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Our Verdict
If you're interested in this box, you really should get the Alienware Alpha with Windows instead.

At a glance

Alien (+) Sexy chassis; small and portable; quiet.
Alien vs Predator (-) Only small portion of Windows games; lack of video streaming apps; Linux performance issues.

Updated with video review!

We’ve been looking forward to Valve’s Steam Machine initiative for a long time, mostly because Valve has never really failed us in the past. Well, there’s a first time for everything, and unfortunately, we have to acknowledge that Valve has made a misstep here.

At the frontlines of the initiative is Alienware’s little 2.1x7.8x7.8-inch box. If the system looks familiar, it’s because it’s largely the same small PC as the company’s Alpha systemwe reviewed earlier this year. It’s still super sexy, portable, and has the same ports. The biggest difference here is that the Steam Machine version uses Linux (with Steam’s Big Picture Mode overlay on top) instead of Windows. Also, instead of coming with an Xbox controller, the Steam Machine comes with Valve’s new Steam Controller, which has a steep learning curve, but let’s you play every single game on Steam and allows you to easily navigate Valve’s 10-foot UI.

Steam Machine video review

Our particular Steam Machine is running the same mobile graphics card that its Alienware Alpha counterpart uses—essentially a variant of Nvidia’s 860M GPU. The system does offer some much-needed enhancements, which include Intel’s 3GHz Core i5-4950 quad-core CPU, 8GB of RAM, and a 7,200rpm hard drive. Conversely, our Alpha came with an i3 processor, 4GB of RAM, and a 5,200rpm HDD.

Linux currently has access to roughly one-fifth of the entire Steam library.

Despite the beefier hardware, however, we’re sad to report that the Steam Machine, with Linux, performed much worse in our gameplay benchmarks compared to the Alpha. There aren’t that many Linux games with benchmarks, but we tried Bioshock Infinite, The Talos Principle, and Shadow of Mordor, and all of them ran 20–30 percent worse than the Alpha, which is troubling considering the Alpha is only a little more powerful that the current-gen consoles. Playing a popular game like Ark: Survival Evolved was damned near impossible at anything but the lowest settings, and then it looked like crap. To be fair, Ark is still in Early Access and the game will likely be better optimized over time. Still, don’t expect to run intensive games above medium settings here. Only in Valve’s own Half-Life 2: Lost Coast benchmark, which uses the non-taxing Source engine, were the two systems comparable. This suggests that the other games weren’t well optimized for Linux.

The Steam Machine comes with Valve's Steam Controller.

Perhaps worse than the unoptimized ports, however, is the lack of games compared to Windows offerings. While Valve has done a very commendable job of increasing the amount of games we get on Linux in the past couple of months, with a total library of 3,389 games at the moment, that’s still only about 22 percent of titles that are available on Windows. Even MacOS currently boasts a greater library of games with its 5,602 titles, which is disconcerting because we would never recommend buying a Mac as a gaming PC. While there are some high-quality games on Linux, and we’re sure more will follow, so far, a lot of the big publishers haven’t brought their big guns to Steam. For instance, there’s no Fallout 4, GTA V, or Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 here. You could use the Steam Machine as a streaming box from your Windows PC, but unless you’re using a wired connection, you’re going to be experiencing the same Wi-Fi latency issues as Valve’s hit-and-miss Steam Link. And going with Linux, you’re also missing games outside of Steam, such as titles on Battle.net and Origin. It simply makes much more sense to bite the $100 bullet and purchase Alienware’s equivalent Windows box.

Beyond the game limitations, the Steam Machine has other issues. For some reason, some cloud saves didn’t carry over for us on certain titles. Another gripe we had is that there are no native video streaming apps like Netflix, Hulu, or Youtube. Nowadays, people use their consoles for more than just gaming. Luckily, there is a browser built into Steam so you can launch Netflix from there, but this solution isn’t very elegant. What’s more, the Steam Controller doesn’t support a headphone jack, so you can’t issue it voice commands to search for things like you can on the Xbox One or Nvidia Shield console. The Steam Machine itself doesn’t have an analog mic port either, so you’re going to have to use a USB headset to communicate with your friends online.

Truth told, we’re not really sure who this is for. The key market seems to be PC gamers who absolutely won’t install Windows, but how many of those people exist? Because we like the hardware, we would suggest going with the Alienware Alpha box with Windows instead, as Alienware has made several improvements to the UI and it works equally well with the Steam Controller. For $100 more, the extra performance boost and access to every Windows game is definitely worth it.

Alienware Alpha Alienware Steam Machine Percent Difference Bioshock Infinite (fps) 69.5 48.1 -30.8% Talos Principle (fps) 49.3 37.8 -23.3% Half-Life 2: Lost Coast (fps) 235.9 231 -2.1% Shadow of Mordor (fps) 50.6 35.4 -30.1%

Our zero-point is Alienware’s Alpha with a 2.9GHz Intel Core i3-4130T, 8GB DDR3 RAM, a GeForce GTX 860M, and Windows 8.1. BioShock Infinite tested at high settings; Talos Principle tested at high settings; Lost Coast tested at max settings; Shadow of Mordor tested at medium settings; all at 1080p.

Specs

CPU 3GHz Intel Core i5-4950T RAM 8GB DDR3 GPU Nvidia GeForce GTX 860M (variant) Storage 1TB 7,200rpm HDD Connectivity HDMI (out and in), S/PDIF, 3x USB 2.0, 2x USB 3.0, Bluetooth 4.0, 802.11ac Carry Weight 4 lbs, 8 oz

The Verdict

Reviews

If you're interested in this box, you really should get the Alienware Alpha with Windows instead.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Jimmy Thang has been Maximum PC's Online Managing Editor since 2012, and has been covering PC hardware and games for nearly a decade. His particular interests currently include VR and SFF computers.

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Dead State demo inbound, expect bickering sheltermates and zombies early January

The long-awaited zombie survival RPG Dead State has been teasing us for years now, but the wait is finally coming to a close.

now, but the wait is finally coming to a close. In a newly released video, developer Brian Mitsoda revealsa demo entitled Dead State: The First 7 Days. It will cover the first week of the game, including the beginning stages of a new shelter and the first hints of the overall story, and is expected to arrive in January.

In addition to the usual tweaks and bug fixes common to game development at this stage, developer DoubleBear has tripled the number of maps and overhauled the dialog and story system. The update also shows off the addition of a dog companion. As we all know, including a canine characteris absolutely crucial in modern game development, so I'm happy to see that DoubleBear is taking that seriously.

Mitsoda has spent time with RPG powerhouses Troika, Black Isle, and Obsidian, and has previously said that a single game of Dead State could stretch out to over fifty hours. This has the makings for a deep, deep RPG experience that we'll be keeping an eye on. Check out Mitsoda's recent updates to the Kickstartercommunity for more details on development.

Atlus: Catherine Ships 200K In First Week

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Our Verdict
Its no replacement for a desktop PC, but if youre looking for an open ended new-gen console replacement, the Alpha ticks most boxes.

Alienware alpha pricing

US $549 UK £449 AU $699
Intel core i3 processor
Windows 8.1
4GB RAM
500GB HD
US$699 UK£498.99 AU $n/a
Intel core i3 processor
Windows 8.1
4GB RAM
500GB HD
US$799 UK £569 AU$999
Intel core i5 processor
Windows 8.1
8GB RAM
1TB HD
US$899 UK £699 AU$1,299 (version tested)
Intel core i7 processor
Windows 8.1
8GB RAM
2TB HD

Evidence has mounted over the last two years that there is a market for the PC-as-console experience, though the size of that market is still hard to measure. While Steam Machines were poised to start hitting the market in earnest in 2014, Valve’s delayed SteamOSand controllermeans hardware partners looking to enter this new market have been forced to wait. Alienware hasn’t waited. Instead, it’s opted to release a system operating on Windows 8.1. It’s ostensibly the same, just without SteamOS.

The Alienware Alpha is a strange proposition: it arrives ahead of SteamOS, but it’s still very much a Steam Big Picture affair. While the Alpha boots into a bespoke Alienware UI, it’s basically a launcher for Big Picture mode. You can boot into Windows 8.1 on the Alienware Alpha but, given that the system isn’t shipped with either keyboard or mouse, you’re not really supposed to. Instead, you’re encouraged to navigate using the bundled Xbox 360 wireless controller. Based on what comes in the box alone, this is very much a gaming console.

Which is fine, except during the rare instances when the Alpha crashes. This only happened once when I was using it, and it was a Steam software problem rather than the Alpha’s, but it does indicate that as a console experience, it’s not quite idiot proof. Having said that, modern consoles are also prone to the occasional (and sometimes more than occasional) crash.

Metro: Last Light ran at a pinch above 60fps at 1080p on Medium settings.

Tech specs

The Alpha comes at four price points, with the model we tested being the highest available. While Alienware is forthcoming about most of the specs, it’s been coy on the GPU, which is a customized Nvidia GTX 860M. The high-end Alpha packs an Intel Core i7-4765T processor with 8GB of DDR3 memory and—sadly but not unexpectedly at this price point—a 2TB mechanical hard drive. It’s possible to swap in an SSD, but in doing so you’d be sacrificing one of the Alpha’s strongest selling points: its price. While the drive’s speed is unlikely to bother the device’s target market—those used to Xbox 360 or Xbox One loading times—it’s likely to rub those used to SSD speeds the wrong way.

As for that GPU, well, according to our benchmarks it’s similar to the GTX 860M with 2GB GDDR5. We tested it up against the recent Acer Aspire V 15 Nitro gaming laptop—which also packs a GTX 860M—and saw comparable performance, with the Alpha edging slightly ahead in games like Metro: Last Light, GRID 2and BioShock Infinite. Those gaming framerates are fairly impressive, especially given that the Alpha is significantly cheaper than the aforementioned Acer. Metro: Last Light, for example, ran at a pinch above 60fps at 1080p on Medium settings, though jack the settings any higher and you’ll immediately encounter performance drops. Basically, it runs as well and looks a bit better than the Xbox One and PS4 versions of the game.

And that’s the thing: the Alpha is basically a laptop gaming PC in a discreet, 20 x 20cm box. It doesn’t get as hot as a laptop, with the GPU temperature sitting around 79 degrees celsius, nor is it any louder than an Xbox 360, though the fan did kick into gear during heated moments in Metro: Last Light. Its main components (CPU, memory and hard drive) are replaceable, except for that custom GPU hardwired to the motherboard. Significant memory upgrades will be a hassle, since there are only two slots here, but if you’re a serial upgrader you’ll probably want to steer clear of the Alpha anyway, despite the unit’s innards being a simple four screw affair.

Image 1 of 4

The screen you see upon booting up the Alpha.

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The Alpha's bespoke UI offers a minimal yet functional set of customisation options.

Image 3 of 4

The alpha has a series of hotkeys triggered by controller button press configurations.

Image 4 of 4

This is how access to the Alpha UI looks mid-game.

User experience

Navigating Steam Big Picture mode with an Xbox 360 controller is as pleasant as it is on a desktop PC, with controller compatible games clearly indicated. There’s even a category for controller games, if you want to avoid anything requiring a keyboard and mouse. I spent a couple of hours playing Eldritchon the couch and it felt like the game was made for console, though it did boot automatically into a windowed screen. Thankfully that was easily fixed in the game’s settings menu.

The obvious benefit of the Alpha over the new consoles is Steam’s gargantuan games library, though only a fraction of the titles are compatible with a controller out of the box. That’s not a problem, though the one thing the Alpha sorely lacks over its console brethren is easy media playback. While it’s possible to exit to Windows for this, it’s an incredibly clumsy solution for a unit which wants you to forget about Windows.

Both the Alpha’s barebones UI and Big Picture mode lack easy video playback, though Steam Music is intact. It’s possible to create a Favourite tab in Big Picture mode linking to desktop versions of YouTube, Twitch or Plex, but it’s not fun to use. Even plugging a USB drive containing an AVI will require exiting to Windows. With media playback a huge selling point on consoles in 2014 it’s a weird oversight, though there’s no reason Alienware can’t patch an app in some time in the future. I strongly suggest they do.

As for the Alpha UI itself, it’s a simple affair which can be accessed at any time via a controller shortcut. Apart from acting as a gate to Big Picture, it features simple display settings (resolution, screen scaling), the ability to customise the Alpha overlay theme with different colours, as well as network customisation.

Of course, it’s possible to forego both the Alpha UI and Big Picture mode entirely in order to use the Alpha as a Windows machine, and at this price point it might be a good solution for some, especially given its size.

Conclusion

It’s tricky to put a value on the Alienware Alpha, as most folk reading this will already own a desktop PC because they prefer it over a console experience. And while it can’t compare to a desktop for sheer power, for anyone looking for a discrete little PC that can quietly sit in the living room, this is a great unit for the asking price. So long as you’re willing to sacrifice some of the flexibility of a desktop—or are at least prepared to forego the Alpha UI in order to access Windows 8.1 proper.

If you’ve got money pouring from your every orifice then the Alpha would make a perfect second PC due to its portability. On the other hand, if you love gaming on a PC but dislike all the fiddling associated with it, you could make the Alpha your primary device, but it’s not as upgradeable or powerful as a real desktop PC.

If you’re willing to wait, it might be worth holding out for Steam OS to properly launch, and the ensuing deluge of Alpha competitors to arrive on the market. In the meantime the Alpha is an impressive unit for its size and price, but it’s unlikely to win over anyone in the market for a new console, much less the very dedicated gaming PC owner. There is, believe it or not, a grey area, we just don’t know how big it is yet.

The Verdict

Alienware Alpha

Its no replacement for a desktop PC, but if youre looking for an open ended new-gen console replacement, the Alpha ticks most boxes.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Shaun is PC Gamer’s Australian Editor. He loves masochistic platformers but lacks the skill and grace to complete them. He has four broken keyboards hidden under his desk, filed between an emergency six-pack of Reschs and five years worth of XXL promotional t-shirts. He stares out the window a lot.

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Dead State gameplay video shows turn-based combat, unfortunate scavenger

Best of luck wandering the wastelands of Dead State , Brian Mitsoda's Kickstarted isometric turn-based zombie RPG.

isometric turn-based zombie RPG. You'll sure need it as you scrounge and scavenge resources for your ramshackle stronghold and the haggard survivors holed up inside. Picking through abandoned buildings makes you a tasty, meaty target for the shamblers outside, and in a video released today Mitsoda demonstrates how to defend yourself with the various weapons you'll find as well as the game's overall development progress.

The depredations of living after the apocalypse takes a daily toll on your survivor group's overall morale, so you'll need to boost spirits with comforts such as toilet paper and toothbrushes while stocking up on adequate food and medical supplies. You'll only control your own character—party members are entirely AI-controlled—and you'll bash or shoot plenty zed-heads in a familiar Fallout/XCOM grid system.

Mitsoda provides some notes for his walkthrough, highlighting the non-scripted behavior of zombies and the importance of keeping noise levels low while exploring an area. Avoiding encounters seems like a preferential route, as "killing enemies doesn't give skill points—gathering resources or meeting objectives does."

Mitsoda also stresses the video isn't indicative of a completed game, but is instead an amalgamation of operational mechanics pieced together to give an idea of what the whole thing will look like. It's a nice display of results from a pile of Kickstarter cash, and Mitsoda's background—lead writer on Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines and a former member of Black Isle, Troika, and Obsidian—definitely adds cred to Dead State's RPG ambitions.

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Our Verdict
Not a dramatic reinvention, but still an enjoyable game of construction, economics and election fraud.

I am not the man you want running your country. Over the course of my extended presidency I've smuggled rum into a prohibition America, sided with Axis powers during both World Wars, systematically stripped away the liberty of my citizens, and assassinated a grandma for opposing my regime. I'm not proud of these things, but I'm glad that I felt the need to do them. For all Tropico 5 adds to the city-building series—and all the ways it doesn't advance the formula enough—its greatest success is in pushing you towards the murkier aspects of dictatorial rule.

Rather than inhabit the genre's favoured role as the floating god-mayor of urban planning, in Tropico 5 you play as a banana republic's ruling dynasty. You still use a top-down view to place buildings and trade goods, but must also navigate the island's politics—surviving both the international machinations of world superpowers, and your populace's desire for democracy and happiness.

Where Haemimont's previous two Tropico games took place around the Cold War, this time the action spans across multiple eras. It changes the pace and shape of a sandbox campaign, offering a longer period of island management that encourages a broader range of industry and development. More importantly, it restricts your early-game options, making for a harder fought battle to stay in power.

After declaring independence from the crown in the Colonial Era, my people asked for elections. Foolishly, I agreed, having been conditioned by previous games to expect an easy win. Only, without access to the advanced industry that would normally bulk up my war chest, I wasn't able to effectively address the needs of the populace. Instead of securing power through the creation of a paradise, I did it via the more realistic tools of intimidation and election fraud.

Throughout your rule, optional objectives appear over your palace, offering bonuses for filling desired criteria. Usually it's in the form of constructing specific buildings to appease one of the political factions, but occasionally something more interesting and wide-ranging appears. My brief bootlegging period was a direct result of one of these missions, and its promised reward of more favourable trade prices. The downside was twofold: my island became a haven for crime lords, and America became very angry. Luckily, when a country invades you, they never pose a serious threat; instead choosing to stomp around like angry toddlers, destroying bits of the city.

The missions help to add a dynamic element to the sandbox mode, but their limitations are clear. Instead of reacting to the specific choices you've made, they're pulled seemingly at random from a pool of possibilities. Throughout I was offered objectives that I'd already fulfilled, and instantly credited with success upon accepting them. Better implemented are the requests that come from agreeing to negotiate with protesters, which are, at least, offered in direct response to your island's failings.

More significant are the potential rewards these missions offer. That's because, unlike in previous games, your Swiss bank account finally has a purpose. This time there's a persistent element to proceedings—your dynasty expanding across every game, be it sandbox, multiplayer or campaign scenario. You can switch between family members each election, and they all offer a different global bonus. It's these bonuses that can be upgraded with embezzled funds. Now when a faction offers you a choice between extra trade routes, additional finance or your own private bank account, it feels like a more meaningful decision.

For all its improvements, Tropico 5 is still iterating on the template set by its predecessors. In many ways, that's a good thing—it's a formula that, behind the overt political caricatures, is deceptively clever. The key is in the way it simulates every citizen, letting you select, follow and harass them individually. The scale is well measured, too. Islands don't feel small, but their population is low enough that there's no abstraction of data. That has a dramatic effect on how you construct your cities, because the way you identify problems feels natural. An icon may tell you that a factory isn't receiving its required raw materials, but you can manually track the production and transportation of those goods to identify and address the bottleneck.

The problem is that, with every successive release, Haemimont are essentially making a more refined version of Tropico 3. Even when spread across a longer timeline, Tropico 5 fails to meaningfully move the series forward. It still has the same cheerful vibrance, the same salsa-infused soundtrack, and the same selection of infrastructure, industry and tourism.

If you're new to Tropico, don't be put off: this is the version deserving of your vote. But as a returning ruler, I was hoping for more of a revolution.

The Verdict

Tropico 5

Not a dramatic reinvention, but still an enjoyable game of construction, economics and election fraud.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Phil has been PC gaming since the '90s, when RPGs had dice rolls and open world adventures were weird and French. Now he's the deputy editor of PC Gamer; commissioning features, filling magazine pages, and knowing where the apostrophe goes in '90s. He plays Scout in TF2, and isn't even ashamed.

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Sony Worldwide Studios boss admits scepticism towards Steam Machines

Sony is in an enviable position at the moment: it's claimed an early victory in the next-gen console wars, with sales of the PlayStation 4 edging ahead of its closest rival the Xbox One.

Sony is in an enviable position at the moment: it's claimed an early victory in the next-gen console wars, with sales of the PlayStation 4 edging ahead of its closest rival the Xbox One. Of course, gaming is a volatile industry and you just never know what's going to happen. Sony Worldwide Studios boss Scott Rohde agrees, admitting in an interview that the Steam Machine may compete in the same space one day, but that Valve has a lot of work to do to make this happen.

"The short answer is 'Maybe someday,'" Rohde said in an interview with Ars Technica, when asked whether the Steam Box will ever meaningfully compete with consoles. "It's not meant to be an arrogant statement. It's not something that we're saying, 'Oh yeah we're not worried about them.' I think we're always interested in anything that comes into this space because it's fascinating to all of us.”

Rohde said the Steam Machine concept is interesting, but that it's still largely an unknown quantity. "It's in its infancy, we don't know exactly what it is, even, or when it will happen or what it will actually be. I guess they've settled on a controller. We're not even really sure. They've been bouncing around for a while."

He also insinuated that Valve may find trouble when it tries to ship hardware globally, given its software heritage. "It's not an easy trick to get global distribution on a piece of hardware," Rohde said. "That is something that Sony is extremely great at and has been for years." When reminded of the fact that Valve will work with hardware partners well-versed in this aspect of the business, Rohde made reference to the widely derided 3DO console.

Things are starting to happen: Alienware's boxis due in time for the holiday system, though it'll ship without the components which are likely to come to define Steam Machines, namely the SteamOS its controller. The latter has been delayed until 2015in order to make good on "a ton" of useful playtest feedback.

Dead State developer Brian Mitsoda explains why zombies aren't the point

DoubleBear Productions is less than $20,000 away from unleashing the zombie apocalypse.

DoubleBear Productions is less than $20,000 away from unleashing the zombie apocalypse. Their turn-based survival RPG Dead Stateis well on-track to meet its Kickstarter funding goal, with over $130,000 of $150,000 already raised and only half of the time limit for fund-raising elapsed. We had a chat with lead designer and Black Isle/Troika/Obsidian veteran Brian Mitsoda about crowd-funding the end of the world, why he thinks that explaining the undead's origin is lame, and how Dead State isn't "just another zombie game."

PC Gamer: Your Kickstarter campaign has been very successful. How does the reality compare to what you expected at the start?

Brian Mitsoda: We're kind of following the normal Kickstarter trend right now. We started really big and that was really very exciting. It's been kind of dropping off in the middle, which it generally does. The expectations are that we're pretty sure we're going to get funded. Our biggest goal right now is to hit the 150 mark which, if you've watched any of the other Kickstarters, a lot of times that's when a bunch of other people will be like, "Oh, it's funded. Let's go fund that now." And then, of course, you've got a huge push at the end generally.

Really, the hardest part for us has been that there's been a bit of Kickstarter fatigue in the press lately. For a lot of press, they're like, "Oh, yeah, Kickstarter. That was really big... back in April."

The other thing that's kind of worked against us is that we have zombies in our game. And I don't know if you're aware, but there are a lot of games that use zombies. And so we've kind of tried to deal with this problem of, "Oh, look, another zombie game!" And one of the things we've tried to get across to people and the press is that the zombies really are not the major focus of the game. It's really just an excuse to have an interesting combat mechanic and explain why the whole world has fallen apart: "Well, the zombies have kind of pushed it in that direction, but let's focus on the humans."

PCG: What would you say is the most unexpected or surprising part of this process so far?

BM: When we were getting things together for the Kickstarter build, it was a pretty insane push and we were working pretty late hours because we wanted to show as much as possible. Getting together videos and stuff like that. And we thought, "Oh, it'll all be over soon! And we'll get the Kickstarter out!" But it's been pretty long hours ever since the Kickstarter launched as well, trying to get press awareness, working on the game as well, and answering e-mails from people, and answering stuff on our forums... You just get a ton of contact from all kinds of people.

Many, many e-mails from composers--and by the way, we do have a composer, everybody. And it's pretty much become a full-time thing where my wife and I have been doing nonstop e-mails with press and other people. It's been a lot of work.

PCG: How does this model compare to working on a game for a major publisher?

BM: Well, for a major publisher, you're going to have times when you're really busy, but you're pretty much dedicated to your section of the game. Unless you're the project lead, and then you're probably in meetings all day. But for indie games, we have a very small team. So, many times, for things not to fall through the cracks, somebody has to take responsibility for them. And a lot of times that person is me.

When you go indie, be prepared to wear a lot of hats. You're going to be the project lead, you're going to be the lead designer, you're going to be the writer, you're going to be the scripter on this level, you're going be the producer, you're going to be the press person, you're going to be the community manager... you're going to be doing a lot of that. So be very good at budgeting your time.

PCG: How many people do you have working full-time on the game right now?

BM: Right now, it's just me, my lead artist Oscar, lead programmer Nick, and then our lead animator. Those are the only people working full-time. We have a lot of contributors and other team memebers that are working on it pretty much every day, part-time. And we're hoping to get most of those guys up to full-time after we've got the Kickstarter done.

PCG: You've talked about Dead State being a very open-ended game. Is there an endgame? Or do you just keep playing forever or until you die?

BM: We definitely didn't want to do something where you just continually play, because we have a lot of story/narrative progression. And a very open narrative, not like a heavy-handed, linear narrative. A lot of stuff opens up as you play. We do have multiple endings. There are a lot of different ways that you can end the game, and some of those are failure states. We do have ways that you can end the game prematurely just because you played so poorly. Which I find refreshing, because you don't see that anymore. But we're not going to punish the player too much. I really don't want to get people into the, "Oh, hey, you messed up once: You're dead!" kind of situation.

Depending on who you meet, depending on your relationship with other groups, depending on where you go and at what time--we open up a lot of possibilities as the game goes on. There will definitely be ways to get a little bit more of a heroic ending or a selfish ending. There are going to be a lot of options. It really depends on how you play. I know there are always going to be people who are like, "Well, I killed off all of the allies at the shelter. I win!" But really, our focus has been having every player have their own narrative of what they did at their shelter. What is their story?

PCG: Can all of your allies die? What happens if, say, all of your co-leaders are dead and it's just you?

BM: Assuming you didn't piss people off enough to get ejected from the shelter yourself, you can still play it. I assume it would be a very different experience. I haven't personally tried that path. I'm sure I'm going to assign somebody to do that. But what we want to emphasize in the game is, you kind of need other people to get by. I'm guessing that at a certain point, it's going to be a little bit too difficult to just be on your own. Although that sounds like an "Iron Man" mode waiting for someone to make it themselves, and go, "I got through by myself! I'm the best!" The first person that does that in the game, I want to hear how they did it.

PCG: How long do you intend a typical game of Dead State to last, assuming it doesn't end early with everyone dying horribly.

BM: Right now our estimate is about 50+ hours, at least. And there are so many optional things you can do in the game that can be padded out. It really depends on how many people you have [at your shelter], what your interactions are, how often you like to get into combat. We don't encourage people to get into combat for experience, so some people are probably going to try to be a little more quiet. There are definitely ways to work things out in dialogue. I'd wager on your first playthrough it's going to be a little bit longer.

PCG: Are the NPC co-leaders the same every time you play?

BM: Right now, yeah. There are dozens of allies, but as far as co-leaders go, they are all the same for every playthrough assuming you get them. But there are different ways that you can approach them. Basically, with any ally, the way that you interact with them can change their personality a lot. That also depends on your skills and who else you have in the shelter.

I don't think everyone's going to get all the allies every time. You're not going to find them all your first time through. As far as the co-leaders go, the reason they're always the same is because the crisis events they participate in are an awful lot of dialogue and script checks. And if we had it so that you could pick anybody [as a co-leader], we would have to write dozens of people into each crisis event, which would be a phenomenal amount of work. But we do plan on doing post-release for Dead State, and one of the things we'd like to do is add more characters and more options.

PCG: You mentioned post-release content. What are your plans for that?

BM: We definitely want to add options for things that the community really wants. For example, modifiers for new games. So, antibiotics is one of those things we might make a modifier for. So if you don't want to play the hardcore mode, you just want to turn off antibiotics in the normal mode. Or things like how much food you need per day.

One thing we've been talking about is, so many people have wanted full control of their party. And that's something we won't be doing for the normal game. But if there's enough demand for that post-release, we might do something like, "This isn't really how the game is supposed to be played, but if you really want this, we've added this modifier." We're looking at new allies, new content. And of course we'd like to work on some full-fledged expansions as well.

PCG: How do you plan to fund and price post-release content?

BM: For any of the post-release stuff, we won't be doing Kickstarter. We don't really want to nickel and dime people with DLC. We're not big fans of that, and we don't really like having everybody play different games with different items that are probably breaking the game in horrible ways. So what we'd like to do is put out content that is for everybody that has the core game [free.] And if we do have an expansion that's stand-alone, that would cost $5-10. Which would be a significant new game with 20 or 30 hours or something. Rather than something where you paid five bucks for two more hours of content.

PCG: In terms of story, are you going with a more unknowable apocalypse? Or will it be possible through gameplay to discover what happened, where all the zombies came from, etc.?

BM: I'm a big believer in the unknowable. Because it's always hokey, right? Whenever they try to explain where the zombies came from, or where vampires came from, or whatever. It always ends up being something really ludicrous. And how many people would even know [in the game world] about what's really going on? It's one of those things where we throw out a lot of theories. Everybody seems to have their own theory, and everybody has kind of heard something. But communication has broken down, and now it's like a game of telephone where everybody has heard something , but you never really know.

PCG: Do you plan to make the game moddable?

BM: Dedicated modding tools tend to be something that you almost need a separate team to develop. It's not even our own engine, we're licensing it, so I'm not even sure what our ability to put out mod tools are. We know there are a lot of modders that will come up with something anyhow. And we'll keep an eye on that. And if people have come up with something better than we could have done ourselves, we'll probably just ask if we can use that. But as far as modding out of the box, that's kind of out of our scope right now. It's also something that we could do post-release, but we'll have to see just how many people it's going to take.

Thanks to Brian for taking the time to talk to us! You still have a couple weeks to fund Dead Stateif you haven't already.

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Dead State preview

"I've always been horrified by the 'zombie emergency plans' that people come up with.

"I've always been horrified by the 'zombie emergency plans' that people come up with. Many involve obscure ninja weaponry. Those people will probably be the first casualties of the zombie apocalypse.”

Brian Mitsoda says gaming just doesn't “get” zombies. His criticism, in plain nerd-English: “Most of the games that use zombies have nothing to do with the zombie genre.” I'd agree—the best zed fiction isn't about the bullet-frenzy sprint from saferoom to saferoom, it's about preparation and survival under pressure through cooperation: maintaining barricades, rationing food, managing the morale of teammates and fending off fellow humans that want what you've got.

As project lead at DoubleBear Productions, that's precisely the experience Mitsoda wants you to have in Dead State: a zombie game with isometric, turn-based RPG combat similar to Fallout and Fallout 2 paired with X-COM's base management. You're the leader of a group of survivors that've holed up in Splendid Elementary School in Texas. Upgrading the school is essential to survival—like your base in X-COM, it's the source for facilities and production. “If you want to start building thrown weapons, you're going to need a lab. A garden will increase food supply by a minor amount per week. An infirmary will make wounded allies heal faster,” says Mitsoda.

To do all that, you'll need to bring back survivors from surrounding towns. You can choose to recruit them, trade with them, exploit them or remove them from your party if they outlive their usefulness. “A lot of allies are not good at combat. But they will all have some value—some having unique perks that give bonuses to things like speed of production of certain kinds of items. The more people in the shelter, the more people you have to work on upgrades and projects. Of course, this means having more food for them, which in turn leads to more exploration for resources.”

A janitor may only bring a mop to your cause, but he'll boost morale. A science-smart character may be able to create a noise-making device that lures zombies to it. But because Mitsoda is keen on making Dead State as open-ended as possible (your expeditions can travel nearly anywhere on the large map from the game's outset), you're not committed to cultivating any particular characters. “You may determine their skills are no longer worth the effort to keep them around,” Mitsoda says. In Mass Effect 2 terms—think about having the freedom to shove Miranda out the airlock on a whim after she spilled your coffee.

How you respond to the apocalypse is up to you, Mitsoda emphasizes. “You might find out while playing that you're kind of a ruthless person. When there are problems at the shelter, you simply have to make tough decisions. You may like an ally, but realize that if you had to give out the last of the antibiotics (which keeps infected allies from becoming undead) you might give it to the [expletive] because he's a great shot. This is a life-or-death situation we're portraying. There's definitely room for players to be the biggest threat to the game world. We're OK with that.”

Mitsoda also wants combat to drive players' decision-making. You'll only have direct control of your main character when fighting—if your prized companion (say, a lady commando) is paralyzed with panic during a zombie ambush, she might flee or try to heal herself constantly. Panicking allies won't accept your orders—how (or if) you'll save them is up to you. Noise is also a concern during combat, forcing you to weigh the silent-but-dangerous risks of close-combat with the powerful—but attention-attracting—benefits of a pistol.

Even if it didn't have zombies, I've waited at least a decade to play a modern game with X-COM's mechanics commingled with a few of the original Fallout's RPG sensibilities. Bring on Dead State.

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Alienware says Steam Machines will spur "20, 30-fold" growth in Linux gaming

For years, PC gaming was synonymous with Windows gaming.

For years, PC gaming was synonymous with Windows gaming. DirectX was the go-to API, and if you wanted to play the latest and greatest games on your killer rig, you did it under the auspices of Microsoft's operating systems. But AlienwareProduct Manager Marc Diana expects that situation to change dramatically once Steam Machines (and, more specifically, the SteamOS that drives them) are finally unleashed.

SteamOS is Linux, you see, and as Diana pointed out, it's not smart to underestimate Valve. "There's more games that are Linux-powered today than have ever been available in the market, and that continues to grow," he told PCGamesN. "It's projected that whenever SteamOS comes out, there's going to be 700-plus titles on SteamOS that are OpenGL games."

It's a big transition, but it has the unique advantage of being driven by Steam Machines, the Valve-blessed gaming PCs that will be produced by various manufacturers. They'll ship with SteamOS installed and assuming they're a success, that means a very large and sudden uptick in the number of Linux gamers running around on Steam.

"Imagine how many people are gaming today on Linux, and how many people will be gaming once Steam Machine launches," he said. "It's going to be 20, 30 fold [growth]. Overnight."

I've had a few Linux proponents push me to try their weapon of choice over the years, and each time my response has been the same: Why? The answer has typically been vague promises of "better" and mumbled anti-Microsoft vitriol, but perhaps in the near future they'll have something more concrete to fall back on. Not right away, though; Valve recently delayed the Steam controller, and by extension Steam Machines, until sometime next year. Somewhat ironically, that means Alienware's debut Steam Machine, the Alpha, will actually come out of the box bearing Windows 8.

Video: 2013 in PC gaming -- the (hopefully) incredible year ahead

http://youtu.be/IQuQ9J-Z4L4
We've already assembled an exhaustive list of all the 2013 PC games worth keeping an eye on.

worth keeping an eye on. But a lot of these merit more discussion—why are we mentally tap-dancing over BioShock Infinite and Metro: Last Light? What makes Clockwork Empiresand Gone Homestand out among a stack of impressive indie games?

In a special, hour-long discussion, Logan, Evan, and Tylertalk about what they're looking forward to most this year, and how the trends that emerged in 2012 will shape the months ahead.

Draw Something 's growth slowing on Facebook

Alienware Alpha: impressions of the $550 Windows 8.1 Steam Machine

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Who's playing the Darkspore beta?

If you're looking for a free way to kill a little time this week, the open beta for Maxis' spin-off action RPG Darkspore is in full swing through this Friday.

If you're looking for a free way to kill a little time this week, the open beta for Maxis' spin-off action RPG Darkspore is in full swing through this Friday. If you're not in already, you can easily grab it on Steam. I jumped in for a couple of rounds of co-op last night - things start off extremely simple, and naturally the first few rounds are a breeze to hack 'n' zap your way through. Once you've leveled up a bit, though, you'll be able to string together missions of increasing difficulty for a chance at much better loot rewards. The graphics are extremely colorful, but I can't help but be disappointed that Darkspore won't let me build my own hero critter form the ground up.

If you're trying it out, weigh in in the comments and let us know what you think. Throw your screen name into the mix and team up with other PCG readers!

Street Fighter producer Ono stepping back amid illness

Alienware Alpha revealed, a $550 Steam Machine available this holiday

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The Sunday Video Pwn

The best thing about being a PC gamer is the vast amount of original ideas we get access to.

The best thing about being a PC gamer is the vast amount of original ideas we get access to. Consoles rarely get to experience the joys of a game that's truly original. The likes of World of Goo, Machinarium and Minecraft are experiences that really can only be provided by the PC and its low barrier of entry, allowing riskier IP creation. As such, as PC gamers we can play such insanity as Cargo! - a game involving a severe lack of gravity, numerous geographical landmarks and a race of naked midgets. Just take a look at the trailer; it's as if LSD fumes are being sprayed out of your screen right into your prefrontal cortex. Mental as it appears, it also seems to be packing some fun gameplay, with a Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts style vehicle creation feature. Interested? Grab it from Steam.

Thinking of neat creation features, I found this dragon created in Sporeover on Reddit. It's videos like these that remind me just how good Spore was in its own little way. Granted, it was a huge miss-step as an actual strategy game, but as a creative tool it was sublime. Since Spore was released we've seen a ton of different creatures, but this dragon is one heck of an impressive beast. We can only hope that Spore's creature creator feature will be put to good use in Darkspore, which is set to combine the creative side of Sporewith some much improved action combat mechanics.

In trailers this week, we've got another Duke Nukem Foreverone as the launch date draws ever closer. This one is somewhat of a highlights reel of everything to do with the Duke, featuring blood, pigs, strippers, toilets and remote control cars. It's also completely uncensored, so if you're viewing this on Monday morning at work, be warned: NSFW!

Dead Mage Studio have their first game almost ready to ship. Garshasp: The Monster Slayeris a hack-n-slash in the vein of God of War, but opts for the lesser explored setting of Iranian mythology. Naturally for the genre, plenty of big ugly guys are going to take a sword to the face in elaborate, acrobatic combat. It doesn't appear to break the mould by any means, but the PC doesn't see that many hack-n-slash titles these days so for fans of the genre this may be worth keeping an eye on.

Arma 2 is a favourite at the PCG office, and a new expansion pack is on its way. Good thing too, since Operation Flashpoint: Red River is a bit rubbish, so we need some fresh blood in the military sim genre to keep up occupied. Arma 2: Reinforcements seems to have everything you'd want from an army simulator, including the our British boys and their beaten up Land Rovers. Huzzah!

In other military shooter news, DICE have finally accumulated all the Facebook 'likes' they demanded, and released the commentaryto accompany that twelve minute gameplay trailer.

Some new footage has cropped up for the latest Dungeons & Dragons game: Daggerdale. In this trailer the focus is more on the plot rather than the action, confirming the game actually does have a story. The video would mislead you by not displaying PC as a format, but should this D&D adventure take your fancy, we can confirm that it definitely is headed to the PC.

And finally, in the week where Valve's latest masterpiece has been released, we couldn't finish the Pwn without including some Portal 2 videos. First up, a handy tutorial showing you how to do local splitscreen co-op in Portal 2, enabling you to play the co-op campaign with two players in the same room on the same computer. Genius! Secondly, have you ever wanted all of Cave Johnson's wisdom downloaded straight into your brain? Unfortunately PC Gamer's lab isn't as advanced as Aperture's, but we can provide a video with every Cave quote ever.

GDC 2012: How Harvest Moon almost didn't happen

Alienware's Steam Machine is "Steam ready" but will ship without SteamOS or controller

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Darkspore preview

If Spore is the cartoon you watched as a little kid, then Darkspore is the revamp for teens with edgier characters and flashier graphics.

If Spore is the cartoon you watched as a little kid, then Darkspore is the revamp for teens with edgier characters and flashier graphics. Maxis is venturing into new territory: the action RPG, a far cry from Sims-style gameplay. Darkspore could be thought of as Diablo mixed with Ben 10's interchangeable alien heroes click-clicking through hordes of enemies.

You start off the game by awaking from cryogenic sleep and realize you're one of the last remaining Crogenitors, a gifted race that knows a thing or two about manipulating the ol' double helix. But as Bioshock's splicers will tell you, rearranging DNA never ends well. Instead of singing creepy songs and hanging onto the ceilings of Rapture, in Darkspore, this tinkering of DNA eventually produced the monstrous darkspore, some evil entity spreading its corruption across the universe. It's your job to recruit the help of 100 genetic heroes to suppress the spread of darkspore baddies.

Playing Darkspore will feel instantly familiar if you've played any isometric hack-and-slash game. The holy trinity of tank (or in this case, sentinel), rogue (ravager), and mage (tempest) is here, and loot must be picked up off the ground like candy smashed out of alien piñatas. The twist is that you select three heroes before each level, and are able to switch between them at any time with the Q, W, and E keys.

Heroes come in five different flavors: plasma, bio, necro, quantum, and cyber. You've got to have variety in your team, just like in Pokemon—if you try to fight enemies that share the same type as you, all the damage your hero takes will be doubled. Luckily, you're told what kinds of darkspore populate each level, and you can create three squads that can be swapped between stages. As you kill more and more mutants in the 24 campaign stages (I played the first 10), your Crogenitor level will increase and you'll be able to unlock more from the overwhelming pool of heroes.

When I first started playing, I felt like I was reliving childhood memories of browsing through the Toys-R-Us action figure aisles. A hulking purple skeleton that smashes face with a giant axe? Awesome! Floating tentacle-teeth that shoot black holes which randomly teleport you? Cool! I even quickly grew attached to a favorite hero: Vex the Chrono Shifter, a DPS'er who could freeze and rewind time. Each member of your squad has two active abilities and one global ability that carries over between each hero. One of my favorite combos was having Blitz, the Storm Striker's plasmaball shield combined with Vex's time lapse burst damage. The UI is incredibly clean and easy to understand, and each level has bonus objectives for better chances of rare loot.

But I have to admit that by level 7, I was already burnt out. The graphics and landscapes look amazing, but the levels are utterly boring, and being forced to back-track through an empty dungeon feels as crappy now as it did in 2000. Sure, there are 100 heroes with their own backstories to learn about and collect, but when each of them only has three unique abilities, you've seen all they have to offer in a flash. Darkspore almost forces you to not get attached to one hero: even though I loved using Vex, I could only cast his Chronoblink so many times before I just didn't care anymore. The backstory of the Crogenitors is initially interesting, but when none of the mission levels provide any sense of continuity, interest fades fast. PvP fights are limited to 1v1 or 2v2, and offer some straightforward-but-short-lived fun in a Marvel vs Capcom kind of way.

Boss fights were another big highlight of the gameplay, providing an enticing reward for trapsing through the generic alien landscape that blocks your access to them. All of the bosses I encountered were entertaining, with huge enemies firing projectiles reminiscent of bullet-hell shooters.

So what does all this have to do with the original Spore? Well, that creature creator system that garnered the first game so much attention is back in Darkspore...sort of. Disappointingly, you can't actually create heroes from scratch, but you can customize nearly every facet of the pre-existing ones. Items you "equip" to your heroes are actually spare body parts, so you can customize your favorite heroes for "decked-out warrior" or "minimalistic brawler" looks.

I've compared aspects of Darkspore to some pretty great games—Bioshock, Diablo, Pokemon, Marvel vs Capcom—but right now, the game feels like it's missing something to tie it all together in a unique package. In this closed beta state, Darkspore is flashy and fun at first, but it never quite made me feel that same addictive urge to immediately reopen the game after I closed it to continue my hack-and-slash for loot, like the best dungeon-grinders of yesteryear did.

World of Warcraft Loses Another 800K Subs In Three Months

Alienware's Steam Machine will not be upgradable, new model every 12 months

From the many Steam Machine models unveiled at CES 2014 , Alienware's looked like one of the best.

, Alienware's looked like one of the best. It was less of an eyesore, and Valve's Greg Coomerhimself has said thatit's the machine "we think is actually going to serve the most customers and make the most Steam users happy." I bet these users will be less happy to find out that they can't upgrade Alienware's Steam Machine, which will instead just launch a new model every 12 months.

“There will be no customization options, you can't really update it,” Alienware's General Manager Frank Azor tells TrustedReviews. “Lifecycle wise, consoles update every five, six, seven years, we will be updating our Steam Machines every year.”

The Dell-owned company has yet to release an exact price and system specifications for its Steam Machine, but it did say that it will run on an Intel CPU and an Nvidia GPU, and compete with next-gen console pricing.

As we've noted before, if you like Windows and the option to customize your machine, at that point you might as well buy one of Alienware's small-form-factor X51 machines,which start at $700.

Even Azor agrees with us. “If you actually want to customize your Alienware Steam Machine, maybe change your graphics card out or put in a new CPU, you would be better off with the standard Alienware X51,” he tells TrustedReviews.

Alienware's Steam Machine might be more tempting once we have an official price point, but it needs to be pretty competitive in order to justify not having one of the most compelling aspects of PC gaming: The ability to solve any problem with a component upgrade. Other Steam Machine manufacturers are building systems with full customization in mind, with only a few of the announced systems acting as a console-type appliance.

Win one of 750 Darkspore beta keys

Imagine a co-op action RPG in which you stomp around alien worlds, blasting evil mutants.

Imagine a co-op action RPG in which you stomp around alien worlds, blasting evil mutants. Instead of dropping money and health potions, these mutants shed body parts and genetic material which can then be used to mutate your gangly alien hero into a more deadly fighter. Darkspore has very little to do with the original Life, the Universe and Everything sim, Spore. It's a game about getting together with friends, comparing your creatures and reducing a lot of alien wildlife to mush.

A Darkspore beta is about to kick off this weekend, and we've got 750 keys to give away. Read on to find out how to win.

All you have to do to enter is head over to this siteand enter your details. We'll be awarding the keys on a first come, first served basis. The beta will run from Friday, March 11 from 6pm PT until 11:59pm PT Sunday March 13.

For more on Darkspore, have a read of our preview, and head over to the official Darkspore site.

...

Jump to Section: Best Price Comments Pikmin 2 is the best Nintendo-developed game since Zelda: The Wind Waker. And more than anything since then, it epitomises Nintendo's genius for game design and sheer fun. In short, it's a classic. The first Pikmin was perfectly formed but terribly small. Pikmin 2 fixes everything that was wrong with it, and then some. The 30-day time-limit is gone - although individual

Alienware says its Steam Machine will be its "least profitable" system [Update]

: The original version of this story implied that Alienware wasn't confident in the potential success of Steam Machines as a broader initiative.

: The original version of this story implied that Alienware wasn't confident in the potential success of Steam Machines as a broader initiative. We've since omitted this. We apologize for the error.

Update 2 : Alienware general manager Frank Azor provided the following statement: "Alienware is very optimistic about PC gaming's future and its opportunity to extend to the TV. We have been partners with Valve since the inception of the Steam Machine over 2 years ago. Our decision to invest in developing the purpose-built Alienware Steam Machine, pairing it with incredible performance and pricing it as aggressively as possible has everything to do with how much we believe in this vision and want to see it materialize."

Original: Valve's Steam Machinesare strange beasts. They're PCs running a Valve-specific version of Linux, attached to televisions in the living room and driven by a controller instead of a keyboard and mouse. That's a tough sell for PC gamers, and a big challenge for the hardware companies who will sell the systems, often at low prices so they can compete against the cheaper consoles. Alienware, the Dell-owned gaming PC manufacturer and largest company in the space, definitely understands how tough the marketplace will be. Individually, the company doesn't believe its Steam Machines will be very profitable compared to the profit it nets from its existing desktops and laptops.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Alienware general manager Frank Azor admits that its first Steam Machines will face a tough margin between the cost of manufacturing and their price at retail. "It's going to be very challenging," Azor says. "This will absolutely be the least profitable system we ever sell."

This doesn't mean that Alienware is bearish on the initiative, of course, but why would Alienware expend the time and effort to develop a unique PC suited for the living room if it didn't expect a significant profit per system? According to WSJ, manufacturers are taking the risk because Valve's scale is so massive— 75 million active users, at last count—with potentially more non-PC gamers jumping on the bandwagon through Steam Machines. Telltale Games CEO Dan Connors tells WSJ that PC games represent around 30 percent of the company's revenue, with Steam representing most of that number. If Valve's push into the living room is successful, Alienware could be at the beginning of that success and stand to gain recognition as one of the first or best Steam Machines available.

Alienware and the other Steam Machine manufacturers so far do not have a release date for their machines. We're hoping to hear more on when Valve will consider SteamOS final enough for release at this year's E3.

Darkspore due March 29, new trailer revealed

Darkspore, the new action RPG born out of Spore, is due out on March 29.

Darkspore, the new action RPG born out of Spore, is due out on March 29. For more details and a new trailer, read below.

Darkspore makes the most of Maxis' powerful character creator, first seen in Spore. Here, it is used to create heroes from the body parts players accumulate over the course of the game. The trailer below has Gameplay Engineer Casey Weaver explain just how players can use the Hero Editor to create and modify various creations.

[via Big Download]

Alan Wake PC recoups costs in 2 days

8 amazing remakes of P.T.

Silent Hills' unexpected cancellation means that P.T. is the closest we're currently going to get to Kojima's horror masterpiece. It would undoubtedly have been a 'horror masterpiece', by the way. When P.T. itself was pulled from the PlayStation Store, all traces of this chilling dream was in danger of vanishing forever. The whole situation captured creative gamers' imaginations and resulted in a large

Alienware says its Steam Machine will be its "least profitable" system [Update]

: The original version of this story implied that Alienware wasn't confident in the potential success of Steam Machines as a broader initiative.

: The original version of this story implied that Alienware wasn't confident in the potential success of Steam Machines as a broader initiative. We've since omitted this. We apologize for the error.

Update 2 : Alienware general manager Frank Azor provided the following statement: "Alienware is very optimistic about PC gaming's future and its opportunity to extend to the TV. We have been partners with Valve since the inception of the Steam Machine over 2 years ago. Our decision to invest in developing the purpose-built Alienware Steam Machine, pairing it with incredible performance and pricing it as aggressively as possible has everything to do with how much we believe in this vision and want to see it materialize."

Original: Valve's Steam Machinesare strange beasts. They're PCs running a Valve-specific version of Linux, attached to televisions in the living room and driven by a controller instead of a keyboard and mouse. That's a tough sell for PC gamers, and a big challenge for the hardware companies who will sell the systems, often at low prices so they can compete against the cheaper consoles. Alienware, the Dell-owned gaming PC manufacturer and largest company in the space, definitely understands how tough the marketplace will be. Individually, the company doesn't believe its Steam Machines will be very profitable compared to the profit it nets from its existing desktops and laptops.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Alienware general manager Frank Azor admits that its first Steam Machines will face a tough margin between the cost of manufacturing and their price at retail. "It's going to be very challenging," Azor says. "This will absolutely be the least profitable system we ever sell."

This doesn't mean that Alienware is bearish on the initiative, of course, but why would Alienware expend the time and effort to develop a unique PC suited for the living room if it didn't expect a significant profit per system? According to WSJ, manufacturers are taking the risk because Valve's scale is so massive— 75 million active users, at last count—with potentially more non-PC gamers jumping on the bandwagon through Steam Machines. Telltale Games CEO Dan Connors tells WSJ that PC games represent around 30 percent of the company's revenue, with Steam representing most of that number. If Valve's push into the living room is successful, Alienware could be at the beginning of that success and stand to gain recognition as one of the first or best Steam Machines available.

Alienware and the other Steam Machine manufacturers so far do not have a release date for their machines. We're hoping to hear more on when Valve will consider SteamOS final enough for release at this year's E3.

Darkspore beta key giveaway!

What would it look like if Diablo was rocketed into space and populated by aliens?

What would it look like if Diablo was rocketed into space and populated by aliens? We want to give you a chance to find out with a key for Darkspore's closed beta! The codes give you access to every beta event, the first of which starts tomorrow!

UPDATE: We've selected all of the winners and will be sending out the beta codes this afternoon! We'll be giving away thousands of more codes over the course of the beta period, so if you didn't get one this time, stay tuned!

Friday, Feb. 11th from 6pm PT until 11:59pm PT Saturday, Feb 12th Friday, Feb. 18th from 6pm PT until 11:59pm PT Saturday, Feb 19th Friday, Feb. 25th from 6pm PT until 11:59pm PT Sunday, Feb 27th Friday, March 4th from 6pm PT until 11:59pm PT Sunday, March 6th Friday, March 11th from 6pm PT until 11:59pm PT Sunday, March 13th

Beta access includes both the campaign and multiplayer, where you can play as countless creatures and swap between a set of three on the fly. We'll have a large preview of the game online next week, but for now, you can see for yourself what you think of the game. You know you want to see it before everyone else does...e-mail us now!

Plextor's new M7e PCIe M.2 SSD hits 1400 MB/s reads at CES

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Darkspore co-op trailer features team tactics and magma monsters

The latest Darkspore trailer gives us an advanced look at the four player co-op mode.

The latest Darkspore trailer gives us an advanced look at the four player co-op mode. In Darkspore each player can control a different class of creature, and can mutate and evolve their monster to make them more devastating in combat. In co-op, these abilities can be combined to lay waste to hordes of mutant Darkspore creatures. The video features plenty of mutant xenos getting space-blasted and a giant angry magma boss creature tearing up the landscape, you'll find it embedded below.

For more information in the evolutionary action RPG, check out the Darksporesite. If you're interested in playing the game before release, Maxis are still looking for beta testers. Here's the video.

Want Silent Hills: A Hideo Kojima Game? Here's a chance to tell Konami.

It's tough to imagine Silent Hill(s) was left off the " Konami heritage games survey " by mistake - especially when one of its options is Sunset "Bury Me With My Money" Riders. You can still fix that oversight yourself, even if it probably isn't worth much more than a bitter laugh. For every franchise you're familiar with, the survey asks how interested you'd be in "playing a new launched version"

Origin packs desktop Core i7 CPUs into new EON17-X and EON15-X laptops

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Darkspore taking open beta sign ups

Darkspore is the spiritual successor to the cutesy evolution sim Spore.

Darkspore is the spiritual successor to the cutesy evolution sim Spore. It's a Diablo style hack and slash game that lets you fight with a character customised using an enhanced version of Spore's fantastic creature creator, grafting living weapons and armour enhancements onto your creature as you find them. It's also launching and open beta, and is looking for people to sign up.

The mutated forces of Darkspore have overrun the galaxy, now it's down to you to save the universe by blasting the evil mutants back to their spawning pits. There's a four player co-op mode which asks players to mix and match their weapons and evolutionary traits to make the most devastating team possible. Each hero character has their own unique brace of special abilities, and can be customised in different ways as you level up, letting you take on even more powerful Darkspore and gain even more powerful weapons until you've successfully evolved into the most dangerous creatures in the galaxy.

If you fancy giving the game a shot, head over to the official Darkspore siteand click the 'Beta Sign Up' button on the right. You'll be asked to give your name and email address and EA will make contact later with first details of how to get onto the beta. Spore's amazing character creator always had tremendous potential, it'll be interesting to see how it's put to use in an action game. The game's due out in February 2011, here's a trailer showing some of the bug splattering action.

The lost Kojima games we'll never play

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Darkspore: home of lava-fisted space-Pokémon

Years ago, master game designer Will Wright's powerful brain turned its lobes to the subject of evolution, and Spore was born.

Years ago, master game designer Will Wright's powerful brain turned its lobes to the subject of evolution, and Spore was born. Its incredibly powerful creature creator amazed us, but the mini-games that progressed you through the game's evolutionary stages failed to rope seasoned gamers. In hindsight, the current minds at Maxis understand that they'd made more of a toy than a game. So they've taken the best bits of Spore(the technology) and attached it to a game mechanic everyone loves: punching things to produce gold— or DNA, in this case. Maxis is making Spore-Diablo, which it's dubbed Darkspore.

“We're real, hardcore gamers. We love to play a lot of different kinds of PC games,” says Mike Perry, Darkspore executive producer. “We saw those tools we created for Spore and found them really inspiring. So we asked ourselves: what if we could take those tools and apply them to a core PC action game? What if you could play in co-op battles against an army of NPCs?”

You'd have an online, four-player, coop-focused dungeon-crawler, is what. Perry's team is very clear that Darkspore will be a different experience from its source material. “It's not a sequel to Spore. It's not a spin-off. It's a new game that uses the DNA of Spore to create a multiplayer online action game.”

Space Pokémon

The core concepts are lifted fromDiablo: loot, an isometric perspective and cooldowns tied to your combat abilities. TheSporetwist on that gameplay is that you manage a team of “genetic heroes,” taking three at a time to a planet to recover DNA (your currency for purchasing more heroes) and do battle with piles of varied aliens.

The level Perry's crawling over is a fragmented asteroid connected by bridges made of light. His three-creature squad is a grasshopper-like “Bio Tempest” gunner, a magma-skinned “Plasma Sentinel” brawler and a teleporting, stabby “Quantum Ravager” with blades on his hands. In Diablo terms, these are comparable to a mage, tank and rogue. Perry plays as only one at a time, but like in the action/side-scroller Trine, with a push of a button he can instantaneously swap between them using an ability with a short cooldown.

Perry is fighting a range of minions— enemies that range from hovering, prickly space pinecones to menacing blue ogres. A few of them have unique behaviors, like a pack of robotic enemies he stumbles on that tries to repair their fallen brethren whenever one is smacked to pieces. He uses that trait against them, waiting for the tiny droids to group up on a repair, then lays down a splashy area-of-effect fire punch ability with his Plasma Sentinel to wipe them all out at once. Clearing a room with a fireball feels great.

But interestingly, unlike Spore, these characters aren't entirely handmade— in Darkspore, you recruit your squad from a set of “hundreds” of premade creatures, then tack on hundreds of pieces of loot— including armor, shoulder pads, wings or gauntlets—to boost their stats and round out their combat personality. It's alien warrior dress-up. Spore's creature creator tech, however, is still intact in this part of character customization—the dev team shows me that you can free-adjust, resize, recolor, and even apply animated textures (like a glowing, magenta magma skin) to your gear. The same idea applies to enemies: they're premade, but there are heaps of them, all guided by a system similar to Left 4 Dead's AI director that will dynamically manage the type and count of enemies you'll have to mash.

That's good—but it didn't hide how dull Darkspore's environments felt. We wandered from symmetrical platters of open terrain, bare spaces that lacked the sense of discovery we're used to in most dungeon- crawlers. I'm concerned that the character-swapping mechanic will make combat feel less grounded, too. There's a looseness and sense of non-attachment to your character when you and three co-op partners each have a trio of heroes to alternate between. But we remain excited about its potential in a way we might not be for, say, Spore 2.

This Silent Hills music parody feels your pain (and sets it to Gotye)

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Command "genetic heroes" in Darkspore

EA have announced Darkspore.

EA have announced Darkspore. What the hell is Darkspore? It's an action game where you play with five of the creature creator monsters, do a little bit of the genetic min-maxing from the first game, and you don't have to spend countless yawnsome hours bobbling around in space. This blog post is now a trailer.

The titular Darkspore is your nemesis in what Maxis are calling an "online action roleplaying game." Whether it's online in the way its predecessor was, in that bits and bobs of your friends' games would populate your own universe, or if you'll actually be screaming down a microphone at people, remains to be seen. You'll be upgrading five 'genetic heroes' with all sorts of darwinian kneecaps and ankle tubes to give them a combat advantage, and given that they keep saying "action RPG," there might even be a horde-stomping, gene-looting side to it.

Aaaaaaaand screens .

Basically, Spore now has a decent design concept - although I'd rather they'd kept with the civilisation thing and just made it more chaotic and fun. What do you think?

Of course people are already selling PS4s with P.T on Ebay

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EA CEO Andrew Wilson wants to treat Star Wars games like Batman Arkham series

Since Electronic Arts and Disney agreed last year to team up and produce games in the Star Wars universe, we've haven't heard much about what they have in mind other than a new take on Battlefront .

. Now a new interview with EA CEO Andrew Wilsonat CNN Moneymakes it clear the publisher plans to go its own way, rather than tie its games to the stories being developed for the next set of Star Wars films.

Wilson points directly at another iconic, imaginative universe as an example of how EA will work to interpret Star Wars: the Batman Arkham series from Rocksteady Studios and Warner Bros.

"What Warner Bros. did with Batman was take the core roots of that IP and manifest that inside the walls of Gotham City and delivered an interactive experience that had real ties to what you would see in the films and what you had read in the comics, while having its own life because it could provide such deep and more immersive storylines," Wilson says. "When we look at the Star Wars properties that's how we're looking at it. We're not trying to build a game that replicates the storyline of any particular film."

Much like Batman, Star Wars is often characterized as much by some of its films' off-key characters and strange moments as by its epic, genre-defining take on science fiction. What the Arkham seriesdoes so well is to decide on what the central experience of the Batman character is—stealth, fluid combat, and gadgets—and focus on making its interpretation a whole lot of fun to play. It doesn't matter that the games exist on their own rather than being linked explicitly to any particular film version of Batman. With that in mind, I look forward to seeing what EA has in store for us as it decides what "the core roots" of Star Wars are going forward.

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Stabbing through Killzone 2

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Gamasutra contributing editor Kris Ligman presses Volition creative director Steve Jaros for the real

story behind the Saints Row IV 's recently released 'Enter The Dominatrix' DLC, which began life as a Saints Row the Third expansion pack and ended as a work in experimental interactive cinema. Gamasutra: So let's get this cleared up right from the start: how did 'Enter the Dominatrix' start, which game was it meant to be part of, and how did it get to be a Saints Row IV DLC?

The experimental art house antics of Saints Row IV 's 'Enter the Dominatrix'

Steve Jaros: Okay, this is actually really fucking complicated.

So, ‘Enter the Dominatrix’ started as DLC for Saints Row the Third . It was a kind of expansion pack that we wanted to go and do. And while that was happening, we were working on Saints Row IV . And we realized we had basically everybody working on those two things and no one was working on other stuff, so we killed Saints Row 3.5 , which was going to be a bridge between The Third and IV . We shoved some of 3.5 into IV and killed the rest of it, looked at what was left behind and used that stuff for the theme of our first DLC pack, which was ‘Enter the Dominatrix’.

So it started as an expansion pack, it became DLC, there were a whole lot of messy things that happened in the middle, and the next thing you know you have a reality show and the soda can prop and the raptors.

It's interesting to look at the final result, because EtD wears its rough edges with pride, I would say. It is very much aware of its own muddy history and looks and acts like an internal design document sometimes. And in that fact it’s really showing the average player something that actually happens all the time in game development, but which the player rarely gets to see: all these different evolutionary paths a game could have taken. What drove the studio’s decision to release it this way?

SJ: Because Saints Row is a comedy game it affords us the ability to operate without boundaries. So it was just kind of a fun way to go and address some of the players’ questions about what happened with 3.5 , for instance.

The things in ‘Enter the Dominatrix’ were, obviously, touched up. We’re not just going to go and ship something that was two, three years old. But the spirit of it remains true. Donnie, for instance, was indeed the hero of EtD. The entire game was about Donnie’s journey. Donnie was Morpheus, teaching and training you, helping you through these scenarios. And Lin was in it. There are a bunch of things that were very different. For the DLC, clearly it was impractical for all the cutscenes to play out how we’d originally conceived them, so we had the interview section of Donnie complaining that he got cut, and so on. It was a fun way, in the end, to revisit what we did before, show a bit of how the sausage is made, while still making it new and interesting.



Speaking of sausage making, that was one of the more charming aspects of the DLC for me: when you use animatics (animated storyboards) in place of some full-motion cutscenes. Were those actual internal sketches, or created specifically for this DLC?

SJ: Oh, those were created just for this! That was just us having fun. It speaks to truths, of things that happened, of course, but we put our own spin on it to have a little bit more fun with presentation. No one wants to see monochromatic people in T-pose sliding around, it doesn’t really work [for an audience], but if you add a little more whimsy, some colorful pictures, it makes it a little more palpable.

How about the DLC’s framing device, the behind-the-scenes featurette-styled interviews? When and how did that come about?

SJ: We were looking at what we had and asked ourselves: what is the methodology for introducing this stuff that ‘used to be’ but ‘isn’t now’?

In my mind there wasn’t a really good way for us to incorporate this and have it be a part of the main story. Particularly because we were taking the highlighted moments [of the initial planned expansion pack] and tweaking them around a little bit. We were distilling down to the exciting stuff, cutting away the boring things, and having it be this confessional, an opportunity to go and play, to joke about things that used to be or didn’t necessarily happen. It creates a whole lot of opportunities for stories and more whimsy, which I’m a fan of, in general, in my life. I want more mirth.

It’s also, perhaps inadvertently, reminiscent of this growing trend in games to offer audio commentary modes and other behind-the-scenes features. Did you ever entertain the idea of going completely outside the fourth wall and address players as the developers?

SJ: You know, it’s weird. We talk about that every once in a while, because we think it’d be really fun. It just never ended up happening or we didn’t have enough time to go and do it. I also question who would want to hear me drone on and on. But it is interesting, and there are a lot of fun stories that come up when you’re in development -- sometimes truth is stranger than fiction like that.

In my view the DLC is very experimental, in the way we call some films experimental. The defining moment for me was the live-action puppetry you use in place of a cutscene, filmed with a soda can and a toy spaceship. Part of it, I imagine, was for reasons of budget, but was there more to it?

SJ: We actually did a prototype of that cutscene with some of our fans here, puppets and everything. In the end [rather than model it in the game engine] we decided to actually go and film it like that. I sort of wish we went with something more in keeping with their original prototype, with a Coke can they had colored over in purple and stuff -- it was hilarious -- but it would have been recreating something that had been made in earnest, you know?



I follow you. So, looking forward, there’s another Saints Row IV story DLC on the way, ‘How the Saints Saved Christmas’...

SJ: Oh, man. This is my favorite fucking thing that I have ever written. It will be experimental as well, but not in the way that ‘Enter the Dominatrix’ is.

The way I would put it is to think about the genre that we’re trying to play with. ‘Enter the Dominatrix’ was a DVD feature. You have storyboards, behind-the-scenes commentary, interviews, deleted scenes, unfinished assets, and all that plays into those conventions. ‘How the Saints Saved Christmas’ is a Christmas story, and as a result there are conventions and moments that are tied to that, and that is what we’re celebrating.

It literally is Saints Row as a Christmas parable. That opens up so many wonderful, stupid things that are just a joy. We’re like giddy children over here. Working with the actors on it has been like constant evil giggles.

There is one part of it I can talk about, because we didn’t end up using it. It kind of speaks to the way that we looked at it. With sincere earnestness, we investigated doing something in claymation, like, can we have it feel like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer ? The answer was no -- we couldn’t do it for the budget, it wasn’t feasible. But that was the sort of thing that we looked at. You'll see it soon.

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Fallout 4 will have no level cap and no hard finish

For many players, one of the gravest failings of Fallout 3 was that once it was over, it was over.

was that once it was over, it was over. Having saved the world from almost certain doom, players couldn't wander back into the wasteland to horse around at their leisure. Same deal with New Vegas: If you didn't do all your exploring before the grand finale, you were out of luck unless you loaded up a pre-endgame save. But Bethesda says that won't be the case with Fallout 4.

"To fans who’ve asked: Fallout 4 doesn’t end when the main story is and over and there is no level cap," Bethesda tweeted earlier today. "You can keep playing and leveling."

To our fans who’ve asked: Fallout 4 doesn’t end when the main story is over and there is no level cap. You can keep playing and leveling. August 6, 2015

Being open-ended is cool, but the lack of a level capis a surprise. Fallout 3 had a cap of 20, which could be boosted to 30 through the Broken Steel expansion. New Vegas peaked at 30 out of the box and could be pushed up as high as 50 via the four DLC releases, which increase the max by five levels each. Without that limit, I would think that Bethesda is opening the door to some potentially dicey balance issues. After all, scaling enemies will only go so far before they start to seem weird.

We'll see soon enough: Fallout 4 will be out on November 10.

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See the Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare multiplayer reveal here, at 6pm BST

Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare is the latest game in the cult Call of Duty series.

Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare is the latest game in the cult Call of Duty series. Among its small band of dedicated followers, some will no doubt be mildly interested in the upcoming shooter's online multiplayer offering. Okay, now read that sentence again, this time replacing "cult" with "gargantuan", "small band" with "vast army", "some" with "many", and "mildly interested in" with "positively kicking their way past small animals and children in a rabid attempt to find any information about".

For all its many faults, new information about the series is a Big Deal. It's fitting, then, that Gamescom 2014 is kicking off with a Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare multiplayer reveal event. It's due start soon, at 6pm BST, 7pm CET, 10am PDT or 1pm EDT. You can see the full thing here.

Yes, men will be shot, but the more vital question is: will there be a robo-dog kill-streak reward? Tune in to find out.