Happy Birthday Arqade! Today is the second anniversary of Gaming’s graduation from beta, October 6th, 2010. What a busy couple of years it’s been! Let’s take a moment to celebrate the accomplishments of the community and the site over the past year. Put on your party hat, throw a handful of confetti at the nearest unsuspecting co-worker, roommate, family member, pet, houseplant, or whatever else is nearby, and have a slice of cake!

Party Cat is ready to party, are you?

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2011 Gaming.Stackexchange Picks

It’s now the end of 2011, and it’s time to look back on some of our most memorable gaming moments of the year.  This has been a great year for gaming, with so many excellent AAA titles such as Deus Ex Human Revolution, Skyrim, Uncharted 3, and Portal 2, along with many indie hits such as Bastion, Frozen Synapse, Terraria, and last but not least, Minecraft.  We asked many Gaming SE users and blog writers to share their most surprising moments, most enjoyable games, and the games they are most looking forward to in 2012.

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Team Fortress 2 has been running a charity drive for the recent Japan disasters in a unique manner.  Between March 23^rd and April 6^th, Valve is selling three hats and two noisemakers in TF2’s in-game store with all proceeds from them going to support the Red Cross’s efforts in Japan.

Who would buy such a thing?  Well, I would for one.  On March 29^th, Valve noted that they had sold $300,000 USD worth of these items.

For reference, the items being sold are:

• Humanitarian’s Hachimaki – 7.49 USD
• Benefactor’s Kanmuri – 19.99 USD
• Bell Noisemaker – 1.99 USD
• Gong Noisemaker – 0.49 USD
• Japan Charity Bundle – 29.96 USD, including all of the above
• Magnanimous Monarch – 99.99 USD

  (Why are the images featuring the RED Spy? Well… check out my StackExchange avatar!)

You’ll see more articles from me down the line, likely about Team Fortress 2, with maybe a little World of Warcraft or Monday Night Combat thrown in.

Do you love Minecraft? Do you want to take it to the next level? Well that’s where Mods come in. A Mod is when someone adds functionality to Minecraft that wasn’t originally there. Take for example the Mo’ Creatures Mod: it adds all types of new mobs to Minecraft (including Unicorns)! Sound cool? Then how about we get started installing this mod!

What you’ll need:

1. The Gui API – This allows the mod to add buttons to the settings area of Minecraft.
2. Risugami’s ModLoader – This makes it easier for the person who made to mod to keep it up to date.
3. Rosigai’s AudioMod – This adds custom sounds (which will need for the new animals).
4. Mo’ Creatures – This adds the new mobs (including Foxes, Horses, and new evil mobs).
5. TFC’s ModManager* – This makes installing the mods much easier.

*TFC’s ModManager isn’t required, but if you’re not comfortable directly editing a .jar file, then I highly recommend you use it. If you would like to do it manually, you can use 7-zip or WinRar to copy the new files into the Minecraft.jar.

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DATELINE TARSONIS SECTOR… no, wait.  I made that joke once before and no one thought it was funny.  Let’s skip that and boil down to the TSL.  For those of you who aren’t giant Brood War nerds who dream about watching MenSol[ZerO] from an Opera balcony in a tuxedo, you’re probably unfamiliar with the history of the TSL.  Back in the dark ages of Brood War, if you wanted to be a professional StarCraft player, but didn’t want to transplant yourself to Seoul, there weren’t many options available to you.  These days, a $30,000 tournament doesn’t seem to turn heads, but once upon a time you were lucky to find a $200 tournament.  WCG, was the only place for American StarCraft players to compete.  Many of the big names today were once WCG medalists (Day9, Artosis, Idra, iNcontroL).  But WCG wasn’t that often, and the tournaments were small.  So a small group of gamers, under the name TeamLiquid, started up their own tournament and even managed to land Razer as their backer.  For North American Progamers, this was a landmark moment. more »

It’s rare to find games that have the right mix of deceptive simplicity, devilish difficulty and subtly addictive gameplay. SpaceChem gets pretty close.

The game idea is pretty simple. You have molecules made of atoms. You must turn them into other molecules. You have two “waldos” that manipulate atoms making “science!” happen. It’s so simple it’s hard to put it into words; the official introduction video makes a good job of it, however:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gk8JwvtVs38

There are a few things that make this game stand out. Since however you’ll find a dozen reviews on the usual places, I’ll just focus on the one that struck me the most. That would be the performance report. more »