The characters in a Lovecraft story are susceptible to… mutation. Minds and bodies are forever altered by exposure to the horrors hiding in the darker corners of the world. It's perhaps no surprise, then, that The Sinking City 2—which just got a world premiere in the latest Xbox Partner Preview broadcast—has undergone its own unexpected change. Where the first game was a detective adventure, with horror bubbling up from its flooded world, its sequel has taken on a darker, more aggressive form. The Sinking City 2 is a true horror game now, with more emphasis on combat, while keeping a Lovecraftian narrative close to its twisted heart.

"The Sinking City is one of our most successful titles, because of our stronger horror genre leanings and the setting," Frogwares Head of Publishing, Sergey Oganesyan tells me. "For us, it was kind of a breakthrough, and we are super excited to work on a full-scale horror game. We have created quite a few detective adventures in the past, so now we're going to mix things up to keep doing what people love from us - meaning story-rich experiences - while still being able to evolve."

Detectives, we have arrived! After much anticipation, Sherlock Holmes The Awakened has been released! Enjoy the Lovecraftian madness. We made this game during one heck of a time. We made it while our country is at war. We faced challenges such as constant power outages, irregular work schedules, air raids, evacuations, losing our homes, saying goodbyes to our loved ones (through immigration, or worse), and losing team members so that they could defend our country.

We worked from our homes, our office, and from underground bunkers or train stations. It was an enduring and unending nightmare. But with all this chaos around, working on The Awakened helped us maintain a little sense of normalcy. We truly gave it all - sweat, emotions, and spirit to the development of this game.

As we're moving into full on spring, we have a rather mixed week of releases in front of us. This week's biggest release is based on a Disney movie, but we also have a famous detective and a selection of other potentially interesting games for you, so click on past the break to find out what else is being released.

Tron: Identity / This week's AA title / Tuesday 11 April
Something has been taken. Enter a new Grid and forge alliances via visual novel gameplay, uncovering truths through Identity Disc puzzles. Make critical decisions and plot your own course in a world without a creator.

Welcome to the TechPowerUp 2011 PC technology Christmas special. We hope that you will enjoy reading it while tucking into your turkey, Christmas presents and a little too much wine... In this article, we go through the technology of 2011 that has had the most significance, the most impact and was generally the most talked about. It's not necessarily the best tech of 2011 which is the most significant though, since lemons can be just as significant as the ground-breakers in how they fail to deliver - and the backlash that goes with it.

January: Intel Sandy Bridge i5 & i7

Released on January 9th, the new Intel Core i5 & i7 processors were based on Intel's second generation Core architecture built on a 32 nm production process (HEXUS review). They included an IGP (Integrated Graphics Processor) physically on the same piece of silicon along with HyperThreading. These new dual and quad core processors soundly beat all previous generations of Intel processors in terms of processing performance, heat, power use, features and left AMD in the dust. Therefore, Intel badly needed some competition from AMD and unless you have been living under a rock, you will know how that turned out in October with the launch of Bulldozer. Sandy Bridge was a sound win and is generally considered to be the only architecture worth considering at this point. The i5-2500K is currently at the sweet spot of price/performance. It comes at a stock speed of 3.3 GHz, but typically overclocks to an amazing 4.5 - 5 GHz with a decent air cooler and without too much difficulty in getting there. Models in the budget i3 range were released at various times later. See this Wikipedia article for details.