It's pretty rare for a game series to get as many chances as Call of Juarez has. After a middling debut, the series drummed up lots of critical goodwill with Bound in Blood, and then absolutely threw it all away with the awful The Cartel. Now, Techland has ventured back to the Wild West with Call of Juarez: Gunslinger, and the developer's got something to prove.

Perhaps seeking to distance itself from The Cartel, Gunslinger is a different beast in almost every way, and it works. The most immediately obvious difference is the art style. Instead of the mostly realistic style of past Juarez games, Gunslinger opts for a more stylized and bombastic look. It's as if the developers threw anime, Mad Max, and The Good the Bad and the Ugly and Borderlands into a blender. That might sound weird, but it's a refreshing and enjoyable change.

Gunslinger also has very little in common with its predecessors when it comes to story. The only real connection is a collectible with a short biography of Ray McCall, one of the protagonists from the first two games. This time around, Gunslinger puts players into the dusty spurs of bounty hunter Silas Greaves.

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The idea hit Dan FitzGerald in the shower last December: What about a dog sledding game? The Chicago native had been toying around with various prototypes based around a lobbing mechanic, but nothing stuck quite like this. Ideas started pouring in, and he enlisted his girlfriend of three years, Lisa Bromiel, to work on the art and help shape the exciting nugget of an idea into a fully realized video game – a concept that evolved into Dog Sled Saga.

It was the first time either had embarked on anything quite like it. FitzGerald studied communications in college, and had spent time doing contract video production (including trailers for other video games) and web design in an effort to get deeper into the gaming scene. Bromiel, meanwhile, is a trained artist with a focus on material art, though she hadn't consistently worked in digital illustration. As confident as they were about seeing the concept through to completion, they didn't have much insight as to going from making an original game to actually presenting it as a purchasable product. Well, at least until Rami Ismail came to town.

Ismail, the business and development half of Dutch indie studio Vlambeer (Super Crate Box, Luftrausers), stopped in Chicago in February to give a talk as part of DePaul University's Visiting Artists Series. FitzGerald and Bromiel attended, expecting to hear anecdotes about creating their beloved games, or the painful cloning saga that marked the development of Ridiculous Fishing.

Instead they got a real lesson – Indie Game Business 101, if you will – defined by the lecture's catchy three-word title: "Monetize That Shit."

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Frugal survivalists can enlist in Lara Croft's prequel adventure, Tomb Raider, for $13.60 today. The deal is over on PC digital distribution outlet Green Man Gaming, which has the Crystal Dynamics reboot currently listed at $17 - simply add coupon code "GMG20-LLASD-D8WBQ" (without quotes, boldness is entirely up to you) in the checkout screen and you'll get the extra-reduced price.

In our review of Tomb Raider, we cited the joy of exploration and story's revelatory crescendo as catalysts for our love of Lara's coming-of-age tale. "The arc is drawn perfectly, with the edges of the old Tomb Raider starting to poke through as the story comes to a close, teasing what's yet to come." Several DLC packs have been issued, adding new maps and modes to the multiplayer side of the game. Crystal Dynamics has said it has no plans to offer single-player DLC.

For the most part, being near- or farsighted today isn't that big of a deal. The only cultural zeitgeist folks like me have missed out on recently has been in the resurgence of glasses-required 3D technology in consumer media. And let's be honest, it isn't a tremendous loss.

In fact, the Oculus Rift is the only thing on the horizon that is as potentially game-changing as it is unfriendly to glasses. That thing straps directly onto your whole face, there's no way a pair of fashionable specs could fit under there.

Well, as it turns out, the Oculus Rift really was accommodating to my Converse frames and their too-old lenses, so much so that for the first time ever I'm legitimately excited about the once-lofty possibility of a virtual reality future.

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Bungie senior writer Eric Osborne didn't go so far as to outright confirm or deny the existence of a PC version of Destiny, though he did say that Bungie is "looking forward to talking more about that kind of stuff in the future" during an interview with IGN.

"We haven't said yes, and we haven't said no," Osborne said. "The more platforms we take on, the more work it ultimately becomes, and what we don't want is to compromise the core experience on any platforms. We have a lot of people who play on PCs. We have a lot of appetite to build that experience."

Right now, Destiny is set to launch for PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One at an unspecified future date, presumably before the dystopian, near-extinct future in which the game takes place.

Boy Scouts should be required to play Don't Starve before going on any camping trips – they could even get a badge for it, in the form of a gaping, pointy-toothed wormhole. Or maybe a friendly campfire.

Don't Starve is packed with wonderful advice about survival and personal growth:

• In the wilderness, you must build your own tools using only the immediate environment
• Animals are a great source of nutrition, no matter how cute they are
• The world is bigger than it first appears; explore it
• Scary things that will kill you hide in the dark
• When you die, your world disappears
• Fire is fun
• Go for the eyes

And that's not mentioning the obvious one.

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Metanet Software's N, which the developer describes as " that game you played in high school but forgot about through college," has seemingly reached its pinnacle. The wall-jumping, pixelated ninja platformer has been officially stamped version 2.0 and is now available entirely for free. N 2.0 adds a number of extra features, including 100 new levels, 100 "legacy" levels pulled from N and the various console iterations of N+, 100 user-made levels, level sharing, local 2 player co-op and new "FUN-lockable" content.

You can play the game for free on Kongregate or download it directly from Metanet. And yes, in case you were wondering, N++ is still on the way

Joe Danger's latest daredevil stunt is to ride both his games, Joe Danger and Joe Danger 2: The Movie, onto PCs via Steam. UK indie studio Hello Games told us a number of tweaks are coming to the PC versions, including Big Picture Mode and Steamworks support. The latter is for the games' level editors. which on PC feature "all the secret controls" Hello Games used to build both tricksters.

Both games will support gamepad, mouse and keyboard controls. Other tweaks and additions include ghost records of other players for both games, and new levels. Prices and release dates are still to come.

"It's weird, PC is actually Joe Danger's birthplace," Hello Games' Sean Murray told us. "We couldn't get hold of devkits when we started out, so I coded my first ever PC engine for the original Joe Danger, and we ended up developing the entire game on PC. I feel like the PC version has been brewing forever - but only played by four of us here in the office."

We expect a few more people will be playing it when it comes to Steam. We gave the XBLA version of Joe Danger 2: The Movie a wheelie good four stars in our review, saying that it does the two things puzzle-racers should do: " tug at your need to beat them, and then tug at your need to beat them better."

Defiance, Trion World's transmedia MMO made in conjunction with SyFy, is offering a free chunk of to players on Steam this weekend. The trial will be paired with 30 percent discount of the full game, bringing it down to $42 for the standard edition.

If you're more interested in the television show, SyFy will air all six previously seen episodes on Monday night, starting at 4 p.m. local time and running until 11 p.m. SyFy's website will also be streaming episodes and offering a mid-season recap for those looking to catch up in as little time as possible. The show was recently cleared for a second season.

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Super Puzzle Platformer Deluxe, a crazy mix of Tetris and Mega Man created by developer Andrew Morrish and published by Adult Swim, comes to Steam later today. The project started as a Flash game (playable for free) in which you shoot groups of blocks that fall from above.

The "Deluxe" part is new, with the game having evolved to include eight different characters, six worlds, and local head-to-head multiplayer. Full controller support is also included, so you can play SPPD through Steam's Big Picture mode.

Super Puzzle Platformer Deluxe is regularly priced at $7.99, though it'll be 25 percent off at launch. To celebrate, Adult Swim's also having a half-off sale on its first Steam release, Super House of Dead Ninjas, next Tuesday, May 28.

Ubisoft Montreal teases a new character class in its latest trailer for the free-to-play PC loot-'em-up The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot. Mighty Quest features asynchronous multiplayer gameplay built around unique dungeon-building mechanics. It also includes hamster-powered spike traps, if that's the sort of thing you look for in your dungeon crawlers. Would-be looters can check out a free alpha version at the Mighty Quest website.

Since announcing The Witness is on its way to Sony's PS4, Jonathan Blow and his development team have remained mostly mum about development. The game is still coming along, with Blow refining all of the details before the game launches, he explains on the PlayStation Blog in a video and a written post.

Video-Blow says The Witness is a true, financially independent game: His studio has the freedom to not make a profit, since it's not beholden to a publisher and doesn't "need" to. This shifts his team's goals from money to quality, he says.

"I would definitely like to make our money back on this game and I would like to make a profit on it, but it's not actually the No. 1 priority," Blow says. "The No. 1 priority is to make the best possible game that we can make, that brings the most beneficial experience to the players."

The Witness is an open-world, non-linear puzzle game that is as deep as the player wants it to be, as Blow describes it. It has no release date yet, but it's in development for PC and PS4, with the latter as a timed console exclusive.

Gamestop's financial data for the first quarter of its fiscal 2013 have arrived like a pizza with nearly 25 percent fewer toppings than the pizza you ordered during the same 13-week period last year. Also, cheesy bread sales are way up? This may not be the strongest analogy.

In non-allegorical terms, gross revenue (overall sales) and net income (post-tax profit) were both down year-over-year, at $1.865 billion and $54.6 million, respectively. As far as net income, that's a 24.69 percent decrease from the $72.5 million Gamestop reported at the end of Q1 2012.

Meanwhile, mobile device sales were up 290 percent, though this massive increase was largely due to the fact that Gamestop's mobile trade-in/sales program was just getting started during Q1 of 2012. Digital sales also increased, to the tune of 47.3 percent year-over-year, while new software sales, both physical and digital, fell 3.8 percent.

As was the case during Q1 2012, used hardware and software sales accounted for the majority of Gamestop's pre-tax profit, with new hardware and software sales making up just 29.5 percent of the quarter's overall gross.

FIFA 14 will line up for the North American continental anthem on September 24 for Xbox 360, PS3 and PC. The European launch is September 27.

Pre-orders of FIFA 14 through GameStop, Best Buy, Walmart, Target, Amazon or Origin get Ultimate Team gold packs. Each pack contains 12 items – players, contracts, stadiums, managers – to support players as they create fantasy teams of real-world athletes.

FIFA 14 is one of four EA Sports games confirmed for Xbox One, Microsoft's next-gen console revealed this week. FIFA 14 will use EA's new Ignite engine on Xbox One and PS4, but not PC or current-gen consoles.

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Contrast, the shadow-shifting puzzle platformer from Compulsion Games, will not be released in May as previously planned. After being Greenlit on Steam, the game has since been picked up by Focus Home Interactive for a wider release. Contrast will now be released on XBLA, PSN and PC in Q4 2013.

We think Constrast could be pretty cool. Here's a new trailer to help you endure the longer wait.

Payday 2, the Overkill-developed crook sim, is set to launch in August. The news comes at the end of the trailer above, which teases a new web series set to start in two weeks.

We have yet to see any actual Payday 2 gameplay beyond a brief teaser issued in March, but feel free to case our gallery of in-game shots below. Payday 2 – which adds classes and a contracts database on top of its predecessor's core robbery mechanics – is planning its heist on Steam, PS3 and Xbox 360. Pre-orders are open on Steam right now and all who sign up early will get an in-game loot pack.

Payday 2

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SimCity's 4.0 patch – whose numbering nomenclature has certainly sent developers everywhere into a death spiral – should arrive shortly. The update adds a new park, new region, more explicit details on what generates happiness, and the usual set of fixes.

The update comes a week before the "Amusement Park Pack," which is scheduled to launch on May 28. EA announced earlier this month that the game has gone on to sell 1.6 million copies despite its launch complications.

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Microsoft has announced Kinect for Windows will receive the updated Kinect sensor shown at the Xbox reveal event for the Xbox One. The rub: it won't arrive until some time in 2014.

We already knew Kinect for Windows would be updated with the new sensor and a new software development kit (SDK). The improved Kinect sports a 1080p RGB camera, capable of 30 FPS in full color, and can even see in the dark through infrared. The new Kinect also has a greater field of depth which Microsoft promises will cut down on the required distance from the device. It can also read your heartbeat but we try not to think about that too much because it's scary.

Square Enix America CEO Mike Fischer left the company this month and is now vice president of digital music and video for Amazon in Japan, Polygon reports. This follows news in April that Square Enix America eliminated "a number of positions" and Fischer was expected to leave in May. Those same reports said the head of marketing should be gone after E3, along with other employees in public relations.

In March, Square Enix President Yoichi Wada stepped down and the company announced widespread restructuring that it expected to cost $106 million. Square Enix posted a net loss of $134 million for fiscal year 2013, citing "weak" sales of major console games, including Sleeping Dogs, Hitman: Absolution and Tomb Raider, the last of which sold 3.4 million in its first month.