Helghast invade Half-Life 2 with Killzone mod

I’ve never played the Killzone games, owing to the fact that I don’t possess the precise living room box required, but now at least I’ve gotten a taste of the Helghast. Killzone Source doesn’t recreate an entire Killzone game in HL2, but provides a particular mission called Strange Company.

It represents several years of work by Moddb member zombiegames, and while I can’t personally vouch for its representation of Killzone, it’s pretty cool and looks great. With an AI companion, you fight your way through the interiors of a multi-floor building, battling Helghast at every turn, then proceed outside for more gunplay. You can carry a pistol and one of several rifles, use frag grenades, and are also armed with a knife. The Helghast look great, and I don’t know if this is true of the original game, but they scream entertainingly when they die. Every time. I couldn’t get enough of it.

They’re tough as hell, too. Even on normal difficulty they killed me repeatedly. I had to disable AI using the Source console just to get close enough to them to take their pictures. At one point a dropship appeared over a shattered courtyard and they rappelled down on ropes in front of me. They’re also pretty good at using grenades.

My AI companion was a little worthless in a fight, but she’s still cool to hang out with. While I was remapping my keys (the default keybindings are a little odd) she helped herself to a soda from a vending machine. 

The guns are fun to use, and plenty challenging due to recoil, and the maps are dressed with various bits of detail like Helghast propaganda. There are some other touches, like flying enemy drone that I presume has roots in the original game.

To play, you just need a Steam account and to have the opt-in beta of Source SDK Base 2013 Singleplayer installed. For the beta, right-click the SDK base on Steam, select properties, open the Beta tab and choose ‘-upcoming’ from the list. (You don’t need to input a beta access code.)

As for the mod itself, here’s its page on Moddb. If you’ve tried it, and you have experience with the Killzone games, I’d love to hear if you think it’s a faithful recreation of the mission.

Follow this link: Helghast invade Half-Life 2 with Killzone mod

Helghast invade Half-Life 2 with Killzone mod

F1 2015 delayed by a month

Latest News

F1 2015 delayed by a month

Battlefield 4's big Spring patch arriving on Tuesday

Latest News

Battlefield 4's big Spring patch arriving on Tuesday

Game of Checkers, Part 7: a tiny drama in CK2's Game of Thrones mod

Latest News

Game of Checkers, Part 7: a tiny drama in CK2's Game of Thrones mod

The HP Omen road-test

Gaming laptops can serve as a space-saving alternative to a gaming desktop PC, but really they’re designed to travel. The HP Omen’s generous hard drive lets you cart most of your games library halfway around the world and back, and play them wherever you choose, but how does it hold up in the wild? We took our HP Omen for a test drive.

The great outdoors

The HP Omen is sleek piece of kit, but the delicate angular shape makes for a surprisingly resilient package. It’s proof that high-powered technology needn’t be fragile. The case stayed cool and performance remained rock solid in the glare of the sun on our carefully selected grassy knoll. It’s easy to forget that there’s a powerful i7 CPU humming away inside the HP Omen’s slender frame, and a state of the art Nvidia GTX 860M GPU—until you log into Steam and start playing. If you want to spend a lazy afternoon in the sun deposing Sauron in Shadow of Mordor, then the HP Omen is a stylish way to do just that. The Beats Audio speakers deliver great sound, too—clear and precise, even in a blustery wind.

The coffee shop

Away from the glare of the sun the crystal clear display comes into its own. The beautiful and introspective Dear Esther managed to be completely absorbing even in the noisy environment of a busy local coffee shop. The HP Omen is in its element here. The ample array of USB ports lets you charge your devices and plug in a travel mouse at the same time. The responsive touch screen makes browsing and Windows navigation breezy and the wireless adapter downloaded Dear Esther out of thin air in fifteen minutes. We enjoyed flawless performance at maximum graphics settings, and the battery life meant we could’ve finished the game in one sitting, if we’d been so inclined. The SSD slashes in-game loading times and makes booting and closing the laptop refreshingly quick—ideal if you have to close up and dash off to catch a train.

The train

The HP Omen’s slim build makes it easy to transport, and easy to unfold and set up in cramped environments like train carriages. It’s light on the lap and—thanks to some sensible vent placement and the heat-dissipating case—doesn’t toast the thighs like some gaming laptops. Customisable key backlighting mean that you can always see what you’re doing, even if you pass through a long, dark tunnel. Six programmable keys to the left of the keyboard can be customised to help you control your games faster, and it also puts more control at your fingertips in cramped conditions should someone occupy the seat next to you on on a journey. You can create up to 30 combinations of key functions, so you can execute relatively complex build orders in StarCraft 2 with a single button press.

The HP Omen returned from its adventure unblemished after impressing at every stage. Gaming laptops can be quite embarrassing things to unfold in public—huge, noisy, with garish neon lights. By comparison the HP Omen is understated and fashionable, while being undeniably powerful. The dark, brushed metal finish suits professional environments and outdoor areas alike, making this an extremely flexible and capable piece of kit. We’re used to being able to enjoy games on the go on mobile and tablet devices, but it’s novel to be able to walk into a field and play a cutting-edge PC game while having a picnic. Once you’ve done it, it’s hard to go back.

Read more: The HP Omen road-test

The HP Omen road-test

Hear Nobuo Uematsu's theme for Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward

Let’s get into a big argument over what the best Final Fantasy song is.

Wait, first, let’s enjoy this: the theme song for Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward. It’s called Dragonsong, and was composed by Final Fantasy veteran, Nobuo Uematsu. The video also serves as a trailer of sorts, and features scenes from the MMO’s upcoming expansion.

The name Dragonsong, incidentally, refers to the Dragonsong War—a 1,000 year conflict between the knights of Ishgard and the dragons of Dravania. In Heavensward, players will be plunged headlong into that, er, disagreement.

Anyway, enough lore. What’s your favourite Final Fantasy song? The most famous is probably The Prelude, which has followed the series throughout—although is perhaps most recognisable in its FF7 form. I do also have a particular fondness for FFX-2’s menu music, Eternity: Memory of Lightwaves. That probably goes without saying though, what with Final Fantasy X-2 clearly being the best Final Fantasy game.

Universally accepted opinions aside, which of the series’ songs do you like the best?

View post: Hear Nobuo Uematsu’s theme for Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward

Hear Nobuo Uematsu's theme for Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward

Games Workshop's Dark Future being adapted for PC

Post-apocalypses come in many forms. There’s your grim, harrowing, struggle-for-survival apocalypse; as seen in STALKER or The Road. Then there’s your ridiculous, leather wearing, half-crazed apocalypse of Mad Max or Fallout. Sure, this latter dystopia says, things are bad. But isn’t bondage gear fun?

This week—I assume due to the recent Mad Max: Fury Road—we’ve seen a couple of developers announce their ultraviolent apocalypses. There’s Crossout, from the War Thunder devs, and now Auroch Digital has announced Dark Future: Blood Red States. It’s a PC adaptation of the Games Workshop boardgame, and is cheesily teased in the trailer below.

In Blood Red States the player is put in charge of a Sanctioned Ops agency—taking contracts and bounties out in the wastelands. The game is described by Auroch as “a turn-based strategy game, played out in simultaneous real-time action.” It sounds a bit like a vehicular Frozen Synapse, which could be pretty nifty if done right.

Dark Future: Blood Red States is due out this winter.

Originally posted here: Games Workshop’s Dark Future being adapted for PC

Games Workshop's Dark Future being adapted for PC

New Overwatch footage shows Hanzo in action

Yet more Overwatch footage, as Blizzard reveal unedited footage of a match as Hanzo. He’s the archer of the game’s cast, and seems plenty nimble thanks to the ability to climb walls. Also, he can fire a big ghost-dragon at people. That is not a bad skill, as these things go.

Oh, and that blue orb thing? That’s a tracking arrow that makes it easier for your team to see enemies within its radius.

This is the fourth character playthrough that Blizzard has released. Previously, we’ve seen Mercy, McCree and Zenyatta.

More: New Overwatch footage shows Hanzo in action

New Overwatch footage shows Hanzo in action

How The Witcher 3 puts misery back into mythology

There’s a flavour of horror that games do so well. It’s a sickening feeling that seeps into your pores as you explore a relentlessly grotesque environment. A game world has many ways to infect you with its worldview—NPC chatter, journal entries, enemy barks, architecture, even the ambient soundscape can communicate hopelessness and decrepitude. In the bogs of Velen it’s hardly subtle. The hanging men; the pallid, half-mad inhabitants; the noxious fumes parping out of the marsh; the undead things crawling around in the mud—they’re all part of a superliminal honk that says “humans don’t belong here”. The message grows louder the moment you meet the three bog witches. Have they warped the marshlands to mirror their nature, or was this naturally-occurring cesspit too grim to pass up?

Places like Velen make The Witcher 3 extraordinary, even though there’s nothing innovative about the way the game world speaks to players, and nothing especially new about the feudal fantasy kings, elves ‘n dwarves setting. There’s great tonal consistency however throughout the game’s dialogue, quest text, bestiary entries, environmental and audio design. That services The Witcher 3’s mythology, plucked from old Slavic myths and Andrzej Sapkowski’s Witcher novels. The result is an unusually coherent take on the staid mud ‘n blood fantasy formula, elevated by a fresh treatment of familiar old myths.

The skull-faced Wild Hunt are derived from the European folk villains of the same name, described as a host of ghostly riders who ride through the sky stealing folk and cursing witnesses with bad luck. Most of Geralt’s foes have similar roots, but clever audiovisual design separates them from the rehashed archetypes we’re used to. Think of those witches again. They look unlike any other videogame villains—diseased, hunched, basket-faced, sagging under the weight of hampers of bloodied limbs. It’s the “double, double toil and trouble” coven, reinvented with a Welsh lilt and reams of scarred flesh.

The Witcher series has a knack for capturing myths at an unsanitised pre-Disney, pre-Tolkien phase, before beastfolk have been assigned to the ‘good’ or ‘evil’ columns of the grand fantasy race roster. There’s no ‘elves good/orcs bad’ logic here. These aren’t morality tales; the world operates in a moral haze as grey as Geralt’s short ‘n curlies. The Witcher 3’s curses and hauntings aren’t punishments from god either, much as some poor afflicted people might think so. The Witcher’s villains are forces of nature, amoral and unconcerned with the wellbeing of humans. They’re animals and natural phenomenon that have been elevated to myth status by humans who couldn’t possibly know better. The Witcher 3 even mimics the inconsistency of the peasants’ oral tradition by giving its monsters many names.

The Witcher 3 is still an effective power fantasy, even though it’s fundamentally a game about little people who have it bad.

None of this would work without Geralt’s rational, agnostic perspective. One of the advantages of having a strong individual main character, as opposed to the ensemble setup of a Bioware RPG (which has its own merits), is the strong take they give you on the world they inhabit. Geralt’s view is that of a natural scientist, born into a society that only has use for his expertise in an exterminator capacity. The man knows as much about the mating habits of your garden variety Royal Gryphon as he does about swinging a sword. He’s a chemist. He’s better educated and more traveled than the most powerful people in the land. Though you spend a lot of time killing, Geralt’s smarts put you in a position to affect the status quo. That’s why The Witcher 3 is still an effective power fantasy, even though it’s fundamentally a game about little people who have it bad.

It’s also why the monsters feel like more than typical videogame fodder. To Geralt there’s little difference between a ghoul problem and plague. His scientific perspective turns slots high-fantasy villains into the same category as a natural disaster, or an epidemic, or other far more relatable fears. In The Witcher 3 a spirit that torments its captor doesn’t care about the host’s wants, desires and social status, it’s just a parasite feeding according to its nature. That’s much more disturbing.

The Witcher 3 also lets you talk to the monsters, and they have more interesting things to say than creatures in most other RPGs. Even creatures that can’t speak (or don’t feel like speaking to Geralt) are given a voice, through their writings, or vicariously through NPCs. I laughed with delight when I found out what the frost giant CD Projekt have shown in trailers actually wants. I’d assumed, thanks to most other RPGs, that he was just a big dumb boss monster, but through scraps of information you discover that he has his own perspective on the universe. He’s got his own plans, and they have very little to do with the wretched humans buzzing around his island.

Fantasy games tend to empower players by giving us the authority to influence human affairs in worlds that revolve entirely around humans. In The Witcher 3 humanity clings to a world that’s indifferent to its existence. It’s grim, but I love it. In the Northern Kingdoms the forces of darkness are much more colourful and charismatic than the light.

See the article here: How The Witcher 3 puts misery back into mythology

How The Witcher 3 puts misery back into mythology

First screenshots of Shadowrun: Hong Kong released

Here’s the first look at Harebrained Schemes’ third standalone Shadowrun RPG, courtesy of its new Steam page. The screenshots depict Shadowrun: Hong Kong’s setting, which, not coincidentally, is Hong Kong. This new game will feature a brand new crew and a corporate conspiracy to untangle.

In addition to the screenshots, there’s also a new trailer. To be honest, it doesn’t tell you much beyond the fact that the team that made the last two Shadowrun RPGs is making another one.

Also on Steam, a Shadowrun sale, covering the two previous games in the series. This weekend, you can get Shadowrun Returns at 80% off and Shadowrun: Dragonfall at 70% off.

Shadowrun: Hong Kong is expected to arrive this summer.

See the original post: First screenshots of Shadowrun: Hong Kong released

First screenshots of Shadowrun: Hong Kong released

Durante's Witcher 3 analysis: the alchemy of smoothness

Character model, armor and equipment detail is one of the graphical highlights of the game, and luckily not too performance-intensive.

A qualitative approach to graphics settings

While it is nice to know exactly how many frames per second you lose on a given GPU by enabling one specific setting, this type of quantitative information has been gathered in great detail elsewhere. Instead, I’ll try to provide some general guidelines on which settings might be worth reducing if you are unsatisfied with the game’s performance on your hardware.

Let’s start with the big ones. Each of these settings has a significant performance impact, and reducing them will make a difference for your frametimes.

— HairWorks does not, in my opinion, justify its performance impact in this game on all but the highest-end setups. While I absolutely love the effect, especially on monsters, and greatly appreciate it being there for future playthroughs on superior hardware, if you need more performance it should probably be among the first to go. This remains true even in after the most recent patch (1.03 as of the time of this writing), though it did improve Hairworks performance.

— Conversely, HBAO+ is a very significant improvement over SSAO at not too high a cost, and having no AO at all greatly diminishes the graphics of the game. I’d suggest keeping HBAO+ enabled if at all possible.

— Foliage visibility range has both a high graphical and a very high performance impact. Reducing it to high or even medium can make for a nice performance improvement while reducing the lushness of distant terrain somewhat. It should be among your first choices if you need to make some cutbacks.

While not quite as important as the above, there’s a whole slew of what I’d call mid-tier settings which might just make the difference between a solid 60 (or 30) FPS and occasional frame drops:

— The game’s built-in anti-aliasing is more effective than usual postprocessing methods, but not by too much, and it is also not as cheap. You might reclaim some performance by disabling it and injecting e.g. SMAA externally.

— Grass density is similar to foliage visibility range, though with a smaller impact on both performance and fidelity. It should be among the first settings you reduce.

— Texture quality is really more dependent on your GPU’s memory than performance as such. If you have more than 2 GB of video memory, keep it at ultra, otherwise do drop down to high.

— Shadow Quality does have a performance impact, and it offers a rather smooth progression of quality from the highest to the lowest setting. It is a good candidate for reduction if you need the performance.

Finally, the settings not mentioned so far either seem to have no performance impact in the current build of the game, or it is so minuscule that I would consider the choice more aesthetic than performance-driven. Personally, I dislike chromatic aberration and vignetting, so I appreciate that the ability to disable them individually is offered.

Further Tweaking

If you have a very powerful system which still offers performance to spare even at maximum settings, there are some options even at this early stage to improve graphics further. One of these is tweaking configuration settings above what is possible using the in-game settings.

The configuration file can be found in “%USERPROFILE%DocumentsThe Witcher 3user.settings“ and primarily allows for increasing foliage distance and improving shadow quality. The former has a massive impact on performance as might be expected, but the latter can result in notable improvements at moderate performance costs, and might be worth looking into if you have a high-end system. Particulars regarding this process and a guideline as to its visual and performance impact are provided in
this article.

CD Projekt RED have also committed to further supporting .ini tweaking in the future, so perhaps we can look forward to, for example, LoD distance settings for non-foliage objects in the future. Similarly, they are planning to provide modding tools for the game, which should allow motivated fans to improve on any blemishes discovered—be they low-res or repeating textures or low-detail geometry—anywhere in The WItcher 3’s vast world.

In other games, this scene could invite a joke about loading times. Not so in The Witcher 3.

Wrapping up

Before coming to a close, there are a few remarks I’d like to make concerning various technical aspects of The Witcher 3 which don’t really fit into any of the other sections.

— First of all, CD Projekt should be commended for not wasting anyone’s time. The game boots up and shuts down in seconds, with no unskippable splash screens (or worse, movies) in sight. This might seem like a trivial point, but too many games get it hideously wrong.

— Similarly, the game’s loading seems highly optimized considering its genre and graphical quality. And that’s despite entering and exiting buildings not requiring any separate loading at all.

— Another small but very convenient feature is the ability to switch resolutions and all settings on the fly within the game, again with minimal pauses and delays.

On the other side of the coin I don’t have much to complain about. One relatively minor gripe is that there is no built-in way to completely hide or restore the UI with a hotkey, or to take HUDless screenshots. This is a convenience feature which will make people more likely to provide good free marketing for your game, so I’d expect everyone to start including it.

A topic that has come up quite a bit are game crashes. I’ve luckily not experienced these first hand, but out of curiosity I tried a very minor overclock on my GPU, one which works without issues in other titles. With just 50 Mhz above the default of my (stock overclocked) 970 I had a driver crash after less than 15 minutes in the game. While it’s unlikely to be the solution to all problems, it does appear that The Witcher 3 is very sensitive to system stability, so if you are overclocking do try to see if it might be the cause of any stability problems you encounter.

Conclusion

The Witcher 3 is a huge game, and just like I have only scratched its surface in terms of gameplay, I am sure that the same is true of tweaking its performance. Some GPU vendors have yet to release drivers for it, others’ are suffering from stability problems, and if history is any indication then the developers will do a great job of supporting and improving the game over the coming years. And that’s not even getting into the possibilities of the modding tools which CD Projekt RED have pledged to release later on.

However, in the here and now, Witcher 3 is already a technically solid game considering its genre and ambition. Its CPU requirements are very reasonable, and its graphical options offer enough range to make owners of both high-end and more modest systems happy. Some tinkering might be needed to get the smoothest performance, but when has that ever stopped us?

The rest is here: Durante’s Witcher 3 analysis: the alchemy of smoothness

Durante's Witcher 3 analysis: the alchemy of smoothness

Expeditions: Vikings, the sequel to Conquistadors, is in development

Logic Artists has announced that Expeditions: Vikings, the second game in the strategy-RPG series, is now in development. Players inherit the leadership of a Viking clan in the late 700s, and must set about doing a better job of expanding its power and influence than dear ol’ daddy, who’s just caught the red-eye to Valhalla.

Expeditions: Vikings will expand upon the gameplay in Conquistadors, with things like an upgradeable home village, overland travel and combat integrated into the same layer, smooth transitions from exploration to turn-based combat encounters, and visible representations of the player-character in all parts of the game.

“We are very excited to return to our roots in the RPG genre, and as developers from the Nordic region, to make a game in a setting that is a lot closer to home than anything we’ve done before,” Logic Artists Creative Director Jonas Wæver said. “We’re improving on the Conquistador formula with deeper and more dynamic systems for character progression, combat abilities, role-playing, choice and consequence, and expanding on our favorite part of Conquistador: camping and wilderness survival.”

It’s clear that Expeditions: Vikings is aimed at a fairly niche audience, but its predecessor, Conquistadors, holds a very respectable Metacritic rating of 77, and the user ratings on Steam are quite positive too. There’s no word of a release date yet, nor is there a proper website, but for now you can keep up to speed with happenings via the Expeditions Facebook page.

Read more: Expeditions: Vikings, the sequel to Conquistadors, is in development

Expeditions: Vikings, the sequel to Conquistadors, is in development

We have 5,000 Magicka: Wizard Wars starter packs to give away

Here we are again with more free stuff to give away! This time the folks behind the free-to-play Magicka: Wizard Wars have kindly given us 5000 Steam keys for some in-game goods. Here’s what you can win:

• 3 Treasure Chest Keys (used to unlock Treasure Chest Loot beyond the free rewards each day)


• A 24-hour XP Boost 


• 5,000 Gold Crowns (used to unlock gear, trinkets, and more)

To enter, just fill out the form below. As usual, instead of a ‘first come, first serve’ format that would be over in a snap, this giveaway is a raffle. Tomorrow morning, 5000 entrants will be randomly selected from the total and emailed their keys.

If you win, you can redeem your key on Steam by installing Magicka: Wizard Wars (it’s free) and then hitting ‘Activate a Product on Steam’ from the ‘Games’ drop down menu. Only one code will work per Steam account. Good luck!

Read more here: We have 5,000 Magicka: Wizard Wars starter packs to give away

We have 5,000 Magicka: Wizard Wars starter packs to give away

A horrifying tale of survival in Pony World 3

I visit a beach, hoping it will take my mind off things, or things off my mind. There is no solace there. It is void, it is limbo, it is nothing, but the other ponies seem not to notice. What is happening to me? Is this the end of all things, the breaking of the world? El-ahrairah! El-ahrairah! The Shining Wire!

Okay, that’s Lord of the Rings mixed with some rabbit lore, but I don’t know any pony lore.

Read more: A horrifying tale of survival in Pony World 3

A horrifying tale of survival in Pony World 3

Blizzard explains why Tychus J. Findlay has no cigar in Heroes of the Storm

You may have noticed, if you have sufficiently sharp eyes and didn’t blink at the wrong time, that the StarCraft stalwart Tychus J. Findlay is missing his usual cigar in the Heroes of the Storm “Enter the Nexus” trailer released earlier this week. It turns out there’s a good reason for its absence: Heroes of the Storm has a “teen” rating, and in some regions that means there’s no smoking allowed.

The question came up earlier this week on the Heroes of the Storm Reddit, where a user acknowledged that smoking is bad but said it isn’t Blizzard’s job to keep people from doing it. “You made Tychus and other characters in a special way, because it fits with the fantasy and the art,” he complained. “Are you really gonna change that vision, because somebody has a problem with it?”

The answer is yes, but not because of public health concerns. “Heroes of the Storm is a multi-region game with a teen rating. There are a magnitude of guidelines we have to be aware of,” BlizzDev_PIGonzales [probably not his real name] wrote in reply. “From a development standpoint we prioritize making Heroes and Skins as utilitarian as possible, if a single model can be used in all regions, that’s a huge win for development.”

In this particular case, Blizzard could either make two versions of the character, or just lose the cigar. It opted for the latter, for reasons PIGonzales made very clear. 

“Making 2 versions means more data management, multiple duplicates of the asset (if we update an animation, it has to propagate to all versions) such as the the death ragdoll model, the facial animations, his morph into the Odin, and apply that process to every skin as well,” he explained. “This mountain of work affects multiple departments and has to be addressed every time we’d adjust Tychus.”

This actually isn’t the first time a situation like this has come up. Skelethur doesn’t appear in regions with restrictions on human remains, Blizzard has to create and maintain alternate versions of anything with skulls and blood, and “there was a desire to localize Gazlowe’s license plate to every region,” which apparently fell through because it represented “a ton of time spent on a small detail.”

So there you have it. And before you bring it up, yes, StarCraft II itself is also rated T by the ESRB; and as Eurogamer noted in 2010, it was censored for the South Korean marketplace, with changes made including the removal of references to smoking.

Continued here: Blizzard explains why Tychus J. Findlay has no cigar in Heroes of the Storm

Blizzard explains why Tychus J. Findlay has no cigar in Heroes of the Storm

The best and worst BioWare companions

This article was originally published on August 25, 2014, but to celebrate BioWare’s 20th anniversary we’re reminiscing again about the characters we love (and don’t). Warning! The following article contains MASSIVE SPOILERS for the Mass Effect, Baldur’s Gate, Knights of the Old Republic, and Dragon Age series.

We’ve been reminiscing about our favourite, and least favourite, BioWare companions. Interesting buddies, and sometimes enemies, have been a staple of BioWare games since Baldur’s Gate, and the studio is famous for creating people you actually care about. So I decided to ask the entire PC Gamer team who among the vast pantheon of BioWare NPCs they hate, and who they love. Some of the answers may surprise you. Especially Chris Thursten’s.

Andy Kelly

Loves…


Minsc (Baldur’s Gate)

One of BioWare’s most beloved characters, Minsc is a massive, tattooed ranger who wields a two-handed sword and travels with his faithful companion, Boo, who he says is a ‘miniature giant space hamster’—but is probably just a regular hamster. Minsc typifies that anarchic sense of humour that pervaded the Baldur’s Gate games, and his eccentric battle cries (“Go for the eyes, Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!”) are the stuff of RPG legend.

It wasn’t until Baldur’s Gate II, when BioWare realised just how much fans loved him, that his character was given more dialogue and depth. He became more sympathetic after the cruel death of his partner, Dynaheir, at the hands of evil sorcer Irenicus. Minsc is not as rich or nuanced as many of BioWare’s more recent creations, but he makes up for it with sheer personality.

Hates…


Tali (Mass Effect)

People love Tali, and I don’t know why. She’s just so goddamn earnest, telling endless, boring stories about the her pilgrimage, droning on and on about quarian tradition and how hard life on the flotilla is. The only interesting thing about her character is that she wears a mask, and even that’s just a cheap way of making her seem mysterious.

I genuinely cared about the majority of the cast in Mass Effect, but I avoided Tali at every opportunity. She has a loyal following, including former PC Gamer writer Rich McCormick, who replayed 25 hours of Mass Effect 3 just to prevent her death, but I really don’t understand the love for her. One of the dullest characters in BioWare history.

Chris Thursten

Loves…


Ashley Williams (Mass Effect)

I know, I know. Ashley the space racist. Ashley who only survived Mass Effect 1 because she’s not as boring as Kaidan. I’ve heard every argument against Ash in the last couple of years – often the same argument, over and over – but she’s still one of my favourite BioWare characters. She’s a rare example of a love interest for a male protagonist that doesn’t really need anything from him. Ashley’s background is defined by stable, positive relationships – with her sisters, her parents, her religion.

Her motivating crisis is a smear on her family name that she’s had to struggle with to get where she is in the Alliance military, a struggle that she’s already largely overcome by the time she meets Shepard. It’s a sore spot, but also a point of pride. In a series largely defined by people that Shepard ‘fixes’, Ashley demands to be understood on her own terms. I respect that. As for the space racism: well, yeah, she says some unfortunate things. But it’s not who the character is. If you bring her with you when you encounter the Terra Firma rally on the Citadel, she’ll angrily condemn their leader for using political pragmatism to disguise the racist element of his party. People tend to forget that about her.

Hates…


Sebastian Vael (Dragon Age)

I struggled with this one, because there aren’t really any BioWare characters I truly don’t like. Jacob Taylor is boring, yeah, but his arc pays off in Mass Effect 3. I’m a bit tired of the ‘quirky little sister’ template (Imoen, Tali, Merrill) but all of those characters have their moments. So I’m picking Sebastian, the launch-day DLC character for Dragon Age II who more or less totally fails to get on with any of the other characters in the game. Despite its faults, DA II portrays its companions as a diverse but closely-knit circle of friends: a revolutionary cell that grows out of natural affections and affiliations.

Sebastian, the Chantry-dwelling, revenge-chasing former dilettante doesn’t fit into that family. He’s too posh to slum it with Varric or Isabela, too straight-laced to indulge in the anger that motivates Anders or Fenris. He shows a bit of fire in the game’s final act, but by that point I was too invested in


literally everybody else


to side with him. He’s that guy you see in the hallway at work that you have nothing in common with but you feel obligated to talk to anyway; he’s your friend’s boring boyfriend from university; he’s the person you invite to your house party while secretly hoping that they don’t show up.

Tom Senior

Loves…


Alistair (Dragon Age)

Dragon Age is a very serious game. You’re juggling issues of lineage that’ll decide the fate of the entire realm with the threat of impending genocide at the hands of an ancient evil. A little laughter goes a long way, and Alistair shines as the self-aware bastard contender for the throne. A great comic vocal performance and a bottomless bucket of quips instantly earned him a permanent role in my party, but his capacity of sudden seriousness gave him an interesting edge. At heart he’s a nervous hero forced into a position of remarkable pressure, which makes him enormously sympathetic, especially in the final act when the kingship is decided.

The kicker is that he’s probably not good King material. I ended up accidentally exiling him from the kingdom while attempting to put someone more decisive in place. The fact that I still feel bad about that shows how much I came to like the poor man. I hope he’s running a thriving tavern somewhere, entertaining his regulars with some of the finest one-liners in Ferelden.

Hates…


Samara (Mass Effect)

Samara has a fascinating backstory. She’s been hunting one of her three vampire daughters across the universe for hundreds of years, and now enforces the pious rules of her order with lethal force. This is great for driving plot, especially when her laws clash with the local customs of the planet you’re exploring, but her personality has been entirely subsumed by the code.

Her outlook and actions are bound to a list of rules that she can never break, and she’ll tell you that relentlessly during your observation deck chats during Mass Effect 2. She’s a boring space paladin. You’re interacting with dogma, rather than a person, which means there can be no evolution to your friendship with her. She could kill a dozen enemies in seconds with her mind, but ended up leaving her to her cross-legged meditation in the observation bay. I think we both preferred it that way.

Samuel Roberts

Loves…


Varric (Dragon Age)

Varric wins out for me because he’s the closest your main character gets to an actual best buddy in a BioWare title (other than maybe Garrus in Mass Effect). He’s just good to have around, and also has the interesting distinction of being one of Dragon Age II’s narrators, so his perception of Hawke is oddly important to me as a player. I love that he frequently refers to his crossbow, Bianca, in third person a la Jayne’s gun Vera in Firefly (but slightly less silly), and that he’s technically spent years in Kirkwall’s pub, The Hanged Man, by the end of Dragon Age II.

Controversially, I think Dragon Age II might have my favourite set of companions—or possibly tying with Mass Effect 2. I must point out, though, that picking one BioWare companion I love is nearly impossible. I have a list of twelve names here that I’ll spare you from, but the thought of Varric being around again in Inquisition is pretty exciting to me.

Hates…


James Vega (Mass Effect)

James Vega is an easy target for least likeable BioWare companion – he’s not that bad, and I wouldn’t say I hate him by any stretch. I think it’s because I got it into my head that he was a cipher for Call of Duty players picking up Mass Effect for the first time with the third instalment, and couldn’t handle sci-fi unless they had a way in via standard soldier guy.

That was a bit too harsh, and I think Freddie Prinze Jr does a fine job with the character’s performance, but aside from beating him up in the shuttle bay of the Normandy, I can’t recall enjoying his company that much. I just don’t need someone being that grumpy on my Normandy. I would have put up a sign, politely asking that anybody trying to brood sexily on my ship has to get off at the next civilised star port. I’ve been saving the party sequence from the DLC Mass Effect 3: Citadel until I’m finally ready to say goodbye to Mass Effect, and I’m told Vega’s attendance is mandatory. Aww.

Phil Savage

Loves…


Garrus (Mass Effect)

Characters my character has loved in BioWare games: Aerie, L’iara, Thane and Alistair. But the character


I


loved was never a romantic possibly. Well, technically he was in Mass Effect 3. What I mean to say is that he was never a romantic possibility for


my


Shepard. Like Sam with DA2’s Varric, Garrus filled the role of best pal. By Mass Effect 2, he’s reinvented himself in Shepard’s image, and that leads to a common understanding between the two. He’s got his shit together, even when he hasn’t.

Many have criticised Mass Effect 3’s actual ending. The truth is it was a game filled with endings, and many of them were note perfect. Garrus’s ending takes place before the final battle, shooting cans with Shepard at the top of the Citadel’s Presidium. It’s a scene laced with humour, rivalry, sadness and, yes, friendship. The best way to remember BioWare’s best companion.

Hates…


Khalid (Baldur’s Gate)

Poor Khalid. You didn’t really deserve to die every time I played Baldur’s Gate. You were, I guess, fine. Adequate. Non-offensively present. My disdain for your life is really down to the way the first BG handled party members. Many of them were paired up—their inseparable buddy being a requirement to them joining your adventure.

If you wanted Jaheira, you had to take Khalid, and, in a game filled with interesting characters and variables, I really didn’t want to waste one of my five companion slots on the cowardly complaining of an effete fighter. And so you were sent to your certain death; one of the few ways you could part these pairings without pissing their partner off. It was an inelegant solution, but a necessary one. BioWare, it seems, agreed, and in Baldur’s Gate 2 they removed such dependencies. They, like me, killed Khalid off.

Ben Griffin

Loves…


Thane Krios (Mass Effect)

Everything about Thane is fascinating. He’s a Drell, a reptilian species rescued from their dying planet by the Hanar. Unfortunately Drell aren’t suited to their new world’s humidity, and many develop a respiratory disease called Kepral’s Syndrome. Thane has it, and he agrees to Shepard’s suicide mission as a gesture of penance. He’s an assassin, you see, and thanks to his photographic memory—an adaptation to an environment where Drell must remember the location of resources across vast distances—Thane involuntarily relives his kills in vivid detail.

This weighs heavily on his conscience, and it’s not unusual to catch him praying in his private quarters. I never feel more badass than rocking up to the Citadel with Thane. I remember him once commenting on the 14 flaws in C-Sec security that a skilled assassin could exploit, and how “eight of them were there ten years ago.”

Hates…


Kaiden Alenko

“Who? Ohhh yeah, that guy.” That’s the reaction Kaidan Alenko usually garners, for me the only forgettable companion in the Mass Effect games. Just look at his boring face. In a galaxy featuring psychic purple jellies, bright blue seductresses, and monotone elephant men, here’s this…dude. His backstory is dull—a biotic born into a military family—and his conversations with the captain are unremarkable. I guess he’s just too similar to male Shepard, his role already served.

I play Mass Effect to interact with strange new beings, not hobnob with brown-haired white guys. Literally everyone I work with is a brown-haired white guy. In the first Mass Effect he shares an interesting conflict with Ashley, her a pro-human xenophobe and him an equal rights advocate, and as Shepard you can persuade him to be either less or more sympathetic to alien races. It’s an important subject to explore, but Kaiden feels superfluous to it. Ashley gets the job done.

Tim Clark

Loves…


Liara T’Soni (Mass Effect)

Lovely Liara. It’s testament to the skill of BioWare’s writers that she isn’t reduced to just being the drippy, peace-loving, science-y one. I mean, she’s all those things, but she’s also more complex. Old by human standards, but a child in terms of Asari lifespan, she’s naive and hopeful, but at the same time proud of her people and conflicted about her relationship with her mother.

She wants the best for the universe but fears the worst. I ended up taking Liara on most missions, partly because I liked having an all-girl Charlies Angels-style squad, but also because her enthusiasm and curiosity invariably added nuance and emotion to the plot lines that was otherwise lost with the more workaday companions. Her arc, leading up the excellent Lair Of The Shadow Broker DLC, is also some of the most interesting stuff in the series. Damnit, Liara, it was always you. You made me want to be a better Shepard.

Hates…


Thane Krios (Mass Effect)

Look, I wouldn’t say I hate Thane – pity, maybe – it’s more that I can’t think about him without feeling the intense embarrassment that only comes with a truly disastrous one-night stand. After Liara was sidelined for Mass Effect 2 my Fem Shep couldn’t be expected to live like a space nun, could she? So, reasoning that she was an experimental girl of the galaxy, I decided to bunk up with Thane. Largely to cheer him up because, hoo boy, badass assassins have rarely been more depressing.

Whether it’s moping over his dead wife, praying for forgiveness after whacking some schmuck, or musing on what a terrible dad he is, Thane is just a big green cloud of glum. (Bonus bad times: he’s also slowly dying of Kepral’s Syndrome, the specifics of which I forget and have no desire to Google.) After the sex he’s awkwardly grateful. Which, honestly, is a sure sign you’ve made a terrible romantic mistake. Ugh.

Evan Lahti

Loves…


HK-47 (Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic)

For all the well-rounded, nonarchetypal, and sensitive characters BioWare has thrown at us, I delight in the silliest, most murderous, and one-dimensional partner they’ve written. HK-47 is more bloodthirsty than Jack or fellow assassin Thane, and most reliable source of bad advice in BioWare games.

He’s essentially a bad-ass, malicious one-liner dispenser (“Observation: We can begin by slaughtering the inhabitants of this building, master. Would that be impressive?”), but he also shows us a dark side of droids not seen in the Star Wars I grew up with–compared to the placative C-3PO, HK-47 shows zero concern for the needs of humans. The Star Wars wiki is a fine source of HK-47


quotes


, most of them containing “meatbag” as a perjorative.

Hates…


Miranda Lawson (Mass Effect)

Miranda is the closest to furniture that a BioWare character has ever been. What do we remember about her, other than her skintight bodysuit and the way Mass Effect 2’s camera suggestively frames her hips? Her loyalty missions were among the least interesting, and her fluctuating relationship with Cerberus, which could’ve been a great opportunity for genuine betrayal in the series, never made me feel uneasy.

Tyler Wilde

Loves…


Mordin Solus (Mass Effect)

Mordin is great for the following reasons: One, he’s a scientist, and science is neat. Two, he blinks upwards. Three, he speaks in sentence fragments, and it is a proven fact that omitting pronouns is super endearing. Four, he is the very model of a scientist salarian. Five, he gives practical sex advice and totally doesn’t judge. Six, he has a cool thing around his neck.

My cynical side says Mordin was designed to be quoted by fans more than be an interesting character, but he’s a very interesting character. His practical, logical morality is a bit Data-like, but unlike The Enterprise’s android, he’s emotional. He’s just so sure of his pragmatism that he can stay upbeat despite the weight of his actions—and then he’s not. It breaks my heart when he yells “I made a mistake!” in Mass Effect 3. Even if he was still talking about variables and potential outcomes, there’s regret and hope there, too.

Hates…


Jack (Mass Effect)

Jack has lived a ridiculously shitty life. She’s been experimented on, tortured, and used—and tragically, all that abuse turned her into a boring character who sucks. She’s that garden variety violent psychopath who’s always wiping something off her lip with the back of her hand (saliva? blood?) after saying “shit.” She’s mad, and she should be, but her conflict with Shepard isn’t interesting. It’s just—she’s mad. She’s really mad, and that’s about it.

Her grisly past means she doesn’t have any interesting space culture to talk about, either—it’s just a story about how Cerberus is bad and we shouldn’t like them. That insane chest belt costume from Mass Effect 2 didn’t help, either, and neither did the equally-stupid Biker Mice From Mars-inspired look in Mass Effect 3.

Cory Banks

Loves…


Aveline (Dragon Age)

For most of my time in Kirkwall (after a long absence, I’m only just now finishing the game), Guard Captain Aveline was merely an interesting character: stoic, hard-nosed, a fine example of how DA2’s “rivalry” system can work. She often didn’t agree with my actions, but our mutual goals united us. We’re not friends, but we’re companions.

Her companion quest is what turned me around. In most BioWare games, your goal with companions is to make them like you more—and most likely, fall in love with you enough that they’ll join you in an awkward, unromantic sex cinematic. Aveline’s quest is different: she has a crush on a subordinate guardsman, and wants your help to get his attention. The captain of the guard is awful at flirting, however, which leads to an amusing series of scenes where you entertain Aveline’s future boyfriend while she works up the nerve to talk to him.

It works because it’s not really about you, but about the character who is supposed to be your friend, and it’s one of the most realistic character moments in a game that’s supposed to be all about character. Now, not only is Aveline the best tank I can bring to a fight, but she’s also an actual friend.

Hates…


Yoshimo (Baldur’s Gate II)

I’ll never forgive BioWare for Yoshimo. When I first met him in the game’s starting dungeon, he was a welcome help to the party—good in a fight, great with a lockpick, and the only pure-class thief players get in the game. I kept him around in the team because I needed him, but also because I liked him. But then it turned out that he was Jon Irenicus’ puppet, and was forced to betray me to save his life. Not that it helped, because I had to kill him. It’s a very Joss Whedon move, to make me kill a character I love, and while that might sound like praise for BioWare, it doesn’t make me any less angry about it.

Wes Fenlon

Loves…


Niftu Cal (Mass Effect)

Over the years, BioWare has written tons of interesting companions who journey and grow along with you. Characters with depth and humanity. In Mass Effect, those characters are often aliens with detailed and unique physiologies. But how many of them are biotic gods? Only one. Only Niftu Cal, the funniest throwaway character BioWare ever created.

Hates…


Carth Onasi (Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic)

It takes Knights of the Old Republic all of five minutes to pair you up with the most self-righteous soldier in the galaxy. There I was, walking through the streets of Taris, just trying to help out the local alien races by relieving them of their credits. That money was just weighing them down! And then here’s Carth, lecturing me. So what if I goaded someone into a fight and killed them, just for the fun of it?


What gives you the right to guilt me, Carth?

I loved to hate Carth in Knights of the Old Republic, sneering at his


honor


and


reason


and that smug, holier-than-thou voice. He was an uncool Han Solo. Even playing as the most honest light side Jedi warrior, Carth was too bland for my tastes. I grew to hate him so much, I kept him around just so I could ignore every piece of sage advice and insult him at every opportunity. Carth’s voice immediately made me angry. I’d recognize it anywhere, so as soon as he showed up disguised as Kaidan in Mass Effect, I knew that he’d be off the squad. Ashley may be a xenophobe, but she’s better than the most annoying man in the universe.

More: The best and worst BioWare companions

The best and worst BioWare companions

Fractured Space gets a major update for May

Edge Case Games has released a major update to Fractured Space, along with a new trailer that demonstrates how the game has evolved from the prototype stage to its current state, which looks just about ready for prime-time.

Fractured Space is a five-on-five game of capital ship combat in space, being developed by the team that created Strike Suit Zero, now working under the Edge Case name. It hit Early Access late last year and has undergone several updates since, most recently the “biggy” that went live on Steam yesterday.

Highlights of the update include two new ships, the Zarek Infiltrator and Zarek Carrier, 11 new crew members including Captain Jingles, plus ramming, remappable key binds, upgradeable systems, a strategic map, and multiple balance passes that affect point defense, jump abilities, and various aspects of individual ship types. Several bug fixes have also been made, as well as changes to the UI and server list messages.

Edge Case said the full breakdown of the update is literally too big to fit on Steam, so it posted the details on its own blog instead. A hotfix released today tweaks things a bit with a handful of small changes, while a few other known issues, like buggy ramming damage, will be addressed in a future update. Fractured Space is currently expected to launch in full later this year.

View original post here: Fractured Space gets a major update for May

Fractured Space gets a major update for May

The Talos Principle writer talks up "ambitious" new expansion

Tom Jubert, one-half of the writing team behind the outstanding first-person puzzle game The Talos Principle, has provided a little bit of insight into what’s coming in the Road to Gehenna expansion. He wasn’t interested in repeating what had already been done, he wrote in a recent blog post, so he and writing partner Jonas Kyratzes kicked around some ideas that would “expand on the original world without simply following in its footsteps.”

Among the ideas pitched and discarded were setting the expansion in the distant past, when the Elohim system was still in development, or in the distant future, after it’s been discovered by other beings; or putting it on a separate server with the same rules but different archive information, resulting in completely different versions of Elohim and Milton, the game’s nagging voice of doubt and cynicism.

Jubert didn’t offer any hints about what they and Croteam eventually settled on, but said it “provides us huge flexibility in terms of the sort and tone of material we deliver. It gives us a world that fits within the original game’s religious and science fiction mythology, but which resolutely has its own identity. Most importantly for me, it lets us explore completely new ideas about how to interact with the game.” He also described it as “ambitious,” adding that the script is comparable in size to that of The Talos Principle itself.

“We have consciously designed [Road to Gehenna] to be experimental,” he wrote. “We wanted to explore new ideas in a safe environment so that when we inevitably come to Talos 2 we will be able to raise our audience’s expectations once again.”

Jubert said the expansion is now undergoing “final bug-hunting,” and will be out in the next month or so.

See the original post: The Talos Principle writer talks up "ambitious" new expansion

The Talos Principle writer talks up "ambitious" new expansion

How Heroes of the Storm compares to LoL and Dota 2

Here is a last list of things that didn’t really fit into anything I mentioned before, but are still important distinctions from the usual formula:

Mounts: Every hero can ride a mount by pressing Z and channeling for a few seconds. The mount will give you increased movement speed until you attack or take damage, and cosmetically different mounts can be purchased or earned.

Stealth: Certain heroes can go invisible, but there will be a telltale shimmer visible to the enemy wherever they walk. There are a few heroes who can also detect stealthed enemies, but mainly you can outplay or be outplayed by a stealthed hero based solely on how close you are paying attention.

Vision and wards: Some heroes have access to talent that gives you a ward-like item, letting you place a totem down that provides vision of the area for one minute, but otherwise the only extra map vision you can get is by controlling watchtowers or certain hero abilities. Vision is, in general, slightly less important than in LoL or Dota, as you will usually be heading towards the same objectives as your opponents and because, as mentioned, you can see when a merc camp is taken. Shorter matches, grouped teams, and the lack of a jungler all tend to make your own team’s positioning more important than knowing exactly where the enemy team is.

Healing Orbs: There are seven minions in each wave; three melee, three archers, and a mage. When you kill the mage, it drops a healing orb for your team that will give nearby friendly heroes a small boost of health and mana.There is also a level one talent for some support heroes that will permanently increase your mana regeneration for every three healing orbs you collect.

Playing Heroes: Like League of Legends, there is a weekly free hero rotation and to play a hero permanently you have to buy it with in-game gold or real money. However, you can test out any Hero you’d like against AI in a special, one-lane map that lets you level up on command and reset your cooldowns. 

There are, of course, more small differences. Heroes of the Storm is a different game, after all. It’s free-to-play and going into full release on June 2nd.

Read this article: How Heroes of the Storm compares to LoL and Dota 2

How Heroes of the Storm compares to LoL and Dota 2

Blizzard confirms mounted flight won't be added to Warlords of Draenor

If you were disappointed to learn that you wouldn’t be able to take your flying mount for a ride in the new World of Warcraft zones introduced in the Warlords of Draenor expansion, Polygon’s recent interview with lead designer Ion Hazzikostas will do nothing to improve your mood. He said Blizzard had initially planned to enable flying in the expansion, but eventually decided that it played better without it.

“Having looked at how flying has played out in the old world in the last couple of expansions, we realized that while we were doing it out of this ingrained habit after we introduced flying in The Burning Crusade, it actually detracted from gameplay in a whole lot of ways,” Hazzikostas said. “While there was certainly convenience in being able to completely explore the world in three dimensions, that also came at the expense of gameplay like targeted exploration, like trying to figure out what’s in that cave on top of a hill and how do I get up there.”

He cited the example of a quest to break a prisoner out of an enemy camp. Normally, players would have to fight their way through it, but with flight they could simply drop in, grab their guy, and split. Hazzikostas said it made the world feel “much smaller” in many ways, which is obviously the opposite of what Blizzard is trying to accomplish. And while it’s possible that flight could return in future expansions, it doesn’t sound likely.

“At this point, we feel that outdoor gameplay in World of Warcraft is ultimately better without flying,” Hazzikostas said. “We’re not going to be reintroducing the ability to fly in Draenor, and that’s kind of where we’re at going forward.”

It’s an unfortunate decision—flying is cool—but understandable from a design point of view. Bethesda elected to do the same thing with its Elder Scrolls RPG series following Morrowind, which contained a levitation spell that let players fly unaided. “[Levitate] was removed so we could design better gameplay spaces and scenarios,” Game Director Todd Howard explained in a 2011 Skyrim fan interview. “We were really limited in Morrowind because the player could recall or levitate out of many situations and break them. There was a lot of good gameplay and level design work that we just couldn’t do and now we can. Back then it seemed like many good ideas we had were shot down when another designer would say, ‘Oh yeah, I just levitate or recall away.’ So we got rid of them.”

Go here to see the original: Blizzard confirms mounted flight won’t be added to Warlords of Draenor

Blizzard confirms mounted flight won't be added to Warlords of Draenor

Tropico 5's sneaky espionage add-on out next week

Phil ‘El Presidente’ Savage liked Tropico 5 a fair amount when it emerged last year, and it’s been (optionally) bolstered a lot since then with quite a bit of DLC. The latest, Espionage, comes out next Thursday, adding a punny new campaign called The Maltese Toucan. It’s spy themed! So of course it adds a tuxedo, spy hat, and other secret agenty stuff as well.

Here’s publisher Kalypso on the contents of the surreptitious Espionage:

“Espionage’ features the all new campaign ‘The Maltese Toucan’, a thrilling new adventure wherein Tropico’s precious treasures need to be protected against foreign agents at all costs. Only you, as El Presidente, can keep Tropico safe from enemy spies and foreign powers that might try to steal your island’s best kept secrets for their own gain.

“Protect Tropico’s borders and reveal enemy agents by installing Security Checkpoints and throwing them in the island’s new Dungeon. Train your own spies in the new Spy Academy and send them off to steal foreign capital or top secret technology from your enemies. Foil attacks on your beautiful island paradise by building the Ministry Of Information and monitor your citizens according to the strict Tropican data privacy laws. For additional air security you can call on the new Police Blimp, and for serious military scenarios you will be equipped with some new toys: the Mechanized Garrison is battle seasoned and ready for any state of emergency!

“Spanning six missions, you can expect manipulation, revolts and acts of sabotage as you use all the resources at your disposal to protect your island from the outside powers trying to move in. Will your drink be ‘shaken or stirred’ at the end of this thrilling spy tale?”

That last line means literally nothing in that context, but hey ho.

So: May 28th. Six new missions. A nontet of spy/military themed buildings. A bunch of new avatar stuff, sandbox events and a little more.

Continued here: Tropico 5’s sneaky espionage add-on out next week

Tropico 5's sneaky espionage add-on out next week

Serpent in the Staglands trailer prepares us for next week's launch

Serpent in the Staglands is a new real-time-with-pause RPG that should remind you of things like Darklands and Baldur’s Gate. It’s out on Thursday, and it looks rather brill, or at least as brill as we can discern from screenshots and videos. A new one of the latter things appeared a few days ago in the form of a ‘launch’ trailer, showing what we’ll get up to as a god stuck in a mortal body in a Transylvanian fantasy landscape obsessed with spices. Here it is:

“Oooh” is the word you’re looking for. There’s quite a lot of RPG going around at the moment, but Staglands should complement the likes of Pillars of Eternity and The Witcher 3 fairly nicely, offering a more gothic and unusual fantasy world to explore, in a game that appears to be equal parts roleplaying and adventure game (or at least with a higher ratio of the latter element than the norm). You’ll be able to buy it from the official site, or from Steam, the Humble Store or GOG.com, though it’s not live on the last two stores yet.

Read more here: Serpent in the Staglands trailer prepares us for next week’s launch

Serpent in the Staglands trailer prepares us for next week's launch

Face off: Is it reasonable to expect a game to live up to early footage?

In Face Off, PC Gamer writers go head to head over an issue affecting PC gaming. Today, Wes and Chris argue whether we should expect games to live up to early trailers and screenshots.

FACE OFF

Wes Fenlon, hardware editor
Wes thinks early promotional materials often don’t look like the finished game, and we should expect that.

Chris Livingston, staff writer
Chris thinks if developers make big changes, they should do more to let us know before we buy.

Chris Livingston: YES. Games change while they’re being made, but if they’ve changed appreciably from the early look we were given, the developer needs to let us know. Features, functions, and yes, even visuals, are bound to change during a game’s development, and I think we all know that. But if a developer has released early gameplay footage and images, and they’re not representative of the finished game, they need to do something to make us aware of that. When it comes to how a game looks—and I’m talking about The Witcher 3—it’s even reasonable to assume it will look better than it did early on. If it looks worse, devs have a responsibility to say “Hey, remember that pretty thing we showed you a while back? We tried real hard to make that, but it’s not what you’re getting.”

Wes Fenlon: NO.The freedom to iterate on and even drastically change a game is a key part of the creative process, and devs shouldn’t have to justify each and every change they make. I agree with you on one thing up front, though: misrepresenting games through early promotional materials, like trailers claiming that something is “in game footage,” really sucks. It’s not necessarily a lie—in the case of The Witcher 3, I believe there was a version of that game that looked like it did, but it wasn’t capable of rendering a full open world. But developers and publishers shouldn’t be showing a game off two years ahead of release and setting unrealistic expectations. Because they know the truth: the development of a game is always going to leave features, graphical effects, plot points, and more on the cutting room floor. Because sometimes things just don’t work, or they’re not achievable by a deadline, and cutting those things is a natural part of the process. It’s why great games can be lean and focused instead of bloated and directionless. Developers need the freedom to make those changes.

Chris: Look, I think it’s ridiculous to buy a game based on promotional footage from several years ago, and I even doubt many people do that. At the same time, the first images from an early gameplay trailer are going to stick with people for a long time. I loved that first gameplay trailer for The Division, and I’m going to be disappointed nine years from now if the game comes out and doesn’t give me that experience I first saw. Early Half-Life 2 footage showed a crazy water tentacle monster impaling a Combine soldier. The tentacle was cut from the game, but it’s still in my head. I remember the first gameplay trailer for Bioshock Infinite, and that wound up being very little like the final version of the game. It was an infinite bummer.

Wes: Again, I agree it’s probably a bad idea to show off a game when there’s years of iteration left to be done. But at the same time, I also treasure the archeology of looking back at things that didn’t make it into a game. Sometimes it’s wondering how awesome that feature would’ve been, or trying to figure out why it was cut. But I think the way many gamers look at “cut” content is incorrect. They feel like something that was in the game or should have been in the game was removed, taken away, and that that’s a bad thing. But we’ve not privy to any of the internal discussions around those features or the way they were integrated into the game as a whole.

What if that tentacle monster in Half-Life 2 worked in that one scene, but its AI was a nightmare that just never worked right? What if devs designed a really cool level, but a great change to the plot of the game during development rendered it obsolete? What if the original lighting in Dark Souls 2, which many gamers are still angry about, was actually terrible for gameplay? It’s okay to say “Aw man, what if” about these features, but I think more often than not, they’re cut for the better.

Chris: From what I recall, Valve said the water tentacle just wasn’t any fun to fight, and I’m not saying they should have kept it simply because they showed it. Devs should make the best game possible and that will always entail throwing away stuff that initially seemed like a good idea but didn’t work out. I think “Aw, man” is a natural reaction, and I think a lot of people are having it about The Witcher 3, though perhaps with more expletives than strictly necessary. It boils down to: “You showed me a thing, I wanted that thing, but I didn’t get that thing.” I wouldn’t expect Valve to hold a press conference to announce the water tentacle had been deep-sixed, but maybe CDPR could have done something to point out the game didn’t look as good as originally advertised before they took pre-orders? It’s not a fun thing for a dev to admit, I’m sure, but PC gamers love sweet graphics. CDPR should have anticipated there would be a certain amount of disappointment.

Wes: Yeah, you’re right about that. I don’t think we should expect a game to live up to early footage for a lot of reasons we’ve already touched on: the creative freedom necessary to cut things that aren’t working, the ability to optimize and adapt to new technology and challenges…but we should expect, or demand, that promotional materials be up front about progress during development. Marketers are always going to do their best to put a positive spin on things, but trying to sweep an issue under the rug never works. Once something like a trailer has been put online, it’s there forever, and people will notice if you try to take it down or alter it. Of course CD Projekt wasn’t going to come out and say “Hey, our game’s uglier now.” But they could’ve written an in-depth technical explanation of how the game engine performed back in 2013 vs. now, what changed, and why. I’m sure a few people would still be mad, but I think a lot of people, myself included, would find it fascinating. We rarely get insight into the specifics of how a game is changed during development.

Chris: Yeah! I think even a little bit of information and explanation would go a long way. No one likes feeling hoodwinked, and while some are a little quick to fly off the handle I think most people are pretty understanding and just want to know what they’re paying for before they buy it. On the other hand, a lot of complaints came from people who had pre-ordered, and pre-ordering games is… well, we probably both have opinions on pre-orders, but that’s a Face Off for another time.

Wes: Seriously. The best justification for a pre-order is to save some bucks, but these days games go on sale so quickly (and so often), there’s not much reason to buy until you know what you’re getting. I hope the controversy around The Witcher 3’s graphics convinces publishers to be more upfront in the future, but I also hope that it doesn’t discourage them from being creative with their advertising. A good trailer can mislead you about a game’s narrative, and the surprise when you play the real thing can be great. Savvy movie trailers do this all the time. Halo 2’s first level ended with an awesome scene with a completely different context than was originally shown. If a game is going to have an exhaustive, two-year advertising campaign, I hope developers start to put out more creative trailers that allow us to still feel surprised when we pick up a game. 

Read this article: Face off: Is it reasonable to expect a game to live up to early footage?

Face off: Is it reasonable to expect a game to live up to early footage?

Battlefield Hardline: Criminal Activity DLC detailed

Battlefield Hardline’s DLC is criminal. By which I mean the game’s first “expansion” is called Criminal Activity, and nothing else.

It’s your standard Battlefield add-on offering, by which I mean there are some maps, weapons, vehicles and a new game mode. Also, there’s a nailgun. You can see the full offering below, courtesy of the Battlefield blog.

• Four fast-paced new maps – Backwoods, Code Blue, The Beat and Black Friday


• Two new rides


• Two new ammunition types for specific weapons


• A new gadget


• Three new weapons


• A nailgun battlepickup


• New Bounty Hunter game mode


• Six new masks: two animal masks, and four new police headgear options

As with all recent Battlefield games, Hardline is getting four add-ons over the next year. Criminal Activity is due out next month, with Premium members getting a two-week head start. 

Originally posted here: Battlefield Hardline: Criminal Activity DLC detailed

Battlefield Hardline: Criminal Activity DLC detailed

There is a live-action Batman: Arkham Knight trailer, for some reason

This is weird, but maybe you’ll enjoy it. It’s a live-action Batman: Arkham Knight trailer, but without much in the way of action. Also, for some reason, it’s backed by Nine Inch Nails’ The Wretched. Symbolism, probably. Anyway, I’m pretty bemused by the whole thing, but there is a smidgen of game footage at the end.

If you’d prefer to just see a big ol’ chunk of game footage, last November’s Ace Chemicals mission playthrough offers just that. Alternatively, check out our guide to everything you need to know about Arkham Knight.

Batman: Arkham Knight is out next month, on June 23.

Originally posted here: There is a live-action Batman: Arkham Knight trailer, for some reason

There is a live-action Batman: Arkham Knight trailer, for some reason

Torment: Tides of Numenera trailer explores the Ninth World

If Wasteland 2, Divinity: Original Sin and Pillars of Eternity didn’t sate your old-school RPG appetite, then, luckily for you, there’s still Torment: Tides of Numenera to come. Also you might want to get that insatiable hunger looked at. See a doctor, or something.

InXile’s Planescape successor is still in development, but you can get an early peek at some of its locations via this new trailer. It explores the Ninth World in which the game is set. And before you ask, no. You won’t need to have seen worlds one through eight for it to make sense.

Away from Torment, InXile are gearing up for A Bard’s Tale IV. Andy Chalk recently spoke to Brian Fargo about the studio’s past, present and future projects in the wake of their third Kickstarter.

Read more here: Torment: Tides of Numenera trailer explores the Ninth World

Torment: Tides of Numenera trailer explores the Ninth World