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Square Enix has announced the release date for Final Fantasy 14's latest patch. Titled "Buried Memory", patch 6.2 will arrive in less than a fortnight on August 23rd.
It's a fair old chunk of update too. For starters, it includes a whole new feature, the "Island Sanctuary". This is a new type of casual solo experience where players can retreat to a tropical island idyll, building and tailoring their own personal farm. Here, you can gather resources, construct different facilities, and tend to various creatures. No prior crafting or gathering experience is required to play Island Sanctuary either. It's basically an isolated chillout space separated from the rest of the game.
The patch also continues the main story with new quests, and expands the side story Tataru's Grand Endeavour. There's a new Dungeon in the form of the Fell Court of Troia, and a new eight-player raid called "Pandæmonium: Abyssos" which will transport players to the dungeon of Lahabria.
You can find out everything that's coming with 6.2 on FF14's special Buried Memory website. The release date announcement was accompanied by a new trailer, which you can view above. I don't play FF14, so frankly it's all gibberish to me. But it's very pretty and spectacular gibberish, and I like those wee dancing mouse/rabbit things.
Square Enix has also detailed the features coming with the next update, Patch 6.25. This includes much of what you'd expect like new main and side quests, new daily quests, and new weapon enhancement quests that let players obtain and enhance Manderville Weapons. But it also includes an ultra-hard type of dungeon known as Criterion Dungeons, which Mollie wrote about in detail here.
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Riot games has announced a major preseason update to League of Legends, dedicated specifically to making the art of jungling easier and more accessible.
Jungling, for those out of the loop, is the act of killing neutral monsters in League's "jungle" area, which lies outside of the competitive lanes, in order to maximise resource collection throughout a match. One of a team's five players usually adopts the role of jungler. Alongside bashing monsters for loot, they can also act in a supporting role to teammates occupying specific lanes.
Jungling is an important job, but it's also a lot to handle, and generally only undertaken by experienced players. This latest update aims to change that, bringing several optimisations and alterations geared towards making the jungle a bit less foreboding.
The lynchpin of these changes involves making a wider range of champions viable for the role of jungler. There are multiple layers to this. First, Riot is adjusting the way camps leash, including their ranges and reset rules. Riot doesn't specify exactly what these changes are, but stated in a press release that "even for experienced players the rules are finicky and sometimes your champion feels useless because they can't abuse these rules as well as other champs."
Other tweaks include making the meta more flexible, and rewarding skills across the entire roster of champs, not just those that are already primed for clearing the jungle. Riot admits that "some amount of the skill expression" in clearing the jungle will be lost as a consequence, but that this means the studio can "move some of the jungle's complexity and skill away from clear optimization toward other places."
Communication is another area Riot is tinkering with to improve the jungling experience, with plans to give players "more tools" to facilitate communication with your team, helping them point their team to objectives and broadcast ganks to their teammates.
Finally, Riot is looking to make changes to some jungle items, and perhaps most notably of all, introduce pets. These friendly critters will help junglers perform tasks like clearing and fighting epic monsters. Pets can also be fed and raised over time, growing until they can reciprocally "empower" your champ.
Riot stresses that the final design of pets hasn't been locked in yet. But you can get an idea of what they might look like below:
(Image credit: Riot Games)
The changes to the jungle, jungling, and anything else related to virtual tropical rainforests go out today. Check out the video at the top of the article for more details about Riot's plans for life outside the lanes.
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The Spider-Man spectrographs aren't quite as tough as their circuit puzzle cousins, but you'll still spend a fair bit of time in the remaster pondering them for the right solution. Some are definitely easier than others, but you can expect these line-based challenges to get harder as you work your way through the main story. Peter Parker wouldn't be much of a nerd if he couldn't match a few lines after all.
The puzzles themselves are straightforward: you place segments with lines on them in order to recreate a series of patterns. Where they get harder is when you have to start making lines disappear, double them up, and overlay ever-more segments to reproduce each pattern.
Lucky for you, I've been through every Spider-Man spectrograph. Below are the solutions for those you have to solve as part of various quests, and the ten that unlock throughout the game in Octavius Labs. These are a great way to get Research Tokens, so well worth completing if you get chance. Don't forget you can cycle through our Octavius Labs gallery in order to see all ten of those spectrographs or click the corner of any image to expand it.
My OTHER Other Job spectrograph solution
(Image credit: Insomniac Games)There is one spectrograph to complete during the My OTHER Other Job quest.
Picking Up the Trail spectrograph solution
(Image credit: Insomniac Games)There is one spectrograph to complete during the Picking Up the Trail quest.
Spider-Men spectrograph solution
(Image credit: Insomniac Games)There is one spectrograph to complete during the Spider-Men sidequest.
Tombstone: What's He Building in There spectrograph solution
(Image credit: Insomniac Games)There is one spectrograph to complete during the Tombstone: What's He Building in There sidequest.
Streets of Poison spectrograph solution
(Image credit: Insomniac Games)There is one spectrograph to complete during the Streets of Poison quest.
Octavius Labs spectrograph solutions
Image 1 of 10Material Candidate Test: L37 (Image credit: Insomniac Games)Image 2 of 10Material Candidate Test: X23 (Image credit: Insomniac Games)Image 3 of 10Material Candidate Test: B62 (Image credit: Insomniac Games)Image 4 of 10Material Candidate Test: V13 (Image credit: Insomniac Games)Image 5 of 10Material Candidate Test: C06 (Image credit: Insomniac Games)Image 6 of 10Material Candidate Test: V77 (Image credit: Insomniac Games)Image 7 of 10Material Candidate Test: S12 (Image credit: Insomniac Games)Image 8 of 10Material Candidate Test: R80 (Image credit: Insomniac Games)Image 9 of 10Material Candidate Test: X09 (Image credit: Insomniac Games)Image 10 of 10Material Candidate Test: P12 (Image credit: Insomniac Games)There are ten Spider-Man spectrographs to complete in the Octavius Labs, and more will unlock every time you have to return there during the main story. They reward you with XP and Research Tokens, as well as a bonus if you finish all ten.
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Finding the Spider-Man Secret Photo Ops locations is no small feat, especially when there are no map markers to indicate where any of them are. These 50 sites are scattered across New York, and you'll have to snap a photo of each one if you want to unlock the ESU suit, which is basically Spider-Man wearing a t-shirt and jeans with his mask on.
There is a way to reveal the Secret Photo Ops yourself with a suit mod, but it requires getting to level 50, and that's a lot of work. Rather than grinding that much XP, you might just want to explore New York at the start of the game and get a fun suit. In this guide, I've included the Spider-Man Secret Photo Ops locations for each district, showing where to find each, and what you need to take a picture of.
You'll have to progress a little way into the story in order to unlock the phone camera, but once you do, you can explore New York freely and snap all 50 secret spots. Don't forget that you can cycle through each of the galleries below to see every specific location up close and what you need to photograph.
Financial District Secret Photo Ops
Image 1 of 9Secret Photo Ops in the Financial District (Image credit: Insomniac Games)Image 2 of 9#1 (Image credit: Insomniac Games)Image 3 of 9#2 (Image credit: Insomniac Games)Image 4 of 9#3 (Image credit: Insomniac Games)Image 5 of 9#4 (Image credit: Insomniac Games)Image 6 of 9#5 (Image credit: Insomniac Games)Image 7 of 9#6 (Image credit: Insomniac Games)Image 8 of 9#7 (Image credit: Insomniac Games)Image 9 of 9#8 (Image credit: Insomniac Games)1. A gold leprechaun on the upper right hand corner of a brick building
2. A statue of a woman in a tree-filled square.
3. The Auerbach movie theater sign.
4. Caged tennis courts by the pier.
5. A wire sculpture overlooking the bay.
6. A flower mural on the outside of a coffee shop.
7. The Statue of Liberty in the distance.
8. A brass bulldog statue in a city square.
Chinatown Secret Photo Ops
Image 1 of 9Secret Photo Ops in Chinatown (Image credit: Insomniac Games)Image 2 of 9#1 (Image credit: Insomniac Games)Image 3 of 9#2 (Image credit: Insomniac Games)Image 4 of 9#3 (Image credit: Insomniac Games)Image 5 of 9#4 (Image credit: Insomniac Games)Image 6 of 9#5 (Image credit: Insomniac Games)Image 7 of 9#6 (Image credit: Insomniac Games)Image 8 of 9#7 (Image credit: Insomniac Games)Image 9 of 9#8 (Image credit: Insomniac Games)1. Statue of a woman surrounded by flowers outside a clinic.
2. First and Last Day movie billboard on a street corner.
3. A big oval shaped pond in a square.
4. The sign for Leo's pizzeria.
5. A decorative stone gate that leads onto the road bridge.
6. Graffiti of a Rottweiler on a concrete floor.
7. The Chinatown police precinct sign.
8. A graffiti mural of the Rhino.
Greenwich Secret Photo Ops
Image 1 of 4Secret Photo Ops in Greenwich (Image credit: Insomniac Games)Image 2 of 4#1 (Image credit: Insomniac Games)Image 3 of 4#2 (Image credit: Insomniac Games)Image 4 of 4#3 (Image credit: Insomniac Games)1. A mural of J. Jonah Jameson as a baby.
2. A pride flag on the side of a building by a fire escape.
3. New York Modern Art gallery.
Midtown Secret Photo Ops
Image 1 of 4Secret Photo Ops in Midtown (Image credit: Insomniac Games)Image 2 of 4#1 (Image credit: Insomniac Games)Image 3 of 4#2 (Image credit: Insomniac Games)Image 4 of 4#3 (Image credit: Insomniac Games)1. A high-up clock face near the top of a skyscraper.
2. A single tree in a circular courtyard.
3. An ornate carp mural in an open city square.
Hell's Kitchen Secret Photo Ops
Image 1 of 5Secret Photo Ops in Hell's Kitchen (Image credit: Insomniac Games)Image 2 of 5#1 (Image credit: Insomniac Games)Image 3 of 5#2 (Image credit: Insomniac Games)Image 4 of 5#3 (Image credit: Insomniac Games)Image 5 of 5#4 (Image credit: Insomniac Games)1. A statue of a man in a square by the south-west entrance to Central Park.
2. A skull and crossbones pirate flag mural on the side of a building overlooking the water.
3. The Nelson and Murdock Associates office sign.
4. A Vulture graffiti mural overlooking a raised walkway.
Upper West Side Secret Photo Ops
Image 1 of 6Secret Photo Ops in the Upper West Side (Image credit: Insomniac Games)Image 2 of 6#1 (Image credit: Insomniac Games)Image 3 of 6#2 (Image credit: Insomniac Games)Image 4 of 6#3 (Image credit: Insomniac Games)Image 5 of 6#4 (Image credit: Insomniac Games)Image 6 of 6#5 (Image credit: Insomniac Games)1. The written Oscorp on the floor by the entrance to the Oscorp Security building.
2. One of two gazebos located in the park.
3. A statue of two birds taking flight.
4. A memorial tower with pillars around the outside.
5. A New York Fire Department fire engine in an alley.
Central Park Secret Photo Ops
Image 1 of 5Secret Photo Ops in Central Park (Image credit: Insomniac Games)Image 2 of 5#1 (Image credit: Insomniac Games)Image 3 of 5#2 (Image credit: Insomniac Games)Image 4 of 5#3 (Image credit: Insomniac Games)Image 5 of 5#4 (Image credit: Insomniac Games)1. An old bunker with a US flag waving above it.
2. A small castle by the water.
3. An engraved obelisk in a small open square.
4. A small covered jetty with some boats floating around it.
Upper East Side Secret Photo Ops
Image 1 of 5Secret Photo Ops in the Upper East Side (Image credit: Insomniac Games)Image 2 of 5#1 (Image credit: Insomniac Games)Image 3 of 5#2 (Image credit: Insomniac Games)Image 4 of 5#3 (Image credit: Insomniac Games)Image 5 of 5#4 (Image credit: Insomniac Games)1. Public library with banners for Greek Myths: Ancient Tales of Heroes exhibition.
2. A circular fountain surrounded by an eight-pointed star in an arcade below street level.
3. The Black Wing Tavern sign.
4. Latin American Museum on the north-eastern edge of Central Park.
Harlem Secret Photo Ops
Image 1 of 12Secret Photo Ops in Harlem (Image credit: Insomniac Games)Image 2 of 12#1 (Image credit: Insomniac Games)Image 3 of 12#2 (Image credit: Insomniac Games)Image 4 of 12#3 (Image credit: Insomniac Games)Image 5 of 12#4 (Image credit: Insomniac Games)Image 6 of 12#5 (Image credit: Insomniac Games)Image 7 of 12#6 (Image credit: Insomniac Games)Image 8 of 12#7 (Image credit: Insomniac Games)Image 9 of 12#8 (Image credit: Insomniac Games)Image 10 of 12#9 (Image credit: Insomniac Games)Image 11 of 12#10 (Image credit: Insomniac Games)Image 12 of 12#11 (Image credit: Insomniac Games)1. A pillared building with two eagle statues outside.
2. A graffiti mural on a wall by the side of the road.
3. A gravestone with a church-like spire.
4. Uncle Ben's grave.
5. The front of the church near the graveyard.
6. A graffiti mural of three Eyes of Providence on a rooftop.
7. Pale Horse Ridez motorcycle shop in a back alley.
8. The closed off Harlem Sanitarium.
9. A statue in a square by the north-west entrance into Central Park.
10. The Osborne for Mayor campaign office just off the main street.
11. A greenhouse in a tucked away city garden.
So what do I get?
(Image credit: Insomniac Games)If you take a picture of all 50 Secret Photo Ops you'll unlock the ESU, or Empire State University, suit. It features Peter wearing a t-shirt with the university's branding, a pair of jeans, and his mask. It's one of the most casual Spider-Man suits, aside from that one where he's pretty much naked, that is.
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Spider-Man suits are one of the most fun parts of the remastered game, letting you change your outfit while also getting all nostalgic about the web-swinging superhero's classic looks. There are a range of suits you can unlock throughout the game from the original Tobey Maguire movies, to Andrew Garfield, to the more recent Tom Holland ones.
To unlock most of the suits you just have to level up, which will reveal them in the menu for purchase. By completing activities around New York, you can gather all sorts of Spider-Man tokens that will let you buy them, though there are also some that unlock through story progression as well.
That said, there are four suits that you can only get by completing specific challenges in the game. In this Spider-Man suits guide, I'll explain what the four challenges you have to do are, and what the suit is that you get for each of them.
Spider-Man homemade suit
(Image credit: Insomniac Games)How to unlock: Collect all 55 backpacks around New York
Suit power: No power
If you're a Spider-Man fan, you'll probably recognise the Homemade Suit from the Captain America: Civil War and Spider-Man: Homecoming movies. This will become available after the Something Old, Something New quest where you find one of Peter's old backpacks. If you follow the icons and grab all 55 from around the city, you'll be able to wear this one. Each backpack also reveals a memento from Peter's past, so it's fun if you like your Spider-Man lore.
Spider-Man Undies suit
How to unlock: Complete the main and side missions, plus get 100% completion in every district
Suit power: Equaliser - Everyone goes down in one hit, including you
When playing the main story, you get to see this suit while fighting Scorpion, and it's pretty great. In order to get it, you'll have to achieve 100% completion of the game, finishing all of the main story and side missions, but also all of the district-based activities, like backpacks, landmarks, crimes, bases, challenges, pigeons, and research stations. It's a whole lot of stuff, but its Equaliser power is very strong if you're good at dodging, since it'll only take one hit to knock baddies down.
Spider-Man ESU Suit
(Image credit: Insomniac Games)How to unlock: Photograph all 50 Secret Photo Ops in New York
Suit power: No power
This one is a little more chill than the others, and just requires you to swing around New York taking photographs of 50 important locations. These Secret Photo Ops are different to Landmarks, and a lot of them are fun little lore tidbits, such as the Nelson and Murdock law offices, or the murals of the Vulture and J.Jonah Jameson. Once you've taken them all, the suit will unlock in the menu, giving a stylish Empire State University t-shirt and some jeans.
Spider-Man Dark Suit
(Image credit: Insomniac Games)How to unlock: Complete all Black Cat Stakeouts and find Black Cat's hideout
Suit power: No power
Once you complete the Stakeout main mission, twelve Black Cat stakeouts will appear across New York. Head to each and use the camera to locate the hidden cat toy, usually propping open a door or a window. They are quite easy to find since they glint, and there is usually some kind of cat related mural or a picture of Black Cat nearby. When you have all twelve, you'll be able to head to Black Cat's hideout in the Upper West Side and claim the Dark Suit for yourself.
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The Spider-Man circuit puzzles might seem easy at first, but placing wires and matching the right voltage gets harder as the game goes on. Just like the spectrographs, there are some you have to complete as part of the remaster's main story, but there are also a whole bunch to ponder over in Octavius Labs.
The core concept is pretty simple: place down wires to direct the flow of power while inserting positive and negative sections to make sure that the voltage is correct by the time it reaches the end. They are one of the earliest ways to grab Research Tokens in the game, which are vital for getting yourself new suits, and crafting certain mods to empower you while fending off baddies. They'll also reward you with a hefty dose of XP.
In this guide, I'll walk you through how to solve every Spider-Man circuit puzzle, including those in the main story (plus a side-quest one) and the ten in Octavius Labs that unlock as you progress through the game. I've labelled each below for the quest or task they correspond to, but don't forget you can cycle through each of the galleries to see every puzzle.
My OTHER Other Job circuit puzzle Solutions
Image 1 of 3Circuit puzzle #1 (Image credit: Insomniac Games)Image 2 of 3Circuit puzzle #2 (Image credit: Insomniac Games)Image 3 of 3Circuit puzzle #3 (Image credit: Insomniac Games)There are three circuit puzzles in the My OTHER Other Job quest.
A Fresh Start circuit puzzle solutions
(Image credit: Insomniac Games)There is one circuit puzzle in the A Fresh Start quest.
Strong Connections circuit puzzle solution
Image 1 of 3Circuit puzzle #1 (Image credit: Insomniac Games)Image 2 of 3Circuit puzzle #2 (Image credit: Insomniac Games)Image 3 of 3Circuit puzzle #3 (Image credit: Insomniac Games)There are three circuit puzzles in the Strong Connections quest.
Tombstone: On the Move circuit puzzle solution
(Image credit: Insomniac Games)There is one circuit puzzle in the Tombstone: On the Move sidequest.
Breakthrough circuit puzzle solution
Image 1 of 3Circuit puzzle #1 (Image credit: Insomniac Games)Image 2 of 3Circuit puzzle #2 (Image credit: Insomniac Games)Image 3 of 3Circuit puzzle #3 (Image credit: Insomniac Games)There are three circuit puzzles in the Breakthrough quest.
Octavius Labs circuit puzzle solutions
Image 1 of 10Actuator Precision #1 (Image credit: Insomniac Games)Image 2 of 10Minimal Grip Force #2 (Image credit: Insomniac Games)Image 3 of 10Spatial Mapping #3 (Image credit: Insomniac Games)Image 4 of 10Balance Compensation =4 (Image credit: Insomniac Games)Image 5 of 10Power Efficiency #5 (Image credit: Insomniac Games)Image 6 of 10Microcable Callibration #6 (Image credit: Insomniac Games)Image 7 of 10Machine Learning Sub-System #7 (Image credit: Insomniac Games)Image 8 of 10Stage One: Intracranial Interface #8 (Image credit: Insomniac Games)Image 9 of 10Stage Two: Intracranial Interface #9 (Image credit: Insomniac Games)Image 10 of 10Precision Targeting #10 (Image credit: Insomniac Games)There are ten circuit puzzles to solve in Octavius Labs and they'll gradually unlock throughout the main story each time you have to return. They reward XP and Research Tokens at specific milestones, as well as bonus tokens if you complete all ten.
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Spider-Man tokens are the most important currency in the game, split into six types you can earn by completing a wide range of activities as you swing your way around New York. Whether you want to hunt down collectible backpacks, snap some tourist shots, or beat the hell out of baddies, you can earn tokens for doing pretty much anything.
You can then use these to purchase one of many Spider-Man suits, craft mods with powerful abilities, or build gadgets that'll give you an edge in combat. If you're playing on one of the harder difficulties and don't want combat to be a slog, it's basically a given that you'll want to grab all kinds of tokens to buff your suit and give you more options when dealing with New York's criminal element.
In this Spider-Man tokens guide, I'll explain every way to get the game's six token types, so you can make whatever upgrades you want. It's worth noting that as you progress the main story, you'll unlock more ways to earn tokens, especially in regards to the research, base, crime, and challenge types.
How to get Backpack Tokens
(Image credit: Insomniac Games)These are some of the first tokens you'll come across in Spider-Man and are easy to gather. Once you complete the quest to help Yuri repair the surveillance tower and grab Peter's first backpack, markers will appear across New York showing their locations. Simply find one and grab it to earn a Backpack Token and a memento from Spider-Man's past. If you manage to collect all 55 of them you'll get the Homemade Suit from Spider-Man: Homecoming.
How to get Landmark Tokens
(Image credit: Insomniac Games)This is another Token type you unlock early on alongside the camera. To get one of these tokens, head to any Landmark indicated on your map by the little building symbol, bring up your camera, and take a picture of it. You'll know you're in the right spot as the camera's aiming reticule will say "subject in-frame". There are also Secret Photo Ops that require you to take pictures of 50 hidden spots across New York, but these unlock the ESU suit instead of awarding tokens.
How to get Research Tokens
(Image credit: Insomniac Games)Research Tokens come from four separate sources that unlock throughout the game. The first is to complete circuit puzzles and spectrographs in Octavius Labs. More of these unlock each time you return during the main quest, and if you complete all ten you get a Research Token bonus.
Once you complete the main quest "Harry's Passion Project", you'll also unlock Research Stations across the city marked with a microscope icon; complete the challenges located at each to get more tokens. Finally, once the "Helping Howard" side quest unlocks near F.E.A.S.T, you'll be able to find lost pigeons across New York, and each one you catch will net you Research Tokens.
How to get Base Tokens
(Image credit: Insomniac Games)You get Base Tokens by taking down criminal strongholds, fighting through wave after wave of enemies. You unlock your first early on when you visit the Fisk Construction Site as part of the main quest, but later you'll also be able to take down Demon Warehouses, as well as Sable Outposts and Prisoner Camps. Each base you complete gets you Base Tokens.
How to get Crime Tokens
(Image credit: Insomniac Games)Crime Tokens are the only ones that aren't marked on your main map. Instead you'll want to swing around the city scanning for nearby events. It shouldn't take long to spot a red triangle with an exclamation mark on your minimap or your hud; these are crimes. Head to the symbol and complete the objective to earn Crime Tokens. The crimes you'll encounter in New York range from kidnapping, to robbery, to vehicle theft, and more will unlock as the story progresses, such as Sable ambushes.
How to get Challenge Tokens
(Image credit: Insomniac Games)Challenge Tokens are the last to unlock in the game and you'll have to wait until after you find Standish in the main story. Yuri will contact you about a mysterious box on a rooftop in Hell's Kitchen. Head there to open it and the mysterious Taskmaster will set you challenges across the city. These range from stealth, to disarming bombs, to fighting enemies, and your performance will determine how many Challenge Tokens you earn. Later in the story, Taskmaster will contact you again and unlock even more challenges.
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Infinity Ward has revealed details about one of the new multiplayer maps coming to Modern Warfare 2. It's called 'Farm 18', and is inspired by the 'Shoot House' map from the 2019 reboot of Modern Warfare.
The info about Farm 18 was shared in a video interview with MW2's director of multiplayer design Geoff Smith, which you can view below:
Welcome to Farm 18. Location: [classified]. Shoothouse optional.#ModernWarfare2 #IntelDrops pic.twitter.com/nINQrQOqg0August 11, 2022
See more"Farm 18 came out of the idea of, we kinda liked the Shoot House facility map, so we decided to think of hidden training facilities. But it's also in a industrial cement factory, and the idea was what if we put a Shoot House-type situation in the middle," says Smith, adding. "If you want to play that crazy game, you can go to the centre and that action will find you. If you want to pull back and play a different way, it's still available to you." In other words, Farm 18 is essentially a map within a map, which sounds like a fun gimmick with some interesting play potential.
The video also features input from Senior Environment Artist Ashley Thundercliffe (what a name), who discusses the challenges of designing a realistic-looking map that also works from a play perspective. "If we go too dense with the foliage, we have people hide in the corners. If we don't go dense enough, we don't sell the narrative of the overgrowth."
I completely understand what Thundercliffe is getting at here. The designers want the map to feel believably dilapidated as players are wandering around. However, "sell the narrative of the overgrowth" is also an extremely amusing turn of phrase, and puts images in my mind of a luvvie potted plant demanding to know what its motivation is.
This isn't the first map for Modern Warfare 2 that Infinity Ward has shed light on. The studio previously revealed details about a Marina Grand Prix map, which will be playable as part of the rather complicated open beta coming next month. The full game is scheduled to launch on October 28, and looks set to be very much another Call of Duty game.
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Hello Samm1,
Welcome to UnityHQ Nolfseries Community. Please feel free to browse around and get to know the others. If you have any questions please don't hesitate to ask.
Samm1 joined on the 08/12/2022.
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Facebook has started showing me pictures of famous actors plastered with comments like: "Haters only hate because real hustlers remind them of everything they aren't." Photo of Keanu Reeves Wearing A Suit might have a point, but what can I say? Sometimes it's fun to be a hater.
Case in point: When I asked the PC Gamer team to tell me everything they hate about the games everyone loves, they wrote 6,000 words in just a few days, and then wrote more. They had so many burns that I'm not going to publish them all today. We'll give Grand Theft Auto 5, Divinity: Original Sin 2, Mass Effect, and a bunch of other games their due in part two of this roast.
In this edition, we hit Red Dead Redemption 2, The Witcher 3, Elden Ring, and 12 other beloved games of the past and present. These are games we've given awards to (or are likely to this year, in Elden Ring's case) and that have appeared in our yearly Top 100 PC games list, some over and over again. We've written about what makes them groundbreaking and delightful more times than any of us can remember. So it's about time we let them have it.
The things you know and love the most are by far the easiest things to tear down, and the criticism here is genuinely felt. Well, mostly. There are a few zingers that might be a little unfair, but like I told that photo of Keanu, sometimes it's fun to hate. Roasts aren't supposed to be entirely fair.
Here's everything that sucks about 15 of PC Gamer's favorite games:
The Witcher 3
Overused meme. (Image credit: CD Projekt Red)Jody Macgregor, Weekend Editor: Gwent doesn't make any sense. Why does everyone play a card game where half the cards have this one Witcher and all his mates/girlfriends on them? Geralt's not a celebrity, it's a major theme of the game that people treat him like garbage even though he risks his life for them. You could pretend the Gwent we play is an abstraction of the one Geralt and every single bloody village merchant plays, except Zoltan has a whole questline about needing three special rares, including Fringilla. It's clearly supposed to be the exact same game with the same cards, which is more immersion-breaking than the NPCs who quote Madonna. Oh, and it's a shameless rip-off of Condottiere.
CD Projekt Red cannot make a good combat system.
Rich Stanton, Senior Editor: The most overrated game of the last decade. CD Projekt Red cannot make a good combat system. I'm a Soullllsss man, da dah dah da da dah dah dahhh, which means I want terrifying precision combat against incredibly imaginative bosses. Geralt feels so fast-and-loose in the hands to me, and I hate running around in circles and doing his little dodge, the horse is the worst horse around, and all the pointless crafting and subsystems can do one.
Morgan Park, Staff Writer: I didn't actually love The Witcher 3 until I modded it. I hated that its side quests give you so little XP, so I scaled that up. I got fed up with following a dotted line on a minimap the entire game, so I installed a compass mod that sort-of-kind-of let me navigate using landmarks and verbal directions. Nowadays open-world games like Red Dead Redemption 2 and Ghost Recon Breakpoint actually design for that playstyle, which is cool. It speaks to Witcher 3's quality that I'm willing to mod around its weaknesses, but it has made me hesitant to replay it.
Lauren Aitken, Deputy Guides Editor: Not nearly enough full-frontal Geralt nudity.
Nier: Automata
(Image credit: PlatinumGames)Tyler Colp, Associate Editor: Nier: Automata is for weebs who haven't read a book or watched a movie. It's cliché sci-fi anime garbage that only feels like it means something because the music owns and Yoko Taro Googled "socialism". Nier: Replicant is a better game because it gives its characters space to be humans, which is pretty important in a game about what it means to be human.
Tyler Wilde, Executive Editor: Damn dude.
Baldur's Gate 2
(Image credit: Bioware)Jody Macgregor: Real-time with pause combat was a mistake.
So close to a real tabletop D&D experience, you'll have to know what THAC0 means!
Ted Litchfield, Associate Editor: Gotta echo Jody here. I love telling my mage to do something and having them blithely wander through the enemy front ranks soaking up damage for some reason. Oh yeah, by the way, the enemies you were fighting all inflict permanent status effects, sorry. Half your party is permadead and the other half has had all their status reduced by half, only way to reverse it is to go to a town on the other side of the map, failing all the timed companion quests you had foisted on you, or load up your save from five hours ago. At least the writing's good—oh wait, no, fan favorites like Minsc, Edwin, and Jan are just "lol so random." False alarm on the good writing
Andy Chalk, News Lead: So close to a real tabletop D&D experience, you'll have to know what THAC0 means! (No, seriously, you gotta know THAC0 or you're screwed. Fortunately it's all laid out in chapters 2, 3, and 11 of this concise 322-page instruction manual.)
And have you ever wondered where BioWare's weird sex hangup comes from? Because I've got eight fingers and two thumbs, and they're all pointing at Viconia.
Kentucky Route Zero
More like Kentucky Route Zzzzzzzz. (Image credit: Cardboard Computer)Robin Valentine, Print Editor: 'Americana' is just a fancy way of saying that Americans are so obsessed with their own country that they won't even stop going on about its endless boring stretches of nothing.
Tyler Wilde: And for seven years! That was way too long to wait for someone to finish telling me about a weird dream they had. I got into Roberto Bolaño novels instead.
Jody Macgregor: I loved the first three acts, but I was underwhelmed by the final two. They're quite different from each other, one a lengthy hypnagogic boat journey through the underworld and the other a brief denouement where you control a cat, but neither's a satisfying resolution of Kentucky Route Zero's themes. Seeing in the writing wiki that there were plans for act 5 to feature a return of the overworld and involve revisiting locations from act 3, none of which made it in, suggests there were some significant changes over the course of KRZ's protracted development. I can't help but wonder if the earlier plan would have made for a finale that tied things together. What we got doesn't. It feels like the product of people tired of their own creation, an obligation dispensed with because they'd already moved on.
Destiny 2
(Image credit: Bungie)Alan Dexter, Senior Hardware Editor: Imagine an MMO, but with guns, and grindier than life itself. No thanks.
Jacob Ridley, Senior Hardware Editor: There are many moments while playing Destiny 2 where I stop and think to myself: "Why? Why am I doing this?" I'm on step one of 58 in an exotic quest that will see me return over and over to the same locations I've seen a thousand times before. And then I keep going.
700 hours I'm never going to get back, most of that spent grinding for guns I'm not allowed to use anymore.
Lauren Aitken, Deputy Guides Editor: Destiny 2 is addictive, silly yet serious,and has a way richer storyline than an MMO FPS deserves, but for 'frell' sake, Bungie, fix your game.
Jody Macgregor: Someone told me Destiny 2 had a good introduction that got you up to speed if you hadn't played the first game. They were wrong.
Robin Valentine: The onboarding in Destiny 2 is so bad that even having already played the entire campaign on PS4 a year previous, I couldn't make any sense of its PC release.
Ted Litchfield, Associate Editor: 700 hours I'm never going to get back, most of that spent grinding for guns I'm not allowed to use anymore. I remember diving into this for the rich lore and compelling characters—like the rhino alien Byzantine empire guy who's kind of your friend—but found myself mostly just ticking boxes so I could have more fun bucks to get more boxes to tick. Big yawn.
Tyler Colp: Bungie tried its best to make the worst jump in videogames and still lost to Dark Souls.
Hades
(Image credit: Supergiant Games)Imogen Mellor, Features Producer: Daddy issues, the game.
Robin Valentine: Is it a dating sim disguised as a roguelike, or a roguelike disguised as a dating sim? Either way it generates too much fanart.
Morgan Park: Spelunky for game journalists.
Tyler Wilde: lol.
Spelunky
(Image credit: Mossmouth)Morgan Park: This is maybe the most vanilla, baby-'donkey' complaint ever brought against Spelunky, but it's too hard. I like that it's hard, but if it were like, 3% less hard, I probably would have gone down the rabbit hole of really finishing it.
Tyler Wilde: Spelunky was the most darling of PC Gamer's darlings for a while. I liked that we made it our Game of the Year in 2013 because people got mad about it, but I didn't play much of it myself. I don't like the Indiana Jones theme; it's boring and outdated (gee whiz, is that lava?). Maybe that's just an excuse to avoid admitting that I don't actually enjoy Spelunky-like difficulty, and just like to imagine that I do. I should try Hades.
Red Dead Redemption 2
(Image credit: Rockstar)Morgan Park: The worst thing about Red Dead 2 is that it's actually two games competing with each other. Sometimes, it's an emergent cowboy life sim about camping, brushing horses, fishing, terrorizing, or protecting the world in any way you want. Other times, its a linear, strictly-guided cowboy Call of Duty game that wants you to play it a certain way. Gallop off the beaten path in a story mission, as you're encouraged to in the open world, and a failure screen follows. Many of its missions, though they tell an interesting story, are total misfires of design.
Most frustratingly slow walk in a videogame.
Tyler Wilde: Sounds like GTA in that respect. I played Red Dead Online for a bit, and it was fun to goof off (we piled onto horses and ran them into each other so that we all went flying into a creek), but we were frequently besieged by weirdo sharpshooters and cheaters. Another classic Rockstar game experience.
Robin Valentine: You can't trust a studio that makes developers crunch for years for the sake of having perfectly realistic horse bollocks.
Sean Martin, Guides Writer: It's also hard to trust Arthur, the most loveable cowpoke around, when he's pondering whether he's a good man after shooting like fifty people in the face.
Lauren Aitken: How can a game have such brilliant storytelling, a beautifully crafted world and amazing voice acting, yet handle like absolute dogshit?
Jacob Ridley: It wins the award for the most frustratingly slow walk in a videogame.
Tyler Colp: I thought playing cowboy was something my racist grandparents did.
Portal 2
(Image credit: Valve)Tyler Colp: The original Portal is great, but Portal 2 felt like it was trying to hit a word count for a college essay, repeating and double-spacing every point the first game already made.
Tyler Wilde: Damn dude.
Jody Macgregor: There's a puzzle in the first Portal where you're supposed to trick a rocket turret into blasting open a tube that transports cubes. Then you take out a cube and climb on top of it to reach a vent. However, you can also stack chairs from the nearby offices to make a jank-'donkey' ladder to reach that vent instead. It's one of several puzzles in Portal you can brute-force, and even when you're doing what the designers intended you often feel like you're inventing a solution. Whenever I tried something offbeat like that in Portal 2, it didn't work. I had to figure out the real answer instead, which was inevitably just putting portals or gel on the clearly marked areas you were allowed to put portals or gel on.
Imogen Mellor: My biggest frustration with Portal 2 is that after avoiding it for 10 years so I could replay it fresh, I still knew the solution to every puzzle. The Portal games are best the first time you play them and then they're just stuck in your head forever. One of the least replayable experiences in gaming.
Morgan Park: I tried to replay Portal 2 recently and lost steam exactly where I always do: after the first good batch of puzzles, but before I get punted down to the basement to see the best stuff. There's a stretch there puzzling with GLaDOS where things feel just slightly too samey. That's just about the meanest thing I can say about one of the best games ever.
Tyler Wilde: I remember I got stuck for like an hour at one part because I didn't notice a tiny sliver of portal-surface that was really hard to see. Pretty frustrating, but I guess it couldn't have been that frustrating, because I gave it a 5/5 in a review I wrote at the time. In hindsight, I'm not as charmed today as I was then by a guy named Cave Johnson saying ridiculous things in a serious voice. I'm reminded of how well Zork: The Grand Inquisitor did a similar tone back in 1997. It doesn't overdo it by tweeting the whole draft folder, the way we're bombarded with Cave gags. Portal 2's extended lemon bit isn't nearly as funny as Erick Avari simply yelling "I am the boss of you." I guess I just really like this one Zork game and I don't get why everyone else didn't play it, and I'm using this as an excuse to talk about that. 5/5 contribution.
BioShock
(Image credit: 2K)Andy Chalk: Here's the real shock: I already played a better version of this in 1999.
Jody Macgregor: Exactly. It's System Shock 2 For Dummies with bolted-on Big Moral Choices and a bad twist. I spent every other minute trying to deviate from the linear path. I'm supposed to believe I was conditioned into unquestioning obedience while I was rubbing up against every single dead end in Rapture?
Robin Valentine: "Right, we've pulled off a twist that will be talked about for years. Shall we just end it there?"
"Nah, I reckon let's tack on another 5 hours and make you fight a big naked man."
Dragon Age: Origins
(Image credit: EA)Lauren Morton: Origins is still the golden child of this series despite its standard-issue fantasy story about pals in plate mail befriending elves and dwarves, killing hordes of not-orcs, and slaying a dragon at the end. And somehow BioWare got a reputation for beloved party member romances from a system that boils down to googling "Morrigan gift guide" and handing her assorted necklaces until she invites you into her tent for a bit of cutscene smooching.
...one of the most ludicrous tonal stumbles in gaming history.
Jody Macgregor: I liked the idea of the origin stories, where you play a different prologue depending what race/class combo you pick, but in practice they just make getting round-pegged into the square hole of the plot more obnoxious. I've got a whole dead family to avenge, I don't care about the Grey Wardens and their nonsense. The one origin story that segues smoothly into the main questline is the mage one, beginning a trend later Dragon Age games would continue where the plot turns out to hinge on the conflict between mages and templars and if you're not one of them then it's all a bit irrelevant.
Robin Valentine: Your party standing around making light-hearted quips in dialogue scenes while visibly drenched in blood from the game's over-exuberant combat gore effects is one of the most ludicrous tonal stumbles in gaming history.
Tyler Colp: The entire cast in Dragon Age: Origins looks like they're made out of clay.
Hitman 3
(Image credit: IO Interactive)Lauren Morton: Bold of IO Interactive to spend decades developing a stealth series built on disguises that rarely cover up the highly identifiable tattoo on the back of Agent 47's head.
Phil Savage, UK Editor-in-Chief: IO Interactive: Create a trilogy praised for its freedom of approach and replayability, and fill it full of expansive, intricate levels that are a joy to explore and understand.
Also IO Interactive: End that trilogy on a train, the most linear of possible settings.
Morgan Park: The only stealth trilogy where keeping up with its release strategy was its own mission. Episodic, then all at once, then all at once with Epic, then on Steam with an online tool to prove that you own all the other games. Hard to master and easy to fail, like any good Hitman level.
Disco Elysium
(Image credit: ZA/UM)Evan Lahti, Global Editor-in-Chief: It's quite a small game, actually. Spatially, I mean. It's basically two street corners, an empty industrial area, some small apartments, and a little island.
A point-and-click adventure with too many words masquerading as a CRPG.
Imogen Mellor: Sure, it's probably the best piece of writing gaming has ever seen, but does it need to shove that down your throat so much so that even saying hello to a post box feels like a learning moment? I think not.
Robin Valentine: This is my mum's favourite videogame, so it can't be as punk and radical as it thinks it is, can it?
Ted Litchfield: A point-and-click adventure with too many words masquerading as a CRPG. Didn't build your character right? Don't do drugs (the game's edgy way of getting a stat boost), just quicksave and reload until you finally hit the roll to fish the bullet out of some guy's head or punch the racist dock worker or whatever—that is if you don't mind clicking through a wall of purple prose each attempt! A knock off of Planescape Torment (another overhyped reading simulator) with even greater political and literary pretensions. (Oh my god that hurt so much I can't believe I said that, this is my favorite game, I think I'm gonna throw up.)
Half-Life 2
(Image credit: Valve)Chris Livingston: So, how should we end our ground-breaking game? I dunno… make the player throw balls at a metal cage on a roof? Perfect!
Phil Savage: A victim of how new and novel physics engines felt in the early 2000s. In this, ostensibly one of the greatest games ever made, there is a whole boring section where you have to move wooden palettes along a beach in order to progress without being attacked by bugs.
Tyler Wilde: I respect that Valve doesn't try to bend movie scripts into videogame shapes. It designs great game narratives, but let's be real: The Half-Life saga is a mid-tier Netflix show that would rightfully get canceled after a season. Characters like 'spooky suit man' and 'woman who is friendly toward you' were perhaps more lauded than they deserved to be.
Morgan Park: A fun snapshot of a time when videogame guns sounded like cereal pouring into a bowl.
Elden Ring
(Image credit: FromSoftware)I could have spent these 150 hours playing a game for adults with a compelling world, story, and gameplay, like FIFA 21 by Electronic Arts.
Andy Chalk: Nonsensical lore! Impenetrable multiplayer! Overbearing soundtrack! A UI so bad you'll believe it was created in a lab by a team of malicious halfwits! That's right, it's Elden Ring: Game of the year 2022!
Morgan Park: Elden Ring is a fitting finale to the Souls series: A game so overstuffed with Content that I never want to sit at a bonfire again.
Alan Dexter: I'd rather spend another 200 hours in Cyberpunk 2077 than another second in this frustrating mess of a port. What's that? I'm playing with a keyboard and mouse and deserve everything I get? Okay.
Ted Litchfield: "Oh there's so much freedom, so many weapons, you can create any kind of character." Yeah, you can, and everybody just used katanas. Moonveil Moonveil Moonveil. Run errands for the anime witch lady, befriend then kill the hot wolf-man, it's all very profound and meaningful, sure. I could have spent these 150 hours playing a game for adults with a compelling world, story, and gameplay, like FIFA 21 by Electronic Arts.
Tyler Colp: The game is way too big, and digging into the story leaves you with a lot of unsatisfying loose ends. It's like a big bucket of ideas that could be something, but amounts to a cool vibe.
Tyler Wilde: Must have been a really cool vibe given your 90%, though.
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Wildermyth is a game about creating legends, heroes whose stories of bravery and valour are passed down through generations. But the thing about legends is the people behind them are often, for want of a better word, pricks. You only need look at history for countless examples of this. Richard the Lionheart? Utter shambles of a king. Christopher Columbus? So unbearably awful that his medieval contemporaries thought he was a jeb. Julius Caesar? Genuinely one of the most destructive human beings to have ever lived, and he bragged about it.
So I want to create some legends who are, if not exactly worthy of the title, at least accurately represent the type of malignant personality that gets warped into a role model by time and the patriarchy. The kinds of narcissists who genuinely believe that only they can save the world, who make all the worst, most reckless decisions and yet somehow come up smelling of roses. I want to make a party of asinine, self-absorbed jerks, and run them through Wildermyth's picturesque fantasy world like a stag party lost on the local golf course.
(Image credit: Worldwalker Games)Wild things
The rules1. Characters always make the most reckless narrative decisions.
2. Consequences must be lived with.
3. Must try to complete the quest.To do this, we're kicking off with the starting campaign, the Age of Ulstryx, and creating three brand new characters—a female warrior named Illa Broadmill, a male hunter called Claynoc Bottlepurse, and a male Mystic ominously named Grifius Kylling. I let the randomiser pick names, appearance, gender, and so forth, but I tinker with their personalities to make them as unfit for heroism as possible. Illa, the troupe's melee vanguard, is a 'bookish coward', Claynoc is a 'snarky loner', and Grifius is a 'decisive greedwagon'. I don't know whether 'greedwagon' is a proper word, but if it isn't, it should be.
The Age of Ulstryx's opening sequence—which sees your party defending their village from a monster attack—also lets you establish specific relationships between characters. For Illa and Claynoc, I pick, 'rivals', as that's the closest I can get to them outright despising each other. I plan to do the same for Claynoc and Grifius, but the game won't let me. Instead, I choose 'romance' as I figure the potential fallout is greater than in a mere friendship.
The quest starts with a pleasing level of dysfunction. Illa bursts through Claynoc's door as fire rages through the village. "Honestly wished you would've skipped," Claynoc mutters as Illa shoves her way inside. The pair debate what to do about the whole 'monsters tearing up the village' scenario before Illa picks a weapon to defend herself with. There's a pitchfork, a pickaxe and a frying pan. Naturally, I pick the frying pan. "I can't believe I'm dying with you," Illa mumbles.
Luckily, the enemy at the door is a Roe, which is like a deer that's been crammed into a microwave. Illa and Claynoc dispatch it without too much trouble, then rendezvous with Grifius, who's exploring a ruined tower outside of town. "He's not mean," Claynoc says wistfully about his lover. "There's just this kind of unapologetic self-interest, with him... that makes me laugh." I give this relationship six months at best.
The pair meet up with Grifius outside the tower, who casually announces that he "does magic now". Because of this, they collectively decide that they're a company of heroes, calling themselves 'The Wolves of the Candle'. I don't know what that means. I don't think they know what that means. But it's a better choice than Grifius' suggestion, 'Father's Generation'.
(Image credit: Worldwalker Games)Myth takes
Ready for adventure, the Wolves of the Candle set out on their first quest. What could it be? Saving a local farmstead from bandits? Helping out a travelling merchant who encounters trouble on the road? Not quite. They head into a magical forest to cut down a sacred tree. This incurs the ire of a forest guardian, who's a bit like an Ent from The Lord of the Rings. Only in this version, Merry and Pippin chop it into firewood. Illa expresses some concerns about their complicity in fantasy deforestation, but by this point off-brand Treebeard is already on the logpile.
After their brush with nature, the Wolves head into town, where they recruit a new warrior named Frelwane. The game describes him as a 'hotheaded poet', which makes him sound like fantasy Eminem. Anyway, Frelwane quickly demonstrates his aptitude for adventuring life, when the group happens upon a trio of eerie, dancing spirits. Frelwane decides they should get involved, which Illa gently suggests might be a "profoundly bad idea". Undeterred, Frelwane joins in with the ghostly festivities. When he emerges, he has aged ten years. At least the group has a veteran among them now, although by far the most grizzled part of Frelwane is his brain.
Now led by Dim Shady, the group travels to the province of Ultol Dreamloom (ironically a nightmare to pronounce) where Claynoc, master of stealth that he is, gets captured by a group of peasants who plan to sacrifice him to 'The Great One'. His acquaintances deliberate how to free him. Reason with the cultists? Or rescue Claynoc by force? I think we've already established that the Wolves are not reasonable types. Force it is!
(Image credit: Worldwalker Games)The assault goes well, in that only one of the Wolves gets killed. As Frelwane and the others deal with the cultists, Grifius gets caught on the flank by the Great One, and is dealt a mortal blow. Knowing his fate is sealed, Grifius rushes the beast, doing as much damage as he can before the darkness takes him. It's a brave final act, although it would probably be more effective if he was armed with anything other than a wooden spoon. The remaining Wolves finish off the thoroughly spooned Great One, then bury their fallen comrade. Claynoc seems oddly unmoved by the death of his lover, although by this point it has been about six months, so perhaps the sheen has worn off.
The group process their grief over Grifius by immediately hiring a new member, a female Mystic named Sina Shy. Soon after, they achieve something vaguely heroic, defeating a Gorgon that has turned an entire village into stone. They're too late to save the villagers, of course, but at least they kill the beast. To celebrate, they decide to take ten years off, only returning to adventuring when Illa discovers the location of a powerful weapon called the Seaspear.
(Image credit: Worldwalker Games)Spear factor
The reason Illa is doing this research is likely down to her bookish nature, a trait which has been enhanced by the fact that she has spent the last decade slowly turning into a tree. It's all because of an enchanted splinter she caught hiking through the woods with Claynoc, a splinter she left untreated because the Wolves of the Candle think 'septicaemia' is the name of one of Ulstryx's minions. This isn't the only transformation the Wolves undergo, either. Soon after they've left home on their second outing, Frelwane demonstrates his knack for heedlessly rushing into things by deciding to shove his whole arm into a giant magical fire, turning him into a kind of half-flame elemental. I can't say I'm surprised, the game did warn me that he was rather hot-headed.
In most fantasy stories, the middle chapter is the most exciting, the point at which the heroes face their darkest moments, the challenges that will make or break them before the final battle. But The Wolves of the Candle are not like other adventuring parties, and so little happens in their second act you'd think it was commissioned by Prime TV. The most interesting occurrence is that they recruit another new member, a young hunter named Marti Burly. Marti's primary characteristic is that he's a huge goofball, as demonstrated when he describes killing a particularly squishy kind of monster as "like popping a zit".
The racoon scuttles right into the middle of the party, and detonates.
The party retrieves the Seaspear with little incident, whereupon they take another decade off to recover from all that sitting around the campfire picking their teeth with the bones of their enemies. Illa's transformation into a tree continues, while Frelwane's fiery infection spreads to both arms. This leaves both my warriors unable to wield conventional weapons. On the plus side, the party is joined by Frelwane's now-adult son, Borwane. Unlike Frelwane, Borwane is a Mystic, and given his father's condition, presumably has a phobia of hugs.
Now six members strong, there's little that can trouble the Wolves of the Candle. So when a mysterious storm begins to drown the lands in floodwater, they decide to split into two groups. Young Borwane leads Marti and Sina to discover a way to stop the flooding, while Frelwane, Illa, and Claynoc head off to, uh, scout distant lands. It may look like they're jollying off on holiday while letting the kids do all the hard work, but it's definitely not like that.
Nonetheless, things initially look bright for the Pups of the Candle. As they travel toward their destination of Supplewade Cave, they're joined by a young female warrior called Hope. In a region known as Scantkiss Brooks, they bravely leap to the defence of a lone woman being attacked by Gorgons. By which I mean, they use her as bait while they prepare to ambush the beasts "We should use people as distractions more often!" says Hope, revealing herself to be a natural Wolf.
Anyway, the battle is a disaster. The ambush goes well, and the party brings down a couple of nasty monsters. But they overlook a small, mutant racoon that has been hexed by another monster with a spell that makes it explosive. The racoon scuttles right into the middle of the party, and detonates. Hope is killed outright, while Marti loses a leg to the blast. Borwane and Sina escape with comparatively minor wounds, but their time as a solo party is over before it has ever got started.
(Image credit: Worldwalker Games)Howl to
At least their sacrifice wasn't in vain. The elder Wolves have made some remarkable discoveries while their younger companions were busy losing limbs and dying. That's right, they found some haunted cows! Yep, the most exciting thing to happen to Illa and Frelwane during this period is that they stumble upon a farmer whose cattle has been infected by Gorgon corruption. They can't even save the cows. They just kill them and leave the farmer feeling a bit sad. Claynoc, meanwhile, tries to steal a jewel embedded in some ancient statue, and ends up with a chunk of it stuck in his eye.
The two parties eventually rendezvous up at Supplewade Cave, and after what are undoubtedly some very awkward conversations, travel together to Dapplereign Altar, for the final confrontation with Ulstryx. Here, there's a lot of melancholy talk about last stands and noble deaths. "If I die today, I won't have to live in a world wrought by my defeat," proclaims Frelwane, while Illa sombrely states that, "Even in the relentless rain, it was a lovely place to die."
Ultimately though, the Wolves of the Candle end up kicking the 'frack' out of Ulstryx. They might be about as heroic as an island of rats fighting over the last coconut, but they have become extremely good at killing things. And in the end, that's how most legends get started. You don't need to be a hero, you just need to be the last bastard standing.
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MMOs always come bearing a lot of promises - endless adventures in an ever-evolving shared world, friendships and rivalries with other players and guilds, and the freedom to play in a way that suits you. But while the best games in the genre know how to keep those promises, their extraordinary scale and ambition often comes at the cost of looking all that good.
That's why looking at Tower of Fantasy makes you do a double take. The new MMORPG from Hotta Studio and Level Infinite has a crisp anime-inspired art style that looks stunning - like an epic open-world game had somehow fused with one of the great sci-fi anime series to depict a world that's both post on the brink of collapse and thriving with life - dangerous and gorgeous in equal measure.
Tower of Fantasy is set on the distant world of Aida, which humanity has populated after leaving the resource-stripped planet Earth behind. Things were going swimmingly on Aida, until again humans messed things up by trying to capture a comet called Mara in order to extract from it a precious energy source called Omnium. Having captured the comet via a building called the Omnium Tower, humanity became afflicted with Omnium radiation, which caused a planetwide disaster.
When will humanity learn?
(Image credit: Level Infinite)But it's not all bad, because Aida is filled with plunder and adventure for those intrepid enough to go out and find it. Sweeping vistas tease you with incredible scenery, distant airships, and mysterious faraway structures to venture towards, while metallic neon-soaked cities are filled with quests, mini-games, and opportunities to speed around showing off your cyber-bikes. Beware though, because wandering the wilderness and guarding the treasures of the world are all kinds of monstrosities that are sure to test even the most experienced MMO veterans.
The granular character creation system lets you tweak and craft a hero in your image, or in the image of the kind of character you want to roleplay. Long hair, short hair, three-tone highlights graduating from blue to pink, bunny ears or cat eyes - it's up to you, and it's all beautifully presented through the game's distinctive anime style.
Creating a character is one thing, but once you're out in the world you'll need to call on powerful Simulacra to aid you in battle. When you get a new weapon, you not only get the weapon but automatically summon a legendary hero to wield it for you. Summon these heroes to battle, master their skill sets, and use them to fight the dangers of the world. With a robust PvP system as well as PvE dungeons and raids, those dangers can take many forms.
(Image credit: Level Infinite)The Simulacra are a varied bunch: Echo, for instance, is an orphaned woman who carries her formidable Thunderous Halberd into battle, King is a red-headed brawler and master of the flaming scythe, while Crow is an assassin skilled in piercing his foes with dual-wielded Thunderblades. Each of these characters is not just a champion, but a friend, and you'll need to learn which gifts they desire to build up their loyalty and make them more deadly in battle.
The fact that you're fighting with multiple characters makes for an incredible variety of moves and play styles, as you'll learn to seamlessly switch up between weapons (and characters) in the heat of battle. Unlike the often staid combat of other MMOs, Tower of Fantasy plays more in the tradition of high-octane MMOs, with an explosive pace that evokes legendary battles from anime series like Naruto Shippuden and Attack on Titan. It's all amazingly stylised.
Whether you're a lone wanderer or searching for companionship, whether you wish to explore the wilderness or get embroiled in the complex quests and storylines of Aida's people, Tower of Fantasy is a world that invites all types of players to participate. From PvE raids to high-stakes PvP warfare, this looks set to be a world of danger and opportunity, layered over with a beautiful aesthetic that keeps your eyes scanning all over the screen in awe.
You can download Tower of Fantasy on the official site, and follow the game on Facebook, Twitter and Discord. The game is available multi-platform on Android and iOS, so no matter how your friends choose to play, they should be able to join you for unbounded adventurers in Aida.
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Sony pays developers "blocking rights" to stop them from adding their games to Game Pass, according to remarkable claims from Microsoft.
Reported by the Verge, the claims stem from a filing with Brazil's national competition regulator, as part of a review of Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard. The filing, which took place on August 9th and is translated from Portuguese, claims that Microsoft's attempts to expand Game Pass have been "hampered by Sony's desire to inhibit such growth." Going further, the filing alleges that Sony "pays for 'blocking rights' to prevent developers from adding content to Game Pass and other competing subscription services."
Microsoft's accusation comes in the wake of Sony's own claim that Microsoft's purchase of Activision Blizzard could influence players' decisions over whether to buy an Xbox or a PlayStation (specifically due to the massive appeal of Call of Duty) thereby stymying competition. Microsoft, for its part, has repeatedly stated its intention to continue developing Activision games for other platforms, including PlayStation.
There are two big questions here. The first is whether Sony is specifically targeting games to stop them appearing on Game Pass, or whether "blocking rights" is simply a provocative way of saying "exclusive deal". It's understandable that both companies would want games hosted specifically on their platforms, especially as they strive to make their respective subscription services more appealing to customers.
The other question is whether these alleged blocking rights have any knock-on consequences for the PC. It's clear that both Sony and Microsoft are keen to feature their games on PC. All the games currently being developed by Microsoft and its subsidiaries are coming to PC Game Pass on day one of launch, while Sony has been drip-feeding its PS4 exclusives onto PC, and recently expanded its web-page outlining its broader plans for putting PlayStation games on PC. But if Sony is paying for so-called Game Pass "blocking rights", does that solely affect the Xbox proportion of Game Pass, the whole of Game Pass, or completely prevent those games from launching anywhere other than PlayStation?
Whatever the ramifications of these exclusive deals orbiting Game Pass, it's clear that Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard has heated up the rivalry between it and Sony, which all rather flies in the face of Phil Spencer's claims that he spends "zero energy" on the notion of console wars. These likely won't be the last shots exchanged between the two companies either, as Brazil also isn't the only country to be taking a close look at the Activision Blizzard deal. Both the UK competition watchdog and the FTC are scrutinising the acquisition. Let's just hope this ongoing tit-for-tat doesn't inadvertently hinder the chances of any games coming to PC.
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A futuristic chopper passing over the Lingshan Islands by moonlight. Gruff men in nanosuits prepare to drop into the combat zone below. After quoting half of Predator at each other, they jump. You jump with them. You reach the sands after a speedier descent than planned, turn your flashlight on, and press W. Then—then I don't know. Nobody does.
At least, nobody did in 2007 when Crysis first came out, because this moment in the opening level was about as far as we could stand to endure at 7fps. The entire rest of Crytek's innovative sandbox shooter was a complete mystery. We'd been told to expect high system requirements and a rough ride for our GPUs but truthfully, we didn't really believe that running Crysis on even the lowest settings would be such a struggle. Or that attempting to do so on max settings would be impossible. All the stern talk about its technical demands was probably just cautionary bluster, many of us thought, intended for students who thought they could run it on their Lenovo Thinkpads during lectures. And then we ran to the shops, bought a boxed copy on release day, ran home again, entered our CD keys in the install menu like overgrown, far less cute children on Christmas morn, whacked the graphics up to max, and cried into our hands at the slide show on our monitors.
(Image credit: Crytek)Overclocked, overdrawn
This was certainly my experience, and the solution was obvious: I needed a better PC. This was the platform's next seminal title, a seismic moment like Doom or Half-Life, and I would not be witnessing it on medium settings or at sub-30fps. That would be like getting married in a Burton suit or watching the World Cup final in 144p. Like a great many gamers in 2007, I was not a man of means. Having just graduated university, I'd taken the cunning decision to work my way back down through the education tiers and enrolled at the local college. Three night shifts per week at the nearby Sainsbury's, stacking shelves on the meat aisle, accounted for 100% of my total income. So I did what anybody would do: I upgraded my RAM and hoped for the best.
I did what anybody would do: I upgraded my RAM and hoped for the best.
It's been a truism since the neolithic era that RAM offers the best bang to buck ratio of all potential upgrades, and that was perhaps truer in the noughties than it's ever been. DDR2 was making its way into systems, and a 2x1GB kit of it would set you back a mere £60 with decent speeds—one mere night shift's worth of toil for this upgrader. I went from 2GB to 4GB, clicking the new modules in place and fully expecting a playable Crysis was waiting for me when I got the case panel back on.
There was a noticeable improvement in performance, and in retrospect, knowing that the very best PCs of the late 2010s still struggled to hold Crysis to a firm 60fps in some areas, it's remarkable that this upgrade was even perceptible. But I'd saved up for that RAM and I wanted more than a few extra token frames here and there. The graphics card would have to go next. The GeForce 8800 GTX that sang like a bird when you loaded Team Fortress 2 or World in Conflict was no longer fit for purpose.
(Image credit: Crytek)Card declined
It wasn't until the following summer of 2008 that I found the £400 for a GTX 280, Nvidia's next generation of DirectX 10 card. It cost the majority of my pay packet. I'd squirrelled a bit a way, month by month, and finally the new silicon was inside my PC. By that point I'd tried every combination of graphics options in Crysis' menus, trying to strike a magical balance of performance saving and gorgeousness that couldn't be found. I'd overclocked my Core 2 Quad Q6600 for all its worth, and squeezed the last drop out of my RAM speeds. There was nowhere else to look. This GPU had to do it.
It was probably cognitive dissonance that led me to become satisfied with the result. A combination of knowing that running Crysis in the mid-20s on high settings was not worth the upgrades I'd just spent, and the knowledge that I'd never spend another penny in the name of this accursed game. On balance, I just accepted the outcome and finally, a year after release, began to play beyond Crysis' opening five minutes.
This was, of course, one of PC gaming's great unifying experiences, our Woodstock. Dylan going electric, except it was the consumer, not the artist, being sold out. CryEngine's lighting, rendering, and postprocessing techniques continued to confound hardware for a further decade, and in the end, was it even that good once you got off the beach and started fighting aliens? Irrelevant: the real game was trying to run the game, and that's now deep in our culture.
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In what crumbling, dragon-leather tome was it written that role-playing games have to be so incredibly long? It's certainly not a convention that rings true for Sraëka Lillian, whose RPG Maker-based 'OI' games clock in at a few hours apiece. Each is a focused exploration of one of "a thousand little questions" an RPG developer must answer—Atom OI, for example, is an interrogation of the nuances of status effects. "My points of obsession are these fundamentals of RPG design, right?" Sraëka explains. "And I don't need to make a big game to explore those."
Once you're done with the OI games you could move onto jetstorm4's Fallen Star, or John Thyer's Facets—two wordier yet equally brisk productions that are pitched as the climax of longer, untold fantasy stories. "Like, you get that there's a 20 hour version of this," says Thyer, "but we're cutting straight to the part you care the most about." Or if you want something a touch more esoteric—Hylics, Mason Lindroth's visually overpowering but concise claymation escapade. Or for a splash of romance, Get In The Car, Loser, the hectic lesbian roadtrip RPG from Ladykiller In A Bind developer Christine Love, which tells much of its story in the backseat of a speeding pink convertible. Or for something at once comedic and darker, Slimes from scitydreamer, in which you play an 'wookie' adventurer eradicating a single dungeon's worth of Dragon Quest's least-threatening critters.
(Image credit: Komodo)That's just a small sample of the genre—'micro' or 'capsule' RPGs, ranging from surgical poetic experiments crafted with free tools such as RPG Maker or Game Maker, to slightly bulkier commercial indies that sometimes play like ruthlessly efficient fan edits of blockbuster RPGs. Micro-RPGs are music to the ears of genre fans who no longer have time for the kinds of games they binge-played as kids, but even if you're a diehard Dragon Age player with weeks to spare, these games are worthwhile for how they concentrate and reveal things about the behemoths they riff on.
It's hard to say when RPGs became associated with gruelling length, partly because 'RPG' has become an enormously elastic term, stretching to everything from Elden Ring through Borderlands to Persona 4 and Skyrim. The primary checks on playlength are practical factors: the size of your team and budget, production timeframes, and having access to the right tools. But Bill Steirnberg—one half of Cosmic Star Heroine developer Zeboyd Games—also dates the expectation of a mammoth hour count to the original PlayStation era and the rise of FMV-led RPGs like Final Fantasy VII. "It's funny how the context changes. So like, Chrono Trigger is a classic, everyone loves it, and it's something like 20 hours long, even if you don't know exactly what you're doing. But somewhere in the late 16-bit, 32-bit era, there came this notion that 40 hours was the expectation. And then as the PS2, PS3 rolled on, that became 60 hours. And now 90 hours long is normal."
This is especially the case, of course, with premium- priced blockbuster RPGs. "You can tell a great story in two or three or four or five or six hours, and I wish there was more of that," Stiernberg goes on. "But understandably, a big studio is not going to take that risk—they're not going to pour a large or even a medium budget into an RPG that's four hours long. And that's kind of where small studios like ours come in."
Too big to fail
John Thyer suggests that players in North America and Europe have fallen out of love with shortform art in general, linking the bloating of RPG playtimes to the rise of 'extended' narrative universes across games, film, and TV. "I think that it's hard sometimes to just sit down with a smaller work—I feel like that translates to how the Marvel Cinematic Universe is really popular right now. People like following one big epic story over a long period of time. And I think that it can be hard for people to accept a smaller thing, a one-and-done thing that tells a complete, satisfying story, because it doesn't feed that nerd brain quite in the same way." Thyer also points to the broader 'fetishisation' of complexity in art as a potential catalyst for exhausting playlengths. There are obvious connections with service-based monetisation, with publishers like Square Enix transforming their already-gargantuan fairytale settings into persistent revenue platforms that are designed to hold your attention indefinitely.
It can be hard for people to accept a smaller thing, a one-and-done thing that tells a complete, satisfying story.
John ThyerSome shortform RPGs play like refreshing, puzzler- style deconstructions of systems from those exhaustive big studio projects. Sraëka's wonderful Cataphract OI, for instance, is a meditation on time inside and outside combat. Four adventurers invade a fortress to break a time loop – a premise that feeds into battles whose participants are effectively suspended outside time and so invulnerable unless forced into 'the fray'. The project began life as Sraëka tinkering aimlessly with a novel movement system—enter a room, and your party wanders through and fans out in a crisp kind of characterisation. "I wound up dropping off for a year coming back and saying, OK, I have some pieces here, I want to make something out of them. And so it was really what can I do with the pieces I've already haphazardly slapped down on the board, rather than a thoroughly, intentionally probing experiment."
(Image credit: Love Conquers All Games)The personal touch
Get In The Car, Loser, meanwhile, condenses its playtime by focusing on cast interactions. Inspired by Valkyrie Profile and Final Fantasy XIII—a game whose opening half is one drawn-out getaway sequence—it leans into the fact that party-member sidestories are often more involving than the overarching plot. "It's got four characters, four bosses, four areas, and each chapter revolves around a single character's concerns," Love says, adding that she hopes "the main reason to keep playing is to hang out with them more". The character focus "meant we could de-emphasise certain things, like complicated plot twists or map exploration, in favour of the feeling of 'you learn a lot about people when you're on an adventure in a crowded car with them'". Having the whole yarn play out on the road also gave Love's team tighter control over the alternation between dialogue and battling.
GITCL often relies on comedy to stop things dragging, "If there was ever a moment that felt a little too boring to me, I could just punch it up with jokes," Love says. Many micro-RPGs are comedies or parodies – two formative examples are Magic Wand from thecatamites and Toby Fox's Undertale. Zeboyd, especially, has profited from developing RPGs with tongue in cheek. "[When] we made Cthulhu Saves The World, game comedy was pretty uncommon," Stiernberg says. "There was this gap in the market. So we wanted to appeal and just be entertaining with the story that way, since we knew we weren't making some huge 40-hour epic." Cosmic Star Heroine, meanwhile, is a more earnest spoof of spy cinema – another flavour of story that puts an emphasis on snappiness. "Instead of going with a Mass Effect-esque space drama, we wanted to do a more James Bond story where it's fast-paced, you're undercover half the time—there's a whole scenario where you go to a dinner party in disguise."
(Image credit: Playism)Which is not to say that shortform RPGs can't explore more sombre themes. Thyer's Facets, for instance, began life as a homage to boss dungeons in early Final Fantasy, but evolved into a difficult and very personal narrative about a group of dream-diving inquisitor-type figures rewriting somebody's personality. FF aside, Thyer took inspiration from RPG Maker projects OFF, Space Funeral, and in particular the legendary Yume Nikki—a shifting strata of dreamworlds with no combat or levelling. "It represents these really raw, ugly feelings almost purely through RPG map design, and that's fascinating to me. So I was like, what if you're exploring a brain that's explicitly a psychological space, what if these bosses are pieces of that personality... I was in kind of a dark space, making the game – it was the end of my marriage, I was getting divorced. And my brain went to conversion therapy and telling this really tragic, ugly, sad story."
While clearly set in a larger narrative universe, Facets avoids undue exposition about, say, the means of invading minds. "I think having thought that stuff through helped the endgame land better because there was a logic, and if there's a logic to the creator, that usually comes across to the player," Thyer says. "I just don't waste their time actually explaining it, because I don't think it matters to the feelings I want to get across."
(Image credit: farawaythyer)Tolkien points
Many bigger RPGs embrace exposition because they are steeped in the legacy of certain ponderous fantasy or science-fiction books, such as The Lord of the Rings, but as Zeboyd's other half Robert Boyd points out, fantasy and sci-fi needn't be colossal exercises in world-building or stretching a plot across continents and generations. "If you look at the horror genre, Resident Evil 4 is a good 20-25 hours long. But you can also have a very succinct 90-minute horror experience that tells a good story. You can have a Twilight Zone episode, that's a half an hour that tells a complete story, or a Junji Ito comic strip that you could get through in ten minutes. It leaves an impact if it's done well. So I think the idea that fantasy or sci-fi RPGs have to be really long is flawed. I think there's room for the equivalent of a short story."
The idea that fantasy or sci-fi RPGs have to be really long is flawed. I think there's room for the equivalent of a short story.
Robert BoydGrandiose narratives in RPGs are also justified with reference to levelling systems—the idea is that you'll have more of an emotional connection with characters after spending dozens of hours tuning their stats. But do progression systems really need a 20+ hour runtime to have such an impact? "I feel like you can have progression levelling systems even in a short game," observes Boyd. "Maybe you want to simplify them so much that you're not poring over Path of Exile-style massive matrices, trying to min-max everything, but there's no reason why you can't have a five-hour game that has a strong progression system. We see that with games like Super Metroid—you can beat the whole thing in four or five hours, but you're constantly gaining new abilities and more power as you progress."
Stiernberg notes that how many different abilities, spells, perks and so on you pack into a progression system is less important than how you pace them. He stresses the importance of "a reasonable learning curve that doesn't just throw you in the deep end—although that there's some merit to that, being thrown into the deep end can be really interesting—but just being able to learn and apply it and towards the end, being able to really dig into the strategies".
Well-wrought shorter RPGs such as Zeboyd's own Cosmic Star Heroine demonstrate that quick progression arcs can be satisfying, but as Love cautions, they also show that RPGs do generally need more time to teach their intricacies than other genres. "Especially if you're introducing unfamiliar mechanics to people who are otherwise very familiar with genre conventions, it's really important to not rush through things, or the player will just say, 'Oh, yeah, I've played RPGs before, I know this!' and then get frustrated when it causes them trouble later in the game, so the desire to not bore the player with dragging out introductions, and the desire to just 'get to the good part' can be at odds."
(Image credit: Zeboyd Games)Experience not required
A conspicuous reliance on grinding aside, Sraëka argues that sluggish endgames are the most obvious symptom of RPG bloat. "Part of what keeps the friction of fighting battles down early on is novelty. And it's common to not introduce a whole lot in the back half, though there are RPGs that do mix things up that I think are really interesting. The 7th Saga [for SNES] gives you these items you can use over and over that can restore your HP in battle or give you powerful buffs that are almost necessary for survival. You accumulate these through the middle three fifths of the game, become very dependent on them, and then it takes them all away for the last act. You have to learn how to fight all over again."
Sraëka feels that RPGs should "push back" on players more towards the finish, though they acknowledge that balancing a character's capabilities at every point in an RPG is a huge labour. The OI games don't feature XP or levelling: it's more like meeting with the party at a critical point in their adventures. "It is a lot simpler to balance these things as a single person if you don't have to worry about all these variables changing. It's a wonder to me that anyone—especially solo developers—has ever completed a long RPG where the numbers are going up the whole time, and you have to account for them at each stage."
While they hold out hope of working on a larger RPG project some day, Sraëka has plenty of "unfinished business" with RPG Maker and doesn't regard the OI games as "stepping stones" to a grander opportunity. "A lot of my work comes from the feeling of, 'I'm really restless right now, I want to make something and I don't want to spend forever on it.'"
(Image credit: Pillow Fight)Thyer, similarly, doesn't see Facets as the prelude to a larger, more commercial project, not least because he values peace of mind over professional prestige. "I'm not trying to iterate on one thing and get really good at making RPGs and then spend five years making a 20-hour long RPG for Steam. I've just seen a ton of people get burned out taking that approach. I am more interested in doing literally whatever seems fun for me in the moment." Thyer also points out that the value of shortform games at large is the community they create, where people release quickfire experiments in response to each other's work. "I want to cultivate spaces where my friends can feel comfortable and encouraged to be just recklessly creative."
You could argue that RPGs tend to be gargantuan not because their creators associate time investment with enjoyment, but because they make a point of housing many different experiences, from wonky minigames through scenarios such as puzzle-dungeons to the systems that make up battle. Rather than 'epics', it's perhaps healthier to frame them as something akin to Thyer's hopes for the shortform gaming scene—a bustling collection of experiments, thrown together in the course of exploring a world. Micro-RPGs might take issue with the legwork involved, but they're not at odds with this ethos. They just give some of those flourishes a little more room to shine.
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Software development company Unity, creator of the popular game engine of the same name, has signed a major contract with the US government to provide its digital simulation technology for defence purposes.
As reported by Bloomberg, the company announced the three year, multi-million dollar deal earlier this week. The contract is in partnership with CACI International Inc., an information technology firm that has previously provided military intelligence, including aerial surveillance, to the US government.
In an earnings call on Tuesday, Unity's senior vice president Marc Whitten said this new relationship will "help the government defining human machine interfaces or HMI for aerospace applications and beyond," adding "These applications demand an interactive, robust user experience very much like games."
The deal comes in the wake of reports last year that employees at Unity had ethical concerns regarding the overlap between the company's military and non-military ventures. At the time, Unity CEO, John Riccitello released an internal statement explaining that the company's military contracts, which included a partnership with Lockheed Martin "are very restrictive" and that the company "would not support programs where we knowingly violate our principles and values". But this apparently sparked a backlash from employees, many of whom it was claimed were only just becoming aware of the company's military dealings. In response, Riccitiello promised that the matter would be discussed at the company's next "town-hall meeting".
More broadly, it's been a turbulent few months for Unity. In June, the company laid off hundreds of employees after a claimed attempte to "realign" resources. A month later, it announced a merger with IronSource, a company known for creating a MalWare program called InstallCore. Meanwhile, Riccitiello issued an apology after calling developers who don't actively think about monetising their games "'frelling' idiots" during an interview. And only a few days ago, mobile ad-tech company AppLovin offered to buy Unity for S17.5 billion, a proposal which Unity's board stated it would "thoroughly evaluate".
It's uncertain what effect, if any, this new deal will have on that offer, or Unity's likelihood of accepting it. But what is clear is that, despite the protests from its employees, Unity is pressing ahead with the military side of its business. Indeed, the company wrote in its earnings report that this new venture is the "single largest digital twin solution deal for Unity to date."
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Bungie ran into a bit of a snag in its legal campaign against Destiny 2 cheat sellers in May when a Seattle judge dismissed its copyright infringement complaint against cheat maker AimJunkies. Bungie had argued that the development of cheats was an infringement of its copyright, while AimJunkies defends its software as an original creation—and the judge agreed with AimJunkies.
That wasn't the end of the matter. Other elements of Bungie's lawsuit remained intact, including allegations of trademark infringement and "false designation of origin," and the studio was given time to restate the copyright infringement portion of its case. A few weeks later it did just that, alleging that AimJunkies "reverse-engineered and copied the software code for Destiny 2" in order to make its cheat software.
To make the cheat software's ESP feature, for instance, which enables users to see other players through walls, Bungie alleged that AimJunkies "copied the Destiny 2 software code that corresponds to the data structures for player positioning [in] Destiny 2, and reverse engineered the software code for Destiny 2’s rendering functions."
The revised complaint is definitely more detailed, but AimJunkies isn't backing down—in fact, according to a new Torrentfreak report, the cheat maker is stepping up its own legal action in defense of its software and the right to sell it. The site says AimJunkies is issuing subpoenas to Valve, PayPal, and Google, seeking information that it apparently hopes will prove that its cheats did not cause damage to Bungie, contrary to what the studio has claimed.
In a press release posted on the site, AimJunkies also defended its Destiny 2 overlay, saying it's no different than the one in Steam.
"It is our belief OUR offering of software product was just doing what Steam and countless others do with overlays. The Steam overlay and others like [it], we believe are not derivative works also," AimJunkies wrote. "Bungie also claims that we caused grievous harm to their game when in fact some of their most popular months of player counts and sales were during the time AimJunkies offered their software products. We believe and intend to gather actionable proof of that and disprove another one of their wild assertions."
Interestingly, AimJunkies also suggested that it's going to pursue legal action of its own against an employee or contractor who allegedly purchased the AimJunkies cheat software and then turned it over to an "unnamed company" to be decompiled and analyzed—an act that AimJunkies says is in violation of its terms of service. It also accused Bungie of attempting to make cheating illegal "because they cannot govern their own players."
"They are looking to the courts to do what they 'Bungie' are impotent to do on their own, even with the vast resources and technologies at their disposal," the press release says. "They would rather suffer death by a thousand cuts than admit this is not the way to fix the problem.
"We at [AimJunkies parent] Phoenix Digital Group have offered to work with Bungie to acquire multiple solutions to their problem. Foremost we believe would be to implement our features in a version of their game for distribution, but their pride and bully mentality prohibits them from thinking out of the box."
It's a bit of a bizarre and rambling statement. It's not clear what Bungie would get out of distributing a version of Destiny 2 with built-in cheats, or why it would need to partner with another company to do so—or if the expectation is that, as cheat makers themselves, they'd be in a better position than Bungie to effectively stamp out cheating.
Typically, when Bungie (or any game company) brings legal action against a cheat maker, things tend to wrap up quickly with a settlement and a shutdown: Companies like Ring-1, PerfectAim, Elite Boss Tech, and 11020781 Canada (and, of course, the individuals behind them) have all folded their tents in the face of litigation, eager to avoid being heavily hammered by the courts. But AimJunkies, for now, is standing its ground. At the very least it'll be interesting to see what happens next.
Bungie declined to comment on the matter. I've reached out to AimJunkies for comment, and will update if I receive a reply.
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1980s Tokyo—the glitz, the glamor, the excesses of the postwar economic miracle, the… genetically enhanced super soldier from 2551?
Modder Kashiiera over on Nexus Mods has traded one gaming sex symbol for another, replacing Yakuza 0's sensitive hunk Kiryu with Halo's sensitive hunk, Master Chief Petty Officer John 117. Thanks to a simple model swap, you can now rough up thugs, teach important life lessons, and unravel the mystery of the Empty Lot as a 7-foot-tall, one-ton killing machine from the 26th century.
I almost forgot to upload this pic.twitter.com/DD0cgmdgfDAugust 9, 2022
See moreKashiiera specializes in modding the Master Chief Collection, mixing and matching assets and maps across the various games in the pack. Their other projects let you play through the entirety of later Halo games with the weapons and HUD from Combat Evolved, for example, or transplant weapons and vehicles from Halo Reach into Halo 3.
The modder used that expertise to hack Mister Chief's Halo 3 character model into Yakuza 0 in playable form. They also seem to have tried out porting the Arbiter in similar fashion, but his gnarly alien proportions make for a less clean transition, and so far Kashiiera just has a short demonstration of the idea up on Twitter.
Arbiter is out for blood pic.twitter.com/sctDtssn1qAugust 11, 2022
See moreHonestly, the Chief fits into Yakuza pretty well—it's already such a fun, absurd romp, and you get the added benefit of seeing the stoic future warrior going clubbing and doing karaoke. That's way better than seeing him have sex.
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Tower of Fantasy, the new free-to-play MMO-like action game, has had a turbulent launch. Hordes of players slammed into its servers and were met with queues and errors preventing them from getting into the game. And now that more of them are squeezing in, they've found that the game wasn't fully prepared for them.
Players are sharing all kinds of absurd bugs and glitches they're encountering as they start to dig into the messy Genshin clone. Some players are slipping underneath the map, others are getting thrown right into the endgame, and a few are just getting really big for some reason. The best glitch, found by Twitch streamer SivHD, turns Tower of Fantasy into an entirely different genre.
now this is what i call tower of fantasy GAMING pic.twitter.com/wNixSAeO0IAugust 11, 2022
See moreThe glitch has squished SivHD's 3D anime character into a 2D character. The juxtaposition as he circles the camera around his flat character standing in the 3D valley is extremely Paper Mario. At one point, the streamer angles the camera so that the character is only a thin vertical line. If that wasn't upsetting enough, just wait until they start running.
It's not totally clear how this glitch operates. SivHD figured out that if they sit their character in a turret and exit quickly enough, they get squished. Repeat that several times and your character becomes thinner than a crêpe. My guess is that it's some form of animation bug for when the character leaps into the seat. Something about the way the model stretches to sell the quick movement, like how animations are full of smear frames, might be the culprit. It's as if, for a brief moment, your character becomes a 2D model and then incorrectly retains some of that 2D nature once it's over. Whatever the reason, the glitch is extremely amusing to watch.
Some time after their discovery, SivHD got asked if the glitch was important to progress in the game by someone in chat.
"It is important, because now, when I approach the enemy, they don't see me coming," SivHD responded, deadpan, while scooting his papercraft protagonist near a camp of unaware enemies. "See that archer? He doesn't see me."
Developer Hotta Studio addressed the game's rough state in a post on the site, saying that it was "well aware that Tower of Fantasy still has many shortcomings." It promised to tackle the worst bugs as they happen and compensate players with in-game currency—which it has already started to do for its initial server instability.
The growing list of bugs is a little surprising for a game that was released in China last year and had a beta earlier this year. But Tower of Fantasy's massive scale and shared world experience combined with the force of a thousand eager players probably makes bug stomping a monumental task. If it were me though, I'd keep the 2D one. Every anime game should let you turn 2D whenever you want.
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Originally released in 2019, Moddb user Depa31's Undertale Together allows two players to complete the entirety of Toby Fox's 2015 indie adventure, well, together. With help from a remote desktop tool like Parsec, it can effectively offer online co-op as well.
The mod itself is a pretty simple tweak to a lean game—you're able to name two players at the start and select overworld and battle sprites for the second player. One character is controlled by the arrow keys, and the other with WASD. Installation is an absolute breeze, with a .exe installer taking care of things in seconds.
Both players have their own health bar, and I could see the added action per round making fights significantly easier, though I could also see some emergent competitive play—a violent player sabotaging a pacifist one say, or vice versa.
Remote desktop software like Parsec, Anydesk, or Team Viewer can let a far away co-op partner take up one of the inputs like they're right there with you. This style of online play is often offered within games through Steam Remote Play, but that's a feature that has to be enabled by a developer—an external program's the only way to go with Undertale.
I didn't have the chance to test the mod with a remote friend, but I can confirm that it fully works as intended locally, with me operating both Fritzes at the same time like some kind of ascendant gamer. My previous experience with Remote Play left a lot to be desired—one or both of our internet connections were not up to snuff—but if you've got a robust connection or live in a country with actually decent infrastructure, using something like Parsec to play this online shouldn't be too much of a problem.
This wouldn't be how I'd recommend going through Undertale for the first time—it's a really narrative, emotional game—but Undertale Together is certainly a fun way to revisit a classic. It's less of an intensive project than the recent Skyrim co-op mod, but it's still a cool, sharable reinterpretation of the game.
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The FCC rejected a proposal from Starlink, a subsidiary of Elon Musk's SpaceX, which would have given the company nearly $1 billion in subsidies for offering broadband internet services to rural areas in the United States from the RDOF (Rural Digital Opportunity Fund).
The official FCC statement (via Slashgear) says that Starlink's technology "has real promise," but ultimately that the US government cannot "afford to subsidize ventures that are not delivering the promised speeds or are not likely to meet program requirements."
The RDOF (Rural Digital Opportunity Fund) is a $20 billion fund that started in 2020 for constructing broadband networks in rural areas across the US. Companies bid to secure the funding with the caveat that they need to prove they can provide internet at the speeds they promised. SpaceX had won its bid for $883 million to provide rural broadband via its Starlink satellite internet service.The program requires internet service providers like Starlink, to show that the service provides a minimum 100Mbp download/ 20Mbps upload speeds. A recent speed report from Ookla showed that Starlink's speeds could not meet the 100/20Mbps threshold to become eligible for the funds, which FCC chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel cited in the statement.
"We must put scarce universal service dollars to their best possible use as we move into a digital future that demands ever more powerful and faster networks. We cannot afford to subsidize ventures that are not delivering the promised speeds or are not likely to meet program requirements," said the chairwoman.To use Starlink, a user must pay $600 for a dish and a monthly fee of $110 for the service the chairwoman called a "still developing technology."
Your next machine(Image credit: Future)Best gaming PC: The top pre-built machines from the pros
Best gaming laptop: Perfect notebooks for mobile gamingTo add insult to injury, the FCC wrote in a report included in the official statement that it had an obligation to protect "our limited Universal Service Funds" by staying away from "risky proposals that promise faster speeds than they can deliver, and/or propose deployment plans that are not realistic or that are predicated on aggressive assumptions and predictions."
The FCC also rejected LTD Broadband's $1.3 billion proposal because it could not "deploy a network of the scope, scale, and size required by LTD’s extensive winning bids."
Starlink can once again put in a bid in the next set of RDOF auctions. The RDOF has already authorized over $5 billion to bring fiber gigabit internet to 47 states, which means $15 billion is still up for grabs.
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Nightingale is a faux-Victorian crafting and survival game being developed by Inflexion Games, a studio founded in 2018 (as Improbable Canada) by a group of former BioWare employees, including former Bioware GM Aaryn Flynn. The basic mechanics seem fairly straightforward—chop tree, crush boulder, pick berry, get gored—but the promise of travel between strange, dangerous realms gives it a sort of "Steampunk Stargate" aesthetic that could be genuinely interesting.
Unfortunately, we're going to have to wait longer than expected to find out if Nightingale can live up to that potential. It was expected to arrive in early access later this year, but Nightingale announced today that it has decided to delay the launch until sometime in the first half of 2023.
An update on our Early Access release pic.twitter.com/LLFLCP3f6hAugust 11, 2022
See more"The move is based on two considerations," the studio wrote on Steam. "The first is an upgrade to Unreal Engine 5. After reviewing the potential UE5 has to offer, we decided on upgrading now rather than waiting until after release.
"Second, Inflexion Games is committed to delivering the best possible experience and fulfilling the promise of what Nightingale's universe of realms has to offer players. To achieve that the additional time will allow the team to make key improvements, bolster content, and polish gameplay."
A delay is always unfortunate, but it beats getting a crappy game that you don't want to play in the first place. Nightingale said that it will share more about the game and development process "in the coming weeks," and a more specific launch target will be revealed "at a later stage."
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Hello, I am the Collective Obligation pulse rifle. Hopefully I will suck less next season. (Image credit: Bungie)
Believe it or not, one of the joys of slavishly playing a live service game is that a big patch note post is treated with the reverence of the Dead Sea Scrolls 2 being hand-delivered to your door. And let me tell you, Bungie just dropped an absolute banger. Ahead of the launch of Season 18 on August 23rd, the developer has detailed a swathe of changes coming to Destiny 2's combat sandbox. There are buffs and nerfs to some of the most used (and abused) gear, plus granular changes to specific perks, including the addition of much needed anti-Champion functionality on four exotic weapons.
The entire This Week at Bungie update is worth reading, but if you're daunted by the sheer density of bullet points and indiscriminate use of the word scalar, don't worry: I've broken out the highlights below.
Omnioculus and Lord of Wolves are getting big PvP nerfs
The Hunter exotic chest piece Ominoculus, which grants the player and their teammates substantial incoming damage reduction whilst invisible, has been top of the hate list in PvP for some time now. Especially in Trials, it can feel like you're fighting a team of three Predators. Bungie is toning down the damage reduction in PvP but leaving it mercifully unchanged in PvE. The same reduction will also apply to the Whisper of Chains Stasis fragment.
Omnioculus is getting hit hard in PvP but left untouched in PvE, a split approach which Destiny 2 players are increasingly demanding. (Image credit: Bungie)As for everyone's favourite burst shotgun, Bungie admits "Lord of Wolves has long been a thorn in the side of PvP players." It's getting multiple changes, including reduced starting ammo (PvP only), lower damage while Release the Wolves is active, and a smaller burst size. In PvE it'll get a 20% damage buff to compensate, and Bungie says a further rework is planned that aims to stave off Lord of Wolves' issues in PvP for good, while also making it a better PvE option.
Vow of the Disciple's memed-on exotic weapon is getting a much-needed buff
I'm still sceptical about this one, but at least Bungie has heard the feedback that Collective Obligation sucks in its current state. The Pulse Rifle will be getting a suite of PvE buffs, including an increase to the Void Leech Timer and a 20% damage buff once active. Void Leech will also now be instantly charged whenever you kill a debuffed target, and will even trigger if you become debuffed yourself (although apparently you won't be able to self-trigger this using Suppressor grenades). Will that be enough to make it more effective than a Funnelweb in a good Volatile Rounds build?
Dead Man's Tale is a lever-action scout rifle from the Tex Mechanica weapon foundry. (Image credit: Bungie)Dead Man's Tale is also getting a spicy rework
Here's a gun that definitely doesn't need help. Bungie says the Dead Man's Tale scout rifle [insert yee-haw sound] is being reworked to better capture the fantasy of being a hip shootin' cowboy. That means removing the stacking damage increase from the Cranial Spike perk in PvP (it stays for PvE) and replacing it with improved reload, aim assist and range. At max stacks it will also fire 50 RPM faster, at the cost of 20% damage, which I guess is where the 'Pop! Pop! Pop!' fantasy comes in. Dead Man's Tale is frankly one of the strongest and most fun exotic primaries in the game so I'm excited to try this out.
Legend of Acrius gets a juicy buff
The exotic Heavy Shotgun is unique, but also currently unusable due to a combination of its lack of damage and range. (You essentially have to stand in kissing range of the boss.) "Legend of Acrius has fallen far behind other Heavy, short-range weapons," agrees Bungie. The weapon's catalyst will now grant the Trench Barrel perk, in addition to its existing benefits. That's a 50% damage buff for three follow-up shots after a successful melee attack. If melee exotics like Liar's Handshake and Synthoceps are meta next season, Acrius could be a contender again.
Multiple exotics are being given the ability to stun Champions… including Thunderlord
This is the kind of thing that probably doesn't sound like a big deal unless you play Destiny 2 endgame PvE, but is actually going to have a huge impact on build-crafting. Champion enemies are a pain in the 'donkey' of cosmic proportions, so being able to stun them consistently with an exotic weapon is a major consideration when doing stuff like Grandmaster Nightfalls. So far these options have been pretty limited, especially when it came to Overload champs, so any additions are hugely welcome:
- Le Monarque bow gets Overload
- Thunderlord machine gun gets Overload
- Wishender bow gets Barrier (also lower draw time, increased damage against Champions and bosses)
- Malfeasance gets Unstoppable (specifically for its explosions)
The two Overload options here are most noteworthy. We already know Le Monarque will synergise amazingly thanks to previous seasons when Overload Bows featured as an Artifact mod. Its Poison Arrows do a great job of keeping Champions under tight control because the damage over time re-procs the Overload effect. I also have high hopes for Thunderlord, because Heavy Weapons are invariably good on the rare occasions they have anti-Champion effects. It should be a serious rival to Divinity (and is certainly much easier to acquire). With next season being arc-themed, it looks like it's finally time to go full Thor.
Le Monarque is a great bow that's set to get even better next season. (Image credit: Bungie )Origin Traits being reworked and added
These are the new perks that have been added to weapons that are tied to specific activities and playlists. Both the Gambit and Iron Banner Origin Traits were too niche to deliver much benefit, so will be switched up in Season 19.
- Gambit — Invader Tracker renamed Gun and Run. Sprint speed increased on multi-kills.
- Iron Banner — Skulking Wolf will now grant enhanced radar and remove you from the opposing radar on kills while at low health.
Weapons from the Dares of Eternity playlist will also now drop with a refreshed perks and a new Origin Trait (no word on what it does). I'm less pleased about this, because if it's any good I'm going to feel compelled to re-grind the god rolls I've already got. Addiction is a hell of a thing.
Several unloved archetypes are getting blanket buffs
The blog post also ticks off a bunch of buffs that the community has been clamouring for in order to make specific types of weapon viable. The headlines are:
- All Scout Rifles get a 10% buff versus minor enemies. This is in addition to the previous buff they received and despite Destiny boss Luke Smith telling me they were a 'coward's weapon' a few years ago.
- High Impact Auto Rifles will have their Stability improved by 6-12 (which Bungie assures us is noticeable in-game).
- Once the kings of DPS, Heavy Grenade Launchers might be back on the menu courtesy of a 10% damage buff vs major and boss enemies. Not Parasite though, because it's already quite broken enough.
- Finally, Lightweight Bows will draw faster and be easier to draw perfectly.
Honestly, there's a bunch of other cool-sounding stuff, like buffs to the Ambitious Assassin and Wellspring weapon perks, but I really do recommend reading the whole thing if you're a current player or just considering coming back. Bungie also teased more changes coming further into next season and beyond, including increasing the amount of exotic armor that can proc using glaive melee attacks. Bungie says that Karnstein Armlets and Necrotic Grips are already done, so I might have to really commit to the prodding aliens with a stick playstyle. Like I said, it's a banger of a patch note post.
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Just about anything can be made better by the addition of the supernatural. Pirates of the Caribbean exploited a winning formula with its ghostly buccaneers, Stranger Things puts the demons in D&D, and Hard West has hit a home run with its tales of the weird wild west. An XCOM-like tactics game, except when it isn’t, Hard West 2 brings some up-to-date ideas to the poker table.
Need to knowWhat is it? Supernatural cowboy turn-based tactics
Expect to pay: $27/£24
Developer: Ice Code Games
Publisher: Good Shepherd Entertainment
Reviewed on: Threadripper 2950X, Geforce RTX 3080 10GB, 64GB RAM
Multiplayer? No
Link: hardwestgame.com
It starts with a train, as many of the best things do. You’re robbing it, naturally, and having done your research you’re sure there aren’t many guards. ‘You’, in this case, are Gin Carter, a horse-riding, hat-wearing, six-shooter aficionado who’s the nominal leader of a band of outlaws. This train heist is gonna make him rich, you’ll see. With him are Laughing Deer, Native American melee specialist, Flynn, who appears fragile and keeps to the shadows, and trick-shooter Kestrel Colt.
The train guards don’t stand a chance, except there are more of them than you expected. Happily, you have certain advantages, which stand you in good stead throughout the game. The first is that your characters have three action points rather than the traditional two. This means they can move, heal, and still shoot. Or sprint into cover and hunker down for a better chance of evading incoming fire.
(Image credit: Good Shepherd Games)Luck of the draw
Trick shots mean ricocheting your bullets off hard surfaces to negate the effect of cover, essentially outflanking the enemy with unfairness. To facilitate this, wheelbarrows, piles of junk, and non-explosive barrels are scattered around levels. You can even ping a bullet off hanging light fittings. Then there's luck, the addition of which makes your attacks more accurate.
It’s bravado, though, that makes the biggest difference. Kill an enemy, and your action points are refilled. It’s so simple, but affects battles in such a profound way. Suddenly they’re chains to be yanked on, to see how far they go. Living enemies are stepping stones toward your objective, at the risk of overextending and getting cut to pieces the next turn, or leaving other characters behind as you take one on a killing spree.
This, at least in the early stages, means Laughing Deer is a killing machine. Get him in close, add a dose of luck, and he can club anyone to death, instantly refilling his AP to move on to the next hapless victim. Luck will eventually run out, and enemies with more health arrive, but he still hits hard. That makes it all too easy to leave him unprotected, standing miles away from cover or allies when the turn ends just because you were having too much fun tearing through bad guys.
Train? Train? You forgot the rails! (Image credit: Good Shepherd Games)Red hot poker
Back on the train, you’ve made your way to the driver’s compartment. The loco goes into a tunnel, everything goes black. When it comes out the other side, it’s crawling on hundreds of centipede-like metal legs, which is unusual for a steam train. There, stoking the boiler, is a man who turns out to have some interesting powers of his own, eventually revealing himself to be Mammon, the devil himself. And he wants to play poker.
Of course you play. Of course you lose. The stakes were only your very soul, but if you'd won he'd have given you the centi-train, making it a very tempting offer. And he seemed like such a trustworthy guy. The loss of your soul, interestingly, stops you from casting a shadow. I'm not sure how that works.
Eventually you’ll unlock a gang of six outlaws, each with their own skills and inventory.
You wake up in the overworld map, a departure from the XCOM-like base-building globe, and something more like Total War’s strategy layer mixed with a 2D RPG. You wander around up here, discovering towns, mines, and weird things next to the road, generally getting yourself into trouble and switching to the turn-based combat mode to get yourself out of it again. You dig up (sometimes quite literally) new members of your posse with new abilities, have short conversations, make decisions like whether to take supplies or leave them for the starving villagers, and investigate the uncanny. Mammon and his centipede express to Hell are still out there somewhere, making a mockery of both timetables and 19th century engineering practices as they thunder through the countryside. Killing him could get you back your soul. It’s worth a try, anyway. And it might be fun.
For now, though, it’s cold. Heading to a town would be good, as there might be shops there to tool up on new weapons, but first we need to check out that old hut by the side of the road.
(Image credit: Good Shepherd Games)Dirty dozen
Once you’ve built up a few extra members to your posse, you can start thinking about different ways to approach missions. The game shares more with Desperados 3 than a setting and a liking for the save scumming, giving each character special abilities. Gin Carter has a short-ranged skill that can shoot through cover, damaging every enemy within its area of effect. Flynn can swap places with any character at the cost of one hit point each—great for pulling an entrenched enemy out of cover or finishing off bad guys with just a sliver of health left. Others have more eldritch endowments.
Eventually you’ll unlock a gang of six outlaws, each with their own skills and inventory, ready to tear into the riflemen, shotgunners, exploding drunks (grenade launchers with apparently infinite ammunition), zombies and witches who infest every rickety wooden structure. Hard West 2 lives up to its name, as enemies are plentiful and become pretty tough.
Replay value may be limited, as levels are more like puzzles to be solved, enemy positions not mixing up if you take another shot at them, and there's no multiplayer.
They start off killable with one shot, but pretty soon double their hit points, bringing your bravado-fuelled rampages to an end unless you spend some time softening them up first. Characters can hold two weapons, plus throwables, each of which will have a different AP cost. Rifles, for instance, take all three action points to fire, but their damage and range are unmatched. Shotguns and explosives have an area of effect, and can hurt your allies. Killing an ally, however, can trigger bravado, so perhaps it’s worth it, especially as members of your team never really die, coming back to life after the battle with one hit point ready for a trip to the surgeon, if you’ve got the cash.
The playing card system increases stats and unlocks new abilities. (Image credit: Good Shepherd Games)Then there are the cards, which you’ll pick up occasionally as you wander round the map. They’re normal playing cards, only slightly enchanted, and on their own can add extra hit points, luck or speed. But this is the old west, so giving a character a valid poker hand gets you something extra. Holding two pair may unlock an ability, but a full house levels it up and a royal flush makes it even better. It can help to have a poker guide or Wikipedia to hand while doling out cards, unless you’re an actual cowboy.
Take Laughing Deer: he needs to hold a pair to unlock his devastating Wild Run ability, which adds extra damage for every two squares he charges into battle. Add extra cards for a flush and an area of effect war cry is added to daze nearby enemies, while a straight flush increases base damage and gives allies a perk. Sending him zig-zagging across the level in a maximum-range killing spree among spread-out enemies, and watching the fires of bravado ignite each time he clubs another rifleman to the ground, is among one of the most satisfying sights the game has to offer.
(Image credit: Good Shepherd Games)Boom town
Less satisfying are the things you’d expect to happen but don’t. Throwing a stick of dynamite should have a devastating effect on structures, which look lightly built and tinder dry. It does not. Area of effect attacks are two-dimensional, limited to the level you’re on and not affecting those immediately above or below, something especially frustrating with shotguns, which you should be able to use to knock someone off a rooftop. And cover can’t be blown away or vaulted over, though your characters do a good job of pathfinding the rest of the time, scaling ladders and bursting through windows. Replay value may be limited, as levels are more like puzzles to be solved, enemy positions not mixing up if you take another shot at them, and there's no multiplayer.
Given time, enemies appear who have the same sort of supernatural abilities as your characters, which feels like cheating on their part as their hit points return to normal after a flurry of gunfire. Then there's the enormous amounts of explosives carried by other enemies, who like to charge in and start lobbing grenades everywhere, causing your characters to bleed their own hit points alarmingly fast. There are ways to mitigate this, of course, like using the Heads Down manoeuvre to stop the bleeding and food to build your points back up, but they all take action points.
None of that really matters though, as Hard West 2 is as solid as the safe in the township’s bank. The one the local outlaws have been making elaborate plans to rob. The combat is crunchy, the bits in-between don’t outstay their welcome, and the whole supernatural cowboy setting still has just enough shine on it to be engrossing. There's more than enough room in our town for a game like this.
The best Skyrim Special Edition mods
in Gaming News
Posted
Several years into its life, the best Skyrim Special Edition mods caught up to the best in Oldrim modding. Many of our favorites from the original have been ported across, so you may recognize some of those on this list.
Looking for mods for the original version of Skyrim? We've selected over 100 of the best mods for improved visuals and optimization, new quests and locations, roleplaying and immersion, creatures and NPCs, and much more. These are the best Skyrim mods.
But there are plenty of newer mods as well—a decade into its life, both original Skyrim and the Special Edition you can safely alt-tab out of are still fertile ground for new creations. Skyrim modding still hasn't slowed down with new additions every week.
Skyrim Script Extender has been updated for the Anniversary Edition, and many of the mods that were broken during the changeover are working again now. Still, once SKSE is installed, you should go into Skyrim Special Edition's properties in Steam and set it to "Only update this game when I launch it" and launch Skyrim with skse64_loader.exe, as otherwise any new updates will break the Script Extender and you'll have to download a new version of it.
Some of the following Skyrim Special Edition mods can be found on Bethesda's site, but the links we'll post usually point to our go-to sites, NexusMods or AFK Mods. And if you're looking to have even more fun in Skyrim, check out our list of Skyrim console commands.
Skyrim mod managers
It's easy to get carried away modding Skyrim Special Edition. To help you keep track of all your various additions, be sure to use a mod manager of some sort. Here are the ones we suggest you try out.
Vortex
Download from: Nexus Mods
For downloading, installing, and managing Skyrim Special Edition mods, we recommend Vortex. It's simple to use, and it works with a number of other games like the Fallout series, the Witcher series, Darks Souls, XCOM 2, and lots more. Make sure to download the version that lets you pick a custom install installation if you don't have Skyrim on your C drive.
Mod Organizer 2
Download from: Nexus Mods
As an alternative to Vortex, Mod Organizer 2 is meant for modders who plan to do a lot of experimenting, keeping separate profiles and installing then uninstalling various mods. If you really care about how neat your folders look, Mod Organizer 2 is probably for you. One downside to Mod Organizer 2 is that if you plan to mod multiple different games with it, switching between them can be a hassle. The easiest way to do that is to install it separately for every single game you want to mod.
Patches, UI, and cheat mods
We all know the reputation Bethesda's games have. Plenty of fans have taken it upon themselves to fix bugs, optimize and overhaul systems, and make the user interface more to their liking. Or maybe they've modded full, networked multiplayer into the game. They've done that, too.
Skyrim Together Reborn
Download from: Nexus Mods
A passion project that's endured a long history of setbacks and pitfalls, Skyrim Together Reborn is the realization of a simple dream: wouldn't it be cool if someone made it so you could run around Skyrim with friends? Of course, modding multiplayer into a singleplayer game is basically the polar opposite of simple. But after years of effort, the Together team has done just that—not a closed beta, but a full release of co-op in Skyrim. There will be bugs. It will crash. Additional mods aren't recommended. But it's Skyrim with multiplayer. What more have we ever needed?
Unofficial Skyrim Patch
Download from: Nexus Mods
This mod is a compendium of hundreds of fixes for bugs, text, objects, items, quests, and gameplay elements assembled by prolific modder Arthmoor. The patch is designed to be as compatible as possible with other mods. If you've got a few hours, you can read through the patch notes.
SkyUI
Download from: Nexus Mods
The heavens parted, golden saints sang, and SkyUI was supported by Skyrim Special Edition. This interface replacer makes Skyrim feel like it was designed for mouse controls, and lets you filter and sort inventory based on weight, value, damage and the like. Also adds an in-game mod configuration menu several other mods rely on. It's essential.
A Quality World Map
Download from: Nexus Mods
Skyrim's map is functional but boring. A Quality World Map offers multiple ways to fix it. It can replace the map with a much more detailed world texture, with colors that help delineate the separate areas much more obviously, but there's also an option to have a paper map, with a more Oblivion look, if that's your thing.
Proteus
Download from: Nexus Mods
While you could switch to another savegame to play your Khajiit archer for a while, Proteus lets you import your characters into an existing world state—meaning you can switch to a character with their own items, skills, and spells, but keep your current quest progression. NPCs who have died remain dead, items left in storage can be retrieved, and so on. It also lets you edit NPCs and items, even the weather. Some of what Proteus makes possible is already doable with Skyrim's console commands and existing mods, but this brings it all together in a single pop-up menu.
Proteus replaces an older version called Project Proteus. The new version runs faster, and when swapping between characters you now switch to their location rather than them being summoned to you, making for a more GTA 5 kind of experience. There are a bunch of other tweaks as well. If you've got Project Proteus installed, uninstall and replace it with Proteus instead.
RaceMenu
Download from: Nexus Mods
An improved character creation menu with numeric displays for all sliders and the ability to choose any color for your hair, skin, or other tints rather than being limited based on race. There's a sculpt mode if you want to get right into messing with the geometry of your head, and you can turn the light illuminating your face on and off to see how your features will look in different situations, which is a blessing.
Downgrade Patcher
Download from: Nexus Mods
If the Anniversary Edition update is causing your favorite mods grief (we're talking about Simply Knock here), this will roll you back to Special Edition version 1.5.97. There are two versions to download, and the Best of Both Worlds version lets you keep all the Creation Club content added by the Anniversary Edition.
Achievements Mod Enabler
Download from: Nexus Mods
Just because you're modding doesn't mean you're cheating (necessarily). So why does the SSE disable achievements if you've got mods running? Stick it to 'em by using this plugin from xSHADOWMANx that lets you earn achievements even while using mods.
Better MessageBox Controls
Download from: Nexus Mods
Increases the clickable areas of menu items so they're the actual width of the item rather than just an absurd little square in the middle of it. You have no idea how much better this tiny quality-of-life tweak makes things. It also improves the keyboard controls in a few ways. For instance, tab will always take you back a stage and enter will let you select an option even when you're crafting and would normally have to mouse back over it.
Binaural 3D Surround Sound for Headphones - HRTF
Download from: Nexus Mods
"HRTF (Head Related Transfer Functions) refers to the way that the curvature of one's ears are used to localize sound in 3D space." I don't know exactly what that first sentence means, but I understand the second one. Make SSE more realistic for your ears with this mod, though note it only works if you play exclusively in first-person. You may also want to check out Immersive Sounds for a huge overhaul of Skyrim's sound effects.
Quest and location mods
Skyrim may be a huge place, but modders are always finding ways to make it bigger. We've collected some really impressive location overhauls to expand your Skyrim experience along with some huge quest mods to take you on new adventures.
The Forgotten City
Download from: Nexus Mods
Skyrim's got lots of adventure, but here's about 10 hours more courtesy of writer and developer Nick Pearce. Play detective and solve a murder mystery while exploring a massive, ancient city. It's got excellent, award-winning writing, a non-linear story, fantastic voice acting by a large cast, an enjoyable original soundtrack, and even a touch of time travel. Here's our write-up of the Forgotten City Skyrim mod. It's also been adapted into a standalone game set in ancient Rome.
Legacy of the Dragonborn
Download from: Nexus Mods
Adds a gallery you can fill with unique items, a museum to your achievements that is also a library, a storage facility, a questline of its own, and a place to learn archaeology complete with its own perks. While there is a version of Legacy of the Dragonborn for Oldrim, the v5 update specifically for Special Edition remaps the building to make it larger and more like a real museum.
Enderal: Forgotten Stories
Download from: Steam
This total conversion creates an entirely new world, very nearly the size of Skyrim itself, and populates it with new dungeons, quests, monsters, and fully voiced NPCs. Some of Skyrim's systems have also been tweaked, there's a new custom story to enjoy, and a good 50+ hours of new adventures to be hard. You can read about the opening hours of Enderal here.
Vigilant SE
Download from: Nexus Mods
Vigilant is a four-part quest mod that adds some Dark Souls flair to Tamriel. After getting stuck in Oblivion, you'll face off against otherworldly monsters and big, Souls-style bosses while exploring areas filled with special items and keys. Beyond that, the 'Anvil of Zenithar' allows players to craft their own wares after finishing objectives, besting bosses and reaching new areas. Vigilant Voiced adds voice-acting.
You can also snag the same modder's Bloodborne-themed adventure called Glenmoril.
Moonpath to Elsweyr
Download from: Nexus Mods
Moonpath to Elsweyr was one of the first quest mods for Oldrim back in the day. It's made its way to SSE now with its two new regions and custom quests. In Jody's Moonpath spotlight he talks to its original creator.
Helgen Reborn
Download from: Nexus Mods
Who's going to rebuild Helgen after it got toasted by a dragon at the beginning of the game? You are, of course. It's a huge, fully voiced quest mod where you'll restore the town, choose a faction, and fight in the new arena. Chris wrote about Helgen Reborn years ago for Oldrim, so we're psyched to replay it in SSE.
Cutting Room Floor
Download from: Nexus Mods
Another big mod from Arthmoor restores loads of content that exists in SSE's data files but wasn't implemented in the game. Numerous locations, NPCs, dialogue, quests, and items have been brought back into the light, and Skyrim is richer for it.
JK's Skyrim
Download from: Nexus Mods
This big construction overhaul mod redesigns all of Skyrim's major cities and some settlements as well. Every city has been reimagined to more distinctly fit its own theme with new buildings and vendors. It doubles as an immersion mod as well, with local banners and guards changing allegiance as Skyrim's civil war develops.
The Asteria Dwemer Airship
Download From: Nexus Mods
There are player home mods to suit all tastes, but the Asteria is a particularly nice one—a flying ship with all mod cons, by which I mean storage space and crafting tables. It's permanently docked, however, and can't be moved around, though it does have a teleporter for a more immersive alternative to fast-travel. If you want a flyable skyship, try the Dev Aveza.
Visuals and Graphics Mods
Even with Skyrim Special Edition, there's still plenty of room to make Tamriel prettier. Modders have updated how characters look and added higher resolution textures, among other things, to put a new shine on the game.
Climates of Tamriel
Download from: Nexus Mods
Climates of Tamriel is a huge overhaul adding new weather types, new lighting, and clouds. It can make night-time darker as well for a more immersive adventuring experience. There's even a winter version that covers even more of Skyrim in snow.
Realistic Water Two
Download from: Nexus Mods
Realistic Water Two, a lauded sequel to water, adds better ripples, larger splashes, re-textured foam and faster water flow in streams, bobbing chunks of ice, and even murky, stagnant-looking water in dungeons. For all your extremely realistic screenshot-taking needs.
Total Character Makeover
Download from: Nexus Mods
Skyrim's NPCs already looked dated when the game was first released, and they certainly haven't aged well. The SSE might improve the looks of the world, but it doesn't touch its citizens, so this mod from Scaria should be on your list. It gives everyone in the game (including your avatar) a facelift with more detailed textures that won't kneecap your framerate, without making characters look out of place.
Vanilla Hair Replacer
Download from: Nexus Mods
We can all agree Bethesda's RPGs aren't often stunners in the hair department. So many hair mods get carried away turning characters into models, though. Vanilla Hair Replacer aims for more lore-friendly changes for Skyrim's default hair choices so NPCs look a less scraggly but still like they hail from Skyrim. Be sure to check the "recommended mods" section of the page to get your characters looking exactly like the ones in the screenshots.
Static Mesh Improvements
Download from: Nexus Mods
While Skyrim Special Edition adds plenty of enhanced visuals, it doesn't do a thing to improve the original game's low-poly meshes. This mod edits hundreds of 3D models placed in thousands of different locations for items like furniture, clutter, architectural elements, and landscape objects to make them look nicer and more realistic.
Security Overhaul SKSE - Lock Variations
Download from: Nexus Mods
The Security Overhaul Lock Variants and supplemental Security Overhaul Add-Ons mods add a whole bunch of new lock designs for you to peer at while you're heroically robbing Skyrim of its every last septim. The locks range from startlingly beautiful to mystically eerie to fairly disgusting, but they're all lore-friendly and wonderfully animated. There are even new sound effects to accompany some of the weirder designs.
Glorious Doors of Skyrim
Download from: Nexus Mods
Hear me out. Aside from NPC's faces, what are you going to have your nose up against in Skyrim most often? Well yeah, enemies, but also doors! Modder "Hype1" has created lots of new door meshes with glorious 4k textures so you'll never be stuck picking the lock on a low-res door again. While you're at it, Book Covers is a mod that will make books as beautiful as they deserve to be.
Companion and creature mods
Skyrim is an even more beautiful place thanks to the visual mods and new locations on this list, but you'll also want to populate it with suitably interesting life. These mods add some of our favorite companion characters, and some cool creatures for them to fight too.
Shirley
Download from: Nexus Mods
This companion mod is a particularly sweet one, based on popular octogenarian YouTuber Shirley Curry, otherwise known as the "Skyrim Grandma". Created by fans and voiced by Curry herself, the Shirley companion shares Curry's likeness. Tamriel's Shirley has her own lore-appropriate backstory too. After you've completed her recruitment quest, Shirley will join you, fighting alongside you as a barbarian warrior—Curry's preferred combat style. Curry has already started playing with the mod herself, which you can catch the beginning of in her video series.
Inigo
Download from: Nexus Mods
Maybe you don't think a blue Khajiit who follows you around commenting on everything and being sarcastic about Lydia is what Skyrim needs, but trust us on this. Inigo has tons of dialogue, some tied to his own questline and more that crops up at appropriate times depending on the location you're at. He can be told where to go and what to do by whistling, and will follow you even if you've got an existing companion, chatting away with them thanks to skilfully repurposed voice lines.
Vilja in Skyrim
Download from: Nexus Mods
A sequel to a much-loved Oblivion mod (which Terry Pratchett contributed to), Vilja in Skyrim adds the great-granddaughter of the original Vilja as a follower. She's an alchemist with her own questline to follow and a unique system to give her orders—essentially spells bound to hotkeys that can be used to co-ordinate attacks. Like Inigo she doesn't count toward your follower limit, and if introduced to each other Inigo and Vilja will even chat among themselves.
Yennefer of Vengerberg
Download from: Nexus Mods
Will we ever tire of crossovers between our favorite big RPGs? No, we definitely will not. This follower mod adds a custom-made Yennefer that re-purposes her lines of dialogue from The Witcher 3. She dual wields magic, of course. Sadly, she isn't eligible for marriage. The same modder has also made a Ciri follower mod and contributed to mods for Geralt and Triss followers all based on their Wild Hunt selves.
Amazing Follower Tweaks
Download from: Nexus Mods
This extremely popular mod for Oldrim is one you'll want to grab the Special Edition version of too. It lets you micromanage a lot of details about your companions like their gear, how to fight, and which of your many houses to live in.
Convenient Horses
Download from: Nexus Mods
This mod makes having a horse much less of a headache. You can have conversations from horseback. You can loot and gather herbs while mounted. Your followers can even buy and ride their own horses instead of sprinting helplessly behind you.
Diverse Dragons Collection
Download from: Nexus Mods
Despite the Special Edition's visual overhaul, its dragons are still a bit ho-hum. This mod, contributed to by a large collection of modders, adds 28 new and unique dragons with different models and textures, and capable of over a dozen new breath attacks and abilities. The dragons come in different ranks as well, to ensure you have a challenge no matter what your level.
Strigoi - Enhanced Vampire Encounters
Download from: Nexus Mods
With Strigoi installed, whenever vampires spawn there's a chance to meet some of its new varieties of bloodsucker. These powered-up undead might turn into bats, throw you around, or just generally be a lot tougher than regular vampires.
Insects Begone
Download from: Nexus Mods
Why is it always spiders in RPGs? Well, it doesn't have to be. Insects Begone replaces all the spiders and chaurus insects with bears and skeevers instead. It also removes decorative spiderwebs and other spider-related decor. If you can't deal with all the giant spiders plaguing Skyrim, this mod will squash them.
Magic, combat, and skill mods
If being the Dragonborn isn't enough, these mods give you new abilities to tinker with. Some are mundane skills like additional crafting abilities, others are new shouts and spells to play with.
Arcanum: A New Age of Magic
Download from: Nexus Mods
Arcanum is a huge addition to Skyrim's magic system. It lets you summon tornados and meteors among many other feats. It doesn't just throw all these new skills at you as soon as it's installed, though. Arcanum is great for starting a new playthrough of Skyrim with because unlocking spells is a more lore-friendly journey of custom quests, crafting, and adventuring.
Combat Gameplay Overhaul
Download from: Nexus Mods
CGO strikes a great balance for those wanting a bit more out of Skyrim's combat without turning it into too much of a fast-paced action game. It adds the ability to dodge roll, which surprisingly looks pretty decent in first-person. There's also the ability to switch between one- and two-handed grips to change how attacks land. Oh, and you can attack in midair, along with lots of other smaller tweaks.
Modder "DServant" also created the Archery Gameplay Overhaul which takes a similarly even-handed approach to improving bow use.
Wildcat - Combat of Skyrim
Download from: Nexus Mods
Wildcat is a much heavier combat overhaul, and an extremely popular one. It makes combat more deadly with increased damage and stamina use, but that's not all. It also adds an injury system where taking enough damage has a chance to give you a serious injury that could knock you down, unequip your weapon, or give you other dangerous effects. It rewards you for properly timed blocks and for attacks of opportunity while enemies are performing other actions too.
Sneak Tools SE
Download from: Nexus Mods
For the Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood members among us, Sneak Tools adds extra functionality to being good at hiding. Instead of just a damage bonus, you can kill NPCs from behind with daggers, knock them out with fists, and assassinate them while they're sleeping. You can douse torches and arrows to better sneak through the shadows and use a bunch of new arrow types with sneaky benefits.
Ars Metallica - Smithing Enhancement
Download from: Nexus Mods
When you're not playing a metal-plated tank, there's less use for smithing. Archers, thieves, and other stealthy characters have no issues finding light armor on their adventures, so there's never been much reason to make it themselves. This mod by Arthmoor gives slippery sorts reasons to learn smithing by letting them forge arrows, lockpicks, and guild-specific armor, as well as melt down bulkier armor they'd never actually wear into ingots.
Roleplaying, survival, and immersion mods
Roleplaying and immersion mods are all aimed at making Skyrim Special Edition feel just a bit more real.
Shadow of Skyrim - Nemesis and Alternative Death System
Download from: Nexus Mods
Emulating the best feature of the Shadow of Mordor series that somehow isn't yet an industry standard, the Shadow of Skyrim adds a full nemesis system. When defeated in combat, you aren't forced to load a save. Instead, you awaken in a nearby location, with the creature that felled you having earned a level-up of their own in the process—your own, freshly-minted Nemesis.
Nearly any in-game enemy (even from other mods) can be a potential nemesis. Once they've KO'd you, that now-terrifying bandit or mudcrab gets a unique title and boosted stats, and might even be wielding some of your cherished equipment after they picked it off your body.
No NPC Greetings - Reduced Range Greetings
Download from: Nexus Mods
Sick of NPCs repeating the same catchphrase from across the street every time they see you? Sick of guards commenting on your best skills, which they somehow know all about just by looking at you—even Sneak? This mod has a few options for fixing the issue, whether you want to reduce the distance these barks trigger at, or get rid of them altogether.
Simply Knock SE
Download from: Nexus Mods
Sometimes you don't want to break into someone's home and have the local guard after you. Instead of lockpicking, this mod gives you the option to just, you know, knock on the door. If someone is home they might answer, giving you the option to earn entry with your speech abilities. If they don't answer, then get your lockpicks out. (If this mod causes crashes after the Anniversary Edition update, check the sticky post at the top of this page for a solution.)
Alternate Start - Live Another Life
Fallout 4 cheats
Minecraft commands
Red Dead Redemption 2 cheats
GTA 5 cheats
The Sims 4 cheats
Ark: Survival Evolved cheats
Download from: Nexus Mods
If you're playing Special Edition, you're starting from scratch whether you're a newcomer to Skyrim or a veteran. Why not start your new game as someone other than the Dragonborn? Alternate Start—again, by Arthmoor—is a roleplaying mod that gives you choices on how you'd like to begin your next playthrough. Are you a patron at in inn, a visitor arriving by boat, a prisoner in a jail cell, or a member of a guild? You can start as a soldier, an outlaw, a hunter, even a vampire. It's a great way to re-experience Skyrim from a different perspective, and skip the tutorial while you're at it.
Open Cities
Download from: AFK mods
It's a little immersion-breaking to enter a city through a gate and encounter a loading screen. Open Cities aims for more of a Morrowind feel: the cities aren't instances, they're part of the larger world. Stroll right in—or ride in on horseback—without a break in your experience, and these cities will feel more like real places than loaded-in maps.
Opening Scene Overhaul
Download from: Nexus Mods
This mod, by elderscrolliangamer, changes and enhances Skyrim's opening sequence by restoring dialogue that Bethesda chose to cut, but which is still present in the game files. With that content restored, you'll learn more about the world you're preparing to inhabit by listening in on additional conversations and seeing full sequences that were snipped before release. Best of all, if you choose to side with the Stormcloaks, you'll actually be able to escape Helgen with Ulfric himself at your side.
Relationship Dialogue Overhaul
Download from: Nexus Mods
This mod by cloudedtruth adds thousands of lines of voiced dialogue for NPCs to make you feel like you have a closer and more personal relationship with followers and friends. Your spouse will no longer sound like a random follower, but address you in a more personal manner, and those you've angered will have a host of new insults to hurl your way.
Frostfall and Campfire
There's no need to play Skyrim as a humble warrior. Become a giant, fly, walk through walls, spawn any item you want, and even become Santa Claus with Skyrim console commands, and give yourself every item in the game with Skyrim item codes.
Download from Nexus Mods: Frostfall and Campfire
Looking to turn SSE into a survival experience without having to rely on the Creation Club's survival mode? Then bundle up and look no further. These mods from Chesko make the frosty world of Skyrim more dangerous more immersive and enjoyable with a system that makes you manage your temperature in the cold climate. Hypothermia is an issue, especially if you swim through icy water, so you'll have to dress warmly, and camping elements include craftable tents, torches, and other gear. There's even a crafting skill system.
Also, check out Wet and Cold, which adds weather-dependent visual effects and sounds.
Survival Control Panel
Download from: Nexus Mods
If you do want to stick with the Creation Club survival mode, perhaps because you got it as part of the Anniversary Edition, this control panel will let you change how it works. You can turn on and off options like whether you need to sleep to level up, as well as modifying the warmth rating of clothes, including cloaks if you've got a mod that adds those.
Positive Undressed Reactions
Download from: Nexus Mods
What could possibly be more immersive than walking around in your underclothes and being lavished with compliments by strangers? OK, maybe it's not that immersive but it is a fun one. On top of that, this mod also uses a very cool new AI-based voice synthesis tool called SKVA Synth to create some of its voice lines.
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