If you’ve been wanting to get all piratey in The Sims 3, now’s your chance. EA has given us three DLC codes to the Barnacle Bay DLC, which is full of all sorts of swashbuckling content. Just retweet this message:

RT for a chance to win a #Sims3 Barnacle Bay download code from The Sims Online Store & @Aggrogate

No big deal. We’ll select the winners on Friday. Good luck!

Visceral Games has been diligent about coming up with fan service content for Dead Space, including a prequel to the original game and a full-length animated movie. Keeping with that tradition, Visceral announced on their Facebook page today that pre-orders of Dead Space 2 will include a free download code for Dead Space Ignition, an interactive digital graphic novel that includes some “choose your own adventure” features as well as some quick minigames. No bookmarking the page you just left in case the decision you made turns out in a way you don’t like, you cheaters. You know who you are.  Ah, hell, I know we all did that.

Ignition follows the stories of two engineers on the city-sized space station called The Sprawl as they attempt to contain an outbreak of the shambling, deconstructed zombies with spikey appendages, affectionately known as Necromorphs. The player’s decisions will lead to four different possible endings, and completion will unlock some Dead Space 2 content, including a few usable items and a new look for main character Isaac.

Dead Space Ignition will be available for download tomorrow on PSN and Wednesday on XBLA. Consider your appetite officially whetted, although you’ll have to wait a few months for the main course; Dead Space 2 doesn’t launch until January 25th.

I generally don’t like to give credit to any game company’s marketing gimmicks, but I have to applaud EA for this. They printed a Chick Tract-style pamphlet to promote Dead Space 2. It’s a religious tract for the Church of Unitology, the cult that basically started the whole space zombie problem with its worship of the Marker, the big monolith that has a nasty habit of spawning hellish creatures in cramped space communities. These tracts were scattered in EA’s Dead Space 2 booth at New York Comic-Con.

The real Chick Tracts are religious pamphlets that encourage an extreme evangelical, fundamentalist approach to Christianity. The publisher, Jack Chick, is absolutely serious in his abiding belief that Catholics aren’t Christians, good works mean absolutely nothing, and Dungeons and Dragons will turn your kids to witchcraft and suicide. They’re quite popular in certain parts of the country, and you may have even come across one sitting on a bench or shelf. Some evangelical Christians leave them in public places as a means of spreading their faith. Ironically, many jaded atheists collect them as an ironic hobby.

Okay, enough of the sociology lesson. You want to learn about Richter and his turn to the Church of Unitology after getting injured in a game of zero-gravity basketball. Look after the break for a scanned PDF of the tract, posted with permission.

Civilization 5 is a deep game. There are lots of ways to play and lots of ways to win. There are also lots and lots of things you can miss if you don’t know where to look. Settings, priorities, and tactics are all things you need to learn through repeated attempts to conquer the world. For our inaugural Strategy Center, let’s look at some tips and tricks to get you started in Civilization 5. These aren’t any game-breakers, but they can help you build a strong civilization.

If you have any taste at all for RPGs and haven’t touched Dragon Age yet, there’s really no more excuse for you. BioWare has unveiled Dragon Age: Origins Ultimate Edition, a $60 box that includes all the current Dragon Age content (thanks Joystiq) scheduled to hit shelves October 26th. For those keeping score, that’s Dragon Age: Origins, the expansion Awakening, and (count ‘em) seven DLC quests. There’s little point in even trying to tally how many game-hours that makes. This package is bursting at the seams, with at least $120 worth of total content including the game, the expansion, and the DLC.

It seems that BioWare is intent on cramming as much Dragon Age down players’ throats as possible in advance of the arrival of Dragon Age 2 next spring. So get ready for a nice, long victory lap around Ferelden with your very personally customized character you’ve gotten to know and love, because remember: Dragon Age 2 leaves him or her behind in favor of a protagonist with a single, prefabricated name and origin.

Realtime Worlds’ shooter MMO APB will likely be remembered mostly for its short lifespan – the game’s servers were shut down only three months after launch and closed just two weeks ago. The game’s rocky launch and Red Bull Flugtag-style plummet are now the stuff of legend, but what about the players who are out $50 with no game to show for it? Steam, the primary retailer of the game, has merely shrugged at the torches and pitchforks of players demanding a refund, but a Steam forum post (via Destructoid) shows a conversation between a player and EA Support (EA was the publisher) that got the player at least some compensation.

The EA rep initially offered a $20 discount code, but the player pointed out that it was a $50 game. Feeling the distraught player’s pain, the EA rep saw fit to throw in a voucher for a $50 PC game of the player’s choice. Now, it gets a little confusing, because the rep stipulated that the game had to be “developed by EA,” but the player was able to get the go-ahead on applying the voucher to Dragon Age 2, which is developed by BioWare (granted, a subsidiary of EA) and scheduled to launch in spring 2011.

This story is anecdotal, and there’s been no official announcement by EA regarding a compensation policy for APB refugees. Still, the takeaway here is that if you are one of the unfortunate few to be left out in the cold from APB’s destruction, you might want to try to find a sympathetic ear at EA Support.

So, what would happen if you were to take the game auteur sensibilities of the man behind Killer7 and No More Heroes and filtered them through one of the minds behind Devil May Cry and Resident Evil 4? Why, you’d get Shadows of the DAMNED. Shadows of the DAMNED is the Suda51 and Shinji Mikami horror game team-up EA will be publishing next year.

The plot follows professional demon hunter Garcia as he kills citizens of the demon world to save his abducted love, Paula. Considering Suda51 has a hand in the game, it probably gets much, much stranger than that. Shadows of the DAMNED will be coming out on PS3 and 360 in Japan next spring. An American release has yet to be announced.

[UPDATE] Eurogamer reports that Bioware has fixed the Lair of the Shadow Broker DLC for Xbox 360 and PC. While I appreciate the quick turnaround, the fact remains that they shouldn’t have put out broken product. Original review below.

Mass Effect 2 has gained what could easily be the last DLC for the game and it’s the largest addition yet. Lair of the Shadow Broker finally bring you face to face with the person who been running things behind the scenes in the Mass Effect universe. But does this hold up to the rest of the series?

“Simlish” is the official language of The Sims. It’s what Sims speak instead of English, and it’s going to be the language of choice for over two dozen pop, hip-hop, and alternative artists in The Sims 3 Late Night expansion and The Sims 3 Xbox 360/PS3/Wii ports. The Sims 3 Late Night will be getting 18 popular music tracks in Simlish, while the console ports will get a whopping 21 songs, from artists like 3oh!3, Flo Rida featuring Jovi, Mickey Fatz, and My Chemical Romance. The songs will be rerecorded in Simlish, so Sean Foreman and Gerard Way will be crooning their bands’ songs in vaguely French-sounding mumbling.

I’d honestly take offense at this, if anyone of the music was good. Fortunately, the tracks are all from autotuned pop bands with z’s in their names, or guys like Souja Boy or My Chemical Romance. Incidentally, My Chemical Romance uses lyrics that are far too interesting and violent for the quality of music. They sound like a bunch of wussy douchebags, so why do they keep talking about things like murder and poison? Bah, kids these days. Let me know if George Fisher or Glen Benton re-record any of their bands’ songs in Simlish.

Fans of The Sims might be pleased to note that EA has registered the domain name “thesims4.com,” according to SystemLink. Or maybe they’ll be less than pleased, considering The Sims 3 hit stores only a year ago. Too soon to make it obsolete? Nah, especially since, without an actual announcement, we’re not likely to see the next Sims for at least another year.

Keep in mind that there is still no official word of a new Sims sequel, but keep your eyes peeled for the floating green diamond in the near future. Personally, I’d like The Sims 4 to give me the ability not only to construct my own fallout shelter beneath my house, but also to then initiate the nuclear/zombie/robot apocalypse. Maybe then the neighbors will be willing to disregard my Sim’s crappy charisma and pay him a visit. It seems the only logical direction to take the series.