Defense Grid: The Awakening Message Board

The first game in Microsoft's Games with Gold promotion is Defense Grid: The Awakening. Hidden Path's 2009 XBLA tower defense game is normally priced at 800 MSP, but will be free for Gold subscribers starting today and until July 15.

Games for Gold, unveiled at E3, sees Microsoft make two Xbox 360 games free each month; one on the 1st of the month, and the other on the 16th. The promotion runs through until the end of the year.

Xbox's Major Nelson clarified through Twitter that the two games already announced for the program, namely Assassin's Creed 2 and Halo 3, aren't this month's pair of offerings.

- Added the mini-games and tools back to the Community console.
- Added controller support for Big Picture mode to all areas of the Community console.
- Fixed 4 of top crashes reported by users.

Defense Grid: Containment, originally expected in December, now has a solid release date of January 23. Containment is an expansion to the tower defense game Defense Grid: The Awakening.

It includes 8 levels that bridge the gap between The Awakening and its upcoming sequel, and features voice work from Ming-Na Wen of ER (and Mulan) fame, as well as Alan Tudyk of being Alan Tudyk fame. Furthermore, Containment includes four user-created maps chosen from the Defense Grid community.

Last year, Containment began as a Kickstarter project to help fund Defense Grid 2. While the project did surpass its $250,000 goal, it never hit the cool $1 million that developer Hidden Path sought to fully fund a sequel. Project backers will still receive Defense Grid 2 whenever it is completed.

Containment will be available on Steam for $5 individually, or as part of a bundle with Defense Grid and all of its DLC for $20.

- Fixed Supreme Strategist can now be earned.
- Fixed Temporal Tower modifications from the Command Decision map will no longer carry over to other maps.

Defense Grid's first story-expansion add-on drops for science on Dec. 7. Titled "You Monster," the DLC features Zoey from Left 4 Dead, who has to navigate various traps and -- just kidding. It features Portal's GLaDOS, and if you really want to play this piece of DLC, you'd better learn to not fall for transparent ruses like that one. GLaDOS will laugh at you. And call you fat. And probably kill you.

"You Monster" will cost $4.99 on Steam or 400 Microsoft Points on Xbox 360, and contains eight new levels and 35 challenge missions, adding more than 15 hours of content where players will fight off Defense Grid aliens and complete GLaDOS' tests. Or, at least you'll try.

First artwork for the new Counter-Strike game, coming in early 2012 to PC, Mac, consoles.

Instead of finally announcing Half-Life 3, Valve has confirmed suspicions something was up with the Counter-Strike franchise the studio has left alone for a few years now.

Counter-Strike: Global Initiative is a brand-new installment being developed in conjunction with Hidden Path Entertainment, the developers behind Defense Grid.

It's been 12 years since Counter-Strike first burst onto the scene as a Half-Life mod, but it returns early next year on PC, Mac, Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network (yes, consoles--cue the angry PC crowd!).

If you're at the Penny Arcade Expo later this month, though, you'll get to play it far ahead of release.

Valve hasn't released any screen shots of the game yet, only the logo. The studio said Counter-Strike: Global Initiative will feature "new maps, characters, and weapons," "updated versions of the classic CS content (de_dust, etc.)," and "new gameplay modes, matchmaking, leader boards, and more."

A downloadable shooter from Valve? Count us in.

New Maps - New Strategies - New Achievements