King’s Bounty: Armored Princess released

1C Company has released King’s Bounty: Armored Princess. Developed by Katauri Interactive, Armored Princess is the sequel to King’s Bounty: The Legend which is a spiritual successor to King’s Bounty - which spawned the popular Heroes of Might and Magic series. Players take on the role of Princess Amelie as she travels the world of Teana in search of a renowned knight from the first game, Bill Gilbert.

This strategy game with RPG leanings promises new creatures, huge bosses and a new race, the Lizardmen. Players will have many new options to resist these new enemies including new skills and abilities, as well as a flying steed - a dragon companion to the princess that will do its best to protect her. The game also promises a new story-line, a whole new continent to explore, medals, the aformentioned pet Dragon which becomes more powerful as the player does, the new Lizardmen race, fast travel between opened continents, hirelings, the return of the classic system of contracts and headhunting, improved role playing elements including more abilities and the chance to achieve level 50 or higher, new spells, unique bosses (Driller, Gremlin, Archdemon Baal and many others) an improved game engine, and much more.

Armored Princess is available for download on Steam, GamersGate, Direct2Drive, Stardock/Impulse and from 1cpublishing.com for $39.99.

Impulse Weekend Deals, Avatar preorder

Impulse passed along this week’s biggest deals - to kick off over the weekend - and announced that preorders are now live for James Cameron’s new game, Avatar along with a nifty preorder bonus. Both a regular version of the game, along with a Special Edition of Jame’s Cameron’s Avatar The Game are available for preorder now. The bonus for putting your money down early on the game includes two exclusive in-game weapon unlocks: the Fighting Staff (Na’vi faction) and the Dual Wasp (RDA faction). Dual Wasps have a short range, but they can quickly inflict enough damage to incapacitate nearby enemies. Fighting Staffs are melee weapons with a long range. Their attacks allow you to inflict damage on all surrounding targets.

Earlier this week Impulse announced that pre-orders for Pandemic’s The Saboteur were also available - though I have my doubts that the game will hit its target release date in Dec. after EA gutted the studio earlier this week. We’ll see, right?

This week’s Impulse weekend specials include the following games:

Ubisoft’s Prince of Persia on sale starting today through the weekend, $22.49 from $29.99

Kingdom Elemental: Tactics - $14.95 from $19.95

Iron Grip Warlord – Half off! - $9.95 from $19.99

Hacker Evolution – Untold – Half off! $12.50 from $24.95

Nemesis of the Roman Empire - $9.99 from $14.99

Warlords Battlecry III - $9.99 from $14.99

Supreme Commander Gold - $22.49 from $29.99

Scrapland - $9.99 from $14.99

Find out more by visiting impulsedriven.com/explore/onsale.

Top Selling Digital Downloads

The top selling game on Steam was Call of Duty: Modern Warfare for the week of Nov. 14, 2009, but over on Direct2Drive where it wasn’t available, various versions of Dragon Age: Origins were selling like hotcakes - whatever that means. I mean, who are the people buying and selling hotcakes and why are they so f**king popular?

Dragon Age is doing pretty well on Steam, Direct2Drive and even on Stardock’s Impulse. 2K Games’ Borderlands is in a respectable position as well, followed by the wonderful indie RPG Torchlight - which doesn’t seem to be available on Impulse for some reason. Come on Stardock, this game is awesome. Complete top ten charts, without any actual sales numbers, below. Sure it’s mostly anecdotal, but it’s fun to look at top ten lists, right?

Steam

1. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
2. Dragon Age: Origins
3. Dragon Age: Origins Digital Deluxe Edition
4. Borderlands
5. Overload Complete Pack
6. Torchlight
7. Crysis / Crysis Warhead Bundle
8. Football Manager 2010
9. Mass Effect
10. Counter-Strike: Source

Direct2Drive

1. Dragon Age: Origins
2. Dragon Age: Origins Digital Deluxe Edition
3. Borderlands
4. Dragon Age: Origins Digital Deluxe Edition (with strategy guide)
5. Torchlight
6. Best of Indie Bundle Vol. 2
7. Tropico 3
8. Civilization 4: The Complete Edition
9. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
10. Fallen Earth

Impulse:

1. Demigod
2. Sins of a Solar Empire: Entrenchment
3. Tropico Reloaded
4. Dragon Age: Origins Digital Deluxe Edition
5. Dragon Age: Origins
6. Sins of a Solar Empire
7. Gratuitous Space Battles
8. Fort Zombie
9. Hacker Evolution
10. For the Glory

Source: Impulse, Shacknews

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band next week

Apple Corps and MTV Games’ Harmonix announced The Beatles classic album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967), will be available in its entirety for purchase and playable as downloadable content in The Beatles: Rock Band starting November 17, 2009.

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is the second full album from The Beatles to hit The Beatles: Rock Band Music Store since the game’s launch on September 9. Last month MTV Games and Harmonix released Abbey Road (1969) as the first full downloadable album for use in the game. Additionally,
“All You Need Is Love,” the first downloadable track available for the game, has shown similar success with more than 100,000 downloads to date on Xbox LIVE. Proceeds to that song are being donated to Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).

Available for Xbox 360 (Nov. 17) and PlayStation 3 (Nov. 19), songs that are not already part of the original game’s line-up - including “Fixing A Hole,” “She’s Leaving Home,” “Being For The Benefit of Mr. Kite!,” “Within You Without You,” “When I’m Sixty-Four,” “Lovely Rita,” “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)” and “A Day In The Life” - will cost $1.99 USD, £.99 UK, €1.49 EU (160 Microsoft Points) per track. The “Complete Album Pack” will cost $13.49 USD, £7.49, €8.99 (1080 Microsoft Points for Xbox 360).

And if you own the Wii version, you can by individual tracks for $2.00 USD (200 Wii Points) each starting Nov. 17.

Impulse Weekend sales

Impulse is hosting a sale this weekend that will see a number of excellent titles be sold for substantial discounted prices.

Deals include Fairy Tales – Three Heroes RPG for $19.99 from $29.99; FLOCK! for $7.49 from $14.99, Mosby’s Confederacy for $12.99 from $19.99, S.T.A.L.K.E.R – Shadow of Chernobyl for $9.99 from $19.99, Shattered Suns for $9.99 from $14.99 and Capitalism II for $14.99 from $19.99

These are just some of the new deals going on this weekend. Be sure to check out all the games released on Impulse this week. Find out more by visiting www.impulse.com.

Torchlight now available

After a number of false starts and technical problems yesterday it looks like both publisher Perfect World entertainment and developer Runic Games have sorted out all the problems with the digital release of their game, Torchlight. Now users can visit both web sites and purchase the game for right around $20. In addition the game is also available via Steam.

Torchlight was developed by Runic Games, whose collective experience includes Diablo, Diablo II, Mythos, Hellgate London, and the wonderful RPG FATE. Taking a page for that latter title, Torchlight refines and improves on core elements like pets, fishing, retirement, and oodles of side quests and equipment to sort through. New to the formula are three brand new charcter classes, a much improved pet system, better fishing, even more loot, plenty of side quests, new types of weapons. and a light but compelling main storyline that revolves around the most powerful magical substance in the world: Ember.

You can get your copy of torchlight by visiting Steam, the Torchlight web site or the Perfect World site. Also worth noting is this brand new launch trailer.

Impulse weekend deals

Impulse is offering a variety of deals in time for the weekend, cutting the price on games of various quality for a limited time. THQ and Relic’s Company of Heroes: Tales of Valor gets a 50 percent price cut, Capcom’s Street Fighter IV is now $29.99 from $39.99, Circus Empire is available for $6.99 from $9.99, Light of Altair is available for $11.25 from $14.95 and Call of Duty Modern Warfare is now 25 percent off.

You can check out these and other deals by visiting Impulse.com