Best-selling PC download games of the week: 'Grand Theft Auto' crashes the party

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While ever-presents Bad Company 2 and Modern Warfare 2 continue to dominate the Steam Network charts for downloadable PC games, swish new kid on the block Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City steals third place for the week of April 12-18.

The Episodes pack, two more stories from the Grand Theft Auto IV fiction, do not require the GTAIV game in order to play properly but nonetheless feature significant crossover between IV's protagonist and both the biker gangs of The Lost and The Damned and the glitzy but grimy nightlife of The Ballad of Gay Tony.

That second episode in particular has been noted for re-introducing the light touch that made Grand Theft Auto: Vice City such a carnival of destruction and humor.

Also new in this week was Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse, a new sequence of adventures starring two unlikely and likeable private investigators: a cartoon dog and his rabbitesque pal. There are actually five episodes contained within this bundle, with each new one being released on a monthly basis.

A cut in price for Star Wars The Force Unleashed: Ultimate Sith helped propel it to fourth position. Players take charge of none other than Darth Vader's very own adopted son, and can choose to obey or rebel against the dark master himself as the game progresses.

The game fared slightly better at review on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, and can now be had less expensively on both platforms (at least in its non-Ultimate incarnation), but for those determined to experience the Star Wars phenomena in any available format the deal was good enough.

01) Battlefield: Bad Company 2
02) Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
03) Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City
04) Star Wars The Force Unleashed: Ultimate Sith Edition
05) Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse
06) Left 4 Dead 2
07) Mount & Blade: Warband
08) Just Cause 2
09) Commandos Collection
10) The Settlers 7: Paths to a Kingdom
Chart positions reflect total revenue gained by the Steam Network.