• Green Man Gaming is doing up some sales advert calendar style, with an EA sale a day for users accessing GMG at www.greenmangaming.co.uk. Every day the offer will change at 1200 GMT. Kicking things off it's SimCity 4 Deluxe for just £4.79.

• GOG.com has announced the release of The Complete Ultima 7 for $5.99. That's sure to bring back some memories. Ultima 7 The Complete Edition includes: Ultima 7: The Black Gate, Ultima 7: Forge of Virtue, Ultima 7 Part Two: Serpent Isle, Ultima 7 Part Two: The Silver Seed.

• Steam has a midweek madness sale on Sniper: Ghost Warrior. Until today at 4:00 PM Pacific you can pick up the game for 66% off which translates to $10.19 USD.

• Direct2Drive is offering up Call of Duty: Black Ops for 50% off, bringing the price down to $29.95. This is a daily deal type thing that is soon to run out, so you have to act fast.

Thanksgiving is already a week in the rear view mirror now, I hope everyone had a good one. I ended up hosting at my house this year, and speaking of Socket Stuffers, I decided to go all out and stuff that turkey with a couple of other birds and some pig for good measure. It turned out pretty tasty, but getting up at 5 am probably wasn't worth it. One thing I probably will do from now on though is de-bone the turkey. It was pure awesome to be able to cut into a large mass of meat without worrying about bones and other riff-raff getting in the way.

I've started playing around with a few Skyrim mods over the last week as well. I got some that are purely aesthetic changes, one that allows Skyrim to use more than 2 GB of memory, and a pretty decent UI tweak; I have yet to find any mods that feel essential as I had hoped. There are some WIP projects that look good but I'll probably wait for the full/final release. What about you guys and gals? Do you have some favorite, must-download mods you've found?

Last but not least, a caption contest! Granted I have no prize to give away, but I want to hear your sick sense of humor anyways! Happy Thursday everyone.

• Multiple exotic racing locations from all around the world
• Nine challenging reversible circuits varied with unique shortcuts
• 20 unique vehicles and eight colourful skins, all spread across four distinct classes, including racing muscle cars, stock car series, world endurance championship and Formula One open wheel cars.
• Take on your friends in Bang Bang Racing in local split screen multiplayer (up to four players), and prove your dominance by earing and showing off your honors and achievements with extensive Friends and Global Leaderboards!
• Face dynamic, interactive objects like cones or exploding barrels that make every race unpredictable - be sure to pay attention to the variable surface conditions that will affect how your car performs, like snow, sand, water and oil.

Of course the biggest war, in recent centuries, was the Second World War. Very few countries were able to keep out of that one. Yet, you rarely see a strategy game that allows you to play Brazil or Siam during those tumultuous times. However, the Hearts of Iron series lets you play any country in the world during that era. There is no better series out there about building up for and waging total war on a global scale.

Thus, we are declaring today World War Wednesday and celebrating this day by giving away 10 copies of the Hearts of Iron 3 Collection. As with previous giveaways this week, we shall give five copies away to people here and five copies away via our official Steam group.

To enter the random drawing answer the following question. If you could go back in time to 1936 and take over a country, which country would you pick and what would you do with it? Alternatively, if you aren’t feeling creative, you may just state that you’d like to be entered into the drawing.

In case you’ve never heard of Magna Mundi, which started out as a mod for Europa Universalis III, I’ve posted a trailer and some details from the press release below.

• Over 400 playable countries spanning more than 300 years of history
• Open-ended and challenging gameplay that is always different but plausible
• Play all over the world, experiencing different challenges depending on culture, religion, technology, geography, and much more
• Experience modeled historical processes that evolve dynamically each game, building a believable narrative
• Brought to you by a team of specialists including historians, anthropologists, & strategy analysts
• Built on the critically acclaimed Clausewitz engine from Europa Universalis III

Tripwire Interactive will make Killing Floor free to play between Thursday 8 December 2011 and Sunday 11 December. Additionally, they appear to be planning their usual seasonal tomfoolery. Checking by the official Killing Floor Game group on Steam will reveal mystery images portending holiday themed madness to come.

PCG: Why do you think so many other developers and publishers are stuck on DRM that inconveniences paying customers just as much as pirates? I mean, their most vocal customers are shouting “No! This is terrible!” at the top of their lungs. So why is it taking so long for them to listen?

MI: Fortunately and unfortunately at the same time, games are becoming huge business. And as with every growing business, there are a lot of people coming in who… have no clue about games and could work in any other industry. They are not asking themselves the question “What is the experience of a gamer?” Or “Is this proposition fair?” But rather, they just look to see if the column in Excel adds up well or not, and if they can have a good explanation for their bosses.

As funny as this might sound, DRM is the best explanation, the best “I will cover my ass” thing. I strongly believe that this is the main reason the industry has not abandoned it until today, and to be frank this annoys me a hell of a lot. You are asking, “So why is it taking so long for them to listen?” The answer is very simple: They do not listen, as most of them do not care. As long as the numbers in Excel will add up they will not change anything.

Pranks aside, I'm wondering, do you guys ever dream about your games? It's happened to me over the years on occasion, the worst was probably when the original Diablo came out. Lately I've been having these weird ass dreams about Anno 2070. They're almost identical to the game itself, where I'm optimizing the layouts of my cities, mines, farms, production facilities, etc. Some of it has even carried back through to the game, and in good ways, where my builds are more optimization. I can't say it's good for feeling all that well rested in the morning though, it's some serious busywork for the brain.

With that said, I finished the Anno 2070 campaign and first "World Event" over the weekend, so the review should be ready sometime soon. After that I've got to tie up some loose ends. Oh and Jube's all crazy about Batman: Arkham City on the PC, sounds like we'll have a review of that up soon. Oh, and we're also going to have access to the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive beta once it goes live. If Rose doesn't put together something on it I'm sure someone else on staff will.

Are there any other titles you guys want us to check out this year, assuming it's still relevant to do so? Let us know!