Exclusive giveaway — Company of Heroes 2 beta keys

All 20,000 keys have been distributed.

All 20,000 keys have been distributed. Thanks to everyone who grabbed one—look for more thrilling giveaways from us in the future.

For seven years, the original Company of Heroes has stood as our highest-rated RTS of all time. As its successor marches toward a late June release, we're happy to be able to exclusively offer about a division's worth of Company of Heroes 2beta keys to you all.

To grab a key, click here to head over to our Facebook page. Once you receive a key, redeem it on Steam. The closed beta is live now, and it includes both multiplayer and skirmish mode against the AI on six maps.

There's a limited supply of keys available. I'll update this post once they've all been drafted (away from their loving parents, you monster). If you miss out on our giveaway, a nuclear option is available: pre-ordering Company of Heroes 2on Steam grants closed beta access.

World of Warplanes first details. Will have same "gold, experience, economics" as World of Tanks

We recently interviewed Wargaming.Net CEO, Victor Kislyi about World of Warplanes, the follow up to World of Tanks that was announced at E3 this year.

this year. Warplanes will follow a similar free-to-play format tof WoT, with the same "gold, experience" and "economics," and is set to include planes from "big plane nations" like Russia, Germany, Britain, France, America and Japan.

Kislyi says the team are trying to strike a similar balance to World of Tanks, combining accessible controls with historically accurate World War 2 war machines. This time around, Wargaming.Net are going for a new audience. "It's important to understand, we want to concentrate this game on air combat enthusiasts," said Kislyi. "We want to go to air shows. We want to go to air museums. We want to talk to people who fly those hardcore flight simulations."

Will creating a convincing flight sim be a much harder task than tank warfare? Yes, says Kislyi. "Aeroplanes, everybody knows, you are in 3D, you have to be moving all the time, like a shark, and you have to have 3D vision in your head, unlike tanks. That's quite a challenge."

"An aeroplane is more difficult than a tank to control, obviously. There are much more drivers than pilots on this planet. That's where we put a lot of good people, trying out different controls, different twists in the flight model itself. If you look at the cockpit of any plane, you see a lot of controllers. We don't want people to be having to switch on all of those."

Even though they're courting flight sim fans, accessibility is still a priority for Wargaming.Net. "There's a lot of enthusiasm about warplanes and World War 2 in Russia , Europe and Britain and America, too. So first it has to be a good simulator, not too hardcore so that it takes you thirty minutes to take off, and then you crash land after a successful mission, and not too arcade-ish."

"It has to be historically realistic in terms of models, engines, internal components and relative perameters of different aeroplanes and different nations, of course, it has to be well balanced, but the gameplay, the flight mode, the controls, they have to be somewhere inthe middle in that sweet spot so that normal people can play."

Kislyi also suggests that players will be able to share currency between their games, meaning World of Tanks players will be able to hop over and buy a plane with the gold they've earned blowing up Panzers.

"Let's have mutually acceptable gold, why not?" Kislyi enthuses, "It's just dollars, or pounds, right? If you have the reserve of gold in your World of Tanks account, you're going to want to try Warplanes, why don't you use that money in World of Warplanes? There is nothing against it."

World of Warplanes is still in internal alpha testing at Wargaming.Net, so we're not likely to see a beta just yet. In the same interview Kislyi also suggested that Wargaming.Net are thinking seriously about their long term plans beyond World of Tanks and Warplanes, and want to do World of Battleships, too. We'll have more about the future of World of Tanks and Kislyi's views on the rise of free-to-play games soon.

The Last Guardian development experiencing technical difficulties, says Sony

Company of Heroes 2 release date shifted to June, closed beta incoming

Company of Heroes 2 was due to come out around about now, but then THQ folded and developers, Relic, were auctioned off to Sega.

was due to come out around about now, but then THQ folded and developers, Relic, were auctioned off to Sega. This has pushed back the World War 2 RTS by a few months. It'll now arrive on JUNE 25, long before Russian winter sets in.

“We hate to disappoint our fans with a later than expected date as we know they are eager to play but we feel that the additional time will help the team deliver the high quality sequel fans deserve” - thus spake producer Greg Williams into the press release robot's listening hole.

“However, the wait won't be long as players will soon be able to help us test and balance multiplayer in the upcoming Closed Beta.

"Details will follow shortly," he adds.

Exciting news, no? I liked what I played of Company of Heroes 2 very much, because I like Company of Heroes 1 very much, and the sequel seems to be clinging very close to the ideas that made the original great.

World of Tanks creator: after Warplanes "we will do Battleships"

We recently got the chance to catch up with Wargaming.net's CEO, Victor Kislyi about the monster success of World of Tanks, and what comes next: World of Warplanes, and possible further continuations of the series.

We recently got the chance to catch up with Wargaming.net's CEO, Victor Kislyi about the monster success of World of Tanks, and what comes next: World of Warplanes, and possible further continuations of the series. Kislyi revealed that Wargaming.net are already thinking about where to go after World of Warplanes, suggesting that battleships are the obvious next direction.

When asked why Wargaming.net decided to do Warplanes as their next game, Kislyi said it was down to the number of requests on the World of Tanks forums, and added that "when players talk about what they want us to do for the next game, of course they say battleships because there is a lot of Navy Field players playing our game that don't seem to believe in Navy Field 2."

When quizzed further on a possible World of Battleships, he said that "My mantra for the last year would be that, after an hour of playing World of Tanks, even a six year old boy would can come up with a list of obvious continuations of the series or franchise. There would be World of Tanks, maybe World War 1, but of course battleships, of course helicopters, of course warplanes, of course modern jetplanes, of course big walking robots.

"It's not about having the ideas. Ideas, everyone has those ideas. The key is to find appropriate development team, or grow it, expand it, put a lot of money in so the game is quality, and then also wrap it up in community and support layers to service it right. Any of those games are possible would be a success if done right.

"So yes, we are thinking about Battleships," he added, later saying "we will do Battleships, anyway."

It'll be some time before we see anything more on Battleships, Wargaming.net are currently working on a ton of new updates for World of Tanks that will add new vehicles, maps and games, and are currently hard at work developing World of Warplanes, which was announceda few weeks ago at E3. We'll have more news about the future of World of Tanks, and more details on World of Warplanes shortly.

Sony trots out The Last Guardian at E3, promises to release it in 2016

Relic to continue supporting Company of Heroes' online, servers moving to Steamworks

After the controlled implosion of THQ, you may have been wondering what would happen to the original Company of Heroes, now that Relic and COH2 have been safely gobbled up by Sega, and its chilli-dog scoffing CEO Mr Hedgehog.

After the controlled implosion of THQ, you may have been wondering what would happen to the original Company of Heroes, now that Relic and COH2 have been safely gobbled up by Sega, and its chilli-dog scoffing CEO Mr Hedgehog. The imminent shutdown of Quazal, who handled the game's online, hardly helped matters - but thankfully, Relic have come to a solution. Rather than leaving their six-year-old game to die, they're thoughtfully transferring the original Company of Heroes to Steamworks - you'll be able to 'opt-in' to the new service from April 8th.

Relic have teamed up with Smoking Gun Interactive - a studio made up of former Relic staff who worked on the original game - to bring COH to Steam "with as many of the original online features working on the new platform as possible." That means that the full suite of online options likely won't be available right at the start, but in the blog post Relic talk of a "roadmap" for COH1, so hopefully the game will be back to full strength in the coming months. Heroes' old, Quazal servers are set to close on May 7th.

Sadly, the years of accumulated online data won't carry across to the Steamworks version, but Relic are "investigating the possibility of creating an online archive of all the final data from the leaderboards, statistics, etc, to honor the gamers who have played so much for the last 6 years."

As for the sequel, well that's heading for Steamworks too. Company of Heroes 2 is out June 25th, while the date of its closed beta will be announced early next week.

Free XCOM games now being dispatched

Good news!

Good news! Digital distributor Green Man Gaming is now distributing free copies of Firaxis' seminal sci-fi strategy game XCOM: Enemy Unknown, to voters of this year’s Golden Joystick Awards.

The offer is available to everyone who’s voted so far, as well as those who head over to GoldenJoystick.comand cast their votes between now and the day we slam the door shut next week.

As an extra bonus, anyone who plays their copy of XCOM: Enemy Unknown will receive an 80% discount voucher for XCOM: Enemy Within via Playfire Rewards.

Launched by CVG magazine in 1982, the Joysticks is the world's biggest public-voted gaming awards. The 2014 Golden Joystick Awards ceremony is set to take place on Friday, October 24 at the IndigO2 at London's O2 Arena.

Place your votes - Head over to the Golden Joystick Awards websiteand pick your winners. Make sure you submit your votes with the same email address as your GMG account if you have one. Claim your free game - Make your way to goldenjoysticks.greenmangaming.comand fill in the 'Claim your free game' form. If you're registering your GMG account for the first time, make sure you use the same email address you used for the Golden Joystick Awards website. Link your Steam account - If you're an existing Playfire member with your Steam account linked, you’re already finished.

The offer is "while stock lasts" and you'll have to be over 18 to claim. Please be aware that certain territories may run out of keys faster than others based on demand. Here's GMG's explanation.

"There have been questions raised about the availability of the website and the free game for voting in the Golden Joystick Awards. While we would love to give games out to as many people as possible we only have a limited stock. We are acutely aware that working across different timezones means that the offer is more popular in different regions at different times of the day. Therefore in order to remain as fair as possible to our global audience we have allocated game keys on a territory basis globally. Some countries have been extremely quick with claiming their free game and so some country stocks have run out. We have also had some abuse of the system that we have corrected, reducing the overall number of games available to you all.

We will be working to make more keys available but please be assured that if you cannot claim a free game we will not be storing your data or adding you to our Playfire service.

We hope you appreciate our efforts to remain fair to our global gaming community and please bear with us in this very popular promotion.

Thanks, GMG"

Watch the PlayStation conference at E3 2016 right here

This year's Electronic Entertainment Expo continues with Sony's PlayStation showcase at 6 PM Pacific, which the company will surely use to hype up its games and hardware plans for the year to come.

Gamasutra will be in attendance, and if you can't join us in person you can use the livestream we've embedded above to watch the show at your leisure.

1000 years of the beautiful game simulated in Football Manager 15

A dedicated football fan (the soccer sort) has used Football Manager 2015 to simulate 1000 years of Premier League play to determine the greatest team of all time.

to simulate 1000 years of Premier League play to determine the greatest team of all time. It took 58 days for the simulation to complete, according to Redditor Lorf_Yimzo, who posted his results in a spreadsheetlisting each club's first, second, and third-place finishes in the English Premier League, as well as the European League and Champions League. Points were awarded based on each team's result, and he also documented how many seasons each club played in the Premier Division.

The first century of the simulation contained a couple of surprises, Yimzo said (and I'll have to take his word for it), as Derby won the Premier League in 2021 and Stoke emerged as a dominant force, a position it held well into the 2100s, when Burnley stepped up and wrestled away the crown. After that, Sheffield United, Southend, Sunderland, and several others all had a turn in the spotlight, until the simulation ended in 3015, in "a struggle between Brentford, Ipswich, and Nottingham Forest, with the very last title ever going to Hull City."

The most successful club of the next millennium was ultimately determined to be Sheffield United, just ahead of runner-up Burnley. The most consistent club, with 982 Premier League seasons played, was Burnley, followed by Arsenal, with 905 seasons. (Presumably with Cyber Wenger 3.0 in charge, says Arsenal-loving editor-in-chief Tim Clark.)

The team with the best Premier League season of the next 1000 years was (will be?) Sheffield United, which managed 101 points in the 2374/75 season. 300 years later, Sheffield United also had the dubious distinction of being the least-disciplined team of the millennium, accumulating 103 yellow cards and 9 red cards in the 2697/98 season.

The results are detailed in a number of screenshots linked in the Reddit post, and the save file is available as well if you want to load it up and play around. Are they accurate? Check back in 1000 years to find out, but the likelihood seems low. Sorry, Stokies.

Evolve interview: Turtle Rock on moddability, competitive FPS, and why Evolve was delayed

We've had a few opportunities to play Evolve this year, but not since the game's delay from its original October release date.

from its original October release date. I caught up with Chris Ashton and Phil Robb from Turtle Rock to ask them what the delay's allowing them to do, what modes or monsters we might see added to the game next, and whether moddability on PC is out of the question.

Absorb all of our stories from PAX Prime. Next week we'll be giving away a ASUS ROG GL551laptop signed by everyone we interviewed at the show.

Video: How to get the funding your game needs

Making great games takes time, skill, talent -- and money.

Game industry veteran, consultant and Execution Labs cofounder Jason Della Rocca has spent a notable portion of his career helping developers with that last part, and at GDC Europe 2015 he took to the stage to share some advice on getting the funding you need to make your game.

In the course of his talk he also presented a reality check on how independent studios are getting projects funded and their companies financed these days. Plus, he offered nitty-gritty advice on investor options, what each one is looking for, how to be "investable," stacking/layering options and what to watch out for when seeking funding.

It was a highly practical, useful talk that's well worth watching right now for free via the official GDC YouTube channel.

About the GDC Vault

In addition to this presentation, the GDC Vaultand its new YouTube channeloffers numerous other free videos, audio recordings, and slides from many of the recent Game Developers Conference events, and the service offers even more members-only content for GDC Vault subscribers.

Those who purchased All Access passes to recent events like GDC, GDC Europe, and GDC Next already have full access to GDC Vault, and interested parties can apply for the individual subscription via a GDC Vault subscription page. Group subscriptions are also available: game-related schools and development studios who sign up for GDC Vault Studio Subscriptions can receive access for their entire office or company by contacting staff via the GDC Vault group subscription page. Finally, current subscribers with access issues can contact GDC Vault technical support.

Gamasutra and GDC are sibling organizations under parent UBM Tech

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Our Verdict
Slow and disappointingly retro, not a series highlight.

Need to know

What is it? Perennial spreadsheet shuffling management game.
Reviewed on Nvidia GTX 570, Core 2 Quad Q6600, 8GB RAM.
Price £30/$50
Release 7 November
Developer Sports Interactive
Publisher Sega
Link

Last year I played Football Manager 14 in ‘classic mode’, the faster, more streamlined version of the game. Going straight from that to a full game of Football Manager 15 is like sprinting headlong into a wall of molasses.

Football Manager is often billed as ‘the football RPG’: selling the feeling of a manager’s life as much as the strategy game built around it. It’s one of those ideas that sounds fantastic on paper, but every time Sports Interactive try and embrace the idea, they just end up adding more press conferences.

Press conferences are to Football Manager what Desmond is to Assassin’s Creed. No-one likes them, no-one wants them, but SI keep trying to make them work. Now there are also tunnel interviews and lots more player conversations, all of which involve answering a series of questions and selecting a tone (assertively, calmly, passionately) and all of which take far too long.

Things taking too long is a theme the theme of this year’s Football Manager. Scouting players now takes several attempts, during which their attributes are displayed as a range (eg: 10-15) that you gradually narrow down. It’s a totally unnecessary time sink. I spent two solid months researching duff right wingers before eventually giving up and googling for one, which lead me to the excellent looking Andrija Zivkovic in a fraction of the time. This is how most FM fans actually play, but instead of embracing this level of meta-knowledge, SI are acting like it doesn’t exist.

But it’s hard to condemn the game for these irritations, because they all disappear the moment you flip over to good old classic mode. Scouting is instant, press conferences are kept to a minimum and unimportant matches can be resolved instantly. Classic values your time and gives you the tools to shortcut to the fun stuff. Of course if you do play that way then you’ll find the game is almost identical to last year’s edition, bar two crucial changes: the UI and the match engine.

The UI is a genuine improvement. It’s not only pretty, but includes some smart decisions. Some changes are clear reactions to how players use the game, like moving the much used quicksearch bar front and centre, while others try subtly influence them, like combining the player search and scout sections to encourage you to use your staff. Veteran players may chafe at having to unlearn years of bad habits but trust me, it’s worth it.

The bigger problem is the match engine. Criticising it is a dicey business. The way it works is so deliberately, wonderfully opaque that players tend to treat it like a force of nature rather than something that has ever actually been designed. But there’s a significant pattern to this year’s efforts: crosses are everything. Target men and traditional wingers are in vogue in a way not seen since the early 2000s. Get enough balls into the box and you will probably win. I’d say two thirds of my goals came from crosses, and the rest from long balls over the top. Short passing got me absolutely nowhere.

Now you, dear reader, may love long ball football, you may delight in old fashioned wing play. If you do, you’ll probably like FM15’s decidedly retro approach. But it does seem a bit strange in a world where all the major teams are all using inverted wingers and diamond formations for old fashioned touchline hugging wingers to be so dominant. I started the game fantasising about being Brendan Rodgers or Joachim Low, but I ended up playing like Tony Pulis. At its best, Football Manager reflects the state of modern football, but these tactics are straight out of 1998.

Contrast this to FM14, where players were playing gorgeous passing football and experimenting with avante-garde strikerless formations while holding discussions about ‘verticality’. FM14 was the football of coffee house intellectuals, FM15 plays like a lager lout. Football de-arte isn’t everything, but after a few hours of FM15’s muscular physicality I found myself longing for the silky skills of my old Everton team.

This all might sound overwhelmingly negative, so it’s important to stress that the basics of Football Manager are still there and working as well as ever. Football Manager 15 is still a good game, especially when played on classic, and you won’t go far wrong if this is your first game in the series. But for existing fans there aren’t a lot of compelling reasons to upgrade from last year’s edition, unless you’re really nostalgic for the Graham Taylor approach to football. Of course it’s entirely possible the traditional mid-season patch will change the tone of the match engine completely, at which point I’d heartily recommend it. But for now at least, this is a year to miss.

The Verdict

Football Manager 2015

Slow and disappointingly retro, not a series highlight.

We recommend By Zergnet

Far Cry 4 hands-on: roaming free in Kyrat

Following Ben Griffin's hands-on with Far Cry 4 focusing on the game's single player and cooperative components, Shaun Prescott takes a look at the open world, and mostly gets killed by wild animals.

Here I am in sunny Kyrat and I’ve been invited to "do whatever I want”. I have a bow and arrow, a handgun, a couple of molotov cocktails and binoculars. I have no desire to play Far Cry 4's story missions, so I mostly avoid them. The plot (seemingly) concerns a regular guy roped in to help some desperate people, even though all he wants to do is throw some ashes at some hills (the Himalayas).

There’s an outpost metres from where I’ve spawned, so I take my binoculars out and start marking enemies from the safety of a nearby shrub. At first I plan to quietly tease the baddies out of their nooks before driving my knife through their necks. They’ll never know what hit them. But just as these plans are starting to come together my binoculars fall upon a feature I hadn’t noticed before.

It’s an elephant. Given the option between a) sneaking around sensibly and quietly or b) stomping everyone to death via elephant, it’s difficult to resist the latter. I’d go as far to say that if your immediate instinct isn’t to plow in guns blazing atop an elephant then you’re either a) dead inside or b) an unusually nice person.

Here’s the thing though: once you’ve had your fun with the elephant you’ll probably not want to ride it again. Or else, you’ll resort to the elephant only in worst case scenarios. The reason for this is because Far Cry was, and still is, an incredible stealth game. It’s not as mechanically deep as Deus Ex: Human Revolutionor Shadow of Mordor, but plotting out the death of whole factions of baddies from atop a nearby hill is still a barrel of laughs. The elephant may be a novel idea, but in practice it’s kinda awkward. Weaponized elephants are fine, but motorized elephants would be better.

I spent the bulk of my time with Far Cry 4 running from tigers, unlocking new parts of the map (achieved here by scaling clock towers rather than radio towers) and, most memorably, flying the Buzzer around. The Buzzer is a primitive one-man helicopter which operates kinda like a motorised air scooter. It’s underpowered and incapable of reaching high altitudes, but it’s a surprisingly useful tactical tool, as enemies remained oblivious to me from certain distances. I spent about half-an-hour flying through Kyrat like this, shooting lazily at passing enemies and taking in the view. I was the laziest renegade / mass murderer there ever has been.

The landscape on the south-east side of Kyrat isn’t as mountainous as some of the terrain shown in Ubisoft’s promotional material: that will presumably come with further exploration of the map. Off in the distance spiky white mountains promise new regions to come, but the green region I explored was nestled between huge mountains and cliffs, cut through by a network of wide waterbeds and dotted with the usual shacks, caves, shrines and points of interest.

You won’t get far in this world without finding something to kill, because hostage situations and random enemy encounters seem to occur more frequently than they did in Far Cry 3. It may have just been my experience, but Far Cry 4 feels much less tranquil than its predecessor. There are more humans around waiting to take a chunk out of you.

The wildlife is more aggressive too. In fact, the wolves in certain areas of the map are relentless, often compromising my silent approach by forcing me to take them out with a machine gun round. I quickly learned that it’s best to suss out an area for wolves (or tigers) before choosing an approach, or better still, to use the wolves to your advantage. In the end though, there’s nothing you can do to quell the beasts and that’s one of the series’ strengths: best laid plans can turn sour fast.

Counter-intuitively, the most threatening wildlife are the sniffer dogs. New to Far Cry 4, you’ll want to lure these nasties out quick smart as they’ll sniff you out of cover if you get too close. On two occasions I was hidden inside a shack as I watched the glowing silhouettes of my marked foes, only to be suddenly chewed to death by a canine. You can always swipe at them with a knife but by then your stealth plans are ruined.

Outposts are generally a bit bigger than they were in Far Cry 3 (the better to march weaponized elephants into) but the trick to taking them out is still the same: remove snipers first, switch off the alarm system and then finish off the rest with stealth takedowns or, um, rocket launchers. Securing outposts was one of the most satisfying aspects of Far Cry 3, and like everything else in Far Cry 4 the ways to do so are not dramatically different to its predecessor.

Far Cry 4 is full of the usual Ubisoft open world cliches but its mix of busywork and unique campaign scenarios is more satisfying than it is in say, Assassin’s Creed or Watch Dogs. This is because Far Cry’s openworld busywork is a lot more fun. In fact, the two campaign missions I played were a bit of a chore in the way they prescribed certain approaches to play. I was forced to be a rough and ready explosives-wielding monster instead of the silent killer I’d much prefer to be. Far Cry 4, like Far Cry 3 before it, is at its best when it’s a stealth sandbox.

That balance between cinematic bombast and quiet, emergent gameplay was Far Cry 3’s drawcard. You'll get that again here, but don't be under the impression that Far Cry 4 will reinvent the series again, or even mix things up dramatically. That was Far Cry 3’s task, and on the evidence of my time with its follow-up the studio is sticking with the template for a little while longer, because it works. Except now there's elephants.

Nexon and Respawn team up for Titanfall on mobile

Total War: Attila devs talk units, Hun politics and the apocalypse

The end is nigh!

The end is nigh! For the Romans, Attila was a terrifying symbol of the apocalypse, largely thanks to the fact his rampage coincided with a period of drastic climate change and global turmoil—the perfect setting for a grand strategy wargame. But how will the latest Total War game build on the formula that made The Creative Assembly famous? I spoke to designer Simon Mann and artist Pawel Wojs about exactly that, with particular focus on new units, the new roaming factions and combat changes.

PC Gamer: What were your main design aims with Attila?

Simon Mann: The main thing we wanted to do really is try and show a new era in history, as we do with every game. It's an era that we hadn't really touched on. We kind of glossed over it with Barbarian Invasion, but I think we've now made a totally new, fresh title.

We really wanted to make a strong, character-based game to show this era, which a lot of people don't actually know very much about. I'm sure there are a few people who never even knew the dark ages were a thing.

Pawel Wojs: And at the same time, close the chapter on the history of Rome. Rome II documented the 200 year period plus of Roman history and this was a nice way of telling the story of the end, the fall essentially, and that also is paving the way to the dark age, and then eventually the next chapter in Europe's history.

PC Gamer: It's interesting to play with barbarian politics in factions that are often wrongly assumed to be completely anarchistic and uncultured. You seem to have expanded on those systems for Attila to give those guys personality.

Simon Mann: I think all total war fans, and certainly myself especially like this idea of narrative. You kind of create your own narrative, the actions you take, you get your favourite generals; we really wanted to push that because we're got a much smaller time frame we could make something really intimate. So we've really tried to make your family tree intimate, you've got your family, and that creates that feeling of dynasty.

But then also, you've got your non-family characters, you've got other factions' characters getting involved as well, and we've also put in things like an event feed, which you can save and then publish on TotalWar.com and share with other players. We really wanted to bring that closer, and it seeps into various factions of the game. So there's some diplomacy now, you're dealing with the faction leaders and they've all got their own personality quirks, as I like to call them. The will treat you in different ways, certainly at the very start of the game they'll be fairly historically accurate in they way they react to you.

PC Gamer: I was playing with the rolling hordes, the Ostrogoths. Describe how that the roving clans systems work in Attila.

Pawel Wojs: Well the Ostrogoths, it's a really nice example, actually, because going back to the whole narrative thing, where people build their own narrative. You start off as a displaced horde and the objective is to migrate, to move away from the Hun to the east. And so you go west and the western Roman Empire is crumbling, it's ripe for the picking and as the Ostrogoths you've got a nice little faction trait—the Inheritors of Rome, I think. It allows you to recruit Roman units from captured Roman settlements and buildings, and you don't get penalties for capturing Roman settlements. So you basically want to move away from the threat of climate change, from the threat of Hunnic hordes. So you move as you develop your infrastructure in the encampment mode, and then move, and once you're ready you settle. You go to a more fertile place and start your civilization afresh.

PC Gamer: Once you've settled, you can pick up and migrate again...

Pawel Wojs: Yeah, you can begin to migrate as well.

Simon Mann: So as long as you've only got one region, you will be able to start migration again. You will raze the province that you have, burn it to the ground, and then you're a horde again.

Pawel Wojs: So, for example, the Saxons who start settled, and you can continue being a settled faction, you could go and take Britain, for example. But you could also choose to migrate, so you would burn the city you start with and then you'd become a horde, so you do have that ability as the other varying factions as well.

Simon Mann: It makes it kind of frightening to have the Barbarians when their back's against the wall, they have an out. They can migrate, which is really historical from the period.

Pawel Wojs: Because as the Romans, you can't do that.

PC Gamer: I guess that should encourage a more changeable world map.

Simon Mann: I think it will be really interesting. Especially because you can upload your game and see others. I think there's going to be so many totally different maps, it's going to be so much less static. Where Rome II all the factions had settlements and things like that, this is going to be wild.

Pawel Wojs: It's going to be a lot more dynamic, because you'll have regions that have been abandoned and other factions, maybe emergent factions, liberated factions will come and settle. So yeah, the landscape does change a lot. Things happen that you'd kind of expect are quite surprising, for example the west Romans choose to abandon Britain in the game, they do consolidate and move all their forces out, which is really nice because that's what happened.

Simon Mann: As you progress, I think factions are going to be forced by the climate change that's occurring. So the snow line's moving again, you're going to get longer winters, winters in areas there wouldn't previously have been winters. Which is also going to get linked in with the fertility line which lowers all your food and the amount of gold you get—supporting your armies is going to get harder. Then they're going to get hit with the cold winters coming in, so it's the sort of double-whammy of attrition coming at you.

Moral Code: Learning from 'Lawful Good' in roleplaying games

If you want to start a fight among Dungeons & Dragons-style roleplayers, just ask them about their views on “alignment.”
The game, and many others inspired by it, is well known for its three by three grid of moral persuasions; one axis ranges from Good to Neutral to Evil.

The game, and many others inspired by it, is well known for its three by three grid of moral persuasions; one axis ranges from Good to Neutral to Evil. It’s the second dimension here, an innovation of earlier editions of D&D, which became far more interesting and far more controversial; the one that purports to measure how “Lawful” or “Chaotic” you are. It turns morality into a set of coordinates: Lawful Neutral, Chaotic Good, Neutral Evil, and so on, with nine combos in all.

But, quite arguably, it’s the meaning of “Lawful Good” which causes the most dissension, sitting as it does at a controversial collision of conflicting, received notions about law and justice. It even led to the coining of a popular bon mot among D&D and Pathfinder players who push back against simplistic interpretations of moral alignments: “It’s Lawful Good, not Lawful Stupid.” The admonition is meant to be a way of stopping players from “roleplaying” Lawful Good characters in ways that are mockeries of virtuous behavior--charging into the mouth of a dragon because it seems selfless, worshipping rules however banal or pointless they are, et cetera.

The subject has fascinated me not only because Lawful Good was my favorite alignment, but because so much of the controversy around it exposed a good deal about the moral assumptions we would bake into game mechanics. It’s profoundly instructive for anyone who tries to make a mechanic of morality in their games or who wants their title to express moral ideas in a thought provoking way.

It also illuminates the many problems we have portraying morality in games at present.

***

The morality mechanics of D20 inspired games were always controversial, especially for those who played classes that had strict morality requirements, like Druids or Paladins. During roleplay, one false move could lock you out of your class and-- more urgently-- start a neverending philosophical debate at the game table. As a mechanic it’s meant to provide girders for the moral dimensions of your roleplay, a way to quantify it and provide rewards or consequences for how you RP.

This is where we run into a classic problem of game mechanics; much is lost in the translation from ineffable to quantifiable.

The D20 alignment grid shares this common failing with the primitive morality sliders that have existed in several roleplaying games, particularly in Bioware’s various outings over the years. What results from these aggregates of points, of additions and subtractions, is twofold: one, any worthwhile exploration of morality is lost in the mercilessness of scoring, and second, that players are compelled to game the system rather than play with it.

Image via StarWarsRP.net

The distinction there is important. When I played Knights of the Old Republic , for example, I did what I quickly learned would net me “light side points”-- it became a simple matter of picking the obviously virtuous option, which was often declarative, simplistic and ethically uncomplicated, ultimately in the service of ensuring I played a “good” character (I felt guilty otherwise) and getting that lovely column of light around her in the character screen. But what I could never be encouraged to do in such a system is make anything other than a binary choice to achieve that predetermined state; it did not teach me much that I didn’t already know from basic, inoffensive, moral education.

Put very brutally, both alignment and good/evil sliders are like moral vending machines that yield to the inputs of sufficient kindness (or evilness) coins, not unlike romance systems which were actually structured very similarly.

Can they be saved, however? Yes, I think, and the answers are already out there in the form of more flexible and thought-provoking forms of gameplay.

***

In the Pathfinder roleplaying game adventure Herald of the Ivory Labyrinth, your characters meet the crusader goddess Iomedae, an armor clad, sword-wielding divine embodiment of Lawful Good in the Pathfinder universe. She quizzes your party with three essay-worthy questions about morality to test their moral fibre for the challenges she is about to task them with.  She asks, among other things, “[If] villains…beg for their lives, are they due mercy? Or are the wages of their villainy always death and oblivion?”

The “right” answer, as suggested by the authoritative voice of the book includes the following:

“Iomedae is not looking for a specific answer to this question; rather she’s seeking hesitancy and conflict. Blindly adhering to any rule may be lawful, but is not always good—a truly lawful good person will temper rules with judgement. A paladin should never be so bound to his pursuit of the law that he loses sight of what it is to be good.”

This was music to my ears. If law in the real world is to mean anything beyond being yet another plaything of the rich and powerful, this is a notion that we could all stand to learn something from: the ability to morally judge rather than genuflect to law’s cold edifice. Through these suggestive instructions, writer Wolfgang Baur compels players to think more deeply through their moral assumptions. There is no one right answer, just a general field that tests one’s moral maturity-- and mercifully, that maturity is measured by one’s ability to be nuanced.

Baur’s writing makes something abundantly clear about the whole Lawful Good debate: the ‘good’ aspect matters considerably more than the ‘lawful’ one. Put another way, Lawful Good is defined by the subservience of law to virtue; it is an expression of the conviction that laws are instrumental to justice and that, per St. Augustine, an unjust law is no law at all. It sees law as an altar that can be desecrated by immorality, not an end in itself-- even if many roleplaying games and players treat it as such, as if Lawful Good must always mean blinkered adherence to anything calling itself “law.”

Baur succeeds by prising apart the assumption that what is lawful must be good and vice versa, something that remains relatively unusual in roleplaying games, sadly.

Crucially, there is also an airy dimension to this moral test that Baur wrote up, one that refuses scoring. It leaves players free to be more thoughtful and inventive without excessively scrutinizing their every word for its adherence to a narrow conception of virtue.

But what about in a video game where a player’s means of interacting are more limited?

***

The key is to create openness and room to explore through the interaction. Are you compelling the player to simply make a red vs. blue choice or can you show them something more? Knights of the Old Republic 2 had a very different moral character from its more popular predecessor and placed a good deal more emphasis on demonstrating the limits of the player’s power. Kreia, your character’s mentor throughout the game and a steely-voiced advocate for moral ambiguity, bathed you in shades of grey that forced you to question deeply held assumptions.

A rather (in)famous moment occurs when you land on the planet of Nar Shaddaa, a world-city characterised by extremes in vice and poverty. You are immediately confronted with what has long been a mainstay micro-moral choice in KotOR: a homeless man asks for spare change. What is interesting, however, is the way that Kreia intervenes: she lends you her Force sight to show you the consequences of your actions. No matter what you do, it ends badly for the poor man you’re asked to help. If you refuse him money, he stalks off in anger and beats up some of his fellow vagrants. If you give it to him, he becomes the object of their jealousy and they attack him.

"Sometimes the best morality mechanic is not to have one; other times it means using the game environment itself to express moral ideas."

Make no mistake, this is profoundly cynical, but it works on a number of levels: illustrating Kreia’s morality, for one, and also demonstrating that sometimes you as the player cannot make everything right. Sometimes you face a situation with no good options, where tokenistic acts of morality may have unforeseen consequences. It’s an interesting case where the restriction of player choice paradoxically opens up an exploratory space for the player.

Moral expression and learning often happen under conditions of humility; we must confront our own powerlessness as much as our responsibility to justly use the power we do have. Though frustrating for players sometimes, such moments end up staying with us. Kreia’s moral musings stuck with me considerably more than some of the less interesting Light/Dark Side choices sprinkled throughout the game.

Sometimes the best morality mechanic is not to have one; other times it means using the game environment itself to express moral ideas. Dragon Age 2 ’s affection meter (divided between Friendship and Rivalry) was intriguing because it measured levels of emotional attachment rather than a simplistic love/hate dyad; it permitted different shades of cathexis, a committed Rival could still fall in love with Hawke or still stand with her at the climax, it just flavoured the relationship very differently. A similar mechanic could be applied to moral distinctions as well, going beyond good and evil, and lending complexity to any recreation of the law/chaos dyad.

The trick is to get the player to think outside themselves for a bit and set aside the instrumental goal of being 100% good or evil for the sake of stat bonuses or what have you. In this way, the blind obeisance to law commanded by the “lawful stupid” interpretation of Lawful Good in D20 is analogous to simple moral mechanics in videogames; each is lifelessly instrumental. Each bows before rules instead of true moral exploration.

Permitting failure, giving the player a sense of the game world beyond themselves, opening up a wider array of choices, can all contribute to making videogames more morally interesting.

There’s a long road ahead and the issues with morality mechanics tie directly into problems of choice mechanics and romance mechanics; they’re variations on the same theme of shortcomings. But there’s always hope-- and that’s a thought I know my old D&D Paladin would’ve approved of.

Katherine Cross is a Ph.D student in sociology who researches anti-social behavior online, and a gaming critic whose work has appeared in numerous publications.

Victor Ireland on the Class Of Heroes II Kickstarter and the future of JRPGs

Victor Ireland on the Class Of Heroes II Kickstarter and the future of JRPGs Of all the Kickstarter projects launched in the wake of Double Fine’s phenomonal success , Monkeypaw Games and Gaijinworks ‘ Class Of Heroes II pitch is unique for a number of reasons, not least that it’s a Japanese console game, but also because it’s to release a game that’s already been developed. And with only five days

Total War: Rome 2's Wrath of Sparta campaign released

Total War: Attila is out in just a couple of months, but that's not going to stop Creative Assembly from sneaking out a quick Rome 2 expansion.

Total War: Attila is out in just a couple of months, but that's not going to stop Creative Assembly from sneaking out a quick Rome 2 expansion. This is, after all, Total War; and not, as you might think, Partial War. Just look at that screenshot of screaming men. There is war happening all over that field.

The Wrath of Sparta is the latest addition to the Rome 2 pantheon. It brings a new campaign map—supposedly the earliest in Total War history. The DLC is set in 432 BC, and covers the Greek mainland, islands and Ionian coast.

But what of the war? You have four factions to fight the Peloponnesian Wars with; Athens, Corinth, Sparta and Boiotia. They bring new tech trees, a "Tribalism" culture variant, and are all constantly threatened by a possible Persian invasion.

Wrath of Sparta is out now, and costs £10/$15.

Best Windows 8 Apps

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Helping you make the most of Windows 8.1
is here and no, Microsoft has not removed the modern UI.

has not removed the modern UI. So to make the best of the situation, we decided to update our best Windows 8 apps story by adding over 20 new app recommendations! We've got game suggestions, picks for best RSS reader, and more.

Do you use the modern UI? If so, let us know your favorite Windows 8 apps in the comments below!

Adobe Photoshop Express: While it’s certainly not the full-featured beast Photoshop has become, Adobe Photoshop Express is a nice (and free) alternative if you want some basic image-editing capabilities in a streamlined package.

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Adobe Reader: The ability to open and read PDF files might not sound interesting at first glance, however, its quick install and bloatware free footprint should pique your interest. The Windows 8 version of Adobe’s reader certainly outperforms the desktop version by a fairly wide margin, and is a must install for any Windows 8 user.

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Best Buy: It’s not quite up there with Newegg, but Best Buy has the advantage of local stores across the US. Best Buy is frequently the best place to find gear or games on short notice, so keep this app handy.

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PDF Touch: $3 might sound like a bit much for a PDF annotator, however even on competing platforms, these seem to go for a premium. The ability to quickly and easily mock up PDF files is super handy, and PDF Touch has almost all the bases covered. Need to sign a document and send it back? No problem. Need to highlight or cross out passages to send corrections back to the author? No problem. Its simple, and it works.

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Pin-Steam No this isn’t a fully functional version of Steam for Windows 8, but it does allow you launch games from Microsoft’s new modern UI without hopping over to the desktop. Given Gabe Newell’s numerous objections to Windows 8, this might well be the closest thing we ever get to an official Windows 8 app. Pin-Steam allows you to do little more than pin icons, but it still offers a great experience for modern UI enthusiasts.

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Dropbox: In our last round-up we recommended the Skydrive app for your Windows 8 cloud storage needs. Since launch however, Dropbox has joined the party. This version of the app is missing many of the features that make it so useful on other platforms (like automatic photo uploading), but its tile based interface certainly makes it much more finger friendly than Windows Explorer. The other downside is that its currently cloud only, and requires an Internet connection to even fire up.

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Remote Desktop: Remote Desktop might sound like nothing new, but the Modern UI version available for Windows 8 is a major improvement. This app allows you to easily bring up the desktop on any Windows machine on the network, and the performance is fantastic. The older version of the remote desktop application is still around, however the modern UI version feels smoother, and you can easily switch between full screen desktops in under a second just by swiping in from the top left.

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Shazam: Shazam is on nearly every mobile platform, so its introduction on Windows 8 was a very natural extension. The ability of this app to recognize and tag the song you are listening to is uncanny, and the service it provides to the mental wellbeing of its users can’t be understated. Never again will you find yourself doubled over in agony over the name of a song that you’ve heard a million times, but just can’t seem to identify.

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Picasa Gallery: Picasa is one of the most under appreciated Google services, and its ability to easily share and save high resolution camera images is hard to beat. Windows 8 users looking for an easy way to browse their own content (or public images), should check out Picasa Albums. The layout of this app works perfectly with the new Windows 8 modern UI, and beats the website hands down if you are in the mood for a full-screen experience.

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Plex: Plex is one of the most popular free and open-source media player solutions you can find these days, and the Windows 8 version does an excellent job of presenting your content using the modern UI. You will need to install the Plex media server on the PC where you store all your music and videos, however once you do, this Windows 8 app does an excellent job of serving up your content.

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Netflix: The popular video streaming service is one of the first apps to hit the Windows 8 store. The interface takes some getting used to, but this app is all about the content.

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Skype: One of the best and most ubiquitous communication services available for the PC, the Skype Windows 8 app may actually be better than the Windows desktop version of Skype with its cleaner UI.

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Kindle: You don’t have to buy a tablet from Amazon to have access to their e-book library. The Kindle app for Windows 8 gives you access to all the functions you’d expect from one of the most popular e-book platforms ever.

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SkyDrive: Like OneNote, SkyDrive is one of those Microsoft offerings that has snuck under the radar, but Windows 8 may change that. SkyDrive integrates tightly with Windows 8, powering file and setting synchronization between PCs.

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BLINK Cliplets: BLINK Cliplets lets you take a short video clip and convert it into an animated GIF, allowing you to select portions of the frame to be frozen as a still image and others which will be animated. These cliplets are limited only by your creativity, and can be shared to your social networks.

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CNN: It never hurts when a big news outlet has a high-quality app. The CNN app for Windows 8 gives you access to CNN content in an intuitive and responsive interface that will have you leaving fingerprints wherever you see the CNN logo.

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Code Writer: Hands down the best Windows 8 app for creating and editing code of various types, Code Writer offers familiar tools like code highlighting, find and replace, indentation, and comments. Whether you need to edit HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PowerShell, or PHP, Code Writer is a required tool for anyone wishing to code in Windows 8.

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Halo: Spartan Assault: Quite simply the best game available for Windows 8. Spartan Assault's controls, gameplay, and price add up to what should be one of the first app purchases for anyone remotely interested in gaming on Windows 8.

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Newegg: Newegg is one of our favorite sites for parts and peripherals, and their Windows 8 app makes it easy to find parts for your next build with a touch friendly UI. The Newegg app even lets you find discounted bundles or barebones systems.

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Redbox: The Blockbuster killer has their Internet-connected kiosks placed strategically throughout the US. The Redbox app for Windows 8 allows you to locate kiosks near you and browse the available discs at each location.

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SlapDash Podcasts: The geniuses at Microsoft have determined that there is no need for native podcast support in Windows 8, leaving an opening for apps like SlapDash Podcasts to fill the void. SlapDash has their own content catalog, but you can also add your favorite podcasts (like our very own No BS Podcast).

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

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