Wildstar could be coming to Steam as a free-to-play game

Cheerful MMO Wildstar could be coming to Steam, and could be free-to-play if it does.

be free-to-play if it does. That's a lot of coulds for one news story, but that's because this information is being pulled from changes to the Steam database—as caught by SteamDB. It's unconfirmed, but certainly possible.

The SteamDB entry lists the billing type as "Free on Demand"—the same status given to Steam's other free-to-play games. It suggests Wildstar's eventual future isn't as a Guild Wars 2-style "buy-to-play" release.

Wildstar isn't even a year old yet, but a free-to-play switch certainly isn't outside of the realms of possibility. It's struggled to attract new players, or even maintain its original playerbase. NCSoft's recent first-quarter earnings callmade for grim listening, with Wildstar bringing in just a quarter of the revenue of the publisher's second-lowest performing game, Lineage II, between January and March 2015.

Warhammer 40K: Eternal Crusade devs discuss the evolution of their ambitious online shooter

There’s no shortage of Warhammer 40,000 games right now.

This article was originally published in PC Gamer issue 292 . For more quality articles about all things PC gaming, you can subscribe now in the UK and the US .

There’s no shortage of Warhammer 40,000 games right now. At one end, you’ve got the game that graces our cover this month, and at the other you’ve got 40K games as obscure as chess-alike Regicide. Eternal Crusade is an ambitious foray into massively online shooter territory that’s currently in Early Access, and has been worked on by Behaviour Interactive, founded by former members of Age of Conan team Funcom. It looks like a pretty convincing facsimile of the 40K universe, like a slightly nicer version of Relic’s Space Marine, even though as a shooter it feels like there’s a long way to go to completion.

Eternal Crusade’s senior producer Nathan Richardson and its lead game designer Brent Ellison, sat down with me at the PC Gamer Weekender to talk about their game’s origins and how they’re replicating certain elements of the tabletop game.

“We started on a concept doc back at Funcom in 2013,” says Ellison. “Then at one point our executive moved over to Behaviour and took the project with him, and started it up from there. We started with an early prototype and got some stuff up and running very quickly, and that was when the project was announced and the deals were signed and everything like that.”

A change in game engine helped the project’s evolution. “We switched over to Unreal 4 at the beginning of 2015, which is the point where we revisited the scope of the game and focused it more,” Richardson recalls.

Originally billed as an MMORPG, the game now seems to more resemble a large-scale online shooter with MMO elements attached. “We call ourselves a massive online shooter,” Richardson says. “ I think it’s a term that’s coming up that you can apply to Division, Destiny and stuff like that, which are not quite MMOs. They’re big, massive online games, so we’re in that category and have many similarities. But we thought we need to get that core shooter experience nailed down first, because anything we put on top is just useless, unless it’s fun to run around and shoot.”

With that in mind, the team’s first move was to set up a form of playable prototype of the game for Warhammer 40K fans to try. “We started with a founders programme, where they started playing the game last summer in June, and that was about 25,000 people. The philosophy is we want players in as soon as possible to get feedback and evolve the direction of the game. We were looking for the fun in the shooter, and us locked in a room in Montreal is not the best way to do that.”

“Particularly with a game where it needs 30 people to play it properly,” adds Ellison. “Being able to get good iteration internally on something like that? You can’t do it. You need people playing the game.”

Early Access has proved a good match for Behaviour—the team had already built seven iterations of the melee system at the time I spoke to them and clearly they’re soldiering on until their audience is satisfied that the right systems are in place.

“Basically we knew we wanted to make a 40K game in an [online] space, and so that was the starting point,” Ellison says. “And our guiding philosophy has always been that you’re one of the guys on the tabletop.” It certainly feels like there’s a scale to Eternal Crusade that I’ve not seen in other shooters set in the 40K universe—from my brief hands-on, the maps seem huge, and are built to support vehicles, too.

“Right now we have 60-person matches,” Ellison tells me. “The 30-person maps, that’s 15v15. Most of the time you’ll be playing on those. The 30v30 maps are these epic siege events where you roll out the Vindicator, blast down the doors, and defenders up on the walls actually have a limited number of reinforcements and are trying to stay alive while the attackers are just throwing their bodies at them. Those we’re going to be testing a lot to make sure we’ve achieved the right scale. But our goal is to make it feel like the game. If you play a game like Battlefront… Battlefront actually reduced the number of players from Battlefield. But they feel much bigger than the battles in Battlefield 4. That’s what we’d like to achieve, we want to have battles that feel absolutely enormous and appropriate for the 40K universe.”

I like the concept and certainly want to see a 40K shooter that can achieve the feel of something like Battlefield, but the quality of the melee combat and shooting is where it feels like Eternal Crusade needs the most work. Based on the few games I’ve played, both currently fall short of The Division and Destiny in providing instantly satisfying feedback to the player. Early Access gives Behaviour the chance to fix that.

Star Wars Galaxies fans strike back

It appears some Star Wars Galaxies players aren't taking the news of their MMO's imminent destruction well. Although many have no doubt come to terms with Sony and LucasArts' decision to end the eight-year MMO on December 15th, thousands of fans havestarted petitioning Sony to keep the gamealive as a free-to-play title, while others are going so far as threatening legal action. “We, the subscriber

Wildstar: Invasion Nexus update released

Clothes or Fighting?

Clothes or Fighting? In many respects, they're the two sides of the MMO coin. Wildstar's latest update caters to both. There's a new 20-person, single boss raid instance, a Level-50 Contracts system and a new Level-50 zone for the fight-fans. For the clothing inclined? A new Holo-Wardrobe system and personal pets.

Naturally, there also a video, designed to highlight how players can now get dressed and/or punch things.

It's possible the update also contains things not relating to clothing or fighting. Stuff like optimisation improvements and an overhauled objective tracking system. To be sure, you'd better visit the Invasion Nexus release poston the Wildstar website.

Wildstar: Invasion Nexus is now live in-game.

Learn the future of WH40K: Eternal Crusade at the PC Gamer Weekender

The PC Gamer Weekender has fallen to the might of Warhammer.

has fallen to the might of Warhammer. In addition to getting your claws on Total War: Warhammer almost two months early, you can hear about the future of Warhammer 40,000 MMO shooter Eternal Crusade direct from the developers.

Senior producer Nathan Richardsson and lead designer Brent Ellison will be on-stage to present the game in its current Early Access incarnation and dish out the details on the as-yet-unseen updates that will come to Eternal Crusade in the months ahead.

There's bloody competition among Warhammer games at the moment, so expect them to be on form, delving into the design philosophy behind the creation of a persistent, territorial shooter on a scale that befits its namesake.

Should you desire still more insight into the unknowable minds of developers, we're pleased to say that Divinity: Original Sin's Swen Vincke will take the stage to talk about its sequel, Paradox will be on-hand to show off Stellaris' most complete build yet, and the HTC Vive will be yours to try out*.

The Weekender takes place March 5-6 at the Old Truman Brewery in London. We've got tickets right here, at 20% off with the code PCG20 .

*We reserve the right to drag you kicking and screaming from your virtual reality paradise to let other people have a go.

Star Wars Galaxies: New dungeon revealed

The online universe of Star Wars Galaxies: An Empire Divided is soon to get another update in the form of The Corellian Corvette. As fans of the movies will know, the Corellian Corvette is Princess Leia's spaceship that you see at the very beginning of the original Star Wars movie. In Galaxies, it presents the first space-based adventure for the online community to enjoy and features nine possible

Wildstar's customisation update will add pets

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MMO-ish WH40K: Eternal Crusade hits Early Access

Furthering the Warhammer franchise's conquest of every genre in the universe, the MMO-ish, third-person shooter-y Warhammer 40K: Eternal Crusade has marched into Early Access , where it aims to remain for "a number of months".

In that time it will add "character progression, the strategic layer and territorial conquest", which, as I understand it, is the bulk of the game. Eternal Crusadeis split into two sections: up to 30 vs. 30 PvP between the Orks, Eldar, Space Marines and their goth cousins, the outcome of which persists to give a semblance of overall territorial control, and five-player PvE against Tyranids that attack en masse. Over time, the game is set to develop into a true open world á la Planetside 2.

For now, it's about getting to grips with basic combat between the Space Marines and Chaos Marines. Steam reviews suggest that much is on point.

You've heard of Monaco right? The game caused a huge stir in 2010 when it won the Grand Prize and the

Excellence in Design award at the IGF, despite having only started life a couple of months before the competition's entry deadline. Shortly afterwards, the game's developer Pocketwatch Games -- aka all-round nice guy Andy Schatz -- moved into the shadows to more privately concentrate on his stealth-based co-op title.

Doing stealth the Monaco way

Shortly afterwards, the game's developer Pocketwatch Games -- aka all-round nice guy Andy Schatz -- moved into the shadows to more privately concentrate on his stealth-based co-op title. Now, following successful public showings and the start of a closed beta period, Schatz is gearing up to show the world the fruits of his last few years of labor.

With so much experience working on a stealth game now under his belt, Schatz is more than happy to share his findings -- although the revelation that he has never played any of the Deus Ex games, nor any of the Metal Gear s, will surely see him being burned at the video game stake.

"I've actually missed out on many of the games in the stealth canon," he admits, "but their influence permeates our industry. The question marks over the heads of the guards in Monaco clearly come from the genetic history of stealth games, even if I don't specifically recall being inspired by MGS ."

According to Schatz, there are two major types of stealth game, and it's important to know which you're aiming for: stealth puzzle games, and open-ended stealth simulations.

"Of the stealth puzzle games, I've always felt Hitman succeeds best in making the player feel smart when they discover the almost impossibly convoluted solutions to their Silent Assassin rating," he says. "The feeling of solving those missions is almost the same as some of the harder puzzles back in the old Sierra days."

The rest of the simulation elements of Hitman , however, don't do anything for the Monaco dev. Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood , on the other hand, "succeeds incredibly well as an open-ended 'stealth' game that truly gives the thrill and fear of playing a real like game of hide-and-seek. I can't think of any other game that allows for as human a competition inside a fully formed gameworld (aside from perhaps SpyParty !)"

Balancing is a seriously tricky business when it comes to stealth-based action, and Schatz knows this all too well. While he is looking to encourage players to use stealth and careful planning in Monaco , he acknowledges that a lot of leeway is required from the get-go.

"The early levels of Monaco are actually quite forgiving in this regard," he adds. "We found that the hardest teaching challenge that we faced was that players didn't know how to escape from guards once they were caught. So in the first fifth of the game, we don't punish the player too heavily for it."

He continues, "The guards in this early ramp-up period don't have guns, so while they are a threat, the player almost always can find a way to escape. But once we introduce guards with guns, dogs that track your scent, and turret that fire instantly upon tripping security, we clearly ask the player to watch their step a little more closely."

This balancing act has also caused Schatz to remove entire portions of the game, in order to strip the experience down to just the elements that work.

"The biggest one was a cops vs robbers mode," he explains. "We discovered, after implementing it, that adding a player controlled cop to the existing AI of a level forced us to deal with game balance, which in a single-sided co-op game, doesn't matter as much. In order to keep that mode, we were going to have to build entirely new levels in order to support it. I'd still like to do it at some point in the future, because the act of playing detective and trying to pick up clues about the whereabouts of the enemy was really fun."

For other devs out there who are planning to implement stealth-based play into their games, Schatz suggests looking at the style of choices you are providing players with.

"One of the things I think Mark of the Ninja does really well (and Monaco does relatively well) is that all the information and choices presented to the player are state-based," he notes. "They are digital choices, not analog."

"Players tend to have a hard time making choices based upon a range of values, but if you give them the choice of A, B, or C, they have a much easier time strategizing about the optimal path forwards. Analog values like lighting conditions are usually bad, but digital choices like 'light OR shadow' are good."

Carbine reveals Wildstar's 2015 roadmap

Let's check in with Wildstar—an MMO that, despite being pretty damn good , has struggled to maintain a regular post-launch update schedule.

, has struggled to maintain a regular post-launch update schedule. Despite the problems developer Carbine has faced, last week the studio published their plans for 2015.

"Even though it took some doing," writes Wildstar's product director Mike Donatelli, "Carbine was able to transition from a launch studio to a live studio. Why is that important? It’s important because we’ve learned a lot and nailed down the processes that will help us deliver solid high-quality updates."

Donatelli says the following features will be arriving in the first half of the year:

We will be adding lots of solo and group content to the game, including new Shiphands, Adventures and dungeons. We are focusing on revamping our customization systems and adding new ways for players to add personality to their characters. We are improving the Elder game experience, offering players lots of opportunities to find new and exciting loot!

As for the MMO's next update, it's called the Protogames Initiative, and will feature the following:

Protogames Academy – a training dungeon to prepare lower level players for telegraphs, interrupt armor, and boss mechanics. Ultimate Protogames – an exciting new dungeon for upper level players. They Came from Fragment Zero! – a level 6 shiphand that introduces players to group gameplay at a much earlier level. LFG upgrades – currently, some shiphands, adventures, and dungeons are intentionally hidden or need to be unlocked. Unfortunately, this keeps many players out of the content. Moving forward, all of this content will be added to an expanded LFG tool. Datascape 20 – the 40-person dungeon wasn’t getting played as often as we hoped. Not only was the content challenging, but roster management was painful. In the next update we will lower the player requirement down to 20.

Donatelli says that all upcoming updates are based on player feedback and activity. Looking further ahead, he talks about tweaking many of the existing systems around levelling and end game. To see all of the planned features and changes, head to full post on the Wildstar blog.

Warhammer 40,000: Eternal Crusade is coming to Early Access

It was a little shy of three years ago that the third-person MMO Warhammer 40,000: Eternal Crusade was announced with a scheduled launch date (well, year) of 2015.

with a scheduled launch date (well, year) of 2015. That didn't happen, although we did get to see some gameplay footagethanks to a brief trailer that came out last November. But today developer Behavior Interactive announced that the game will soon go live on Steam Early Access.

“We are now preparing to fully move over to the Early Access program on Steam, where you can easily get into our Closed Alpha with all the payment options they offer and the ease of use of the Steam platform,” the studio said. “We‘ll be communicating more about our Early Access launch in the coming weeks and our servers will of course remain open.”

The move to Early Access means that the homegrown Founders Program, which offers three different packs available for prices ranging from $40 to $120, will close on January 25, after which the regular release pricing will kick in. Specifics about the standard purchase price(s) are yet to be revealed.

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 coming to PS Plus next week

Sony has just issued the latest details about what's in store for PlayStation Plus subscribers, and among the discounts and specials, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 will be available as a free download. Regular PS3 users will have to wait longer for their chance to get it, and, of course, won't get it for free. It's part of Sega's continuing Genesis Collection rollout on the PS3, bringing classic first-party

Wildstar 'Drop 3' update released

Last week , I was all, "Wildstar's long-awaited third content drop is ... out next week, on 11 November." It's now 12 November.

, I was all, "Wildstar's long-awaited third content drop is ... out next week, on 11 November." It's now 12 November. Is WIldstar's long-awaited third content drop out? It is, yes.

That means players now have access to a new zone, The Defile, and a new solo story, Journey Into OmniCore-1. You can find more about both through these informative pamphletstrailers.

Want to get down to the nitty-gritty details? Here are the full patch notes.

Try the HTC Vive at the PC Gamer Weekender

You can be among the first to get hands-on with HTC’s Vive, powered by GeForce GTX, at the PC Gamer Weekender in London March 5/6.

in London March 5/6. The headset, a collaboration between HTC and Valve, will be available for purchase from April for $799.

Showcased throughout the two days of the PC Gamer Weekender, you'll have the opportunity to get hands on with the HTC Vive Consumer Edition and experience what it's like to be fully immersed in a virtual environment while playing games. As well as a headset, which boasts two screens (1080x1200 resolution) streaming data at high refresh rates (90Hz) to create the sense of 3D virtual reality, the Vive gives a full body VR experience, with sensor array mounted wand-shaped controllers for superior positional tracking, and laser-emitting base stations for a quicker and more accurate experience.

Come and try it out at the PC Gamer Weekender at The Old Truman Brewery in London on 5-6 March. Day tickets are just £14.99, and you can save an extra 20% using our special discount code PCG20 when you book.

Sonic 2 HD fan remake teaser whets our appetite

The logo of this fan-made game alone is cooler than any sort of official project that Sega has ever attempted. In other words, we're already sold. Sonic the Hedgehog 2 HD is an ambitious idea from a group of die-hard Sonic fans. These are fans who just want what the rest of us have been asking for for years - a totally remade version of the classic 'Sonic 2' Genesis game. We don't need fancy new power

Modder is restoring original Resident Evil voices to HD remake

The voice acting in the original Resident Evil is famously awful, as this torturous 11-minute "Voice Acting Horror" video , courtesy of YouTube user gamegoonie, makes painfully clear.

, courtesy of YouTube user gamegoonie, makes painfully clear. In that light it's hardly surprising that Capcom elected to record a revised script and new cast for the recently-released remake. But there may yet be hope for those of you who, for whatever reason, would prefer to stick with the old cheese.

A Resident Evil Modding forumuser by the name of Bunny revealed over the weekend that he's working on a mod that will replace the new voices with the "legendary" voice acting from the original. He's got five rooms done so far, and said he's working on finishing as many others as he can.

It's a tricky job, as other forum users have pointed out, since there are new scenes that aren't in the original game, and of course not everything is going to match up perfectly. But he's posted a couple of videos of his efforts on YouTube (one of them playing above, the other here), and they are glorious . I'm not sure I'd want to play the whole game like this, but I love the idea that it might be possible.

Scan brings the VRX Racing simulator to the PC Gamer Weekender

It's not all fun and games at the PC Gamer Weekender .

. Actually, it kind of is, but if you want to take a break from playing unreleased games and seeing talks presented by world class developers from all over the world, you can stop by Scan's retail zone to grab some deals on hardware, and try out the cool toy they're bringing

The full-motion VRX Racing Simulator is a beautiful monster. The chair, wheel and pedals are secured to a carbon fiber chassis. Three screens under a glare-eliminating canopy show the action, and a surround sound system gets you close to the roar of the engines. Unless you have $22,000 and a spare room, it's a rare chance to experience this rig.

Alternatively, if you're looking for a deal, Scan are bringing a huge selection of components from Asus and EVGA and game recording solutions from Elgato as well as the latest NVIDIA GeForce cards and Shield gaming tablets.

That's just a fraction of what you can do at the PC Gamer Weekender. Here are ten reasonswhy you should come on down to the Old Truman Brewery on March 5/6. You can use the code PCG20 to knock 20% off the standard ticket price on this here booking page.

Game music of the day: Sonic the Hedgehog 2

Welcome to GamesRadar's daily blast of all things pertaining to the ever-growing field of game music. Each post will introduce new sounds, games, composers and fan-made remixes of gaming's greatest aural achievements. July 9, 2010 Game: Sonic the Hedgehog 2 Song: Aquatic Ruin Zone Composer: Masato Nakamura Above: Aquatic Ruin Zone from Sonic 2 Long before the Sonic series adopted shredding guitars

Resident Evil: Revelations 2 delayed

Word has just arrived that Resident Evil: Revelations 2 has been delayed, but only by a week.

has been delayed, but only by a week. Instead of the originally planned February 17 release, the premiere will now arrive on February 25. Subsequent episodes will release on March 4, 11 and 18 respectively, with the full retail release landing on March 20.

Capcom attributes the delay to "additional polishing work and gameplay optimisation". If you can't wait that long to feel haunted, the Resident Evil remake is still releasing on January 20. Meanwhile, there are tonnes of Revelations 2 screenshots over here.

See exclusive Hitman footage at the PC Gamer Weekender

Agent 47 is back.

Agent 47 is back. We've seen the stone-cold killer stalking prey aboard the beta's training boat, but if you want to really get a sense of the scope and complexity of the Hitman's huge new levels, come along to our upcoming live event: the PC Gamer Weekender.

On the weekend of March 5/6, creative director Christian Elverdam will be taking to one of our developer stages at the Old Truman Brewery in London to show exclusive, unseen mission footage. This is your chance to scope out Agent 47's new killing grounds and see some of the ways you can exploit the environment, and the crowds within it, to creatively expose and eliminate your targets.

Hitman's move to an episodic structure makes each environment all the more important. IO are plotting a return to the huge, detailed stages of Hitman Blood Money, and every level must be replayable enough to support repeat runs between releases. Thus each level is a self-contained sandbox that supports player-created challenges as well as story missions, and some will be bigger than any Hitman level that has gone before. At the PC Gamer Weekender you'll be able to see how those levels are shaping up before anyone else.

We have some hugely exciting announcements still to come this week, but our stages are already filling up with great exclusive reveals—Star Citizen, Stellaris, Frozen Synapse 2, Divinity: Original Sin 2—and our game zone will give you time with unreleased giants like Dark Souls 3 and Total War: Warhammer.

Book now to secure your place, and remember to use the code PCG20 to get 20% off the price of a standard ticket. If you'd like to experience the full weekend, you can pick up a PC Gamer Weekender Plus pass which comes with a digital subscription to PC Gamer, exclusive gamezone time, and more. Also, all tickets come with a bonus Steam Key for the ace combat platformer, Dustforce, so what are you waiting for? Join ussss.

Steam Greenlight voters still favor horror, hype

Twenty-one more independent games will be distributed on Valve's Steam distribution service thanks to fan feedback through its Steam Greenlight initiative.

There are few surprises in the list of newly-approved games. Players utilizing the semi-democratic voting system continue to favor titles in the popular first-person shooting genre, as well as Minecraft -like "voxel sandbox" games, MMOs, games with retro-inspired pixel aesthetics, and titles that categorize themselves as "survival horror".

What you won't see, however, are games that are readily available. Of the thirty total games that have been "greenlit" to date, only one -- Sos Sosowski's point-and-click adventure McPixel -- is complete and purchasable.

In fact, Valve saysthat the often far-off ship dates of games that were up-voted by the community was a factor in increasing its approval list from ten to twenty titles this time around.

As with the initial roundof approved games, it would appear that having an established fan base -- even without necessarily having a game for them to play -- is crucial for getting noticed on Greenlight, as the majority of its games continue to be those that have generated some amount of hype prior to being put to the vote.

The full list of twenty-one games approved for Steam today via Greenlight is as follows:

Afterfall InSanity Extended Edition
AirBuccaneers
Blockscape
Contrast
Fly'n
Folk Tale
Forge
Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams (Project Giana)
Gnomoria
Interstellar Marines
Lost Story: The Last Days of Earth
Miasmata
Miner Wars 2081
NEOTOKYO
Octodad: Dadliest Catch
Perpetuum
POSTAL 2 COMPLETE
Secrets of Grindea
The Intruder
The Stanley Parable: HD Remix
Yogventures!

Things escalate quickly in this Resident Evil: Revelations 2 cinematic

One minute you're engaged in vaguely aggressive repartee during a fancy corporate shindig, the next you're being shot up by a helicopter.

Resident Evil: Revelations 2is definitely a video game, but in a first for the series it'll release in a serialised format ala Telltale Games. The video above is the opening cinematic from the first episode, which launches February 17.

It perfectly captures the fact that it's a game about bad things happening, namely: Resident Evil 2's Claire Redfield and fresh face Moira Burton being kidnapped. If you'd prefer to binge play the series, a Complete Edition is confirmed to be releasing at some point next year.

Play X-Wing with us at the PC Gamer Weekender

With our lineup of playable new and unreleased games and our developer stages full of top industry talent, there's loads to do at the PC Gamer Weekender next weekend.

next weekend. There's something we need to tell you, though. A secret obsession has seized control of PC Gamer towers. It's brilliant, even though it's not a PC game.

It's X-Wing, the miniatures game, created by Fantasy Flight. You control a squad of tiny, beautiful Star Wars spaceships and make them fight in space (or rather, on a starmap that looks like space). Through a simple set of dice rolls and movement trackers the game elegantly simulates the capabilities of Star Wars' most famous vessels. TIE's flit erratically about the 3 foot x 3 foot board with the near-suicidal lack of restraint they show in the films. X-Wings, with the right pilot, are fearsome hunter-killers. Y-Wings are tough, dependable weapons platforms. The great X-Wing and TIE Fighter Lucasarts PC sims put you in the cockpit, the miniatures game achieves a similar degree of authenticity in a turn-based strategy format. Also you get to see your opponent's face when a double-damage crit pops their prize ship. Ah, what a feeling.

Esdevium Games and GamesQuest will be bringing X-Wing, and many more boardgames (like the marvelously frantic card game, Dobble), to the boardgame basement at the PC Gamer Weekender. Our live event takes place on March 5/6 at the Old Truman Brewery in London. We've got exclusive stage shows for Stellaris, Frozen Synapse 2, Divinity: Original Sin 2, and unreleased games like Dark Souls 3 and Total War: Warhammer will be playable. You can even get your head inside the extraordinary HTC Vive virtual reality headset. We'll be there too, of course, rolling dice and moving little ships around while making "pew-pew" noises.

You can book tickets here , and don't forget to use the code PCG20 to knock 20% off the ticket price.

1998 vs 2008: How has gaming changed in 10 years?

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Resident Evil PC footage looks sharp and bloody

If you played the original Resident Evil back in 1996 you'll certainly get a kick out of watching this footage of the forthcoming remaster.

back in 1996 you'll certainly get a kick out of watching this footage of the forthcoming remaster. The footage is taken from the PC edition, which will land on January 20. The remake is based on the 2002 Gamecube version rather than the awkwardly unscary-by-today's-standards original, which is more of a blessing than a curse, to be honest.

As previously reported, Capcom is also making adjustments that it hopes will make the game more appealing to younger audiences, including mercifully updated controls. It'll feature 5.1 surround sound, upgraded textures and fancier resolutions.

Compete in the tournament gaming area at the PC Gamer Weekender

What would a PC gaming event be without some virtual blood sport?

The PC Gamer Weekender, in association with EGL, will feature a heaving tournament gaming area when it opens in London's Old Truman Brewery, March 5-6. Dota 2, League of Legends, Hearthstone, Street Fighter 5 and Rocket League will all be available for you to test your mettle against fellow Weekenders.

In Street Fighter 5, it's winner stays on. In Rocket League, you'll be duelling it out. Dota 2 will be played in 1v1 solo mid mode, with the first person to score two kills or destroy a tower declared the victor, and a custom version of League of Legends will deliver one-on-one competition in Howling Abyss.

In every game, you stand to win top loot from the folks at Lenovo and GT Omega. Tournaments will operate on a first-come, first-served basis, so be sure to book ticketsand head over to the Weekender's registration area early to guarantee a spot. The next 500 Weekender tickets are a trifling £9.99.

I'll even be playing a few Rocket League friendlies if you think you're hard enough. But no flying. Or ramming. In fact, I'd appreciate it if you didn't touch the ball at all.

...

Jump to Section: Best Price Comments Our Verdict Fresh cast, fresh ideas and full-on action gives Taylor’s reboot momentum, even if an overloaded script threatens to topple it at times. Doesn’t touch Cameron’s two movies, of course. Kyle be back. “Time-travel makes my head hurt,” yells Kyle Reese, midway through the mindbending Terminator Genisys . His words are sure to be echoed by a good few viewers

Resident Evil remake trailer revamps haunted house

Capcom have put out some new footage of the enhanced version of Resident Evil coming to PC early next year.

Capcom have put out some new footage of the enhanced version of Resident Evil coming to PC early next year. They've uprezzed those backgrounds to support widescreen displays and added detail with polygonal models crisp things up. No word on whether the amazing voice acting will receive its own makeover, but Redfield's stance remains reliably wooden. Ah, nostalgia.

The growing trend for remastering classics is good for new audiences who want to discover a classic without the need to find a working Playstation, but can have negative consequences. In the film industry remastered releases can put original cuts out of production (try to find an original, pure version of Star Wars), for games they can consign the original version to death on fragile disks while the remastered versions live on in everlasting digital formats.

Resi Enhanced is a remaster of the 2002 Gamecube remaster of the 1996 original. As chunky and silly as the old game looks now, that wonky original is a historical artifact consigned to a limited run of crumbling CD Roms. Its legacy will live on on YouTube, at least.

Frozen Synapse devs on why Frozen Cortex was a conceptual failure

Tom Francis is a former writer for PC Gamer and current game developer who offered to give us his thoughts on some of the GDC sessions he's attending this year.

Tom Francis is a former writer for PC Gamer and current game developer who offered to give us his thoughts on some of the GDC sessions he's attending this year. You can follow the development of Tom's next game, Heat Signature, at its official site.

As a developer myself, one of the most interesting parts of the Game Developer’s Conference each year is the Failure Workshop: a session where developers step up to talk about projects that failed, and where they went wrong. It’s not quite where I expected to see Paul Taylor of Mode7 Games, creators of the massively successful Frozen Synapse, and the quite successful Frozen Cortex. I know Paul, and as far as I know he and dev partner Ian Hardingham haven’t had a failure since their crazy flying sword-fighting game Determinance—and even that I think was pretty cool. But he was there to talk about Frozen Cortex, not because it failed commercially—it didn’t—but because the public reaction to it has made them see it as a failure of concept.

Frozen Synapse is a top-down, turn-based tactics game: you issue waypoints to your squad of gunmen, hit ‘Commit’, and watch the action play out. Taylor says that concept works for people in trailers: “When you see it, you can see what kind of fun you’ll be having.”

Their idea for a followup was to take the turn-planning system that worked so well, and add something to it—“frame it in a new way”. Where Synapse had been inspired by Laser Squad Nemesis, their follow-up would draw from 2004 fantasy sports game Chaos League. But rather than an orcs-and-goblins setting, they wanted to make it a future sport.

Taylor showed the original trailer for Frozen Endzone, as it was originally called, to explain what they thought was the compelling concept. Its look is immediately different to Synapse—instead of abstract blueprint style, it’s a sports arena on top of a skyscraper, a gleaming metal city stretching off around it. And where Synapse involves small glowing men scuttling around far beneath you, Endzone switched to a cinematic camera to show close-ups of your angry sports robots enacting your plan with full, violent animation.

“It showed you making a plan, and that being interpreted into amazing animations.” Mode7 thought that was the core of the game, and that it would be “something that really excited people.”

The disparity between that and the actual public reaction became clear immediately: Taylor showed “some of the more polite comments” on YouTube, some of which do credit the new art style or the appeal of a Synapse-style planning system, but all of which ended with some variation of “too bad it’s just a sports game”.

“It’s still about handegg,” one comment concluded. “An unfortunate phrase I wasn’t familiar with, but which I’d be hearing a lot over the four years we worked on the game,” Taylor says.

They tried to adapt to the feedback. They felt it was being wrongly interpreted as an American football game rather than seen as a sport in its own right. So they changed the name to Frozen Cortex, removing the football reference and replacing it with a strong connection to Frozen Synapse. They visually redesigned the goals to make them less like those of American football, and released new trailers to showcase more fantastical settings like a fiery underworld. Their next batch of shots featured close-ups of robots clashing with spectacular sparks, again trying to stress the less traditional elements.

But none of this really solved the problem. “There wasn’t a core fantasy at the heart of it,” Taylor says. Frozen Cortex still made money, and got good reviews from PC Gamerand Eurogamer. But Paul feels they still suffered from the problems of the core concept. He expanded on this to me afterwards: "Of course there will be people for whom that is exciting and who can see what you're trying to do: we certainly don't regret making the game in any way. It's great to have fulfilled that need for those players who love the game. It's just that a specific combination of things can alienate as many people as it attracts."

He points to Rocket League as the counter-example: it “made the sports aesthetic so absurd you want to try it. It takes you out of the world of sports and makes you say ‘Wow, what’s that?’—which is what we failed to do.”

Mode7 applied this lesson in choosing what to make next: they’re now doing Frozen Synapse 2. In a way it starts from a similar place: take what worked about Frozen Synapse and expand it. But this time the core concept is already proven and successful: they already know people like the plan-and-execute tactical gunplay. So what they’re adding is a huge procedurally generated city around that, one where you can choose to infiltrate any building and perform missions for or against any of the city’s factions.

Frozen Cortex wasn’t my cup of tea, and Frozen Synapse 2 looks like it absolutely will be. But I hope the lesson here is not “stick to what you know”, or “don’t be too adventurous”. Once Synapse 2 is done, even if it’s massively successful, I hope Mode7 wouldn’t be averse to trying something nutty again, if the core concept appeals to them.

GDC China Adds Angry Birds, Monaco Creators To Summits

Warface hands-on: the silliest name in games conceals a F2P shooter of serious ambition

This preview originally appeared in issue 249 of PC Gamer UK.

There are a few ways of responding to a name as silly as Warface. You could roll your eyes, and declaim it as evidence that the machine that stamps out military first-person shooters in the basement of every major publisher has finally become self-aware.

You could laugh and interpret the nod to Kubrick as a sign that Crytek are approaching the Call of Duty sub-genre in the way Full Metal Jacket took on the Vietnam War. The truth is somewhere in the middle. Warface is a free-to-play multiplayer shooter produced with a clear awareness that modern military shooters are the biggest games in the world. On the other hand, the developers are also conscious of the oversaturated and overserious nature of the genre they're taking on – and one way of responding to that, it turns out, is to call your game Warface.

“We think it's awesome,” executive producer Peter Holzapfel told me when I asked him about the name. “The tone of the game is not serious; it's not geared towards realism. It's a first-person shooter – have fun! It's not completely over-the-top, but it's exaggerated. A bit of humour would be healthy, I would say, for the industry.”

While visiting Crytek's headquarters in Frankfurt, the game was initially demonstrated to me running on a conference room PC – the kind of enterprise computing setup that you wouldn't expect to be capable of handling a shooter of any fidelity. In the absence of dynamic lighting and post-processing effects, it's not a pretty game – but it works, and Crytek's success in cramming the game onto hardware this restricted is an impressive technical feat.

"Fitting Crysis 2 onto a console is now paying dividends for the developer on PC."

“We optimised the hell out of the engine for Crysis 2,” Holzapfel explains. “We took it further for Warface and made it run well on lower system specs – we made it scale with the [game's] other features.”

Warface is a decent-looking game on a more powerful system. Not stunning, but it takes sufficient advantage of CryEngine's lighting tech to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the majority of full-price shooters. When you bear in mind that the most popular FPS in the world runs on the same basic tech now as it did in 2005, Crytek's decision to set the bar lower with Warface makes sense.

There's also an irony in the fact that the efforts undertaken to fit Crysis 2 onto a console is now paying dividends for the developer on PC.

As a competitive shooter, Warface sits somewhere between Counter-Strike and Call of Duty – although the technology underpinning it is flexible enough that larger, Battlefield-style maps are a possibility further down the line. Its offering of modes, levels and weapons tick all the boxes you'd expect in a modern military shooter: free for all, team deathmatch, and an attack-and-defend mode that's a little like a smaller scale version of Battlefield's Rush.

Players move with a lot of weight but bring weapons to bear quickly – this is a game of cautious exploration and sudden action, with a lot of emphasis on positioning and observation. The first map I played in team deathmatch was laid out as an open field with a river on one side, a small area of streets on the other, and each team's spawn behind some buildings at either end. The firefight concentrated around the spawns and streets, with individual players scrapping out in the open for the chance to flank the enemy and clean up.

Later, in free for all, an urban map played very differently – with multiple interior, exterior and elevated routes, I was just as likely to spot an enemy far down the street as I was to suddenly bump into them. Claymores and other deployables helped campers hold on to territory, but I found a varied, exploratory approach more effective. I won, so I'm probably right about that.

Frozen Synapse 2 first details, gameplay trailer

In most turn-based games you see the consequence of your decisions pretty quickly.

In most turn-based games you see the consequence of your decisions pretty quickly. You give the order to attack; bullets fly. Frozen Synapse delays that gratification, asking you to wait until you’ve given orders to each of your squad of vat-grown sci-fi soldiers before showing the results, because those results play out simultaneously with your opponent’s—a machinegunner rounds a corner and is surprised by a shotgun blast while a grenadier ducks behind cover before a sniper can line up his shot, and a rocket harmlessly demolishes a wall several seconds after everyone behind it has buggered off.

What prevents all that action from being confusing is that it all plays out in abstract neon shapes. Everything in Frozen Synapse is seen through “the shape”, a digital overlay that clings to the future city of Markov Geist like a pair of yoga pants, making it readable at a glance.

Frozen Synapse was released by Mode 7 in 2011, and its success surprised creators Ian Hardingham and Paul Kilduff-Taylor. While many multiplayer-focused indie games languish, unable to attract or maintain the critical mass of players needed to make finding a match hassle-free, Frozen Synapse’s design makes it easy to have multiple games going at once, taking turns and then being alerted when one of your opponents had done the same. Plus, lag isn’t an issue. You can still find a game today.

Five years later, Hardingham and Kilduff-Taylor think it’s time for a sequel. They’ve been working on it since June of last year, recently announcing itwith a screenshot and the words “Open World Tactics” and “Coming 2016”.

The City & The City

“Open World” is an ambitious thing to say about an indie game, and a label rarely applied to anything that isn’t an action game or an RPG. What does it mean for a squad-level tactics game made by a small team to be “Open World”? Each singleplayer Frozen Synapse 2 campaign will generate its own map of Markov Geist to form a strategic top-level, and conflicts on the tactical layer can take part in any of its buildings. “We think this is the first procedurally generated city in a game where you can do that,” says Kilduff-Taylor. “The entire city is comprised of living, functional buildings and your squads can go anywhere at any time on missions that you define yourself.”

“It’s not like I can only have a mission in building X either,” says Hardingham. “I can set a mission in building X and the road to the right of it and maybe the weird pawn shop behind it.”

One of the original game’s best features was that its small levels made for quick turns, and Mode 7 aren’t eager to throw that away completely. “Obviously we—well, hopefully—understand what makes Frozen Synapse tick and that’s one of the things,” says Hardingham. “You don’t want a gigantic level every time you’re playing Frozen Synapse, that’s not necessarily what Frozen Synapse is about.” What this new openness will add is more options about how you approach those missions. “Do you want to set up a fair distance away and move forward through the roads? Are you moving through some other building that you’ve managed to get access to?”

"You have to think very carefully about how you’re going to get from A to B, so it’s not about taking over territory."

It may sound like a game of territorial conquest, a sci-fi Jagged Alliance, but they’re hoping to create something more. “I actually have a bit of an issue when I’m playing one of these great games like Alpha Centauri where it’s all about painting the territory your color,” says Hardingham. “What happens after you get really powerful, you get into the midgame, is that often the map’s a bit less interesting to interact with. You control so much of it, it’s really morphed into a radically different game. I think one of the really exciting things about controlling a covert ops team within a city is that whenever you’re moving in the city you’ve got to pay attention to what you’re doing. You could be coming across an enemy at any time. You have to think very carefully about how you’re going to get from A to B, so it’s not about taking over territory.”

And while you’re doing that computer-controlled factions are doing the same. “We actually feel like they’re a bit more like Alpha Centauri sides more than factions in GTA or something. These guys look after their own interests, they actually go and take over places, get in battles that can change things. They can lose, they can die.”

Towers of commerce and faith

So why are these factions fighting? There’s a mysterious external force making incursions into Markov Geist to uncover valuable long-lost artifacts, and the city’s cults and gangs are competing for them as well. An alert on the city screen will warn you of each incursion and it’s up to you how to respond.

While Mode 7 says that knowing the story of the first game isn’t necessary, Frozen Synapse 2 is set after it, with its citizens attempting to rebuild and forge new alliances. “Because you have these generated cities each time it’s gonna be a different version, a different hypothetical city,” says Kilduff-Taylor. “This is about the idea of the city as a very complex compromise between different ideologies. Each faction will have its own ideology, they will relate to the incursion force in a different way. Some of them might want to enslave it and use it for their own goal, some of them might want to research it, some of them might want to ally with it and have it take over the city.”

He cites Darran Anderson’s book Imaginary Citiesas an inspiration, “He talks a lot about cities as being reflective of ideologies and I though that was a really interesting idea, this idea of towers of commerce and faith, that buildings represent different points of an ideology and they’re all trying to reach towards competing goals. It was an idea that I wanted in Frozen Synapse 1 but we had to convey that with linear missions, whereas here we can have a real living city with these real personalities all competing,”

Beyond the complicated warring belief systems, there are elements you might associate with a more typical open world game. Hardingham gives an example: “You can go and piss off faction A, you can take the weird church and go attack one of their temples and see what happens. They’re probably gonna attack you, they’re gonna ask their friends to attack you. All that stuff you’re completely free to do at any time.”

As Kilduff-Taylor puts it, you can either choose which factions to side with to push for a specific endgame, or “you can also decide to be nonsense and to prat around as well. It’s important to me that we manage to find a way of having a really strong story without railroading how the player feels they should play at all.”

As for the player, they’ll be in charge of a small group who have been sent into the city to deal with the situation however they prefer. “We want you to have an open remit,” Hardingham says. “You’re there to find out what’s going on with this incursion force and why it’s coming in and attacking the city, and to manage everything to create some kind of power balance or establish some kind of order. It’s up to you to define what order that is.”

On multiplayer and sneakiness

The first screenshot of Frozen Synapse 2 revealed details that weren’t present in the original game. There’s more variety to the objects that can be used as cover, including a car and trees outside the building, and what looks like a toilet inside it. ( Obviously video game toilets are Very Important.) Separating the inside and outside is a wall with a curved section, something else the first Frozen Synapse did without. It may seem a slight change, but it’s an illuminating one.

But as nice as the campaign’s procedurally generated city sounds, it won’t be a feature of the multiplayer mode. “It’s just too big a challenge to do at this stage,” explains Hardingham. “I think the primary thing for multiplayer above all else is probably the new units. In singleplayer we have all these new units and we also have stats, basically it’s based around signing mercenaries that are a kind of FS archetype but will have different stats and different perks. In multiplayer we expand on the original roster of six different kinds of units with another seven or eight units that we spent a lot of time designing.”

Those units aren’t just new varieties of gun. They’re designed to interact with another new feature: stealth. Both singleplayer and multiplayer will allow units to sneak into position before everything kicks off. “Being unseen and sneaking around is a huge part of it,” Kilduff-Taylor says, “and if the AI spots you then units will go to defensive positions and others will come round and attack you and try and flush you out. We’ve got some new units that are relevant to that kind of gameplay.”

They’re tight-lipped about most of those new units, but Hardingham mentions one favorite, “a smoke grenade launcher, which is really nice because it allows you to create a dynamic bit of terrain, in some ways a short-term bit of terrain, so I hope that gives the idea of the kind of thing that we’re talking about. Any new unit has to fit in perfectly with the really hardcore mechanics of FS, and what’s FS all about? It’s about sight and prediction and preparedness and being able to plan really cool, complicated stuff.”

Another new feature that will particularly change the multiplayer is what they’re calling “advanced tactics”, a new set of orders that can be programmed into troops to tell them how to react to changing events as they occur: “if X happens, switch to plan Y.” That’s a big change, but smaller ones are in the works as well. “We’re just trying to deal with a few of the problems people have with the first game,” says Hardingham. “We had a problem with people abandoning games, we’re gonna be working really hard to fix that. There was a specific ploy in multiplayer called the distraction ploy¹ that I’m not a particular fan of, we’re getting rid of that.”

Zen Studios tease Valve pinball game

Zen Studios, creator of Pinball FX 2, has tweeted out an enigmatic image hinting at an upcoming tie-in for its flipper-and-ball series:
Alright, that's not incredibly enigmatic or subtle in the slightest - it's doubtful that the next set of tables released for Pinball FX 2 will be based on Valve itself.

will be based on Valve itself. No, this is more likely to be things like Team Fortress 2 and DOTA 2 tables, at a guess. Actually, DOTA 2 in pinball form would work really well, it being lane-based and all.

Zen Studios' previous tie-in tables have generally been excellent fun, capturing the mood of the game or franchise they're based on while offering a solid, enjoyable and thoroughly compulsive game of pinballing goodness to play along on. Also I'm pretty good at it, so I'm obviously going to like it.

So we've got Valve-based tables coming to Pinball FX 2, or... there's two flippers and a ball, which added together makes three things... oh dear god, Half Life 3 confirmed - and it's a pinball game .

Warface's "Sneak Peek" phase adds new game modes and female soldiers

Crytek's free-to-play military FPS, Warface , has just received a free update called the “Sneak Phase” that adds in new maps, female soldiers, and a few other goodies for those who've managed to find a way into the closed beta .

The phase (which is just another word for “update”) adds a new map set in China, additional co-op missions, and a tutorial system explaining the ins and outs of Warface's four classes. The update is free for everyone in the closed beta, which you can sign up for here. More content's coming in a future update dubbed the “Pre-Open Beta” making me suspect an open beta in the US isn't too far off (the game's only in open beta in Russia at the moment).

We tried out Warfaceearlier this year, and were cautiously optimistic about the opportunity Crytek can give players. There are micro transactions, of course, but we left with the feeling that Crytek knows what can make or break a free-to-play game.

This Week in Video Game Criticism: From 'Slave Tetris' to Street Fighter 's 'Hot Ryu'

PC Gamer Show: Are arena shooters coming back?

Evan, Tyler, and Wes talk about the death (and return?) of one of the PC's most beloved genres: the arena shooter.

Evan, Tyler, and Wes talk about the death (and return?) of one of the PC's most beloved genres: the arena shooter. Toxikk, Ratz Instagib, Unreal Tournament, and the next Doom all get a mention.

And, as usual, we answer your questions about PC gaming.Will e-sports become real sports? Is digital distribution making games buggier?

appears every Friday. Hit us with PC gaming questions in the comments, and we might answer them in next week's episode! Or tweet @pcgamer with a question using the hashtag #AskPCGamer.

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Our Verdict
The imperative to cash in on Black Flag is transparent, but as it turns out a location swap works wonders for igniting the hooded pirate in you again.

NEED TO KNOW

What is it? Effectively Black Flag 1.5, supplanting the Caribbean for chillier climes.
Influenced by: Sid Meier’s Pirates! Moby Dick, all that money ACIV made.
Reviewed on: 3.4GHz Core i7 2600K CPU, NVIDIA GTX 680 (4GB), 16GB RAM
Alternatively: Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor, 85%
DRM: UPlay, Steam
Price : £40 / $50
Release: out now
Publisher: Ubisoft
Developer : Ubisoft Sofia
Link : Official site
Multiplayer : No

A cynic could have a field day here. After all, it’s the second swashbuckling AssCreed since 2013, developed by a gaggle of Ubisoft’s international studios while its prizefighter Montreal team was busy strapping hidden blades to the cast of Les Mis for Unity. More of the same, then—what else would you expect of a series that invites you to give feedback via a star rating after every mission, as if you just passed through airport security or had a parcel delivered? Could that system produce anything but more of the same?

There’s no denying that Assassin’s Creed Rogue is fundamentally a redeployment of Black Flag’s winning formula in a new location, and it’s also true that it bears the crow’s feet and laugh lines of a graphics engine optimised for ageing last-gen consoles. But here’s the kicker: none of that gets in the way of your enjoyment. Not if you’re prepared to exercise a little patience in the opening hour or two.

Since you ask, that winning formula is as follows: you’re plonked on a beach with nothing but a colloquial British Isles accent (you’re Irishman Shay Cormac this time, fledgling assassin hoping to foil a Templar expedition for ancient artefacts) and exceptional parkour skills to your name. Oh, and a fully-crewed ship. Quite important, that, because your freedom to roam the seas, dock at any number of alluring locales or hurl cannon balls at other vessels still imbues Assassin's Creed with an irrepressible sense of adventure. Even the second time round.

Rogue is fundamentally a redeployment of Black Flag’s winning formula in a new location.

It’s while manning the wheel of the Morrigan that you’ll find Rogue’s most grabbing activities: attacking ships to plunder them for crew members and resources, which you spend on ship upgrades. So you can attack bigger ships, obviously. Or, you can go about it the old-school way and strip-mine each onshore location of all its treasure chests, shanties, Animus fragments, naval Animus fragments, Templar maps, native pillars, Viking swords… I’m probably forgetting a few more minimap trinkets. They’re dizzying in volume. Oh, and there’s a city management layer later on too. You’re quite the busy man.

There are billions of collectibles to pick up, of course, but the scenery across Rogue’s three game maps—New York, River Valley and the North Atlantic—provides a powerful incentive to hop from ledge to tree branch to cliff top in pursuit of the odd knick-knack. The northern lights cast a ghostly shimmer across the North Atlantic and its ice sheets which soothes your soul after a hard day’s stabbing, and River Valley’s craggy archipelagos and quaint lighthouses put a spring back in your step after your last whaling misadventure. The visuals are far from bleeding-edge, but Rogue manages a kind of rugged handsomeness through thoughtful large-scale environmental design. Of the game’s successes, its breezy and atmospheric setting might be the one it can actually call its own, rather than a continuation of Black Flag’s form.

It’s a double-edged sword of course, Ubisoft’s strategy to lean on Edward Kenway’s exploits as the foundation for Rogue. It means that if you got sick of that overlong trade-cannon-balls-then-board naval combat sequence the first time, you’re bored before you even begin in Rogue. And if the combat was starting to feel outmoded by AssCreed’s contemporaries in 2013, it feels positively arthritic by now. If you’ve clocked in some hours with a Rocksteady game and/or Middle Earth: Shadow Of Mordor since guiding Kenway’s blade, the adjustment back to a slower pace and lessened precision here is tough and unflattering.

Then there are the other longstanding AssCreed problems. The frustratingly imprecise parkour control; the lukewarm stealth mechanics; the uninspired and repetitive mission templates; the ten-hour-long tutorial sequence. The latter alone threatens to stifle the potential of Rogue’s open waters; the game is bizarrely reticent to let you loose on its prized open world until you've hit key story points.

It isn’t that Assassin’s Creed Rogue is without problems, or particularly fresh within the context of the series. Critically though, it puts you in a mindset in which you’re inclined to let a lot slide, because it’s one hell of a power fantasy. You begin as unknown assassin/pirate and quite quickly become the single most important man who ever lived. I’m not even referring to the main story missions explicitly—even outside of that, you’ve a shipful of sailors ready to die for you, all kinds of friends in high places, and basically own New York. That’s an addictive feeling. Rogue understands how to create a sense of adventure using old mechanics and new locales, and as such remains very playable despite the franchise-long problems AssCreed endures in combat, mission design and story.

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The Verdict

Assassin's Creed: Rogue

The imperative to cash in on Black Flag is transparent, but as it turns out a location swap works wonders for igniting the hooded pirate in you again.

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Our Verdict
A masterpiece of audio and visual design, SOMA is atmospheric, cerebral, and occasionally frustrating.

NEED TO KNOW

What is it? First-person horror set in a ruined facility.
Developer Frictional Games
Publisher Frictional Games
Reviewed on GeForce GTX 970, Intel i5-3570K @ 3.40GHz, 16GB RAM
Expect to pay £22.99 / $29.99
Multiplayer No
Link Official site

SOMA is, essentially, a deadly game of hide and seek with a parade of increasingly bizarre mechanised monsters. You have to make it from one end of underwater facility PATHOS-II to the other without being spotted. Along the way you learn about the base, the sinister experiments going on there, and what happened to its mysteriously absent employees. It’s a pretty basic horror game at its core, but elevated by a compelling sci-fi story and a hauntingly evocative setting.

The game is viewed from the first-person, and you interact with the world in a brilliantly physical way. Click on a door to grab it, then push with the mouse to shove it open. Click to take hold of a switch, then pull back to yank it down. Anyone who played Amnesia will be familiar with this. Everything you touch, push, pull, and pick up feels heavy, tangible. There are no weapons, gadgets, or tools to help you, and you can’t fight back. All you can do is run and hide. It’s a resolutely minimalist game, but with lavish production values that make it feel much richer than it really is.

I can’t say who you are, or why PATHOS-II is in such a mess, because both represent the backbone of the plot. It’s a game of slow revelation. You, like the protagonist, are completely clueless at the beginning. You don’t know why you’re there, why it’s crawling with murderous machines, or where everyone is. But the truth is drip-fed over time, until the reality of your situation hits you like a brick. It’s a wonderfully told, and written, story. It compels you to keep pushing on through the darkness, with shock moments that make you rethink everything preceding them.

Amateurish voice acting is the only sore point. The main character, Simon, never sounds particularly bothered by anything happening to him, including a mid-game twist that would send anyone into shock. Honestly, I don’t like or care about him that much, which diminishes the fear factor. The supporting cast are a mixed bag, but are largely just as unconvincing. However, it’s testament to the quality of the world-building and writing that, although sometimes distracting, the am-dram acting is never enough to make you stop believing in what’s happening.

For me, the highlight of the game is PATHOS-II itself. The best storytelling is found in the environments, not the characters. Located at the bottom of the ocean, it’s Rapture meets the Nostromo. Its claustrophobic, labyrinthine metal corridors are straight out of the 1970s handbook of hard sci-fi set design, and it’s absolutely drenched in atmosphere. Flickering lights, burst pipes, leaky bulkheads, and a strange, black, alien goo seeping through cracks in the ceilings is a constant reminder that this place is seriously broken. The story takes you on a tour of different parts of the base, and they all have distinct personalities and stories to tell.

The lighting is fantastic, making you forever wary of what horrors lurk in shadowy corners. You see peculiar, almost organic machinery dotted with glowing lights, like something out of an HR Giger drawing, that seems to be eating the world around you. Visually, it’s a masterpiece, and every room tells a story: about the people who lived there, about what went wrong, about the outside world, or about yourself. Your character has the ability to touch certain things, including corpses and robots, and hear fragmented memories that tell tales about the base and its inhabitants before its collapse. It’s a setting flooded with hand-crafted detail.

While there are plenty of slow moments where you explore the base and learn about its purpose, it’s when the monsters arrive that SOMA enters more familiar territory. Its cast of robotic stalkers is varied, but their AI is rudimentary. Compared to the dynamic, unpredictable predator in Alien: Isolation, these guys just seem to pace back and forth, waiting for you to mess up and stumble into their field of vision. You don’t feel you’re being hunted by an unknowable evil: more like you’re trying to sneak past a security guard—albeit one made of wires and body parts.

They’re scary at first. You only ever catch glimpses of them in the shadows, which makes them more terrifying. Your mind fills in the blanks, which is always more effective in a horror game than just showing you something. The screen glitches and distorts as they approach, which sets your heart racing. They make horrifying sounds: screeching, rasping, and ranting about ‘black blood’ in garbled machine-voices. My favourite, who I’ve nicknamed Disco Man, has a head made of blinking lights that make the screen distort crazily if you look directly at it. This adds an interesting dynamic to sneaking around it in the cramped confines of a shipwreck, as you can never fully look at it to gauge its movement.

But the monsters’ initial impact never lasts. When they attack, you lose a ‘life’ and are sent back in time to just before they spotted you, giving you a chance to correct your mistake. The more this happens, the glitchier the screen gets, and you start limping. Get caught too many times and it’s game over and back to the last checkpoint—which are, to be fair, generous. In some of the trickier sections, when you inevitably die repeatedly, you’re no longer scared of your pursuer: just frustrated by it. Like I said earlier, it’s no more complicated than hide and seek. I ended up dreading the arrival of a monster, not because it was scary, but because it meant more trial-and-error stealth—and less time poking around at my own pace in those wonderful environments.

Occasionally you leave the confines of the base and wander the sea floor. These large, open areas are a nice change of pace from the narrow, metal corridors, and feature some of the game's prettiest visuals. Some of these sections see you dodging the roving spotlights of killer submarine-bots, but sometimes they offer (ironically enough) some breathing space. I spent a good while just wandering around watching shoals of fish and sea turtles swim past, putting off venturing into the next dark, dingy corner of the base. A level set on a sunken, barnacle-covered ship also offers some variety, and its twisting, cramped tunnels are genuinely nerve-racking.

It’s a curious combination, really: rote hide-and-seek horror, tied to a game with an intelligent, thoughtful story that reaches beyond the bounds of its own narrative. In this universe, people have found a way to make digital copies of themselves—their memories, personalities, flaws—and transfer them into machines. SOMA asks questions about the nature of humanity. It has things to say about free will, individuality, and morality. It makes you think —which in turn makes the bits where you’re being chased around in the dark by a mechanical monster all the more jarring.

SOMA has big, interesting ideas when it comes to story and themes, but this ambition and imagination doesn’t carry over into its game design. But, monster encounters aside, this stricken underwater base is one of the most fascinating, atmospheric spaces I’ve ever explored in a game. There’s all manner of horrific imagery down in those murky depths to be uncovered, and the story is unsettling. In this sense, it’s a great horror game. It affects you psychologically and emotionally—often in a subtle, understated way. But all this does is highlight how ineffectual its more familiar attempts to scare are. Ultimately, it’s what’s inside your head that scares you in SOMA, not what’s in front of you.

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The Verdict

SOMA

A masterpiece of audio and visual design, SOMA is atmospheric, cerebral, and occasionally frustrating.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Andy grew up with PC games, losing countless hours of his youth to Quake and Baldur’s Gate. Today his love for PC gaming is just as strong, and now he loses countless hours of his adult life to them. He loves horror, RPGs, sims, anything set in space, anything set in rainy cyberpunk cities, adventure games, and you.

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Underworld Ascendant interview: making a sequel to a 22 year old classic

Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss was nothing short of a revelation when it was released in 1992.

was nothing short of a revelation when it was released in 1992. The first-person, 3D dungeon explorer predated Doom, yet featured many technological advances that game lacked, like the ability to jump, look up and down, and swim through flowing water. An even more ambitious sequel, Ultima Underworld II: Labyrinth of Worlds, followed less than a year later. And then, nothing. For 22 years.

That's a long time to wait for a sequel, but it's finally happening: Underworld 3, properly known as Underworld Ascendant, is now on Kickstarter.

Astute observers will notice that it's no longer an Ultima game, but creator Paul Neurath told PC Gamer this week that Underworld Ascendant is a "genuine sequel" nonetheless. In fact, not being saddled with the pre-existing Ultima mythology—which the original Underworlds really only paid half-hearted lip service to anyway—actually opens up some opportunities that the developers may otherwise not have had. "We can be more creative and pursue a more modern sense of story. I think Richard [Garriott] himself would say that the kind of story design he was doing in the early 90s, he wouldn't do that today," Neurath said. "We've learned a lot and other designers have learned a lot about how to tell stories, and how to make something tighter and more cohesive."

Even though it's not a direct "one year later" follow-up, there will be "tight connections" to the original game, including some familiar characters and locations, and of course the setting of the great Stygian Abyss—the gloomy, subterranean realm of Underworld. Neurath said that having one big, "contextual space" made more sense for what OtherWorld is trying to accomplish than the more sprawling (and less cohesive) series of worlds that formed the basis for Ultima Underworld II. "We really want to recreate that experience that you're thrown into this deep, dark underworld, and it's dangerous, and you start not knowing anything and being very vulnerable," he explained. "You go through the whole arc of growth and learning and gaining mastery of the Underworld in terms of growing your character, what you learn about the lore of the world, and your place in the Underworld, and how other societies work with you."

Somewhat ironically, while it's the recent advances of Kickstarter and digital distribution that have made Underworld Ascendant possible, Neurath is handling the actual development process in much the same way he did back in the glory days of Looking Glass. The team is small, lean, and tightly-knit, and he has several veterans from those days involved in the process as well, including Tim Stellmach, Austin Grossman, Robb Waters, and Warren Spector, who's taken on a "part-time role" as a creative adviser.

"There's an almost tribal culture when the teams are small. Everybody knows each other really well, they know their strengths and weaknesses and foibles and all that, and that's actually really helpful," he explained. "And when you get above a certain size, 30 or so, people don't know each other as well, and they can't be in close communication with each other. You lose that tight collaboration. So part of what we're trying to do is to do this with, by modern, triple-A standards, a very small team."

Neurath said Underworld Ascendant will have a "real familiarity" for fans of the original, but he emphasized that it's important for the game to break new ground as well. "Innovation is always a tricky thing. You never quite know what you're going to get out of it. So we have what we look at as a set of experiments," he said. "Some of this came out of what we were originally thinking about when we thought of Underworld 3 way back when, some of it is based on games that we've worked on or played over the last five years, and some of it is looking forward to what no one's done yet. We have a suite of innovations, so to speak, a lot of them are tied to stretch goals, and we'll see where are fans want to go on that."

Many of those "experiments" are tied to Kickstarter funding: The goal for the "core, essential Underworld experience" is $600,000, but there are stretch goals for as much as double that amount, and OtherWorld has more ready to go if the funding runs even higher. Yet while the fans will determine how deep into the stretch goals the game will go (or, to put a more negative spin on it, whether it will be funded in the first place), Neurath insisted that the design won't be dictated by audience expectations or marketing metrics.

"Can we deliver in your mind's eye what it would really be like to be an adventurer in a fantasy underworld? That informed pretty much everything we did."

"I came up with the original concept for Underworld [and] it really came out of a passion to try to create a much more immersive, you-are-there kind of dungeon exploration game that's much more alive and real [than other games of that era]," he said. "I wanted to get rid of all the abstractions, all the mechanics, and just say, what's the pure experience? Can we deliver in your mind's eye what it would really be like to be an adventurer in this fantasy underworld? And that informed pretty much everything we did. And I didn't have a clue if a bunch of people wanted that same experience, but that's how I approach things."

In the original Ultima Underworld, that "pure experience" meant flexibility—solving problems in whatever way the player saw fit, rather than based on the structures of a predetermined character class—and the same will hold true in Underworld Ascendant. "We don't really create those distinctions. We say, hey, there might be 20 ways to solve this. It's very fluid," he said. "Again, it goes back to, if you were really there, if you were really an adventurer and you had some assortment of skills and equipment, you'd use whatever was in your bag of tricks and be as clever as you could. You wouldn't say, well, I'm a thief so I can only use stealth. That's not how you would do it in real life. We think that freedom is pretty cool and pretty distinctive."

"It's interesting to me that almost the standard of role-playing games is hack and slash. You go through the typical RPG today and kill, what, 5000 monsters? 50,000 monsters? You have a pile a mile high of dead monsters when you play one of these games through," he continued. "I get it, it's a grindy kind of thing, there's nothing wrong with it, but that's not the Underworld. The Underworld has combat, you can fight monsters, that's perfectly fine and a lot of players like that, but there's almost always non-violent solutions, ways to outsmart the monster, or outwit them, or dispatch them without just swinging swords at them or casting fireballs at them."

That, for me, was a huge part of the magic of Ultima Underworld: Talking to ghouls instead of killing them on sight, making wormy stew for a troll, and never knowing what each new encounter would bring. Even the ending had a sort of "doing a bad thing for a good reason" ambiguity to it. That's what I want from a new Underworld, and that's what Neurath says OtherWorld is making. I hope they can pull it off.

Last year, we spent an hour playing the original Ultima Underworld with Paul Neurath, as he talked about designing the game. You can watch our playthrough here.

Below: More concept art from Underworld Ascendant.