In a match between Julian Gollop and a load of crab men, I like to think that the X-COM designer would at least put up a decent fight, given his experience with tactically snuffing out aliens, and the fact he’d be literally playing them at his own game. And yet here he is showing how not to defeat the crab men and the crab queen in a demo for his upcoming turn-based tactics game Phoenix Point, which is a bit like X-COM but with more murderous crustaceans:If you were at the Weekender a few days a

Biomutant is the open world RPG to watch this year: a mutant and mech-focused game with a gorgeous post-apocalyptic landscape to explore, and not a boring human character in sight. Instead you’ll be playing as a cute, Rocket Raccoon-style mutant critter, who you’ll be able to customise to your liking. Experiment 101’s Stefan Ljungqvist enlightened us on this aspect at the PC Gamer Weekender, going into detail on Biomutant’s character creation tools. There are also mechs, a sort of jetpack to fin

Assassin’s Creed Origins adds its educational The Discovery Tour today with this in mind. As you might expect, The Discovery Tour has a trailer. Look and learn:”We’ve been in touch with teachers from the very first instalment of Assassin’s Creed games,” explains Maxime Durand, one of Ubisoft’s in-house historians. “With the Discovery Tour by Assassin’s Creed: Ancient Egypt, you can visualise and understand thousands of things from Egyptian history in their actual context. Assuming you already ow

A statue depicting Geralt of Rivia from The Witcher 3 taking a bath will, for some reason, be produced by specialists Dark Horse in the near future. The company, which has made The Witcher merchandise in the past, displayed an early example of the statue at the New York Toy Fair last week, which Polygon attended. Dark Horse’s decision to depict Geralt having a bath is an odd one, but I’m happy to see video game merch that pushes the envelope. According to the Polygon report, CD Projekt Red and D

In July 2016, Twitch suspended James “PhantomL0rd” Varga, a streamer who at the time had nearly 1.4 million followers, over his association with CSGO skin gambling site CSGOShuffle. That’s in violation of FTC and Valve rules, which means it also violated the Twitch terms of service, and as a result his channel was suspended. But now Varga has filed a lawsuit (via Unikrn) against Twitch over the suspension, saying that Twitch improperly suspended his account and then terminated his contract witho

It was a simple mistake, but as in real life it had cascading consequences. Some genetic instinct tells my squishy human body that being chased by sea monsters is upsetting, but barring bad luck and a shark attack I’ll probably never know that fear first-hand. In real life, I go up the block to buy bagels on Wednesdays and expect my mailbox key to be where I left it. Subnautica has its alien sea monsters, but maybe they’re not so unfathomable as they seem. The real world is certainly full of pre

He explained that it’s actually being used to alert the company when the expansion is installed using serial numbers known to be pirated. “‘Test.exe’ is part of the DRM and is only targeted against specific pirate copies of copyrighted software obtained illegally. That assessment was largely confirmed in an analysis by cybersecurity firm Fidus Information Security. “Whilst a lot of information is provided, it does not include any references to the password dumping tool,” it wrote. “It is for thi

The Fable-based CCG Fable Fortune, which hit Steam Early Access last summer, will go into full, free-to-play release on February 22. Leading up to the launch, Early Access players will be able to pick up some free Fancy cards, and a Fancy card pack, in the “Road to Release” log-in event. Fable Fortune has undergone a number of major changes since its Early Access debut, including the addition of a single-player mode called Heroic Tales and a new emote system that enables players to—among other t

We tried to pick the best of the worst from across PC gaming history, assembling an eclectic mix of armor that’s hideous, hilarious, and nonsensical. Some ‘fantasy’ armor from the middle ages is a lot more fantastic than a lot of the armor that’s depicted in these games. Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines – Pimp my hideHang on, you’re probably thinking. As a grunt on the ground, you probably don’t want to hear that your primary advantage is ‘numbers’, especially when your boss jealously guards

If you’re having trouble deciding between the speed of solid state drive and the capacity of a slower performing (but cheaper) hard drive, there’s a compromise to be had. Seagate’s FireCuda SSHD is one such drive, and the 2TB model is on sale at Newegg today for $85. While SSHDs don’t offer the same overall performance as a solid state drive, they can feel just as snappy in some situations. And compared to a 7,200 RPM hard drive, Seagate says its FireCuda drives are five times faster. The FireCu

The Overwatch Year of the Dog event got underway earlier this month, but later today Blizzard will take the action to the next level with the first-ever Puppy Rumble, a no-holds-barred competition featuring real, and really small, dogs. In Overwatch, every dog has its day.2.19.18 pic.twitter.com/5oWvxuFB7rFebruary 17, 2018It’s not clear how this is going to work, although I’m assuming that there will be no actual dog-fighting involved. Whatever the Puppy Rumble turns out to be, I expect it will

To get around this, AMD is offering free ‘boot kits’ on loan so users can flash their motherboard’s BIOS to support the new APUs. Not everyone building a system around one of these chips will run into a situation where a boot kit is needed. If you happen to own an AM4 motherboard that will not boot or allow you to update the BIOS to support the Ryzen 3 2200G or Ryzen 5 2400G, you can request a boot kit from AMD. To request one, you have to visit AMD’s warranty claims page and fill in your contac

In my case, just about everything in Kingdom Come: Deliverance has been put on hold until I get my damn boots back. On his feet: boots. This game stole my boots, and I’m determined to steal them back. I know it’s risky, but I guess I’m still annoyed at having my first pair of stolen boots stolen from me, and so I have little faith or trust in authority at this point. So, yeah, he’s dead now too.

“If Odin played Early Access strategy games, I imagine he’d be pleased,” said T.J. Hafer of Northgard in February last year. Having spent the past year living in Early Access, Shiro Games’ Viking RTS colony sim Northgard will launch in full on March 7, 2018. Comprised of pretty artwork and snippets of in-game footage, here’s a campaign trailer:At launch, Northgard introduces a new 11-chapter-spanning single-player campaign that follows the saga of Rig. Northgard’s multiplayer component featured

Announced at the PC Gamer Weekender a couple of days ago, Mavericks: Proving Grounds is a massively ambitious 1000-player MMO that will also find the time to cram in a 400-player Battle Royale mode, which will launch first. Automaton basically sees this as the “next generation” of MMO, something it’s achieved via a network of servers, allowing for millions of entities inside a single game. Other similar titles, Thompson argues, compromise the depth of the simulation for the sake of scale, but he

“There clearly seems to be some confusion about various patch versions, for which we are very sorry, so let us explain it a little bit,” says Warhorse on the KCD subreddit. “When we finish any patch we can’t just upload it and send it to you immediately. There is a certification phase in which platform holders check whether the patch is stable. If we fail any of these platform-specific requirements, we have to upload a correction just for that specific platform. Warhorse then provides an overvie

The idea for Ooblets came from a desire to play a farming game with more RPG elements. Given that emphasis on self-directed play, I ask what happens if you want to focus on farming or on training ooblets. Could you treat Ooblets entirely as a farming game? Cordingley is optimistic that Ooblets can stand out, and sees the benefit of more attention being paid to that space. “Ooblets has a lot of personality and unique attributes that we think will set it apart in people’s minds.

Star Wars: Battlefront 2 failed to reach its holiday period sales targets—so said EA CFO Blake Jorgensen last month, while blaming the game’s loot box backlash for its shortcomings. Somewhat surprisingly, Jorgensen then said the controversial mechanic will be nevertheless reinstalled “when [EA] thinks it’s ready”. In the meantime, Battlefront 2’s latest update—version 1.2—adds a limited-time ‘Jetpack Cargo’ mode, that equips players with rocket launchers and jetpacks and has them blowing each ot

Following his Saturday stage presentation at the PC Gamer Weekender 2018, Julian Gollop brought 17 minutes of Phoenix Point in-game footage to the event’s livestream. Alongside our host Zoe, the X-Com mastermind talked us through one particularly action-packed turn-based mission—filled with hostile aliens, space age weaponry, and, yikes, one massive pincer-wielding extra terrestrial boss baddie. Phoenix Point is without a hard release date as yet, but good luck taking on that multi-legged monstr

A few years ago, we published an article asking developers to stop making horrible PC ports. It’s a guide that should have been inscribed on massive stone tablets throughout the land, but it’s 2018 now, and rubbish PC ports are still happening. One particular area from our guide that’s brought up is social media integration—to whit, there isn’t any. Here’s Rare’s PC design lead Ted Timmins chatting about that, the PC port, and analysing reviews:Rare seems to have put a lot of of effort into maki