Total PC Gaming has arrived in LA! The city of gang violence, hardcore pornography and, lets not forget, angels. We may have just endured a grueling 12 hour flight - sat next to a man who insisted on giving us a smell of his colon every 15 minutes - but we’re now in the LA Convention centre to bring you news and ramblings from this year’s E3 (the video game trade show that’s kind of lost its magic, but is going to stick around for a little while longer until someone starts-up something better).

For our latest coverage of the event you should direct yourself to our Blog page here

Unless you have been living under a rock for the past year, Spore needs no introduction. Will Wright’s evolutionary blockbuster isn’t cited for release until early September, but publisher EA has released the Creature Creator segment of the game early to garner some not-really-needed interest. A free trial is now available from www.spore.com/trial . The question is, will Spore live up to the hype? Not long to wait now…

CD Projekt, developer of award-winning PC title The Witcher, is taking a retro step into distribution future with GOG.com, a digital platform that allows you to download classic titles for a very modest fee. These will be optimized for Windows XP and Vista, and will be available for a modest $5.99 or $9.99. More significantly, they’ll all be DRM free and once paid for, downloadable as many times as needed - giving GOG.com a clear advantage over Steam. CD Projekt has already secured licences for games from Interplay and Codemasters’ back catalogues and hopes to add Lucasarts titles such as Sam & Max and the Monkey Island games in the near future. Currently CD Projeckt have a tantlising line-up that includes Fallout, Fallout 2, MDK, Freespace 2, Operation Flashpoint: Game of the Year Edition and TOCA Race Driver 3, with their ultimate goal being to offer “a comprehensive collection of classic PC games from the 80s, 90s and 2000s.”

Check out our GOG.com competition on the TPCG forum.

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That’s right. Not only can you get the best prices on PC games direct from the pages of www.totalpcgaming.com,  you can also save a fortune on the latest graphics card, CPU or an entire gaming PC courtesy of our shiny partners PriceGrabber.com!

www.totalpcgaming.com/shop will find you the cheapest online prices on tens of thousands of computer components and those that click through will not only save hours of mucking about and money - they’ll be supporting Total PC Gaming while they’re at it.

Enjoy!

Lizard Interactive has announced that the first expansion pack for free to play MMORPG Sho Online is just around the corner. Entitled “Two Emperors”, the expansion brings with it a host of new features, one of the more interesting being a pet training system whereby players can raise creatures to assist them in battles or provide speedier forms of transport.

Get the lowdown here

Get yourself over to the Total PC Gaming forum here, sign up (its free) and log in either at 1:30pm or 8pm on Monday 14th July to be in with a chance of winning big courtesy of the mag.

In case you don’t already know the TPCG forum is the place to be if you want to discuss you’re favourite hobby, ask and answer gaming and hardware related questions and talk directly to the magazine team about whatever’s on your mind.

So what’s on offer? 4GB of Corsair’s awesome DHX DDR2 RAM for the top prize and a bundle of PC games and the Gamer Edition of Guinness World Records 2008 for two lucky runners up.

Tell your friends and family, rope in your neighbours and call the cops! Actually, scrap the last one, that would just be silly.

Full details can be found here!

If supercharged engines, loud exhausts and smell of burning rubber revs your engine then FIA, the guys behind the World Touring Car Championship , have something for you. The V-WTCC is the virtual version of the famous FIA petrolhead tournament from SimBin, where anyone can log in and work their way up the leaderboards without investing in a souped-up motor. You can play in the free demo tournament for the chance of winning a prize from Yokohama’s merchandise collection, or buy the retail version of Race07 to race against people worldwide and for the chance of becoming the V-WTCC grand champion - and a seriously tasty grand prize, of course. Register for the V-WTCC Race07 tournament and download the demo here.
We also have just the ticket for you if this turns your ignition. Two, in fact: FIA World Touring Car Championship is giving us two weekend tickets to Brands Hatch, valid for 26 and 27 July, to watch the real FIA WTCC as it unfolds. We’re offering these to one lucky winner, as well as copies of FIA WTCC Race07 to the five runners-up of our competition.
All you have to do is get onto the V-WTCC Race07 website, tell us exactly what the Grand Prize of the V-WTCC is and send your name and address to tpcg@imagine-publishing.co.uk. Closing date is 18 July. Check out more details of SimBin’s Race07 here.

If Blizzard ever needed a hint of how it could expect Diablo III to perform, this is it. Since the announcement of the long-anticipated ARPG over the weekend, sales of the last Diablo game released almost a decade ago have soared on Amazon, with Diablo II hitting fourth place in the PC sales charts and its expansion just behind in fifth. Meanwhile, a contingent of original Diablo fans have raised an online petition complaining about the ‘cartoonish’ look of Diablo III and comparing the art direction to World Of Warcraft, which lead producer Keith Lee has defended on MTV Multiplayer.

Blizzard has announced that its long anticipated third episode to the classic RPG series, Diablo, is in development. It’s the first Diablo game since 2001 and it sees Deckard Cain return to a full 3D Sanctuary, a much-improved Battle.net platform and new character classes such as the Witch Doctor. No official word on a release date yet, but we’re not expecting to see it this side of Christmas.

The official website can be found here.

Konami has recently confirmed that a PC-DVD version of its latest football title Pro Evolution Soccer 2009 should come to a games store near you in Autumn 2008. An all-new graphics engine should make PES 2009 the best looking soccer game available, though EA’s titanic grip on the official FIFA licence means you will still be playing as West London White against Merseyside Blue rather than as officially licensed teams. Or you could just download the inevitable 3rd party ‘fix’ of course. More details and the first screen shots coming soon, but for now you can read more here.