The folks at OnLive seem intent on capturing new subscribers with the enticement of deals on games.  Every Friday, they are offering a game from their catalog for a cool $5.00 investment.  This week, the deal is Just Cause 2.  As you can tell from our review, as well as several of the articles that Paul has posted, we have a particular fancy for Just Cause 2.  It is the epitomy of what an open world game is all about.  Every last square inch of Panau is available to explore right from the get go.  See a place in the distance, go ahead and visit it.  Sure the main story is crap, but this game is all about the adventure that you can find and make for yourself, and at $5.00, it is a no-brainer if you have not picked it up yet on some other service.

And since it is an OnLive game, you don’t have to worry about little things like PC specs, as the game is streamed to you via your Internet connection.  If you are interested, head over to www.onlive.com and pick up Just Cause 2 for five.

Just noticed this little footnote over at Steampowered.com, but Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines is on sale for $4.99.  With that price, you would be foolish not to pick up this gem of a game.  The first third party game developed with the Source engine, it offers up a huge single player campaign running about 30 hours, with 8 different classes to pick from, offering up different experiences each time you play it.  Did I forget that John DiMaggio, voice of Bender and Marcus Fenix, lends his vocal talents to the game.

While it was a buggy mess when it was released, and Troika Games only managed to release one patch before they went bankrupt, the mod community has picked up the slack and has created new skins, new patches, new textures and even a companion mod to allow you to have a party of character with you in the game.  Yes, I am totally on a soapbox for this game, but you really should treat yourself for a Lincoln and pick up this title.  Not sure if this is a weekend deal or just a one day sale, but follow the link to add it to your shopping cart.

With summer now here in full swing, Steam has decided that it is also time to empty our bank accounts of any spare cash, as they have launched the Summer Camp Sale.  Starting today and continuing through July 10th, there will be all kinds of discounts, bundle packs and more that you can pick up.  And as with the Perils of Summer, there are tickets that you can win by unlocking tasks each day.  The more tasks you complete, the more prizes you can obtain, which includes DLC, games and more.

Today’s special deals include:

• Medal of Honor – $10.19
• Recettear: An Item Shop Tale – $5.00
• Oblivion GOTY – $6.80
• Back to the Future The Game – $12.49
• Blood Bowl Legendary Edition – $13.99
• Test Drive Unlimited 2 – $9.99
• Operation Flashpoint – Red River – $29.24
• Lead and Gold – $1.50
• The Witcher 2 – $33.49
• Dawn of War II: Retribution – $14.99
• Bit Trip Runner – $2.50
• Borderlands GOTY – $7.50

Look for daily updates on the sale right here on Aeropause Games.  Oh, and prepare to be broke as hell in a week and a half.

If you have been waiting for a deal on some of the big shooters from the last year (or more in one case), Direct 2 Drive might have the hookup for you.  They have teamed up with Electronic Arts to offer up discounts of 30-75% off on specific, shooter oriented titles.

Some of the titles included in the sale are:

• Crysis 2 – $41.97 (30% off)
• Bulletstorm – $29.97 (50% off)
• Medal of Honor – $14.97 (50% off)
• S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadows of Chernobyl – $4.98 (75% off)
• Mass Effect 2 – $9.97 (50% off)
• Battlefield Bad Company 2 – $9.97 (50% off)

Head over to the Direct2Drive sale page to get in on the low prices.  I have to admit that Bulletstorm at $30 is enticing for me, but I still think Crysis 2 is a tad bit high for my tastes.

On Monday, most government employees, post office employees, schools and banks will have the day off here in the US for President’s Day.  Unfortunately, I do not work for any of those, so I will be at work, but for those that are off, you might want to take advantage of Direct2Drive’s President’s Day sale where you can enter a coupon code to get 20% off of everything in the store.  Yep, 20% off of any title, no matter how new or old the title is right now.  To get your discount, fill up your cart and then enter the code “hailtothechief” in the promo code box and BOOM, 20% off.

Also, take these little facts to heart about some games that have presidents involved in one way or another via Direct2Drive.

• Play as Kennedy or Nixon in Call of Duty’s Black Ops Zombie mode.
• Butt heads with Abraham Lincoln in the Civilization series.
• Go visit the Washington Monument or The Thomas Jefferson Rotunda in Fallout 3: Game of the Year edition
• Listen to the dulcette tones of fictional president Josiah Bartlett’s Martin Sheen as the Illusive Man in Mass Effect 2.

The coupon code will work from Friday, February 18th-21st, 2011.

I turned the Commander’s Optimus Prime-style robotic frame around to face a single-file line of armed dune buggy scouts. I punched “D” on the keyboard, and clicked on the first car. With a bang the commander unleashed a proton-torpedo like shell which plowed in a straight line along the ground disintegrating the incoming vehicles. Now to build a light laser tower for them to run into next time the AI tries that little stunt again.

Sweet moments like this are icing on the cake for Chris Taylor’s classic RTS game that put his name on the game development map, Total Annihilation. Until November 30th it’s half off, just $5 for the game bundled with both of its expansions as part of the Impulse Thanksgiving Sale. It’s been patched up to run on modern Windows machines, thanks to Atari, the final resting place of the Cavedog IP.

This game has it all: the ability to give even factories direction on where new units will move to, unit order queues, patrol routes that work differently based on the unit type — construction units will repair injured bots or structures they patrol past, for example — and a variety of air, land, and even water units were offered. The biggest thing that hooked me all those years ago was the simplicity of its economy — it’s all about metal and energy here — but it doesn’t hurt that the game avoids squishy organic units like zerg aliens and those icky humans. To cap it off I like that the Commander is the alpha and the omega. He can build a base up from nothing but he can also fight in a pinch. Give him a big stockpile of energy and he can turn that nanolathe into a disintegrator gun to level just about anything in a pinch.

What else is on tap from Impulse during this sale? Tropico 3 for $7.49; Sword of the Stars for half off; Galactic Civilizations I Ultimate Edition for 99 cents; a STALKER bundle for ten bucks — these are just a sample of the long list of items. The sale ends November 30th, so don’t wait too long to pick up something you might have missed.

EA haven’t made any official announcements about what goodies a Dead Space 2 Collectors’ Edition might boast, but thanks to an over-eager employee of Amazon, they now no longer have to.

Courtesy of the eagle-eyes and screen-capping skills of The Examiner, we can see firsthand what Visceral think we’d like to see in a CE – namely artwork, a soundtrack and DLC extras – even though the picture was quickly pulled from Amazon’s site.

Oh, and there’s also a replica Plasma Cutter. Yeah, that’s right – A REPLICA PLASMA CUTTER. Just how chocful of awesome is that?

Dead Space 2 is scheduled for release on 25 and 28 January 2011, in the US and UK respectively.

Why bad news? Because now all of these chains have a vested interest in NOT discounting new games at all. Discounting new titles may mean the buy-back price can be lower, sure, but the resale price might also end up lower. Plus, discounting new titles makes the slight discount used titles get seem unattractive. See where this is going?

While I’m generally afraid of where this is headed given that there aren’t that many games retailers around anymore and like other commodities it’s being dominated by the largest players, I can’t say this was wholly unexpected once they got wind of what’s been keeping Gamestop in the black.

Will this accelerate the publishers push to all-digital wares? Quite possibly. That, or carving out more and more parts of a game, like multiplayer, and making vouchers in each game that only give new buyers all of what a game has to offer, forcing used buyers to pay more and more to get that content. This could become an interesting arms race at retail after all.

Sadly, today’s news includes something that I think will mean the end of good sales on video games. I mean, already we’ve seen the game sales at retail chilled somewhat since the death of Circuit City here in the US, leaving Best Buy up against megastores like Target and Wal-Mart, but this might get really ugly:

Target and Best Buy are rolling out used game buying and selling. Now there’s no incentive for them to put new and especially older games on sale at all. They’d be cutting into their own profit margins to do so.

I wonder what the publishers think of those apples?

Damn it, I hate you Steam, id Software and Bethesda.  Together, you have teamed up to find a way to try and wrench money from my wallet.  See, to celebrate QuakeCon, the annual gathering of all things Quake and id Software related, Betheda have decided to put a bunch of their games on sale via Steam.  How much of a sale?  How about 27 id Software and Bethesda games for $70.  That $70 includes Fallout 3: Game of the Year edition, Oblivion Game of the Year edition, all the Doom games, all the Hexen games, all the Heretic games, Morrowind, all Quake games (except Quake IV) and all the Wolfenstein games (except the latest Wolfenstein).  Even Commander Keen is in this bundle.

And if you are not down with all of that, they are even throwing out daily deals for the next four days.  How about Oblivion for $6.49, or Oblivion with The Nine DLC for $8.24. 

So, who is going to end up as broke as I am?