Open the vaults: the first two Fallouts return to Steam in high-res with Cloud saves
Oh, the house Bethesda built for Fallout was good, very good. But it never did recreate the same junktown vibe of those ‘90s jaunts through the Wasteland with Black Isle.
Now the publishers have wrestled the last few rights to the series from Interplay’s remaining fingers, Fallouts 1, 2 and Tactics have come back to Steam with their skin still attached - and a few extra doo-dahs in their inventories.
Ubisoft reveals Far Cry 4's protagonist: Collars McBroody
In Far Cry 4, Ubisoft's open world shooter on top of a mountain, you play as protagonist Ajay Ghale. And here he is. Here's his face. Ubisoft is showing you what he looks like, in case you encounter any mirrors in the game and think "hey, who's that?"
The Evil Within Hands-on: like a funfair House of Horrors
The Evil Within is more funfair House of Horrors than it is waking nightmare. At one point I was searching a gothic manor house for brains that I’d sap of juice to open a vault door while avoiding traps, like a meat grinder hidden behind a set of double doors. It was a little silly considering this is from the maker of Resident Evil.
I couldn’t help but warm to its clumsy scares and crude, cliched environments, full of blood and ghosts. However, it’s all held back by a frustrating camera and mechanics designed to hobble you.
Sledgehammer are "not shying away from what CoD is" for Advanced Warfare's level design
Do you remember ‘All Ghilled Up’? The thirteenth mission of the very first Modern Warfare, it stuck us behind the moustachioed upper lip of Captain Price. Moving to a hotel vantage point from the outskirts of Pripyat, it exemplified what we now recognise as CoD form: a breathless slide down a pre-dictated path.
The Advanced Warfare demo showed to press at E3 featured a level a lot like it - and developers Sledgehammer aren’t ashamed to admit that they’ve taken their cues from CoD history.
“We are trying to change things up, but we’re also not shying away from what the series is,” said co-founder Glen Schofield.
Just how alpha is the Star Citizen alpha?
This is not a good start. My screen’s flashing with the telltale colourful triangles of a graphics card glitch. I can barely make out the ship hangar behind the collaged curtain of bugs.
Since installing Star Citizen’s dogfighting module two weeks ago (a trying experience in and of itself) I’ve only once managed to launch my ship into space. Every other attempt has been met with dropped server connections, crippling graphical artifacts, and crashes.
Bugs are to be expected, this is a pre-alpha release of the module, but after six months of delays I wasn’t expecting the bugs to be this bad. Especially when RSI creative director Chris Roberts said "It would be foolish to release an unstable build, even if pre-alpha for the sake of meeting an internal deadline."
Reach for the sky: Trials Fusion grows an online tournament mode
Bikes! Oh my gosh, look - one’s upside down. You can’t land a bike upside down! Oh, now it’s the right way up again. Phew.
Such is the exhilarating premise of Trials Fusion. Dedicated racers have already zipped through its existing stages, and its six-part course of DLC is yet to begin - but in the meantime, a free online tournament mode has dropped into the game.
Battlefield Hardline single player won't be the "linear rollercoaster that's been done before"
We’ve been here before, in this exact spot. DICE’s Battlefield 4 campaign would have us “feel smart”, we were told before release - let us choose our own approach.
And it did, sorta. But it was clear it still owed a debt to CoD and to Medal of Honor - games Battlefield played nothing like in multiplayer - and Visceral seem to want to put a stop to that in Hardline.
They’ve used that game’s cops and robbers hook to ensure we’re no longer following orders. Instead, they say, we can expect to be making tactical choices - some of which don’t involve shooting every man in the room. Gasp.
Dota 2 update fiddles with team matchmaking and throws in more compendium stretch goals
The latest Dota 2 update is live, hammering away at some bugs while tweaking team matchmaking, the interface and the camera. New compendium rewards have been thrown into the mix, too, adding Favourite Hero Challenge and 1 vs. 1 practice mode.
Take a gander below at the patch notes.
It begins: the Steam Summer Sale has arrived and even Dead Rising 3 is getting in on the action
It’s here. The Steam Summer Sale has arrived. Do you know where your wallet is? Mine’s locked inside a matryoshka-like safe, which in turn is wrapped up in chains and locked by a key that I have fed to a snake which I have sent on a plane to a distant land.
The twist for this Summer Sale is team-based shenanigans. Everyone will be assigned a team, randomly, and these teams compete for rewards. The team with the most points - gained from crafting Summer Adventure badges - wins each day, and 30 members will receive 3 games from their wish list.
But enough faffing: what about the deals?
Lego Minifigures Online open beta: bricks without substance
LEGO Minifigures Online has just hit open beta. Those of you without wee ‘uns can probably stop reading right about now. It’s not that LEGO can’t be enjoyed by adults, but that Minifigures Online only has one demographic in mind, and none of them can buy cigarettes or whisky.
I didn’t take my own advice, however, and dived in for a couple of hours. I’ve enjoyed endless hours of fun with TT's LEGO series and hoped that Minifigures Online would strike the same balance between simplicity and fun.
It doesn’t.
ESL One Cologne will see Counter-Strike: GO teams battle it out during Gamescom for $250K
After the hugely successful EMS One Counter-Strike tournament in Katowice, Poland, ESL is gearing up to host yet another big event. Once again, a $250,000 community-funded prize pool is up for grabs as Counter-Strike: Global Offensive teams duke it out, this time in Cologne, Germany.
ESL One Cologne 2014 will take place during this year’s Gamescom between August 14th - 17th.
Surviving the World Cup doldrums with World of Tanks: Football Edition
I’m one of those miserable sods who gets a lot more pleasure out of moaning about the World Cup than watching it. So I was more surprised than anyone that I found myself very happy that this competition of footballs and men in shorts was bringing me no small amount of joy. And it’s all thanks to World of Tanks and the game’s temporary football mode.
For the last few days, I’ve been ramming an oversized football around a well-trimmed pitch. In a tank. It’s the most I’ve ever enjoyed the sport. And it’s provided some of my favourite World of Tanks moments.
Warlords of Draenor's patch notes will keep you reading until launch
World of Warcraft’s Warlords of Draenor expansion is still some ways away, but you can work yourself up into some sweaty excitement by browsing the time travelling expansion’s alpha patch notes.
The update list is appropriately humongous given that it’s attached to brand new systems and a whole new/old world to explore. Blizzard’s conveniently provided a TL;DR version as well, because you don’t all have three days to read through the whole bloody thing.
@TheVoxelman on twitter
Essay Pro