With if we've accidentally created a deviously cunning artificial intelligence bent on eradicating the cancer that is humanity from the surface of the Earth?

Thankfully, most evil AI issues can be found through a closed beta test, which Adhesive Games' upcoming free-to-play mech shooter Hawken will be conducting from October 26 through October 29.

"The more that we find wrong now; the smoother open beta will go," said Meteor Entertainment CEO Mark Long in a press release available after the break, though no information was given regarding when that open beta will take place. Anyone interested in signing up for the closed beta can do so here. Just, you know, study up on your paradoxes.

Update: Meteor Entertainment has contacted us to clarify the statement made by Long in the press release. By "open beta," Long was actually referring to the game's previously announced release date of December 12, rather than an additional testing phase prior to Hawken's release.

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Street Fighter X Tekken is getting a "'hefty free" update later this year, Capcom announced. The update is expected to substantially re-balance the game, as well as provide some visual and mechanical tweaks. While every character is likely to receive some balancing tweaks, as always with these things some characters need more tweaking than others.

Capcom outlined some of the tweaks already planned for implementation, which include a range of tweaks at varying levels of impact. Characters listed so far for tweakage include Ken, Kazuya, Cammy, Julia, Bob, Abel, Xiaoyu, Balrog, Heihachi, Ibuki, and Paul.

Less hefty but just as free is the trailer above, a new one for SFxT's Vita edition. It outlines some of the new features (not tweaks) coming to that version, which is due on October 23.

Chris Roberts' new space sim Star Citizen has already raised over $455,590 from its crowd-funding drive, despite being called Star Citizen. Pledge counts are not yet available on the website, but Roberts sent out an update today containing that number. "Seems everyone wants the RSI Constellation and physical goodies," he noted, suggesting that many buyers have paid more than $250 for access to the "RSI Constellation spaceship."

Technical problems have held some pledges back, Roberts notes, entreating potential buyers to try again. "We still have a ways to go but I have no doubt with your support we will get there." Half a million in two days seems like a good sign.

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A company named Treehouse Avatar Technologies was granted United States Patent No. 8,180,858 in May of this year, which covers a "Method And System For Presenting Data Over A Network Based On Network User Choices And Collecting Real-Time Data Related To Said Choices," according to the patent's title. In other words, it covers a method of taking and tracking user choices over a network, a vague description to say the least.

Nevertheless, Treehouse has decided to use the patent to take on Lord of the Rings Online and Dungeons and Dragons Online creator Turbine, Inc., and has sued the game maker for infringement on a number of counts, including character attributes like Strength and Charisma. Specifically, Treehouse mentions "the feature of tallying the number of times the selected character attribute(s) have been selected by users of the game."

Too vague? That's for the courts to decide, apparently. Treehouse is aiming for a full injunction against Turbine from using the system described by the patent, and for "adequate compensation" in damages. The full complaint is available to read online.

Mass Effect 3 DLC Omega is landing on November 27 and is priced at 1200 MSP or $15, if a video interview by Examiner's Beverly Lim Lee is accurate. The interviewee is apparently Mass Effect 3 Producer Mike Gamble, although he's introduced as "Mike, the producer of Mass 3 Effect Omega." According to the interview, the DLC is double the size of any previous Mass Effect 3 DLC, and lets players take on Aria, who is vying for control of the Omega space station.

The video was uploaded to Ms Lee's YouTube account, and was apparently taken at the New York Comic Con, a convention at which EA BioWare is certainly in attendance and showing off Omega concept art.

We've reached out EA BioWare for confirmation of these details and further information.

Update: A post on the BioWare blog confirms the details. The Omega DLC is coming to PC, PSN, and XBLM on November 27 for $14.99 or 1200 MSP. PS3 owners in Europe will have to wait until November 28 for the DLC to hit the continent. The blog post reads:

"Disturbing reports from the Citadel suggest that something big is about to go down. If our Intel is accurate, Aria is on the move. This was anticipated, as we did not expect her to sit idly by while Cerberus ran roughshod over Omega. With her biotic capabilities and well-documented mean streak, what happens next won't be pretty. Our informants believe that Aria intends to seek out Commander Shepard for assistance. We are aware of the Commander's ties to Aria, but are unclear about how deep they run. What we do know is that Aria will be relentless in her fight to take back Omega, and with the Commander at her side, she may very well be unstoppable."

The video linked above has now been made private.

Clan of Champions, a multiplayer action game from NIS America and Tenchu developer Acquire Corp., will hit Steam on October 30. It's set to launch on PSN at a later date.

The first we heard of Clan of Champions, NIS was planning a release on Xbox 360 and PS3. Looks like plans have changed. Clan of Champions enables single-player or online multiplayer, with warriors fighting to become the one true champion using short-range magic spells or close-range combat. Remember: There can only be one. Unless you're on a multiplayer run.

Clan of Champions

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David Craddock is a freelance writer (and former Joystiquer) who's putting a book together about Blizzard North, the studio that created the enormously popular Diablo series. Up until the book's release (it is called, of course, "Stay Awhile and Listen"), Craddock is doling out some insights that he's picked up from his research on Diablo's past development.

Like, for example, the fact that a version of Diablo 2 was considered for the Game Boy Color and/or the Game Boy Advance. Following the release of the popular sequel, Blizzard North considered a single-player handheld game with the working (and adorable) title of Diablo Junior, which would have three separate cartridges on offer, each featuring a different class of hero. The game was never made, mostly due to the high costs of mobile development at that time.

Craddock says Blizzard North also considered a second expansion for Diablo 2, which would have come out after Lord of Destruction. That expansion would have focused on multiplayer features, and set up customizable guild housing and banks. In the end, however, that expansion was also scuttled, and Blizzard North got to work on the long project that would become Diablo 3.