In episode 11 of PC Gamer's Dwarf Fortress series, Wes and Will move past their medical crisis to focus on more important things: a new trade caravan! Also, they eat cupcakes.
In early July 2014, Dwarf Fortress received its first major update in two years.We wrote about why now is the time to get into the game with our guide Into the deep. Now we're learning how to play.
Check back every Tuesday and Thursday for new episodes of A Newbie plays Dwarf Fortress.
It wasn't long ago that everyone was mourning the death of "true" survival horror games, but the last couple of years have seen a huge, unexpected resurgence for the genre.
It wasn't long ago that everyone was mourning the death of "true" survival horror games, but the last couple of years have seen a huge, unexpected resurgence for the genre. P.T., a playable Silent Hillsteaser exclusive to PS4, has been among the highlights, and it looks like Allison Road is itching to follow in its footsteps. P.T. is no longer available on PS4, and Silent Hills is no longer in development, so it's a canny move on British studio Lilith Ltd's part to work on a game like this.
As the footage below demonstrates, Allison Road not only borrows the P.T. aesthetic, but it's also audacious enough to directly reference the former game. While the video shows "real gameplay", it doesn't spoil any actual events, and is intended only to convey the atmosphere of the game.
"At this point pretty much all of our core mechanics are in place, however, some actually didn't make the cut-off for the video," the YouTube description reads, naming the inventory system as still a work-in-progress.
This is only a pre-alpha prototype, but it's already looking good. It's long at 13 minutes, but make sure you watch until the end to see what all the fuss is about. No release window has been announced.
We've been talking a lot about Platinum's upcoming brawler, Anarchy Reigns , partially because we're fans of the developer, and partially because Sega has been releasing assets faster than Kirk Douglas can make celebrities uncomfortable. Today, we've got a bunch of new, extra-chaotic screens to confuse your eyes with. Above: Aaaawwwwwwwwwwwww yeaaaaaaaaaaaaah! You can see all of the new screens in our viewer , and check out the most recent trailer below for a bit of the game in motion: Feb 28, 2011 Feb 28, 2011 ABOUT THE AUTHOR GamesRadarTylerWilde Associate Editor, Digital at PC Gamer Topics Action Anarchy Reigns We recommend By Zergnet Load Comments
In episode 6 of PC Gamer's Dwarf Fortress Let's Play, Wes and Will begin to suspect that their leader Sibrek is a bit of a bum. Also, they learn all about cooking and brewing!
In early July 2014, Dwarf Fortress received its first major update in two years.We wrote about why now is the time to get into the game with our guide Into the deep. Now we're learning how to play.
Check back every Tuesday and Thursday for new episodes of A Newbie plays Dwarf Fortress.
Team Fortress 2 is getting a substantial new update in the form of the Gun Mettle Campaign.
is getting a substantial new update in the form of the Gun Mettle Campaign. The campaign will offer two contracts per week over a three month period, with each offering a new skill-based challenge. Examples include "get a kill with a reflected projectile as Pyro", or "survive 1000 damage in a single life as Heavy".
Completing contracts will grant campaign-exclusive weapons or an unlockable weapon case. These weapons will come in six grades of rarity but won't give you a competitive advantage, according to the Gun Mettle Campaign FAQ. Instead, each (and by 'each', I mean every single weapon assigned to every single player) will come with a unique paint job. If you don't like a weapon, you can sell it.
Access to the Gun Mettle Campaign will set you back $5.99. Some of the profits will go to the map creators responsible for maps featured in the contracts. These maps, which come in the form of Borneo, Suijin and Snowplow, as well as the new Valve-built map Powerhouse, will roll out free for anyone not partaking in the Gun Mettle Campaign. More info over here.
Finally, another Anarchy Reigns trailer! It feels like it's been at least a few hours since the last one we posted. This time, Sega and PlatinumGames are revealing the multiplayer brawler's fourth character, Jack, who starred in the dev's inaugural title, MadWorld. We know it's been a while - like, a week, maybe - since Anarchy Reigns was unveiled, so if you need a refresher, here's what we wrote when
In episode 5 of PC Gamer's Dwarf Fortress Let's Play , Wes and Will discuss mermen and learn all about trading when the first caravan arrives arrives at their fortress.
, Wes and Will discuss mermen and learn all about trading when the first caravan arrives arrives at their fortress. Turns out, trading involves a lot of menus.
In early July 2014, Dwarf Fortress received its first major update in two years.We wrote about why now is the time to get into the game with our guide Into the deep. Now we're learning how to play.
Check back every Tuesday and Thursday for new episodes of A Newbie plays Dwarf Fortress.
Comments
Our Verdict
Exactly what Dawn of War 2 needed: a generous dose of variety, options, and vicious silliness.
Exactly what Dawn of War 2 needed: a generous dose of variety, options, and vicious silliness. Play through it at least twice.
It must be hard to be a Guardsman. You're standing around staring at an uncaptured control point and a box full of something called Requisition, and suddenly an Ork appears three inches from your face. His name is Spookums, he is wearing a pirate hat, and now he has exploded. You're killed instantly – that's one of the worst parts of the job – but Spookums is merely flung by his own explosion into a bush.
Luckily, Dawn of War 2: Retribution lets you be the Ork.
If you'd asked me before I played it, I would have told you Retribution was all about making Dawn of War 2 closer to a proper strategy game. It's standalone, and where Dawn of War 2 was all about micromanaging just a handful of units, Retribution allows you to build up your force from the headquarters you capture midbattle. In theory, the big change is that you're now commanding an army instead of leading a squad.
As it turns out, that's not at all what Retribution is about. And thank God. You can build up an army, certainly, but almost every unit in it would have several manually activated abilities to deal with. Quickly and accurately ordering that number of units to use cover and activate their abilities is the kind of manual and mental torture test you could use to find out if you have a heart condition. Dawn of War's interface, zoom level and controls just weren't built for battles of that scale.
Yet Retribution is startlingly good – it's the best Warhammer 40K game I've ever played. Because it's not really about numbers, it's about diversity. If you played Dawn of War 2 and its first expansion Chaos Rising, you've spent upwards of 30 hours controlling some combination of the same seven units. Retribution lets you choose between six different factions, with a total of around 70 squads, vehicles and heroes to play with. It's a massive breath of fresh air.
Joy of six
There are six campaigns of around eight hours each, all playable in singleplayer or co-op. One of the six races is largely new to the game, the Imperial Guard, and they're also playable in competitive multiplayer. Then there's a new map and a new hero for Last Stand, the superb three-player cooperative survival mode Relic added to Dawn of War 2 in a free update. And if you're interested in any of these ways to play it online, there's the enormously welcome news that it now uses Steam for matchmaking and friends lists, instead of the horrific Games for Windows Live.
Frankly, the last time anyone went this nuts with an expansion was, well, Relic – with Dawn of War: Dark Crusade.
These aren't six completely unique campaigns, admittedly. Play two and you'll find they have about ten of their twelve missions in common, just slightly repurposed to fit a different plot. That only really hurts the early missions: the first three are overly long and overly scripted tutorials, and replaying them as each new race gets painful.
But once you do fight through them, you have enough experience points to start customising your heroes, and that's where Retribution suddenly turns around.
Dawn of War 2 was one great fight, repeated. You set up your heavy weapons in cover, snuck your scout in to snipe a prime target, tanked them with your commander, and jumpjetted your assault guys onto the enemy's strongest shooters. It was satisfying, but by and large it was the same every time. It was often the same map every time.
Retribution comes up with five new formulae, composed of the same basic elements of stealth, suppression, jumps, melee and damage types. Formulae that evolve as you decide how to upgrade each hero, what you equip them with, and how you want to use them.
It's still tactical and manually intensive – you need to move each hero individually and activate the right abilities just when you need them, preferably with hotkeys. You can bench heroes in return for a free squad or vehicle and an increased army size limit in the field. But for most races, each hero plays such an important role that it's hard to see why anyone would.
So for the most part, you slip into playing Retribution much as you did Dawn of War 2: four heroes, each with special abilities that mix with each other in excitingly brutal ways. I added a few heavy weapons squads to support my biggest gunner, and the occasional vehicle when I could afford it, then spent the rest of my money on upgrading and reviving my heroes.
I mentioned the Orks earlier: as well as the commando/commander switcheroo (where Spookums can swap positions with Bludflagg), their ranged specialist Nailbrain is ridiculous. He can teleport into battle, and one of his perks causes him to explode every time he does anything. So when he teleports, he also explodes, flooring everyone. He can then turn on his force field so that incoming damage will drain energy rather than health when everyone gets back up. This causes him to explode. Damage taken to his forcefield also charges his static blast, an ability that causes him to explode. And since it is an ability, it also causes him to explode. In addition to the explosion.
That part of the Ork's combat formula is a result of the way I'd specced my Nailbrain. Each hero of each race has three stats: health, damage and energy. Those can be upgraded from zero to five, and almost every upgrade comes with some ability or perk that changes the way the hero works. The static explosion is a perk for upgrading Nailbrain's damage to level 3.
I was rude about Guardsmen earlier, and I will be rude about the rest of the Imperial Guard later, but for what it's worth they do have a formula of their own. The Lord General is a terribly British chap who can call in free reinforcements for squads who've lost men. The Commissar is a more sinister officer who can spur a squad to fight harder by shooting one of them – not that the Imperial Guard need any help getting themselves killed.
I like to have my Commissar use Execute on a Stormtrooper to kickstart that squad's damage output, then cast Draw Their Fire on my General, forcing enemies to attack him instead. The behatted Inquisitor can then cast a protective shield on the General so he survives the onslaught. And after the fight, he can have a new stormtrooper dropped off to make up their numbers so we can do it all again. They're not going to make the Fortune 100 for best places to work, but it's satisfyingly effective.
In fact, a sadistic number of the Commissar's upgrades revolve around his Execute ability, including a perk which lets you use it on enemy squads to demoralise them. Nice, but at that point aren't you just shooting the enemy? Is that really something that needs to be unlocked?
Heroes of chaos
The units, heroes and abilities of the Chaos faction are split between three of their four gods. The god of violence is represented by a heavy weapons marine, the god of magic and change has a chaos sorcerer on the team, and the god of decay gets a brilliant muckspreading Plague Marine as his representative.
Kinky porno-god Slaanesh doesn't get a hero – he's always been the black sheep even in a family of pitchblack bloodgargling daemon deathsheep who burn in perpetual agony with the searing fires of the warp. Instead, your commander is a Chaos Champion who can choose his allegiance: each branch of his level-up tree serves a different Chaos God. I levelled up his health, enabling him to channel disease-god Nurgle in what is presumably Relic's idea of irony.
As well as the usual tanking abilities, this changes the way your Chaos Cultists minions work. With Nurgle, they can worship on the battlefield to heal nearby Chaos units, and even build shrines that can then summon reinforcements from the warp. If I'd leant towards Khorne, shrines would periodically spew out daemons, while Tzeentch shrines cloak your units and fire doombolts at enemies.
But the highlight of the Chaos roster is the Plague Marine. He can spread a disease that heals Chaos units and rots enemies, and even 'detonate' the infection to wipe out a whole squad in an instant – or bring a pestilent friend back from the brink of death. A whole set of late-tier abilities cause the enemies he kills to come back as Nurgly diseasezombies. One of the most beautiful sights in the game is this guy squirting his horrible plague spreader into a fortified bunker, corpses falling out of the windows, then getting back up again and joining in the siege as zombies.
There are so many wonky and exotic options in the new races that it's hard to imagine someone picking the Space Marines. But that campaign is kept relatively fresh in a clever way. Rather than bringing back the increasingly corrupt band of increasingly crazy brothers we've been playing in the last two games, we get a new team with only one familiar face. Their commander is similar and their scout is the same, but they now have a Tech Marine hero who's all about deployables. And their fourth member, called simply The Ancient, can be specced to play any of three heroes' roles you fancy: heavy weapons if you level up his damage, jumpjet assault if you level up his energy, or tactical tank if you level up his health. It's a smart way of saying “Who did you like in the last game?”
Surprisingly, the weakest campaign is for the most potentially interesting race: the Tyranids. They only get one hero, who can summon a few free units on the field without the need of a base. But the limiting factor on your army is almost never the expense, it's your population capacity. Summoned units consume that just as much as the ones you requisition at a beacon, so that whole set of abilities is effectively moot.
Without three other heroes to level up, there are few interesting interactions between Tyranid units. You don't have the dopamine drip of constantly unlocking exciting upgrades, and there are no tough decisions to make between missions. Loot is rare and poorly judged – almost everything I found required a minimum level I wouldn't reach until four or five missions later. Even the units seem poorly judged: I never found any combination as effective as massing the low-level Tyranid Warriors – tough, fast, cheap, and good against everything. They render the whole campaign easy, even on Hard.
The other bum note is the Imperial Guard campaign. They have some fun abilities, as mentioned, and it's still worth playing if you're after a challenge. But it's a challenge not because the missions are harder, but because the race is a walking catalogue of inadequacies. The tactics that work – such as using your fragile melee units to bait enemies into large groups of heavy weapon emplacements – are the tactics that work for every race. The Imperial Guard's twist is that they don't have anything else.
Still, four great campaigns is impressive – it's three better than Chaos Rising managed. And as usual, they can all be played with two players. That's the other time requisitioning extra units in the field feels useful: controlling only two heroes each, you have the control bandwidth to take on a few more squads and use them well.
When Dan Stapleton and I played the Chaos campaign together, I tried benching my Sorcerer and taking the Dreadnought instead. It was fun to be able to requisition some cultists to follow it around and repair it, and easy to manage. Resources are shared, so generally you'll check with each other before buying anything. It makes the individual missions more fun, particularly on harder difficulties. The only drawback is that however many units you build in the field, each of you only has two heroes to level up, so there are fewer interesting long-term decisions to make about kit and abilities.
Parlour games
The adversarial multiplayer is mostly unchanged, except for the addition of the Imperial Guard to the playable race roster. They're a fine faction for it, since their vehicles are easier to come by than in singleplayer, but the design of the mode itself is still completely unsatisfying.
It has almost nothing to do with actually killing your enemy's forces – any squad in jeopardy can flee at ridiculous speed to their headquarters to heal. In Victory Point mode, it's just a game of weaponised musical chairs over three control points, and an early lead almost always means victory. Once you're ahead, it's too easy to hold enough of the map to win - even if your opponent manages his units and resources better.
Annihilation mode is better – you have to destroy each other's bases – but it just takes hours to get the huge economic and military advantage you need to overcome the powerful home advantage a player has at his base. Most games drag out in an interminable stalemate.
Last Stand was always more successful: three of you control one hero each and slay waves of incoming enemies until you die – and level up. The new hero, the Imperial Guard's Lord General, starts weak but suddenly becomes fun once he unlocks the ability to deploy turrets – the best of which is vast and absurd. The new map, bringing the total to two, is absurd in the other direction: frantic, desperate and brutal from the very first wave. Both additions work primarily because the mode itself is so smartly designed and endlessly replayable.
Dawn of War 2: Retribution is such a beast of an expansion that there's room for some of its elements to fail without adversely affecting the ones that work – those being the four great campaigns, whether you play them alone or with a friend. For those alone, this is an essential purchase for anyone who enjoyed Dawn of War 2's tightly focused tactical scraps – even if they were sick of them by the end. It's a complete revitalisation of that format, and more fun than Dawn of War 2 ever was. Just don't go in expecting a game that's slickly designed for large scale conflicts, because that's not where Retribution shines.
The Verdict
Warhammer 40000: Dawn of War II - Retribution
Exactly what Dawn of War 2 needed: a generous dose of variety, options, and vicious silliness. Play through it at least twice.
We recommend By Zergnet
In episode three of our Dwarf Fortress Let's Play, Wes learns all about building and using workshops, assigning stockpiles, and giving dwarves their own bedrooms. Even dwarves need their privacy!
In early July 2014, Dwarf Fortress received its first major update in two years.We wrote about why now is the time to get into the game with our guide Into the deep. Now we're learning how to play.
Check back every Tuesday and Thursday for new episodes of A Newbie plays Dwarf Fortress.
Comments
Our Verdict
Exactly what Dawn of War 2 needed: a generous dose of variety, options, and vicious silliness.
Exactly what Dawn of War 2 needed: a generous dose of variety, options, and vicious silliness. Play through it at least twice.
It must be hard to be a Guardsman. You're standing around staring at an uncaptured control point and a box full of something called Requisition, and suddenly an Ork appears three inches from your face. His name is Spookums, he is wearing a pirate hat, and now he has exploded. You're killed instantly – that's one of the worst parts of the job – but Spookums is merely flung by his own explosion into a bush.
Luckily, Dawn of War 2: Retribution lets you be the Ork.
If you'd asked me before I played it, I would have told you Retribution was all about making Dawn of War 2 closer to a proper strategy game. It's standalone, and where Dawn of War 2 was all about micromanaging just a handful of units, Retribution allows you to build up your force from the headquarters you capture midbattle. In theory, the big change is that you're now commanding an army instead of leading a squad.
As it turns out, that's not at all what Retribution is about. And thank God. You can build up an army, certainly, but almost every unit in it would have several manually activated abilities to deal with. Quickly and accurately ordering that number of units to use cover and activate their abilities is the kind of manual and mental torture test you could use to find out if you have a heart condition. Dawn of War's interface, zoom level and controls just weren't built for battles of that scale.
Yet Retribution is startlingly good – it's the best Warhammer 40K game I've ever played. Because it's not really about numbers, it's about diversity. If you played Dawn of War 2 and its first expansion Chaos Rising, you've spent upwards of 30 hours controlling some combination of the same seven units. Retribution lets you choose between six different factions, with a total of around 70 squads, vehicles and heroes to play with. It's a massive breath of fresh air.
Joy of six
There are six campaigns of around eight hours each, all playable in singleplayer or co-op. One of the six races is largely new to the game, the Imperial Guard, and they're also playable in competitive multiplayer. Then there's a new map and a new hero for Last Stand, the superb three-player cooperative survival mode Relic added to Dawn of War 2 in a free update. And if you're interested in any of these ways to play it online, there's the enormously welcome news that it now uses Steam for matchmaking and friends lists, instead of the horrific Games for Windows Live.
Frankly, the last time anyone went this nuts with an expansion was, well, Relic – with Dawn of War: Dark Crusade.
These aren't six completely unique campaigns, admittedly. Play two and you'll find they have about ten of their twelve missions in common, just slightly repurposed to fit a different plot. That only really hurts the early missions: the first three are overly long and overly scripted tutorials, and replaying them as each new race gets painful.
But once you do fight through them, you have enough experience points to start customising your heroes, and that's where Retribution suddenly turns around.
Dawn of War 2 was one great fight, repeated. You set up your heavy weapons in cover, snuck your scout in to snipe a prime target, tanked them with your commander, and jumpjetted your assault guys onto the enemy's strongest shooters. It was satisfying, but by and large it was the same every time. It was often the same map every time.
Retribution comes up with five new formulae, composed of the same basic elements of stealth, suppression, jumps, melee and damage types. Formulae that evolve as you decide how to upgrade each hero, what you equip them with, and how you want to use them.
It's still tactical and manually intensive – you need to move each hero individually and activate the right abilities just when you need them, preferably with hotkeys. You can bench heroes in return for a free squad or vehicle and an increased army size limit in the field. But for most races, each hero plays such an important role that it's hard to see why anyone would.
So for the most part, you slip into playing Retribution much as you did Dawn of War 2: four heroes, each with special abilities that mix with each other in excitingly brutal ways. I added a few heavy weapons squads to support my biggest gunner, and the occasional vehicle when I could afford it, then spent the rest of my money on upgrading and reviving my heroes.
I mentioned the Orks earlier: as well as the commando/commander switcheroo (where Spookums can swap positions with Bludflagg), their ranged specialist Nailbrain is ridiculous. He can teleport into battle, and one of his perks causes him to explode every time he does anything. So when he teleports, he also explodes, flooring everyone. He can then turn on his force field so that incoming damage will drain energy rather than health when everyone gets back up. This causes him to explode. Damage taken to his forcefield also charges his static blast, an ability that causes him to explode. And since it is an ability, it also causes him to explode. In addition to the explosion.
That part of the Ork's combat formula is a result of the way I'd specced my Nailbrain. Each hero of each race has three stats: health, damage and energy. Those can be upgraded from zero to five, and almost every upgrade comes with some ability or perk that changes the way the hero works. The static explosion is a perk for upgrading Nailbrain's damage to level 3.
I was rude about Guardsmen earlier, and I will be rude about the rest of the Imperial Guard later, but for what it's worth they do have a formula of their own. The Lord General is a terribly British chap who can call in free reinforcements for squads who've lost men. The Commissar is a more sinister officer who can spur a squad to fight harder by shooting one of them – not that the Imperial Guard need any help getting themselves killed.
I like to have my Commissar use Execute on a Stormtrooper to kickstart that squad's damage output, then cast Draw Their Fire on my General, forcing enemies to attack him instead. The behatted Inquisitor can then cast a protective shield on the General so he survives the onslaught. And after the fight, he can have a new stormtrooper dropped off to make up their numbers so we can do it all again. They're not going to make the Fortune 100 for best places to work, but it's satisfyingly effective.
In fact, a sadistic number of the Commissar's upgrades revolve around his Execute ability, including a perk which lets you use it on enemy squads to demoralise them. Nice, but at that point aren't you just shooting the enemy? Is that really something that needs to be unlocked?
Heroes of chaos
The units, heroes and abilities of the Chaos faction are split between three of their four gods. The god of violence is represented by a heavy weapons marine, the god of magic and change has a chaos sorcerer on the team, and the god of decay gets a brilliant muckspreading Plague Marine as his representative.
Kinky porno-god Slaanesh doesn't get a hero – he's always been the black sheep even in a family of pitchblack bloodgargling daemon deathsheep who burn in perpetual agony with the searing fires of the warp. Instead, your commander is a Chaos Champion who can choose his allegiance: each branch of his level-up tree serves a different Chaos God. I levelled up his health, enabling him to channel disease-god Nurgle in what is presumably Relic's idea of irony.
As well as the usual tanking abilities, this changes the way your Chaos Cultists minions work. With Nurgle, they can worship on the battlefield to heal nearby Chaos units, and even build shrines that can then summon reinforcements from the warp. If I'd leant towards Khorne, shrines would periodically spew out daemons, while Tzeentch shrines cloak your units and fire doombolts at enemies.
But the highlight of the Chaos roster is the Plague Marine. He can spread a disease that heals Chaos units and rots enemies, and even 'detonate' the infection to wipe out a whole squad in an instant – or bring a pestilent friend back from the brink of death. A whole set of late-tier abilities cause the enemies he kills to come back as Nurgly diseasezombies. One of the most beautiful sights in the game is this guy squirting his horrible plague spreader into a fortified bunker, corpses falling out of the windows, then getting back up again and joining in the siege as zombies.
There are so many wonky and exotic options in the new races that it's hard to imagine someone picking the Space Marines. But that campaign is kept relatively fresh in a clever way. Rather than bringing back the increasingly corrupt band of increasingly crazy brothers we've been playing in the last two games, we get a new team with only one familiar face. Their commander is similar and their scout is the same, but they now have a Tech Marine hero who's all about deployables. And their fourth member, called simply The Ancient, can be specced to play any of three heroes' roles you fancy: heavy weapons if you level up his damage, jumpjet assault if you level up his energy, or tactical tank if you level up his health. It's a smart way of saying “Who did you like in the last game?”
Surprisingly, the weakest campaign is for the most potentially interesting race: the Tyranids. They only get one hero, who can summon a few free units on the field without the need of a base. But the limiting factor on your army is almost never the expense, it's your population capacity. Summoned units consume that just as much as the ones you requisition at a beacon, so that whole set of abilities is effectively moot.
Without three other heroes to level up, there are few interesting interactions between Tyranid units. You don't have the dopamine drip of constantly unlocking exciting upgrades, and there are no tough decisions to make between missions. Loot is rare and poorly judged – almost everything I found required a minimum level I wouldn't reach until four or five missions later. Even the units seem poorly judged: I never found any combination as effective as massing the low-level Tyranid Warriors – tough, fast, cheap, and good against everything. They render the whole campaign easy, even on Hard.
The other bum note is the Imperial Guard campaign. They have some fun abilities, as mentioned, and it's still worth playing if you're after a challenge. But it's a challenge not because the missions are harder, but because the race is a walking catalogue of inadequacies. The tactics that work – such as using your fragile melee units to bait enemies into large groups of heavy weapon emplacements – are the tactics that work for every race. The Imperial Guard's twist is that they don't have anything else.
Still, four great campaigns is impressive – it's three better than Chaos Rising managed. And as usual, they can all be played with two players. That's the other time requisitioning extra units in the field feels useful: controlling only two heroes each, you have the control bandwidth to take on a few more squads and use them well.
When Dan Stapleton and I played the Chaos campaign together, I tried benching my Sorcerer and taking the Dreadnought instead. It was fun to be able to requisition some cultists to follow it around and repair it, and easy to manage. Resources are shared, so generally you'll check with each other before buying anything. It makes the individual missions more fun, particularly on harder difficulties. The only drawback is that however many units you build in the field, each of you only has two heroes to level up, so there are fewer interesting long-term decisions to make about kit and abilities.
Parlour games
The adversarial multiplayer is mostly unchanged, except for the addition of the Imperial Guard to the playable race roster. They're a fine faction for it, since their vehicles are easier to come by than in singleplayer, but the design of the mode itself is still completely unsatisfying.
It has almost nothing to do with actually killing your enemy's forces – any squad in jeopardy can flee at ridiculous speed to their headquarters to heal. In Victory Point mode, it's just a game of weaponised musical chairs over three control points, and an early lead almost always means victory. Once you're ahead, it's too easy to hold enough of the map to win - even if your opponent manages his units and resources better.
Annihilation mode is better – you have to destroy each other's bases – but it just takes hours to get the huge economic and military advantage you need to overcome the powerful home advantage a player has at his base. Most games drag out in an interminable stalemate.
Last Stand was always more successful: three of you control one hero each and slay waves of incoming enemies until you die – and level up. The new hero, the Imperial Guard's Lord General, starts weak but suddenly becomes fun once he unlocks the ability to deploy turrets – the best of which is vast and absurd. The new map, bringing the total to two, is absurd in the other direction: frantic, desperate and brutal from the very first wave. Both additions work primarily because the mode itself is so smartly designed and endlessly replayable.
Dawn of War 2: Retribution is such a beast of an expansion that there's room for some of its elements to fail without adversely affecting the ones that work – those being the four great campaigns, whether you play them alone or with a friend. For those alone, this is an essential purchase for anyone who enjoyed Dawn of War 2's tightly focused tactical scraps – even if they were sick of them by the end. It's a complete revitalisation of that format, and more fun than Dawn of War 2 ever was. Just don't go in expecting a game that's slickly designed for large scale conflicts, because that's not where Retribution shines.
The Verdict
Warhammer 40000: Dawn of War II - Retribution
Exactly what Dawn of War 2 needed: a generous dose of variety, options, and vicious silliness. Play through it at least twice.
We recommend By Zergnet
Eurocom, the 007 Legends developer which laid off 75 percent of its workforce in November, has eliminated its remaining positions. The last employees were terminated after the company entered administration. "As a result, the remaining 42 employees have been made redundant today and the business has ceased to trade after some 25 years, having grown organically to become one of the largest and most
In episode 4 of PC Gamer's Dwarf Fortress Let's Play, Wes builds a kitchen, expands his underground fortress, and starts a farm!
In early July 2014, Dwarf Fortress received its first major update in two years.We wrote about why now is the time to get into the game with our guide Into the deep. Now we're learning how to play.
Check back every Tuesday and Thursday for new episodes of A Newbie plays Dwarf Fortress.
The second Early Access content update to Mordheim: City of the Damned hit Steam today, making a number of changes to the game and, more significantly, adding several new features as well.
hit Steam today, making a number of changes to the game and, more significantly, adding several new features as well. The Cult of the Possessed, a group of "degenerates and mutants" who seek the favor of the Shadow Lord, is now available as a playable Warband, and Warbands now have "reserves" that players can choose from before going into combat.
The trailer above covers the big changes in the update, but the narrator speaks pretty quickly and there's obviously an assumption that you already know what he's talking about, so you might want to nip over to the Steam pageand take it in at more of a leisurely pace. The update also enables all actions that are described in the tutorial ("Search and pray are now possible during Missions," which presumably they weren't previously), there are new extra objectives, and time limits can now be set on unit turns.
Mordheim: City of the Damned is based on the Games Workshop tabletop game Mordheim, in which players lead small groups of fantasy archetypes into turn-based, tactical-level battles. It is perhaps not the best-known of Games Workshop's properties, certainly not up there with Warhammer 40K or Warhammer Fantasy, but as Tom Senior noted in its announcement last year, it's got bipedal rats packing dual flintlock pistols, and that alone makes it worth a second look.
As mentioned, Mordheim is out now on Steam Early Access. A full release date, at least as far as I can tell, has not been announced.
PlayStation Access are great. They're smart and funny and do cool things involving games. That's why they're our friends. So please accept out recommendation to read their spiel about their new James Bond special, and then watch the hell out of it. James Bond is back with a bang, with 007 Legends out today and blockbuster Skyfall in cinemas next week. So of course what we did on PlayStation Access
In episode two of our Dwarf Fortress Let's Play , Wes and Will talk through the early steps of building a fortress: setting animals out for grazing, chopping down trees, and digging underground.
, Wes and Will talk through the early steps of building a fortress: setting animals out for grazing, chopping down trees, and digging underground. A fortress is born!
In early July 2014, Dwarf Fortress received its first major update in two years.We wrote about why now is the time to get into the game with our guide Into the deep. Now we're learning how to play.
Check back every Tuesday and Thursday for new episodes of A Newbie plays Dwarf Fortress.
PlayStation Access are great. They're smart and funny and do cool things involving games. That's why they're our friends. So please accept out recommendation to read their spiel about their new James Bond special, and then watch the hell out of it. James Bond is back with a bang, with 007 Legends out today and blockbuster Skyfall in cinemas next week. So of course what we did on PlayStation Access
In early July 2014, Dwarf Fortress received its first major update in two years.
We wrote about why now is the time to get into the game with our guide Into the deep. Reading about the new features in Dwarf Fortress 2014 ended up giving me the bug: I'm determined to learn how to run a fortress and how to navigate Dwarf Fortress' labyrinthine menus. But I'm not embarking alone. I pulled in PC Gamer video producer (and DF veteran) Will Chesney to teach me the ways of Dwarf Fortress' bloody world.
This is episode one of our Dwarf Fortress Let's Play. It's aimed at newcomers like me who want to learn the game. As we play, we'll talk through the complex process of beginning a fortress, controlling our dwarves, and learning new mechanics. It may all end in blood and tragedy, but at least we'll learn something along the way. Look for new episodes of our series every Tuesday and Thursday. Now: let's strike the Earth!
second. Though she's been on the scene since Sissyfight , recently she's been speaking about -- and designing -- more works that explore sexuality and queerness. Her obscure, devilish Sex Mix ruleset challenges you to set your intimate time with a partner or partners to alienating music .
Consensual tentacles: Naomi Clark's provocative card game
. More recently, she's decided to develop a card game based around tentacle sex -- more importantly than that, it's about consent.
Despite being frighteningly intelligent, Clark is approachable, conversational about every topic, no matter how arcane. The concept for Consentacle seems similarly familiar, until you unpack it just a little bit.
"Enjoy a mutually-fulfilling romantic encounter with a sentient member of an unfamiliar species," the rules say. It's a game for consenting partners, where one plays the curious human, and the other plays a willing alien. The analog card game design offers players the opportunity to build and Share trust with these tentacled foreigners, and trust can be traded toward the quality of Satisfaction .
The game is cooperative -- the goal is not to beat the other player, but to create satisfaction mutually.
For the imagery on the cards, which depicts interactions between humans and tentacles, Clark drew on the troubled history of the "tentacle porn" genre, as found in anime. "I encountered tentacle-rape porn for the first time in the 90s, when my sister and I accidentally checked some out from the video rental place where she worked during high school," Clark explains in her design notes.
"We subsequently tried to wash our eyes and brains, to no avail," Clark adds. As a Japanese-American, she grew increasingly uncomfortable as she approached college age and encountered 'jokes' from classmates about her family's relationship to tentacle porn.
"The topic became part and parcel of a depiction of Japanese culture that I grew far too familiar with, even though it bore little resemblance to my own experiences living in Japan as a kid and visiting friends and family there: Japanese culture as super-weird, disgusting, sexually obsessed, sexist, and characterized by anime, video games, manga, porn, sadistic game shows, cute schoolgirls eating cute snacks, and so forth," she says.
Adds Clark: "Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy many items among the aforementioned categories, but that doesn’t mean I enjoy the 'Japan is Weird' trope as it’s emerged in the West."
So why draw on the "tentacle alien" as a relationship for a card game about mutuality, trust, satisfaction and consent? For clark, the "Tentacle Bento" Kickstarter scandal catalyzed some thinking -- the crowdfunded card game was booted from Kickstarter after it became clear its themes were subtle allusion to the rape of schoolgirls.
"I was one of many people who spoke out against that game, but I also ended up mentioning an idea to Anna Anthropy -- couldn’t you make a game about having consensual sex with tentacled monsters?!" Clark suggests.
"Besides the crucial point of not making players act out rape, it seemed to me like potentially productive (and squirmy) terrain to explore. Different partners negotiating differently non-normative bodies: it spoke to me as a queer creator. After all, creatures with tentacles need love too."
This year's No Quarter exhibition at New York University proved the perfect catalyst for Clark to finally bring her idea to life. It gelled well with her curiosity about sex and relationship games that amounted to mutual negotiations -- more than just the "raising points" archetype commonly encountered in romantic sims.
"As a designer, I’ve always been interested in playing around with systems and rules and seeing what we can do with them expressively — especially in a space of play that involves multiple players encountering each other — so hopefully Consentacle explores some of that and will add to the fruitful intersection of sex and games," she writes.
Clark says Consentacle 's mechanics are directly influenced by games of limited communication, like Hanabi or Onirim, as well as by classic puzzles like Tower of Hanoi. "I thought a lot about Android: Netrunner during the creation of this game, because of how that game’s system and interplay feels so expressive of intimacy, vulnerability and relationships between players–albeit one fraught with secrecy, betrayal, and competition," Clark adds.
The game saw a limited but intriguing engagement at No Quarter, although its complete manualis available on her site
, and she's interested in hearing feedback from potential playtesters who might respond to her ideas, or who may want to print kits and experiment.
So far, Clark tells me people have been curious about the visual style and the game mechanics, but less interested at the idea of negotiating consent through a game. Fans of tentacles tend to expect less sexy, more "pervy," she suggests.
She's also been surprised at the backlash from people unable to tell the difference between the play environment of mutual negotiations with aliens as presented by Consentacle , and the non-consensual overtones of the widely-panned Tentacle Bento concept.
The confusion may suggest that card games -- which tend to require close social relationships, discussions about rules, and the comfort of all players -- might be an ideal way to demonstrate the differences between consensual sexuality and the destructive power dynamics often presented in media.
There's no escaping Death's clammy hand in the Sims 3 , not even in these new screenshots of forthcoming expansion Island Paradise.
, not even in these new screenshots of forthcoming expansion Island Paradise. Hopefully you'll get a few by-the-pool margaritas in before your untimely demise.
The poor lady above seems to have confused "island paradise" with "gangster's paradise," but no matter. In this latest batch of screenshots from EA's people simulator, things appear to be going just swimmingly—that is, until death makes a bizarre, underwater appearance, probably following a fatal kraken attack. Personally, I'm looking forward to luring unsuspecting Sims into my houseboat-cum-modern-art-museum before dumping them in shark-infested waters.
The Sims 3: Island Paradise is out June 25. It's pre-orderable on Origin, where you'll also find other Sims 3 expansions discounted in the lead-up to holiday funtimes.
Jump to Section: Best Price Comments Pros Fan service and homages Interesting stealth and melee Plenty of level variety Cons The fact that theres no ending Bland shooting and uninspired level design Seriously the game shipped without an ending In the late ‘90s, James Bond’s name was as synonymous with first-person shooters as Mario’s was with platforming. But things have changed since 007 was perched
How do you beat a game about life, romance and ambition in three-and-a-half minutes?
How do you beat a game about life, romance and ambition in three-and-a-half minutes? If you're thinking "well just create a charming character, pick the gold digger lifetime wish, marry a rich sim, then lock her in a tiny box and burn it down to secure her inheritance" then firstly, what is wrong with you , and secondly, yes, absolutely that.
Kotakuspotted NeverNotKicking's video of his successful run. The hardest part, he says in the YouTube description, was "ENGAGING THE WOMAN IN A CONVENIENT LOCATION", which isn't disturbing at all.
The game doesn't end there, of course, but with his lifetime wish achieved, what more can this bespectacled psychopath really hope to achieve with his life? Watch him tearfully reach his his goal in the video below.
The Sims 4 is all about feelings , as you may have heard, and people who own The Sims 3 will enjoy—or perhaps suffer—even more of them than everyone else.
, as you may have heard, and people who own The Sims 3 will enjoy—or perhaps suffer—even more of them than everyone else. Electronic Arts is offering a Sims 4 Rewards program that will unlock emotionally influential bonus content for owners of the previous Sims game.
A total of 13 Sims 4 Rewardsare up for grabs, based on how much Sims 3 content you own. The base game nets you the "Let There Be Plumbobs" award, "Plumbobs" being those green diamonds used to identify selected characters; each owned piece of DLC brings with it another reward, like "Whatever the Weather" for The Sims 3: Seasons, or "Enchanted Aurora" for The Sims 3: Supernatural. And if you own all of it, you'll also be granted the bizarre-looking "Ultimate Freezer Bunny Award."
What specifically these rewards do isn't known just yet, but EA says each of them "will affect your Sims' emotions and personalities in a unique way." The bonuses will unlock automatically the first time The Sims 4 is launched, as long as the required Sims 3 content is attached to your Originaccount. If you're not sure how to go about making that happen, detailed instructions are up on EA's help site. The Sims 4 Reward giveaway is valid until December 31, 2014.
007 is taking a trip down memory lane with the release of 007 Legends, Activision's next James Bond title featuring missions inspired from the uber-spy's films. Developed as an homage to Bond's 50-year history, 007 Legends will cast players as the iconic superagent in an original story that will include locations and scenes culled from six James Bond movies, including the franchise's upcoming flick
Since the day the first Sims game was launched, virtual architects have been using its built-in construction tools to create exotic and bizarre monuments ranging from heart-shaped islands to a mansion made entirely out of stacked trailer homes .
. With the same tenacious ambition but with a stated purpose to do "terrible things," Reddit user BourgeoisBanana presented a project earlier this week of a more sensitive nature: the Gaudet Plantation, a lush colonial farmstead complete with slave workers and affluent white owners. But is it actually a terrible thing to explore the darker periods of history?
On a whim, BourgeoisBanana set out to see how closely he could recreate the living conditions of both slave and owner on a plantation. "I'm a large history and architecture buff, and The Sims is a great outlet for both of those, despite getting a lot of flak for being a 'casual' game," he told PC Gamer. "Being British, the colonial era is of particular interest of mine, and after seeing Django Unchained, the idea sort of came to me. I had the day off, so I thought, 'Why not?'"
A small pile of modswere used to design and model both the slave quarters and mansion. The mods set parameters for reflecting the quality of life (or lack thereof) for the slaves, locking them out from the main building and tweaking the AI to stuff in more Sims per house.
"The general layout of the plantation was of my own design, and several people pointed out that it wasn't entirely historically accurate, but given the tools I think I did the best I could," BourgeoisBanana explained. "The house was more or less of my own design too, loosely based off several colonial plantation houses of the era. My main inspiration for the exterior was the plantation house from a level in Hitman: Blood Money. Django Unchained certainly was a great reference too."
BourgeoisBanana recognizes how his creation's stark depiction of racism doesn't exactly mesh with the game's cheerful suburban innocence. He hopes for a future where more games and gamers explore all facets of history, even where doing so may make us uncomfortable. "I believe that to deny our history is to make it repeatable, and discouraging projects such as this one won't prevent racism in the least," he said. "Not only gamers, but all forms of media should definitely get over this politically correct phase we seem to be going through so we can expose the brutality of our past, rather than covering it up and pretending it never happened."
So, is it really a terrible thing? As the plantation's creator touched upon, ignoring our past mistakes with civil rights won't make them simply disappear. Thus, why shouldn't we reconstruct terrible events from history? If not for the goal of sending a message, then just as a way to satisfy curiosity? How would an in-game replication of a slave ship, for example, look like using Minecraft blocks? Let's hear your thoughts in the comments.
expansion on Cavanagh's original Pirate Kart entry Hexagon , sold more than 10,000 copies in its first three days on sale in the App Store -- a total that the dev never dreamed was possible for a seemingly niche experience. Not that it surprised the rest of us.
There's something primal about Super Hexagon
Not that it surprised the rest of us. With such iconic titles as VVVVVV, At a Distance, Don't Look Back and Pathways already under his belt, it seems like Cavanagh can do no wrong.
Cavanagh's first foray into the world of iOS development went off without a hitch, thanks to his smooth gelling with the Adobe AIR environment, and a concept that struck a chord with the iOS audience. Players rotate an arrow around a hexagon-shaped playing field, dodging through gaps and second-guessing morphing shapes to survive for as long as possible before hitting a wall.
"Making Hexagon for the Pirate Kartdidn't get the game out of my system," Cavanagh tells Gamasutra. "It's something I kept thinking about for months after I'd released it. I felt like I'd stumbled onto something really primal, and I wanted to spent some time exploring it properly."
He adds, "I didn't expect it would turn into quite as big a project as it did, though." The original was released just over six months ago, and can still be played on Cavanagh's website.
Most notable about Super Hexagon is its similarities to Cavanagh's other most popular title VVVVVV . Both games feature rather masochist gameplay, killing players over and over again at high speed, but allowing quick restarts to ease the potential frustration.
While you might assume that Cavanagh purposely makes his games hair-pullingly difficult, he says this honestly isn't really the case -- rather, he just tries to balance the difficulty to levels that he believes to be the most enjoyable.
"I guess it just sort of happens naturally," he notes. "Most of the time I spent working on Super Hexagon , I spent tweaking things, playing it again, gradually improving it little by little with each iteration. It feels the way it does because that's what feels good to me."
Cavanagh's next port of call is to provide PC and Android builds of Super Hexagon before diving back into work on his Nexus City RPG with fellow indie dev Jonas Kyratzes. Nexus City definitely has one of Cavanagh's longer cycles for a game, having been in development since the start of 2010.
Whatever the plan, it will no doubt receive as much attention as his prior works when it's eventually ready.
six years at Ubisoft creating games for other people, he's now ready to get back to doing it for himself again. Gollop is the very definition of a video game industry veteran.
30 years of creating strategy games with X-COM 's Julian Gollop
Gollop is the very definition of a video game industry veteran. The British designer started out creating tabletop strategy games for Games Workshop, before moving on to strategy games on the ZX Spectrum, the Amiga, Amstrad, Commodore 64, and eventually the Windows PC.
His credentials include creating the X-COM series, while also founding Mythos Games and Codo Technologies. In 2006 he decided to join up with Ubisoft, and lead a team to create the under-appreciated Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Shadow Wars for the Nintendo 3DS.
But after work was completed on Assassin's Creed III: Liberation , Gollop decided he'd had enough. "I wanted to get back to making the games that I'm actually good at making and I am interested in making," he tells me. "I did manage to make a cool turn-based strategy while at Ubisoft, but it seemed that I would be unlikely to make such a game again if I remained there."
"I did learn a lot, working for a big publisher," he adds, "but it wasn't exactly my most creative period."
Chaos Reborn is set to be a turn-based strategy game with RPG elements, playing out in both single player and online multiplayer. Gollop is planning to take the in-development game to Kickstarter next month.
" Chaos had some unique qualities," he says of the original. "It was an effective multiplayer game, with up to eight players on one computer, and despite the fact that it was turn-based, it was still quick playing and fun. The randomness meant that every game was quite different and excitingly chaotic."
In the years that followed the 1985 release, Gollop received numerous requests from other developers to remake the game. He always consented, and as such there are over 30 completed Chaos remakes out there. Now the designer is ready to try his hand at his own remake.
"I did learn a lot, working for a big publisher, but it wasn't exactly my most creative period."
With this updated take on the concept, Gollop is aiming to both capture nostalgia in former Chaos fans, while also modernizing the idea for a fresh audience.
"The core mechanics of the wizard battles are almost identical to the original game, and there will be a 'classic Chaos mode' which closely matches the workings of the original game," he explains. "The presentation has been remarkably spruced up, but still keeping the mono-color themes of the creature."
New features including a massive single-player mode in which you explore the Realms of Chaos, and various online multiplayer modes including tournaments, rankings and co-op play.
Now into his 30th year creating strategy games, Gollop has seen the genre evolve rapidly. Of modern strategy games, he says that many fall down from the very beginning of development.
"I think the biggest problem is an inadequate preproduction phase where the core gameplay has not been proven with an effective prototype," he reasons. "The key for building a good prototype is to 'find the fun' quickly and test it regularly with people who haven't been exposed to it before."
Which modern strategy games does he enjoy, then? The latest XCOM team will be happy to hear that the man who started it all is quite the fan of the updated series.
"I think the latest XCOM stands out as a remarkable triumph for turn-based strategy games," he says. "Apart from this I can't think of any direct influence on my latest work. I have taken an interest in some of the rogue-like games, such as Hoplite and 868-HACK . I am also intrigued by Spelunky with its random levels and daily challenge. Chaos Reborn will use a lot of procedurally generated content, which is to some extent inspired by these games."
Looks like we'll be able to re-enact parts of Game of Thrones in The Sims 3 now, with the introduction of a new dragon-themed map—I wonder how to say "oh god help me it's eating my face " in Simlish?
Judging by the trailer, the new town's taking some inspiration from the much-loved book series and show, with long flowing gowns, steely-eyed good-looking guys, and some supernaturally inclined tattooed people making an appearance. And then, of course, there's the cute baby dragon, delightfully roasting some poor dude in a quiet countryside valley.
Dragon Valley, its elven residents, and an adorable red dragon become available on May 31 at the Sim store. It's $25 for the standard bundle, but an upgraded bundle for $35 will also net you a theme-appropriate "Celtic Lands" furniture and decoration set, as well as a slew of SimPoints to spend in the store. It seems like a steep price to pay, though, when you could just sell your slave army.
Warning: If you're currently near a wall, desk, table or any solid object, take care while reading this story.
Warning: If you're currently near a wall, desk, table or any solid object, take care while reading this story. You may be struck with an overwhelming urge to bash your head against it.
A Representative of Missouri, Republican Diane Franklin of Camdenton, is calling for a sales tax on violent video games following the tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut. "Violent," in this instance, really doesn't mean what you think it does. From the proposed bill: "the term 'violent video game' means a video or computer game that has received a rating from the Entertainment Software Rating Board of Teen, Mature, or Adult Only"
That means that , if successfully passed, Teen-rated games like The Sims 3, Starcraft 2, EVE Online and Tropico 4 would all be taxed in Missouri on account of how unrepentantly violent they are. Seriously, if my eyes rolled any harder it would cause permanent damage.
If passed, the bill would impose a 1% sales tax to violent games, to be used to finance mental health programs and law enforcement measures to prevent mass shootings. No other form of media is being targeted by the proposal.
KSDKreport similar legislative attempts in Oklahoma and New Mexico, both of which failed to pass.
Once again, I'll point to our researchon the connection between violent games and increased aggression, which provides ample examples of the faults that can be found in the methodology used to say the link is conclusive.
Thanks, Slashdot.
Harmonix recently stopped by the GamesRadar offices - not just for a demo, but for a full on dance crew battle. With the help of Official Xbox Magazine and @GAMER , we strutted our stuff the only way we know how: in front of a video game. Check our Dance Central 3 QuickPlay to get the scoop on the game's new modes, moves, and the most radical concept for a single-player campaign we've heard of yet. You too can Do the Hustle when Dance Central 3 is released for Xbox 360 on October 16th. Be sure to check back for our review of its groovy moves - just don't judge our dancing too harshly. Let us know in the comments below which crew you think won the dance-off, and whether or not we've been cursed with two left feet.
Over the years, The Sims games transformed from a meta-life experience into a stage for my inner Jigsaw to enact elaborate deathtraps.
Over the years, The Sims games transformed from a meta-life experience into a stage for my inner Jigsaw to enact elaborate deathtraps. All the classics made an appearance: disappearing bathroom toilet, disappearing pool ladder, and a slowly shrinking doorless room, all spiraling my Sims into a miserable pile of urine-soaked madness. And as an explanatory article in The Sims Official Magazinereveals, my torturous tendencies aren't alone.
Interviewed psychologists such as Dr. Jamie Madigan stated players instigating an age of woe upon their Sims "may not be as much of a subset as we might think." No, it isn't a mass lapse of sanity—it's simply human curiosity taking its natural course.
"People may simply be curious about what happens when they create these situations, and the results can even be seen as funny," Madigan said. “There are many different ways of playing the game, and these endless choices are what bring about enjoyment.”
Madigan also explained the inclination to fashion Sims approximating "slightly idealized versions of ourselves" that influence player behavior both in-game and in-life, saying, "People who used particularly tall avatars tended to be more assertive in negotiations both inside of a virtual world and in the real world immediately after turning off the game." Hey, it worked for Keanu Reeves.
The Sims' addictive qualities also came under the psychological lens, with Madigan explaining the pervasive enjoyment of goal-setting and achievements keeps us glued to watching little green bars go up and down. "I think that if you took away those rewards and progress meters, people would be much more likely to abandon the game," she said.
Read the rest of the psychology of The Simsfor more justification to inflict utter misery upon digital denizens.
Thanks, PCGamesN.
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Once upon a time, PC gamers weren't known for our affection for mainstream culture.
Once upon a time, PC gamers weren't known for our affection for mainstream culture. It's significant then that the Lead Producer Corey St John tells me the Sims Showtime was “totally inspired by performance reality shows” like X-Factor and Britain's Got Talent.
In Showtime, you take an aspiring acrobat, magician, singer or DJ from small-time busking for change to their first paid gig and onto performing massive concerts in arenas (or as near as the Sims 3's engine can produce to an arena.)
When these performing Sims take up their new career, they start out at a pretty lowly level – singers start as candygrams, complete with a bellhop outfit, whilst acrobats can start by juggling batons. Magicians, we presume begin by stealing a top hat and some rabbits.
As they level up their skills, they perform more reliably and get access to more difficult activities. Notably, compared to earlier Sims 3 careers, where your characters levelled up off-screen, these are very interactive and visual; you see the Magician putting the sword into the cabinet containing a volunteer Sim. Other sims can also take part, throwing cabbages or roses, heckling and praising.
To get the big gigs, your Sim has to somehow make contact with a venue owner and persuade them to let them have a try-out. Once this happens though, the game really ramps up. From here on in, players can start building their own custom stage sets, complete with themes, special effects, fireworks, light shows and so on.
The DJ career is notably different from the others. Aaron Conners, Lead Designer; “lots of DJs moonlight. We thought it would be really cool if you could be both a celebrity DJ and businessman or politician.” Hence DJs learn their trade by using a home DJ booth and training it as a skill, though like the other careers they can still perform at a huge venue eventually.
Possibly more important than the actual expansion is the way it expands The Sims 3 into social networking. Firstly, EA has introduced a new achievement system which provides the player with in-game rewards and badges. Then EA allows players to set their game up to tweet or put on Facebook these special moments. On top of that, there's also an in-game social network, complete with walls and partially integrated with EA's Origin download system, alongside a new system called SimPort. Sadly, automation is only restricted to achievements - we wish each Sim had its own wall so her or she could post banal updates about wetting themselves.
SimPort allows you to send your Sim off to another player's world. The way the team described it, initially it's intended to allow your Showtime Sims to go on tour in other towns. While out there, they may get rewards. Sadly, they can't die or get pregnant on tour (too realistic), instead suffering a “near-death” experience. Or a near-pregnancy experience, I guess.
Of course, there's all the usual stuff that expansions add as well; new outfits, new gadgets (including a pool table, jukebox, arcade machines and a mechanical bull), new venues, new lot types and a whole new town, Starlight Shores, that's a cross between Los Angeles and San Francisco, complete with Simlish Hollywood sign.
Showtime has the same hook as trashy war films or gung-ho sci-fi, with you as the hero, the focus of attention, with thousands screaming your name. It may seem more grounded in our everyday world than those, but it's a fantasy for many more people and equally unattainable.
Tuesday 26 September 2006 Power Stone Collection is gleaming like its titular gems as it's polished up for its 13 October release on PSP - and we've got some fresh screens for you to prove it. Among the first truly 3D beat-'em-ups, the original Power Stone games let you throw tables, chairs, signs and bombs at your opponent in small but brilliantly designed stages, all the while seeking the power of
The SuperMes is a Channel 4 reality TV show about virtual housemates.
The SuperMes is a Channel 4 reality TV show about virtual housemates. The series has been created using the Sims 3, with plotlines based on the unchoreographed actions of the house's four inhabitants. Gamasutramention that the first episode is online now, and you'll find it embedded above.
It's interesting to see a major broadcasting house using taking advantage of procedural storytelling. Anyone who loves the Sims games already knows how good they are at generating ridiculous tales, and the SuperMes feels like a professionally produced after-action report. Chief creative Paul Brennun describes it as "a true collaboration between humans and robots" over on Televisual, adding "this is one of the most exciting projects we have made yet and points to the future of interactive storytelling." What do you reckon?
EA have launched a Sims 3 demo that will theoretically run in your browser.
EA have launched a Sims 3 demo that will theoretically run in your browser. The demo was announced on the EA site, spotted over on Blue's News, and contains "elements from The Sims 3, The Sims 3 Late Night, The Sims 3 World Adventures."
EA's link doesn't seem to work, but we managed to launch the demo from the Gakai front page, the service providing the streaming tech behind the trial. The demo is time limited to 20 minutes. You'll be able to create a sim and lead them to their a gruesome death in an Egyptian pyramid, a haunted house and a vampire lair. Or you could keep them safe and watch them live long, happy fulfilled lives, but where's the fun in that?
Capcom's Power Stone series is heading for PSP this year with Power Stone Collection, a handheld version of the Dreamcast battlers that encouraged players to tear apart each of the game's levels in search of super-powered gems to pump up their fighter. Combining the levels, characters, features and action of both the original Power Stone and its sequel into one game, Power Stone Collection will also add four new characters and enable multiplayer ad hoc matches with just one copy of the game. There's been no official release date from Capcom but, with the game already looking bright and brash and ready to kick ass, we'd expect to see it pop on to PSP in the spring. We'll be back with any new info. Topics Fighting Power Stone Collection We recommend By Zergnet Load Comments
The Sims 3 is now on Steam , bringing interactive soap operas, dysfunctional families and suburban nudist colonies to your Steam account.
, bringing interactive soap operas, dysfunctional families and suburban nudist colonies to your Steam account. The game's many expansion packs are also on Valve's digital download service, including World Adventures, which lets you take your sims treasure hunting in exotic and often booby-trapped locations, and Late Night, which lets you take your sims out on the town. There's also a bundledeal offering the Sims 3 and all five expansions for half price. I'm off to build my sims a glorious mansion, and then delete all the doors and watch the carnage unfold.
Team Ninja's big return to fighting games continues to build to its fall release later this year. This newest trailer showcases a new stage with a battle between series stars Kasumi and Ayane. But at about the halfway point, things take an odd turn. Out of nowhere comes Virtua Fighter's lead martial artist, Akira Yuki. Though crossovers like this have popped up before, this is the first time DoA has
Statistics for new retails sales across 2010 have been released, and it's been a big year for SEGA with Football Manager 2011 and 2010 taking the titles of first and second best-selling PC games., respectively.
Statistics for new retails sales across 2010 have been released, and it's been a big year for SEGA with Football Manager 2011 and 2010 taking the titles of first and second best-selling PC games., respectively. Read on for the full top 10.
1 - Football Manager 2011 2 - Football Manager 2010 2 - The Sims 3 4 - World of WarCraft: Cataclysm 5 - StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty 6 - The Sims 3: Ambitions 7 - Battlefield: Bad Company 2 8 - Call of Duty: Black Ops 9 - The Sims 3: Design & High-Tech Stuff 10 - The Sims 3: World AdventuresThe chart, which only includes new retail purchases and not Steam sales, shows that the world continues to love The Sims and are still enthralled by Blizzard's games. PC gamers were also less enthusiastic about Call of Duty this year; Black Ops came in at number one for both the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 platforms, but failed to impact the Top 5 on PC.
[via MCV]
Ohaiyo gozimasu from Tokyo. We just returned from Team Ninja’s Unmask event in Shibuya, where the developer dropped a pile of new info on us. After showing off their upcoming Ninja Gaiden 3, the event seemed to be drawing to a close, but then Team Ninja said they had a new game to show, one that’s synonymous with the developer. After asking everyone to shut off their cameras, they played a pre-Alpha
If you fancy having your mind somewhat blown, try playing the Mass Effect 2 demo in your browser.
If you fancy having your mind somewhat blown, try playing the Mass Effect 2 demo in your browser. Unlike most graphically impressive browser games, this isn't a huge download running via a special plugin: all you need is Flash and Java, which you likely already do, and you'll be playing in a few seconds. The only catch is you need a good connection - about 10Mb/s - and the demo won't appear if you don't.
The service is called Gaikai, and it's live in 12 countries right now. The focus is on letting you into the game with no fuss or sign-up process, so it's perfect for demos. At the end of the Mass Effect 2 or Dead Space 2 demos available now, you get a link to buy the full game.
If the Mass Effect 2 demo link doesn't pop up when you visit the Gaikai site, try the Spore one- it has the same requirements but it'll tell you what's wrong if it doesn't work.
The service has actually been running in a low-profile way for a couple of months. There's a slight lag on interactions when playing on our office connection, but performance is generally very good. Since it's web based, it means you can now play these PC games on a Mac or Linux system. It's set to be demonstrated in full at the Games Developer Conference this week.
Unlike the similar game-streaming service, OnLive, Gaikai doesn't charge for its services and allows users to play in their browser right away. At the moment it only offers some choice selections from EA, but is hoping to move onto including a larger catalogue of blockbuster hits from them and other publishers.
Writing on his blogCEO David Perry explains that he hopes to eventually end up with servers in every major city in the world to stream data from, saying that "if [Gaikai's] engineers work really hard, they can maybe squeeze out another thousandth of a second from our compression but if we set up in a data center two states closer to your house, we dramatically improve the performance".
The creator of Earthworm Jim hopes to eventually expand the service to allow YouTube-style embedding of demos on websites, and the service will eventually work with Facebook. The aim is to have the embedded demos appear on Facebook, and at the end of reviews, so players can hop straight in and play.
Other demos currently available include Spore, The Sims 3and, after completing a short survey, Dead Space 2.
Let us know if they work on your connection and, if so, how the performance feels to you.
As a way of encouraging high school students to pursue a job in the video game industry, Valve launched an initiative called Pipeline over the weekend, with the aim to provide an insight into how best to start out.
The Pipeline program will follow a group of high school interns at Valve, who will attempt to encourage teenagers who are considering a career in video game development, through answering questions and providing a more direct way to engage with Valve as a company.
Valve admits that it "has been a very good place for very experienced videogame developers, and not so good at teaching people straight out of school."
Hence, Pipeline is meant as an experiment, "to see if we can take a group of high school students with minimal work experience and train them in the skills and methods necessary to be successful at a company like Valve."
More information will apparently be released within the next month or so. You can see all the currently available information on the official website.
If you fancy having your mind somewhat blown, try playing the Mass Effect 2 demo in your browser.
If you fancy having your mind somewhat blown, try playing the Mass Effect 2 demo in your browser. Unlike most graphically impressive browser games, this isn't a huge download running via a special plugin: all you need is Flash and Java, which you likely already do, and you'll be playing in a few seconds. The only catch is you need a good connection - about 10Mb/s - and the demo won't appear if you don't.
The service is called Gaikai, and it's live in 12 countries right now. The focus is on letting you into the game with no fuss or sign-up process, so it's perfect for demos. At the end of the Mass Effect 2 or Dead Space 2 demos available now, you get a link to buy the full game.
If the Mass Effect 2 demo link doesn't pop up when you visit the Gaikai site, try the Spore one- it has the same requirements but it'll tell you what's wrong if it doesn't work.
The service has actually been running in a low-profile way for a couple of months. There's a slight lag on interactions when playing on our office connection, but performance is generally very good. Since it's web based, it means you can now play these PC games on a Mac or Linux system. It's set to be demonstrated in full at the Games Developer Conference this week.
Unlike the similar game-streaming service, OnLive, Gaikai doesn't charge for its services and allows users to play in their browser right away. At the moment it only offers some choice selections from EA, but is hoping to move onto including a larger catalogue of blockbuster hits from them and other publishers.
Writing on his blogCEO David Perry explains that he hopes to eventually end up with servers in every major city in the world to stream data from, saying that "if [Gaikai's] engineers work really hard, they can maybe squeeze out another thousandth of a second from our compression but if we set up in a data center two states closer to your house, we dramatically improve the performance".
The creator of Earthworm Jim hopes to eventually expand the service to allow YouTube-style embedding of demos on websites, and the service will eventually work with Facebook. The aim is to have the embedded demos appear on Facebook, and at the end of reviews, so players can hop straight in and play.
Other demos currently available include Spore, The Sims 3and, after completing a short survey, Dead Space 2.
Let us know if they work on your connection and, if so, how the performance feels to you.
If you're not up on the latest of several No Man's Sky controversies ( a delay , death threats , a lawsuit , another potential lawsuit , another potential delay ), there's been yet another one: someone bought a leaked copy of the game , posted videos of it, and has been doling out information on Reddit.
And, according to this Redditor, posting in a 'Spoiler/Leaks Megathread' which I don't really want to read because I don't want everything spoiled, and don't want to link because I don't want anyone else to be spoiled:
"So, I've reached the center. For now, I'll just keep it a secret. I realize it is "the secret" of the game and I'm sure other people will spill the beans for clickbait sooner than later, so fear not fellow spoiler hounds - someone out there will feed your appetite I'm sure."
The center. Of what? He doesn't say, which is nice of him considering he's happy to blab about nearly everything else he's encountered. It could be the center of the galaxy he began playing in, and considering our own observable universe has something approaching one hundred billion galaxies, it might not be such a big deal to reach the center of a single galaxy in No Man's Sky.
The center of the universe, which contains all those galaxies (and doesn't actually have a center, though perhaps there is one in the game somehow) would certainly take much longer to reach than the center of a single galaxy. But then, who even knows? Much of the game, despite our recent attempts to nail things down, remains something of a mystery. Sean Murray originally said it could take up to 100 hours to reach whatever 'the center' is, but later said it would take far more, perhaps hundreds of hours, to reach the center.
So, what we do know is the guy who bought a leaked copy of No Man's Sky claims to have reached 'the center' after only a couple days of playing, but we're not sure what the center is or what it's the center of, only that it's the center of something but perhaps not the center of everything.
I've never cried at a video game before and I have a deep-set mistrust of anybody who claims they have, but I'll challenge anybody to play Shadow Of The Colossus and not walk away feeling both enriched and also bearing some form of emotional scarring. It pains me to know that Shadow Of The Colossus is one of the least-played games on this list. A rare example of a title that can boast finely-tuned
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Our Verdict
A mammoth update that caters for mid to high level players.
A mammoth update that caters for mid to high level players. Memorable new lands and quests make up for the lack of PvP.
Reviewing an MMO is like being asked to step outside and put a score on the moon. No matter how long you look, you'll never see all of it. What follows are impressions of Age of Conan's first expansion, gleaned from a sliver of its hundreds of hours of content.
With some help from Funcom I set up four alts: a level 20 and a level 40 character to attack the lower level area from both sides, and two maxed-out level 80 warriors to explore the high level zones. With the paint still drying on the new world I braved three dungeons, joined and quested for two factions and explored every corner of the new lands.
Here's what I found.Rise of the Godslayer adds Khitai, Robert E Howard's take on East Asia. It boasts five huge new areas, packed with quest lines and loot. The Gateway to Khitai is set aside for level 20-40 play, adding some much-needed substance to the middle game. Your first hour or so will be spent protecting a stalled caravan from raiders, but before long you'll find that the dead are rising and a race of irritating ape men running amok. The wide open areas, with their abandoned crypts and ancient ruins, provide plenty of adventure but the Gateway is easily the weakest zone of the five, lacking the dungeons and spectacular sights of the level 80 areas that lie beyond the iron-clad Gates of Khitai.
Cross the threshold of the great gate and you'll see what Khitai is all about. It's a place where samurai fight giant spiders among the bamboo canes, death cults worship huge stone statues deep in the jungles and cannibals ride colossal war tigers past the tall pagodas of the southern swamplands. Riding in a straight line from one end to the other sees you pass over wide grasslands, through Chosain's autumnal forests and into the jungle of Paikang before finally coming to the white beaches on the far eastern shore. The huge areas transition perfectly between the varied climes, and the whole place is filled with meticulously researched detail borrowed from oriental cultures.
[MPU]It may be pretty, but it wouldn't be Conan without muscle-bound warriors braining each other. In this respect also, Khitai doesn't disappoint. It's a land marred by conflict, its ten new factions at war in every corner. You can ally with them, curry favour by attacking their enemies, rise through the ranks and eventually earn serious rewards in the form of stunning armour sets and in the best cases, an epic mount.
Getting one of those mounts is one of the best quests in the game. Gain enough favour with Tamarin's Tigers and you'll have the opportunity to steal a tiger cub. Like real cats, they're hard to impress, so you'll need to strip naked and beat a tigress to death with your bare hands before they'll follow you. With that done, you'll need to train your loyal cub to fight for you. Then you can craft a saddle to turn your war beast into a truly impressive mount. It's a difficult and lengthy task that builds a bond between you and your creature, turning the best rewards in the game into something more than just another loot drop.
There are a few duff kill quests and collection tasks, but Rise of the Godslayer's great success lies in creating a world that never feels like a quest factory. There are places where idle spiders or wolves loiter waiting to be slain by the next adventurer, but for the most part your actions will have context and meaning. There's an area of Chosain torn apart by the war between local factions: you'll be taking quests aiding the faction of your choice, but you can also help the innocent peasants caught up in the conflict, searching for lost loved ones and helping the wounded. It's touches like this that make Khitai a consistent and believable place. I never had the ugly feeling that I was just another member of a conveyor belt of warriors ploughing through the same quests for loot.
With its powerful character classes, offline levelling and emphasis on PvE, Age of Conan has made a niche for itself among casual solo players. The expansion hasn't touched the player vs player side at all and Conan feels more like a singleplayer RPG than it ever has before. Fortunately, there's still plenty here for groups, who can test their mettle across the 13 new dungeons scattered through the high level lands. The underpopulated beta server I was on made grouping difficult, but the dungeons I did see were inventive affairs. The most challenging lie at the base of the vast, ominous crater that scars the northern land of Kara Korum, where a six-man dungeon turns into a huge puzzle, with players activating combinations of switches to tailor their path to the boss. These instances may be tough but they're nothing compared to the tier 4 Jade Citadel raids that pit you and an army of friends against the Emperor's forces. You'll need military grade organisation and help from the new alternative advancement system to stand a hope.
This new system means that at level 20 players now get access to one of three extra skill trees. Points earned in PvE can be spent on one half of the table and points from PvP kills on the other. Earn enough points in either class and you'll be given Expertise, which can be spent on both sides of the table, which means that even if you don't participate in PvP you can still gain abilities from that skill tree, albeit at a slower rate. There are new abilities to play with, but many of the new advancements work by buffing or altering existing spells and combos.
You can also use the alternative advancement system to train perks. These skills are passive bonuses activated by dragging them into a slot on a special taskbar that limits the number of perks you can have running at any one time. This means you'll be switching between them depending on your enemy. Local wildlife bothering you? Boost your damage and finish them off faster. Angered a giant reanimated undead golem? Buff your toughness and you might survive the fight.
The system enables you to enhance the particular abilities you rely on, making your chosen play style more powerful, while also granting you the stat increases you'll need to take on the challenges of the highest areas. Hit level 80 and the other two thirds of the advancement tree open up. When this happens you'll have the option of learning these skills over the course of just a day or so. This removes the need for players to grind their way up the skill trees, while at the same time allowing casual players to spec up and keep pace with more active friends.
Rise of the Godslayer is a huge update that plays to Conan's strengths and addresses many of its flaws, although there are still parts of the core game that need reworking. Veteran players will be disappointed that the starting area of Tortage remains unchanged, with only slight differences if you start as a Khitan character. Some uninspired writing and manneqinlike NPCs threaten to undermine the drama, and PvP enthusiasts, served so well by many of the free updates, will find nothing in the expansion beyond the extra skills.
Overall, though, there's a sense that Godslayer is exactly what Age of Conan needed. The low level Gateway to Khitai area will ease the transition to Ymir's Pass, one of the level 60-80 areas added last year, and the other four zones of Khitai offer months of activity at the highest level. Lapsed high-level players will be rewarded if they return, and there's never been a better time for new barbarians to join the fun.
The Verdict
Age of Conan: Rise of the Godslayer
A mammoth update that caters for mid to high level players. Memorable new lands and quests make up for the lack of PvP.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Tom stopped being a productive human being when he realised that the beige box under his desk could play Alpha Centauri. After Deus Ex and Diablo 2 he realised he was cursed to play amazing PC games forever. He started writing about them for PC Gamer about six years ago, and is now UK web ed.
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An Australian senator has announced that he intends to introduce a bill defining Counter-Strike: Counter Offensive as gambling, thanks to its weapon skin trading system.
An Australian senator has announced that he intends to introduce a bill defining Counter-Strike: Counter Offensive as gambling, thanks to its weapon skin trading system. In what looks to be a world first, independent senator Nick Xenophon will introduce the bill when the Australian federal parliament resumes next month.
Speaking to the Sydney Morning Herald, the senator said that Counter-Strike and similar games "purport to be one thing" while they're actually "morphing into full-on gambling and that itself is incredibly misleading and deceptive.
"This is the Wild West of online gambling that is actually targeting kids," Xenophon said.
According to the report, the legislation could make it illegal for Valve to solicit payments in exchange for items with different, or random, value. Or else, there could be legislated age requirements to play any game featuring a similar economy, or the requirement to warn of gambling related content.
Valve has only recently made meaningful steps to curb the fledgling – but already very prolific – skin gambling market. In a statementissued earlier this month, Valve made clear that it has no connection with any of the skin gambling sites that have emerged since they introduced in-game item trading.
"A number of gambling sites started leveraging the Steam trading system, and there's been some false assumptions about our involvement with these sites," the statement read. "We'd like to clarify that we have no business relationships with any of these sites. We have never received any revenue from them. And Steam does not have a system for turning in-game items into real world currency."
This statement was prompted by this month's CSGO Lotto scandal, which involved two high profile streamers failing to disclose their direct connection with the gambling site they were promoting. Valve sent cease and desist letters to over 20 skin gambling sites last month.