Most MMOs have at least a few holiday events, but BioWare has yet to reveal any of its plans for holiday content for The Old Republic. What’s the best holiday content you’ve ever played in a game, and what do you want to see from holiday events in TOR, DCUO, or any other MMOs you’re playing?

In the latest installment of the League of Legends Champion Roundtable, Josh and Lucas are joined by GamesRadar’s Hollander Cooper to give the run-down on Sejuani, the newest female tank to storm onto the Fields of Justice. Is she really worth your money? Only one way to find out.

Creatures may be disappearing from Diablo 3, but there are more soon to be added to Minecraft. The video above shows the three new varieties of Ocelot. They can be found in the new jungle biomes, and tamed with fresh fish. D’aww.

Elsewhere, Aliens: Colonial Marines gained a few months of development time. Hopefully Gearbox can get those shiny alien heads all polished up before Autumn rolls around. Bioware lost their dictionary but found a way to make us excited about Mass Effect 3′s multiplayer in the latest trailer and CD Projekt Red made us smile the smile of someone about to get lots of free stuff when they unveiled their plans for The Witcher 2 Enhanced Edition. Hooray!

But what else has been happening? Monaco, Portal, Battlefield 3 and the Binding of Isaac all feature in the following list of links for the day, presented for your perusal in no special order.

• DICE tell MP1st that the MAV riding bug, beautifully exploited in this video, will be patched soon. Nyooo!
• Ever left a game to get a drink and then returned to find your character dancing? Edge takes a look at idle animations.
• The lovely Craig P, who used to sit just opposite me, posts about a neat new Portal mod over on the Rock Paper Shotgun.
• Evil Avatar have the latest trailer for Blacklight: Retribution.
• This is what designing a Monaco level would look like if it was made reallyreallyfast.
• In a not-at-all sinister move, Square invite you to join its Hitman community, The Barcode Society.
• An “Unholy” edition of Binding of Isaac is arriving on Steam in March, VG247 report.
• Kotaku mention that PixelJunk is coming to PC.

 
Pets in games are brilliant. I tend to roll as a pet class when possible in RPGs and MMOs. Why should I bother killing ten boars myself when I can let servile creatures kill ten boars for me? What are your favourite examples of animals in games?

The latest victims of their feature cull are companion scrolls and scrolls of reforging. The first ability would summon a critter to run around looting gold for you, but that’s now gone. Blizzard community manager, Nethaera, explains why on the Blizzard forums. “The companion pets felt like they were mandatory to maximize play efficiency and some of the pets were too cutesy for the gritty, dark world of Sanctuary.” In a way, he’s right. The little rats were adorable.

The Scroll of Reforging would let players change the properties of an item entirely on the fly. As with the pets, Blizzards say that the scrolls felt “underdeveloped and just not quite good enough for the game in their current state.”

“Neither of those are issues we felt like we could solve without a lot of additional work, and we’re trying to close in on a solid release date for the game, not move further away,” Nathaera says.

These changes are a few of many pretty wide-ranging tweaks to D3′s stats system, outlined in a recent blog post by game director Jay Wilson. He recognised that it’s been a long wait for fans, but says that “no one will remember if the game is late, only if it’s great.”

Will they ever finish Diablo 3? If they do, will it be the leanest, silkiest most polished game they’ve ever made? Will there even be a game left? Who knows, but there’s something quite exciting about a company that can afford to keep on refining a game that they could probably have released a year ago, trimming and hopefully improving it with every round of updates. Luckily, the companion pets and reforging scrolls may not be gone forever “We think we can make companion pets into a much cooler system (both mechanically and visually), and evolve the reforging scrolls into a more meaningful system at some point in the future,” Blizzard say.

Dirt Showdown bears the Dirt name associated with Colin McRae and, once upon a time, serious rally racing, but is really more of an arcade spin-off. This new trailer shows off an “8 Ball” course. It’s like those Hot Wheels toys where you’d launch cars down convoluted tracks towards a central crash site, where they’d collide and fly off to hit your dog in the eye. This time, you’re inside those cars, and some of them are spouting fire.

Showdown’s focus is on Destruction Derbies and “full contact” racing, with lots of ramps and choke points, and will apparently make use of “gaming’s most advanced damage engine.” Move aside, Frostbite 2! It’s due out in May and was announced with an announcement trailer a few weeks ago which looked a little bit like this.

I was just explaining this to our Production Ed, Tony. Basically, we’re just going to have to accept that in the far future things will be spelled and pronounced slightly differently. Sometimes, grenades will be “gernades.” Sentinels will not always be sentinels. Sometimes they will be “sentinals.” That’s just what happens and we should just accept it now. “NEVER!” Tony screamed, “NEVAAAARGH!” Then he beat his Mac to death with a dictionary.

These are without a doubt the best gaming typos made since … earlier today, when Capcom faced uncomfortable revelations regarding the release of their latest game, “Resident Evil: Revalaitons.” In other news, Mass Effect 3′s multiplayer mode actually looks quite punchy and exciting. Now I’m off to make some tee and write more wards for our wobsite.

There will also be a new CGI cutscene depicting the assassination of King Demavend. According to the news post on Good Old Games “BAFTA Award winner and Academy Award nominee Tomasz Baginski brings this key historical event to life (not actually historical – Historical Ed)” You’ll also get a game map, game guide, manual, soundtrack and Witcher comic free.

Are you planning to own The Witcher 2 before April 17? Good news! You ALSO will get your copy upgraded come April. The Witcher 2 is on sale at 15% off for the next two weeks on Good Old Games to celebrate.

The Enhanced Edition is just the latest in a big series of hefty free updates that have been added to The Witcher 2 over the course of the last year as CD Projekt continue to make their great game greater still. Bravo.

We’ve got 500 keys to give away for the Aion free to play beta. If you get into the beta, you’ll automatically be granted ‘Veteran’ status when Aion free to play goes live. This will give you a few extra features over starter players, like the ability to open up your own shop.

All you need to do to enter is put your name and email address into the Aion beta key competition page, which you can discover through this link right here.

I want in on the Aion beta. Give me wings, PC Gamer!

And that’s all there is to it. If you win a key, you can redeem it on the Aion Free to Play site. They’ll be sent out once we all 500 have been snapped up, so tell your friends if you want in quicker. The Aion client is available to pre-load here. Good luck!

There’s a lesson in this trailer somewhere, I can feel it. Something to do with not digging up ancient Indian burial grounds? Perhaps. Maybe it’s more to do with not building giant creepy houses and leaving them unattended for decades near an swamps full of tentacle monsters? No, I’ve got it. The lesson is: don’t go to Blue Mountain under ANY circumstances. Even if a man with a giant floating “!” mark over his head asks you to because it’s full of ghosts and spiky dogs.

The Secret World’s mix of mad monsters and modern guns is a pretty appealing and genuinely different place to set an MMO. There will also be lots of proper puzzles in it, some of which will require players to do some research outside of the game. Owen found it intriguing, but a little frustrating when he got his hands on it for our Secret World preview. We’ll have more on The Secret World soon.

The GPU in question, says IGN, is based on the Radeon HD6670, a graphics processor that would only have been considered cutting edge in PC terms five or six years ago – around the time of the Xbox 360′s launch.

That might seem somewhat underwhelming if you’ve just tricked out a new PC with a GeForce GTX580 or Radeon HD7970. If true, however, it would mean the Xbox 720 has somewhere between six and ten times the pixel processing potential of the current console depending on how you measure. Which is a fair performance leap, all things considered.

What’s more, a relatively low power and mature processor should be fairly simple to cool without resorting to the kind of turbines that the original Xbox 360 had on board. IGN is reporting that the chip is fully capable of 1080p gaming – which should be a given – and stereoscopic rendering. Intriguingly, there’s also mention of multidisplay output. It’s also expected that the new chip will be about 20% more capable than that of the Nintendo Wii U.

All the same, it’d be hard to measure the disappointment on a hardened PC gamer’s face were you gifted a HD6670 as an upgrade you’d been forced to wait nearly eight years for.

What does it mean for PC gaming if these rumours are true? There are obvious concerns in that the gap between the relative power of a new PC compared to a new console in 2013 will be the largest ever. Given the way games engines haven’t made huge strides forward in terms of complexity over recent years, and cross platform development has been held up to blame, the suspicion would immediately be that a relatively weak console refresh will further hold the PC back.

But that’s worse news for graphics manufacturers looking to sell £500 chips than it is for us. AMD’s forthcoming Trinity APU – a processor which combines Bulldozer CPU cores with Radeon graphics on one die – is said to be 50% more powerful in terms of graphics compared to current fusion processors. As chance would have it, that would make it almost equal equal – in terms of GFLOPS at least – to the HD6670.

In other words, by the time Xbox 720 rolls around you should be able to play games at an equivalent or better quality on the cheapest laptops available.

If developers can essentially target anyone who owns a laptop with games that are more sophisticated – looks wise – than consoles, it makes the PC a far more attractive platform for big budget mainstream releases than it arguably is now. And without the lure of fancy new graphics to entice people to upgrade their current consoles, you’d better hope the selling point is something more impressive than 3D – because that’s not really working out for movie makers, is it?

Obviously there are other factors to consider, like how piracy rates affect lead platform decisions and lucrative exclusivity deals. But there’s also the fact that the next gen consoles are going to face bottom up pressure from tablets with display sharing capabilities and streaming games services built into things like Google TV too. By not aiming high in terms of graphics and pushing for things like 4K compatibility, they could be in danger of underlining their own irrelevance.

Potentially, then, the next generation of consoles won’t hold PCs back as they do now. Rather, they could be hastening their own demise.

SEGA explain the delay over on Edge, saying that the process of making a game about shooting aliens in the face is “a process of creativity and invention” that doesn’t “necessarily follow the structure of an assembly line.”

“We don’t want to sacrifice the creative process just for the sake of following a blue print.” they add. “We prefer to have the creative discovery shape that blue print because our goal is to make a great game, and we are prioritizing this goal over the previously targeted date.”

Colonial Marines was originally slated for 2008, but then Gearbox got sidetracked by other projects, including Duke Nukem Forever. We’ve waited this long, so a few more months is probably no big deal. If Colonial Marines can capture the comeraderie and hyper-macho posing with Smart Guns that made Aliens famous, it should be worth the wait.

Lord of Valve, Gabe Newell seems keen: “Seeing which of your friends are online and playing a game, sending quick messages, looking at screenshots for an upcoming game, or catching a sale – these are all features customers have requested. Mobile is changing way people interact, play games and consume media, and the Steam app is part of our commitment to meet customer demands and expand the service functionality of Steam to make it richer and more accessible for everyone.”

The app is currently in closed beta. To express interest, download the app for iOS or Android, then log into your account from within. Valve will send out more invites as the “service ramps up.”

I can imagine the drunken 3G purchases/messages already. Apologies in advance friends list.

All this was triggered by the promise of replaying Mass Effect 2 with these awesome texture packs, spotted by Duncan Harris. We also discovered some impressive discounts on BioWare points, allowing you to pick up any Dragon Age or Mass Effect DLC you might have missed on the cheap.

Elsewhere in the world of PC gaming, the New York planetarium is thrusting 200 people into (virtual) space and Square Enix have trademarked yet another Hitman game. We suspect that they’re just messing with us at this point. Clickable hyperwords to follow after the jump.

• Engadget give a glimpse of a 200-player space game taking place at the New York planetarium tonight.
• Games are being used to educate children in the US about slavery and the American Civil War, report Gamasutra.
• No Heroes are running a TF2 Trivia Night server, where correct answers grant you 10 seconds of ownage.
• The Hitman series’ addiction to subtitles continues with Hitman: Sniper Challenge, as Siliconera have discovered. Personally, I’m holding out for Hitman: Noun.
• CVG report that THQ are leaving the children’s games business to focus on their core franchises.
• If you don’t own it already, you’ll soon be able to buy Terraria in a box for £19.95. VG247 have the details.
• RPS look into NCSoft’s attempt to shut down upcoming fantasy MMO TERA.

 
Are you looking forward to taking Shepard for another lap around the space block, readers? Double points to everyone if we get through this comments thread without the words “favourite” and “Citadel”.

I hold no affection for Rayman either, but Ubisoft’s latest platformer is rumoured to be extremely pretty, and pretty damn awesome. And we’re getting it on PC!

It’ll support four players locally and will be available to download from Ubisoft’s Ubishop on March 30. While you’re waiting why not read Edge’s review? They say “Origins feels like stepping into an alternate reality in which the 16 bit era evolved by increasing in fidelity, not dimensions.” Sounds a bit like a holodeck episode of Star Trek The Next Generation to us.

Full installation instructions and mod download links can be found in JeanLuc’s forum post. It’s been around for a while now, but with so many people playing through the first two games it’s worth a shout. Check out the screenshots below to get a sense of the massive improvements the mod makes. Click to see them full size.

You can get hold of the demo now from Fileplanet ahead of the game’s release tomorrow. If you were to pause the demo mid-battle, zoom your face right up to your soldiers and take a few pictures, they could well look similar to the new screenshots below. They show men being exploded by magic, fighting through a forest of ice spikes, and doing battle in a dark forest.

Quantum Conundrum is being developed by Portal creator Kim Swift. It’s a first person puzzler in which you play a twelve your old boy lost in his mad scientist uncle’s underground laboratory. It’s full of safes, switches, lava and vast gaps with no bridges. This would be a serious problem but for the fact that you can switch between five dimensions, each of which affects matter differently. By switching between world on the fly, otherwise immovable objects like safes can be tossed, stacked and even surfed to make it past the mad machines and laserbeams that every mad scientist installs in their homes as standard. It’s all demonstrated perfectly in the walkthrough video above from Gametrailers, spotted on RPS. It’s out early this year, and looks rather good, don’t you think?

Thanks to iOS, though, desktop customisation is going out of fashion fast and it’s not surprising that Metro introduces more limits. Even Linux is becoming more proscriptive by the day. Still, there’s hope yet. I don’t think I’m not alone as being able to say that early Windows’ backgrounds enhanced my vocabulary, as simple as they were. I’m not sure I knew what ‘teal’ was until offered it as a choice of shade, and if I remember rightly I could spot a houndstooth background pattern long before I understood its sartorial significance. I certainly owe ‘cyan’ to the keyboard of a ZX Spectrum.

Perhaps Microsoft could liven up the options with language? Maybe a simple niveous, or a subtle leuchroic backdrop would help Metro icons stand out. If the default smaragdine doesn’t appeal, perhaps you’d prefer a sorrel or porraceous alternative?

For those curious to find out more about Metro, the full Windows 8 beta is planned to arrive at the end of next month. It’s worth holding off until then to make up your mind.

Here’s a screenshot of the page you want. To get there, sign into the Bioware social site with your EA account and get to the Mass Effect DLC page like this:

Then pick a DLC pack and make your way to the checkout page. Click “add Bioware points” at the top and buy away. It could be an error. The 1200 points for £4.33 option isn’t available on the Dragon Age page. As such, you might want to snap this one up quick before it gets changed.

Kingdoms of Amalur will have a complex, chromatic score played by huge orchestras of 90+ people, but no farting Gorillas, sadly. See the orchestra doing its thing over shots of Amalur’s massive locations, and hear audio director, Grant Kirkhope describe what it’s like to write big music for a big game. You can step into the Kingdom of Amalur to absorb the musical ambience and hit things in the demo, available now on Steam. It’s out on February 7 in the US and February 10 in Europe.

All the soldiers in Crytek’s free to play multiplayer shooter, Warface, make this face at all times, even in victory. Sadly they’re all facing away from the camera in the three new screenshots over on RPS, doing soldiery things like shooting mechs from the cover of a shattered tree stump. One chap is firing and sliding simultaneously, one of Crysis 2′s most common manoeuvres.

Warface will have class-based competitive multiplayer, co-op missions and a “constantly updated extensive PVE universe.” It’s built with CryEngine 3 as well, so it’ll be Maximum Pretty. See for yourself in these carefully posed shots.

The dev team’s made some glorious propaganda posters for this alternate reality war, and we have high-res versions of the five best right here. Let them them stomp around as your background. And make sure you don’t let your grandpa, who actually served in the war, see them—he just won’t understand.

Elsewhere in the world of PC gaming, Zynga continued to transform other people’s ideas into suspiciously similar-looking games, and the Raspberry Pi mini-computer set out to turn the kids of today into the programmers and computer scientists of tomorrow. All this and more after the jump.

• Edge explores the allegations of idea theft that Facebook game dev Zynga has incurred over the years.
• The chaps behind the brilliant Monaco take us through a level from the game.
• Beefjack track down some corridor-heavy footage of STALKER Online.
• Mode 7′s Paul Taylor writes in-depth about the making of Frozen Synapse over on Gamasutra.
• GamesIndustry.biz have a long talk with Eben Upton, the man behind Raspberry Pi.
• GAME tell Eurogamer that “a gremlin” removed PC games from their online store.
• IGN’s Keza MacDonald writes about the history of LGBT characters in gaming.
• With SOPA gone for the time being, RPS investigates other pieces of anti-piracy legislation with similar aims.

 
If you could transmogrify anything into anything else, what would you transmogrify? I would probably turn myself into a thesaurus.

Before we get into the specific details of the expansion, let’s focus on how players will get there.

The first update related to the Fall expansion is tentatively scheduled for this spring, and will return players to the footsteps of the fellowship by sending them to the Great River region. This area—south of Lothlorien and north of Fangorn—is the region that the fellowship traveled through before they were separated. The biggest new feature in this update will be the ability to summon Skirmish Soldiers (currently trapped inside the skirmish instances you run) in the general landscape. That’s right, your trusty companion in those countless skirmishes will no longer be relegated to helping you wipe the floor with Sauron’s minnions where only a few can bear witness, but will be free to help defend you as you travel all of Middle-Earth. While the exact mechanics aren’t finalized yet, Paiz said that players shouldn’t expect any major overhauls to combat mechanics of the soldier system.

I asked Paiz if my soldier would ever be able to join me in an instance if we’re running one man short, and she stated that it’s being looked at, but that she can’t say anything definite at this point.

It's okay, horsey. There are updates for you in this expansion too. Let the skirmish soldiers have their couple paragraphs.

As Turbine moves players through this Lone-lands-sized region, getting ever closer to Rohan, they’ll still release the usual near-monthly patches with quality-of-life fixes, bug fixes, and possibly a new festival as well. Paiz was light on details about the festival, but I’m excited to see what the next one will bring.

At some point in the Fall, the wait will be over, and Riders of Rohan will arrive like a thundering herd. The expansion will include the largest region LOTRO’s ever seen. Rohan is a vast kingdom, allowing players to level to the new cap of 85 while exploring its expansive terrain. And this massive zone will only cover the East plains of Rohan, so you’ll have to wait for the next expansion to visit the legendary Helm’s Deep–which is located near the Western border of the region.

Be careful where you talk. Horses are notoriously bad at keeping secrets.

While a new, huge region is cool and all, what really made me excited about the expansion was that it will introduce of mounted combat to the game. The generically named War Steed will become player’s newest ally in the fight again Sauron. These trusty companions will level with the players, and have upgradable armor to tweak their appearances and performance. This sounds like a great idea in theory, but I’m slightly worried that this might follow the path of Legendary Weapons, and become more headache and hassle for players to deal with than its worth.

Fighting on horseback will open up a whole new type of combat and leveling experience, Paiz explained to me. There will still be some traditional questing areas in the new zone, such as Amon Hen (where Boromir died and the fellowship split), but Paiz told me that the plains of Rohan will feature roving band of enemies that players will engage more fluidly. When you first spot the clouds of dust in the distance, you’ll have to decide if you want to flee the incoming riders and run away, or charge into the battle on your War Steed, clashing with the enemy. This sounds like it could be an interesting twist on the traditional MMO quest grind setup, and I’m anxious to see how it’s implemented.

Shall we dismount for combat? Neigh!

I pressed Paiz hard to answer my two most-burning questions, but when I heard her saddening answers, I kind of wish I hadn’t asked.

Do we have any chance of seeing the Battle of Helms Deep in this expansion? Negative.

Will Ent Session Play ever be a reality? Laughter that wasn’t very reassuring.

Swallowing my crushing disapointment, I tried to bolster my excitement for mounted combat with the stirring quote from J.R.R. Tolkien’s classic:
“Arise! Arise, Riders of Theoden! Spears shall be shaken, shields shall be splintered! A sword day… a red day… ere the sun rises!”

The author of this Reddit post got in touch yesterday with links to hacker forum discussions revealing exploits that would trick Punkbuster into ejecting honest players. A number of threads on the Battlelog forums have been started by players claiming to have been banned from Battlefield 3 games without cause. There are plenty of reports of servers and leaderboards dominated by bots racking up hundreds of kills.

DICE have recently said that they’re ramping up anti-cheat measures and have been issuing bans en-masse to cheaters they’ve been catching, but among Battlefield 3 players there’s increasing scepticism over the levels of security offered by anti-cheat program, Punkbuster.

Battlefield 3 community manager crash7800 responded to the Reddit post saying “we’re absolutely looking into this issue.” They’re currently looking into the hackers’ claims to establish how much of what they say is true. “We definitely know that something isn’t right and we’re working to fix it ASAP.” DICE’s most recent Battlelog post recognises that some players have been having problems dropping from Punkbuster servers. Their advice to affected players is to “join servers that are not running PunkBuster.”

If you encounter a cheater in Battlefield 3, DICE recommend reporting them through Battlelog. To do this, you can “enter the profile page of the person you suspect and click the triangle in the top right corner of his name.” This will lead to a report screen where the devs encourage players to “enter as much detail as possible, describing what specifically makes you believe this player has used unfair methods, and preferably include a link to the Battle Report for the match in question.”

We’ve contacted DICE for comment on the hackers’ claims and more detail on ther their plans to counter cheaters. It’s not just hackers that Battlefield 3 fans have to contend with. Many players, including ourselves, have constant difficulty getting into games. Once in, disconnections are a regular annoyance. I wrote about why Battlefield 3 deserved our Online Game of the Year award. I still think the game underneath the connection problems and cheating scandals is world class, but with so many problems three months after release, player patience will understandably be wearing thin.

If so, there is absolutely no event suitable for you occurring in the next year. Apart, maybe, from , which is taking place at the Hilton Anatole in Dallas on 2-5 August 2012. It’s free and run by volunteers, and in 2010 it attracted some 8,500 people. You might even rub shoulders some of the incredibly famous and good-looking people from PC Gamer there.

Paradox Interactive’s CEO, Fredrik Wester, is an outspoken man. He’s one of the most honest company directors you’ll ever come across in the games industry, and he’s not afraid to lambast his own games – most of which are hardcore strategy titles like Hearts of Iron and King Arthur. The games are intricate and rewarding, but getting gamers into them can prove problematic.

“Our games leave you high and dry in the first ten minutes,” Wester told us. The trick to making their games accessible is not to make the game itself simpler, but to hold the player’s hand as they’re gently introduced to the game world and its rules. “We don’t want to dumb down the experience. We want it to be challenging, but not a chore to learn.”

Total War developers Creative Assembly are masters of introducing complex strategy elements to a more casual audience, and Wester is keen to note that their slickness hasn’t gone unnoticed among people who played Paradox’s RPG/RTS King Arthur: The Role Playing Wargame. “A lot of people would like to see Total War-like design decisions and maybe we should have chosen that path, done things that make it simpler for people who are used to the same gameplay style,” he said. “I’m not suggesting that it’s actually Fantasy: Total War, but it’s an obvious comparison.”

Paradox have focused on making things more Total War-y for their upcoming RTS King Arthur II. “We’ve been working with a more in-depth tutorial in the second game,” Wester said. “We will also have a pre-campaign to help people come into the game. A lot of people would like to see more Total War-like design decisions, like how to scroll with the mouse, things that are done in the Total War series.”

Wester’s other touchstone in ease of access is World of Warcraft. “I think a lot of people are mixing accessibility with ‘dumbed-down’,” Wester said. “If you take a game like World of Warcraft that’s an incredibly complex game at level 80 – but you don’t figure out that it’s complex because you learn as you play.”

The concept is nothing new, but it wasn’t introduced to World of Warcraft until last November’s patch 4.3. One man – appropriately known as The Mogfather – saw potential for extreme virtual wealth.

The Mogfather’s goal was to prove how profitable the transmogrification could be. Players aren’t able to sell any products created by the process, but that didn’t deter the entrepreneur. He started buying up auctions for cheap armour that looked cool: “When I looked at those armor sets that were primarily made up of lower-level items from The Burning Crusade and vanilla, my design eye kicked in,” the Mogfather told Joystiq. And he did all this before patch 4.3 landed.

Then, once the new feature hit, he relisted his designer items at a higher price based purely on their aesthetic appeal. “I took the pricing spread of fashion and brought it to my markets.”

People wanted to look cool, and were willing to pay top dollar for the privilege. 45 days later the Mogfather hit WoW’s gold cap of one million gold. Then he decided to give his fortune away: “In all seriousness, giving away that much gold has been pretty difficult,” says the Mogfather. He has experienced four insta-bans after all.

It started with a gift of 400K to a random player. Blizzard assumed the Mogfather was a gold seller and instantly banned him. Then he gave 100k to 100 players and got rebanned But over time he established some “fans” within Blizzard’s customer service team who realised his wealth and generosity were genuine. According to The Mogfather they would be the ones to release him from his “prison cell” after each major giveaway.

Eventually, the Mogfather started targeting his gifts to promote his business: “I gave half a million gold to players who strutted around in their transmog outfits. So in a way, it was my way of giving back to the community that I had taken all the gold from.” He was a bit like a modern day, fashion-conscious Robin Hood.

For more on The Mogfather’s exploits, read the full interview on Joystiq, or follow him on Twitter.

In the light of the success of the massive Starcraft 2 pro finals at Blizzcon 2011, Blizzard announce that they will be staging the 2012 Battle.net World Championship, described as “a major global eSports event featuring some of the best pro-gaming competition in the world.” It’ll host StarCraft 2 and WoW Arena World Championship tournaments in Asia later this year.

Blizzard haven’t announced any release dates for Mists of Pandaria and StarCraft 2: Heart of the Swarm, and a post last week revealed major changes to Diablo 3 that will surely push it further back. Behind the scenes, work will continue on Blizzard’s next big MMO, Project Titan. Are you disappointed by Blizzard’s decision to delay Blizzcon 2012?

Lego say “we are now developing a concept that celebrates the best aspects of building with the LEGO system and in Minecraft and we can’t wait to show it to you — but we aren’t ready just yet.” Mojang will receive 1% of any profits gathered by the Lego sets bearing its branding, which they plan to give to charity. It’s odd to think that Lego-influenced Minecraft should inspire Lego sets. We caught up with Notch recently to see what he thought. “Yeah, it’s weird,” he said.

“I could never imagine this a couple of years ago, but it’s really cool. And it’s something I’m really excited about because Lego’s so like super friendly. Both the brand, the way they do stuff and as a company, everything there is just friendly and nice. So to have Minecraft go in a nice direction, like the brand, is something I’m looking forward to.”

Lego have been in contact with Mojang to discuss their plans for the upcoming sets. “We just had a meeting about it and discussed some design stuff. I can’t say anything about it because we don’t have it nailed down yet. This guy is going to fly over on Thursday and show us the actual stuff, and we can play with it. But it’s looking pretty good. It’s going to be very modular of course.”

The teams are split between gamers and developers. Gamers will become Man, described as being “strong, handsome and red” with splash damage rocket launchers. Developers will be Machines, who are “cold, big and blue” and wield precision lasers. Slots will be allocated on a first come, first served basis but you can buy a ticket to guarantee yourself a spot. Find out more on the Man vs. Machine site.

The schedule is aimed at those signed up to Call of Duty Elite, though the extra missions, maps and modes will make their way to the PC eventually. Black Ops DLC took about four weeks to cross the desert that separates Xbox Live land and PC gamer world. Check out these Modern Warfare 3 screenshots for an early look at the first two maps, Piazza and Central Park.

If death dies on the battlefield, who comes to claim his soul? What happens to everyone else who dies when death’s not about? Darksiders 2 probably won’t answer these questions, but it definitely will let you hit things with a giant axe. You like hitting things with a giant axe, right? See a gallery of the various things you can hit with a giant axe in the latest batch of Darksiders 2 screenshots below.

Darksider’s creature design was one of its stand-out features. You could make friends with giant stone doors. Instead of opening like a normal door, they’d turn into a lumbering stone golem and wander off. More of this sort of thing, please, creature designers.

Four arms are better than two when you’re being assaulted by a city of gangsters. The Darkness 2 demo, now available on Steam, will gradually give you use of all your arms, just as soon as you’ve made it through the intro cutscenes, and the on-rails shooter bit, and a few more cutscenes. Thankfully the demo has been put together to give us an overview of some of Jackie’s more powerful abilities, so it’s worth persisting to get to the gorier bits. The pseudo-cell shaded look is a nice homage to The Darkness’ comic book roots, too. Give it a whirl and let us know what you think. The Darkness 2 is out on February 7 in the US, and February 10 in Europe.

I ran out of my spawn area on League of Legends’ Dominion map and made a move for the nearest capture-point, which an enemy Sona was stealing from us. I was confident I could take the flimsy healer and reclaim our home point, but before I can get in range, a burst of flames erupts around me and burning-man Brand bursts from the bushes. He’s now pacing side-to-side between me and Sona, tossing out flames if I get close, but stubbornly refusing to let me drag him off point, where I could safely kill him.

Now, Brand running interference on a point in Dominion isn’t that unusual—but this Brand is a bot, and he’s ruining my day, courtesy of the improved AI and bot rosters being added to League of Legends in the next few weeks.

I’ll get into the details in just a second, but first, a word of warning: Brand Bot is the new Annie Bot. That guy was everywhere during my four matches against the improved AI last week at Riot’s headquarters, and he burninates all the peoples without hesitation.

Brand, being a jerk. Just like usual.

On top of being added to Dominion, the other most exciting change for LoLers who play co-op regularly (and Riot says that most users play at least one co-op-vs-AI game a week), is the influx of 26 new champions added to the AI’s roster. Existing bots have all been retained, with revamped AI to make them play smarter. But these new-and-improved bots aren’t meant to be drastically more challenging: Producer on the project, Mark Norris, told me that the developers’ goal was to keep the difficulty level of the two AI settings, Beginner and Intermediate, about the same in combat.

Instead, the improvements to the existing AI focus on improving their behavior near towers to nullify players’ cheesy tactics and on making better big-picture strategic decisions. For example, when bots ace the player team, they’ll know to press their advantage and push a lane while the players wait to revive. And when I over-extended myself on top-lane, the bots triangulated on me from the jungle on every side, alternating their CC on me to keep me stunned from full health to death. Current bots tend to all spam their CC at once, resulting in wasted attacks.

The devs told me that Cassiopeia is one of the most brutal bots on Dominion.

The biggest change to bot AI is their ability to use skill-shots: spells that require precision targeting that often relies on predicting a players’ movement. None of the old bots had the ability to use skill shots effectively, which is why Riot chose champions without them the first time around. But no longer! Karthus, Cassiopeia, and Morgana and the rest of the skill-shot crew are all welcome on the bot roster now—and they’re really strong at predictive aiming, if my time spent getting blasted by Brand and Graves is any indication. On top of that, they’ll even dodge incoming skill shots you send their way, much like a Noxian Agent Smith.

They’re also better at using items, and can now use items with active abilities like Zhonya’s Hourglass, which can make them invulnerable for a couple seconds. Norris told me that Fiddlesticks in particular loves to use it to run right up to you and melt your face with impunity.

To balance out this newfound power and keep the bots from being too strong at current skill levels, the devs have baked in a chance for the AI to “make a mistake” and target the wrong area or juke the wrong way with skill shots. This’ll happen much more often with Beginner bots, which are tailored for brand-new players to go up against.

In addition, bots are still unable to jungle or counter-jungle effectively, and while they’ll check brush to see if you’re hiding there, they do so by running face-first into it. During my games, I was still able to pretty easily ditch bots by ducking into brush. Sr. Game Engineer Thomas James confirmed that they’re definitely smarter about knowing that you still exist when you go into brush, but admitted that “they have a very short attention span” when it comes to remembering you’re in there. All things considered, my team of 5 experienced LoLers had no real problems beating the AI two times each on both Dominion and Summoners Rift.

I have yet to take a screenshot of Renekton that doesn't make him look ridiculous.

That said, the developers’ work on improving the bots has only just begun, and we can expect to see more frequent updates going forward. Norris explained to me that the programming structure they’ve built the new AI onto allows them to share AI logic across all the champions where it makes sense, which makes it significantly easier for them to make fixes to things like tower-awareness or even to add new champions. I don’t think we should expect a new bot being added every week, but it certainly sounds like the developers are eager to release updates and new bots more frequently.

On top of that, the developers are certainly capable of creating some more difficult challenges for us—even if they aren’t including them in this update. Norris told me of one instance where a Tristana bot double-Rocket Jumped (the ability resets when she gets a kill, and it reset while she was in mid-air and she used it again) her way to quad-killing four-fifths of the entire dev team. The devs playing argued over whether that was even possible in the existing rules, but upon further FRAPS review, it definitely was. Fortunately for our win:loss ratio against bots, the developers decided that they didn’t want the bots performing at quite that level and restricted Tristana Bot from performing any such feats of godliness when this update hits.

Comp stomps for quick daily IP rewards just got quicker!

Norris wasn’t able to to give a firm release date on the AI update yet, but told me that players can expect it to come in a patch in the very near future. A full list of the bots that will be available is included below.

All 14 existing bots that have improved AI:
Annie, Ashe, Cho’Gath , Miss Fortune , Nunu , Renekton , Ryze , Shen , Soraka , Taric , Trundle , Warwick , Malphite , and Sivir.

The 26 bots being added:
Amumu, Brand, Caitlyn, Cassiopeia , Fiddlesticks, Galio, Garen, Graves, Irelia, Jax, Karthus, Kayle, Kog’Maw, Leona, Lux, Malzahar, Morgana, Rammus, Shyvana, Sona, Swain, Tristana, Udyr, Wukong, Xin Zhao, and Zilean.

But whatever happens, And in other PC gaming news… will never die! Apart from that bit over Christmas when it died because we were all on holiday. The heat death of the universe may also prove a small barrier in the long term, but for now the fort is secure. As such, here’s todays list of links, including rumours of a Ninja Turtles game from Rocksteady.

• Origin is expanding. 11 publishers have signed up to sell their games through EA’s digital download service.
• Rock Paper Shotgun have absolutely had enough of savegames going to different places on our hard drives. STOP IT, they say, here’s how it should be done.
• The last batch of World of Warcraft server blades are up for charity auction.
• VG247 have quotes fron Splash Damage promising new games this year.
• Rumour has it that Microsoft will be dropping MS points in favour of ordinary money by the end of the year. That’d be nice.
• Here’s a new trailer for Red Orchestra 2′s upcoming expansion, Rising Storm.
• Gamasutra mention that Indie Royale will be releasing smaller lightning packs between their bigger bundles.
• There’s a rumour circling that Batman: Arkham City creators Rocksteady are working on a Ninja Turtles game, which is a thinly veiled excuse to ask you who is your favourite turtle?

 
D’oh I got to the question before the sign off paragraph. But really, who is your favourite turtle? Don’t say Master Splinter, that’s cheating, he’s not one of them. He’s a bipedal rat mutated by toxic sludge, which raises another question. Why do the turtles unquestioningly indulge his quest for revenge? HMMM.

Hard drive prices are finally starting to come down in the wake of the terrible floods in Thailand. Aria’s got a two terabyte Samsung F4 listed for under £100, which is getting close to what they were six months ago.

I have mixed feelings about Corsair’s K60, as I explain in the next issue of PCG. It’s an astonishingly good keyboard with one or two silly flaws. But if you can get it for the price LambdaTek are currently charging (£75) it’s about £25 less than others have listed it and suddenly a bit more tempting.

Finally, I’m struggling to recommend AMD’s latest high end Radeon, the HD7970, purely because it may be awesome but no-one needs to spend £500 on a video card. The best way to get your hands on one seems to be Chillblast’s Fusion Marine – a pre-overclocked games PC with a Core i5 2500K and HD7970 for under £1000 (£949 ex VAT, £1138 with). As far as I can see it’s about £200 less than you could build the same system yourself.

Feel free to share any other good bargains below.

In the first post published on the new Warhorse site, Vavra describes the studio’s struggles to secure financial backing in a difficult market unwilling to make big investment risks and, incredibly, hints at a darker side to the business. Vavra explains that the team pitched their game at every studio and publisher they could think of, except for “loan sharks and some strange underworld types.”

“I wrote a game about the Mafia and I don’t want to deal with those types of “businessmen”.” he writes. “The game industry is a risky business and nobody wants to end up under the boardwalk. I personally know people who got their bones broken or were kidnapped during game development. No kidding.”

Vavra and co. eventually struck a deal with “private individuals” described as being similar to “the Czech equivalent of Warren Buffet or Andrew Carnegie – billionaires with huge financial empires,” but describes how difficult the process had been to reach that stage.

“If you have a great idea and an experienced team there is an off chance somebody is going to give you money. But in order to put the team together you need a lot of money that nobody is willing to put up when you don’t have the team. It’s a Catch-22 situation,” he said.

“I had several very experienced people committed to the project, but no office, no company, no money and nothing to show, except for a pitch and some nice pictures. The likelihood of impressing a publisher in these circumstances is, for all practical purposes, zero, but I had to try.”

All we know about the unannounced game is that it’s an RPG that Warhorse say “is not going to disappoint fans of open realistic worlds and quality stories.” You can keep up with development progress on the Warhorse blog, and by following them on Twitter.

Probably not, but that’s not the point. PopCap are closing down Baking Life at the end of January, and any “Zip Cash” bought with real-life money will be erased from existence.

I’ve never baked a virtual cake via the Baking Life app, but that PopCap aren’t offering any exchange or refund option sets an ugly precedent for the value of microtransactions and gamer’s rights. As pointed out in the screenshot below, PopCap seem keen to redirect players to alternative Facebook titles, but don’t seem so keen on converting player’s funds.

Those 100,000 daily players seems like a lot, especially when the most popular game on Steam right now is Counter-Strike, with 56, 776 active users. But when you compare those figures to the 8.6 million players who log into Cityville every day, you begin to understand the monstrous scale of Facebook gaming.

There’s also a huge cost involved in running these games, from operating the game’s servers to providing customer support. But that’s very little comfort to gamers whose money is about to vanish.

I visited the Baking Life Terms and Conditions page for clarity. Handily, the relevant parts were capitalised:

“ZIPZAPPLAY RESERVES THE RIGHT TO DETERMINE IN ITS SOLE DISCRETION THE PAYMENT METHODS WHICH MAY BE USED BY YOU TO PURCHASE VIRTUAL ITEMS AND VIRTUAL CURRENCY, AND HOW, WHEN AND FOR WHAT PRODUCTS OR SERVICES VIRTUAL ITEMS AND VIRTUAL CURRENCY MAY BE REDEEMED. IN ADDITION, ZIPZAPPLAY MAY MODIFY, ELIMINATE OR DISCONTINUE VIRTUAL ITEMS, VIRTUAL CURRENCY OR OTHER BAKING LIFE APP SPECIAL FEATURES ENTIRELY AS IT SEES FIT.”

EA’s general terms and conditions reads similarly, abeit a bit less shouty:

“We do not guarantee that any Content or Entitlement will be available at all times, in all countries and/or geographic locations, or at any given time or that we will continue to offer particular Content or Entitlements for any particular length of time. We reserve the right to change and update Content and Entitlements without notice to you. Once you have redeemed your Entitlements, that content is not returnable, exchangeable, or refundable for other Entitlements or for cash, or other goods or services.”

It’s worth noting that other game’s terms and conditions have the same clause, including League of Legend’s Terms of Use, but this is the first time we’ve heard of a company using these condiitions to delete player’s money. PopCap were bought by EA late last year.

Were you aware of your rights regarding microtransactions? Also: what’s the best game you’ve played on Facebook?

AVSEQ stands for Audio Visual Sequencer. It’s a puzzle game in which you must draw links between descending orbs to vapourise them and unlock new notes on an audio sequencer cycling through the background. The idea is to build up massive chains to gain mega-points and unlock new notes for the gradually building musical score. You have to collect every note before the time runs out to beat the stage. It’s join-the-dots against the clock with the added satisfaction of a swelling musical accompaniment.

There’s a catch, though. If those orbs touch the bottom of the screen, they evaporate and break any chain they’re hooked into. Each level becomes a frantic but absorbing game of risk vs reward as you try to sketch more and more ambitious webs over an increasingly kaleidoscopic backdrop. A two-mission demo is available now on the AVSEQ page of the Big-Robot site. If its musical tendrils manage to snare your attention, you can grab the full game here for a mere $5.

The randomised codes “could include powerful new weapons and new characters,” according to a post on the Bioware store, or they could contain “character boosters, weapon modifications, and weapon upgrades to make your multi-player squad stronger.”

The four figures can be pre-ordered ahead of shipment in April/May for $75.on the Bioware site. The Big Bad Toy Store has eight figures listed available for $17.99 each including Shepard, Tali, Thane, Garrus, Legion, Miranda, Mordin and Grunt. If you have $650 knocking about, there’s also a full size replica of a Mass Effect assault rifle which I’m going to immediately click away from to protect my bank balance.

Bioware haven’t announced their DLC plans for Mass Effect 3 yet, but I’d be surprised if the weapons and upgrades supplied with the figures weren’t available as DLC after release. Retailers have already been outlining their pre-order bonus packages for Mass Effect 3, which will include extra armour and weapons for ME3′s single player campaign. The game’s due out on March 6 in the US, March 8 in Australia and March 9 in Europe.

Most of the shots are the dark brooding sort that you’d expect from a series with Resi’s survival horror roots, but it’ll almost certainly contain lots of action, a la Resident Evil 5, so let’s kick things off with an explosion. BOOM!

The preliminary patch notes for patch 1.4 include many, many quest and crash fixes. Bethesda recommend that you sign up for the beta if one of the fixes applies to your game. You’ll find the list below. The first entry suggests that Skyrim will be getting Steam Workshop support shortly, the infrastructure that will let modders share projects created with the incoming Skyrim Creation Kit. The mod tools are still set to land sometime later this month.

NEW FEATURES

• Skyrim launcher support for Steam Workshop

 
BUG FIXES

• General optimizations for memory and performance
• Improved compiler optimization settings (PC)
• Memory optimizations related to scripting
• Fixed crashes related to pathing and AI
• Fixed crash in Haemar’s Shame if player had already completed “A Daedra’s Best Friend”
• Fixed rare crash with loading saved games
• Fixed issue with accented characters not displaying properly at the end of a line
• Master Criminal achievement/trophy unlocks properly in French, German, Spanish and Italian
• Fixed issue where dragon priest masks would not render correctly
• Fixed issue where quests would incorrectly progress after reloading a save
• Fixed issues with placing and removing books from bookshelves in the player’s home
• Fixed issue where weapon racks and plaques would not work correctly in player’s house if player immediately visits their house before purchasing any furnishing.
• Fixed issue where the player house in Windhelm would not clean up properly
• Fixed crash related to giant attacks and absorb spells
• Fixed issue with ash piles not cleaning up properly
• Fixed occasional issue where overwriting an existing save would fail
• Fixed memory crash with container menu
• Fixed infinite loop with bookshelves
• Fixed issue where traps in Shalidor’s Maze would not work properly in French, German, Spanish and Italian versions
• Fixed issue where transforming back to human from werewolf would occasionally fail
• Bows and daggers will display properly when placed on weapon racks

 
QUEST FIXES

• The Unusual Gem inside the Thalmor Embassy is now accessible after finishing “Diplomatic Immunity”
• In “Breaching Security”, the quest token is no longer required to receive a fortune reading from Olava the Feeble
• Fixed issue where Galmar would not complete Joining the Stormcloaks properly if “Season Unending” was an active quest
• Fixed issue where starting “Season Unending” after finishing “Joining the Stormcloaks” would prevent “The Jagged Crown” from starting properly.
• Fixed issue progressing through “Message to Whiterun” while “Season Unending” was still open would block progression for both quests.
• In “Arniel’s Endeavor”, fixed issue where a quest journal would trigger multiple times
• In “Forbidden Legend”, the amulet fragment can no longer disappear after player leaves a dungeon without taking it
• Fixed rare issue in “Forbidden Legend” where killing Mikrul Gauldurson while sneaking would make his corpse unaccessible
• In “The White Phial”, the phial can no longer disappear if player leaves dungeon without taking it
• “The White Phial” will now start properly if player already has a briar heart in their inventory
• Player can no longer get stuck in Misty Grove after completing “A Night to Remember”
• Fixed issue where leaving Riften during “A Chance Arrangement” would prevent quest from progressing
• In “Darkness Returns”, a door in Twilight Sepulcher will properly open if the player leaves the dungeon for an extended period of time before completing the quest
• In “Revealing the Unseen”, if the player leaves the Oculory for an extended period of time after placing the focusing crystal and returns, the quest will proceed correctly
• “Onmund’s Request” will now start properly if player has already found Enthir’s staff before receiving this quest
• Fixed instance where Tonilia would stop buying stolen items and also would not give Guild Leader Armor
• “Repairing the Phial” will start properly if player already has unmelting snow or mammoth tusk in their inventory
• Finding Pantea’s Flute before speaking with Pantea no longer prevents her quest from updating
• In “The Coming of the Dawn”, fixed rare instance where a quest object would spawn incorrectly on the Katariah during Hail Sithis
• Fixed rare issue in “The Mind of Madness” where player is unable to equip the Wabbajack
• Fixed issue in “Pieces of the Past” where Mehrunes Dagon’s Razor will not trigger properly if player leaves the cell for extended period of time before activating it
• “Blood’s Honor” will start properly if you visited and completed Driftshade and an extended period of time passes before starting the quest.
• Fixed rare issue where “Dampened Spirits” would not start properly
• Fixed issue where player would be unable to become Thane of Riften if they purchased a home first
• Fixed issue where killing guards in Cidhna Mine would block progression for “No One Escapes Cidhna Mine”
• Fixed numerous issues with “Blood on the Ice” not triggering properly
• In “Blood on the Ice”, Calixto can now be killed if player owns a house in Windhelm
• In “The Cure for Madness”, killing Cicero then resurrecting him no longer impedes quest progress
• Fixed rare issue in “To Kill an Empire” where an NPC would fail to die properly
• Clearing Knifepoint Ridge before starting “Boethiah’s Champion” no longer prevents quest from starting.

It looks like the new Doctor Who game from Supermassive Games will only use two of the four dimensions the Doctor is accustomed to. There are plenty of villainous cameos from Who foes old and new, and it looks like there’ll be some stealth bits with the latest series’ creepiest monsters, The Silence. It’ll be out in March. No word yet on a price. You can follow The Eternity Clock on Twitter for the latest Doctor Who game announcements and you can follow The Talking Clock for the very latest news on what time it is in London.

I’ve heard talk that vanilla Skyrim isn’t pretty. Balderdash! Sure, it’s got a few muddy textures, but I think it deserves a ton of recognition for the scale and artistry of its environments. To that end, I’ve created a video featuring my favorite places in the game, which I’ve dubbed “Koyaaniskyrim.”

The only modifications I made were a few config edits to increase level of detail at distance, and console commands to free up the camera and mess with the passage of time. The tweak guide over at Dead End Thrills explains the config changes, and most of the console commands I used can be found at The Elder Scrolls Wiki. Here’s a list of the basics, in case you’re bitten by the Skyrim filmmakin’ bug:

coc [cell ID] – Teleport to a given cell ID (e.g. “BlackreachCity”). A complete list can be found at http://www.skyrimsearch.com/cells.php.
sgtm [x] – The “set global time modifier” command can be used to slow down and speed up time.
set timescale to [x] – Modify the speed of the night/day cycle.
tfc – Toggle the free camera.
tcl – Toggle collision.

My warm feelings for Jasper help me overlook his main flaw, which is his incessant, endless barking. They also explain the sudden bolt of terror and sadness I feel when, while crossing a river, Jasper gets trapped in the current and sucked over a waterfall.

You hear that, boy? It's the call of the wild. And we're going to ignore it.

We left Riften a few days ago after I decided to take my marriage search to a new, hopefully more pleasant location: Skyrim’s central city of Whiterun. Before we left Riften, I checked with the blacksmith again and found he’d somehow filled his inventory with a bunch of steel ingots, so I whanged myself out a new suit of armor, and improved it to “exquisite” levels. It doesn’t look particularity exquisite on Nordrick’s ugly, awkward frame, but it’s an improvement.

Dog armor DLC hopefully coming soon.

When I consulted my map to plan our trip, I noticed a wee little obstacle between Riften and Whiterun: the tallest, most intimidating mountain in Skyrim. My options were to travel around it to the south, where it looked like there may be a partial mountain pass, or skirt it to the north, which would take me most of the way back to Windhelm. I opted for the latter. It’s familiar ground, and NPCs like Nordrick are known for retreading their steps. I knew what to expect from the terrain and where to find places to spend my nights. Most of all, I was worried that if I passed through mountainous terrain to the south, Jasper might have difficulty following me over cliffs and rocks, and I didn’t want to lose him.

I’ll spare you the intricate details of the first part of the trip, since there really weren’t many. There were some wolf attacks, one angry sabre cat (which I’ve mistakenly been spelling “sabercat” this whole time), a couple bandits and some skeevers, but otherwise I just picked flowers, caught butterflies and fish, and walked along the river with Jasper as he barked non-stop from dawn until dusk.

JASPER NOOOOOOOO

Now, though, I’ve stupidly crossed the river a little too close to a waterfall, and poor Jasper can’t quite make it across. He tries: he paddles with his big feet, his shiny eyes fixed on me, in a display I would find comical if I weren’t so scared he was about to die. I run into the river — I don’t know why, really, since I can’t help him or grab him — and we both fight the current, but a moment later he disappears over the falls. Then, I’m sucked over as well, plummeting down to whatever lies below. Pounding water. Roaring noise. Jagged rocks. The abyss.

Actually, we’re both fine. No worries. In fact, we both run back up to the waterfall and go over it a couple more times. It’s fun!

As we continue along, I realize I’m running low on arrows, and decide that we might as well stop in Windhelm, my old strolling grounds, since it’s not too far out of the way. Plus, I can poll the locals to see if any of them might be interested in marrying me, since I wasn’t able to last time I was there. We even stop in for a night at my old bloody riverside shack along the way. The sabre cat hasn’t returned, but the disgusting bones have. Again. I kick them back into the river for old time’s sake.

The next morning I return to the familiar bleak, snowy streets of Windhelm, and after conducting my usual potion and crafting-related business, I drift around the city for a day, talking to the locals about the endless series of tasks they are unable to complete for themselves. And then, after giving a gold coin to a beggar named Angrenor: a bombshell. A bombshell of love. The beggar notices I’m wearing an Amulet of Mara.

Do I hear wedding bells, or do I just have a terrible inner ear infection?

For the uninitiated, the dialogue option “Interested in me?” really means “Interested in marrying me?” This is it. If I want to, I can totally marry this guy. His deed was simple: just give him a coin. I always donate to beggars because it gives me a nice Speech buff I can use on the vendors. Angrenor says he is indeed interested in me, and then tentatively asks if I’m interested in him. Am I interested in marrying a stinky, sleeveless beggar? Are you kidding? I’m so interested I feel like my head is going to explode.

And yet, I don’t want to say yes. I can’t rush into this decision, not me, Nordrick, who once spent five minutes having an internal debate as to whether or not I should borrow a spare pickaxe. I also don’t want to say no, because I can’t remember if you can still marry someone after you’ve turned them down. So, I say nothing. I just tab out of the conversation and walk a few feet away. I need to think this over. I need to find out everything I can about this filthy homeless man I just met before I can decide if he is my true soulmate. I need to engage in a ritual as old as love itself. I need to stalk him.

Since Skyrim hasn’t invented Facebook yet, I have to do my stalking the old fashioned way: on foot. So, for the rest of the day and well into the night I follow this guy around to see what he does. I need to make sure he’s a good person who will treat Nordrick like the delicate flower he is. I also need to find out if he’s really homeless, because where am I going to live if he is? Will we share a disgusting sleeping bag somewhere on the street? Will I get my own pile of filthy hay, or will we have to sleep in shifts? Granted, this isn’t a BioWare game, so there won’t be a cutscene of us vaguely humping in some public alleyway, but I’d still like there to be some modicum of privacy in our marriage. If we get married.

He acts like he doesn't detect me, but he totally does. That's why he's flexin' those guns.

After hours of following Angrenor around, I’ve only learned that he spends all of his time walking between the inn and an alleyway near the Elf slums. He doesn’t talk to anyone or do anything. He doesn’t even appear to ever sleep or eat. It eventually occurs to me that a good way to find out more about him is by, you know, actually talking to him. So, I walk over to him while he’s stopped in the street. Hi! Remember me? The guy who wordlessly walked away in the middle of a marriage proposal and has been following you around for fourteen hours at a distance of ten feet in the company of a constantly barking dog? Can we talk?

He doesn’t really have much to say, except that he once fought six Imperials while trying to rescue his Stormcloak buddies during an ambush. He also says he’s not too proud to admit he needs help, hence the begging. That’s about all I get out of him. Having delved into his life a bit, it’s time for another well-worn ritual of relationship decisions: the pros and cons list. I start with the pros, the positive aspects, for getting married to this sleeveless hobo:

1) He actually wants to marry me, unlike every other jerk in the world
2) He seems nice

That’s a good start. I think for a few minutes, then write:

3) It would be funny

Well, wouldn’t it? Sad sack Nordrick marrying a stinky homeless guy? That’s comedy gold, as gold as the coin Angrenor fell in love with. But do I really want to spend my life with him just because it’s funny? Finally, I write:

4) Probably no other Skyrim player has married him

Could be true. Everyone else playing Skyrim is running around covered with enchanted armor and awash in treasure and perfectly willing to perform dangerous quests for NPCs far more attractive and well-off than this sad, aimless frump of a man. I might be his first and only love in all possible versions of this world. Now, there’s a reason to marry him: pity.

Not so long ago, I too was balding, stinky, homeless, and sleeveless. Now I have sleeves!

Okay, time for the cons, which is, as it turns out, a much shorter list:

1) He loves my gold, not me
2) He has no home I can live in

I admit it’s weird to criticize him for only loving me because I gave him a gold piece when I myself only want to marry someone so I can live in their house for free, but there it is. The hypocrisy can’t be denied. There’s also this concern: if he loves me because I gave him a Septim, what happens if someone else gives him money? Will he leave me? Will he dish out that sweet hobo honey for anyone who thumbs a coin in his direction? Can I trust him to be true to my coin purse?

This is all too much to decide tonight while standing here staring at my potential future husband as he shuffles endlessly back and forth in the street. In the shadow of this monumental life choice, even the normally boisterous Jasper has grown quiet and contemplative. No, just kidding, his incessant, moronic barking continues unabated as it has over the past five days. I lead his noisy butt back to the inn and rent my room.

I’ll sleep on it. Choosing whether to marry a homeless man isn’t a decision you can make in a single night. It might also take a couple hours in the morning.

Sometimes a soundtrack can get in your head and stay there forever. The Zelda themetune is one of those soundtracks. The soundtrack to HBO fantasy series A Game of Thrones is another. Battlefield 3′s angry machine noise is yet another. Owen has come across a unique way of washing one’s brain clean of an invading soundtrack. It’s and album called The Disintegration Loops by William Basinski, in which a short loop is repeated for an hour, but changes subtly with each repetition as the track slowly degrades, bludgeoning your brain into a state that couldn’t even absorb an Abba riff. Here it is. Happy Monday!

Avant garde ambient music aside, it’s been a fun day for news. ITV took an official rebuke to the face for mistakenly including footage of Arma 2 when they meant to include footage of the IRA attacking a helicopter. It was confirmed that Guild Wars 2 will be out this year and we had a chat with Notch about whether Mojang consider themselves indie devs anymore. There was loads more we couldn’t cram in, so we’ve assembled them in a gradually disintegrating list of links below.

• OXM have a bit more from Ken Levine on how Bioshock Infinite’s 1999 mode will force you to specialise when choosing weapons.
• Senior game producer on Diablo 3, Steve Parker, leaves the team after five years, report Eurogamer.
• This came in on Friday evening but it’s worth a mention. The ESA finally drops support for SOPA.
• The unofficial Battlefield 3 blog mentions a case in which DICE had to ban one of their own mods for hacking.
• Star Wars: The Old Republic wins AbleGamers accessibility GOTY, awarded to games that take measures to be more accessible to disabled gamers.
• Indiegames mention that HBO are considering commissioning a series based on Indie Game: The Movie.
• Gamasutra interview Starbreeze about Syndicate, and another project they’re currently working on at the same time.
• Epic’s Fortnite will be aimed at a more casual audience than Gears of War, say Shacknews.

 
The Greatest Video Game Music album, performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra, can be listened to for free on Spotify. There are some great tracks on there, not least this lovely bit of Mass Effect music. Which pieces of gaming music would you recommend?

The Q&A also mentions that Alan Wake will work with Nvision 3D, though you’ll need a top end PC to harness the power of that extra dimension. There won’t be a demo, either, but as previously mentioned, we won’t have to mess around with Games for Windows Live either. Hooray for that!

• OS: Windows XP, Windows Vista or Windows 7
• PROCESSOR: A dual core processor is required:
  • AMD: Athlon X2 2.8GHz
  • Intel: Core 2 Duo 2GHz
• MEMORY: 2 GB
• HARD DRIVE: 8 GB
• VIDEO CARD: DirectX 10 compatible or later with 512MB RAM
  • AMD: ATI Radeon 3650, 4450, 5550, 6450 or higher (per series)
  • NVIDIA: GeForce 8600GT, 9500GT, GT120, GT430, GT520 (per series)
• SOUND CARD: DirectX 9.0c compatible
• INPUT: Mouse and keyboard, Xbox360 controller also supported

 
To run at maximum settings, with high level textures and the like, Remedy recommend a quad core CPU and “a top of the line graphics card.”

The job listing for a franchise development producer. Among the job requirements, one requires that applicants be able to “work with major consumer brands to facilitate product placement and licensing within the world of Blizzard Entertainment’s next-gen MMO that enhances the gameplay experience.”

It’s hard to remember an occasion when product placement in a game has especially enhanced anything, but the inclusion of modern products would suggest a contemporary or futuristic setting for Blizzard’s next MMO, codenamed Project Titan.

Project Titan first appeared on a leaked planning document which pegged it for a late 2013 release. In February last year Blizzard CEO, Mike Morhaime said that Blizzard have “some of our most experienced MMO developers, people who spent years working on the World of Warcraft team, working on the project.

“We’re really trying to leverage all the lessons we’ve learned throughout the years. So we’re kind of taking a step back with all that knowledge to make something that’s completely new and fresh. We’re not trying to make a WoW sequel,” he said. Beyond that, very little is known about Blizzard’s enigmatic new MMO. What do you think, could product placement add to the experience?

“These days it’s become hip to pay for indie games. That’s partly down to people charging for it, like with the Humble Indie Bundle, and partly because of Steam doing awesome stuff,” Notch told PC Gamer last week.

“I don’t think [Mojang] are indie in the sense of how I used to work any more, because we have a payroll to worry about and we need to do stuff to ensure the company lasts,” he continued.

“We have other stuff which influences what we do other than trying to focus on the games. We make sure me and Jacob are only focusing on game development so the founders are still developing. But as a company, I don’t think we are indie in the sense that I used to mean it. But in the other sense of indie – as in we make games we want to play without having any external dependencies – then yeah, we’re indie.”

According to Notch, gamers’ perceptions of independent developers has altered over time: “I think it’s easier to be an indie game developer these days because back in the day it wasn’t called being an “indie developer” but a “garage programmer.” You weren’t expected to charge for your game so you couldn’t do it. People never charged. It was just a hobby.

“I think it’s much easier these days, but there’s still no guarantee you’ll make a profit. If you’re doing it out of passion and just want to get some money back it’s definitely doable.”

Minecraft was officially released in November last year. For the latest Mojang news visit their official site.

What’s your definition of an indie developer?

The Guardian report Ofcom’s findings, which declared the film “materially misleading” and labelled the error “a significant breach of audience trust, particularly in the context of a public service broadcaster.”

ITV said that a compliance officer had expressed concern about the footage, but the producers failed to check it. “We considered that there were clear deficiencies in the steps taken by both production and compliance staff for sourcing and verifying the archival content of the helicopter attack in this programme,” Ofcom concluded.

Bohemia CEO Mark Spanel told us that he was “surprised our games apparently may look real enough to some users already that they can not tell it is not real life footage,” adding “I just briefly watched the entire documentary and I still can not believe it as it is overall very serious and lenghtly feature.” We couldn’t believe it either.

Later in the same documentary, footage described as showing riot in Northern Ireland in 2011 was actually of a different riot that occurred years before. ITV blamed deadline pressures and “human error” for both blunders and asserted that the clips were “not a deliberate attempt to mislead viewers.”

They’ve also promised to improve their compliance procedures, which hopefully means they’ll start watching their films before broadcasting them. Here’s the clip that was accidentally used in the program.

“We just did a big recording before Christmas and we have another one,” he said. “We’ll see how much we can cram in, it’ll basically come down to logistics and memory. We have a script of 2000 pages for the AI alone. It’s huge.”

Stumbling across NPCs in the middle of a chat adds to the weird voyeuristic thrill of being completely hidden in a stealth game and can be a good way to deliver some extra optional story information, or just do some jokes. Hopefully the barks will be of a higher quality than the likes of Splinter Cell: Conviction’s constant calls of “I’ll kill you, Fisher!” “Come out, Fisher, I know you’re there!” and “Fisher, Fisher, I’ll Fisher your Fisher, Fisher!” Something more on par with The Darkness’ quality “stick your face out so I can shoot you in the face!” line would be preferable.

For more Hitman, check out the latest trailer. The latest Hitman: Absolution screenshots also confirm that, yes, you will be able to dress up as a priest and kill men with an axe. No sign of a clown costume yet, though.

Do check out the Resident Evil 6 trailer, if you haven’t already. The opening scene shows lone defender of ’90s curtain haircuts and treasonous fiend Leon Kennedy shooting dead the President of the United States simply because he happened to be a zombie (they’re not zombies they’re “infected” – Zombie Ed). The madness ramps up from there. It’s set for November 20 on consoles, and an ambiguous “later” on PC. Here’s the debut trailer again in case you missed it.

A Game of Dwarves (or “Dwarrrrrves!”) is suddenly looking a lot like Dungeon Keeper. The trailer above presents the first moving pictures of Paradox’ new management sim (the first screens landed last week). Your role as invisible floaty god-force is to lead your clan of dwarves to prosperity, instructing them to build labyrinthine mines to safely progress through each randomised section of the underworld.

Each dwarf in your crew can be specialised differently. Master craftsmen can build your leader a glorious throne room and warriors can protect them. There are monsters underground, of course, and the deeper you dig the more your risk unearthing the really nasty ones. More details are sure to arrive soon, but for now you can check out the new Game of Dwarves section of the Paradox site.

Access to the Guild Wars 2 beta will be an extremely hot ticket for players looking for a fresh take on the MMO. We’ll have to wait and see just how different Guild Wars 2 really is, but who wouldn’t want to play as a giant lion man and wander around some of GW2′s extraordinary areas. Roll on March! Are you excited about Guild Wars 2?

The Tin Soldier

Tyranus. Play it on the IndiePubGames website.

The fairytale-inspired The Tin Soldier certainly takes its cues from an era when fairytales were dark, twisted stories designed to scare children stiff about the dangers of life. This isn’t a game you’d show to a young ‘un, most likely: within seconds of its opening, you’re met with – well – that scene above.

Relentlessly unsettling, it’s something like a cross between an adventure game and a more straightforward puzzler. You’ll meet a string of characters, all of whom demand something of you, but none of whom will communicate with you in plain English. You’ve to decode their visual clues – think something like a more abstract version of Machinarium’s ‘dialogue’ system – before fulfilling their requests and pressing on to the next area.

Its noisy, scratchy graphical style, sepia toned and depressing, works perfectly with the plodding unease of the soundtrack. This is creepy, taxing, and quite lovely in its own emo way.

Cart Life

Richard Hofmeier. Download it from the developer’s website.

Okay, so it’s actually been quite some time since Cart Life was released, but it was an update the other day that finally brought my attention to it, and it’s too smart to miss out. Playing initially as a soon-to-be divorcee who’s looking to win custody of her children, you set out to establish a successful business within just a few days, a way of proving to the judge that you’re more than capable.

Several other characters are unlocked later, and with each you’ll follow a well-written story as you embark on your business enterprise. But Cart Life is a game about much more than simply entrepreneurial strategy. It is, essentially, a vast and expansive life simulator, a game that asks you to manage your personal resources as well as your work ones. Be warned: this is a complicated game. Do thoroughly explore the tutorial, and don’t be put off if you need to start again a couple of times.

Developer Richard Hofmeier is supporting his work in a fun way, too. The game itself is free, and you get the full version whichever package you opt for. Paying money for it gets you optional extras, such as a free game, or an extra character in this one. But whether you pay or not, this should be experienced.

^_^

Ben Chandler. Grab it from BigBlueCup.

The thoroughly unpronounceable ^_^ is actually a rather apt name for this delightful point-and-clicker that sees you assume the role of Julian, a were-bunny who’s somewhat unimpressed with the new form that’s been forced upon him. You want nothing more than to become a bog-standard fluffy rabbit again, and in order to do so you’ll need to enlist the help of a witch. The only problem is that she won’t come outside; she’s frightened about what people will think of her baldness, after her enchanted hair ran away.

Yes, it’s a strange game, populated by weird characters and written with an excellent sense of personality. Developer Ben Chandler makes about five hundred million adventure games a week, it seems, but this is one of his most characterful yet. Don’t be fooled by its cutesy image, though: this is often an exceptionally challenging puzzler, with lots of trial-and-error object manipulation involved as you work your way to a solution. If you’re able to twist you brain around the game logic, you’ll probably like this a lot.

Cut The Rope

ZeptoLab. Play it on the official website.

You’ll almost certainly have heard of smartphone smash hit Cut The Rope, in which you must slice through various bits of rope in order to deliver candy to a small, frog-like creature. This puzzler was, for a time, almost as ubiquitous as Angry Birds, the games’ publisher Chillingo rising to mobile stardom in the process.

Across approximately nine billion levels, you’ll chop ropes in a variety of arrangements, collecting stars on the way, all to satiate the salivating hunger of a greedy little green blob. It’s the perfect mobile game, of course, but you perhaps won’t spend quite as long with it on your PC.

This edition’s been lobbed online by Microsoft to showcase the HTML5 capabilities of the latest version of Internet Explorer, although of course a variety of popular browsers are capable of doing exactly the same thing, and almost certainly better. Play it in Chrome, enjoy its lovely music, but probably go back to the mobile version.

Dog Game #1

Daniel Blackburn. Download it from the developer’s website.

An experimental game that plays with the ideas of windowed play, Dog Game #1 is a surprisingly effective and stifling game about the nagging unease of claustrophobia. Sort of. That’s how this interesting little piece felt to me, anyway, as the outer reaches of the play space closed in on the game itself.

The idea: the game exists in a window, which, if you fail to evade the various shapes that are out to attack your small triangle thing, gradually close in as the game window moves around your desktop. You’ve to strike a careful balance between focusing on controlling your triangle, and focusing on the movement of the window. The result is a surprisingly tense experience.

There’s no sound, and the visuals are as bare as they get, but I’d be hugely interested to see what developer Daniel Blackburn could do if he expanded the concept. Worth a go, both despite and because of its simplicity.

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Inspired by Alienware’s launch of its lounge friendly X51 console sized PC and a feature I’m writing for the mag, this week’s post is about a second system I’m going to try and keep up to date: The PC Gamer Media Centre-cum-Occassional-Games-Rig-With-Console-Beating-Games-Ability. Or, as I like to call it, Son of Rig.

I find putting together a spec for a living room machine much more challenging than building a static desktop PC. For a start, it has to be small enough and quiet enough to be unobtrusive by the TV. And it also has to be very cheap, and yet capable of gaming at 1080p resolutions.

Why bother when consoles are so cheap? Well, for a start your games will look better than on a console: most Xbox and PlayStation games are actually running at an upscaled 720p resolution, and I’m tired of watching Assassin’s Creed’s vast cityscapes get ruined by the Xbox’s blocky mess. With a PC you can game natively at 1080p on a HDTV.

Then there’s the hidden costs of running a console – subscribing to an online service to access other, free, online services really bugs me.

The much vaunted apps of the Xbox 360′s new dash were the final straw for me – there’s an on demand video service in the UK called Blinkbox (owned by Tesco) which isn’t brilliant, but has the appealing selling point of being a service you only pay for what you watch, there’s no monthly sub on top. Until you try and use it on Xbox, where you need to pay for Xbox Live to use it.

Plus, Xbox is still noisy for watching videos on, and no console has the kind of codec support built in for smooth streaming around the home.

Straight off, I’ve ruled out any of the nifty little Atom-based net-tops that are kicking around, like Sapphire’s Wii-sized Edge-HD, because not only are they not quite powerful enough, they can also be quite noisy and don’t have essential features like audio line out or SPDIF.

The mission I’ve set myself is to build a system as cheaply as possible. It’s strictly a second PC as far as games are concerned, so there’s no point spending loads on fully featured CPUs and GPUs. That makes the choice between AMD’s Fusion processors and an Intel Core i3.

As far as the AMD chips are concerned, I like these new hybrid chips a lot. You can just about game at 720p without any other hardware, and a cheap AMD GPUs can bolster them in Crossfire mode for up to double performance. The problem is that ‘Asymmetrical Crossfire’ is unreliable at the moment, only works with DX10 and thanks to the peculiarities of the platform, can be slower than simply using one card.

Intel’s Core i3s are better overal gaming processors, and while the quad core Llanos are better at media encoding on the CPU, Intel’s QuickSync video system makes up the difference.

In the end, I opted for Fusion. I’m not 100% behind the decision, though, and there’s a lot of customisation you could do to the base spec here to make a much better system if you want. You could save money or spend on better components by opting for a micro-ATX chassis rather than the pricey mini-ITX one here (my personal media box is in a lovely Lian Li PCV-300 chassis which has sadly been discontinued) – but I’ve opted to go for the most discrete size and sacrifice elsewhere. For example, a larger case with a bigger PSU would allow you to go for a Core i3 and a discrete GTX 550Ti. It’ll cost cost about £50-£70 more, but give you better and more consistent framerates.

Is Son of the Rig better than the X51? Without one here to benchmark against I can’t actually say for sure – certainly not when compared to the two more expensive models, but I’m fairly sure it’ll give the basic £699/$699 one a run for its money. I’m also confident that you could spend about £30 more on the GPU and comfortably beat the X51.

I haven’t had time to benchmark this rig properly at 1080p either, thanks to a technical problem in the office. But here’s the bare minimum you’ll be able to get at 720p, medium settings.

• Assassin’s Creed Revelations: 47.37 FPS
• Shogun 2: 53.43 FPS
• Skyrim: 60+ FPS

I’ll update these as I get more time.

What’s in Son of the Rig?

CPU

AMD A8-3670K
£89/$128.11
As far as quiet, budget gaming goes this is pretty unbeatable. Comes with an unlocked core, so the first thing to do is accelerate it to 3GHz for the CPU and 600MHz for the graphics, adding £20 to its value.

Motherboard

Zotac A75-ITX WiFi
£107.54/$133
Tiny, but can take an extra graphics card and has optical sound out and support for unlocked processors.

RAM

4GB Corsair Vengeance Low Profile
£23.99/$31.98
You’re not going to need much, and this has the advantage of sneaking comfortably under the heatsink.

3D Card

Sapphire Radeon HD6670
£59.80/$79.99
Adding a cheap card for CrossfireX gives the Fusion processor enough of a kick to get games running. It’s not foolproof though: DX9 games get no benefit from CFX at all. You can spend more on a HD6670 with GDDR5, I’m not convinced it will make enough of a difference. A fully silent one, on the other hand, would be worth paying more for.

Case

Silverstone Sugo SG06B
£88.32/$108.99
A tiny and gorgeous little miniITX case that’ll look good by the TV. Plus it has a built in PSU that’ll cover what we need. Just.

Heatsink

Shagon Auras ARC-118
£20/$25

Hard drive

Seagate Barracuda 1TB
£86.40/$150
it pushes the price up a bit, but we’ll match the 1TB drive in the X51. Seagate’s hybrid Momentous XT would also be a good choice if you don’t mind sacrificing a bit of space.

DVD drive

Samsung SN-208BB
£15.48/$22.12
You’ll need a slimline DVD burner for the Sugo case. It’s worth considering a Blu-ray drive for movies too.

Software

Windows 7 Home Professional
£71.20/$102.28
Of course, if it was a real media centre we’d run Linux. And there’s some good Unigine based games over there now.

Total

£566.73/$682.83

In sterling, you can save quite a bit over the X51, then. In dollars, not so much – looks like the Alienware machine is pretty good value after all.

When evil rears its ugly head, the cry for justice echoes throughout the post-apocalyptic streets! Which brave, valiant, daring, fearless, hardy, indomitable, unabashed, valourous, thesaurus-owning heroes will arrive to save the day? The Superhero League of Hoboken, of course. And if you need to see inside pizza boxes, tread water really well and make robots rust a little faster, then citizen, relax!

(But if you know how to make a mini-Batsignal with a torch, definitely try that first.)

Fighting them isn't the embarrassing part. Losing to them is.

At some point in the future, computers as we know them will cease to be. Games will no longer be things of code and pixels, but simply carefully constructed ideas that we download into our brains, where they’ll exist in a state of pure imagination, as incapable of disappointing us with the cold harsh nature of reality as a pleasant dream. Until that day though, we have to take a lower-tech approach, and in the 80s and 90s, that form was the good old magazine review. On the surface, they were simple buying advice. In fact, they were primitive game simulators in their own right. Long before online forums turned casual discussion into a heated deathmatch, long before the internet made it possible to play demos that didn’t come mounted on the front of a magazine, there were kids holding screenshots up to their eyes and jiggling them around to pretend they were moving. Even before Tomb Raider came along.

This was easily the best way to play many games, letting the concepts behind them live and breathe free of any control issues, sadistic difficulty curves, or just plain Not Being Very Good. In many cases though, the issue was more that the ideas that stuck in your head towered over the actual execution, making the actual game feel far flatter than if it had just been a dull idea in the first place. Here is where Superhero League of Hoboken stands – not in the corner of shame, but spending its afterlife eternally mingling with the ghosts of games like It Came From The Desert. “You know, we had great ideas,” they sigh to each other over watered-down cocktails. “We could have been so much more…”

And this is why I never got that job in PC World.

The premise is that a couple of hundred years into the future, America is a melted slurry of toxic waste and the remnants of the polar ice-caps, and its post-apocalyptic world reliant on brave mutated superheroes stepping up to the plate to defend the innocent. Unfortunately for New Jersey, the best they’ve got is the fearless but useless Crimson Tape, whose sole power is creating organisational flowcharts. This power is never, ever used in the game, and it’s a game that finds a use for a hero called Robomop. Not to mention Princess Glovebox, mistress of maps. Specifically, paper maps. That need refolding. She’s good at that. And only that. Still, it comes in useful. Exactly once.

Isn’t that a cool idea for a game? Crap superheroes can be almost as much fun as the good ones, from The Tick to Mystery Men to Kick-Ass to those other two superhero movies that came out at the same time as Kick-Ass, but not Superhero Movie because that was rubbish. Add to the pitch that it’s an adventure/RPG hybrid, give it what for the time were solid graphics, and the clout of universally recognised makers-of-good-games Legend, and you surely have a recipe for a great game. At the very least, a great idea that you could smile at for a good long time. “Superhero League of Hoboken,” you’d think, many years later. “That was a funny game. I really should ask Richard to write about it.”

You may want to stop reading at this point and keep those fond memories.

Superhero League of Hoboken has been one of the most requested games since Crapshoot started, mostly I suspect thanks to those fuzzy memories. Don’t get me wrong, it’s far from a dreadful game. For the time it was a clever idea, it scored and reviewed pretty well, and plenty of people will defend it to the hilt. No, the action hasn’t aged well, but most games of this era really haven’t. That said, it was never honestly a great adventure even in its prime, and there’s a reason that most of the really memorable stuff tends to be along the lines of “You get attacked in the streets by killer wardrobes!”

(Incidentally, you totally get attacked in the streets by killer wardrobes.)

In short, move the individual gags from a description to the screen and it’s just not that funny. When it’s not being funny, there’s not much here. Case in point, McMutants – mutated hamburger mascots who may or may not represent any multinational fast-food chain with a team of itchy-fingered lawyers. The first time you get attacked by one, wielding chips as weapons and grinning a malicious smile in lettuce and probably pickle, it’s weird and wacky. The seventieth time, they may as well just be a kobold for all the difference it makes. The one-off jokes obviously work better, but are incredibly spaced apart and often lost in a slurry of maybe-important, maybe-joke filler text that’s a real pain to sift through.

I’m reminded of another Legend game, the wonderful Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon. That was even more text-heavy, but got away with it because the individual bits of writing were punchy, with fun characters and puns bad enough to suck your life essence through your eyeballs. Here, everything is lost in the interface. A long infodump revealing that the reason nobody’s heard from the Superhero League of Scranton recently isn’t down to evil Dr. Entropy, but because they found a whole load of Playboy magazines… well, it just doesn’t have the same oomph. The gag’s fine. The delivery? “Eh.”

If it was an itch on his bum, that's probably for the best.

What little story Superhero League of Hoboken has is split into several rounds, each split into unrelated missions that can be anything from acquiring guacamole for a forthcoming party to stopping a supervillain use a confusion ray that will reverse all the world’s signs. Each is solved by trekking across the post-apocalyptic wasteland, surviving random encounters with the crazy mutants and homicidal furniture that gets in your path, and solving puzzles when you get to the other side. RPG, meet adventure. Adventure, meet RPG, and- put down that knife! Stop stabbing adventure in the back, RPG! I said stop!

The RPG side is very, very simplistic, with combat borrowing from the Bard’s Tale school of thwackery and only very limited upgrades for your team. There’s some amusing parody in it, with enemies making your heroes feel itchy instead of poisoning them and subsequently missing their turn, and the enemies are a fun batch, but it soon becomes a drag. Mostly, it serves to split up the adventuring bits and scatter them to the corners of the Earth… or at least New Jersey… and that in turn only makes sifting through the adventuring bits where most of the original jokes happen even more of a chore.

Why a chore? Well, you know how irritating pixel-hunting is? Scanning the screen for something usable, trying to figure out what you’re meant to do? Right. Imagine pixel-hunting when every screen is separated by a long walk, guarded by enemies trying to gut you, and the map is entirely blacked out. Exploring takes forever, and it’s not helped by more than a few outright ‘screw you’ moments. That example a bit earlier, with the Superhero League of Scranton’s Playboy addiction? You literally trip over the item you need to fix that – a ‘bowdlerising gun’ (and hopefully you get the reference, because the game doesn’t help out much there), but you can only use it if the one female member on your own League’s books is in your team. If not, you get a loooong walk back to swap her in thanks to the rest of the gang’s less than heroic commitment to Truth, Justice, and the American Hey Are Those Boobies?

'I swear, we only read it for the nudity.'

It doesn’t help that Superhero League of Hoboken ranks as one of the least rewarding games ever. In most cases, your attaboy/girl for finishing a mission is returning to base and being politely informed of the fact, then being sent straight back out with another shopping list of injustices to foil. Okay, you also get bonus experience points and similar rewards, but the occasional ticker-tape parade in honour of your valour… even if it was only in service of stopping your arch-enemy Dr. Entropy creating a precision-pooping pigeon… really wouldn’t go amiss. This hits a low hitherto plumbed only by Syndicate when you finally face-off with Entropy in a fight for the future of reality itself. Your ultimate reward for heroism? The text box: “The other members of the party boost you onto their shoulders, carrying you off to a well-deserved retirement.” And some credits. And an advert for the sequel that never was.

Hurm. Suddenly the wages of sin sound positively generous.

The puzzles themselves aren’t too tough – and you’re told where each mission objective is. You still have to be very lucky, or very observant, to figure out what you’re meant to do, and willing to wade through a lot of filler text. Throughout most of the first set for example, you find yourself carrying around a rag that you can dip in various substances. This won’t make sense until you get to the last bit though, where you’re suddenly told in a throwaway line that a particular type of material’s warranty will be void if it comes into contact with a mixture of “ovine saliva, automotive lubricants and loam”.

A ridiculous request? Bah. To an old-school adventure gamer, it may as well be eggs, bread, milk.

Coincidentally, this is the reason you should never accept cake from a Monkey Island fan.

Meanwhile, in a game of Civilization, not far away...

What’s always most frustrating about a game like this is that you can’t stop thinking about how much better it could have been, ‘if only’. If only it had been more of an adventure game. If only the puzzles had been more built around using your team’s abilities in clever and awesome ways, not simply lucking into the one situation where their skill happened to be useful. After all, you’d be amazed what you can do with even the crappiest sounding powers. Even lactokinesis can be a weapon in the right hands.

But hey, them’s the breaks. Imagining it was a better game made Superhero League of Hobokan terrific for its day. What better legacy could it have than for us all to keep up the tradition? Killer wardrobes. The Crimson Tape. Robomop. You’ve got to smile, right? Right. And so do we save its reputation.

Plus, it is at least a hundred times better than Hero X…

What we didn’t expect was to see a Miraluka Sith Warrior opening a can of whoop-ass on some rusty droids. The Miraluka are a blind species who see the world through the Force, and are currently only available to Republic characters, but this particular Miraluka is dressed up like a Sith Warrior, an Empire-specific class. Could this mean that new class/race combinations are on the way?

This short-but-sweet scene appears during the segment of the video that’s explaining the coming Legacy system, suggesting we may get to build that pureblood Sith as a Jedi carebear after all. The folks over at GamesRadar were able to get Daniel Erickson, TOR’s Lead Writer, to confirm that it is, “definitely a Miraluka Sith.” This isn’t the concrete confirmation that the race/class combo is a result of the Legacy system, but given its placement in the video and previous rumors, it’s probably safe to assume that the legacy system will unlock some cross-faction races.

Obviously not. However, according to Paradox Interactive CEO Fred Wester, we can’t aim our pitchforks and torches entirely at maniacally monolithic companies that erupt in a din of evil cackling and ominous lightning strikes each time someone’s booted back to a start screen. Business, he says, isn’t such a one-sided game.

“I think there’s a lot of politics, especially in bigger companies,” Wester said in an interview with GameSpy. “If you’re a CEO, you need to cover your back. And the people who ask, the board, know nothing about games. They’re there because they’re some investment company or something, and they ask ‘So what are you doing to protect our game from pirates?’ And then they can reply ‘We’re buying this solution from Sony.’

Even so, Wester finds the whole “solution” to be incredibly counter-productive from both a business and consumer-centric standpoint.

“I just can’t see why people are using DRM still,” he continued. “If you take something like Sony’s DRM, SecuROM – it’s a waste of money. It will keep you protected for three days, it will create a lot of technical support, and it will not increase sales. And I know this for a fact, because we tried it eight years ago, and it never worked for us. Two major reasons: it costs money and it makes you lose money, and the other is that it’s so inconvenient to customers.”

“Now, I see no reasonable explanation for why people keep on adding it. Especially the kind where you have to be online all the time, like Ubisoft. I think that’s, to me that’s 2003.”

Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid has officially postponed voting on PIPA due – in large part – to all the impassioned outcry from fine folks like yourselves. He’s asked for revisions that maintain “openness and innovation on the Internet,” which is sort of, you know, the complete opposite of what PIPA was trying to do before.

Obviously, though, this isn’t over. In a statement, Reid cited “billions of dollars” piracy costs the American economy each year and concluded that there’s “no reason the legitimate issues raised by many about this bill cannot be resolved.” He hopes to reach a compromise “in the coming weeks,” though the bill’s recent expulsion from the Cool Kids’ Club (via cannon, into the sun) might put a damper on his plans.

Meanwhile, BBC reports that House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith has begrudgingly backed down from his hard-line stance on SOPA. His panel will no longer push the bill until a compromise is reached.

“I have heard from the critics and I take seriously their concerns regarding proposed legislation to address the problem of online piracy,” said Smith. “It is clear that we need to revisit the approach on how best to address the problem of foreign thieves that steal and sell American inventions and products.”

And finally, with all that nasty “having to choose a side” business out of the way, the ESA’s decided to pipe up against PIPA and SOPA. “We call upon Congress, the Obama Administration, and stakeholders to refocus their energies on producing a solution that effectively balances both creative and technology interests,” the gaming industry advocacy group said in a statement. “As an industry of innovators and creators, we understand the importance of both technological innovation and content protection and are committed to working with all parties to encourage a balanced solution.”

This is, of course, the same ESA that spent $190,000 lobbying in favor of PIPA last year.

Regardless, give yourselves a pat on the back. The Internet banded together, fought for its rights, and scored a black-eye-worthy blow against the biggest threat against its still-young existence. SOPA and PIPA aren’t down for the count just yet, but the hornets’ nest has been stirred. Except that the Internet hivemind has more in common with the Buggers from Ender’s Game – who, for the uninitiated, sort of nearly wiped out all life on earth. That is to say, look out, the government. You have no idea what you’re dealing with.

You can link us to your pictures on Facebook and Twitter of course, but we also have a Google+ page, which we are now updating regularly. Do pop by and say hello. Meanwhile, here’s your daily list of PC gaming news

• Eurogamer mention that many high profile politicians have withdrawn support from SOPA and PIPA after Wednesday’s internet protests. This infographic shows political support for SOPA and PIPA before and after the blackout.
• EA’s share prices had a bit of a wobble after an analyst implied that TOR might not do as well as predicted.
• VG247 on why the new Tomb Raider will be all about survival.
• MCV report that PopCap have axed Facebook game Baking Life, even though it has close to three-quarters of a million players.
• RPS have spotted a mod that recreates Minecraft in Crysis.
• Edge have a chat with the creator of the original X-Com, Julian Gollop.
• Massively mention that Eve Online’s development team has grown, and split into three groups named Five 0, Team Super Friends and Game of Drones.
• Space-born tower defence game, The Unstoppable Gorg, is out now on Steam.
• Blues News say that Ubisoft have changed the DRM on Anno 2070 that limited players to three activations based on the graphics card they had installed.

 
It’s Friday. WOoo! A frantic lunchtime in the Tribes Ascend beta (which is looking excellent) has put me in the mood for something fast and shooty. What do you recommend?

If Wargaming.net can make World of Warplanes as addictive and accessible as World of Tanks, we may slightly doomed. The new trailer above gives us an idea of the number of customisation options that each plane will have, even if there’s no actual in-game footage just yet.

A batch of new screenshots have been released, though, showing a selection of planes in action. They’ll come in three classes, single engine light jets, heavy fighters and strafing aircraft designed to dominate ground forces. Check them out below. You can find out more on the World of Warplanes site.

The next part is down to you. Send us a link with a picture of your desk. You can post it here in the comments, on our Facebook page, our Google+ account, or you can tweet one at our Twitter account. Our three favourites will be featured in a post next week on PCGamer.com. We’ll raid our cupboard full of random gaming objects and send the owner of each featured desk a prize that we think will best suit them based on extensive psychoanalysis* of their gaming space.

This one’s open to both UK and US residents, and French residents, and Vietnamese residents and anyone, really. We don’t care, JUST SHOW US YOUR DESK. To get the ball rolling, we’ve taken a picture of Owen’s desk for you to analyse first. Here it is.

Some Darksider 2 developers gather on THE PLAINS OF LIMBO to chat about the sequel’s new hero, Death. Compared to his brother, War, he’s more agile, more serious and more purple. He has access to niftier weaponry as well, including his “Swiss Army Scythe,” a pair of vicious sickles that can combine into a mighty scythe at Death’s will. The first Darksiders had some decent demon-bashing. A speedier, more exotic hero should liven up the formula a bit.

Ghost Recon Online is a free to play, team-based shooter with three classes and a collection of mad gadgets and unlockable gear upgrades. Owen got to play it a while back and came away quite impressed. You can read his impressions in our Ghost Recon Online preview. The latest developer diary above goes showcases a few of the the high tech toys that each class will get access to. The shoulder mounted heat wave blaster looks like an decent weapon, and a great way to cook some chicken in the field.

Bioware have patched Star Wars: The Old Republic to fix some of the PvP problems on Ilum caused by the recent 1.1 update. A bug would allow players on a team to invade the other team’s base and camp their spawn points, taking valour points for every enemy kill. According to a post on the TOR forums, that should no longer be possible.

The cheeky Ewoks who took full advantage of the exploit will have gained masses of valour. There’s no mention of any plans for stat-rollbacks prompting fears that the campers would get to retain all their ill-gotten rewards. Community manager Joveth Gonzalez says “we’re definitely aware of individuals who took extreme advantage of this situation and we will be carefully evaluating and taking action as necessary.”

It’s hard to know what that means exactly but some players may get to experience the power of a fully operational banhammer in the near future. The population cap on Ilum has also been lowered to improve performance.

Patch 1.1 added the first stage of Rise of the Rak’ghouls to TOR. The second stage is set to arrive next month and there are plenty of updates planned for the coming year. A few are teased in the trailer above.

It’s looking a bit like a more user friendly version of the obtuse-but-awesome Dwarf Fortress. Graham’s in Sweden absorbing more details right now. He’ll be back soon to tell us all about it, meanwhile here are the first screenshots showing some cheerful miners exploring the randomised underworld.

“We’ve been called out for messing around with systems too much, that the game is good as-is and we should just release it,” he says on the Diablo 3 blog. “I think that’s a fair argument to make, but I also think it’s incorrect. No one will remember if the game is late, only if it’s great.”

We’ve played it and it already feels great, but Blizzard are looking to streamline every game system so that there are no unnecessary stats, NPCs and abilities left. That means they’ll be making a few controversial decisions along the way. “we’re going to be iterating on designs we’ve had in place for a long time, making changes to systems you’ve spent a lot of time theorycrafting, and removing features you may have come to associate with the core of the experience,” says Wilson.

Entire character attributes will be disappearing from Diablo 3. Wilson lists them on the Diablo 3 blog. “We’re dropping Defense, Attack, and Precision as attributes, Armor is taking over for what Defense used to provide, +Physical Resist will take over for Armor, and +Chance to Crit will fill in for Precision.” It’s a big change that will “have far reaching requirements to re-itemize and balance the game.”

Blizzard hope that the streamlined stats system will let players identify and discard junk items much quicker. Certain stats will be essential to each class making it easier to pick out relevant treasure from the heaps of loot monsters will be dropping.

Scrolls of identify, formerly used to discover the magical properties of special items, will soon be gone forever. You’ll now be able to identify loot by right clicking on it. Town portal scrolls will become an ability instead of an item, and devices like the Cauldron of Jordan and the Nephalem Cube will be removed. These are currently used to salvage and sell loot, but with the addition of the Stone of Recall, Blizzard reckon it’s easier for players to go back to town to do their item admin.

The Mystic will also be removed. Most of her duties have been passed onto the Blacksmith and the Jeweler. Her job is to enchant items, but the dev team felt that enhancement wasn’t interesting enough in its current state. “Enhancement was really just the socket and gem system with a different name, and it would prolong the release of the game even further to go back to the drawing board and differentiate it.” Wilson mentions that Blizzard will look into reintroducing the Mystic at a later time.

There’s plenty left to do, then, which probably means we’ll have to wait a bit longer for Diablo 3. We’ll have to wait and see if these changes improve the game, and whether we’ll remember the long, long wait for Diablo 3′s release.

Leon Kennedy has fought zombies, parasitic scythe-monsters, and even a few things that couldn’t be instantly slain with a spinning back kick to the face. However, in Resident Evil 6, he may finally meet his match: American politics. Read inside for launch date details.

By “American politics,” of course, I mean that he’ll be duking it out with a president who’s been biochemically “transformed beyond recognition and [making] his hardest ever decision.” Series mainstay Chris Redfield, meanwhile, will be sharing top billing by putting his large biceps to use in China. So basically, the outbreak is going global, and globe-trotting is hungry business.

On the upside, the PC version is as existent as most PC ports of major console games are not. However, while RE6 is creeping onto consoles on November 20, the PC launch date is currently a simple “later.” But for you impatient types, you can cut three whole minutes off your year-or-so wait time with the above trailer.

The Creation Kit (referred to as the Construction Kit in previous games) makes the process of modding in Skyrim far easier for less tech-savvy folks. As such, we expect to expect to see the number of Skyrim mods and tweaks increase dramatically once the Creation Kit goes live. So now you can finally fulfill your life’s destiny of turning arrows into missiles made of kittens!

Valve’s Steam Workshop is planned to be used for mod hosting and distribution – the same system used by the Team Fortress 2 community to share and vote on hat and other gear mods. That means that if you do forge those kitten doom arrows, and share the mod on the Steam Workshop, others can download and automatically install the mod from there as well. Nice.

On top of all that, Bethesda has put together a batch of general performance enhancements (including some memory and scripting adjustments), fixed almost two-dozen quest-related hiccups, and squashed a respective number of random bugs, including problems overwriting existing saved games and crashes “related to giant attacks and absorb spells.”

You can read the official blog post and catch the full patch 1.4 details on Bethesda’s official blog. Thanks to the developers and one of the best mod communities around, it really is an exciting time to be Dragonborn. Just don’t wield those kitten-rockets indiscriminately.

“While it’s correct that copies of Anno include three activations and that changing hardware may trigger the need for reactivation, the vast majority of Anno customers never encounter this scenario. On the rare occasion when a customer does need additional activations, Ubisoft customer service is available to quickly resolve the situation, and we encourage those customers to contact us directly so that we can ensure they are able to continue to enjoy their game,” said the publisher in a statement.

Moreover, the draconian-even-by-Ubisoft’s-usual-standards DRM system doesn’t allow de-activations, so when you hand over one of your three installation cards, it’s out of your deck for good.

So then, stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Legitimate customers get treated like pirates, pirates get treated like kings, and sane human beings are left scratching their heads in confusion until they draw blood. Ubisoft, folks. Let’s give ‘em a hand.

First up: how will this be connected to existing DDO content, since they exist in different realms entirely? Through the preceding update, and events held at the launch of the expansion, the worlds of Eborron and Forgotten Realms will be connected to one another, allowing players to travel between the two. Level 20 players will be able to travel to Forgotten Realms on their way to the new level cap of 25. There, they’ll find the mysterious Drow (dark elves) as well as their Spider Queen Lolth. Another update to the leveling process that Paiz teased is that Turbine’s revamping the enhancement system, which currently allows you to tweak your character’s stats in small ways, with the goal of updating the advancement system for players as they reach the Epic levels.

While quite coy about what Forgotten Realms will specifically look like for players, Paiz was able to talking about the new class being added: the Druid. Well, it’s not completely new to players familiar with D&D, as the Druid is the final “core” class available in the tabletop universe to join DDO. And it sounds terrific: a versatile caster, with a spell for any occassion, the Druid will also have animal companions – first introduced to DDO awhile back with the Artificer class- and will be able to shapeshift into different animal forms to take out the enemy up close and personal.

Surprise: she's the good guy! No just kidding, you'll totally kill her.

Once I wiped the drool of my chin, I got back on track and continued to pester Paiz about how this connection between the two realms would be made. It paid off and Paiz spilled (at least part of) the beans. Update 13, to be released at “the end of Februaryish”, will set up the story for this bonding of universes, and will also give veteran players a chance to earn a cosmetic (non-combat) pet. While there will only be a few of these pets at first, Paiz added that the number available would grow over time. Sounds like we could be in for a very cool high-level quest chain that has us help connect these two worlds.

As my interview time winded down, I asked Paiz what question he wished he was allowed to answer most, but can’t. He thought for a second and told me, “I wish I could tell you about Big Scary Monsters.”

So there you have it. We’re headed into the Forgotten Realms–which I’ve been anxious for DDO to move into for years–and there are going to be some “Big Scary Monsters (tm )” waiting for us there. Bring ‘em on!

Were games harder in 1999? Bioshock Infinite’s 1999 mode will offer a hardcore alternative to the standard single player campaign. An interesting addition to a game we’re already rather excited about. A better question might be “were games weirder in 1999?” Thanks to modders, that’s a tougher one to answer. The video above shows the hilarious but somehow incredibly disturbing My Little Pony mod for Skyrim. Tony thinks the pony should breathe deadly rainbows instead of fire, and he’s right.

Some Star Wars: The Old Republic players are facing a different problem. Like the inhabitants of Hotel California, they can log out any time they like, but they can never leave. Hopefully the problem will be fixed soon. Meanwhile, here’s a list of things that have been happening in PC gaming today, including good news for Trion Worlds, Space Marine players and Skyrim modders.

• Space Marine will be getting “Dreadnought DLC” which will let players pilot a deadnought in multiplayer. YES.
• There have been some big changes to Diablo 3
• Shank 2 release date is set for early February.
• Paradox CEO Fredrik Wester reckons the next console generation will be the last, and open platforms like the PC will prevail.
• Bethesda say they’re still on track to release Skyrim mod tools this month.
• Obsidian have released a trailer for the upcoming Fallout: New Vegas Ultimate Edition
• Rift and Defiance developers, Trion Worlds have scooped a massive 85 million dollars in investment cash.
• RPS quiz BeerDeer on their new action RPG, Nyrthos.

 
As always, if you’ve found anything interesting you’d like to share, let us know in the comments. Now I’m off to play a bit of Battlefield 3. What will you be playing tonight?

According to this entry TOR’s help centre, the unsubscribe link should be accessible from your accounts page. Then you should be able to “click on the ‘Subscription’ button in the sidebar and choose the option to ‘Cancel my Subscription’ from your main subscription page.” Those of us in the office that tried to unsubscribe this way found ourselves at a screen asking us to set up a subscription plan, even though according to our accounts, we were already subscribed.

Players on The Old Republic forums have offered up alternative links to the cancel subscription page, but there’s another problem. The Star Wars: The Old Republic site is “temporarily unavailable” because of “extremely high traffic.” If that persists then we could find ourselves trapped in a galaxy far far away forever while we wait for it to come back online. If the worst comes to the worst, you should still be able to cancel your subscription through Bioware customer support, though that’s down at the moment as well.

The unsubscribe link is still appearing for many people, so it’s likely to be a bug, albeit an extremely frustrating one for customers looking at being charged for another month of play time they don’t want. Massively say that Bioware are investigating the problem, and think it might be a browser issue. It’ll hopefully be fixed shortly. It’s probably down to Jawas. It’s always Jawas.

UPDATE:
EA contacted PC Gamer to acknowledge the problem: “We are aware there is an issue with our website and apologize for any inconvenience. We have identified the issue and can confirm it will be resolved shortly.”

The new warranty is good for three years and covers a one time replacement of a processor damaged by overclocking. It goes by the name of Performance Tuning Plan, and costs between $20 and $35 depending on which chip you own.

The offer is being described as in pilot at the moment, available for an initial six month period. Despite the dollar pricing it is available to international customers (except for those living in trade embargoed countries). You can take out Performance Tuning Plan cover on any K or X series chip that’s under one year old, and the pricing is pretty reasonable if you need to replace a $1000 chip.

• Intel Core i5-2500K – $20.00
• Intel Core i7-2600K – $25.00
• Intel Core i7-2700K – $25.00
• Intel Core i7-3930K – $35.00
• Intel Core i7-3960X – $35.00

As a safety net for those of you who’ve heard that it’s easy to get a Core i5 2500K up to 4.5GHz on a $20 air cooler but never had the guts to try, there’s a lot of merit in this new insurance. Even if overclocking does seem to be proscribed in the terms and conditions:

“[Does not cover] Damage to the Eligible Processor due to external causes, including accident, problems with electrical power, abnormal electrical, mechanical or environmental conditions, usage not in accordance with product instructions, misuse, neglect, alteration, repair, improper installation, or improper testing”

The only thing is whether or not it’s worth it. In the best part of two decades, I don’t recall ever burning out a CPU from overclocking – although I’ve lost plenty to burnt pins, broken contacts and other physical misfortunes. With today’s CPUs pretty aware of when they get too hot and throttling back intelligently, I’m not sure many other than extreme overclockers who create extreme temperature fluctuations faster than the chip can keep up are likely to ever need to make a claim. In my experience it’s far easier to burn out mohterboard components than it is the chip itself.

Still, if you want to spend a few dollars for piece of mind, l certainly would’t blame you. Full details are here.

A new post on the Bioshock Infinite blog describes the new mode. “With every choice you make, there are irreversible implications,” the post says. “If your choices guide you down a path not suited to your play style, you will suffer for it.”

Bioshock’s distant cousin, System Shock 2 was released in 1999, and the new difficulty mode promises strict resource limits that may prove familiar to long-time Shock fans. Combat specialisation will be an important factor, too. Irrational say that “you’ll need to develop them efficiently and effectively throughout the story; any weapon will be useless to you unless you have that specialization.”

The post also says that your health will be “set to an entirely different baseline.” Unlike some hardcore modes, your progress won’t be wiped on death, however. Ken Levine says “there are game saves, and you’re gonna f***cking need them.”

1999 mode sounds like a thoughtful and intriguing take on alternative difficulty modes. It’d be good to see more games significantly altering their mechanics to create experiences that are different, not just more difficult. What do you think of the idea, will you play Bioshock Infinite on 1999 mode?

Seems you are not alone in your antipathy towards the dull silence of the modern microcomputer. According to a report on New Scientist, Intel has just filed a patent for WiFi routers and dongles that can literally talk to each other.

It’s not quite a return to the days when establishing an internet connection meant putting up with a couple of minutes of noise like nails on a blackboard – although it could be if you want. The patent covers a plan for fitting WiFi devices with a speaker and microphone, so that instead of typing in a passcode when you want to establish a connection for the first time a new laptop would be able to shout out its presence for the router to hear and verify.

The idea is that this could prove to be a simpler and more secure way of logging devices onto the network, especially as more everyday appliances become internet aware. Potentially, given the right interface for authorising a new device at the router side, it neatly sidesteps a lot of the potential problems of what happens when your Gran buys a new smart TV or internet enabled washing machine, for example. No trying to enter a passcode with a remote control for her, just turn it on and hear it sing.

Why bother with all this , you might ask, since the proximity of the two devices means they can talk over WiFi anyway? The reasoning seems to be that this is a more secure second factor key. A drive by hacker trying to get onto your network would need to be able to listen to and reproduce the audio tone as well as any encrypted key sent as raw data. And that’s not going to be easy unless you leave a window open.

Presumably, the success of the system hinges on the ability to customise a tone to your personal network. I hope to be able to use a wav file of Tibetan chants myself.

The biggest problem I can see, though, would be that the new device would have to be within earshot of the router – something that’s not necessarily true if your net connection comes into a spare bedroom/home office, for example.

We’re not sure exactly what this is, but it we like it. It looks like a highlight reel designed to show off the skills of the ENSO team of stunt designers and performers, but it includes lots of shots of scenes involving Deus Ex: Human Revolution characters. There’s a convincing likeness of Jensen at 1:55 and Human Revolution boss Yelena Fedorova appears at 00:23. It’s not hard to imagine the big guy in the car park as Barrett.

There’s evidently a bit of a budget behind it. It may well be part of an official ad campaign or upcoming short film licensed by Square Enix. It could even be a fan project. Either way, we want to see more.

You’ll find the full quick below. As our Tom Francis said when he first saw the picture, “that’ll burn soooo quick.”

But will your PC run it? The full system requirements have popped up on the Bioware forums. We slipped the Shadow Broker a few credits and he sent them over stapled to the forehead of a courier Volus. Here they are.

Minimum Spec:

• OS – Windows XP SP3/Vista SP1, Win 7
• CPU – 1.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo (equivalent AMD CPU)
• RAM – 1GB for XP / 2GB RAM for Vista/Win 7
• Disc Drive – 1x speed
• Hard Drive – 15 GB of free space
• Video – 256 MB* (with Pixel Shader 3.0 support)
• Sound – DirectX 9.0c compatible
• DirectX – DirectX 9.0c August 2009 (included)

 
Recommended Spec:

• OS – Windows XP SP3/Vista SP1, Win 7
• CPU – 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo (equivalent AMD CPU)
• RAM – 2GB for XP / 4GB RAM for Vista/Win 7
• Disc Drive – 1x speed
• Hard Drive – 15 GB of free space
• Video – AMD/ATI Radeon HD 4850 512 MB or greater, NVidia GeForce 9800 GT 512 MB or greater
• Sound – DirectX 9.0c compatible

 
And here’s a list of supported graphics cards: “Supported chipsets: NVIDIA 7900 or better; ATI X1800 or better. Please note that NVIDIA GeForce 9300, 8500, 8400, and 8300 are below minimum system requirements, as are AMD/ATI Radeon HD3200, HD3300, and HD4350.”

I was talking to our Chris Thursten last night about possible superweapons that could be used to defeat the Reaper menace. He suggested using a Mass Effect relay to shoot the Mako through the heart of the Reaper mothership (if such a thing exists), turning it into a massive, bouncy bullet. That could be quite awesome. How would you defeat the Reapers?

Rockstar are pretty proud of their animation tech, to the extent that they’ve hired a man to talk about it extensively over videos of Max Payne 3. He was chatting about similar things over the last trailer for Max Payne 3 as well. Perhaps they’ve just replaced Payne’s internal monologue with an animation-obsessed new narrator. The Max Payne 3 release date was set for March, but it’s dived slowly backwards through a plate of glass out of sheer force of habit, and will now be arriving on May 29 in the US and June 1 everywhere else.

“Free-to-play games can’t be high quality,” said European senior VP Olivier Comte during Cloud Gaming Europe (via IndustryGamers). “We need to put certain value on certain work. When you’re a big company… you can’t take risks too quickly, you can’t make a change just because there’s a fashion for a couple of years; you want to be there in 20 or 30 years.”

He further argued that the unrelenting barrage of cheap, easier games is slowly sapping value away from triple-A games by causing buyers to expect to have everything handed to them on a silver platter.

So basically, Comte believes this rapidly expanding bubble is destined to burst in spectacular fashion. Even so, his argument seems a tad self-serving, if you ask me. He sort of just ignores the part where full-price products on PC tend to sink amidst a sea of piracy. F2P’s a potential solution, and I think it’d be rather like walking the plank into a tank of genetic mutant sharks just to write it off because change is scary. How about you?

“We are currently working on an official response to these issues and we will be posting it soon. Please understand that these issues require some time to investigate and we are making sure that we provide you all with the most updated information in our official response.”

So then, patience, Padawans. Unless you’re on the Dark Side. Then you can, I don’t know, break stuff or something.

In this Protip, Josh explains how to snag three WoW achievements with the help of furry little nature friends. How you proceed just depends on how thirsty you are for the blood of the innocent…so, how many critters do you want to kill?

Kill a few critters…

KILL ALL OF THE CRITTERS!

But I love the critters… :(

Congratulations to Andre Mitchell, Christian James Watson, Kristoffer Harrington, Andrew Gabriel and Richard Jones for allowing their names to be sullied in the pursuit of free kaboodle. They shall be rewarded with randomly-selected prize packs, which include a Diablo III Book of Cain book, a Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic art book, a TOR-tastic mouse and headset from Razer, and a 1/7th-scale Star Wars Senate Guard Statue. Thankfully, the only real losers were the ones on mic. Haven’t listened to ELECTROCATFANTASTIC yet? Do so NOW! Be sure to check your Twitter DMs and Facebook messages, you lucky winrars.

In the PC gamer office, we took advantage of a wiki-TOR-and-/r/gaming/-less day to plan our living room gaming PCs. Elsewhere on the internet, details crept out about the future of World of Warcraft, CCP’s World of Darkness MMO, and EVE Online. Publishers demanding payment from pirates were uncovered by TorrentFreak, and one of the designers behind Skyrim took us through procedural game narrative. All this and more in today’s roundup:

• Shane Liesegang, game designer at Bethesda, talks about procedural narrative in games.
• TorrentFreak report that Square Enix, Codemasters and others are demanding payment from alleged pirates.
• Edge on Raspberry Pi, the tiny computer designed to get kids into programming.
• Videogamer.com interview World of Warcraft quest designer Dave Kosak about the end of Cataclysm and the game’s future.
• GamerLive.tv interview CCP’s Chris McDonough about the World of Darkness MMO and the influence of Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines.
• CCP post the minutes of EVE’s latest CSM meeting.
• Kotaku shows off pixel artist Pieceoftoast’s lovely take on Mass Effect, Portal, Deus Ex and BioShock.
• Rich Stanton attempts to end the ‘are games art?’ debate over on Eurogamer.
• EA make their own claim for games being art with The Sims 3 Showtime Katy Perry Collector’s Edition trailer.

 
What protest did you stage today, readers?

Also, THE TOP 100 IS HERE. Yes, the sexiest list of the year has arrived, in which we deliver our infallible and entirely correct list of the 100 best PC games in the world right now. You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. You’ll want to write a strongly worded letter of disagreement. You can argue the case for your favourite games in the top 100 discussion happening on our forums right now.

The issue hits shops today and subscribers should have had it for about a week. It’s also available online, through Zinio and through the Apple Newsstand. Read on to find out what else lies behind the beard.

In our previews section this month, Tom Francis takes to the lanes in Dota 2, Chris Thursten takes to the planes in X-Plane 10, then takes the reins in Warlock: Master of the Arcane. Tom takes the blame in Faster Than Light and Chris uses hammers to maim in Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, winning the previews section by a score of 3 -2. Elsewhere, Will Porter takes a look at Mass Effect 3 and Henry Winchester checks out Sniper Elite V2.

The reviews section doesn’t rhyme quite as well as the previews section this month, but it’s full of exciting games. Reviewed inside: Star Wars: The Old Republic, Batman: Arkham City, Battlefield 3: Back to Karkand, Trine 2, APB Reloaded, Anno 2070, English Country Tune, Ignite, Sonic Generations, Serious Sam 3: BFE, Magicka: The Stars are Left, Rochard, InMomentum, Cave Story+, Fractal: Make Blooms not War, Grotesque Tactics 2: Dungeons and Donuts, Waves, Dead Island: Bloodbath Arena and For The Awesome.

In Extra Life we recount some of the funniest and strangest things that have happened to us in games recently. Rich McCormick becomes an accidental cannibal in Skyrim, Henry is way ahead of the criminals in LA Noire, Tom F dons a jetpack in Spelunky and Chris bribes all the space pirates he can throw money at in Sins of a Solar Empire.

Then there’s our top ten free downloads section, in which we gather together some great Shogun 2 mods and go slightly insane playing Worry of Newport. Tom Senior returns to Terraria to explore the huge 1.1 patch in Update, and Duncan Geere discovers how Bioshock was made in a four page feature we decided to call “The Making of Bioshock.”

There’s tons more inside, like Adam’s hardware report on a way to use SSDs to speed up your system, our round-up of the best heatsinks for your CPU and our special report on this year’s most promising racing sims. If you subscribe you’ll get each issue, cheaper, earlier, and clad in our cover-line free cover (as seen above). You can also buy it online, through Zinio, or Apple Newsstand. Enjoy the issue!

The Mass Effect 3 demo won’t bring you true love on February 14, but it will unlock extra armour pieces in Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, which is almost as good. The full game will be released across the milky way on March 6.

It’s worth playing right now, though. They’ve already added new items, crafting recipes and spells. New mounts and horse armour are in the works and the one of the modders behind the excellent Midas Magic is on board to add some even more powerful spells.

You can read the full list of additions and download the current version of Tytanis from the Skyrim Nexus page. Tytanis is just one of the projects included in our round-up of 25 best Skyrim mods, but it’s being updated all the time. Keep an eye on the Tytanis site for more info.

The show is being written by Rockne S. O’Bannon, creator of Alien Nation and Farscape. Defiance leading man Grant Bowler also appeared in an episode of Farscape in 1999. Coincidence? Probably. Bowling’s better known as Connor Owens in Ugly Betty and Cooter in True Blood. Later this year, he’s set to appear as Jesus Christ in City of Gardens. So there you go. Sign up for Defiance, meet Jesus. Sort of.

The X51 certainly looks the part. Its all corners and curves with a slot loading DVD drive and Alienware’s trademark customisably LED lighting. Prices start at £699 (no US price has been confirmed yet) though, so what’s inside, and is it powerful enough to take on its bigger brethren?

Small is clearly the new backlit alien head for the company, which brought out an 11inch laptop last year as an alternative to its usual unportable portables. With a rather slicker and (relatively) unassuming design, the X51 looks like it wants a home near a TV or a neat desk space.

There’s three different specs currently available – £699, £849 and £949 – with a choice of Core i3, i5 or i7 processor accordingly. Each has a terabyte hard drive, no SSD and 4GB or 8GB or RAM. You get an Alienware keyboard as part of the bundle, but no monitor or mouse.

So long as it runs quietly – which we’ll have to wait to test it to see – it’s a promising little box for a cramped desktop or to sit beside the TV.

The problem as far as I can see is that the X51 comes with either NVIDIA’s GeForce GT 545 graphics in the cheaper model, or GTX 555 in the top end specs. The GPU is mounted in parallel with the motherboard. All components can be upgraded too. The GTX 555 is an OEM only card featuring 288 CUDA cores and a clockspeed of 776MHz. It’s not a terrible card, and should be fine for single monitor gaming at medium settings, but it is the weakest part of the set up. The 545 has just 144 cores and is clocked at 870MHz, so is less powerful still.

To be fair to Alienware, it’s a lot better than the Radeon HD 6630M found in a similarly priced Mac Mini,

As luck would have it, I’m in the middle of putting together a similar type of system for a feature next issue. There is a price premium attached to smaller motherboards and specialist power supplies still, but I reckon you could build a slightly more powerful similar system (including operating system) for about £150 less. I’ll be pitting the two against each other as soon as I get hold of the X51.

Here’s the problem: the sharing of game footage and screenshots probably counts as copyright infringement.

That’s just the first of many problems we have with the pair of bills passing through the US Congress and the Senate right now. SOPA (The Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (The Protect IP Act) aim to legislate against websites facilitating piracy outside the US. But the language within them is so clumsily worded, the measures so absurdly positioned that they make victims of customers, gamers, the media, game developers and publishers and the technical fabric of the internet, without offering much hope of tackling piracy.

PC Gamer has some experience of this. Legal teams working for game publishers and developers have issued takedown notices to us for hosting trailers and footage of their games, as we attempt to promote their work. Under the current terms of SOPA, their infringement notices would probably have resulted in PC Gamer being delisted from search engines and advertising network and payment providers being forced to sever business relationships.

PC Gamer objects to SOPA and PIPA in the strongest possible terms, and we’re terrified of the effect of what the legislation could have on our business and the wider PC gaming community.

Under SOPA, Macho Man Randy Savage may never invade Tamriel again. We must not let this legislation pass.

The first official Dear Esther trailer has appeared on the Dear Esther site, celebrating its four IGF award nominations and upcoming release on Steam on February 14. It offers a short but haunting glimpse of the island that you explore for the duration of the game. As you move over its hills and through its caves, you’ll uncover scraps of narration that resonate with the environment, resulting in an interactive letter of “love, loss, guilt and redemption.” It also looks as though it’s going to be the most beautiful thing ever made with the Source Engine.

SWTOR’s shiny, soon-to-be-new tweaks may be hogging the spotlight, but it’s not the only space-faring MMO gearing up for a change of pace. Starting today, Star Trek Online is boldly going where, well, pretty much every other MMO has gone before: into the realm of free-to-play. The game now employees a two-tier pricing system, with Silver providing a solid (and free) starting point, while Gold adds all sorts of bells and whistles – including user-created content tools, a larger inventory, and more character slots – for a $15 monthly fee.

Cryptic’s released the above trailer to celebrate your space piggy bank’s new lease on life. Watch it and revel in slight confusion as generic male Shepard from Mass Effect rises through Starfleet ranks. Or maybe it’s his twin cousin. Regardless, mankind may have the technology to live among the stars, but has it lost sight of what matters most: distinctive hairstyles?