Valve are continuing to pump even more games on Steam this week, with five new (and old) titles announced so far. The newest of them is Arkane's Dark Messiah of Might and Magic action-RPG, which was also released at retail by Ubisoft yesterday. Alongside it, we have a final launch trailer today, merging both cinematic and gameplay footage, and revealing some of the game's story... a bit too much perhaps. Since when is stabbing a main character part of "teasing" your audience? Good thing Square didn't do that with Final Fantasy VII when... right, some of you haven't played that yet, so it's best I stop here. And move on.

Dark Messiah is available on Steam today for North American gamers only, but the rest of the world should be able to download it as well this Friday, October 27, "for just $49.95". Seriously, whatever happened to digitally distributed games being way cheaper than the boxed version, with manuals, hard copies of the game, and various bonuses? It's no wonder that 3D Realms' boss Scott Miller doesn't like Valve, or their steaming practices. I'm beginning to share some of his feelings.

Anyway, several 2K titles will also be up for grabbing via Steam this week, most of them being strategies and/or games bearing Sid Meier's highly esteemed signature. They are Civilization IV, Civilization III, Shattered Union and Sid Meier's Pirates!. We don't have any pricing details yet, but I wonder if the Civilization III digital package will also include the two expansions, Play the World and Conquests. That would be nice.

(N.B. Archive text, links removed)