PC Gamer UK March issue: Far Cry 3
They say that if you stare into the mad eyes of Far Cry 3 villain, Vaas, for too long then you lose all sense of time and language. I’m not sure that’s true. I’ve been staring into his eyes for the last few minutes trying to think of an intro and oogle bloogle barble blom.
We put Vaas on our cover this month to spread the madness and let the world know about our six page Far Cry 3 preview. The third game in the series will revisit the beautiful tropical setting of the first game and this time not everyone on the island will be a respawning homicidal maniac. Subscribers have had the issue for about a week already, but it should be hitting shop shelves as you’re reading this. This month all of our readers get a key that will grant access to the excellent Tribes: Ascend beta, and six pounds worth of World of Tanks cash.
There’s plenty more inside, of course. Our huge tips feature is packed full of moderately worthwhile advice that will threaten to catapult your gaming skills into the realm of slightly above average. Graham’s been seeing aliens, too. Partly because he’s been out to see XCOM: Enemy Unknown, but mostly because he spent too long staring at Vaas when designing the cover. Read on to discover what else lies in wait in issue 237.
Dear Esther turns a profit in five and a half hours, sells 16,000 in a day
A post on the Indie Fund site responsible for backing the development of Dear Esther says that the team have recouped their investment of $55,000 in just five and a half hours and is currently the third best selling game on Steam.
“To be honest, we are a little surprised by how many people bought Dear Esther so quickly,” say the Indie Fund. “We were expecting the game to have a niche appeal. In fact the situation is quite different.” Dear Esther has so far sold more than 16,000 copies in its first day.
The Fund were slightly reluctant to fund the game in the beginning because they were worried it go down well with Steam’s mainstream audience. “We appear to have been very wrong about all this,” they say. “We are happy to have been wrong.”
For our verdict on Dear Esther, check out our Dear Esther review.
Far Cry 3 trailer flees madmen, drops beats
The latest CG trailer for Far Cry 3 sets up the premise quite nicely. The psychotic one in the red vest is Vaas, the star of the E3 trailer. It looks as though he’ll be hunting you through the jungle as you try to find a boat, any boat, to take you away from the wilderness gone mad. You had a choice of characters to play as in Far Cry 2, but none of them were innocent holidaymakers caught up in a gang war. It’ll be interesting to see if there’s any transition between ‘man on holiday’ and ‘man who can single-handedly take out a base with a toothpick.’
Resident Evil 6 screenshots show new enemies and tentacle arms
We don’t know a huge amount about Resident Evil 6 yet, but we do know that it’s going to be quite blurry. Let’s do a quick experiment. Turn your head slightly. Did the world dissolve into an incomprehensible smear? No? Then your brain settings have motion blur turned off by default. This visual effect has ruined more screenshots than bad textures have, and can make it hard to see what’s going on while playing as well.
Still, behind all that fuzz, there are some mean new enemies in the latest round of Resi 6 screenies, including the tentacled-armed J’avo. These ugly beasts are a lot smarter than zombies. They have a basic grasp of language and teamwork, and can regenerate mangled limbs into even more dangerous forms. The first five screenshots offer a flip book portrayal of what will happen to you if one of those arms gets hold of you. Take a look.
Dota 2 will support LAN play, next International tournament prize pool to be “at least” $1.6m
Valve’s Erik Johnson has told Join Dota that Dota 2 will be getting a LAN mode. “There are some systems that LAN mode requires that we haven’t finished yet, mainly because we’ve been focused on matchmaking. We know how important this feature is for the community,” says Johnson.
He also talked a bit about Valve’s plans for their next big Dota 2 tournament. The Dota 2 International took place at Gamescom last year, offering Dota pros a shot at a piece of the $1.6 million prize pool. Valve are going to at least match that amount in the next tournament. Johnson said that “if you look at any major sport around the world that has an audience of similar size to Dota’s you’ll find that those at the very top in terms of skill tend to make a lot of money.”
“Frankly, we think the teams represented at The International deserve this kind of money for what they do. We all know how hard it is to master Dota,” he added.
What do you think of the Mass Effect 3 demo?
The space lobsters are coming for the daffodils. Earth is doomed. This teaser is a short clip of a full CG trailer set to be released on Sunday, and is the latest piece in an escalating frenzy of Mass Effect 3 marketing materials surrounding the release of the Mass Effect 3 Origin demo yesterday. It contains a couple of missions and a taste of the new multiplayer mode and got us so excited that we livestreamed it.
Executive producer Casey Hudson tweeted the day before yesterday to let us all know that Mass Effect 3 has gone gold. It’s finished. All we have to do now is play the demo over and over again while we wait all those disks to be printed off and ferried to shops ahead of release on March 6 in the US and March 9 in Europe. What do you think of the demo? Are the new close combat moves big and punchy enough for you? Does James Vega bulge too freakishly? Is Shepard still badass enough? Let us know your thoughts.
Schafer says Psychonauts 2 will cost $13 million to fund. “Yeah, I can do that,” says Notch
This fan made film, Inceptionauts, was used by Tim Schafer in meetings with publishers to try and sell the idea of a sequel to Psychonauts. “It’s better than any trailer we ever had for the game” Tim Schafer said to Kotaku. But it wasn’t enough to persuade any businesses to part with their money, until Notch went onto Twitter last week with a simple message. “Let’s make Psychonauts 2 happen.”
“I feel like I was being proposed to on the jumbotron at the baseball game.” says Schafer, but an offer on Twitter is one thing, a publishing deal is another. A sequel would need to at least match the budget of the original, which cost around $13 million to make. Schafer told Notch how much cash he might need to front production. “As soon as I mentioned the amount of money he said, ‘Yeah, I can do that.’”
Team Fortress 2 gets $100 wedding rings
The Something Special for Someone Special item was in a secret update back in December, but you can now buy it. For a hundred dollars. “It’s ring-shaped, it’s gift-wrapped, it’s basically useless, and it’s really expensive,” say Valve. “In short, it’s the most accurate simulation of an actual Valentine’s Day gift ever made available to the public.”
Public alpha imminent for intriguing action-RPG, Krater
Krater is attempting to fuse the fast, bloody combat of Diablo with more thoughtful squad management. The devs are listing big names like X-Com and Syndicate as inspirations, and there will be a massive crafting system to back up the exploration and monster mincing. Your squad will change as members leave or die, and as every item in the game can be crafted, you’ll have complete control over your squad’s gear and set-up.
Krater is about to go into public pre-alpha testing, in which they’re aiming to get tons of feedback on an early build. If you’d like to get involved and see how Krater’s shaping up, you can follow the latest announcements on the Krater site and follow developers, Fatshark, on Twitter. Meanwhile, here are a few of the latest screenshots from the current build.
Skyrim mods are quite popular: two million downloads in three days
The Skyrim Creation Kit was released last Wednesday. Within hours, the Steam Workshop was stuffed with mods, including good ones, bad ones and downright scary ones. In case it wasn’t obvious already, Skyrim mods have proved extremely popular with players. Bethesda say that two million mods were downloaded within three days of the release of the Creation Kit.
Players have had plenty to choose from. According to Bethesda “more than 2,500 mods have been published by the gaming community.” It’s an almost overwhelming selection that ranges from new armour and upgraded textures to new combat moves and devastating magic. Thankfully, the Steam Workshop now has a much needed search bar, making it easier to find mods your friends have recommended. Speaking of which, here’s our round up of some of the best Steam Workshop mods so far.
Dwarf Fortress update adds “secret vampire dwarves” and werewolf invasions
Remarkable indie adventure generator, Dwarf Fortress has just received a great big update. Version 0.34.01 is now free to download from the official site, adding fresh new ways for your Dwarves to die horribly. Vampire dwarves can infiltrate your settlements and full moons bring the added threat of werewolf invasion. More unpleasantly, “Ingested syndromes are now possible” in adventure mode, so you’ll have to watch what you eat when exploring the new cities present in the latest update.
There are some gems in the bug fix list as well. “Demons masquerading as gods will try a little harder” and the devs have “restricted mandates so they’ll be more reasonable.” Thank heavens for that! Find the rest of the patch notes below. For more Dwartress, check out our Dwarf Fortress diary, a tale of seven drunk dwarves and their quest to reach hell.
Star Wars: The Old Republic Q&A reveals plans for Legacy races and dual spec support in 1.2
Bioware have held the first of a new series of weekly Q&A sessions with Star Wars: The Old Republic players, with some more information on what we can expect from the upcoming 1.2 patch.
The Legacy system offers a shared level that exists across all TOR alts, but while it’s currently possible to gain Legacy levels, there are no rewards attached to them. Lead writer Daniel Erickson confirms that 1.2 will give players with Legacy levels access to a greater selection of races when creating new characters.
“The species that will be unlocked in Game Update 1.2 are species currently in the game that will become available to classes and factions where you haven’t seen them before,” says Erickson. “New species are in consideration for the future but we don’t have any details to share right now.” Jawa Jedi, anyone?
Total War: Shogun 2 – Fall of the Samurai trailer talks torpedo boats and off-field artillery
Total War’s biggest expansion will also feature their most modern setting to date. That doesn’t mean that we’ll lose out on cavalry charges and mass infantry melee, though. Japan’s traditionalist forces will put the art of war to the test against new threats like long-range artillery, gatling guns and well-drilled ranks of gunmen. Each of the six new factions will be fighting for or against the Shogunate. Your role as the leader of one of those factions will be to push Japan in one direction or the other, ideally by creating an army that consists entirely of horses and rampaging them from one end of the country to the other, trampling the enemy underhoof. Horses FTW.
Fall of the Samurai is a standalone expansion, so you won’t need a copy of Shogun 2 to play it. The expansion is due out on March 23. Which side will you take?
Grand Theft Auto IV video shows iCEnhancer 2.0 visual mod in action
Version 2.0 of the superb iCEnhancer mod for Grand Theft Auto IV is now freely available on creator Hayssam Keilany’s site. Providing your PC can run it at more than a handful of frames per second, it’ll turn Liberty City into the almost photorealistic version of pseudo-New York shown in the trailer above. The mod’s creator is planning to release a “Natural” version soon, which could provide the more muted tones we’ve seen from previous versions of iCEnhancer. If you like the look of this, Keilany’s also made a version of iCEnhancer for Skyrim. What do you think, time to install GTA IV again?
And in other PC gaming news…
Got problems with your life freezing and then skipping forward unpredictably like that great episode of Futurama? No problem. All you have to do is change the structure of spacetime and apply a bit of slow motion every now and then, like the bit in that great episode of Spaced. It worked perfectly for CCP with their lag problem in Eve Online.
That’s time anomalies dealt with, then. Now for the small matter of all the interesting PC gaming news that’s been happening today, with the most serious links first, and the rest arranged to deliver PC gaming news at maximum intensity. Are you ready?
