Those who think downloaded games are the future might want to look at stuff like this, showing how companies will milk every dollar out of the consumer. For the first six months after purchase from EA’s online store, you’re covered. You can re-download the game at will. After that, you’ll need EA’s Extended Download Service, which lets you go for two years knowing your content is always available. Of course, this will cost you an extra $7. If you don’t get it and you lose the digital file via a virus or HDD crash, you’re done for.

Isn’t digital downloading supposed to fix stuff like this? Why should consumers have to pay extra for content they rightfully own? The company that handles EA’s store is Digital River, and they seem to be the culprit, and certainly take most of the blame.

At the same time Microsoft is dropping gamers from Xbox Live for modded hardware, Blizzard is apparently in a bad mood too. They’ve suspended 350,000 players from both Starcraft and Diablo II play on Battle.net. The ban comes as a result of users that were cheating via third-party hacks, and that goes against the TOS (duh).

Unlike Microsoft though, this is only a suspension for the time being. After 30 days, these users can sign back on. Now, if they try this again, then they’re in trouble and gone until… well, until the end of time or the servers for those games go offline, whichever comes first.

While hardly the revolution PopCap makes it out to be, Bejeweled Twist is a fun take on the simple, addictive “match 3” genre that made the company a household name. The key to Twist is that it maintains what made Bejeweled a classic, while changing the mechanics ever so slightly to keep it fresh.

The change is that you flip four jewels at once in a clockwise motion. It’s a tough change to adjust to, as in learning how the pieces need to be aligned for everything to fall into place. Since you have to move four of them, aligning them into row of three (or four, or five) is significantly more complex. The closest match to Twist is Microsoft’s Hexic. Take away the grid pattern of the latter and you have the base for Twist.

Visually impressive level transitions make for a nice break in the look before diving back in. Each level is cleared after a specific amount of points are scored. Pieces can be rotated infinitely, but the score multiplier only increases if you can clear pieces with one flip. Reaching the top of the score multiplier (10x) earns you a fruit which can then be broken to clear all of the same color on screen.

It’s hardly easy, as Bejeweled is still a game of random chance. As with the original, you can’t see the pieces that will be falling. It’s all about luck in how they randomly fall. Seeing at least a single line above the playfield would add a significant strategic advantage.

Difficulty is surprisingly high until you unlock the Zen mode. Here you can’t fail. In the standard game, colored bombs need to be removed from play by matching them up within a certain amount of time. These begin dropping at a furious rate early on, and can actually create a highly stressful environment.

Other modes include the time attack, and once unlocked, a challenge/puzzle mode. There’s nothing out of the ordinary here. Each mode offers quick saves when need be.

Bejeweled Twist is a quick and painless casual title, offering solid and expected fun. PopCap has a winner despite it being barely revolutionary in any way. It’s a standard, straightforward Bejeweled experience with some changes that make it worth picking up.

It seems Blizzard is making up for the long wait for Starcraft II by releasing it as a trilogy. And by “making up for the long wait” we really mean “filling the void in their pocketbooks.”

The three versions were confirmed at BlizzCon by Rob Pardo, executive VP of game design. He said to look at the first release as the main game, and the other two as expansions. The three are as follows:

Terrans - Wings of Liberty
Zerg - Heart of the Swarm
Protoss - Legacy of the Void

Each one of course represents a different race. That’s all when and good, and sure to take advantage of those Korean gamers who have made the original a national sport, though on the hand, releasing new of an “expansion” (if you want to call it that) this early seems really cheap. Command & Conquer used to come on two discs, one for each of the warring factions. Making someone buy three discs is petty at best.

Hmm… here’s an odd one. Rockstar was unable to release the console version of Grand Theft Auto IV over in Australia uncensored. Australia’s Office of Film and Literature Classification has issues with the game’s hooker sequences. Yet, when the PC was rated, this showed up as reported by GamePolitics:

“Grand Theft Auto IV PC has been rated MA15+ strong violence, sex scenes, coarse language, and drug references by the Australian Classification Office. The PC game is unedited in any way and identical in content to the international version.”

The theory out there is that the hooker animations simply aren’t in the PC version anywhere, certainly more likely than a ratings board changing policy so quickly.

Those non-console gaming fans looking to boot up Grand Theft Auto IV on the PCs soon may want to take a pause from their excitement. The unpopular SecuROM anti-piracy technology will be implemented upon install. On the positive side, while the disc needs to remain in the drive at all times and it does need activated online, there is no limit to the number of installs. Of course, this only applies to the retail version. Those downloading will contend with the DRM from their company of choice.

EA’s hyped free-to-play cartoon shooter Battlefield Heroes won’t be seeing playtime this year. Even the closed beta isn’t going to happen much longer, as that will be going offline too. Instead, the company will hold off the release until early 2009 at some unspecified date. The beta will also be open for business again sometime before the full release as well, though nothing seemed to set in stone. To further hype what those beta players have seen, senior producer James Salt states what they’ll be working on in the meantime:

There’s the 10% game part you can see, and the hiding 90% is what we call the ‘backend’. The backend does a lot of things. From running the website’s features and looking after the items you have, to collecting the results from each Heroes game and matchmaking players into games.

After Blizzard announced that Starcraft II was going to be released in three parts (one for each faction), it was a bit of a shock. Now, Blizzard VP Rob Pardo has stated that it’s going to take some time for those individual releases to come out. There could be a year span between each release in fact, which is flat out absurd.

By the time they make it to stores, the chapters will be outdated (three years is an eternity for games). Interest will have waned. On top of that, they expect consumers to pay a crapload to get the full game. The entire concept sounds cheap on the part of Blizzard, although I’m sure Koreans won’t care given that the game is just shy of a national treasure.

Think your World of Warcraft addiction is out of control? Well, rest assured, it’s not as bad as this guy. Going by the name of Prepared, he uses a massive, ridiculous 11 computer rig to control (count ‘em) 36 characters at once. How exactly do you control that many characters at once, and honestly, is it even fun anymore?

Besides the debatable fun factor, this is what it costs him: $5,700 a year, plus $1,500 for any expansions that come out. Oh, and that doesn’t include the PC’s impact on the electric bill. Seriously, I love my gaming, but this is ridiculous.

When Activision merged with Blizzard, Sierra was sort of stuck in the middle. The result? Servers are heading to that great server pasture in the sky which doesn’t really exist (but we’re trying to make this easier on you assuming you play any of these games). The 21 games leaving us for good all go offline on November 1st, not exactly a lot of time to give these games a proper send off. The full list of games is as follows:

* Alien vs Predator 2
* Arcanum
* Caesar IV
* Dark Reign 2
* Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom
* Empire Earth
* Empire Earth 2
* Empire Earth: Age of Conquest
* Ground Control
* Ground Control2
* Homeworld
* Homeworld: Cataclysm
* No One Lives Forever 2
* Red Baron
* Sanity
* Star Trek: Armada
* SWAT3: EE
* SWAT3: GOTY
* The Incredible Machine
* Tribes 2
* Vampire

If you call yourself a dedicated gamer, well, you’re probably not. For instance, could you have reached the top level in the latest Warcraft expansion Wrath of the Lich King in only 19 hours? As in 19 hours straight? The European player going by the name of Nymh had some help along the way with healers and such, but it’s still an impressive, herculean gaming task to pull this one off and gain some press along the way.

Whether or not it was worth ignoring the outside world and family remains to be seen, but congratulations nonetheless.

Note: The rumor button has been hit. Anything you see here may or may not be true.

There’s a rumor floating around, started by a German site citing an “inside source,” that Fable 2 may be coming to the PC sooner than expected. The first Fable took a year to reach PCs, but if this one turns out to be true, Fable 2 may hit the platform on February 15th, ‘09. That’s only a few months. There is currently nothing else to back this up, including an official response, store listing, or ESRB rating. Take it for what it’s worth.