Joystiq reports that the new end date is Sunday, June 23, at midnight PT. This weekend will also offer double XP in your auto-matched modes, so you can grind out some experience.

As previously reported, your experience will transfer to the main game as long as you buy the full version within 60 days of launch and tie it to the same account. That means your hard work this weekend won't be wiped when the game launches next Tuesday, and you get a chance at a head start. Any advantage is a good advantage when taking on the Russians, boy.

Head on over to pay as much or as little as you please for metroidvania Aquaria, puzzler Fractal: Make Blooms Not War, undead homage Organ Trail, and the sneaky Stealth Bastard Deluxe for all platforms, plus Pulse on Android alone.

Paying more than the average gets you turn-based tactics 'em up Frozen Synapse and adventure game Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars too. Also, paying at least a dollar means you'll receive Steam keys as well as DRM-free versions.

It's the Android debut of Aquaria, Stealth Bastard Deluxe, Fractal, Pulse, and Frozen Synapse too.

This bundle will be sold until June 2.

"What happened was that we saw the Wii U was not going to sell enough of those games," Guillemot told VentureBeat. "The game is going to be fantastic, and we didn't want those creators to wind up in a position where even after making a fantastic game, they didn't sell well enough. We decided that we had to come out on enough machines that players can try it out on any one that they have, and give more time to both improve the game on the Wii U and create versions for the other consoles."

He defends it as "the right decision for gamers and for the team," and says the extra time has let them polish and expand the game. "It's much bigger content-wise," he said. "We have new bosses in key levels and so on. The experience is much more complete." He concluded by saying that, "sometimes we have to go against the urge to get to market too fast," and slow down to reach full potential.

The team at Ubisoft Montpellier certainly hasn't been resting on its laurels. The extra time has resulted in a Challenge Mode demo for Wii U, 30 extra stages, and a Vita version, along with whatever spit-shine has gone into the game itself. It's due September 3.

XCOM's DLC will be "narrative-driven", 2K said in the announcement. Beyond that, we don't know what it is or when it'll be coming or how much it'll cost. Or, indeed, whether the Xbox-exclusive DLC is simply a timed exclusive. Expect more details as the marketing schedule deems appropriate.

"The alternate 1962 universe that we've created for The Bureau is vast and there are many more stories to tell about the early days of XCOM," 2K Marin development director Morgan Gray said in today's DLC announcement. "We're excited that our stories will provide a new perspective on the war effort, much like how our critically acclaimed Minvera's Den DLC for BioShock 2 allowed us to present a unique perspective of Rapture."

Ooh, wouldn't it be nice if The Bureau's DLC does actually go all Minerva's Den? 2K Marin's BioShock 2 DLC told a beautiful standalone story with new characters, showing a new side of Rapture and, well, perhaps surpassing the core game's story. While the main folks behind Minerva's Den went indie to make Gone Home, DLC following its lead could be quite pleasing.

More DLC comes in the form of an extra side-mission named 'Codebreakers' as a pre-order bonus, which'll see you investing a key communications facility that's fallen quiet (alien troubles, I'd wager). I would be surprised if that isn't later sold separately too. And you can get an exclusive Light Plasma Pistol weapon for pre-ordering from GameStop.

While we quite enjoyed what we've seen of The Bureau, given its tumultuous development, do you really want to slap down cash without seeing a lot more?

The Bureau: XCOM Declassified comes to PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 on August 20.

The full cast of TF2 classes are available for your racing enjoyment, which Minecraft's offerings are Steve and the eerie Pigman. Minecraft blocks are available in the level editor too.

"Just for fun Aaron started adding TF2 characters into Joe Danger and I was in love with how good they looked. We completely had to make them happen for real, so we called Valve, and now it's a real thing!" Hello manager director Sean Murray explained. He added, "Is this the first time Minecraft is on Steam? Is this legal?"

Joe Danger and Joe Danger 2 somersault onto Steam next Monday, June 24.

The Steam release is a jazzed up Bone-A-Fide Edition, which 11-Bit explains brings a new four-chapter epilogue episode with a new protagonist and the new teleporting, taunting Tanuki unit. It has six new multiplayer levels too.

While the Windows 8 version had PC-Xbox 360 cross-platform play, Steam users won't be able to play with any of them, 17-Bit confirmed on Facebook. However, Steamers will be able to play against people on mysterious unannounced "future platforms".

None of these improvements will make it back to the original release either. "Due to the expense of releasing this content as DLC for all previous Microsoft platforms, as well as current market conditions, we've decided to focus on Steam and additional yet-to-be-announced platforms for future content and products," 17-Bit said.

You can pre-order now for $11.99, thanks to a 20% discount, to score access to the multiplayer beta as well as the first chapter of the campaign. Observe, trailer:

Sony has pushed out a new PS3 firmware update. System software 4.45 was supposed to add trophy notification options and improve overall system stability.

Unfortunately, it did quite the opposite.

The PlayStation community forums have blown up with reports of the firmware causing several issues, including causing consoles to become completely unresponsive.

Sony has yet to respond to these issues that have cropped up. In the meantime, PS3 owners are advised not to update to 4.45 at this time (although it may already be too late for some members of the Shacknews community).

"It's the finale for Hotline Miami," said Dennaton's Dennis Wedin. "We're gonna work with how we cope with things ending. The characters in the game, they're all gonna meet their end--their mission, their life, or their dreams."

The demo started out in a level designed strikingly similar to one from the original game. The character seen here was the Pig from the first game's original teaser, playing through a new level seemingly pulled straight from the previous game. But the next dialogue sequence revealed that it was simply a re-enactment for a new movie based on that teaser, indicating that Hotline Miami's events were indeed a thing of the past. In fact, Jacket, the first game's main character, will not be playable at all.

The next sequence showed just how deep Hotline Miami's narrative hopes to go, introducing a new vigilante group called the Fans. "It's about a bunch of wannabe guys that wanted part of that first game's vigilante movement, but they kinda missed it," explained Wedin. "And since Jacket pretty much killed all the Russian mobsters, there was no reason for the Janitors to keep calling people. But they are still wearing the masks and driving around in their van, beating up any thugs that they can find in hopes of getting enough media attention that someday they might get that call and be a part of it all. They kind of symbolize the players that want Hotline Miami 2 to be exactly as Hotline Miami 1."

Wedin indicates that some elements of the first Hotline Miami, like donning masks and getting phone calls, will be in the game, but for the most part, this will be a whole new game with new goals, storylines, and motivations. However, the gameplay will remain intact. "People seem to like it a lot," he added. "If you the feeling, the pace, and the difficulty of the first one, it's going to be in there."

Hotline Miami 2 looks to be just as bloody as the first game

That segued into a demonstration of the next stage, in which a whole new character needed to bust into a nightclub and find the owner. More of the action from the original game could be seen here, as the idea was to avoid gunfire and pound away on thugs with fists. There were also several sequences that required getting the drop on thugs by swinging doors at them, in order to cause a distraction. And make no mistake, this looked hard--very hard! Even the makers of the game, who were playing through the closed demo, were dying repeatedly in the game's opening stages. They'd either get popped with a stray rifle shot, beaten to a pulp, or bashed with a baseball bat. Just like the first game, one hit puts you down, often in a pool of blood.

It was upon finding the owner that Hotline Miami 2's darker tone began to take shape. The nightclub owner had already been beaten to a bloody mess. He had seemingly been completely compliant, expressing that he wanted nothing to do with what was happening and had simply wanted to go home. The vigilante Fans wound up beating him within an inch of his life anyway. At that point, the player simply put the poor guy out of his misery with a single gunshot.

In terms of story, Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number appears to take a major step forward. Dennaton manages to mix in clever meta commentary through the Fans, as well as sprinkle in fresh motivations for the game's characters. Even without Jacket, it doesn't look like fans will be disappointed. Meanwhile, the tough-as-nails gameplay appears to remain in place and may prove even more difficult than its predecessor. Sprinkling in a brand new soundtrack that matches the original's in spirit, Hotline Miami 2 is on its way to becoming a memorable swansong for the series. The Hotline Miami series is set to say goodbye on PC, with no confirmation of a console or Vita version at this time.

Here are the recommended specs for interested Mac gamers:

• Mac OS X 10.7.5 Lion

• Intel Dual Core Xeon / Core i Series 2.4 GHZ or greater

• 4GB System RAM

• NVIDIA® 8800GT 512MB VRAM or AMD Radeon HD 4870 512 VRAM

• HDD Space: 35GB

According to their report, "while Nvidia-based systems will be supported, the company won't be able to develop and distribute updated drivers until after each game is released."

The site postulates that AMD's complete control of tech in the new generation of consoles may have played a part in this agreement. AMD chips can be found in PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Wii U.

PC Gamer points out that these kind of exclusive agreements can be problematic for rival card owners, as evidenced by Tomb Raider's shaky launch. If IGN's report is true, that means Nvidia card owners may experience equally bumpy launches of not only Battlefield 4, but other Frostbite 3 games like Need for Speed Rivals, Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare, Dragon Age: Inquisition, the new Mirror's Edge, the new Star Wars: Battlefront, and the upcoming Mass Effect.

We've contacted AMD for more information.

If you've logged into Facebook any time in the past few months, it's likely you've received an invitation to play Candy Crush Saga, currently the most popular game on the social network. The match-three game locks progression behind walls that can be bypassed through money or hassling friends.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the company has started conversations with banks about a potential IPO. However, pricing and timing of a deal is still quite a ways off. "King's success and growth presents numerous opportunities for the business to develop further, and one option would be to take the company public. However, while it's an option for the future, we would not comment on when we could consider making such a decision," a spokesperson told the newspaper.

While Candy Crush Saga has been a tremendous success so far, it's unclear if the market will respond to yet another social gaming offering--especially after Zynga's high-profile implosion. Shares of the rival company have fallen about 70 percent since launch. And once-popular games like Draw Something show how fickle the casual audience can be: Zynga pretty much closed the team after purchasing the company for about $200 million.

Criterion's Craig Sullivan, former creative director for last year's Hot Pursuit and NFS: Most Wanted, told VideoGamer that while Rivals is being creatively run by Ghost, "There's a lot of Criterion DNA in here." Criterion is best known for the Burnout series, though I noticed a distinct lack of Burnout-like crashes when I went hands-on with Rivals at E3.

As for Criterion VP Alex Ward, Sullivan indicates that he's working on "special, secret Criterion stuff."

Having previously appeared with only 1,000 spikes as a remake of the 8bits Fanatics game on Xbox Live Indie Games and the Nintendo eShop, 1001 Spikes sees explorer Aban Hawkins venturing into a temple filled with dangerous traps, like bats, fireballs, and...yes...spikes. The object is to find a key that opens the door to the next room, which is also filled with sharp pointy objects. Hawkins can use daggers and a short and long jump to make his way through, but part of the challenge appears to be judging which leap to use. He will also have 1,001 lives at his disposal, but if you think that makes this game easy, Nicalis' Tyrone Rodriguez laughs in your general direction.

"The designers have spent countless hours fine tuning placement of every obstacle and item in the game," Rodriguez tells the PlayStation Blog , "literally every detail of the game was meticulously planned and thought out, tested, tuned and retested."

There are six worlds to explore in 1001 Spikes, which will feature 8-bit cutscenes and special unlockable characters. The game will also feature co-op and competitive multiplayer modes that will likely revolve around the idea of not dying. 1001 Spikes is set to poke through you later this year.

Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto told IGN that about the new game, but didn't specify platforms or even how the free-to-play transactions would work. He did comment that the team is currently balancing how to make a good pricing model for the game, and plans to make it a packaged product as well.

"There is something we're doing with the Steel Diver idea that I think is going to open things up with that game," Miyamoto said. "It's going to be very fun. We're exploring from a perspective of where we can take that from a multiplayer standpoint - it's going to have this four-player battle mode that I think is going to be very interesting. It's something that we're hoping to be able to show relatively soon."

Steel Diver was initially a tech demo for the original DS, and was then revived for the 3DS launch with some new features like sea battles using the accelerometer and a multiplayer strategy mini-game. You can check out our review of the original if you need a reminder. In short, "free" might be about the right price.

Apparently, Nintendo has been keen on bringing its strategy series to handheld, with series creator Shigeru Miyamoto admitting that the company "experimented" with both DS and Game Boy Advance prototypes. However, "we really felt that the portable machine simply didn't have the capabilities to create the Pikmin gameplay in a way that we felt like it needed to be represented," Miyamoto said.

With 3DS being a far more capable system than its predecessors, it seems like it would be powerful enough to handle a proper Pikmin game. However, Miyamoto argues that it still couldn't do the franchise justice. "There's actually one particular facet of this game that we were very focused in on, which was building bridges in Pikmin 3," Miyamoto explained to Polygon. "If you look at it, the bridges are made out of these little tile pieces, and each tile piece is shaped kind of differently, and each individual Pikmin might pick it up and hold the piece in a different way.

"We could be able to take something like that element of the Pikmin gameplay and try to do it on a portable, probably what would end up happening is you would have to make all the pieces the same size and shape, and they'd have to carry them the same way," Miyamoto said. Unfortunately, without being able to appreciate these subtle differences, Miyamoto says that "it really doesn't feel like Pikmin."

Pikmin 3 will be available on Wii U in August. And look, here's a new video showcasing that version of the game:

The add-on includes four new maps--Cove, Detour, Rush, and Uplink--as well as a new zombie map set in a Wild West town. The latter will also introduce a new version of the Ray Gun, aptly named the Ray Gun Mark II.

"Vengeance addresses the community desire to have super controlled, head-to-head gameplay that's pushing you," Black Ops 2 game designer David Vonderhaar said. "And the players that have the skill are the ones who will come out on top of those battles."

Vengeance will be the third DLC in the Black Ops 2 Season Pass, joining Revolution and Uprising. If you don't have the pass, it will cost 1200 Microsoft Points ($14.99).

Check out the trailer below for details on each of the new maps and how they play.

A Kickstarter update states that the money will be put towards hiring more staff from among "the best and brightest minds in VR from around the world." CEO Brendan Iribe told Forbes that it plans to roughly double its current staff of 30.

"Virtual reality will be one of the most significant technologies of the 21st century. It has the potential to drastically alter the way we play, communicate, and learn," the post says. "I want to thank everyone for their support. None of this would be possible without you, the people who supported Oculus when it was nothing but a rough prototype and a dream of changing gaming forever!"

Oculus Rift was one of many subjects bantered about on the latest Weekend Confirmed, gathering buzz coming out of E3. Development kits shipped in April, but the company has not yet set a date for the consumer version.

A representative confirmed the release window to Polygon, after a hands-on from TouchGen revealed changes for the platform. The mobile version will rely on taps for movement instead of a stick, and you'll swipe the screen to jump. The game is already available on PC, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Wii U, but adventure games all migrate to mobile phones eventually. It's like a rule.

Wilson told Polygon that FIFA in particular has a global audience, and most people around the world don't have PCs powerful enough to handle the latest and greatest tech. That's why, until the release of FIFA 11, the company used different engines on PC and consoles. The same logic is at play now.

"So could I see the potential for EA Sports Ignite to make it to PC in the future? Yes, I think it's possible, but a couple of things need to happen," Wilson said. Those criteria include the average PC specs being on-par with the next-gen consoles. It being the average is important, since EA Sports reach such a wide audience, and not all of them have powerful rigs.

Once that happens, he implied that EA would get to work tweaking the engine to work on PC. "There needs to be some adjustment in terms of how EA Sports Ignite works to facilitate the open nature of PC architecture, rather than the closed nature of console architecture."

After the demo, producer Stephan Roy sits down to answer some questions about the game. Of course, we got our own answers in case you want extra details on what the community thought was important.

Vanity Fair cites an unnamed source that says "Vince felt that Jason was sabotaging the company." In response, Zampella told the magazine: "It's hard to work with one person for 15 years."

The note from Zampella upon West's departure cited "family issues" as the reason. "It is sad to see things come to an end, but there are times when change is best for growth, both personally and professionally," the note read. "I wish Jason the best and send my best wishes to his family."

West's departure doesn't seem to have detracted from Titanfall, which was one of our favorite games at E3.

"It's too early to talk specifics, but definitely all the DLCs and updates will be free," CDP head Marcin Iwinski told Rock Paper Shotgun. "Of course, we'll see what the platform holders will allow - what we can do for free [on next-gen consoles]. I mean, there are different business models on consoles. From our standpoint, we'll definitely do everything we can to deliver the same experience across all platforms."

It's worth noting, though, that Iwinski is referring specifically to DLC like extra weapons and fixes. Content of a larger-scope would cost money as usual. "Should we decide to do some big expansions or something, we'll expect gamers to pay for it," he said. "But again, it's all value for money. I think $15-$20 for new gameplay is a pretty honest and fair deal."

As for the studio's attitude towards DRM, he says they are still firmly "anti-DRM," but that doesn't mean they want to deny the chance to play for those who own one of the next-gen consoles. "There are people who'll be fine with [Xbox One's DRM]. They'll buy the console and just want to play. Why should we not give them this option?" He also noted that the policies still might be in flux, but on PC, where it has a greater degree of control, the game will be DRM-free.

"What we meant by that was, based on feedback we got on Dark Souls, we got a lot of feedback that said that it was challenging and that the satisfaction was there, but there were a couple of areas that were a little bit tedious or a little bit time-consuming," Tanimura told Polygon, thorugh a translator. "Those are things we want to sort of streamline - to sort of cut away a lot of the fat, to make some revisions and enhancements so that we can really deliver the pure essence of the challenge in the Dark Souls experience."

He pointed out that in Dark Souls, players would often have to backtrack across large areas multiple times. He said they're attempting to "get rid of all the tediousness and the time-consuming stuff so you can actually get into the game and not worry about having to do certain tasks like this."

That sounds less like dumbing down the difficulty, and more like reducing the repetition. We'll have a clearer idea when the game releases in March 2014.

Videogamer reports that a PlayStation 4 brochure offline single-player, and then "online players TBC" (aka "To Be Confirmed"). Other single-player games in the brochure, like Knack, reportedly don't include such a listing. That indicates that the wording was slipped into the Second Son entry for a reason.

This is speculative for the time being, and Shacknews has contacted Sony to confirm. We'll update as more information becomes available.

To get Torchlight, simply follow GOG's instructions. It's free until 4:59am Pacific on Thursday.

A ridiculous number of fine games are on sale so I won't give a full run-down. While the sale is set to run until July 5, some games won't be on sale all that time, so you may want to buy them before they vanish. Oh, but what if they later turn up in a daily deal! If you're feeling diligent, check GOG's forums frequently and only buy games when it's either clear they won't be in a daily or they're about to come off sale.

The first daily sales are both Alan Wake games for $4.48 and an absurd bundle of D&D games for $21.10.

Say, let's all pick out a game on sale or two whose name we'll happily scream aloud in a public place, perhaps a park or shopping mall, until everyone plays it to placate us. I'll start: System Shock 2 is $4.99 and The Witcher 2 is $9.99.

This Protocol Droid is here to help you buy System Shock 2. How can it help you if you hide?