We love Portal 2, so we’re excited about the first DLC pack, which Valve announced in April for a summer release (and for free, too!). Today at Gamescom, Valve told Kotaku that the DLC would be coming in mid-September.

In Kotaku’s piece, Valve spokesperson Doug Lombardi quipped that mid-September is “still technically summer.”

If you haven’t played it yet, read Will Herring’s 5-out-of-5 star review of Portal 2 and see what you’re missing.

Paradox Interactive is known for frighteningly deep strategy games, and its upcoming titles are no exception.

I paid Paradox Interactive a visit today to see how their latest PC strategy titles were coming along. While I didn’t get a chance to spend time with all of the games they had on show, the three I did see represented three very different approaches, all of which provided enough depth to drown in.

Salem

Free to play MMO Salem casts players in the role of a colonist in a fictional New England-inspired setting circa 1500-1700. The world is randomly generated, but all man-made structures are just that — players build them. Building is a simple matter of choosing a structure from the menu, choosing a location and then gathering the appropriate resources with which to build it.

Salem’s peculiar stats system highlights the fact that this is far from a traditional MMO. Players spend one of four bodily fluids — blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile — on various actions. Phlegm is used when performing actions such as gathering resources. Blood is effectively the health bar. Yellow bile is used to perform specific skills, and black bile is spent on studying new ones. Running out of any one of these causes the player to collapse unconscious and be at risk of being killed — and death is permanent.

Well, sort of. While the previous character can die, the player can create a new character as the heir of a previous one, and inherit the land they held. Land in Salem is much more valuable than your individual character.

The game takes an interesting approach to PvP — players committing crimes leave behind clues, which other players can then use to track them down. If the crime is serious enough, a player’s character can be summoned and brought to justice even when the player is offline.

Salem is set to launch an open beta in early 2012, and see its final release in the summer of next year.

Naval War: Arctic Circle

A far cry from Salem’s cartoony super-deformed graphics, Naval War takes a clinical, vector graphics approach to sea-based warfare, inspired by ancient strategy title Harpoon. It’s been crossed with elements from modern real time strategy games to make it somewhat more accessible, however.

Set in the year 2030 and using currently existing technology, the game focuses on a series of conflicts between NATO and Russia. In an attempt to be accessible yet deep, the game uses considerably fewer units than a typical real time strategy game, though each is a powerful force in its own right. Players can use sensor technology such as sonar in an attempt to locate the initially invisible enemy units and then engage them in combat using their submarines, destroyers, aircraft carriers and airplanes.

The graphics are simple but very clear — though the developers are considering adding an option to use authentic abstract naval iconograpy for those who enjoy a more realistic approach. And for those who simply can’t live without watching things go boom, an optional 3D “live” window shows what the currently selected unit is up to, though this hadn’t been fully implemented in the demo I saw today.

Naval War: Arctic Circle is due to release digitally on PC in the second quarter of next year.

Crusader Kings II

Crusader Kings II describes itself as a “grand strategy game” and it’s not difficult to see why. Set in Europe and Northern Africa between the years 1066 and 1450, players can choose to take on the role of any one of hundreds of historically-accurate characters — from kings to local lords — and attempt to accrue as much prestige as possible through a variety of means.

Taking on the role of King Harold in 1066, for example, puts you at immediate risk of having gross bodily harm inflicted on you by William the Conqueror as he invades from across the English Channel. It’s not all about warfare, though — you have to consider where you’re going to get an heir from, the needs and wants of your vassals and even fulfilling the Pope’s requests for holy crusades to the Middle East.

There’s a staggering amount of depth on offer and this comes to a whole new level in the 32 player multiplayer mode, in which players can take on the role of any character in the region, from the ruler of an individual province to the king of an entire country. This raises the interesting possibility of improvised competitions where disparate baronies do their best to overthrow the king of a nation, for example — it sounds like a lot of fun, though extremely time consuming.

It’s certainly a game you’ll need a strong multitasking brain for, though the sense of satisfaction on offer as a reward for your hard work will be immense.

Focus Home Interactive’s upcoming The Testament of Sherlock Holmes brings the classic adventure genre right up to date with console-friendly play.

It was then that my friend, Mr Sherlock Holmes, made the most startling revelation of his career. ‘Watson,’ he said. ‘This man is dead.’

Focus Home Interactive’s Sherlock Holmes series has been around for about 10 years now, but has previously been a largely PC-based franchise. 2009 saw the release of Sherlock Holmes vs Jack the Ripper on Xbox 360 as well as PC, but few specific considerations had been made for consoles.

The Testament of Sherlock Holmes does a complete about-face by being primarily designed for consoles. Rather than a point and click interface, the player has direct control over Holmes (and sometimes Watson, and very occasionally, Holmes’ dog) and can interact with the environment by pressing A upon discovering interactive icons. Don’t feel that this simple control system means the game is easy, though — it’s what you do with the information that forms the bulk of the game’s challenge.

A conscious decision was made to develop the game to be as cinematic as possible — the developers were jealous that the action adventure and FPS genres had commandeered the cinematic storytelling which used to be the hallmark of adventure gaming. As such, conversations use a Mass Effect-style conversation system to keep the pace flowing, character models and animations are significantly better than in previous titles, and camera angles give a much more movie-like experience.

The story is of great importance to the game — beginning with the conclusion of a theft case (which acts as a tutorial) where Holmes discovers some lost jewelry only to find it’s a fake, the man who popularized the deerstalker hat soon finds himself accused of being the real thief. As the plot progresses, Holmes becomes more and more desperate, resorting to fleeing from the police, destroying evidence and even considering committing murder.

It’s the investigation of the game’s cases that drive the narrative — Focus is keen to try and make the experience as logical as possible and not simply throw in arbitrary puzzles to artificially extend the play time. Rather, you’ll find yourself using Holmes’ traditional methods of careful observation and deduction to come up with the solutions.

Certain evidence can be examined up close using a magnifying glass, tape measure and other tools. Other items can be examines in a 3D view, and when the player points out interesting things, this reveals further clues. Holmes’ constant companion Watson keeps track of these clues in Holmes’ notebook, and the process of deduction is somewhat similar to the Logic mechanic from Ace Attorney investigations — notes can be combined together to make deductions about what is going on, and this in turn reveals the way forward.

The “cinematic investigation” description of the game may make it sound like a 19th century L.A. Noire, but Focus is keen to distance itself from Rockstar’s title, noting that there’s a lot less action and a lot more thinking. There’s also less scope for failure — while you might get stuck at times as you determine what to do next, there’s no way of doing things “wrong.”

The Testament of Sherlock Holmes is an unabashed love letter to fans of traditional adventure games, but is also friendly to console gamers. It looks set to offer an intriguing tale across its 15-20 hour narrative, and one that will keep you guessing until the very end. Watch for it in the fourth quarter of this year.

En Masse showed us the upcoming “action MMO” TERA at Gamescom today, including sharing some details about the game’s main villains.

The aim for action MMO TERA is, in publisher En Masse Entertainment’s words, for it to release as a “complete game” — that is, to allow players to level from 1 to 58 and then enjoy a ton of endgame content without needing to wait for patches or purchasing expansions. The game’s overarching story is a key part of this plan, as the narrative will build to a suitably epic conclusion — but presumably be left open for future expansions.

Enter the Argons, the newly-revealed main villains of the piece. Argons are metallic monstrosities who use a combination of magic and technology to reshape the world. They also have necromantic powers, reanimating fallen heroes as undead minions. All in all, they’re not very nice. And guess who gets to kick their asses? That’s right, you. Bring friends.

The demo En Masse was good enough to share with me today saw us taking on a dungeon of around level 47 or so known as the Necromancy Cell. TERA’s dungeons are filled with monsters and it’s necessary for players to use all their skills to survive, particularly as the combat is real-time. At the end of this particular dungeon was one of the game’s iconic Big-Ass Monsters (aka BAMs) known as Kaidun — one of the aforementioned Argons.

The battle against Kaidun was a full-on boss battle, complete with pattern recognition elements. Playing as a sorcerer, I got to pelt the metal beast with fireballs and explodey things from afar while the others got up close and personal. The sorcerer is equipped with a handy “blast back” skill which inflicts some damage and also allows her to “hop” backwards out of harm’s way when necessary.

We prevailed (thanks largely to my fireball-throwing skills — at least that’s what I like to believe) and Kaidun went down. It was an exciting battle, and markedly different from your traditional MMO combat.

Besides exciting real-time combat, though, the other ace up TERA’s sleeve is its political system. Either by being voted in or enjoying sufficient success in various battlegrounds, players can take on the rulership reins of one of 18 provinces across the game world. They can then enact political changes as they see fit — but they’ll need the support of the people. As such, players need the backing of a guild in order to ascend to rulership of a region — the guild then earns “policy points” which can be spent on activating special NPCs, adjusting tax rates and generally making life either better or worse for those players who call that part of the game world home. It’s an interesting system, though it wasn’t being demonstrated today, sadly.

Any MMO trying to follow World of Warcraft has its work cut out for it. TERA sidesteps that by offering a markedly different experience from the norm — and for that reason it’ll be well worth checking out on its release early next year.

At Gamescom yesterday, several developers from across Ubisoft sat down for a lengthy and frank discussion on how the growing world of online gaming affects the creation of games.

Whatever you may think of the controversial DRM solutions Ubisoft puts in place on some of its titles or its UPlay Passport program, there’s little denying that the publisher is both willing and able to explore the growing world of online gaming in as many ways as possible. That might mean a few missteps along the way as certain experiments don’t work out too well — but that’s how you find out what is a good idea and what isn’t.

Ubisoft hosted a round table discussion at Gamescom yesterday, during which a cross-section of developers from across Ubi-land gave their thoughts on how online gaming was changing the way games were created — or indeed if it was changing the process at all.

Speaking at the event were Anne Blondel, managing director of Nadeo Live, responsible for TrackMania 2′s substantial online offering; Benedikt Grindel, head of live operations at Settlers developer BlueByte; Yves Jacquier, executive director of production services at Ubisoft Montreal; Erwan Le Breton, creative director of the Might & Magic brand; Theo Sanders, creative director and producer of Ghost Recon Online; and Ibrahim Mazari, director of public relations for the Electronic Sports League.

The panel was moderated by Thomas Lindemann, an editor at German newspaper Die Welt. He started off by pointing out that at both Sony and EA’s press conferences yesterday, every single game on show had some form of online or social component. Was this the shape of things to come?

Blondel kicked off the discussion by announcing that TrackMania 2′s prepurchase program was up and running, and that the multiplayer beta was already available for anyone who preordered. She referred to the digital-only release of TrackMania 2 as “Publishing 2.0″ — an attempt to be as close as possible to the community and collaborate with them.

Grindel took over by noting that the growing world of online ensures continued development and refinement of existing games. He believes online has been around for a while, but has shot to particular prominence in the last few years.

“The boxed game is evolving,” he said. “We’re not necessarily moving boxed games to online games, but we are adding an extra layer.”

The Settlers 7 offers a different enough experience to Settlers Online that fans can enjoy both.

Grindel compared the experiences of Settlers 7 vs Settlers Online: one offers an experience with which you sit down for an hour or two and actively engage with, the other offers a quick “lunch break” game with the basic style from the mainline series. He was keen to note that the existence of the quick to play Settlers Online didn’t mean that there would be no new full scale Settlers games, however.

Sanders noted that the growth of online, digital distribution and free to play added a particularly important element to the mix: accessibility.

“With Ghost Recon Online [which is free to play], I don’t have to convince friends to buy the game,” he explained. “They don’t have to have a high end machine. I can just tell them about the game and they can join in.” Blondel agreed, and this was part of the reason TrackMania 2 is an online-only release.

Le Breton took over and described some of the upcoming changes to Heroes of Might & Magic VI — specifically the addition of an in-game social network and a sense of persistence.

“Heroes VI is very immersive and deep,” he said. “We wanted to reward our community — they were proud to play our game. They wanted persistency in their gameplay rather than having to start over with each campaign — we gave them our new ‘Dynasty’ system, but for that to work, it has to be online. We want to carry it across to future games — if you play Might & Magic for 10-20 years, all that progress you make will be persistent.”

The iOS version of Rage will be free for the next week, bored gamers riding the bus rejoice.

If you haven’t played Rage or Rage HD, now’s the time. It’ll be free on iTunes for the next week.

Why the sudden burst of charity on the part of id Software? It seems that a promise was made that they would be free for a week if their Facebook page got 100,000 “Likes.” Needless to say, that goal has been reached.

For the uninitiated, Rage and Rage HD are rail shooters, and darn pretty ones at that. You can download them here.

The full game will be out October 4.

If you’re so excited you have to get your computer primed right now, you can put money down for MW3 starting today.

Modern Warfare 3 owner who open up Steam today will get a pleasant surprise: you can pre-purchase the popular military shooter starting today.

No details on any particular bonuses were given, nor whether or not you’ll be able to download the game early to have it ready for play as soon as it goes live, but Steam will fill in those details as the game gets closer to its November 8 launch date.

The RPG that our reviewer Jason Wilson gave five stars to (and which has a five star user average on the site), is 40% cheaper for a limited time. GOG.com is selling the game through this weekend at the discounted price of 29.99.

And like most games on the digital download service, you get the soundtrack, .pdf versions of the manuals, as well as a few wallpapers, avatars, and other freebies.

If you’re computer can handle it, this seems like a great time to try out one of the best RPG this year. But if your system not up to snuff, you can still hold out for the 360 version next year.

Gabe Newell calls issues with EA “complicated,” says Valve has a “duty” to show EA that they will make more money on Steam

Valve founder Gabe Newell is extending the olive branch to Electronic Arts, who recently opted to go their own way with the launch of “Origin.”

Not surprisingly, Newell views publishing on Steam as the best possible move for EA, saying that it’s Valve’s job to prove that they are “creating value on a regular basis.”

Battlefield 3 is one game that won’t be on Steam unless EA changes their stance

“I think at the end of the day we’re going to prove to Electronic Arts they have happier customers, a higher quality service, and will make more money if they have their titles on Steam. It’s our duty to demonstrate that to them. We don’t have a natural right to publish their games,” Newell told Develop.

As for why EA left in the first place, Newell said it’s “down to a whole complicated set of issues.” In confirming that Battlefield 3 won’t be Steam, EA said that they took issue with Valve’s “restrictive terms of service” and the fact that Steam restricts their ability to “connect directly with the consumer.

Valve naturally has a vested interest in bringing EA back to the fold, if only because it looks good for the catalog. Right now though, it’s looking like Battlefield 3 is going to remain firmly on Origin.

Blizzard is currently assembling a team to bring Diablo III to consoles, “very, very serious” about a port

Blizzard hasn’t quite announced Diablo III for consoles yet, but Xbox 360 and PS3 owners still ought to feel pretty good about their chances.

During a Gamesccom press conference, lead designer Josh Mosqueira said that the company is “very, very serious about bringing the Diablo III experience to console.”

“Today, we’re trying to build the best console team at Blizzard. We’re looking for programmers, designers, artists who think their dream job would be to bring Diablo to the console. Trust me, it is a dream job,” he said.

“All I can say is it’s going to be awesome. Stay tuned.”

Blizzard is known for being primarily a PC developer, but a console port wouldn’t be unprecedented for the company. The original Diablo got a port to the PlayStation back in 1998. The only question is whether Blizzard will follow in Valve’s footsteps and bring Battle.net functionality to the PS3.

As for the PC version, it’s still without an official release date.