The Sunday Video Pwn

Funny story: PC Gamer's boss is obsessed with zombies.

Funny story: PC Gamer's boss is obsessed with zombies. Completely, totally, enthralled by them. He demands, occasionally, that we stay up late and play Left 4 Dead with him, on the overclocked and overpowered rig we got for him as a 'present'. We going to leave this video on the front page of the site for a little while, just because he'll come bouncing into the office on Monday morning, demanding to know how he can play this. James - to answer your questions: it's an ArmA II mod. And yes, we do have a copy of ArmA II waiting for you. But no, we don't have a spare TrackIR hanging around. You'd look silly using one, anyway.

[via reddit]

There are plenty more videos, including the best trailers of the week, below.

There's not a huge amount of hype going on for it at the moment, but every time I remember that Lord of the Rings: War in the North is an actual game in development, my inner Tolkien nerd comes out. The latest developer diaryfocuses on one of the most important things in a hack'n'slash game - swords and other assorted weaponry. And not only do we have swords in-game. Oh no, the guys at Snowblind Studios have actual swords in their offices too, which they quite happily use to hack apart sandwiches and use a keyboard with.

If fantasy is your game but Middle-Earth not your ideal setting, your pointy-eared and sharpened steel needs could well be fulfilled by Hunted: The Demon Forge. In the latest trailerthe developers talk about the creation of the game's grimy environments, and explain that they used the Unreal engine to create what the tech does best (essentially Gears of War, just with orcs instead of Locust). More interesting is the Crucible, which is a level creator that allows players to create maps to be used in a Horde-like game mode.

We're fast approaching the summer, well known to be the time of the gaming drought. Thankfully 2011 is kicking this rule in the teeth, with games like The Witcher 2 looking to be deep enough to eat up the next three months, not to mention the complexity of Deus Ex: Human Revolution that wonderfully hits during August (the time I'd normally be re-playing an old classic). Less predominant in the summer schedule but no less noteworthy is America McGee's sequel to Alice. Madness Returns, as you can see from the above trailer, is set to be a beautiful-but-haunting adventure through the protagonist's warped mind. Blood soaked kitchen knives and demonic teapots are of course what everyone wants to experience during the sunnier months, along with little girls being burnt alive.

Getting away from all that death and beheading, less violent players may want to check out Dirt3, which is fast approaching. On reveal here is the game's Gymkhana mode. Forget bombing around a pre-set track six times; gymkhana lets you go free-form on an abandoned bit of land, full of ramps and spaces perfect for donuting in.

Not quite a video but a great bit of non-game gaming is this dub-step remixusing samples from Portal 2. I predict that all the cool kids will be raving to this in the big-name clubs before the month is out. Who could resist the demands of a turret, insisting you "Get mad"?

Also, one can't include a link to a videogame-based piece of music without plugging my favourite game musical tribute.

Finally, we spotted that Gamespot have a video dedicated to the Sith Inquisitor classfrom Star Wars: The Old Republic. Rich and Tom have played it with mixed feelings, but there's still much of BioWare's vast universe we've not seen. We can only hope that the Force is stronger in the so-far unseen areas.