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It's difficult to oversell how big a fan I am of the Hitman series of games (specifically, "Hitman 2: Silent Assassin," "Hitman: Contracts," and "Hitman: Blood Money"). My own love affair began with the unforgivably difficult, almost entirely open-ended, inscrutable slaughter of 2002's "Silent Assassin," a game which turned off many of its players (fans and critics alike - myself included) with its tantalizing offering of untold gun-violence kept just out of reach by its mission structure.

We've organized our list of don't-miss titles for the Steam Winter Sale into three categories this year: Major Titles, Rare Discounts, and Everything Else. Unlike some other (auto-generated) lists, a title has to meet all of the following criteria to make the cut: great (or extremely well-received) game, discounted enough to make a deals list, and runs on Linux. This year, we tried to limit the number of titles to feature to under 20, weighing in at a near-ideal fifteen selections.

So, as outlined in this week's episode of the podcast, the latest installment of the "Deus Ex" universe could have been a fantastic game, truly a historic and important title - if only its publisher hadn't decided to intentionally butcher the finished work, parcelling out portions of the complete game into a dishonestly named, unfairly expensive, and essentially unethical abomination of a "season pass DLC," and further ruined by only being able to experience the game as it was originally designed by in game microtransactions we estimated to cost an additional $50-$60, bringing the total cos

We're strictly-post-partisan here at the Best Linux Games Podcast, but can't help but aknowledge the tangy twinge of agonizing post-partisan-depression that has hit us like a truck now that the people have spoken. To that end, we present three things that may help fellow sufferers as they wander, bewildered through a vastly new and incredibly alien political landscape.

-That New Steam Interface

Editorial disclaimer: let's get one thing out of the way: as mentioned numerous times on the podcast, I am the world's greatest player of "Duskers." Those wishing to challenge me for this title are more than welcome to message me so that we can set the time and date of their educations as to how woefully inept they are at the game. And no, I am not kidding. I am the greatest, and am taking all challengers. Message "Skookiesprite" on Steam, or hit me up on twitter @Vegaswriter and I'll show you what it's like to be outclassed in every single way in "Duskers."

Chumbucket and I have a very special relationship.

While rough-riding (some would say bareback and armorless) through a terrible, sun-annihilating, red-velvet sandstorm, Chumbucket stirs, alighting from his position in back of my car, babble-howling some incomprehinsible gibberish about red devils, pointing somewhere towards our right. He jumps up and down, hanging onto the rollbars like some kind of barely-human ancestral ape, howling from the exposed flatbed of our Magnum Opus - Chum's special name for our car.

One of the most fun (and beneficial - to us Linux users) things about Starbreeze's approach to developing their "Payday 2" franchise is that there's almost always something new being offered to enhance the experience. Be it DLC's (Downloadable Content packs) offering new characters, playable maps (in the form of heists), weapons, masks, or otherwise, every few months it seems that there's always a reason to drop whatever game you're currently playing and make the return to "Payday 2."

A thousand years ago, I once believed that Minecraft offered one
of the best and most approachable analogues to learning to program
for, well, people of all ages. It's open-ended gameplay, infinitely
large, utterly unique procedurally generated worlds, and its
fundamental focus on basic survival provided a fantastic platform to
engender deep problem-solving skills unlike any other game I had ever
played. The fact that the problems themselves were unscripted -
instead built out of base exigincies necessary for survival - struck