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Our Verdict
A generous, history-respecting rethink that adds weeks of fun to one of 2011s finest strategy titles.

Should a Total War: Shogun 2 supplement centred on the Genpei War of 1180-1185 feature a comprehensive selection of period units? Before you answer with an eager 'Hai!' bear in mind that the Minamoto clan won the pivotal Battle of Kurikara with the aid of stampeding oxen.

There are no war cows in Rise of the Samurai, in fact this expansion is free of gimmicky bullocks/bollocks of all kinds. What you get for your very reasonable six quid is a cartload of new content that leaves Shogun 2 feeling sushi-fresh.

At the heart of the transformation is a corker of a campaign involving six pleasingly distinct and enticingly unfamiliar playable clans (see Pushy Bushi). Vying for control of a re-regioned Japan map, these clans have their origins in three different families, meaning you always start out with one powerful ally nearby. The blood ties between you aren't indestructible, but the relationship usually lasts long enough to give those early years of expansion a comforting co-op feel.

If sister clans sent the occasional “Prepare yourself. I'm about to attack those swines in the east!” missive, and were a bit more attentive when it came to mutual defence, that feeling of companionship would have been even stronger. On a couple of occasions I've watched my empire crumble before my eyes while sizeable allied armies in neighbouring provinces sat around gassing on their camping stools.

On the battlefield those armies look a lot more rustic and realistic than their base-game equivalents. The 400-year rewind brings a slightly simpler unit mix and far less fancy metal armour and flamboyant pageantry. Ashigaru and matchlock units are out. Cavalry is rarer. Formations are smaller and airier.

As the title of this supplement suggests, versatile bow-and-katanaarmed foot samurai are the new skirmish stars. The only units capable of poaching their limelight are the knots of club-wielding Tetsubo monks and the whitefaced, warhorse-spurring Onna Bushi heroines.

Women contribute to the war effort as sly Shirabyoshi, too. These traditional entertainers use poetry, dance, and, presumably, cuddling [Tim, we really need to have a chat - Biology Ed] to persuade enemy generals to defect and friendly ones to stay loyal. Picture how crestfallen The Creative Assembly's cutscene team must have been on being told agent animations wouldn't feature in this expansion.

Shirabyoshi share the agent mess room with Metsuke-like Junsatsushi, the Ninja-esque Monomi, and the rabble-rousing Sou. None of these strat-map wanderers are radically different from their Shogun 2 prototypes, but there are enough variations to encourage fresh approaches. Currently I'm playing as the well-heeled Hiraizumi and doing most of my conquering bloodlessly via the Junsatsushi 'switch allegiance' ability. First the agent spends a few turns passively influencing the target region, then a bulging carrier-bag of cash is handed over, and – bingo – the region usually switches sides. It's a very effective tactic. Perhaps too effective.

New agents are hired through such new structures as the barter house. To unlock these, Rise of the Samuraispecific arts trees must be climbed. Don't let anyone tell you this DLC is a lazy cash-in. Creative Assembly have thoroughly Genpei-fied almost every aspect of the game.

One of the few areas that hasn't felt the wind of change is the historical battle folder. Anegawa, the one previously unseen scrap, is a Sengoku-era affair.

Crawley's finest are already hinting that they've more Shogun 2 adjuncts up their voluminous kimono sleeves. If the coming packs are as full-featured, historically sensitive, and as transformative as Rise of the Samurai, then hang onto your Hattoris, we're in for a treat.

The Verdict

Total War: Shogun 2 - Rise of the Samurai

A generous, history-respecting rethink that adds weeks of fun to one of 2011s finest strategy titles.

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Amnesia developer on piracy: "screw it"

Frictional Games posted a on its bravery-busting hit Amnesia: The Dark Descent today, discussing its success at carving a niche in the PC horror scene and the longevity created by a dedicated modding community.

on its bravery-busting hit Amnesia: The Dark Descent today, discussing its success at carving a niche in the PC horror scene and the longevity created by a dedicated modding community. But when the topic of piracy reared its ugly, eyepatched head, the developer's stance was a simple "screw it."

"It's been over a year since we even thought about piracy," Frictional Lead Programmer Thomas Grip wrote. "With sales as good as they are, we cannot really see this as an issue worth more than two lines in this post, so screw it."

Grip also disclosed the exact cost of Amnesia's three-year development was $360,000 and that it made "more than ten times" its budget from sales. He estimated nearly 1.4 million units sold so far from a combination of indie and Steam bundles and standalone purchases. Grip claimed monthly sales "lie at over 10,000 units" and translated it as a purchase made worldwide every five minutes.

"That a game can still be going this good two years after releasing is truly remarkable," Grip explained. "This success is due to many factors, some of which are the uniqueness of the game (horror games without combat do not really exist on PC), the large modding community, and the steady flood of YouTube clips (which is in turn fueled by the modding community's output)."

Frictional's endorsement of modding flexibility in Amnesia certainly contributed heavily to its staying power - it currently holds second place in popularity at Mod DB- and Grip keeps modding's importance in mind moving forward. "It's quite clear allowing users to create content is a feature worth putting time into," he wrote. "I also think that we managed to have a pretty good balance between having simple tools and still allowing a lot of possibilities."

Sniper Elite 3 preview: an open world playground of stealth and ballistics

Sniper Elite 3, the third game in the series about shooting Nazis from really far away in World War II, eschews the usual dreary, gunmetal skies of bomb-battered Europe for the sun-and-blood-drenched deserts of North Africa.

Sniper Elite 3, the third game in the series about shooting Nazis from really far away in World War II, eschews the usual dreary, gunmetal skies of bomb-battered Europe for the sun-and-blood-drenched deserts of North Africa. Despite eleventy million thousand WWII games having been released on PC over the years, this is a setting rarely used.

I ask Jean-Baptiste Bolcato, senior producer, why Rebellion decided to return to the Second World War for their sequel, rather than drag the series into the more fashionable present.

“It's driven by the studio and the brand,” he says. “Half the team are huge, hardcore World War II fans. It's an incredible setting. That's not saying we won't try new things in the future, but for Sniper Elite 3 we really wanted to explore that side of the war. It's an interesting period. There was a lot of mechanical warfare, and it's when the Americans started to get involved. It also looks different, and hasn't been used much before. We wanted a different feel from the usual grey European setting.”

The completely gratuitous, but perversely satisfying, bullet-following killcams are back, of course. Now when you see the X-ray of your target's insides exploding, you see their muscles and circulatory systems being mauled by hot lead as well. Hooray, I guess. It certainly looks impressive, but it adds nothing to the game besides giving gore fetishists an excited throb in their underpants.

What is different is the way the levels are designed. One of the biggest complaints about the last Sniper Elite was the boxy, linear, uninspiring maps. The sequel goes in the opposite direction, giving us large, multi-level playgrounds to kill in. There are numerous ways to get through a mission, depending on how you choose your targets, your route, and the order you complete your objectives.

The level I had demoed to me, set in a Nazi-fortified desert canyon, was impressively big, with elevation for makeshift sniper nests and underground tunnels to escape into. The placement of machinegun nests and patrolling soldiers made stealth a necessity, and there are a lot of toys to play with: rocks for throwing to distract guards, tripwires to cover your exits when you're sniping, and plantable TNT. But because I wasn't playing the demo myself it was difficult to gauge how sharp the enemies were. A stealth game lives or dies by the quality of its AI.

Taking advantage of those bigger levels, vehicles play a bigger role. “When facing tanks you can shoot the driver through the slot or use a mine to destroy its tracks and immobilise it,” Bolcato says. “There'll be killcams dedicated to mechanised combat too. Encounters with vehicles will have proper, multifaceted gameplay and won't just be a one-off cutscene or set-piece.”

Sniping being the focus of much of the game, it is, appropriately, a bit more complicated than just hovering your sight over someone's head and squeezing the trigger. There's wind and bullet drop and your heartbeat to consider. “We're not quite a sniping simulator. We still want it to be a fun experience. But if you set it to the highest difficulty setting, it's pretty damn close to a simulator. Authentic mode is the most hardcore, with no guides at all. It doesn't even tell you where your objectives are. We'll also have a custom mode where you can, say, play on easy with all the sniping aids disabled.”

Bolcato ends the interview by stressing the studio's dedication to the PC version. “It's getting a lot of love in the last months of development, even after the console versions have begun their tricky approval process. We play the game on PC every day. We're trying to refine it to be as good an experience as possible. Rebellion is a very PC-focused studio, and development of our engine is driven by it. We have new tessellation tech, ambient shadowing and ultra high-res textures. You can zoom in on anything with your scope and it'll instantly have a high level of detail.”

I'm cautiously optimistic. I love the idea of the open maps, which should make the stealth feel much more dynamic. My only issue right now is the amount of clutter on the HUD. There are markers and meters and notifications screaming at you, and it destroys the immersion somewhat. It doesn't give you the sense that you're using a sniper's battle-honed instincts.

But if SE3's map design really is as freeform and open-ended as Rebellion are promising, and not just a series of slightly wider corridors, this could be a major improvement on the so-so last game.

Total War: Shogun 2 Rise of the Samurai trailer and screenshots show new factions in action

[VAMS id="J86043qv1D0cq"]
The Rise of the Samurai DLC is out for Total War: Shogun 2 later this very month.

The Rise of the Samurai DLC is out for Total War: Shogun 2 later this very month. Sega have released a video, a few new screens and revealed a tiny bit more about the pack on the Sega blog, spotted by Blue's News.

They go over a few facts that were revealed back when the Rise of the Samurai DLCwas announced (six new factions belonging to the three legendary clans of the Taira, Minamoto and Fujiwara families, 16 new land units, four new Hero units, 10 new naval units and four new agents), but also mention some new naval special abilities, including “Banzai!”, “Whistling Arrows” and “Rally.” All that for a humble $9.99 / £5.99 on Steam.

The three new screenshots below show some lovely landscapes, and the new Shirabyoshi agent, who can woo enemy characters. Watch her wooing in the screenshots below.

The Pirate Bay reponds to UK ban: "We have no right to speak since we’re not rich”

Yesterday we reported that popular torrent site, The Pirate Bay, is due to be banned by six UK ISPs.

popular torrent site, The Pirate Bay, is due to be banned by six UK ISPs. A high court ruling stated that the site “actively encourages” copyright infringement.

Now The Pirate Bay have had a chance to respond to the ruling. And it's not happy.

According to a blog post on the website, no-one from The Pirate Bay was invited to the court case: "This is not the first time this happens, it's been the same in most countries we're censored in," stated WinstonUK on the blog. "We have no right to speak since we're not rich."

The blog implies that the ISPs got sued by record companies, forcing them to block the website. "This is particularily interesting since music released and promoted exclusively here on TPB is currently in the brittish top charts," stated WinstonUK.

The blog also lists instructions on how to circumvent the ban. There are plenty of options available to UK fans of the site.

The blog concluded with a rousing tone: "Don't forget that we can't allow this shit to happen! Next time they're coming for something else. And yes, there will be a next time if we don't stop them. Write to your ISP and tell them to appeal the case. Write to your local MPs and tell them that this is not allowed. Make sure your voice is heard. Remember, we're all the pirate bay, and we must stand united against the censorship from our opponents!"

Sniper Elite 3 trailer explores the gruesome detail of the X-Ray Killcam

There are a few amazing metaphors that Rebellion break out in this Sniper Elite 3 dev diary.

There are a few amazing metaphors that Rebellion break out in this Sniper Elite 3 dev diary. The best has to be the onion analogy, in which their Head of Art starts talking about the layers of the vegetable, only to shift into describing the layers of skin, flesh and gristle that are being shredded to bits as part of the game's much "improved" X-Ray Killcam.

I've never really understood the purpose of Sniper Elite's Killcam - at least in its more detailed V2 X-Ray variant. Successful sniping gives me a clinical, almost mathematical thrill of battling physics and ballistics. That's rarely enhanced by another slow, gruesomely detailed goresplosion of bone shards and arterial fluid. It's always surprising to see them make such big a deal of the feature in pre-release media.

The argument made in the video is that Rebellion aren't flinching away from the damage caused by a sniper's bullet. I'm not convinced, though. Sniper Elite V2 felt as if it was leering towards that damage; slowly - covetously - lingering on the meatgasm of human debris while an imagined Greek chorus of lads went "phwoar, ey?" in the distance. To be clear, it's not that I think it's offensive or dangerous, just boring and not in tune with Sniper Elite's strengths.

This sequel could, of course, completely change how it's positioned within the game. On the basis of this video, though, it seems like they're content with just turning up the excess.

Sniper Elite 3 is due out in the second quarter of the year.

Total War: Shogun 2 Rise of the Samurai screenshots storm in, Steam pre-orders available

Ten new screenshots have arrived for the Rise of the Samurai DLC that was announced yesterday for Total War: Shogun 2.

for Total War: Shogun 2. The pack is also available to pre-order now on Steamfor £5.99 / $9.99. The DLC adds a new campaign set 400 years before the standard Shogun 2 single player mode, and features six new factions, dozens of new units, four new agents, and lots more. See the new screenshots below. Rise of the Samurai is due out next month.

The Pirate Bay banned by UK ISPs

Popular torrent site The Pirate Bay is set to be blocked by six major UK internet service providers following a high court ruling, according to The Daily Telegraph .

. In his ruling, Mr Justice Arnold said that the site's operators "actively encourage" copyright infringement.

The ruling comes following a complaint from the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), who get a bit cross when users download music for free. As a result the site will be blocked by Sky, Everything Everywhere (Orange), TalkTalk, O2 and Virgin Media.

Piracy is a contentious issue for PC gamers and developers. We've talked to CD Projekt, Notchand Devolver Digitalabout DRM recently. It was only a few months ago that SOPAreared its ugly head too.

BT - the UK's biggest ISP - have asked for a little more time to consider their position, but according to the BPI they have "agreed to [the] request".

UK ISPs, especially TalkTalk, have been surprisingly vocal when it comes to defending their customer's decisions to download copyrighted material. Virgin Media are the only ISP to pipe up so far, and have somehow shoehorned their agreement with Spotify into their statement.

"Virgin Media complies with court orders addressed to the company but strongly believes that changing consumer behaviour to tackle copyright infringement also needs compelling legal alternatives, such as our agreement with Spotify, to give consumers access to great content at the right price," said a Virgin Media spokesperson.

The Pirate Bay features thousands of PC games on top of its roster of music and films, and the head honchos at major publishersare likely to be delighted by the news. But internet campaigners are up in arms about the decision, with the Open Rights Group's Jim Killock saying that: "It will fuel calls for further, wider and even more drastic calls for Internet censorship of many kinds".

Sniper Elite 3 trailer shows off Tobruk city, then blows bits of it up

It's not people that are the casualties of the small slice of war depicted in this trailer, but places.

It's not people that are the casualties of the small slice of war depicted in this trailer, but places. Specifically, it's the Libyan city Tobruk, which gets roundly shelled, shattered and exploded, all to demonstrate Sniper Elite 3's new fancier tech. At least, that's the case for the first minute of the trailer. After that, people are definitely the casualties. One person, to be precise, in a particularly gruesome way.

For the most part, the trailer seems to suggest an openness that was sorely lacking in Sniper Elite V2. But as promising as this teaser may be, my thoughts are largely centred around the final few seconds.

Sniper Elite V2's killcam bothered me for a number of reasons. It's partly because I enjoy sniping in video games. It's a technical challenge that's one of the more interesting interactions you can have with a game's gun. But the pleasure I get from that challenge is completely removed from the effect: the digital rendition of a person's face being disintegrated into dust and jelly.

Part of me thinks that - because of those reservations - the system could have been an affecting, if somewhat trite reflection on The Horror of War. Except, V2 just didn't function like that. It's constant slo-mo shots lingered on its lavish representation of collapsing organs in a manner that felt almost fetishistic. At the very least, it seemed like a cynical attempt to encourage viral videos of skilled or notable gore. There was an assumption that we, as gaming enthusiasts, must like this sort of thing. I didn't.

All of which doesn't take into account the main problem: it was so frequent it became tedious. Every couple of minutes, the game was interrupting itself to show off what its engine could do. It was like Burnout's impressive but frustrating crash animations, only instead of the twisting and scraping of inanimate metal, it's the perforation of a lung and the shattering of a spine.

That said, I don't know how Sniper Elite 3 will implement its version of the killcam. Maybe it'll be done in a way that's more tasteful. I suspect not, given that this trailer seems to be doing the same thing with more graphics. We'll find out for sure when it's released next year.

Total War: Shogun 2 Rise of the Samurai DLC campaign announced

Shogun 2 has been getting incremental slices of DLC in the months since its launch in March.

Shogun 2 has been getting incremental slices of DLC in the months since its launch in March. Now Eurogamerreport that The Creative Assembly are preparing something more substantial for Total War fans to get their teeth into. Rise of the Samurai is coming in September will add a new campaign set 400 years before Shogun 2's standard campaign.

Rise of the Samurai will let generals play as six new factions that make up three new warring families, the Taira, the Minamoto and the Fujiwara. These clans will have access to 16 new units, including Tetsubo Warrior Monks with female Onna Bushi fighters.

There will also be four new agents, including Shirabyoshi dancers and Junsatsushi Inspectors. Finally, the DLC will add 10 new naval units, 10 new mons and 10 new retainers.

Rise of the Samurai is slated for release some time next month. There's no news on how much it'll cost just yet.

Notch: "If someone copies your game a trillion times, you won't have lost a single cent"

Notch has just finished his "Fireside Chat" with Chris Hecker at GDC.

Notch has just finished his "Fireside Chat" with Chris Hecker at GDC. It sounds cosy, but that didn't stop the Minecraft creator taking on the thorny issue of piracy towards the end of the talk.

"If someone copies your game a trillion times, you won't have lost a single cent," said Notch. "Some people are using that to ruin the internet."

We can only asssume that Notch was referring to the SOPAlegislation that rose its ugly head a few months ago. The billing would make it harder for pirated materials to be distributed, but would throttle our ability to share content on the web. Notch told us that " no sane person" would support it when we spoke to him in January.

"I still think piracy is wrong, but the the level of wrong me calling my friend an idiot. It's wrong but it's such a minor thing. It's ridiculously small," concluded the hatted developer.

Notch has expressed his liberal views on illegal downloading before. Andres Lea recieved a ;) after tweeting his intentto pirate Minecraft. The dev has also mentioned that pirates can be convertedinto paying customers if treated appropriately.

Sniper Elite: Nazi Zombie Army targeting a sequel for 2013

Sniper Elite: Nazi Zombie Army will get a sequel in 2013, according to an announcement today from developer Rebellion.

from developer Rebellion. The goal of the new, stand-alone game will be to sharpen and intensify all the mechanics that brought players together in the self-published original, according to the studio.

"We really wanted to heighten the demonic, nightmarish tones of the first game," reports creative head Tim Jones. "The environments, the levels, the soundtrack all give a strong feeling of descent—each encounter, each level becoming progressively more hellish. Most importantly though, we've expanded the legions of Nazi undead with some really intimidating new enemies which we'll reveal soon."

A stand-alone expansion of Sniper Elite V2, the first Nazi Zombie Army released in February and focused on co-op play and a story based around American sniper Karl Fairburne as one of the people alive in a Germany overrun with a zombie hoardunleashed by Adolf Hitler. The sequel is set to continue this story with a focus on the German capital Berlin, according to Rebellion's announcement.

While a zombie/Nazi mashup is nothing new, probably the most spectacular part of both Sniper Elite V2 and its zombie expansion was its presentation of slow-motion, x-ray, bullet-time kill shots. This mechanic is sure to make the upcoming sequel and I'm eager to see how the game has developed what has became its most well-known—and theatrical—calling card.

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Our Verdict
Confused and buggy, but very entertaining under the right circumstances.

Confused and buggy, but very entertaining under the right circumstances. Bring friends.

In Magicka, you're a wizard. You've got eight elements that you can stack up, mix, multiply, and unleash. You can cast them at goblins, cast them at anything next to you, cast them at your specially blunted sword, cast them at your own face.

Singleplayer mode is a light comic fantasy, narrated by your dodgy mentor, Vlad. The black-clad Romanian wizard keeps pointing out that he's not a vampire, and making bad puns about sinking his teeth into things. It's a mix of satire and pop culture references that'll have you smirking dangerously throughout.

Lots of care has gone into the way the elements combine and contort in your spells. Combinations shape the form (Missile? Beam? Cone? Wall?) and function (Healing? Burning? Shielding? Exploding? Freezing? Drenching? Zapping?) of each glorious experiment. There's enough variety for every wizard to have his or her own favourite attack style. Mine is a steamy lightning beam that scalds you before dealing bonus lightning damage from the water element in steam.

Concocting these spells is a little confusing at first, as you're commanding eight elements across eight keys, but you're rarely faced with enemies that can't be killed by particular elements. Button mashing will get you far, and a mistake might just surprise you.

The environments are top-down, linear jaunts through bright and breezy fantasy tropes: forests full of goblins, orcish trenches, swamps, mines, the land of the dead. Wander off the beaten path, and you can find powerful equipment and new magic spell recipes that reach beyond the scope of your regular elemental concoctions - spells such as Revive and Teleport.

Singleplayer will soon wear thin, sadly. It's not that you can't beat it with the right spells and an awful lot of goes – it's that if you make a mistake and burst like a sticky water balloon, you get chucked back to the last checkpoint you reached. In once case, that involves fighting three big groups of face-pounding orcs and one-hit-smash-to-deathing ogres, in a row, before you hit another checkpoint. If you quit before you complete that level (perhaps out of, ooh, say, frustration), you'll have to start it all over again when you boot up the game again. Ultimately, you'll hit this annoying boss or that overpowered yeti thing or this boring underworld level and you'll just give up on singleplayer. Then you'll turn to multiplayer.

And multiplayer is good, when it works. If you've got a few networked computers and three eager friends with Magicka on their Steam accounts, you can enjoy the splendour of four death lasers combining neatly into a super-beam that bursts ogres in seconds. You can have tactics and gambits and laugh as they end with one wizard left, deciding if he wants your gear before he resurrects you.

The bulk of us, however, will be butting our heads against the brick wall of online multiplayer. At the time of writing, developers Arrowhead have been releasing patches every 24 hours, and they're gradually improving on the terrible connectivity issues. Despite their efforts, you no sooner host a game than Steam Chat dies, Skype calls drop, and flatmates start inspecting the router for flashing lights. For a game so reliant on multiplayer to be fun, there are lots of missed opportunities. There's no chapter select function, no joining mid-session for latecomers or disconnected players, no voice chat, no dedicated servers, and tons of lengthy, wordy cutscenes that only the host can skip.

Get it working, and it's great. For £8, you'll get your money's worth before everyone forgets about it. But it could have been game of the year material! Silly wizards.

The Verdict

Magicka

Confused and buggy, but very entertaining under the right circumstances. Bring friends.

We recommend By Zergnet

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Our Verdict
Low-key, effective storytelling and a hyperfocus on puzzles.

Low-key, effective storytelling and a hyperfocus on puzzles. The Swapper exemplifies the adage that less is more.

need to know

Expect to pay: £10 / $15
Release: Out now
Developer: Facepalm Games
Publisher: Activision
Multiplayer None
Link Official site

Built of clay and the echoes of Stanley Kubrick's creative ghost, sidescrolling puzzler The Swapper is superb. It's clever, moody and forward-thinking in its disdain for conventional, permaroided protagonists, but also irrepressibly frustrating. Like the charming rapscallion you can't help but like, The Swapper will drive you up the wall and have you coming back for more.

Disquieting in the way that only abandoned spacecraft can be, the game hinges on a single conceit: you can make clones. Lots and lots of clones. With the help of the titular device, you can generate a replica of yourself with a click of the rightmouse button, then propel your consciousness into that new body with a tap of the left. It's that simple. And that gruesome.

The clones, of which you can have up to four, will blindly mimic your every movement. They're the mainstay of your interactions with the game: you'll use them to push blocks, stand on buttons and do whatever is necessary to unearth the mystery of your surroundings. In the process, however, you're going to kill them repeatedly. At times, it'll be accidental. At times, you'll fling them knowingly off a ledge to get what you want. Crunch. Thud. Crack. But there's nothing wrong with that, right? After all, they're just empty vessels, containers your mind has oh-so-recently vacated – wait.

What is life? If a rock, one completely devoid of any biological function, is capable of sentient thought, does it put it on the same level as a human being? These are some of the many questions that The Swapper insinuates. Delivered through the many terminals littering the space station Thebeus and the odd cutscene, the story will have you ruminating on the nature of your existence even as you unravel what has happened here.

When not otherwise asking you to evaluate the measure of a soul, The Swapper will have you manoeuvring through Thebeus's labyrinthine depths in an attempt to gather a congregation of orbs. To do so, you're going to have to figure out how to circumnavigate levers, obstacles and coloured lights (depending on their hue, these sources of illuminations can cancel your ability to produce clones, to swap to them, or both). It's a routine concept but one implemented with a delicious amount of competence. The puzzles, which start easily enough, ramp up speedily in terms of difficulty. Though they progress at an expected incline, they can still be absolutely rage-inducing, as there is no way you can get around solving any of these buggers.

The Swapper is one of those games that will stick in your mind. Years down the road, when you have grandkids demanding tales of retrotastic delights, The Swapper will be among those you reminisce about when you're telling them of nonviolence done right.

The Verdict

The Swapper

Low-key, effective storytelling and a hyperfocus on puzzles. The Swapper exemplifies the adage that less is more.

We recommend By Zergnet

Sniper Elite: Nazi Zombie Army 2 announced, will release on Halloween

October 31st is a good time to release a game about killing zombies with a sniper rifle - why it's almost as if Rebellion had planned it to release on that very day.

October 31st is a good time to release a game about killing zombies with a sniper rifle - why it's almost as if Rebellion had planned it to release on that very day. Sniper Elite: Nazi Zombie Army 2, their seasonally appropriate sequel to the seasonally in appropriate (it released on Valentine's Day) original, boasts a new campaign and new bosses, and once again features co-op, shambling right-wing corpses, and Rebellion's sickeningly gory X-Ray Killcam.

Rebellion have managed to crank out a Nazi Zombie spin-off and now a Nazi Zombie spin-off sequel while we wait for Sniper Elite 3 to see the light of day (it's expected in 2014). Like its predecessor, NZA2 is a sort of co-op horde thing with an emphasis (obviously) on sniper rifles. It's already shuffled its way onto Steamand Rebellion's own store, should you want to take a look. You'll find video proof of the game's existence below.

Hyper Light Drifter is now available for pre-purchase on GOG

Hyper Light Drifter was funded to the tune of $645,000 back in 2013, back when Kickstarter was a cool new thing that barely anyone was sceptical of.

was funded to the tune of $645,000 back in 2013, back when Kickstarter was a cool new thing that barely anyone was sceptical of. Since then I've checked my email every morning for a note confirming its release date, which we got (in a fashion) last yearwhen a "spring" window was announced (autumn in Australia). Well, that season is fast approaching, and so too is Hyper Light Drifter apparently, because it's now up for pre-purchase on GOG.

That means it's coming really soon, right? No idea, to be honest – there have been no official announcements made since the launch window was confirmed last year. Still, the studio did seem pretty certain.

"Release dates are a sensitive subject, and our attitude has been to take the time we need to do this right," a spokesperson wrote last year. "Though we have hinted at estimated dates before, we are thrilled to finally come to you in certainty with our official release window!"

Here's the latest trailer, in case you missed it last year:

The Swapper - a clever claymation puzzle-platformer - coming to Steam this Spring

You're going to want to keep an eye on The Swapper , a sidescrolling platform/puzzle game with a staggering art style and a killer central mechanic.

, a sidescrolling platform/puzzle game with a staggering art style and a killer central mechanic. You play an astronaut - or more accurately, astro nauts , because you soon gain the power to make clones of yourself and, as the title suggests, swap between them. If that wasn't novel enough, the game's characters and sets are made of handmade materials such as tin cans and clay - this is the Aardman hard sci-fi I never knew I needed until now. Have a watch of the following, new trailer for proof, but be sure to turn the quality up so you can make out every last blemish and fingerprint.

The Swapper's come a long way since it first came to light in 2009, in part due to backing from The Indie Fund. Developers Facepalm Games announced yesterdaythat it would be heading to Steam this Spring, which - wait, has anyone checked with the Groundhog whether it's Spring yet?

...Groundhog says no. Bill Murray won't be pleased.

Thanks to Kotaku.

Reinstall: Sniper Elite V2

Reinstall invites you to join us in revisiting classics of PC gaming days gone by.

Reinstall invites you to join us in revisiting classics of PC gaming days gone by. This week, Craig plays a hidden object game with bullets in Sniper Elite V2.

You, there: put down that spoon and tub of Nutella and go to a window, preferably one with a rural view. If you can't find one, you're out of fun as far as this paragraph is concerned. Just skip to the middle of the second and lament your windowless world. The rest of you, take time to absorb everything that you can see. Scan everywhere. Give it all a really good, hard look. Don't rush. Done that?

Now how many Nazis did you see? Be honest! Any number above zero and you should probably move. The reason I ask is because when I go to the window, even though there are no mid-20th century German national socialists visible, I worry that there might be dozens. Is that a fascist fumbling in the foliage, or was it just the wind? Might that broken wall conceal someone? I might sound unreasonably paranoid, but if you've played Sniper Elite V2's multiplayer as much as I have, you begin to realise the evil that could inhabit every bush.

This is because of the particular ruleset used on a server I've found: instakill, no bullet-drop, and no running. Not even when a bullet whizzes so closely by that you can read your name on it. That means that when you find a spot that gives you plenty of coverage of the level but protects your buttocks from König's killshot, you stay there for as long as you can. Sometimes it's a grave. Sometimes it's the remains of a bombed-out church tower. Sacrilege takes second place to safety. It's a ruleset that legitimises that otherwise unforgiveable sin of multiplayer shooting: camping.

It turns what was already a slowly paced game of sniping into something almost Zenlike. Where you lie has as much significance as how steady your aim is. I am one with the bush. I am the bush. The bush and I are quantum-entangled.

The scope of my rifle sweeps across the land, hoping to catch a Stahlhelm poking out, or find a foot fumbling for purchase. That's all you need. A pixel or two. A shadow. I click up the zoom level of my T-99, take a breath (in the real world and also by pressing 'E' in-game) and follow my bullet through the air. It doesn't matter if it's from 10 metres or 200 metres, every kill feels like a victory.

What makes it interesting is that others are playing the same game. If there's a server full of 12 people, all hidden, cowering in corners and barely moving, how do you know what to snipe? The clue is in 'barely moving'. When prone players shift their view, even just a tiny fraction, the entire character model moves. It's that movement that gives you the best chance of spotting someone. Shift your shoulder, the tiniest movement possible, and it could mean death. It has for me so many many times.

But learning to spot that movement takes time. The levels are gorgeous, animated marvels. Beautiful in the way only a destroyed city can be. Smoke boils out of fires, embers leap into the air, and torn flags cast rippling shadows that you need to absorb and make a part of the background detail. You need to get a feel for it all, and then to disregard it. Nazi-sympathising inanimate objects are everywhere.

While watching a green field from the broken roof of a bombed-out museum, I've discovered reserves of patience I thought had long since evaporated. Somewhere out there, among the trees and ruts, behind the crates and tanks, sunken in a crater, is someone. Finding signs of life in all that, and it could be 1% of a helmet spotted 250 metres away as it shifts a centimetre, is glorious. It wouldn't work if the game's draw distance was shoddy, but with the right kind of thousand-yard stare you can see the waggle of a gun rifle a map-length away.

When every movement can feel like you're setting off a firework display that writes 'I'm Here' in rockets, popping up to shoot someone is a tough decision. You're only in that position because you spent the time crawling to get there. What if this act of assassination is the one that gives your position away? Death comes quickly and from every conceivable angle. You'll often not even know where the shooter was.

With such a precise method of killing, things can also go hilariously wrong. At one point I accidentally hit 'F', which selects whatever trap you've highlighted, and bent down to place a landmine. Just above me a brick spat out a puff of debris. I'd accidentally ducked out of a bullet's path. That puff of dust told a hell of a story. It bloomed out from the brickwork the second I broke my cover, so I could be sure I was being tracked. I'd been crawling through a warehouse, the broken walls offering players across the map only a brief glimpse of movement, enabling me to be traced but not shot. Maybe I wasn't even visible, only my shadow betraying me? Then, ridiculously, I'd popped up. All that careful shuffling undone with a keyboard fumble that both exposed me then saved my life.

I dropped again and didn't move for minutes, trying to imagine what I'd be doing in my opponent's place. I'd be as still as I could possibly be. I'd just wait. The rest of the world would melt away as I kept my aim on that few square metres. I'd probably grin the grin of a man who's got a high-powered rifle and a target that knows even a shrug of a shoulder means death.

I expect that's what he was doing when another sniper's bullet zipped in from the side, shooting the land-mine that was my curse and saviour, and blowing me sky-high. It set off an odd chain reaction that seems unique to Sniper Elite's multiplayer: the guy that shot me exposed himself enough to die, then the guy that shot him was caught out as well. All told, three people made the mistake of moving an inch to take a life. At least I took a few people with me, even if it was indirectly.

Brigador is releasing in June with an unusual extra

Brigador, the neon-soaked isometric mech piloting game from new developer Stellar Jockeys, will be launching along with something a little odd for a brand new indie game: an audiobook.

from new developer Stellar Jockeys, will be launching along with something a little odd for a brand new indie game: an audiobook. A $30 bundle on itch.iowill include the game, audiobook (which is also titled Brigador), as well as the original soundtrack by Makeup and Vanity Set. On Steam, the audiobook and OST package will be sold as DLC.

The novel (which will also be available in text on Amazon) is written by Brad Buckmaster and read by voice actor Ryan Cooper. It fills out the story of Brigador's world so the game can give full attention to all its little tanks and mechs crushing fully-destructable pixel art cities, which is fine by me. You can check out a sample below:

Why include an audiobook? “The biggest [reason] is just that we wanted to follow through on what interested us, try different things,” says Stellar Jockeys CEO Hugh Monahan. “And if this is the only game we ever make then I didn't want to leave anything on the table.”

Monahan describes a new “arms race” among developers. No longer is the battle over who can cram the most polygons and particles into their games, but who can get players most invested. “Making a ‘good game’ feels like a starting point now rather than the end unto itself,” says Monahan. “That and there's just a degree of spectacle at play; with how many people are jumping into independent development it's increasingly difficult to get any kind of attention, especially on a first title.”

It made a lot more sense to us than tiny talking heads and cutscene dialogue most people just want to skip as fast as possible.

Designer and lead artist Jack Monahan, Hugh’s brother, adds that the novel is them putting Brigador’s story in its “natural habitat,” citing the difficulty of meshing story and game design. “Maybe we'll try a more integrated effort next time,” writes Jack. “But for a first game on an original engine, it made a lot more sense to us than tiny talking heads and cutscene dialogue most people just want to skip as fast as possible.”

Also going on sale, independant of the special edition, is a $15 vinyl pressing of the soundtrack (listen below). All combined, the extras are the Monahans’ way of extending the potential for Brigador to entertain—“different ways to enjoy it,” as Jack puts it.

“I don't think the multi-format tie-in approach is solely the purview of big content producers,” he says. “We've got our own little club, which includes a great musical artist, and a very entertaining action writer, so why wouldn't we invite them along with us?”

Brigador is currently in Early Access on Steam, and will release in full—along with the audiobook and soundtrack—on June 2nd. That bundle can be pre-ordered on itch.io as of today. Pre-orders for the vinyl soundtrack will be available on launch day, and the records will start shipping in August. For more, read my previewfrom last summer—with the caveat that Brigador has surely changed since then, and we’ll have a full review of the release version next month.

Serious Sam 3 hits Steam Workshop, in typically explosive fashion

The problem with Serious Sam 3's rocket launcher is that it looks too much like a rocket launcher, rather than, say, a disconcertingly headless enemy that fits in the palm of your hand like a particularly grisly Polly Pocket.

The problem with Serious Sam 3's rocket launcher is that it looks too much like a rocket launcher, rather than, say, a disconcertingly headless enemy that fits in the palm of your hand like a particularly grisly Polly Pocket. Thank heavens then for the Pet Scrapjack mod, and for Steam Workshop in general, which has welcomed Serious Sam 3 into its moddable embrace.

Highlights so far include the aforementioned Scrapjack, the gentlemanly Sir Buttersworth mod, and, er, a map based on the Ben Stiller film Night at the Museum. If that's inspired you to make your own, based on Meet the Parents or even There's Something About Mary, Croteam have helpfully created a guideto putting the thing online. In the meantime, this cheery little headless fella clearly needs to be in everyone's game. Chop chop.

Reinstall: Sniper Elite V2

Reinstall invites you to join us in revisiting classics of PC gaming days gone by.

Reinstall invites you to join us in revisiting classics of PC gaming days gone by. This week, Craig plays a hidden object game with bullets in Sniper Elite V2.

You, there: put down that spoon and tub of Nutella and go to a window, preferably one with a rural view. If you can't find one, you're out of fun as far as this paragraph is concerned. Just skip to the middle of the second and lament your windowless world. The rest of you, take time to absorb everything that you can see. Scan everywhere. Give it all a really good, hard look. Don't rush. Done that?

Now how many Nazis did you see? Be honest! Any number above zero and you should probably move. The reason I ask is because when I go to the window, even though there are no mid-20th century German national socialists visible, I worry that there might be dozens. Is that a fascist fumbling in the foliage, or was it just the wind? Might that broken wall conceal someone? I might sound unreasonably paranoid, but if you've played Sniper Elite V2's multiplayer as much as I have, you begin to realise the evil that could inhabit every bush.

This is because of the particular ruleset used on a server I've found: instakill, no bullet-drop, and no running. Not even when a bullet whizzes so closely by that you can read your name on it. That means that when you find a spot that gives you plenty of coverage of the level but protects your buttocks from König's killshot, you stay there for as long as you can. Sometimes it's a grave. Sometimes it's the remains of a bombed-out church tower. Sacrilege takes second place to safety. It's a ruleset that legitimises that otherwise unforgiveable sin of multiplayer shooting: camping.

It turns what was already a slowly paced game of sniping into something almost Zenlike. Where you lie has as much significance as how steady your aim is. I am one with the bush. I am the bush. The bush and I are quantum-entangled.

The scope of my rifle sweeps across the land, hoping to catch a Stahlhelm poking out, or find a foot fumbling for purchase. That's all you need. A pixel or two. A shadow. I click up the zoom level of my T-99, take a breath (in the real world and also by pressing 'E' in-game) and follow my bullet through the air. It doesn't matter if it's from 10 metres or 200 metres, every kill feels like a victory.

What makes it interesting is that others are playing the same game. If there's a server full of 12 people, all hidden, cowering in corners and barely moving, how do you know what to snipe? The clue is in 'barely moving'. When prone players shift their view, even just a tiny fraction, the entire character model moves. It's that movement that gives you the best chance of spotting someone. Shift your shoulder, the tiniest movement possible, and it could mean death. It has for me so many many times.

But learning to spot that movement takes time. The levels are gorgeous, animated marvels. Beautiful in the way only a destroyed city can be. Smoke boils out of fires, embers leap into the air, and torn flags cast rippling shadows that you need to absorb and make a part of the background detail. You need to get a feel for it all, and then to disregard it. Nazi-sympathising inanimate objects are everywhere.

While watching a green field from the broken roof of a bombed-out museum, I've discovered reserves of patience I thought had long since evaporated. Somewhere out there, among the trees and ruts, behind the crates and tanks, sunken in a crater, is someone. Finding signs of life in all that, and it could be 1% of a helmet spotted 250 metres away as it shifts a centimetre, is glorious. It wouldn't work if the game's draw distance was shoddy, but with the right kind of thousand-yard stare you can see the waggle of a gun rifle a map-length away.

When every movement can feel like you're setting off a firework display that writes 'I'm Here' in rockets, popping up to shoot someone is a tough decision. You're only in that position because you spent the time crawling to get there. What if this act of assassination is the one that gives your position away? Death comes quickly and from every conceivable angle. You'll often not even know where the shooter was.

With such a precise method of killing, things can also go hilariously wrong. At one point I accidentally hit 'F', which selects whatever trap you've highlighted, and bent down to place a landmine. Just above me a brick spat out a puff of debris. I'd accidentally ducked out of a bullet's path. That puff of dust told a hell of a story. It bloomed out from the brickwork the second I broke my cover, so I could be sure I was being tracked. I'd been crawling through a warehouse, the broken walls offering players across the map only a brief glimpse of movement, enabling me to be traced but not shot. Maybe I wasn't even visible, only my shadow betraying me? Then, ridiculously, I'd popped up. All that careful shuffling undone with a keyboard fumble that both exposed me then saved my life.

I dropped again and didn't move for minutes, trying to imagine what I'd be doing in my opponent's place. I'd be as still as I could possibly be. I'd just wait. The rest of the world would melt away as I kept my aim on that few square metres. I'd probably grin the grin of a man who's got a high-powered rifle and a target that knows even a shrug of a shoulder means death.

I expect that's what he was doing when another sniper's bullet zipped in from the side, shooting the land-mine that was my curse and saviour, and blowing me sky-high. It set off an odd chain reaction that seems unique to Sniper Elite's multiplayer: the guy that shot me exposed himself enough to die, then the guy that shot him was caught out as well. All told, three people made the mistake of moving an inch to take a life. At least I took a few people with me, even if it was indirectly.

Upcoming PC game release dates: Winter 2015 - 2016

The leaves are falling, the skies seem just a little paler, and the air is chilled—or if you live in the southern hemisphere, the opposite of all those things—and so it's time for another of our quarterly looks at the big games coming soon.

The leaves are falling, the skies seem just a little paler, and the air is chilled—or if you live in the southern hemisphere, the opposite of all those things—and so it's time for another of our quarterly looks at the big games coming soon. For winter (which we're just going to call December, January, and February regardless of the solstices), we've got all those games that were going to come out in November and didn't, and some we've been waiting a while for, like The Witness.

December
Helldivers

Release date: December 7
Link : Steam store page

The developers of Magicka return with a four player co-op shooter, where death comes quickly and sloppy friendly fire can easily wipe out your whole team. If that sounds familiar, well, you probably played Magicka. Ammo limits and a focus on coordinate teamwork (step one: don’t walk in front of the bullets) distinguish Helldiversfrom other twin-stick shooters. So does the “community-driven galactic campaign,” where everyone’s combined efforts in Starship Troopers-style alien bug extermination affect the balance of the galactic map. Interestingly, Helldivers is the first game on Steam to be published by PlayStation Mobile (it was released on PS4 earlier this year). A sign of things to come, perhaps?

Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex - First Assault Online

Release date: December
Link: Steam store page

A first-person shooter inspired by anime Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, along with its very lengthy title, is coming to Steam Early Access sometime in December. Some of the gameplay footagewe’ve seen has Call of Duty tones, as augmented soldiers tap away at the triggers of automatic weapons, earning bonuses for double kills and such. The official description doesn’t reveal much else, though videos from the beta show off both deathmatch and objective-based modes.

January
The Witness

Release date: January 26
Link : Official Site

Did you like Braid? Well this isn’t Braid. Forget Braid. Why did you bring up Braid? But now that you mention it, The Witness is made by the same people who made Braid. A first person puzzle game from designer Jonathan Blow and developer Thekla Inc., you awake on a deserted island and have to solve a series of puzzles to progress. While the first person camera is more reminiscent of Myst, the puzzles themselves aren’t nearly as freeform, primarily showing up on puzzle panels for you to solve. The island itself is bright and vibrant, and we quite liked the deceptively tricky puzzles when we previewed The Witnessback in April.

Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen

Release date: January 2016
Link: Official Site

In addition to being one of the great cult RPGs of the last console generation, Dragon’s Dogma also shines because you can pick up NPCs and throw them off cliffs. In fact, the way you face off with Gransys’s many and varied foes is what gives the combat so much impact. Climbing atop a panicked cyclops never gets old (it sounds like it would, but it doesn’t!), but it’s the game’s unique companions, dubbed ‘Pawns’, that stand out most. Each Pawn is customised by the player from the ground up, and when you’re not adventuring with them, other players can access them with a sharing system. It was a little bit ropey when it released on consoles, and it’s not the prettiest game ever made, but its nuanced combat and sense of adventure makes it stand the test of time.

Tharsis

Release date: January
Link: Steam Store page

“Peril, dice and cannibalism” headlined our first look at Tharsis, which mixes board game-style mechanics and roguelike permadeath. The combination of dice and cannibalism should be tempting enough, but here’s another word to grab your interest: FTL. Tharsis sets you on the task of shepherding a ship to Mars, and disaster can and will strike along the way. Instead of ordering your crew around a la FTL, imagine having to roll dice to to repair things and take other actions. As Jody wrote for us, “Tharsis is like playing four games of Yahtzee simultaneously, only sometimes you’re on fire.”

February
XCOM 2

Release date: February 5
Link: Official Site

XCOM 2, which was meant to be out last month but was delayed into February, picks up after the events of XCOM: Enemy Unknown—except you lost. The aliens haven’t just arrived: this is is their planet now, and the Enemy Within expansion never happened. So we’ll once again struggle against the extraterrestrials in turn-based combat encounters, but this time as an even greater underdog. Some of the most notable changes are the introduction of procedurally generated maps, a stealthy concealment phase to start fights, and voiced squad members with more customization options. And the most important surprise: it’ll be PC-only and Firaxis will be releasing modding tools. Hallelujah. For more, Sam wrote in depth about all of these changesback in September.

Firewatch

Release date: February 9
Link: Official Site

Firewatch is the first game from Campo Santo, a developer staffed with folks like Sean Vanaman (The Walking Dead, Tales of Monkey Island), Jane Ng (The Cave, Brutal Legend), Olly Moss, a graphic designer who’s worked with Lucasfilm and Studio Ghibli, and a bunch of other people who’ve done things we like. And it looks cool. The trailers cast us as a man named Henry who wanders the wilderness—watching for fires, naturally—while chatting with his supervisor, Delilah, on a handheld radio. As they trade sarcastic quips in the bright, flat-shaded forest, thriller tones creep in: a pair of young women were reported missing, the communication cables are cut, and someone else is creeping around in Henry’s isolated canyon.

Mighty No. 9

Release date: February 9
Link: Official Site

The first game from Mega Man creator Keiji Inafune since he left Capcom, Mighty No. 9 is a spiritual successor to the classic Mega Man games. It’s a 2D sidescrolling shooter where you play as a blue robot named Beck, who can dash into enemy robots to steal their abilities. Sound familiar? Inafune and developer Comcept Inc. crowdfunded Mighty No. 9 on Kickstarter where it raised nearly four million dollars. Though its Kickstarter had it slated for April of this year, it got a release date for November which, as you might have noticed, was eventually pushed back to February.

Far Cry Primal

Release date: March 1
Link: Official Site

As it comes out on PC a week after the console versions, this one actually slips into March—but that’s technically still winter, so we’ll include it anyway. It’s a Far Cry game set in prehistoric times, without guns, jeeps or gyrocopters. Instead of these, you’ll be using whatever hand-to-hand weapons you can craft from the elements. Given the Mesolithic setting, the odds will be emphatically against you (ever tried to punch a sabre-tooth cat in the face? Didn’t think so). For a series that has lately morphed into an open world power fantasy it’s a refreshing change of pace, and the focus on hunting and tribe management suggests Ubisoft Montreal is taking its cues from survival games like Rust and DayZ. It ain’t a shooter—more of a bludgeoner, really—but any game willing to stray this far from its series’ template is worth at least a look.

TBD
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt — Blood and Wine

Release date: TBD 2016
Link: Official Site

Hearts of Stonewas a satisfying expansion, but Blood & Wine looks set to be better. In addition to a bunch of tweaks based on player feedback, the expansion promises a 20 hour jaunt through Toussaint, a previously unvisited region of the Northern Realms. The prospect of a new world to explore is exciting, but the little that we know about Toussaint is even more enticing: it’s a region “untainted by war” and reputedly idyllic, in stark contrast to the devastation of Velen and the dangerous cliffs of Skellige. Sounds like a welcome change of scenery, but there’s little doubt Geralt will be killing lots of monsters in it. He doesn’t do peace very well.

We don't have a screenshot of the expansion, so here's a griffin.
The Ship: Remasted

Release date: Early 2016
Link: Official Site

When The Ship 2’s crowdfunding campaign failed to reach its goal, Blazing Griffin went back to the drawing board and returned with The Ship: Remasted, a remake of the 2006 original. The Ship is a multiplayer murderin’ game in which players must hunt down a single target and take them out—out of sight, or they’ll be arrested—while avoiding their own hunter. Players also must fulfill personal needs like socializing and eating, which can force them to inadvertently reveal their identity to their hunter. The original also included a single-player story, in which all this is justified as a game invented by the mad Mr. X. The new version looks much snazzier, though it won’t add new content.

Rollercoaster Tycoon World

Release date: “Early 2016”
Link: Official Site

It’s been 10 long years since the last installment of the RollerCoaster Tycoon series, but after bouncing between several different developers and following an upgrade to Unity 5, it’s finally inching our way. Promising Steam Workshop support and a (post-launch) multiplayer mode, the theme park simulator was originally planned for release on December 10. However, its first beta weekend convinced Atari they needed more time to fine-tune, as not all testers wanted to build their coasters completely from scratch, preferring instead to snap together pre-made track sections, while others felt the game was poorly optimized. There’s been no official word on the revised release date other than that it’s planned for early 2016.

Serious Sam 4 to be funded through the seriously good Humble Weekly Sale

The latest recipient of the Humble Weekly Sale is Croteam's hyper-realistic military simulation, Serious Sam.

is Croteam's hyper-realistic military simulation, Serious Sam. For a fistful of dollars, you can get the entire series, including Serious Sam's First and Second Encounters, Serious Sam II, Serious Sam 3: BFE, and the Serious Sam indie series. More seriously, all funds directed towards Croteam are being put towards development of Serious Sam 4.

For more on the contents of the sale, here's an extremely serious video:

So far, the only information we have on Serious Sam 4 is the above image and Croteam's promise that it'll be the "craziest and greatest Serious Sam game EVER." They used all-caps and everything. That's how you know they're serious. Oh god, I'll stop now.

The average price is currently hovering around the $4.25 mark, which is therefore what you'll need to pay to unlock Sams 2 & 3. The bundle runs until Thursday.

The first big Windows 10 update is out today

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Indivisible, the 2D action-RPG by Skullgirls devs, has been funded

After one of the most effective marketing campaigns in recent crowdfunding memory, Indivisible has reached and exceeded its $1,500,000 IndieGogo asking price.

has reached and exceeded its $1,500,000 IndieGogo asking price. That means if you enjoyed the playable prototype – which is still available on the IndieGogo page– you can expect more in 2017.

Of course, being a crowdfunding campaign, there are stretch goals. These are outlined in more detail on the IndieGogo page, but if the team reaches $1,650,000 legendary composer Hiroki Kikuta will contribute more music to the game, while $1,900,000 will allow for an animated opening by Titmouse and a "Mystery Anime Studio".

More stretch goals could come, depending on the success of these ones. "Most gameplay-oriented additions are being considered as content for a post-release expansion," the teams writes. "The budget we’ve presented is for our full vision for Indivisible, but we have plenty of ideas for stretch goals, should we be fortunate enough get to that point.

"If we get to them, we have two primary aims in mind for Indivisible’s stretch goals: make the game into an even better game and more desireable product, without greatly extending the development schedule of the core game. As such, most gameplay-oriented additions are being considered as content for a post-release expansion."

Whatever the case, a 2D action-RPG in the vein of Valkyrie Chronicles, developed by the studio responsible for one of the prettiest 2D games in recent memory, is not something to be sniffed at.

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Our Verdict
A hugely fun, mega-frenetic co-op shooter that embodies the soul, and depth, of 90s twitch shooters.

No cover. All man. So reads Serious Sam 3: BFE's macho tagline. Those other shooters you've been playing? The ones that let you hide behind things? You were playing a coward. You had formless voxels where your bump-mapped man-genitals should have been. Serious Sam despises you and your modern FPS standards, in a fun way that's sometimes difficult to appreciate as intentionally ironic.

As with the previous games, this is an FPS that prides itself on bedlam and ultraviolent, large-scale carnage versus tens of thousands of streaming, screaming monsters. It's defiantly old-school PC in tone.

Even Sam's motion feels weirdly outlandish as he scoots in all directions like a hyperactive ghost, nimble and carefree. This despite carrying a dozen different kinds of weapon, from sledgehammer to shotguns, miniguns, rocket launchers and a leash weapon obviously 'inspired' by Bulletstorm.

Enemies spawn in their droves, from cyclopic fanged gorillas and skeletal chain-chucking horses to giant scorpions with miniguns for arms, and headless, sprinting, bombfisted kamikaze soldiers.

The latter are particularly obvious above the mayhem thanks to their rapidly approaching, unending screams. Each kind of enemy has its distinct movement and attack patterns, its own audio cues and weaknesses, and it's in prioritising the most dangerous – picking them out of a clattering bunch of 50 or 60 foes – that challenge lies. Of course, challenge also lies in the scarcity of ammo, the lack of regenerating health (on anything above the easiest two difficulty settings) and the unforgiving relentlessness with which its developers, Croteam, inundate you with angry creatures.

So hooray that the campaign is playable in anything up to 16 player co-op, and although the population of enemies is adjusted to match, the proceedings are decidedly more relaxed when played this way. You respawn on death, for example, rather than having to restart from your last save. Alternative game modes allow you to enforce a lives limit if you want to maintain some risk of adversity. Either way, Serious Sam is at its most gratifying in co-op.

Survival mode is a distillation of the form, pitting you and (if you like) co-op buddies against waves of increasingly tough enemies in one of two arenas.

Despite introducing a Duke Nukemlite plot as shlocky as it is charmless, the singleplayer campaign feels like a lingering, grudging concession. A heavily templated and mazelike series of levels into which the meatpaste of Serious Sam's sublime and pure death arcade has been pumped. There are a few moments of beautiful design: the occasional genius placement of a surprise onslaught of kamikaze soldiers, the triggering of a shrewd mousetrap. There's little beauty in the visuals though, somehow greyer and less expansive than 2005's second Sam. It's left to some swanky new particle effects to impress us.

The return of Serious Sam's most familiar weapons and enemies, at the expense of much new content, will just as likely leave you exhausted as elated. But if you felt even vaguely like fist-pumping upon hearing the tagline 'No cover. All man.' give Serious Sam 3: BFE a punt.

The Verdict

Serious Sam 3: BFE

A hugely fun, mega-frenetic co-op shooter that embodies the soul, and depth, of 90s twitch shooters.

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Microsoft promises to support modding, overlays, G-Sync and Freesync in Universal Windows Apps

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Shadow Complex Remastered has been rated for PC

Shadow Complex was a 2009 2.5D Metroidvania exclusive to Xbox 360.

Shadow Complex was a 2009 2.5D Metroidvania exclusive to Xbox 360. It attracted quite good reviews at the time, and is widely considered among the best digital-only games available for the console. It won't be exclusive for long though, because a recent PEGI listingindicates that a remastered version is coming to PC.

That's not an official announcement, but ratings boards generally don't rate games that don't exist, so I wouldn't be surprised if we hear more about it in the coming weeks. The game is based on Orson Scott Card's novel Empire, and as the trailer below will indicate, it looks pretty good even without a remaster.

Serious Sam 3: BFE DRM hounds pirates with immortal scorpion

[embed width="610" height="340"]http://youtu.be/e91q5BtlxK0[/embed]
The video above shows off Croteam's ingenious DRM solution for Serious Sam 3: BFE.

The video above shows off Croteam's ingenious DRM solution for Serious Sam 3: BFE. It's got nothing to do with secure-ROM, or product codes, or online validation. Instead, those who boot a pirated version of the game will find themselves hounded forever by a gigantic pink scorpion that can never be killed. The video above comes from RPS, who scooped it from DSO, and shows the terrifying thing in action. It might well be the most inventive DRM trick since Rocksteady coded Batman to forget how to glidein pirated versions of Arkham Asylum.

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Our Verdict
Gears of War is fun as ever, but the technical flaws and limitations of Ultimate Edition are disappointing.

need to know

What is it? A remastering of the third-person shooter that popularized cover systems.
Developer: Epic Games (original), The Coalition (remaster)
Publisher: Microsoft
Expect to pay: $30
Reviewed on: Windows 10, 8GB RAM, i5-3570k, GeForce GTX Titan
Multiplayer: Co-op and competitive
Link: Official site

My criticisms of Gears of War haven’t changed much, which is exceptional for an Xbox 360 game from 2006. Well after it first redesigned third-person shooting into a chunky, cover-to-cover alien meatgrinder, Gears is still fun as hell. It’s aged wonderfully, tasting just a bit better, even, because it sticks out among modern shooters as thicker, stronger, and simpler.

But Gears of War has grown some pretty gross mold, too. This new ‘Ultimate Edition’ is one of those fancy DirectX 12 games built as a Universal Windows App, which is supposed to make it more efficient and simpler on us, but in this case has only introduced limitations. It looks great—the stones are grimier, the meatheads are gruffer—but do you want to play at an ultrawide resolution? There’s no ini to edit. Want to record gameplay with ShadowPlay? You can’t, so get used to Xbox DVR (which sucks). And you’d better hope Gears likes your video card, because it doesn’t like my GTX Titan or the GTX 980 Ti we tried it on in the office, and that grudge comes as nasty audio and video stuttering if I have the texture quality above ‘low.’ Microsoft is working on it, but it’s still a pain a week after launch.

That’s all crappy, but Gears softens the frustration of its limitations by being so much fun. The campaign can be a little self-serious—it’s Doom as an ensemble action flick like The Expendables, with a cast of ultimate tough guys flexing their neck-trunks at every problem—but there’s no drawn-out character development or weak attempts at high-concept sci-fi. Yeah, the cast of melancholy soldier archetypes can get boring, and the grimdark stonework becomes a grey paste in places, but I only have to care about that stuff for a minute at a time. Just a little walk and talk exposition, and then I get to spend 20 minutes with Gears’ wonderful shooting in a shower of alien gore.

Cover story

Gears of War still owns one of the best cover systems ever. The space bar puts in a lot of work: hold it to charge forward, tap it to enter cover, and hit it with a direction key to move between cover points, dive into the open, or hurdle over a concrete barrier. Except when I accidentally magnetize myself to a pillar while trying to transition from cover to close-quarters, the system feels clean and responsive. It does what I want it to do.

The battlefields are like strategy game boards, with cover points arranged at 90 degree angles to each other. There’s a lot of playing it safe, staying behind one comfy concrete cube or rusted out car while playing pop-and-shoot with likewise stationary grunts. But Gears gives you that routine so that it can freak you out when one of its Locusts decides to rush your position, or a new unit of them crawls out of the ground to your side. It feels nice to find a home and let the adrenaline settle into a pool, because a minute later Gears is going to splash me into action. I’ll point my nose at the ground and dash half-blind to a new cover fort where I can settle in again. It’s a bracing game of fight and flight.

And the guns are fierce, imprecise fun. You can spray tracer bullets wildly over cover or more neatly down the sights, flicking gore off the spongey heads of aliens until they pop. Giant mounted guns spit a whirl of projectiles and handle like firehoses, severing alien legs at the knees. Shotguns are hole-punches for headcrab-like rug beasts. There’s even an orbital beam weapon that Mass Effect’s Reapers would applaud, which is guided by a targeting gun—it’s like vacuuming the floor with space fire.

​I love that rather than reprimanding the player for shooting squadmates, Marcus yells at them for getting in the way.

I love that rather than reprimanding the player for shooting squadmates, Marcus (that’s you) yells at them for getting in the way. Gears is here because it wants you to have fun shooting aliens, and little else. It even makes reloading, a shooting staple you’d think needs no change, more fun. The Active Reload system adds golf swing timing to magazine swaps: tap R to reload, then again when a moving bar hits the sweet spot and you’ll reload faster and apply a damage boost to your new bullets. This sounds dumb, but my left index finger tingles when I hit a perfect reload, and my right hand feels more anxious and powerful with a special bullet in the chamber. With a bolt-action sniper rifle especially, it’s invigorating to send power from the R key to the mouse to the head of a brute, like I’m completing a circuit.

Gears is at its best in co-op, and on that front, I managed to find a random player to join up with for some brief shooty friendship. The competitive multiplayer, however, is quieter, and that’s part of the reason I won’t be recommending Ultimate Edition wholeheartedly. Gears has some pretty fun multiplayer—all that cover hugging with unpredictable human enemies—but it can take a while to get into a match. Unless you’re really nostalgic for Gears multiplayer, it’s a hassle when there’s so much else you could be playing outside the walls of the Windows 10 Store.

And I’m fine with Microsoft having its own store, but despite how good Gears of War still is, Ultimate Edition is making a poor case for venturing into that walled garden. The stuttering issue is a big pain, and even if Microsoft fixes it, Ultimate Edition will still be a limited piece of software. You can’t inject shaders, or capture video with the tool you like, or do anything we’ve become accustomed to doing on this wonderfully open platform. Gears of War is a great game, but the spirit of PC gaming does not inhabit this muscly incubus. If it runs properly for you it’s worth playing, but it might gnaw on your soul just a bit.

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I love sniping in games, and even without any complex ballistics, it's a lot of fun in Gears.

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Running feels powerful. Everything feels powerful.

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Even non-violent things, like staying in the light at night, are solved by shooting. (Gasoline cans in this case.)

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The point at which these guys' necks end and heads begin is the subject of much debate.

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Pushing cars around exemplifies Gears' simple, forceful approach to fun.

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The textures in Ultimate Edition aren't too shabby.

The Verdict

Gears of War Ultimate Ediition

Gears of War is fun as ever, but the technical flaws and limitations of Ultimate Edition are disappointing.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR As Executive Editor, Tyler spends a lot of time editing reviews and looking at spreadsheets, and whatever time is left over writing reviews. People joke that he doesn't like 90 percent of the games he plays, but he'll tell you he just has very discerning tastes.

We recommend By Zergnet

Blowing up Brigador's isometric cities with big ass mech guns

Brigador is a tantalizing isometric playset.

Brigador is a tantalizing isometric playset. It has some of the densest pixel art I've seen, all lit and all destructible, set to the cold nighttime synth tunes of Makeup and Vanity Set. It has lasers, cannons, chainguns, and rockets, walking mechs, tanks, and anti-grav assault vehicles—all complex to shoot and pilot as you turn tiny model city blocks to mulch. It's like a throwback to a classic game I'm not sure existed—somewhere in a Venn diagram with Desert Strike, MechCommander, and Cannon Fodder.

Brigador is hard as hell, too. Too hard, when I first tried it, which has colored my impressions a little. Brigador is releasing in Early Accesson Friday, but I started playing an early copy last week, which was spawning overly-powerful enemies until a patch last night. Getting past one stage used to be an accomplishment, but it's more manageable now (though still hard).

The structure is simple. After choosing your chassis, primary weapon, secondary weapon, and special ability—smoke grenades, an EMP grenade, or a cloaking device—you roll, stomp, or hover into a militarized city district. Complete one of three goals—kill three special mechs, destroy three gun installations, or just smash enough troops—and you can exit and move on to another district.

Boom!

A lot of things make Brigador difficult, some in really good ways, others not as much. Something good: piloting is hard. Brigador uses tank controls, so 'W' is 'forward' and not 'up' and 'A' and 'D' turn, not strafe—except in anti-grav vehicles. Cannons move independently by following the mouse, so in a walking mech, you've got to keep track of which way your legs are facing in relation to your torso. It takes a while to get the hang of and I'm still only successful in heavily armored vehicles, because I just can't be trusted to effectively dodge cannon fire and use cover. I get nowhere in the speedy, low-armor anti-grav vehicles.

What can be a pain about movement is the readability of the art. It's easy to get stuck in pixel rubble, and easy to lose track of your own legs, as the vehicle models are tiny on-screen. I'm not sure that there's a way around this without significantly changing the look of Brigador. It's just something to get used to, and I'm having more success as I learn to use the special abilities. I really like the smoke screen, which can halt an onslaught and give me a moment to figure out which way my legs need to be pointing.

Something I love outright are Brigador's weapons. You'll notice from the screenshots that my aiming interface has height. As I drag out those lines with the mouse, I get different arcs. Some cannons fire straight ahead, and drop toward the ground with a linear decline. Others, like the Howitzer (my favorite) fire in an arc. This matters when some enemies are hovering, or low to the ground like troops. If I'm really skilled—and I have made a few shots that impressed me—I can arc my fire over walls and nail a moving hostile as it comes looking for me.

A well-placed Howitzer shot is about to take out an enemy mech (look for the red dot headed for the pink eyeball).

Ammo conservation is important, and there are stations on the maps for refills, each serving one of several ammo types. Downed enemies also sometimes offer ammo pickups. It's currently a bit onerous. Just the act of pressing 'R' to retrieve ammo packs before they disappear is a dangerous distraction when a swarm of machines is surrounding me. And if I do manage to complete a stage, my current hitpoint level and ammo cache transfers over to the next: it's a one-life run through as many districts as you can manage. It might be overly punishing to not have any sort of between-level repair station—maybe it could cost in-game cash?—as starting a new district with low HP and low ammo just feels futile.

What I want most from Brigador is a bit more structure. Currently, it's a series of sandboxes with 'destroy X things' objectives. It's exciting to visit a new district just to see what it looks like, but the objectives don't change, and I didn't feel especially accomplished after a run. There's no sense that I'm getting closer to the center of the city, to some final objective, like Spelunky's City of Gold. Once one district is beaten, any other district can be chosen as the next destination. I appreciate the freedom, but as it settles into Early Access I hope Brigador finds ways to motivate deeper and deeper runs, whether that's through unlocks (which are coming, as I understand it), or with light restructuring—maybe even a separate, more directed campaign mode.

Brigadoras it is now will be available this Friday. For more, check out my interview from PAXbelow.