Tech Olive

Ding! It’s round 4, folks. For the days of December 12th and 13th, you can get Left 4 Dead at 75% off for $4.99. Shatter and Evil Genius are also 75% off at $2.50 each. And as always, four new objectives are up:

• Send a gift to a friend.
• Make a Sacrifice in Call of Duty: Black Ops.
• Set a leaderboard score of at least 11,200,000 for ‘Bonus Mode’ in Shatter.
• Create a Crass Menagerie in Left 4 Dead 2.

Get to it, soldier!

The concept alone sounds far fetched, but the nifty minds at Shogun Bros. have come up with a mouse that’s also a gamepad, complete with joysticks and everything. The Chameleon X-1 sports an adjustable DPI optical sensor that goes up to 1600 DPI and has a 125Hz polling rate. The gamepad, which resides on the bottom of the mouse, has everything you’d want in a gamepad including force feedback. Shogun Bros. say that we should expect the mouse to ship sometime in Q1 2011 for the very competitive price of $55. Will the mouse be enough to replace our Xbox 360 controllers for PC? Probably not, but this does look like an excellent option for on-the-go gamers.

[Shogun Bros. via Engadget]

Undisputed kings of the casual gaming scene, PopCap Games entrust us with the third installment in what is arguably their most popular series yet, Bejeweled. Is there enough left to squeeze out of this tube of toothpaste? Or will we be left with an all-too-familiar feel that we just paid a hefty $20 for?

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Still not convinced that Super Meat Boy is a really good game? We can’t blame you. We wouldn’t trust us either. For even more opinions, we had to search a little deeper for PC reviews of Team Meat’s challenging platformer simply because nobody gives a crap about PC indie games anymore (except us).

PC Gamer – 90/100
“A delightfully challenging platformer, and the most fun you’ll have by dying repeatedly.”

GamingExcellence – 9.5/10
“If you’ve been looking for a good platformer that actually holds up and lasts for more than a few hours then this is the game for you.”

IGN – 9.0/10
“Super Meat Boy is one of the best modern platformers. It’s infuriating, exasperating, and arduous, but it’s also delightful, thrilling, and hilarious.”

The strange and unique indie developer behind the equally strange and unique game AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAaa!: A Reckless Disregard for Gravity, Dejobaan Games, has announced their latest project which is called 1… 2… 3… KICK IT! (Drop That Beat Like an Ugly Baby). The game is much like the previous base-jumping game in that you’re free-falling between buildings, getting as close as possible to score the most points, except KICK IT! relies on your MP3 library to generate the unique maps that you’ll be falling through. It’s hard to explain, so check out some alpha gameplay footage after the break.

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Here we find ourselves at round 3 of Steam’s Treasure Hunt festivities. This round of challenges also brings fresh new deals: 75% off Droplitz, 50% off Magic the Gathering, and 33% off Mafia II. This round’s challenges are as follows:

• Join an Official Group
• Get Back in Business in Mafia II.
• Be a Devastator in Magic: The Gathering.
• Set a leaderboard score of at least 85,370 for ‘Classic – Small Wonder’ in Droplitz.

The game that’s more horrifying than the F.E.A.R. series is now on sale for half off. For this weekend only you can grab Amnesia: The Dark Descent for $9.99, that is if you’re courageous enough. We didn’t even review the game because we could never get around to beating it in the first place. It was seriously that scary (perhaps that’s a review in itself), but maybe we’re just wussies.

[Steam Page]

A group of major technology manufacturers have banded together to rid VGA of their products all together by 2015. AMD, Dell, Intel, Lenovo, Samsung and LG have said that DisplayPort and HDMI connections will lead the way. AMD will lead the charge by removing VGA, as well as DVI-I from all of its products by 2013. They believe that DisplayPort 1.2 will eventually be the default interface for PC monitors and HDMI 1.4a for TVs. Of course, they won’t be the first to push VGA out of the way. Apple was one of the first manufacturers to dump the 20-year-old display technology from its Mac lineup back several years ago.

via [Electronista]

This isn’t the first machine spotted running Intel’s new Sandy Bridge chip by any means, but it’s the first with benchmarks included, and boy are they impressive! This leaked 17-inch Alienware M17x gaming laptop scored a 15,940 in 3DMark06 sporting a 2GHz Core i7-2630QM with integrated graphics. Yes, integrated graphics. Furthermore, a higher-end version of the M17x scored a 20,155 running a 2.2GHz Core i7-2720QM with AMD Radeon HD 6900M graphics. Not too shabby.

[Notebook Review Forums via Engadget]

Image Credit: Chip Hell

Team Meat has released another title update for Super Meat Boy, which fixes several bugs and general stability issues, but also adding some achievements. Hit the break to read the full patch notes.

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