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All this weekend, THQ games are on sale through Steam. On top of a 50% discount on the embattled publisher's entire catalogue, each day will see a select game receiving even further discounts in a daily spotlight.

Like today - Metro 2033 is in the spotlight and available for only $5. This deal only lasts for today, so if you want to get a head start on Metro: Last Light, now may not be a bad time.

While the rhythms of authenticity and graphics aren't faint, the drum Relic Entertainment is keenest to bang with Company of Heroes 2 is that of getting commanders to play smart. Quinn Duffy, the game's director, tells us that from a gameplay standpoint the biggest thing his team is focusing on is re-injecting tactics into its real-time strategy.

"We want to be rewarding smart players," Duffy told us, "It's not an APM (actions-per-minute) game. To play Company of Heroes 2 you need to play smart and be aggressive in your decision making. We want smart players to be able to maximize the value of their units. A guy playing smart with his defenses and his cover and his movement, you want him to beat up on a guy with three squads."

War may never change, but it certainly has gotten more expensive. The frugal warmonger must secure funds for a conflict as early as possible, and THQ is hoping to capitalize on this need with pre-order incentives for Company of Heroes 2.

Plunking down money right now will grant you German Rotbraun and Soviet Leningrad skins for medium-weight vehicles. Pre-ordering through Steam will enlist you in the Steam Pre-Purchase Tiered Reward Program, which grants players goods in Team Fortress 2 and Relic Entertainment's Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War 2. A pre-order through Origin tosses in the Soviet Bryansk Front vehicle skin for heavy vehciles, while pre-ordering directly through THQ awards a free Command Pass that unlocks bonus multiplayer maps and entrance into "exclusive member's only events." The Command Pass will also be available for purchase following launch.

A $99 Digital Collector's edition is aimed at those who find their war coffers are overflowing, granting access to the first three single-player content packs post-launch, some additional vehicle skins, and a veteran badge displayed next to your name. Plus, this edition will pack in the original Company of Heroes and its two expansion packs.

Argul's Tomb, the ice-based DLC for Darksiders 2, is set to launch on September 25 for Xbox 360, PS3 and PC, for $7 (560 Microsoft Points).

Argul's Tomb comes free with the Limited Edition of Darksiders 2, including anyone who pre-ordered the game. It will come packaged with the Wii U version of Darksiders 2 when that console hits in the US on November 18.

Relic is selling memorabilia on eBay - not to help its precarious parent company THQ - but for the nobler cause of the Canadian Cancer Society. The studio is gathering money for an event called Road Hockey to Conquer Cancer, where each team has to raise $10,000 to participate in a dawn 'til dusk hockey tournament. All the money goes directly to the charity. Also, we can't think of a more Canadian charity event we'd care to write about today.

"We're closing in on our goal, but we still need a bit more money - so we're holding an auction for some signed swag," Relic designer Ryan McGechaen told us. "We have a ton of cool stuff, including an unopened copy of Homeworld 2 signed by the dev team!"

Other items up for auction, signed by their respective development teams, include a Company of Heroes 2 notebook, Space Marine: Collector's Edition for Xbox 360 and several posters. Check out the items on eBay - shouldn't it be eBeh?

Metro 2033, the post-apocalyptic shooter from 4A Games set in Russia, actually isn't an entirely new concept. The video game is based on a pretty popular book by author Dmitry Glukhovsky. MGM has optioned the rights to the book and is now looking to adapt it into a film.

The Hollywood Reporter says MGM snagged the rights and will have rookie writer F. Scott Frazier create a script. Little is known right now outside of Frazier and some production talent's involvement, so creative liberties may be taken. We're crossing our fingers for one scene where the protagonist accidentally uses some scrounged perfect ammo in his gun then gets mad at himself when he realizes its market value.

#akira For such a beloved manga and animated film, poor Akira hasn't had the best of luck when it comes to video games. Amidst the wreckage of the awful NES and Amiga adaptations of the movie, though, there always lingered the promise that a cancelled Akira project - one destined for the SNES, Genesis and Mega CD - could have been OK. More »

#justcause So, you've read all about the ambitious multiplayer add-on that that a group of modders has been working on for the PC release of Avalanche's hit sandbox action game. You've seen the insane stuntsand unscripted chaos, and said to yourself, "Man, I want me some of that." More »

#darksiders Good news: true to their word, Vigil has issued the first update for the PC version of Darksiders II, addressing a number of problems players have had with that version of the game. Among the fixes: easier key-mapping, in-game crashes, and crucially, the broken v-sync, which resulted in unfixable screen-tearing for some (but not all) players. More »

#darksiders Sad but true: The PC version of Darksiders II is bare-bones and has some serious graphical problems. Non-functional vertical-sync, strange controls, minimal options for graphical tweaking; it's a drag. More »

Darksiders 2 is a patchwork of the best in the third-person beat-em-up action genre and that's what makes it comforting. We said in our review that "you're not required to forgive the game's faults," but it does spend more time on the good side than bad. Here's what others thought about their trip with Death.

• Game Informer (90/100): "One of the most polished aspects of the game is environment traversal. Death can run along walls and leap between pillars much like the Prince of Persia. These platforming-like sequences add an element of verticality to exploration, and are used extensively to unearth hidden areas. The overworld is filled with them (including numerous bonus areas and bosses). A handy fast travel ability makes backtracking painless affair."
• Gamespot (85/100): "Bigger doesn't mean better, of course, but this isn't a "more of the same, just bigger" kind of sequel. The game uses its expansive geography to cultivate a poetic tempo in which your intellectual triumphs are rewarded with the immediate pleasures of fleet-footed platforming and demonic brutality. In Darksiders 2, Death is not an end, but rather, a portal to a memorable saga of snarling brutes and stolen souls. "
• GiantBomb (4/5): "The adventure has its rough spots and the technical issues are disappointing, but these are relatively small issues in the grand scheme of things. Darksiders 2 is an exciting and lengthy adventure with interesting characters and a host of items and features that make its mix of combat and puzzle-solving very attractive. It's better if you also played the original game, but even if you didn't, Darksiders 2 is definitely worth looking at."
• IGN (75/100): "Despite its problems, I was compelled onward in my quest with Death because Darksiders 2 is simply a fun game. The RPG elements and to-the-point action all make for some solid gaming, glitches and all. It's a shame so many glaring issues hold such an ambitious endeavor back from the greatness its developers were clearly aiming for. Still, if you love action adventure games, it's certainly worth checking out - but don't expect it to rival the masterpieces it will inevitably call to mind."

#pcgaming I played two PC ports of two big, exciting new games this week. One of them worked. One of them didn't. More »

#fineart You could, if Hong Kong gangsters weren't your thing, call Darksiders II the biggest game release of the week. Probably the month, too. More »

#darksiders Most men of modern profession have the good fortune to face death but once in their lifetime. These brave and critical souls stared into those empty sockets for hours and did not flinch... much. More »

Darksiders 2 elicits forgiveness in its weakest moments. There's a lingering sting to every stumble, and a constant yearning for just a bit more polish here and there, but the game's tremendous vision and heartening sense of adventure give it an unbreakable foundation.
The tone of Darksiders 2 is captured best in its opening shot, of a lone horseman carving through snow and inhospitable cliffs toward an immense fortress. His destination seems to teeter impossibly on a sliver of mountain, and the elegant score (care of Assassin's Creed composer Jesper Kyd) suggests this peak is but the beginning of a long, taxing ascent. Darksiders 2 is utterly devoted to the quest.

Astride the horse is capital-D Death, depicted here as a pale bruiser rocking raven hair, a spooky mask, and other skull-based attire that should guarantee him a secondary career in someone's theatrical heavy metal band. Death vows to dabble in irony and resurrect humanity, thereby aiding brother (and fellow equine enthusiast) War, who is unjustly blamed for triggering the apocalypse just a wee bit early. And like War did in Darksiders, Death completes his task by invading dungeons, slaying beasts, solving puzzles and running epic errands.

#review I am become Death, destroyer of crates. More »

This video for Darksiders 2 shows off the game's flashy combat in its arena mode. Known as "The Crucible," the mode has players beating down waves of enemies until offered a random prize. Darksiders 2 arrives at retail, ready for battle on August 14 for PS3, Xbox 360, and PC.

From now until 4 p.m. Eastern time tomorrow afternoon, the CryEngine 3-powered, IllFonic-developed FPS Nexuiz will be free to play for anyone with Steam and a Windows machine capable of running things powered by CryEngine 3. If the game tickles your fancy during that brief period of care/money-free play time, it can be permanently purchased for $2.50 during the next 40 or so hours.

Look, just because we found Nexuiz a little bland doesn't mean we're going to stop you from getting a good deal on it. We're not monsters. Well, Gorthax in accounting is a monster, but he doesn't bring it up and neither do we and everyone gets along fine and no one gets eaten.

#homefront If you played Homefront, the new trailer for the remake of 1984's Red Dawn is going to seem like déjà vu all over again. More »

#ufcundisputed THQ found the time to re-rate fighters for UFC Undisputed 3 a third time but still hasn't delivered a patch for the game, now six months after its release, despite THQ's promises it would continue to support the title even after the news it sold the license to EA Sports. More »

#darksiders First THQ's media relations folks send me a furry hat that's too small for my head. Now they've signed my death warrant. More »

Getting to know Death, getting to know all about Death. Getting to like Death, getting to hope Death likes me.

#insane THQ has cancelled work on horror game Insane and given all rights back to film director Guillermo del Toro. More »

"Beyond Earth, beyond Hell, Death is our final salvation." What does that even mean? Can we get a theology professor in here to explain that?

Haydn Dalton, lead designer on Darksiders 2 at developer Vigil Games, has some interesting ideas for Darksiders 3 - if THQ decides to greenlight a sequel. If Darksiders 2 is successful, Dalton told VideoGamer, it's unlikely THQ would have Vigil shift development to another franchise.

Specifically, if Darksiders 2 manages to sell "4 or 5 million units," he said, THQ president Jason Rubin would likely want a sequel, though he might expect Vigil to "reduce the scope so that we can make it even higher polished." Doing so would give the game more focus, said Dalton.

Building a smaller open world with more detail isn't necessarily a bad thing - it worked wonders in Rocksteady's Batman games. A smaller world certainly wouldn't hurt THQ's unstable bottom line. It's also worth noting that 4 million units of any game is no small feat. To put things in perspective, Saints Row: The Third, one of THQ's most successful games, managed to ship 4.25 million units in roughly seven months.

Darksiders 2 launches August 14.

Death's arrival is only a few weeks away on August 14. Putting live-action trailers aside, here's what the game will look like when it rides into retail.

#darksiders The new, Darksiders II map isn't the only thing that's going to be grand when THQ/Vigil Games' next hack and slash title releases next month (the map is said to be double the size of its predecessor). It's also a shared quality with the fiendish enemies you face off against. It's a wonder that the protagonist, Death, can hold his own with his comparatively tiny scythe. More »

Company of Heroes 2 will feature death by brutal Soviet winter. Relic's upcoming strategy game for 2013 will utilize a "ColdTech" system, exposing infantry units to extreme cold, where they can "gradually freeze to death unless the player keeps them warm." This can be done by building fires and garrisoning troops in buildings with Soviet snuggies.

The winter maps will also blast blizzards and snow that can accumulate on buildings and vehicles, but can also be melted or removed. The depth of snow will impact troop movement and reveal vehicle tracks.

If you're an awfully cruel commander, remember to triple-dog dare troops to lick a frozen pole.

#companyofheroes The harsh Soviet winter of 1941 saw temperatures drop as low as -40 degrees Fahrenheit, a temperature at which human skin freezes in minutes. Axis and Allied forces alike suffered tremendous casualties due to the extreme cold. Relic Entertainment harnesses this deadly force of nature with Company of Heroes 2's ColdTech system. More »

These South Park: The Stick of Truth screens suspiciously look like they're from the television show of the same name. We have no choice but to believe these are screenshots from the game, which will be available on Xbox 360, PC, and PS3 on March 3, 2013.