Sleeping Dogs E3 screenshots show racing, cleavers, man surprised by giant blurry gun

Sleeping Dogs is the martial-arts-and-gunplay open-world action game that previously went by the name True Crime: Hong Kong.

Sleeping Dogs is the martial-arts-and-gunplay open-world action game that previously went by the name True Crime: Hong Kong. I went to see it recently: it's shaping up quite nicely. The melee combat takes after the Arkham Asylum games, albeit with far more enthusiasm for jamming people's faces into pointy things (and vice versa.) The driving also benefits from the devs' past experience on the Need for Speed series. Check out our most recent previewfor more information.

The new screenshots cast some light on the range of activities that undercover cop Wei Shen will be engaging in while taking down the Hong Kong Triad. As any undercover police officer knows, crimes get solved faster the more cars you set on fire from the back of your awesome motorbike.

IGM Forum Find: A Wizard’s Day Kickstarter Relaunched with Improved Graphics and Gameplay

After his previous Kickstarter for A Wizard’s Day failed, developer ToneRed Studios decided to revamp the graphics and playstyle of the game and relaunch the campaign.

failed, developer ToneRed Studios decided to revamp the graphics and playstyle of the game and relaunch the campaign. The newer version is superior to its predecessor via maps that aren’t confined to merely one square area – you can see the land around you, where you need to go, and what lies ahead with regards to challenges. An adventure platformer, A Wizard’s Story follows Merlicus on a journey to stop an evil Warlock, Zorgamor, from casting a spell on the people of your kingdom, turning them to stone. In your possession is the Staff of Light, which you must use to attempt to defeat not only Zorgamor, but also the various monsters spawned from the Staff of Darkness.

Unfortunately, Merlicus is too late to stop Zorgamor, and the shock wave from the Staff of Darkness’s spell shatters the Staff of Light; it also shatters itself. Your mission is the recover the pieces of both staves, journeying from a remote part of the forest to the kingdom to use them to free the inhabitants from the stony forms which were imposed on them by Zorgamor. There are 27 days left in the Kickstarter, with a goal of $15,000. The goal of the campaign is to finish A Wizard’s Day for Windows PC, Mac, and Linux systems, with the stretch goal of $25,000 dedicated to getting the game on the Wii U.

If you’d like to contribute to A Wizard’s Day ‘s campaign, check out the Kickstarterand the reward tiers. You can “like” the Facebookpage for updates, or follow ToneRed Studios on Twitter. If you’d like to interact directly with the developer, be sure to check out the original forum post!

If you have an indie game you’d like to share, no matter which stage of production it’s in, be sure to join the Indie Game Mag Forumsand Tell Us About Your Indie Game! You can interact with other developers, speak directly to interested parties, and you may even be featured right here on Indie Game Magazine’s Forum Finds!

Harmonix is making a musical F2P mobile game: Record Run

Sleeping Dogs preview

Square Enix's next game, Sleeping Dogs, is a bit of a hypocrite.

Square Enix's next game, Sleeping Dogs, is a bit of a hypocrite. Its name is derived from that old proverb about "letting sleeping dogs lie," but the Square completely ignored that advice when it resurrected the dozing open-world adventure game after it had been deemed too troublesome by Activision and left for dead. But that may turn out to be a very good thing. The new publisher must've seen something in the former True Crime: Hong Kong that Activision didn't, and it's not content to let Sleeping Dogs lie for long.

I spent a fair amount of time with the game when it was still True Crime: Hong Kong, and after a recent playtest at PAX East can confirm that it has undergone significant tweaks since Square Enix took the reins. But for all that's changed, the main storyline, setting and approach remain the same. Sleeping Dogs, now due for an August release, spotlights the plight of Wei Shen, a detective who returns to Hong Kong years after growing up there to infiltrate the Triads as an undercover operative—a tale that'll test his loyalty to old friends and his badge.

Hong Kong is a thriving metropolis with distinct sectors, the congested, neon-lit streets of one populous area appearing in stark contrast to the tall, modern skyscrapers and ritzy cars of the financial district. Essential storyline missions drive your progress through those streets, but it's still very much a sandbox environment filled with optional police missions, street races and even mini-games like karaoke and cockfighting.

The core experience remains, but Sleeping Dogs has definitely benefited from the extra development time and the input of Square Enix London Studios, the publisher's in-house support crew that previously enhanced Batman: Arkham Asylum and Just Cause 2 as each approached release. According to a London Studios representative, they've worked closely with the developers at United Front Games to enhance the early missions in the game to pull players into the experience, tweaked the controls and open-world balance and helped implement new social challenges that will be further detailed closer to the August launch.

On top of that, the London Studios team has significantly upgraded the melee combat, which draws strong influence from Batman: Arkham Asylum and Arkham City (the latter of which they didn't have a hand in). As in those games, you often face off against groups of attackers in Sleeping Dogs, fluidly trading blows and countering attacks between goons with the ability to grapple foes and drag them around to environmental hotspots for contextual attacks. Little tweaks like adding heavy attacks to melee buttons and a running tackle move and more brutal hand-to-hand assaults aim to amp up the cinematic presentation—best exemplified in the varied takedown and kill maneuvers in the game.

During my demo, I finally got to play a mission that I'd only been allowed to watch in 2010 when the game still bore the True Crime tag. Brutally beaten and maimed by Triads, Wei Shen fights back in an under-construction penthouse apartment, using the environment to dispatch foes in violently creative ways. Launching enemies into the flat screen TV they were just playing a dancing game on, tossing them down an elevator shaft or slamming them face-first into a table saw are just a few of the many options you have for dispatching goons in the large room. It's primarily good for laughs, but the cinematic kills also offer variety that break up the common melee skirmishes.

On-foot navigation was pretty fun, both when attempting to leap across workers' platforms suspended outside the penthouse from the previous scene, and later as I tried to chase a man through a winding Hong Kong market filled with food stands and bystanders. Momentum is essential, and you need to tap the appropriate key upon reaching barriers or gaps to vault over or across; otherwise, you'll lose speed or come to a complete stop, which is particularly damaging when sprinting through crowds to tackle someone.

The demo concluded with a taste of the game's street racing side, which strongly resembled past Need for Speed titles—no surprise, considering that the Vancouver-based United Front Games poached talent from EA Canada to head up the game's racing elements. Racing mechanics in open-world action games rarely prove to be as well-built and complex as they are in standalone driving titles, but Sleeping Dogs' segments seem poised to buck the trend with refined controls and physics. Rather than a filler element, racing felt like it could be one of the key aspects of the experience. And while I didn't get to play any of this, released footage has shown some exciting vehicle chase sequences and bike-based shootouts, so there's more here than just finish line sprints.

From what I've seen and played so far, Sleeping Dogs isn't as concerned with innovation as it is with iteration, pulling from outside the open-world genre to create a slicker and more cinematic sandbox affair. Their main goal is to improve the aspects that other open-world entries make barely passable, specifically hand-to-hand combat, on-foot movement and street racing. That little spark of promise I saw in True Crime: Hong Kong a while back shines a little brighter now in Sleeping Dogs, and I'm anxious to see if Square Enix's unexpected bet pays off later this summer.

We’ve heard of ‘Draw Something’, but what about ‘Depict’?

Okay, we’ve seen how popular Draw Something has been so popular lately, but how has Depict been?

Depict is a live, guessing/drawing game. Not recordings of what something has been drawn. It’s a little bit different in the fact that you don’t need to figure out the word from several letters, but you pick a word from a word bank. I recently was digging through my old iPod Touch, and I found the game sitting there, and I opened it up, after about a year, and starting playing again. Surprisingly, there were only around 40 players online, considering how great the game is.

It’s considerably better, in my opinion, because the games are completely live. You can see the drawings in real time, chat in real time, and even rate the drawings. You can even have your own personally drawn avatar! Astonishingly, the game was released back in 2009, and I believe that even this old, indie game still deserves some attention. The game is playable on Facebook, where it’s completely free. You can snag Depict on the App Store, universal for iPhone and iPad for $0.99.

Double Fine’s Massive Chalice Coming to Xbox One

In a surprise announcement via yesterday, Double Fine announced that Massive Chalice will be heading exclusively to Xbox One after its PC release.

will be heading exclusively to Xbox One after its PC release. Designed by Brad Muir of Psychonauts fame, Massive Chalice ‘s imaginative tactical fantasy concept brought in over $1.2M on Kickstarter.

Massive Chalice will have players raise a heroic bloodline under the guise of an immortal king. Gameplay itself will be split between turn-based tactical combat and fantasy kingdom roleplay as you aim to outlast a century long war. Strategize generations of heroes by either pitting them into a life of war, or by focusing on raising a family and passing their strengths onto the next of kin. This is achieved through a clever permadeath mechanic that has heroes drop relics upon their death that, when collected by the next in the bloodline, will make the new hero more powerful than the last.

This Xbox One announcement comes hot on the heals of Sony’s reveal last night that Tim Schafer’s classic Grim Fandango will be remastered for Playstation 4.

The Showdown Effect gets two free characters and maps, plus "terrifying hats"

The Showdown Effect is currently 50% off on Steam , and in a startling coincidence (well, probably not) the explosive sidescrolling action game has just been updated with a bunch of new, mostly free stuff.

, and in a startling coincidence (well, probably not) the explosive sidescrolling action game has just been updated with a bunch of new, mostly free stuff. The two additional stages comprise the Tagliatelle Western-themed South Eastwood and Fort Fiesta, while the new characters are...considerably less Wild Westy. Thelma Vayne is a British superspy, while Dr. Johnny Bionic is, you guessed it, a werewolfcyborg. There's also the matter of some "terrifying hats", but I'm too afraid to check if they live up to their reputation. Stick around for the DLC trailer.

As thereveals, "these characters, plus a series of Reddit costume pieces, can be redeemed for free using in-game AC." I'm not sure what AC refers to in this context, but I assume it has something to do with air-conditioning. Meanwhile, "an additional set of Western costume pieces can be purchased for a fistful of dollars", which is a subtle reference to the Clint Eastwood film 'Every Which Way But Loose'.

Here is most of what I just said, in trailer form. (Oh, and here'swhat we thought of the game.)

RymdResa Drifts Gently Onto Steam

Swedish developers Morgondag — a couple who make games together — are releasing a game to give gamers a poetic, almost reflective journey through space.

RymdResa is, as the duo puts it, a “Procedurally Generated Space Odyssey.” This means there’s a new universe to explore each time.

Morgondag wants players to feel the beauty and the moving poetry of space, and so abstract poetry and art reveal themselves as the player’s ship moves from place to place. Each world can be explored and used by the player, though it isn’t quite clear how deeply players can interact with these worlds just yet.

Despite the fact that the game is also described by the developers as being a roguelike, it’s simultaneously described as nonviolent.

RymdResa is releasing to Steam on August 20 for both Mac and PC, and it will eventually be available for Xbox One, Linux, iPad, and Wii U (sorry PS4 owners!). The game will be priced at $11.99 USD. Those interested can find out more about the game from its Steam pageand website, and can learn more about the two folks behind the game from their website.

While space is, realistically, a pretty quiet journey, RymdResa features a soundtrack composed by Tom Croke and Pat Jacobs. Below is a sampling of the soundtrack, which can be found in full via Bandcamp.

XCOM: Enemy Unknown review

XCOM: Enemy Unknown review Hubris sets in after around 20 hours of XCOM: Enemy Unknown. We thought we saw the worst the aliens could throw at us, that the best of our veteran soldiers were invincible, and, worse, it occurred to us that this was Firaxis in 2012, not MicroProse in 1994. Reboot or not, we just couldn’t imagine that the Civ V developer would make a turn-based strategy game as cruel or

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Our Verdict
A cheap and cheerful action game that wont win any awards, but provides solid knockabout laughs.

Review by James Archer

When the title screen introduces The Showdown Effect as 'An Arrowhead game with references', they're not kidding. Like its studio stablemate Magicka, it's packed with affectionate send-ups of pop culture tropes and personalities, focusing this time on the cheesy action movies of the '80s and '90s with only occasional forays into internet memes and bad CSI:NY dialogue.

"The need to stay on target makes every duel feel tight, intense and brutally dependent on skill."

Appropriately, it's a mix of shooter, 2D fighter and um, platformer (remember that film where Sylvester Stallone did all those walljumps?). It provides support for up to eight-player brawls between an ensemble cast of Hollywood archetype heroes and thinly-veiled actor pastiches. It's not uncommon to see a good cop on his last day before retirement going katana-to-katana with Liam Neeson, for example. For a gimmick, it's executed with enough conviction to become genuinely entertaining – at least before the constant barrage of barely-applicable one-liners starts to wear thin.

The lack of controller support, while making the jumping a little fiddly, starts to make sense once the shooting begins. Unlike most twin-stickers, the aiming reticule has to actually hover over an enemy to score a hit. Considering that animation consists largely of slides, rolls and backflips, this minor quirk makes combat wildly tricky even with the trusty mouse – and that's no bad thing. Even with the maelstrom of projectiles, flailing bodies and muzzle flashes that accompany a fight, the need to stay on target makes every duel feel tight, intense and brutally dependent on skill. The one exception involves throwing knives, which are both powerful and don't require precision aiming to hit. Expect a nerf.

Melee combat, however, doesn't get as much screen time as its comedy potential deserves. In fact, the ability to pick up and throw props is hardly used at all. When most players are packing, it's rarely viable to go rushing in with a lightsaber unless you're making use of two specific characters' unique Hero Powers.

"Unlocks are mostly clothes or reskins, so there's little impetus to keep levelling up."

Each character gets one of these as standard, though some are far more useful than others – the Arnie clone gets a lot more usage than the Neeson clone, largely because an invulnerability shield usually beats easily-avoidable frag grenades. Since Hero Powers are the only functional difference between each character, this imbalance does cause a bit of a homogeneity problem in terms of who plays as who.

Weaponry has a similar problem: since there are only a handful of staple armament types, most encounters are functionally similar and rarely demand a shift in tactics. Unlocks are almost exclusively clothes or reskins, so there's little impetus to keep levelling up either. (You buy stuff with XP or real money. Basic hats: $1 / 50p, tuxedos and bionic legs around $2 / £1, premium weapon skins up to $6 / £4.)

Thank Woo, then, for the One Man Army and Expendables. These asymmetrical hero vs henchmen game modes give The Showdown Effect a much needed structural shakeup, pitting one or a team of heroes against hordes of nameless, player-controlled rent-a-mooks. The latter are weak and can't use custom loadouts, so must rely on cunning and teamwork to overcome their Hollywood-mandated ineptitude. It's chaotic and funny in ways that the standard deathmatch can't always attain. The only downside is having to rely on unreliable peer-to-peer hosting. Here's hoping both modes make more appearances in official Ranked rotations.

With a bigger roster of stars and concessions to more varied playstyles, this could have been a great little PvP shooter-brawler. But, like the movies it lovingly mangles quotes from, The Showdown Effect doesn't aim much higher than simple, disposable fun. And to its credit, it largely succeeds.

Expect to pay: $12 / £8

Release: Out now

Developer: Arrowhead Game Studios

Publisher: Paradox Interactive Multiplayer Up to 8 players

Link: www.theshowdowneffect.com

The Verdict

The Showdown Effect

A cheap and cheerful action game that wont win any awards, but provides solid knockabout laughs.

We recommend By Zergnet

Crash Drive 2’ Crashing Out in November

‘Crash Drive 2’ Crashing Out in November
In a recent press release from developer M2H , the studio announced the sequel to their racing title Crash Drive is set to release in November.

set to release in November. The game comes with vast improvements, and will be released on web and mobile platforms, with a Steam Greenlight page up for standalone versions.

“With over 5 million mobile downloads and over 25 million web plays, Crash Drive 1 proved itself worthy of a successor. This sequel is now about to launch and has improved on every front. Crash Drive 2 offers a unique multiplayer sandbox racing experience,” the press release states. The game has many new features, with the most notable one being cross-platform multiplayer. “The multiplayer is cross platform; Mac, Linux, Windows, iOS, Android and Web will all compete against each other. Players are automatically matchmaked and thanks to the cross-platform [setup] there are always loads of players to play with.”

Crash Drive 2 is described as a “Multiplayer Sandbox Racer”, where players can drive in an open-world environment. However, there will still be multiplayer events to partake in: “This freedom is the very foundation of the game. M2H did not forget that the majority of the players still need to have some goals presented to them, that’s why there’s the random event system which spawns random events in which all players will compete.”

Beast Towers – Tower Defense for the Other Side

Heavily inspired by the Warcraft III TD mod, the French developer, Baptiste Largaiolli, recently released his 3D game, Beast Towers, on Android and iOS devices.

on Android and iOS devices. This tower defense game puts the player in the place of monsters, who are trying to defend their castle from human threats.

Instead of showing the possible paths the enemies might take, it is up to the gamer to design these paths on the grid of the battlefield, and set up towers to take down enemy minions, which takes the gameplay to a higher level of difficulty. Beast Towers looks a lot like Warcraft III, from its characters to its environments, and as a result, may appeal to fans of the series. The game also features 19 levels, 40 towers and two game modes: the normal mode, with several waves of increasingly difficulty, and the Tsunami Mode, that features one huge wave of enemies, but offers the player a lot of starting gold to build towers, tracks and develop their strategy.

The players will also face bosses in some waves. Every time they’re defeated, they join the player’s army as a new tower and add new options for tower combos and enemy paths. But, of course, more towers mean more difficult choices, and a lot of thinking ahead in order to defend the castle.

The mod-inspired Beast Towers is already available at the Play Store and the App Store at the price point of $0.99, with no ads or in-app purchases. For further information, you can visit the game’s official website.

The Showdown Effect launches beta sign-up page and trailer, takes aim for March launch

Arrowhead - the guys responsible for the barmy Magicka - are now taking sign-ups for the beta of their upcoming The Showdown Effect, a sort of 2D side-scrolling Action: Half Life.

Arrowhead - the guys responsible for the barmy Magicka - are now taking sign-ups for the beta of their upcoming The Showdown Effect, a sort of 2D side-scrolling Action: Half Life. The game features up to eight players battling it out with weapons ripped from the hands of cheesy 80s action heroes. In that spirit, they've released a trailer that crams in as many clichéd one-liners as a Google for "stupid things said in bad movies" can find.

You can sign up for that macho madness at The Showdown Effect's beta page. If you also refer three friends, you'll get a guaranteed place for when the trial starts.

If you prefer the passive entertainment of watching others run and gun like idiots, Arrowhead will be livestreaming the game tonight from 7pm GMT over at Paradox Interactive's Twitch TVchannel.

Indie Royale: The Halloween Bundle Returns For 2013

The big day is finally upon us and with it comes a flurry of great gaming deals from the Indie Royale group.

The Halloween 2 Bundle contains some great spooky games for the Halloween season and what better way to avoid trick or treaters than to hole yourself up in your room and just play video games.

Organ Trail: Director’s Cut – Is a great zombie inspired take on the classic Oregon trail. In Organ Trail you must navigate your cart through this zombie wasteland in the hopes of surviving this zombie apocalypse and reaching your destination. Dark Fall: Lost Souls – Set in a quaint British village you find yourself wrap up in a dark and sinister mystery that has been haunting this village for year in which people simple disappear into thin air. Nightmares From The Deep: The Cursed Heart – An interesting new take on the pirate genre as you pursue an undead pirate who kidnapped your daughter. Full of supernatural overtones this adventure game promises a rich and interesting story throughout. Rise Of The Ravager – An arcade action game that draws heavily from Guitar Hero and Missile Command in which you must battle you way through the levels to prevent the destruction of everything living. eXceed 2nd – Vampire REX – Play as a half human, half vampire in this bullet hell action game using your ability to shift forms to make your way through these grueling levels. Alien Zombie Megadeath – Play the intense platform shoot-em-up as lost in space you stumbled across extraterrestrial life forms, although these are no normal aliens these are zombie aliens and you must fight your way through the hordes to survive. Dead Hungry Diner – Takes a novel approach to diner management sims as you must operate the diner to appease the picky locals who just happen to be monsters. Overcast – Walden And The Werewolf – Step into the boots of Walden, a hunter who has taken up life living the solitary life of living in the woods. After a monster destroys a local village Walden seeks revenge as he vows to hunt the beast down.

The Bundle will run for six more days and as people pay more the price will slowly rise so the quicker you get in the more you can save.

You can read more on The Halloween 2 Bundle on the Indie Royale Site.

Game Accessibility Guidelines Awarded by FCC for Inclusivity

The Game Accessibility Guidelines , authored by Lynsey Graham, Ian Hamilton, and others (see complete list here , right sidebar), were created as a means for helping game developers, distributors, and console manufacturers to better consider people with disabilities when designing games for all platforms.

, right sidebar), were created as a means for helping game developers, distributors, and console manufacturers to better consider people with disabilities when designing games for all platforms. These guidelines are particularly important given that over 20% of gamers have some form of disability. As a sufferer of seizures and nerve damage, I am definitely heartened to see effort made on the part of developers to make games more accessible, and apparently the FCC shares that sentiment, because the Guidelines were awardedthe Chairman’s Award for Advancement in Accessibility on June 9, 2014.

Ian Hamilton accepts the Chairman’s Award for Advancement in Accessibility. (source: FCC Flickr)

The FCC’s Accessibility and Innovation Initiative strives to reward those who’ve made advancements in communication for a large group, and people with disabilities aren’t just the largest minority among gamers; they make up the largest minority in the country. Those of us with disabilities are often overlooked in areas of entertainment, because the focus with the Americans with Disabilities Act only forces companies to consider the so-called necessary modifications to an environment or process, meaning that while wheelchair ramps and elevators (as well as Braille in many areas) are standard sights associated with disability, more pressing matters like depression and isolation aren’t always properly dealt with. While mandating these things for the disabled isn’t necessarily the right call, the creation of the Game Accessibility Guidelines takes into account that the disabled need to have fun, too, and the FCC’s acknowledgement of their efforts can only mean good things for disabled gamers.

The Game Accessibility Guidelines cover all manner of disabilities, from something as simple as color-blindness, to more complicated conditions like autism and cerebral palsy. Modifications to gameplay, appearance, sound, and the way text is displayed can all have a major impact, and the website is divided into categories to help developers figure out just who will be able to play their game, and what changes they can make to include more gamers. These guidelines were tested by gamers with disabilities, is updated when changes are suggested, and the categories on the website also take into account the reach of the implementation, the cost, and the difference made to the target audience. There is also a page explaining how best to implement the changes, for clarity and ease of use.

The categories for accessibility guidance.

This award means a great deal to the creators and maintainers of the Game Accessibility Guidelines, as well as the disabled community. For more information, visit the Game Accessibility Guidelines site. For more information about the FCC’s Accessibility and Innovation Initiative, visit broadband.gov.

Valve launches crowdsourced game submission system Steam Greenlight

Greenlight, Valve's voting platform for indie game submissions on Steam, has just switched on, and eager developers are pouring in pitches for their games.

As an initiative by Valve to merge community interaction with its approval process for Steam publishing, Greenlight allows users to browse, comment, rate, and track indie games under consideration through bios, screenshots, and video collections. Several noteworthy names have already popped up, including our 2011 Mod of the Yearpick No More Room in Hell, as well as Incredipedeand The Intruder.

By involving players in the publishing process, Greenlight creates an outlet for lesser-known developers to promote their games while also giving the community a new-found chunk of regulatory power. How well it will work is to be seen, but we'll be on the watch for the experiment's first success stories. How do you feel about Greenlight?

Boom Street review

Boom Street review The timing could be better. Nintendo has chosen to release a game about building a lucrative property empire – the first localised entry in a Japanese series dating back to the Famicom – at a time when the world is in the throes of economic meltdown. As familiar Mushroom Kingdom and Dragon Quest characters buy stocks, invest in store expansions and watch the value of their portfolio

Get In The Gamebook World With ‘Fighting Fantasy: Blood Of The Zombies’

Back before the days of the iPad, before the internet, before even the thought of picking up a Nintendo console, role playing game books were all the rage.

Back before the days of the iPad, before the internet, before even the thought of picking up a Nintendo console, role playing game books were all the rage. One of the biggest names in the business was Fighting Fantasy, a collection of fantasy based novels that began back in the very early 1980’s with The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, created by famed authors and co-founders of Games Workshop, Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson.

Today, in celebration of the 30th anniversary of the series, aussie indie studio Tin Man Games has come together with Livingstone to bring the brand new chapter in the series, Fighting Fantasy: Blood of the Zombies , to the Apple App Store for iPhone and iPad and Google Play for Android devices.

So if you haven’t played a game book before, here’s how it works. You’ll read the book just like any other, following the story of a hero who’s been captured within a castle somewhere in the Romanian wilderness. A man scientist of sorts is using the castle as a prison to do is dirty, scientific deeds which in this case involves injecting innocent victims with zombie blood (hence the title). But as you read, you’ll be given choices as to how to proceed which determines which page you turn to, with a dice to roll in order to decide your fate during certain instances such as battles or dangerous situations. One wrong choice could leave you stranded, dead … or worse.

The Blood of the Zombies game on Apple and Android devices takes the same gameplay of the recently written book and gives it an ebook makeover, complete with a ton of fancy animations, on screen dice rolling, a haunting musical score and a much easier way to maintain your stats on screen. There’s also two difficulty levels to choose from and, according to Livingstone himself, a number of hidden surprises to find and collectibles. Not to mention over 80 different ways to die by zombie, which these days is a dream of many a fantasy fan … so to speak.

Tin Man Games aren’t new to the arena of game books either, having previously released Strange Loves: Vampire Boyfriendswhich follows a similar play style, so no doubt Livingstone’s fable of deadly zombies is in very good hands.

If any of this has you keen to find out more (and if it hasn’t, what’s wrong with you?!), then head on into the App Storeor Google Playnow and download Fighting Fantasy: Blood of the Zombies today.

Upcoming Flash Metroidvania ‘SPARK’ Looks Charming

Brevity is something that is being increasingly explored by indies.

Brevity is something that is being increasingly explored by indies. Games like Thirty Flights of Loving have proven that ‘short’ needn’t be a dirty word, and that a brief experience can still have a lasting impact. In the same vein, SPARK looks set to deliver a short and sweet experience, and one which the developers say is designed to be played in one sitting.

SPARK is the first game from London duo Odd Sock Games, and is slated for a free-to-play release via browser in March. The game has a familiarly colourful and retro graphical style and stars a cutesy robot, but there are seemingly darker undertones at play. SPARK takes place in a threatening and mysterious place known as ‘The Sight’, which our robotic hero visits in search of an item to save his dying friend. From the ‘metroidvania’ label, it’s safe to assume that The Sight will have plenty of nooks and crannies to explore.

I feel that the brief nature of SPARK makes it a perfect fit for in-browser play, and if Odd Sock Games can weave a ripping adventure in the space of a lunch-hour I’ll be more than satisfied. While some may find this off-putting, I welcome bite-sized games with open arms. As a busy gamer with an ever-growing backlog, less demanding titles are very appealing to me.  What do you think about short games? Do you appreciate them, like me, or do you prefer games to be a more traditional length? Let us know in our forums! I started a thread on the topic here.

Odd Sock Games is a collaboration between Jonny Wick and Gary Goard , friends since childhood who grew up gaming together. It’s nice to see the transition from gaming buddies to development collaborators, and it sounds like these guys have a great working relationship. You can follow Jonny on Twitter @spookyview, Gary is @theroguebotand Odd Sock Games is @oddsockgames. While waiting for the game’s release, why not listen to the official SPARK soundtrack on Jonny’s Bandcamp page here? It’s short and sweet, just like the game itself.

Incredipede trailer pulls limbs out of an eyeball and makes it walk in a creepy but awesome way

Incredipede is an indie puzzle game that "celebrates the vast diversity of life in the world" by letting you pull bony limbs out of a giant green eyeball, and then fasten muscles to its twisted joints to create a monster capable of traversing 60 increasingly perilous levels.

Incredipede is an indie puzzle game that "celebrates the vast diversity of life in the world" by letting you pull bony limbs out of a giant green eyeball, and then fasten muscles to its twisted joints to create a monster capable of traversing 60 increasingly perilous levels. It's disturbing and strangely beautiful, and I can't wait to play it.

The eyeball has a name: Quozzle. Its staring iris betrays nothing of its suffering or joy as the player in the latest trailer forces it to climb trees and stomp over lava flows. Early levels will let you experiment with basic limb structures, but advanced worlds will let you "stretch her into new shapes to better navigate her surroundings. Long arms can reach up high to grab ledges, while many feet make for faster crossing over dangerous terrain." You'll want to see what that looks like, I imagine. Step forward, young trailer, and show us your stuff, so that we may giggle, or cry at the sight of Quozzle's flailing.

Incredipede is made Colin and Sarah Northway, a husband and wife team backed up by artist, Thomas Shahan and a bunch of music artists listed on the Incredipede credits page. This is due out in October, and will be hitting Steam Greenlight when that goes public. Find out more on the Incredipede site.

Google acquires AI company founded by Theme Park creator

Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath Gets a Remake On PlayStation 3

Video: How Double Fine remastered Day of the Tentacle

Double Fine has been in the business of resurrection in recent years, reviving critically acclaimed classics like The Secret of Monkey Island , Grim Fandango , and now, Day of the Tentacle .

Pulling those games through time and space into the 21st century isn't as easy as you might think. They're relics, after all, and getting them to run, look, and feel right on modern hardware requires a mammoth effort and painstaking attention to detail.

How much effort, exactly? That's a question best answered by Day of the Tentacle co-leads Tim Schafer and Dave Grossman, who chart the remastering process in its absolute entirety in Double Fine's new mini-documentary.

The Vanishing of Ethan Carter’ A Detective Mystery From Ex-Bulletstorm Developers

‘The Vanishing of Ethan Carter’ A Detective Mystery From Ex-Bulletstorm Developers
Bulletstorm and the Painkiller series both made by People Can Fly have always been known for excess violence and insanity.

The Astronauts , a self described small independent game studio started by Ex- People Can Fly are going for something even more macabre.

The Astronauts , founded last year by Adrian Chmielarz, Andrzej Poznanski and Michal Kosieradzki were also the original founders of People Can Fly . People Can Fly’ s first title Painkiller was akin to Serious Sam and spawned its own expansions and Xbox Ports before handing over the the rights to publisher Dreamcatcher Interactive to make more sequels.  Moving forward they were annoyed about having to make their own engine and contacted Epic Games about using the Unreal Engine 3. They were then contracted to finish the Gears of War PC Port. They were then given the approval to make their own game, Bulletstorm which sold poorly. On August 13, 2012, Epic Games fully acquired People Can Fly and Adrian Chmielarz announced on the same day that he was leaving the company.

The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is about a detective using his paranormal ability to see lethal crimes at crime scenes.  You are investigating the kidnapping of a young boy and come to a beautiful mountain area. You find a severely mutilated body of one of the kidnappers and the story unfurls from there.  Using your paranormal powers and detective tools you will find the mystery of mountain and the fate of the boy.

The game is being developed on the Unreal Engine 3 engine.  Adrian promises that the game will be much shorter than usual big budget game affair and cheaper than it as well. The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is planned to release digitally on PC this year.

F.E.A.R. sequel talk re-emerges

It's been nearly a year since talk of a sequel to Monolith's FPS F.E.A.R. , but today it's been reaffirmed that a follow-up to the horror-shooter is planned. In a press release from Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment announcing that Monolith CEO Samantha Ryan has also now assumed the role of Senior Vice President, Development & Production at WBIE, it's mentioned that the company's "current production

Android Tips, Tricks & Apps eBook launched

Android Tips, Tricks & Apps eBook launched Imagine Publishing’s Android Tips, Tricks & Apps book has arrived on Kindle. Android has revolutionised the smartphone market, and this comprehensive guide brings you everything you need to know to get the most out of your handset. From essential guides to the best apps, if you have an Android device this is the perfect book for you. Smartphone Essentials

This Looks Wheelie Good: ‘Pumped: BMX’ Teaser

A teaser trailer for a rather remarkable looking sidescrolling stunt bike game called Pumped: BMX has made its way on to the internet and it needs to be watched by you and everyone you know.

Due for release on the App Store this summer, Pumped: BMX is a very smooth looking title in which you speed your BMX over ramps and pull stunts while in the air to gain points. It’s that simple by the fluidity of the animation really elevates the game’s presentation. Unfortunately there is no information about how the touchscreen works with the game but we can only hope it will be kept simple, with the harder tricks requiring some form of acquired finger mastery.

At the moment, Pumped: BMX has only just been announced but you can get a good old glimpse of it via the first teaser trailer. Behold!

You can keep up to date with the progress of Pumped: BMX via Facebookand Twitter.

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Jump to Section: Best Price Comments Pros Incredibly fun firefights Multiplayer modes are intact Railgunning flesh off bones Cons Graphics are drab for PS3 All the downtime That creepy girl Go to page: Page 1 Page 1 Page 2 F.E.A.R. is hilariously, absurdly violent. It's a shooter set mostly in a single skyscraper block, where genetically modified soldiers and psychic monsters have invaded a biotech

20 million viewers stream Dota 2 championships

Doom 2 megawad Valiant offers 32 new maps and custom weapons

You might remember the time—it was literally a day ago—when games media sites all across the world informed you that a selfie stick had been modded into Doom .

. Important, nay, life changing news, I think we can all agree. Still, that's exactly the quirky kind of attention-grabbing mod that's able to rise to the surface. Underneath, there's a bubbling arrayof mods and maps being shared around by the Doom community.

Here's a recent one: Valiant, a 32 map megawad. It's an entirely new set of levels, all with a distinct look and some surprising design. It's neat, and a good reason to spend more time with the classic shooter.

"I did aim to make a wide variety of maps," writes creator 'skillsaw'. "There are short punchy maps (MAP03, MAP22), sandboxes (MAP06, MAP18), long adventure maps (MAP10, MAP28), silly gimmick maps (MAP07, MAP19), and everything in between. Most maps are densely packed with monsters, and occasionally you'll see something resembling full on slaughter."

It can be a little too trap-heavy for my tastes, and that leads to some pretty awkward sections that feel somewhat removed from the type of gunplay I associate with Doom. Nonetheless, the quality and effort that's on show is remarkable.

You can download Valiant from the link above. If you want to play it, you'll need a copy of Doom 2 and a source port like GZDoom.

Oblivion to miss PS3 launch

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion for PlayStation 3, originally announced as a launch game for PS3 in America, has been delayed until early next year, developer Bethesda Softworks has confirmed. Oblivion is the first of PS3's launch line-up to be pulled, though recent unconfirmed rumours have suggested that Sonic the Hedgehog and FEAR could also suffer a delay. Publishers Sega and Vivendi were available

Enabling Gamers: What is the industry doing for disabled players?

Enabling Gamers: What is the industry doing for disabled players? Gaming is by and large a private pastime. People play in their own homes, with friends or family. When discussing games, we tend to talk to only a small circle of friends. When we do talk about games in a larger public sphere online, it’s behind a veil of anonymity. Encased within our own personal bubble, it’s easy for us to imagine

John Romero gets the "Icon of Sin" for Christmas

Brenda Romero revealed the gift, a detailed sculpture based on the Doom 2 level Icon of Sin, with a couple of photos on Twitter earlier this week.

I have two things to say about John Romero'sChristmas present. First, it is glorious, and perfectly appropriate. And second, I am intensely jealous.

earlier this week. A closer look at the work and the process of making it can be had at creator Jason Hite's website, where he explains that some of the individual components were built from existing pieces—the Doom Guy is a "slightly augmented' HorrorClix figure—while others, including the central demon skull, are entirely hand-made.

Upon completion, the sculpture was sent to the Copro Nason Galleryin Santa Monica, California, where it went on sale for $6000. Hite told Polygonhe also sent photos of the work to John Romero, who seemed duly impressed. "A few days later, out of the blue, John messaged me asking if the sculpture was still for sale," he said. "There was one other person who also expressed interest to me but had not confirmed yet, so I told John the sculpture was his!"

It isn't completely faithful to the game's famous final level—Hite replaced the numeric indicators with hearts and "possibly live" .30 caliber bullets—but he did make a point of including the most important detail: Romero's decapitated head, stuck on a stick, and hidden out of sight.

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Jump to Section: Best Price Comments Pros Super-solid shooting action Great computer opponents Lots of ways to play online Cons No post-game lobby system Environments are bland Graphics are nothing special Go to page: Page 1 Page 1 Page 2 What's the point of a shooting game? Shooting things! It's weird, then, how many first-person shooters are content to settle for positively wimpy gun mechanics, with

KOTOR II was critically acclaimed on its 2004 release, w ith weird and morally ambiguous characters

who felt more at home in a Fallout game than the George Lucas-verse. But it didn't receive the same universal praise as its predecessor. Firm deadlines led to many bugs, and complaints that the story felt “unfinished.” Its plot wrapped up very quickly and ended on a mysterious cliffhanger; modders later discovered entire storylines that were included on the disc but had not been implemented.

How a ragtag band of modders restored Star Wars KOTOR II

Obsidian’s Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords holds a strange place in the Star Wars video game canon.

Firm deadlines led to many bugs, and complaints that the story felt “unfinished.” Its plot wrapped up very quickly and ended on a mysterious cliffhanger; modders later discovered entire storylines that were included on the disc but had not been implemented. Most players assumed that KOTOR II would remain an unpolished gem unless Obsidian was able to revisit it and fill in some of the gaps.

Then on July 22nd, all of that changed. Publisher Aspyr Media, responsible for porting games to non-Windows platforms including OSX, Linux, iOS and Android, updated KOTOR II on Steam for the first time in 10 years, and with it came a crucial patch note: support for Steam Workshop mods, and with that, The Sith Lords Restored content mod.

Now any KOTOR II player can install this fabled mod with a simple button push, and play the storylines that were previously abandoned. The work of one dedicated modder community has fleshed out a flawed masterpiece, and their work is sure to bring newfound attention to this game. (It's already drawing praise from KOTOR II’s lead narrative designer, Chris Avellone.)

"I don’t feel like I ever ‘own’ a game I work on. It’s something to be shared, improved upon, and whenever possible, seen from a new perspective that gives the title new life. - Chris Avellone"

The mod includes numerous bug fixes, new areas, and dialogue options that flesh out the story in the main game. It was actually in development since before 2009, when it was first released in open beta by modder Zbigniew Staniewicz, aka Zbyl, with his modding partner Darth Stoney.

Staniewicz was a big fan of the KOTOR series, and wanted to play the cut content  as soon as he heard about it. “I also thought ‘finishing up’ the game would make me super famous, but I may have overestimated the size and reach of the KOTOR community,” he jokes.

Staniewicz and Stoney’s first versions of The Sith Lords Restored, built on the back of research and work done by other modders, added what they believed to be part of a known list of cut content found on the disc. “It turned out our list didn’t include even half of the trivial stuff left out of the game," he says. "It was always exciting and at times surprising to realize how much more there was buried in there.”

More than just fixing bugs

Staniewicz was joined by modder Hassat Hunter as development on The Sith Lords Restored continued. Hunter started out in the mod community bug testing and teaching himself the dialogue editing tools for KOTOR before signing on to work on The Sith Lords Restored.

Hunter’s passion for fixing KOTOR II's bugs grew into a desire to dig out all the unknown story content and present a “true” version of KOTOR II to the players.

“We didn’t just want people to experience the cut content, we wanted to give people the KOTOR 2 that should have been," Hunter says. "I don’t think anyone expected to still work on it five years later, or that eventually we’d take up a greater scope, albeit in steps.”

Doing this kind of restorative mod work isn’t just a process of cleaning up bugs and extracting unused models though. A s Staniewicz and Hunter describe their process, it becomes clear that they wound up doing plenty of design work too, building on Obsidian’s work from a decade prior.

Doing this kind of restorative mod work isn’t just a process of cleaning up bugs and extracting unused models.

“For example in the very first closed beta of [the mod], you could finish the HK assassin droid factory without firing a single shot," says Hunter. "That just didn’t fit the story of the HK droids though, not to mention that it was extremely boring. The factory went through a lot of transitions, but I think the current version works very well.”

Much of the restored content reflects the core of what made KOTOR II so unusual as a Star Wars game. HK-47, a murderous assassin droid from the first KOTOR , began his life as a fan-favorite character in the context of a more traditional hero’s story (or villain’s story depending on the player’s choice), but like many other plot points from the first KOTOR he and other characters evolved under the moral lenses Obsidian took to the Star Wars universe. KOTOR II spends a large amount of its cut and uncut content examining how droids shape the world of Star Wars, and how the way most species treat them leaves them in a perfect position to perform acts of villainy or heroism overlooked by most.

KOTOR II’s lead narrative designer, Chris Avellone, has loosely kept up with modder’s progress over the years, with the HK Droid Factory being one of the biggest pieces of content he’s glad players can experience. “While we had HK-50 and HK-51 droids in the game, I always...intended the player and even HK-47 itself to feel offended by their presence,” he says

"This was intended to make the final confrontation with them all the sweeter when HK-47 gets to turn the tables on its upstart “successors” by using their programming that they inherited from him as a weakness," he adds. "There’s a ‘panicked’ sequence in the excised content where the HK-50s figure this out, and I always meant it as a scene to make the player grin."

Elsewhere, Kreia’scut lines reinforce her as a character who possesses traits of both the Jedi and the Sith, constantly judging the player no matter which side of the Force they give in to, and the Sith are shown more to be a complicated, nuanced political group rather than an embodiment of raw evil. All of these ideas are far removed from their film incarnations, and are not even the kind of storytelling that Disney has endorsed in its video game tie-ins realesed after the Lucasfilm acquisition.

The Home Stretch

Hunter says that Aspyr approached them a month before it planned to push out KOTOR II on Steam (mostly to open up ports for Mac and Linux), but wasn’t able at first to properly say why they were interested in talking to the KOTOR II modders.

When they learned of Aspyr’s plans though, Hunter and Stanwiecz dove in to patch the mod to be Steam Workshop ready.

“They pretty much laid down for us what we had to do to make [the mod] work for the Steam Workshop so everything could go as smooth as possible at release," says Hunter. "And now hopefully we can get rid of all the remaining bugs and annoyances still in this version, and be in the unique position to fix things we couldn’t as modders. I can’t say that we or anyone else expected this to happen at this time or date, so that was a pretty nice surprise.”

For its part, Aspyr Media's primary goal was to include Steam Workshop among a large batch of featured updates, including controller support, Steam Achievements, and playability on Linux and other platforms. Product manager Michael Blair explains that they knew the mod would be a huge feature to have on launch, which was why they reached out to Staniewicz and Hunter to get them on board.

"In order for our QA team to test 'live' content from months of working on this update, we moved our Steam branches from beta to live 2 days before launch," Blair says. "During that time, we allowed the mod team access and instructions on how to get their mod up in the Workshop, and ensured it remained hidden from public view. Our team then tested it before we hit 'go' on the launch.'"

Obsidian’s only involvement in the game’s update seems to be unofficial. Hunter says Obsidian lead programmer Adam Brennecke voices a character on the planet M4-78EP, but that connection came from chatting with him during a Pillars of Eternity (Obsidian's latest RPG) promotional stream, not any official endorsement.

Regardless, Hunter and Staniewicz both are floored by the positive feedback that they’ve received for their work, and are glad more players can make their mod a core part of playing KOTOR II . For his part, Avellone remains thrilled by the collaborative spirit of the modders pulling his old work out of the shadows.

“I love it, and I have much respect for the Total Restoration mod and any modders willing to experiment with gameplay and narrative aspects to our titles,” he says.

“I don’t feel like I ever ‘own’ a game I work on, it’s something to be shared, improved upon, and whenever possible, seen from a new perspective that gives the title new life.”

Brutal Doom update v20 to add ragdoll physics, more brutality

I didn't think it was possible for Doom to get any better, but mods make everything better.

I didn't think it was possible for Doom to get any better, but mods make everything better. The absurdly violent Brutal Doommod is doing a great job of keeping Doom just as shocking and visceral of an experience as it was when it first came out 20 years ago, and the newest version will add ragdoll physics—because when I shotgun an Imp, I wanna see it tumble.

The Brutal Doom mod, which you may have seen us squeeabout before, adds new effects, animations, way too much blood, and other things that heighten the experience. v20, as you can see in the video above, makes each shotgun blast even more satisfying by knocking the enemy back an unreasonable distance. To me it looks like the right amount of ridiculous, but creator Sergeant_Mark_IV said he's going to tone it down a notch.

“I have been playing a lot of Killing Floorlately and noticed how small zeds are sent rolling on the floor when killed by shotguns at close range, I love this effect, then I thought about making something similar on Brutal Doom,” he said. “Of course it will not send almost every enemy flying away like in the video. I will reduce the minimum range from 300 to 200 units. I mean, the shotgun will only send flying enemies that are VERY close to the player, and shooting on the legs or heads still causes amputations.”

When it comes out, v20 should also make the mod run smoother, make blood splatters and ejected magazine last longer, and other nifty things. It seems like Facebookis the best place to keep up with it, and you can download it for free from Moddb.

FEAR - hands-on

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Activision expects Overwatch to be Blizzard's biggest launch since Diablo III

Activision COO, Thomas Tippl, is expecting Overwatch to be Blizzard's biggest launch since Diablo III , which sold over 12 million copies in its first year.

Tippl laid out his expectations during the company's recent earnings call, and is also optimistic that Overwatch can emerge as a major player in the world of eSports.

"We expect Overwatch to be Blizzard's biggest launch since Diablo in 2012. We also believe Overwatch will resonate well in eSports, which provides yet another vector for audience expansion," explained Tippl.

"In fact, eSports is not only a driver of audience expansion, but also importantly drives growth in terms of time spent with our franchises."

Diablo III , the long-awaited third entry in Blizzard's action RPG franchise, landed in May 2012, and has to date sold over 30 million copies worldwide - 3.5 million of which were shifted within 24 hours of launch.

In the four years since Diablo III hit shelves, Blizzard has launched a number of high-profile expansion packs, including World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria and StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm , along with full releases such as Hearthstone and Heroes of the Storm .

Overwatch , currently in open beta, is due to release later this month on May 24.

Doom 2 speed run sweeps through Ultra-Violence mode in 23 minutes

Wherein a tenacious speed runner completes Doom 2 's Ultra-Violence mode (that's the second hardest difficulty) in a smidgeon over 23 minutes.

's Ultra-Violence mode (that's the second hardest difficulty) in a smidgeon over 23 minutes. The work of YouTuber Zero Master, it beats the previous record holder by an impressive 22 seconds. "This is the second improvement in the last 10 years," Zero Master writes on his YouTube page, "though I don't think we will have to wait that long before we see the 23 minute mark broken."

That's because there's a handful of easily correctable errors in the run, according to Zero Master in the Doomworld forums. Reading over his notes, it's hard to believe the previous record holder managed to keep the throne for as long as he did, especially considering the enduring popularity of the game.

Cheers Eurogamer.

FEAR demo now available

Microsoft has made a demo of FEAR available today, ensuring that you'll not be able to get to sleep tonight due to the resulting nightmares. Thankfully, the demo is short, so you probably won't be frightened into agoraphobia (leave the fear of going outside for the final release of the game in November). This is a good chance for you to get acquainted with the odd control system that seems to take the position of your feet into account and makes running from here to there seem more like hobbling. Still, we're even more excited to get our hands on this one after this all-too-brief taste. September 25, 2006 Topics Shooter FEAR: First Encounter Assault Recon We recommend By Zergnet Load Comments

GDC 2013 adds design lectures from Diablo III , Lili , Dear Esther creators

Brutal Doom gets a v19 release, mod's maker says it's "the final version for a while"

Absurdly violent mod Brutal Doom is a perfect lesson in the pleasure of bloody violence.

is a perfect lesson in the pleasure of bloody violence. And yet, even with it taking its obnoxious philosophy way past any natural conclusion, it's neither childish or embarrassing - unlike, say, that Ninja Gaiden Z trailer. This most gore-filled version of Doom's Id Tech 1 years has now reached its 19th version, bringing new fixes, animations and improved effects.

Okay, so maybe it is a bit childish. That's kind of the point, though.

After 10 months in development, version 19 is now available to download. Of its completion, creator Sergeant_Mark_IV writes, "V19 is not the final version of Brutal Doom. It's just the final version for a while. I need to take a long break of it, work on other projects, and return to it somewhere in late 2014/early 2015."

If it isn't enough to run through a blood slick version of the original DOOMs, you can also get a beta version of a Brutal Doom expansion for Doom 2, titled Beyond Hell and Earth.

You can download and see the changelist for Brutal Doom V19 over at ModDB.

Police Quest games and Zork anthology now available on GOG

Last week Good Old Games became a crime scene .

. Now we know why. The first four Police Quest games are now available to buy in a convenient bundle, and the Zork Anthology has also been re-released.

The Police Questpack contains Police Quest: In Pursuit of the Death Angel, Police Quest 2: The Vengeance, Police Quest 3: The Kindred, and Police Quest: Open Season and will set you back $9.99.

The Zork Anthologyis now on sale for $5.99, and contains the text adventure games that started the series, including Zork I, Zork II, Zork III, Beyond Zork, Zork Zero, and Planetfall. All six games weigh in at a combined total of 9MB, and make up what GOG are calling "the most oldschool [release] in GOG.com's history"

If you're on the lookout for a classic adventure game to play, The Last Express, a brilliant animated adventure set on board the Orient Express, is now available on DoTEmu for 7.49 Euro.

PS4: The Complete Manual – Available Now

PS4: The Complete Manual – Available Now Sony’s PlayStation 4 might just be the hottest toy in town, but do you know how to make the most out of it? Well, don’t get left in the dark. Imagine Publishing has put together PS4: The Complete Manual , which is bursting with information on Sony’s new console. Want to know how to replace the hard drive? No problem. Stream live video over Twitch? Couldn’t be

Doom 3 BFG trailer features new missions and retro action

Doom 3 BFG edition is out this week, which makes it the perfect week for a Doom 3 BFG launch trailer.

Doom 3 BFG edition is out this week, which makes it the perfect week for a Doom 3 BFG launch trailer. The repackaged, updated version of Doom 3 comes with 3D vision support and a new seven-level segment called The Lost Mission. The Resurrection of Evil expansion pack is included, along with Doom and Doom 2. The whole package is available at a budget £20 / €30 price point.

it sounds like Doom 3 has been significantly polished up with "improved rendering and lighting," more sensibly placed checkpoints and, countering one of the biggest points of contention, an armour-mounted flashlight. That should stop you from having to constantly choose between being able to see and being able to defend yourself. You can absorb some of that information in visual form with bonus demons in the launch trailer below.

Reinstall: Police Quest

Maybe it's just me, but I never could take Police Quest ( $4.99 on GOG ) very seriously.

) very seriously. I know I probably should. It's certainly a serious game—an interactive police-procedural adventure written by a real cop, and supposedly used by others as a training tool. For me though, it was always something else—closer to the dreams that good cops probably have after eating too much cheese before going to bed. It's like a fevered nightmare of repressed paranoia, lessened only by a little guilty wish-fulfillment to round off a long day of being abused and unappreciated.

Police Quest's goal is to simulate the experiences that a real cop might have on a daily basis. So, like most dreams, it starts out rooted in reality. You're Sonny Bonds, a regular beat cop, going about his day in the decaying Lytton City (the bigger mystery plot shows up much later). You drive around until your radio tells you something's going on, then you drive over there and deal with it. You stop speeding motorists. You call in the appropriate authorities at an accident scene. You chat with a hottie who turns into a spitting hellcat if you don't let her out of a ticket (and gives you the police commissioner's wife's phone number if you do). You sort out trouble at a coffee house. In short, you do your job.

Badgered

Oh, and you die. A lot. This is where our sleeping cop's paranoia kicks in. Even by Sierra standards, Police Quest wants you dead. Run a red light? Game over. Don't call for backup? Bye-bye. Don't check your gun into a locker before going into jail? The perp will pull it from your belt and pop you. This is a game where you can single-handedly face down a bar full of bikers, only to get cold-cocked by an incorrectly-handcuffed drunk. In the original version, you don't simply have to check your car before you head off on patrol—you have to manually walk to all four sides and check them each in turn, otherwise you instantly blow a tire. The kicker? If you do the check, nothing is wrong. That's just cruel!

Both versions of Police Quest are brutal—the original, released in 1987, uses a text-parser interface, the 1992 remake uses icons. You can muddle through the icons, but the only way you were getting anywhere with the text version was to follow the manual's procedures down to the letter, literally.

Of course, that strict adherence to proper procedure actually makes the moments when Police Quest goes utterly insane all the funnier. For starters, while the story technically takes place over the course of a few days, in practice you never go home or off-duty for more than five minutes, making the whole adventure seem like some bizarre, mirror-universe season of 24 where Jack Bauer is a stickler for due process. Even better: in the text-driven version, you can type “remove uniform,” and Sonny will actually get his little nightstick out in the middle of a crime scene, dying of shame. Yikes.

With a heart of gold

Finally, there's the game's love interest. Oh boy. Now, I'm not saying a cop and a hooker shouldn't fall for each other. I'm just saying that I can't not giggle at a by-the-book cop ending up with a callgirl (who happens to be your former high school sweetheart) named Sweet Cheeks. The story only gets sillier from that point too, as you use her prostitute connections to track down the titular Death Angel (a drug dealer called Jessie Bains—Sonny's nemesis in the sequel, but largely irrelevant until the very end of this story) by going undercover and beating his friends at poker. Alternatively, you can screw up, miss the big game due to sleeping with Sweet Cheeks instead, and lose your career when your boss calls and hears her screaming out in pleasure. Being the single best game-over in Sierra history doesn't make that feel any less out of place in a “serious” police game!

But Police Quest isn't serious—not really. It pretends to be, but it's the clash between its by-the-book attitude and the gamey parts that makes it so charming, and it knows it. The sequels wasted little time upping the stakes, with Sonny moving to the Homicide Department, and a third game involving an evil cult. Still, this first game was always my favorite, especially the more down-to-earth parts that simply try to convey the flavor of being on patrol. A real cop may not find Police Quest to be a realistic simulation of his profession, but at least he can appreciate that by playing it, we learn about the hookers, bar fights, and rigid rules he must abide by in order to keep us all a little bit safer.

On the next page: More Police Quest screenshots from our archive

How Total War got stripped down and sped up for F2P Arena

It might look like another yet another military strategy game at first glance, but Total War: Arena is a big departure for Creative Assembly.

is a big departure for Creative Assembly. The Total War series is known for its deep and lengthy play sessions, its spectacular-looking but resource-intensive battles, and a, um, well...let's just say a level of ambition that inevitably results in an initial bugginess that needs to be patched away over the first few months post-release.

A completely new approach is required when you transpose the Total War formula into a 10v10 free-to-play multiplayer game. Grand lengthy strategies are gone in favor of a tight focus on battles. Resource-intensive graphics no longer fly, as the primary goal of a free-to-play title is to reach the widest possible audience. And losing a competitive game because of a bug or some other bit of jankiness is the fastest way to get a player to log off and invest their time in a different free-to-play game.

So the team at Creative Assembly have to approach Total War: Arena in a way that they haven’t approached developing a Total War game before.

Managing servers and tweaking the tech specs

Arena adopts the World of Tanks model. It starts you out with relatively simple troops, three units that you can take into battle, and then over time you purchase more advanced units with more advanced equipment, and are matched against people with similarly elite units.

"For traditional Total War titles, the battle model would update at 10Hz. We’ve reduced that to 5Hz to really pull a lot of CPU performance."

Getting Arena working with twenty players all bringing several large units to play, was a new type of headache for a team.“Previous Total War games were purely peer-to-peer multiplayer games ,” explains Jan Van Der Crabber, the Live Operations Manager on Arena . "So if one computer was lagging in a match, all the others would lag to stay in synch. Now, if you have 10v10 across multiple countries and streams and so on, it’s extremely likely that someone is going to lag."

Creative Assembly had to build a robust relay server to accommodate all of this. "It acts like a proxy server," says Van Der Crabber. "It receives all the commands from all the players, and then sends them on to all the other players. So if one player lags, the server will continue on at a normal rate, and that player will lag but no one else will.”

This is one of the relatively big changes that the Arena team have had to make to a standardized practice in a series that’s nine games deep and a decade and a half old. And it’s far from the only one.

“For traditional Total War titles, the battle model would update at 10Hz,” Van Der Crabben continues. “We’ve reduced that to 5Hz to really pull a lot of CPU performance. It’s barely noticeable when you’re playing; you’ll only notice it if you’re really looking for it.”

Slimming down for battle, and ruthlessly executing exploits

Cutting down on the resources needed for the game heavily influences how the team develops their art assets, which have typically been one of the most impressive aspects of a Total War game. Instead of adding as much detail as possible, here Van Der Crabben and his team have to do the opposite.

“A lot of times, junior artists would produce buildings with tons of details on a part of the building that you’d never see," he explains. "We’ve put so much emphasis on optimizing the art assets to run on lower end PCs, and really figuring out how to get the most out of the art. That's something the whole company has benefited from.”

And those lessons aren’t purely about optimization. As Total War: Arena moves through its alpha and into open beta, this engine that has driven the battles for fifteen years is starting to be put under more and more pressure from a direction that it hasn’t experienced before.

The new demands on the engine are highlighting gameplay problems that haven’t previously been an issue. With a competitive focus, "cheesy" tactics that aren’t so much of a problem in a single-player game become glaring flaws that have to be addressed.

“One thing we’ve done is fix so-called ‘pull through’.” Van Der Crabben tells me. “That's something that the Total War community has been complaining about for a while. Basically, it is when you have two units engaging, and one of the players repeatedly clicks a movement order behind that enemy unit, his unit will wiggle through, take some damage, but be able to get through to the other side. Which means that if one player has made a defensive line at a choke point, the other could just run through with some losses, but very often it’s worth it.’

“With classic Total War there’s more of a single-player focus, so this kind of behavior isn’t as important--the computer isn’t going to do that," he says. "In Arena, it’s become very important, so we decided that it was worth a very significant investment of time. After we fixed it, the other teams at Creative Assembly were very interested in how we did it.”

Doom 3 BFG Edition will feature entire Doom series, seven new Doom 3 levels

id Software is Dooming us like we've never been Doomed before.

id Software is Dooming us like we've never been Doomed before. Publisher Bethesda Softworks has announced the Doom 3 BFG Edition, which will feature the series' entire catalog, including Doom, Doom 2, Doom 3, and Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil, as well as an added "Lost Mission" with seven new levels. The release date and pricing are TBA, but it's coming sometime this year. Check out the trailer inside.

In addition to new content, id has spent the past year addressing complaints about Doom 3's darkness and difficulty (enter the new "armor-mounted flashlight"), tweaking its lighting and rendering, and adding 3D monitor and 5.1 surround sound support. Many of the modifications are bigger news for the console versions, as we've already been blessed with smooth framerates and the famous Duct Tape Mod.

"Doom 3 was enthusiastically embraced by gamers worldwide at its release," said id Software's John Carmack in today's statement. "Today, the full experience has been enhanced and extended to be better than ever, and is delivered across all the platforms with a silky smooth frame rate and highly responsive controls."

If id were working on it, this definitive Doom collection would be an excellent precursor to Doom 4, and Polygon's Russ Pitts made the same leading statement to id's Tim Willits, who repeated back, "If one were working on that, it would be a perfect precursor."

So, yeah, it seems likely that we'll get a Doom 4 re-announcement sometime this year.

Precinct shuts down Kickstarter and reboots with its own "staged funding" plan

It's always sad to see a promising Kickstarter pull the plug, and this time is no different: Precinct, the revitalization of the classic Police Quest lineage, has suspended its Kickstarter .

. Precinct will be moving to a “staged” crowdfunding effort on its own website.

Precinct had raised just shy of $90,000 of its $500,000 goal since the campaign began. With only ten days left on the clock, creators Jim Walls and Robert Lindsley decided to call it and try a new tactic.

The new staged funding drive works differently than Kickstarter. At each funding stage (currently set at $25,000, $90,000, $250,000 and $400,000), the funds pledged will be charged and sent to Walls and Lindsley to fuel that portion of the project. When $25,000 is reached, for example, the developers will deliver a “proof of concept,” a short but playable sample of the Precinct experience. The fundraising drive has no time limit, so whenever the money is raised is when the game gets made.

The idea is to reduce risk for backers by showing them concrete evidence of their funding. If backers don't like the proof of concept or the demo ($250,000 goal) for example, they can vote with their wallets and stop contributing. On the other hand, if the community demand for this game just isn't as big as the $400,000 goal, willing backers may spend an awful lot of money and receive only a playable demo in return, a risk that Kickstarter's all-or-nothing model prevents.

It's also interesting to note some of the costs involved with Kickstarter that have now been removed. The creators are asking for $100,000 less with this model, the tradeoff being that backers no longer receive physical rewards.

If you're still hungry for the kind of realistic police procedural that Precinct is aiming for, head over to the new fundraising website.

Great year for Square Enix, thanks to Final Fantasy XIV reboot

Rediscovering Skyrim's greatness

REINSTALL
There’s a moment near the beginning of every Elder Scrolls game that defines the series.

Reinstallinvites you to join us in revisiting PC gaming days gone by. Today, Andy rediscovers Skyrim's greatness.

There’s a moment near the beginning of every Elder Scrolls game that defines the series. It’s when you emerge from the dreary dungeon, sewer, or wherever the prologue is set and see the world stretching out enticingly before you, brimming with possibility. I vividly remember this feeling when I first played skyrim five years ago.

After escaping execution thanks to a well-timed dragon attack, I found myself in a beautiful boreal forest, knowing that what I did next was entirely up to me. The game gently nudges you towards Riverwood, a nearby village that’s a good introduction for new players, but it’s really just a suggestion.

Replaying it today, a lot of that initial magic has been lost. But that’s only because, after hundreds of hours, I know where everything is. I know that if I head east I’ll find the town of Riften, with its snaking waterways and shady citizens. I know that if I go northeast I’ll travel the misty mountain passes of the Reach and arrive at the ancient city of Markarth. But, even so, I still feel a ripple of excitement. The sense of adventure, of shaping a new character’s destiny, is as exhilarating as it was back then.

Your character is dragonborn, a legendary hero. But until you trigger the chain of quests that reveals this, you’re whoever you want to be. Some people played Skyrim for hundreds of hours without ever setting the main story in motion. Personally, I prefer to play a sellsword, wandering from town to town, solving problems, helping people, killing people. The whole dragonborn thing is just too much responsibility.

The varied geography is what makes it one of the best open worlds on PC. Each region has a distinct atmosphere and personality. The Rift is gold and autumnal, with forests, lakes, and vineyards. An incongruously idyllic setting for the hotbed of crime and corruption that is Riften. Eastmarch is a volcanic, volatile landscape of bubbling hot springs and jagged rock. You can almost smell the sulphur in the air. To the far north, Winterhold is perpetually battered by blizzards and blanketed in thick snow. At night the sky is illuminated by vividly colourful aurora, a sight that never stops impressing. Whiterun is a vast, treeless tundra, freezing, grassy plains surrounding its central city.

At the centre of the map is the Throat of the World, a colossal mountain that you can’t help but feel the urge to climb when you first see it tickling the clouds. Your pilgrimage up it, and the view when you reach the peak, is one of the game’s best experiences. Just watch out for the frost troll lurking near the summit.

As is the case with a lot of RPGs, it’s the side quests where the best stuff lies. Joining the Dark Brotherhood and becoming a master assassin. Rising in the ranks of the Thieves Guild. Investigating a brutal murder in the city of Windhelm like some kind of fantasy gumshoe. Teaming up with a talking dog that’s actually a demon. Becoming a werewolf. Picking sides in a civil war. There are so many quests in Skyrim, from the epic to the absurd, and your journal is always fat with things to do. There isn’t much in the way of choice or branching paths, however, and far too many quests involve trekking through samey dungeons with a meagre reward at the end.

Whether it’s a Dwemer ruin, Draugur crypt, or Falmer hive, it becomes clear that all the dungeons in the game are snapped together from the same set of pieces. Play for any length of time and you’ll start to recognise props, room layouts, and puzzles. There are 197 clearable dungeons, camps, and other locations in the game, which explains this kitbash approach, but I’d rather have a smaller number of dungeons that feel more hand-crafted. To be fair, there are a few dungeons, particularly in the main questline, that boast some impressive, bespoke designs.

As I write this, almost 30,000 people are playing Skyrim on Steam. That’s remarkable for a five-year-old game, but not surprising. The vibrant modding scene frequently has me reinstalling, and some mods are basically essential for a replay. My favourite is Alternate Start: Live Another Life, created by Arthmoor, which lets you skip the opening sequence and choose from a number of different starting characters. You can play a bandit, a Stormcloak soldier, a diplomat from the Thalmor embassy, a peasant, a nobleman, and many more. It’s great for roleplaying, and an elegant way to avoid embracing your destiny.

Chesko’s brilliant Frostfall adds survival elements, so you have to dress appropriately or suffer from hypothermia. It adds craftable camping equipment, the ability to make a fire, and dozens of other features. Skyrim is the perfect example of how support for mods can dramatically extend the lifespan of a game. Even after the next Elder Scrolls is released, thousands of people will still be playing Skyrim.

The game is not without its flaws. As an RPG it’s fairly shallow, many of the quests are stiflingly linear, and the stealth is terrible – but the feeling of freedom it gives you is irresistible. The sheer scale of the thing, and the variety of quests, is enough of a distraction. And the world is so beautiful, sometimes I play just to go for a wander. Nothing beats the first time you leave that dingy cavern behind and see the world spread out before you, but even if you know the game inside out after hundreds of hours of play, there’s still something intoxicating about those first steps.

Precinct's crowdfunding campaign cancelled again, backers' cash is safe

We have some bad news for fans of cop-based adventure games (although it seems there may be fewer of you than was first hoped).

We have some bad news for fans of cop-based adventure games (although it seems there may be fewer of you than was first hoped). You'll remember that the PrecinctKickstarter was shut down earlier this month, with the developers of the Police Quest spiritual successor attempting to raise the needed money via their own independent schemeinstead. Well, now that new "staged" funding scheme has been cancelled as well, after raising around $12,000 of the $400,000 goal. No backer cash has been taken.

Jim Walls Reloaded's Robert Lindsay broke the news on the Precinct website. "Each member of our team has done their very best to make Precinct a reality. We put every effort into making a crowdfunding campaign work but we have decided to end the Precinct campaign effective today. Your generous support not only made Precinct a possibility, it also gave us the fire to try and make this work when the going got hard. Thank you."

"We're fighters and fought our best. Unfortunately, our best wasn't good enough to overcome the challenges with crowdfunding Precinct. Our new approach attracted some terrific supporters and we are grateful. However, we simply don't have the momentum needed to meet the requirements of this project.

"Depending on the situation, we may decide to try again someday. The backing community are wonderfully supportive of Jim Walls making a new game. Likewise, our team remains passionate about Precinct and are hopeful there is a way to make Precinct a reality in the future."

If you're wondering what all the fuss is about with the original Police Quest games, have a read of Richard Cobbett's Saturday Crapshootand Reinstallfeatures.

Thanks, Blue's News.

Natural Selection 2 Review

Natural Selection 2 Review Natural Selection 2 is stubbornness; it is bull-headed devotion to a single idea; it is passion personified and everything in-between. The original Half-Life mod released a decade ago and despite the innovation it brought to the FPS genre we’ve seen very little like it in the years since: which is pretty rare in an industry so reliant on the borrowing of great ideas. Natural

Skyrim Special Edition will be 64-bit, promising big things for modders

The souped-up Skyrim Special Edition for the PC and current-gen consoles announced by Bethesda during its E3 press conference will offer all sorts of visual improvements to the game, like volumetric lighting, dynamic depth of field, and improved water shaders.

for the PC and current-gen consoles announced by Bethesda during its E3 press conference will offer all sorts of visual improvements to the game, like volumetric lighting, dynamic depth of field, and improved water shaders. On Twitter today, Bethesda's Vice President of Marketing and PR Pete Hines expanded on that, saying the PC edition of the game will be 64-bit, and that saves “should” transfer from the original game to the new one.

Chatting w Todd just now, able to confirm on Skyrim SE for PC:64-bitSaves should transferSeparate creation kit to upload mods to Bnet June 15, 2016

The ability to import saves is nice, especially for players like me, who never finished the original and might be tempted to come back for this new edition. But in the long run, being a 64-bit app will almost certainly have a much greater impact on the game's long-term future. I will cop to not being intimately familiar with the technical side of things, but simplistically, 32-bit applications can use a maximum of 4GB of RAM, a part of which is reserved for the OS, while 64-bit effectively does away with that restriction. (There is an upper limit, but it's so high as to be pretty much meaningless at this point in time and technology.)

An old, but still relevant, post on the Nexus Forumsexplains the practical impact of that limit in somewhat greater detail. “Skyrim will crash at or around a reported 3.1 gigabytes of RAM usage, which is fairly widely known. Skyrim mirrors its active textures in memory, and since it is a 32-bit application with a 4GB memory limit, this constrains the total size of modded textures that are viably usable,” the post says. “The exact VRAM:RAM ratio is not known, but one metric reported was a texture pack taking up ~500MB VRAM would consume approximately 430MB physical RAM.”

The authors of the post said that they hadn't been able to come up with any memory management solution that could “reliably mitigate” the problem, and worse, said “it is unlikely that any could be developed.” Even Bethesda described the 4GB ceiling as “a fundamental problem of 32-bit applications,” and said it had no plans to address the matter further.

“We present this information with the hope that modders/mod authors will keep these limitations in mind when using/creating mods, especially texture-heavy ones. Those mods that take up less space will likely get more exposure, given that most modders will be using a heavily-modded game,” the post concludes. “Without Skyrim's source code it is almost certain that neither the 3.1 gigabyte stability issue nor the RAM mirroring issues will ever be fixed.”

Or, obviously, if it's reborn as a 64-bit application. There may be some compatibility hinks along the way—Hines tweeteda few days ago that existing mods would “basically” be compatible with the updated game, which is not quite a rock-solid “yes”—but doing away with that memory restriction has the potential to open the door to all kinds of mods that were previously unattainable. So while the visual overhaul is impressive and the most obvious improvement to the game, over the long term the move to a 64-bit architecture will be at least as big a deal.

The Skyrim Special Edition comes out on October 28.

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Skyrim total conversion mod Enderal releases soon, so here's a trailer

Enderal: The Shards of Order is an ambitious total conversion mod for Skyrim .

. It's been in development since Skyrim launched in 2011, and is the work of SureAI, the same team responsible for the Oblivion total conversion Nehrim. We profiledEnderal early last year, and have covered it for years now, but it looks like it's finally releasing next month.

That's a pretty big deal: Enderal is a fully-featured open world RPG, complete with new environments, art and voice acting, which you'll be able to download for free (so long as you own Skyrim). It's releasing in Germany next week, with an English language release to follow in the weeks after.

The launch trailer below is in German, but it provides a satisfying glimpse of how Enderal will play. Fingers crossed it'll work smoothly with the forthcoming Skyrim: Special Edition.