Oculus Rift nabs former EA senior vice-president

Skullgirls Encore to include Typing of the Skullgirls feature

Skullgirls Encore isn’t just an amicable legal sidestep of dissolved publisher relations; it’ll have new content, too, including one quite odd new feature.

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Star Citizen crowdfunding total hits $35 million

In news likely to be obsolete by the end of next week, Star Citizen has passed yet another enormous crowdfunding milestone, announcing a further stretch goal.

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TellTale discusses new Game of Thrones & Borderlands titles

Get Even: Painkiller dev reveals next-gen shooter, first images inside

Get Even is the new PC and next-gen shooter from Painkiller: Hell & Damnation studio The Farm 51. The developer has released its first batch of screens. Check them out here.

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Oculus Rift-supported World of Diving shows off its multiplayer

23 December 2013 • 5 hours 1 min ago • Story by Fraser Brown

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Multiplayer underwater romp World of Diving didn't manage to secure the $75,000 it asked for on Indiegogo earlier this year, but that hasn't stopped Dutch developer Vertigo Games from going ahead with the game anyway. After getting Greenlit on Steam, Vertigo reinvested their time and money gained from other projects into the aqua caper, and now they've got some pre-alpha footage to show off. 

It certainly looks relaxing, like a lovely soak in a tub filled with turtles. 

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Team Fortress 2 gets frosty, big plans are in the works for 2014

23 December 2013 • 8 hours 52 min ago • Story by Fraser Brown

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Team Fortress 2's holiday celebrations are already in full swing. With Smissmas comes a slew of festive weaponary, winter-themed community cosmetics, and a big holiday sale in the Mann Co. store. If you play during Smissmas, you'll find your stocking filled with special goodies, to boot. Free stuff is what the season is all about. 

Valve's also working on some big surprises for 2014, but of course they're keeping things close to their chest. Take a gander below for the full list of changes for the Smissmas update. 

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An interview with Fullbright's Steve Gaynor: what made Gone Home work?

23 December 2013 • 10 hours 50 min ago • Story by Jeremy Peel

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“How are we going to allow the player to fully, interactively inhabit a role in this immersive space that is non-linear?,” Steve Gaynor asks us. He has the luxury of doing so rhetorically, having worked over the details at length with his four-strong team in Portland during the development of Gone Home - a game about rifling through an empty house to discover that it’s brimming with life.

The kind of studios that have asked this question before are mostly dead and buried. Looking Glass Studios met an ignoble demise at the turn of the century amid cardboard boxes and blank plaster walls unbothered by award cabinets. Deus Ex originators Ion Storm Austin took custody of their charge, Thief, but followed soon after. And great recent hope 2K Marin - founded by the level designer behind Thief: Deadly Shadows’ infamous Cradle and BioShock’s Fort Frolic, Jordan Thomas - succumbed to the very vocal critics of their first-person XCOM before folding themselves.

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Smashing stuff: Next Car Game Early Access launches

23 December 2013 • 11 hours 27 min ago • Story by Fraser Brown

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Since cars are essentially metal coffins on wheels, I don't drive. But people have explained to me that it's a fairly popular pursuit, and that sometimes folk even race these speeding death traps and even crash them into each other for kicks. Maybe everyone would be safer if these people just played Next Car Game, a demolition derby themed racer that's conveniently just hit Early Access. 

It's only available through developer Bugbear's website, but you'll be able to download it on Steam and you'll get some extra goodies for chipping in early like a special supporters car and your name in the game. 

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Elite: Dangerous alpha augmented with early VR support

23 December 2013 • 16 hours 22 min ago • Story by Jeremy Peel

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There’s not an awful lot of Elite: Dangerous there at the moment. A set of combat scenarios for Kickstarter backers. An array of admittedly beautiful cockpits, which beep and rattle and set on fire. Many asteroids. That’s okay, because it’s not due out for another three months or so.

But it’s already got convincing VR support, according to an RPS report. A little low-res, a tad pixelated, but quite a bit like being in the most exciting possible version of space.

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Lewt is Blizzard's Christmas present to you: a papercraft Diablo III treasure goblin

Lewt (rhymes with ‘loot’ and a side order of 'ew', obviously) is the only papercraft Diablo III treasure goblin you should be considering printing this Christmas. His complimentary grey complexion and lidless, glowing yellow eyes make him the perfect tree-top number for the contemporary Yuletiders who keep demon-killing in the family.

You’ll only need spare a piece of paper or two.

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Get Even is a PC shooter designed to "remove the artificial boundary between single and multiplayer"

What I didn’t put in the headline, because it’s not what you think: Get Even is made by Painkiller developers. Not People Can Fly, whose top tier team flew the nest before they became a cog in the, er, Gears machine, but the outfit that made the remastered Hell & Damnation - The Farm 51.

Their name probably won’t mean anything to you, but their spiel is good. Get Even plans to link its single and multiplayer modes in “unique” fashion, and tell its story of two opposing protagonists through environmental interaction and exploration, not “cutscenes or dialogue”.

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Kerbal lead developer on the Steam Effect: "Valve is single-handedly keeping PC gaming going"

Felipe Falange is still wary of calling Kerbal Space Program a success, though it undoubtedly is - he could be describing the game experience itself when he recalls a “series of small moments that would actually lift the always looming concern of impending failure, up to the point where it built up a sense of accomplishment”.

A recent press release called the game “popular” and “award-winning”, and Falange had to check with Squad PR manager Bob Holtzman that they were indeed the facts.

But as the Steam Holiday Sale gobbles wallets, it’s fun to see Squad recall the “cataclysmic” moment during its Summer equivalent when Kerbal really took off, without careening back to earth, extra-sploding into eight or nine pieces, or leaving some poor green cosmonaut stranded on a distant moon.

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Slice of bullet sponge, anyone? Call of Duty: Ghosts Heavy Duty mode tops up HP

It’s hard to know just yet how Heavy Duty mode’s HP boost will affect Ghosts’ multiplayer dynamic. Perhaps, as some have speculated, it’ll feel more like ‘classic CoD’, and we’ll shoot it up like it’s 2007. Maybe we’ll see injured players retreating to the map’s corners to lick their wounds, to the strains of ‘War is Over’. Whatever the consequences, as of last night it’s in the game.

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The Elder Scrolls Online's PvP Cyrodiil "will look very familiar" to Oblivion veterans

Cyrodiil was not Bethesda’s best open world. Its unrelenting greenness wasn’t nearly so powerful as Fallout 3’s sudden flashes of it, nor as compellingly weird as Morrowind’s massive mushrooms. And where Skyrim offers breathtaking views, 2006’s Oblivion couldn’t help but scupper its own with a dodgy draw distance.

But seven years or so makes the heart fonder and the head forgetful - and we’re quite looking forward to joining The Elder Scrolls Online’s PvP fight across a recognisable warzone. And if Zenimax Online are to be believed, we will recognise it.

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Batman Arkham announcement coming December 31

I bought it a few weeks back, graphically you are better served with getting a PS1 copy and emulating that, provided it is legal in your country or state or course.

If you buy the steam copy, grab the improved fmv sequences which can be found in the steam forums.

zarx said: The Elder Scrolls Online's PvP Cyrodiil "will look very familiar" to Oblivion veterans 24 December 2013 • 5 hours 4 min ago • Story by Jeremy Peel Comment   Reddit This Cyrodiil was not Bethesda’s best open world. Its unrelenting greenness wasn’t nearly so powerful as Fallout 3’s sudden flashes of it, nor as compellingly weird as Morrowind’s massive mushrooms. And where Skyrim offers breathtaking views, 2006’s Oblivion couldn’t help but scupper its own with a dodgy draw distance. But seven years or so makes the heart fonder and the head forgetful - and we’re quite looking forward to joining The Elder Scrolls Online’s PvP fight across a recognisable warzone. And if Zenimax Online are to be believed, we will recognise it. Read and Comment

Wow, that's great news to an Oblivion-lover. It's a big incentive to get to explore Cyrodiil once again.

But I wonder why they boast so much about the size of Cyrodiil in EOS compared to TES4:Oblivion, that it takes 20-30 minutes to cross the map from north to south on foot. To me it felt like it took just as much in the original Oblivion. I may have to check.

How can I make sure I really have the high res texture pack for Skyrim installed? When I play the game it looks like the old low res textures, they look almost as low res as on PS3.

The Stanley Parable now available to screw with Mac owners heads

Owners of Apple computers rejoice: you can now venture on a journey into The Stanley Parable, the mind-bending tale that challenges the conventions of video games. A Mac-compatible version of the game is now available on Steam, and you can even grab it at a wonderful 25% discount in the Steam Winter Sale. 

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No Man’s Sky developer Hello Games flooded over Christmas

Whatever bad Christmas present you had this year, it would have to be pretty terrible to contend with what Hello Games recieved: dirty river water sloshing all the way through their offices. 

The No Man’s Sky and Joe Danger creator lost almost everything as the banks of Guildford’s Lower River Wey burst on December 24th.

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Steam Controller Bonanza: watch a selection box of games get played with Valve’s prototype pad

You may have had some pretty awesome PC-related gear for Christmas this year, but unless you were one of the 300 people Valve sent a prototype Steam Machine to, you’re probably not the talk of the town. Presenter of YouTube channel Trial By Game did find a Steam Machine in his stocking though, and has uploaded a range of videos showing off games being played with the fancy new controller. From Dota 2 to.. um.. Typing of the Dead, take a look at how they all fare right here.

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War Thunder lets second wave of Ground Forces closed beta testers through the gate

The closed beta for War Thunder’s tank-based Ground Forces mode has been well under way since the start of December, but the time has now come to let another set of pilots descend from the sky and control a vehicle more content with the forces of gravity. The second wave of players will be granted access to Ground Forces from today.

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Unreal Engine 4 Showcased Via A Pre-Alpha Test Video