Great Holiday Giveaway Day One: Testament of Sherlock Holmes

Our massive holiday giveaway is not only starting EARLY but we’re expanding it. We’ve got almost 50 codes to give away, over $500* worth of free games for you, our readers and we’re going to start things off right, with a little bit of a mystery.

Each week day from now until January 10^th we are going to be giving away one digital game (usually through steam) to our lucky readers who either read our facebook page, @brokenjoysticsks on twitter or send an email to contests @brokenjoysticks.net.

Today’s giveaway is… *drumroll* 3 copies of The Testament of Sherlock Holmes for Windows PC. All three codes have been given away. Look for more codes on Monday!

Note: * These codes were provided either by developers or Broken Joysticks staff. Please consider them a gift and they carry no retail value. Contest eligibility: You must have a working twitter facebook or email account. If you use social media we ask that you are following us in order to be considered for the giveaway. Winners will be included in the following days post and the deadline is midnight Eastern Standard time, at that time codes will be sent out.

Blizzard Lays Down The Ban Hammer On Bots

There is nothing more frustrating than trying to find your perfect set of gear in a game like Diablo III only to find that either the people you are playing with have snagged it or the marketplace is flooded dozens of them thanks to bots. For serious players it can take away the meaning of rare drops and in the worst case scenarios it can bring the game to its knees by overloading the servers.

Blizzard revealed today that they have banned a few thousand accounts for hacking, boting among other offenses. Since this is a game with an economy based upon real money it is nice to see the developers taking things seriously. Apparently cheating was so widespread that it was starting to cause problems with Battle.net.

Check out their official statement after the jump. (more…)

Steam Winter Sale Begins, Wallets Cry and Gamers Save

The time of year to empty our wallets into Valves coffers has come once again. The end of December may be synonymous with various holidays but for PC gamers there’s also the annual Steam Holiday Sale. The festivities kicked into gear earlier today and there seems to be a little bit of everything available with the promise of more to come!

Several of the big titles from this fall are discounted 30 – 50% including Scribblenaughts Unlimited, Borderlands 2 and Hitman Absolution. Check out the full list of games available after the jump or head on over the Seam store yourself! (more…)

The Great Broken Joysticks Holiday Giveaway Contest

The holidays are a great time to be a gamer, as a child you get to wait for your favorite game with anticipation, hoping that it is wrapped under the tree. As an adult you either get to be selfish and play Assassin’s Creed III for two straight days or ya know visit family. We here at Broken Joysticks might not be knee deep in games due to the annual slowdown but that doesn’t mean we don’t want to give you something. That is why we are launching the first Broken Joysticks Great Holiday Give Away.

During the next two weeks (December 24^th thru January 4^th) we will be giving away over 20 steam codes for popular games. Each day we’ll run at least one contest on our front-page similar to the Skyrim Giveaway from last week, picking a winner from either Facebook or Twitter! (more…)

Valve Releases Steam Client for Linux

It is no secret that Valve has been working on a version its Steam client for Linux for sometime. This afternoon the closed beta for the new version of the client became available to the entire world. If you are a fan of open source software or free operating systems then you now have a new option for your gaming enjoyment. Just don’t expect the strong library that Windows and Mac users enjoy currently.

As of this writing there are 39 games available including Team Fortress 2, Killing Floor, The Book of Unfinished Tales and Aminesia The Dark Descent. (more…)

League of Legends On Watch After Heroes of Newerth Hack

Fans of the MOBA genre and the creators of their favorite games are on watch after Heroes of Newerth was hacked this afternoon. Originally appearing on Reddit, a user by the name of Ryan_HTP posted about the hack with a twitter link as supposed truth. Apparently he made off with the usernames and passwords for the games accounts.

According to Ryan he’s also planning to attack competing game, League of Legends, a later time just to enrage its fan base. Surely this will put Riot Games on watch for potential security breaches but can one person bring down an entire development studio? As Kotaku postulate’s a remote possibility.

As he wrote on Reddit:

“I hacked HoN because there’s nothing as hilarious as seeing a bunch of fanboys of a game get enraged over the fact that their favourite game has been hacked”

Do you enjoy the MOBA Genre? Will you be changing your passwords in light of these recent events?

Source: Reddit via Kotaku

Rise of The Hutt Cartel Expands The Old Republic

Bioware and Electronic Arts have got a lot of press for the recently released free to play version of the Old Republic. Players in a galaxy far far away can expand their experience for a mere $20, or $10 if they’re a paying monthly subscriber. That doesn’t sound like such a bad deal, whether The Rise of the Hutt Cartel can bring the level of content players expect from a full expansion is unknown Bioware has revealed some details surrounding the add-on.

Rise of the Hutt Cartel brings high level players five new levels to experience with the new level 55 cap. On top of this is new story missions and a planet, Makeb, designed for the game’s most advanced characters. Aside from the new fully voiced story content Bioware haven’t revealed what new features this expansion will bring. Stay tuned for more!

New Assassin’s Creed III Patch Is Live

I won’t lie, Assassin’s Creed III is amazing and buggy. Those two words don’t normally mesh and in order to take the buggy part out of the equation, Ubisoft has released a patch that fixes a bunch of stuff today!

Single Player
Global Fixes
- Couriers will now appear more often in Boston and New York

- Fixed a bug where consumables would not be restored properly after playing a naval mission

- Fixed a bug where multiple copies of heralds or paper boys could be spawned at the same spot

- Fixed a bug where printer shops icons could appear on the map even if the player is not notorious

- Fixed a bug where the 2nd equipped pistol could disappear after a loading

- Fixed a bug where the player could fall through the map if he went through a city gate on horseback while in conflict

- Fixed a crash when the player uses the rope dart on a horse from above

- Fixed horse glitch

- Fixed inventory messages that kept being displayed after every reload if the player had completed some missions

- Fixed various crashes

- Forced subtitles to be displayed for off-camera voices like some tutorials and end of sequence transitions

- Made sure to stop tavern music when exiting taverns
SEQUENCE 1 – A DEADLY PERFORMANCE: fixed a music glitch by making a cinematic not skippable
SEQUENCE 4 – FEATHERS AND TREES : fixed another case where optional objective “Do not touch the ground or water” could fail for no good reason
SEQUENCE 6 – ON JOHNSON’S TRAIL: fixed a bug where sometimes Adams and Revere could be missing, preventing the player from starting the mission
SEQUENCE 7 – LEXINGTON AND CONCORD: fixed a bug where the player could stay stuck on the road while on horseback at a specific spot on the mission’s path
EPILOGUE – Fixed Animus Synching gameplay that could get stuck
Side Quests

- Boston Brawlers: clearer message after beating all ex-champions, stating that you need to go back to Boston

- Boston Underground: fixed a bug where exploded barrels could come back if you re-entered through the South Commons entrance.

- Boston Underground: fixed a bug where Haytham could never use the North Port entrance

- Liberation Missions: added unfogging of the map when the player gets near a liberation event, to make sure the icon will be revealed in case the player doesn’t complete it and wants to come back later.

- New York Liberation Missions: fixed a few cases where the player could get to the event’s icon but nothing would happen.

- New York Underground, fixed a bug where the player would be teleported at the center of New York if he declined to enter the underground through the South Market entrance.

For more details, keep reading after the break!

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Street Fighter x Megaman Is Out Today!

As we previously announced today is the first day of Mega Man’s 25th anniversary and what better way than to download for free Street Fighter x Mega Man. (more…)

Metro: The Last Light Limited Edition Detailed

Metro: The Last Light is poised for a March 2013 release and if you haven’t went to pre-order this game yet, you might be more entitled to do so now. As of today, THQ has announced that all pre-orders will automatically be upgraded to the Limited Edition of Metro: The Last Light.

What does this limited edition include you may ask? Well, it will include a harder difficulty mode known as “Ranger Mode”. For those familiar with the first game, Ranger Mode is insanely hard – one hit by a bullet will kill you. Not only that, you don’t have a HUD and pick-ups have less quantities of ammunition. But, players were also entitled to 3x damage with their own weapons. Sounds like fun huh?

As you can tell from the above picture, you also get Extra Military Grade Bullets which are essential for either trading or killing enemies quickly and effectively.  In addition, you also receive the Modified Russian Rifle which is ideal for “claustrophobic combat.” Oh yes!

So what are you waiting for? Really, what are you waiting for! Go pre-order Metro: The Last Light and get the FREE Limited Edition upgrade. I’m expecting this game to stand out a lot more that its predecessor (which was a really solid, under-the-radar hit). You definitely need to check this out! Here is a trailer if you need a little more persuasion.