Valve

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title="Permanent Link to East vs West has been cancelled, Paradox announce">






Paradox's Cold War strategy has become that much colder. The studio are tearing down East vs West: A Hearts of Iron Game. In a joint statement on their forum, Paradox and developer BL Logic reveal that the project had "been severely delayed", to the point that not even an early access release would meet their desired timeline. As a result, the game has been officially cancelled.



You can see the full statement below:



"Today it's our sad duty to inform you that it has been decided to cancel the game "East vs West". We at Paradox Interactive have the utmost respect for BL Logic and this is not a decision that has been taken lightly quite the contrary but ultimately we are a publisher and our actions and decisions must reflect that.



"As the project has been severly delayed we dont think that open beta / early acccess could, within our desired timeline, meet the set criteria.



"It has been a journey of ups and downs since we started the development of East Vs West back in May 2011. We wish each other nothing but the best with future endeavors.



"We also would like to thank the developers for their hard work and their tremendous effort, as well as the fans for their long term commitment and their never ending support."



It's a shame, because the game had a lot of promise. Giving you the chance to pick any country, it would have then had you delve into the turbulent world of foreign relations, proxy wars and nuclear brinksmanship. It would have had DEFCON levels, space races, the doomsday clock, and all the other things that mid-20th century politics fans love to obsess over. Read Graham's preview, and contemplate what could have been.



On the other hand - and obviously not knowing details - there's every chance this was for the best. Paradox have had a rocky history as a publisher, most infamously with Gettysburg: Armored Warfare. Whatever the story behind East vs West's cancellation, it's perhaps for the best that they were prepared to drop it, rather than release yet another unfinished game.

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title="Permanent Link to Tropico 5 trailer takes you through the eras">






Haemimont Games, the fun-to-spell developer of Tropico 5, have released a new trailer offering a first look at their upcoming city-builder series. Note that, while it's written Tropico, it's actually pronounced Trropicooooooo. In the world of El Presidente, the root of power comes from your ability to overly-extend vowels. Also from the ruthlessness to fix elections, imprison your enemies, and enact a program of state surveillance.







The trailer offers a quick glimpse at the new eras. While previous Tropico games were set during an indefinite Cold War, this sequel starts in colonial times and runs through to the modern age. As you progress through its four eras, you'll be able to research, build and upgrade new buildings, shifting the architecture of you city along the way.



While it otherwise looks quite similar to Tropico 3 and 4, Haemimont have imbued the game with a variety of clever features designed to test the player. Tropico's problem has always been how easy it was to settle into a comfortable routine. Once you'd learned a few of the game's tricks, you could happily get the basics in place, then begin the transition to tourism. This time, there are a vast number of potential dynamic roadblocks, forcing more improvisation and creativity.



For more details about the game, check out Tom's preview. Tropico 5 is due out this Summer.

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title="Permanent Link to Shaquille O’Neal launches Shaq-Fu: A Legend Reborn crowdfunding campaign">






We might get to play another Shaq-Fu game, finally. Former NBA star Shaquille O Neal and new developer Big Deez Productions has launched a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo to make a followup to 1994's Shaq-Fu, widely considered the worst fighting game of all time and one of the worst games ever, period. They re hoping to raise $450,000.



Big Deez says it s well aware of Shaq-Fu s terrible reputation, and that this new game will have little to do with it besides the name and Shaq's leading role. It describes the project as a 3D beat em up with dynamic destructible environments, saying Shaq will fight thousands of enemies, learn new skills and moves, and do the other things you d recognize from the character action game genre.



Think Devil May Cry with an old school Streets of Rage feel mixed with classic Shaq humor, says Big Deez's Katya Maximova.



The project s Indiegogo page claims that Shaq assembled Big Deez s all-star team for the creation of Shaq-Fu. It includes industry professionals that have previously worked on projects like Halo, Street Fighter, Final Fantasy, Battlefield, and others. The mention of Street Fighter is particularly interesting, as what we can see of the game looks very much like Street Fighter IV, with the inky interface and exaggerated, high contrast style.



As to why Shaq, a retired NBA player and millionaire, isn t funding the game himself, Big Deez says that the purpose of the campaign is to see how much the public is interested in becoming Shaq s partner in making the game. Shaq will also invest a lot of his own time in money in the project, and Big Deez will be investing considerably more money than it s asking for.



You can find out more about the game on Indiegogo.

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title="Permanent Link to Watch Wes stream Just Cause 2 Multiplayer at 4:15 p.m. PST">






Just Cause 2 Multiplayer is an insane mod that allows hundreds of players to do stunt jumps off of jumbo jets at the same time. We're going to jump in to play on JMan100's Freeroam Construction Sandbox, which we recently wrote about. Hit our Twitch channel at 4:15 p.m. PST to follow along!



Update: Thanks for watching! The stream is over, but if you want to catch an archive, click this wonderfully convenient link.

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title="Permanent Link to The mouse of the Large Pixel Collider">






We've picked a mouse worthy of plugging into our $10,000 super-rig, the Large Pixel Collider.



The truth is, there's an absurd range of good, LPC-worthy choices for gaming mice available today. Razer's DeathAdder is simply the most comfortable chassis we've found. It's been a cozy, capable implement for the high-res video and image-capturing we do on the LPC. There's a left-handed version, too.



We're in the process of picking what keyboard we'd like to pair with the LPC look for that soon. See what else is inside the LPC.

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title="Permanent Link to The Yawhg review">






She drank for six weeks straight. That is, except for the week she inexplicably spent fighting crime in the slums. That was weird. But any other time you d have found her in the tavern, throwing back pints and spilling conversation all over the place.



He spent a quieter six weeks: studying magic, mixing potions, mediating in the gardens to hone his mind. She stumbled into a dart tournament, broke up a brawl, and shooed away a tone deaf bard. He fought a rogue goo monster, witnessed a miracle, and turned a frog into a prince.



On the seventh week, the world ended. And that s one playthrough of The Yawhg, excluding the epilogue: 10 or so minutes of decision making with two to four characters (controlled locally, and best with other players). It s a text-based interactive short story about flawed characters coping with disaster, meant to be played again and again, but differently.



Two to four characters can be chosen they're only different in looks.



The static art complements the text well, cute but not saccharine and with enough sadness to pair well with the often tragic stories The Yawhg generates. Ryan Roth and Halina Heron's superb acoustic soundtrack best expresses the tone: foreboding and melancholic, but laced with optimism and levity. The Yawhg really is a sad game, but sad in the sort of way you have to laugh along with.



The end is nigh



One game spans six weeks, which translates into six turns for each character. Each turn begins with deciding what to spend the week doing. Clean up the hospital? Attend a ball at the palace? Go hunting in the woods? Drink? Each activity increases one or more character traits drinking at the tavern, for example, boosts Charm and Physique.



After choosing an activity, a randomized event with a binary decision elaborates on the story and offers the opportunity for another stat boost or loss, if the character fails. While drinking, for instance, a brawl might break out. With enough Charm, I can settle the patrons back into their seats, or I can jump into the fray to test my Physique.



This seems like a benign enough activity, but you never know you might accidentally kill everyone or something.



The events are often intentional fantasy clich s a slime monster, a dark ritual in the woods but with a modern sensibility and humor. In one storyline, I ran into an ex-lover with her new boyfriend and chose to be filled with terrible jealousy, decreasing my Charm but increasing my Physique as I consumed my aggression with exercise. Other events can destroy parts of the town, making them inaccessible to all players, and some can lead to follow-up events: I later ran into my ex s new man again and punched him in the face.



Whatever happens in that six weeks, it always ends with The Yawhg a vicious storm that destroys the town. Everything is lost, but hope remains: each player now assigns her character a role in the rebuilding. My drunk was full of charisma, so I chose her to lead, while my conjurer would summon supplies for the builders. Their stats determine their success, and the story machine spins up to generate an epilogue for the town and players.



Choose wisely: each role relies on a different combination of stats.



It s possible to earn a bright future for the town, but in this case, we were defeated. My drunk, after witnessing The Yawhg s horrors (including a pack of schoolchildren eating the corpse of their teacher), lost herself again at the bottom of a bottle. The conjurer fared only slightly better. He obsessively mediated until he crossed into the astral plane, which is the same as our world only everyone s eyes are a little smaller and there is no return.



Time is a flat circle



Designer Emily Carroll s writing is funny, succinct, and confident. Her voice is amusingly dispassionate, putting it on the players to feel empathy or not when their characters reach their often horrific fates. There are over 50 possible epilogues, and many that I've seen are as cruel as an Edward Gorey poem ( K is for Kate who was struck with an axe") and narrated with the same matter-of-fact detachment.



And if the endings aren t tragic, many are at least melancholy, twisting a seemingly positive story into an unhappy life: a famous wizard who can conjure everything but a love potion, a successful bar owner who homogenizes the industry through franchising. There are happy endings, but I prefer the tragedy that comes from unbalanced playthroughs. When multiple players have projected their personalities onto their characters, there s a lot of fun in stepping through the epilogues line by line, anticipating each one as we discover if anyone gets a happy ending or if we re all left mugged and bleeding on a pile of rubble.



This won't end well.



For that reason, The Yawhg is a great way to have a few morose laughs with my girlfriend, or with a small game night group. Very quickly, though, it starts repeating itself. With no imagination of its own, The Yawhg can t offer outcomes or choices Carroll didn t write. There are plenty of possible epilogues, but after two to three playthroughs the randomized events become familiar. After around five times through, I was experimenting with intentional combinations of actions to get a look at alternate endings rushing through to see my tragic fate. I was tinkering with the story machine instead of playing along, and The Yawhg lost its suspension of disbelief and a lot of its value.



It s like a casual tabletop roleplaying game with a dungeon master who isn t prepared for more than a few rounds. I imagine The Yawhg that way, as a game box tucked into my bookshelf. I might take it out for friends who haven t played it yet, and we ll laugh as someone rolls a perfect round of drunk darts or deals with an unstable potion by throwing it into the town water supply. And after a few rounds we ll shelve it, happy to have played, but noting that there s no point in going on if we keep dealing the same events.



In a couple months the alluring box art might be noticed by a new group, and we ll play another few rounds so I can enjoy their discovery and a few surprises I missed or forgot about. And we ll quickly shelve it again with the same conversation. The Yawhg is a salvo of imagination that depletes its ammunition quickly, best enjoyed in brief sessions, weeks apart, with new friends and a little forgetfulness.

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title="Permanent Link to Batman: Arkham Knight’s Gotham will be five times larger than Arkham City">






Batman is at his best when he reflects the world he's always trying to save from itself. In the upcoming Batman: Arkham Knight, that world is reportedly getting a lot bigger and more dangerous, according to information in the latest Game Informer magazine. With the Rocksteady series coming to an end with its third entry, it seems clear the studio is narrowing in on what's made the Arkham games one of the best depictions of Batman in any medium.



"The Arkham games have always been about providing that power fantasy, about being and feeling like Batman," Rocksteady game director Sefton Hill tells GI. "We're going to take it further with the addition of the Batmobile and the bigger city."



The Batmobile has always felt like the perfect expression of the Batman story, in that it's the result of Bruce Wayne's intelligence, wealth, and lack of superhuman powers. It's an extension of his armored cowl and it's clear Rocksteady thinks introducing the vehicle will only deepen the experience of immersion that's been so vital to the Arkham games.



"We've known it's what people want," Hill says. "When you're Batman you do think Batmobile, it's the one key thing we felt we really always wanted to do. And also that refreshes the whole experience ... What we're always trying to do is every game feel like a new game rather than another episode of the last one".



Some more key Arkham Knight details:



The "Arkham Knight" is actually the name of a new rival for Batman created by DC Entertainment's Geoff Johns

The new Gotham City setting is five times as big as Arkham City

Enemy goons are more plentiful and have been given new tools to take out Batman

The countering system returns and remains central to combat in Arkham Knight

Arkham Knight's story takes place one year after the events in Arkham City



CVG has the complete rundown of details from the GI article and if you haven't caught it yet, be sure to check out the game's announcement trailer here.



 

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title="Permanent Link to Year Walk review">






By Ben Griffin.



The year walk is ingrained into Scandinavian folklore, a thousand-year-old pagan vision quest where people with lots of time on their hands headed into the deep dark forest to catch a glimpse of the future. Picture what Australians call walkabout, but with more creepy wooden dolls.



Launched on iOS last year, this 90-minute point-and-click is essentially an interactive horror novella splicing full-screen puzzles with first-person exploration. It's a grab bag of experimental ideas, but instead of grabbing everything, you prod it and poke it and spin it. So how exactly does this work with a mouse and keyboard?



The pointer acts as substitute for your finger and manipulates points of interest, while movement is on WASD. Puzzles play with this formula, though: one has you hold down the T and V keys to depress two locks then slide metal catches to keep them in place as you open a metal hatch.







The midnight icy wilderness in which the bulk of the game takes place is a grid of screens that you navigate by travelling forwards, backwards, left and right. It's a conspiring maze, luring in year walkers and displacing them amid endless trees and tundra. The perspective isn't as freeing as conventional first-person, as you're always facing forwards and can only travel up and down at set points, but environmental cues indicate when: a mysterious set of footsteps leading into the distance. The blackened husk of a bonfire. A wooden cart missing a horse.



These abandoned artefacts make it seem as if you've awoken to find a world devoid of people, like they've melted into the snow. The featureless landscape combines with an excellent use of silence to evoke a feeling of unsettling isolation. In this sense, the game nails its namesake. According to the in-game encyclopaedia, "A year walker had to avoid other people, so they commonly locked themselves in dark rooms and were not allowed to see fire for an entire day."



Written by my favourite Scandinavian folklore expert Theodor Almsten, this encyclopedia details the kinds of myths and monsters that make you glad you grew up with Humpty Dumpty. In fact it plays into puzzles itself. When a beast called the Brook Horse rises out of a turquoise stream carrying the ghosts of four babies (Mylings), you must search for their bodies by following trails of bright blood stained into the white snow. One of these Mylings can be found in the pages of your encyclopaedia, hinted at by strewn letters and dripping blood.







The dark recess of Year Walk hold all manner of warped puzzles. There's a goat-headed Church Grim to defeat, and a hidden language to decode (keep a pen and paper to hand). Sound plays a unique role, too. Snow crunches underfoot, and only by following a siren's distant call will you find her. Later, inside a shimmering cave, a tuneful melody is a clue as to how you should progress. That's Year Walk all over. It's in turn bamboozling and disturbing, constantly throwing up both chilling curiosities and fresh interactive experiences.



While often obtuse, ambiguity is part of its charm. A hint system and map, both additions to the PC version, reduce aimless wandering, but in the process they kill part of what Year Walk is about the wandering. Resist the temptation to use them because they make an already short game shorter. For a mere four pounds / six dollars, though, this is a walk worth taking.



Details



Expect to pay: 4 / $6

Release: Out now

Developer: Simogo

Publisher: In-house

Multiplayer: None

Link: www.simogo.com/games/yearwalk

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title="Permanent Link to Three Lane Highway: what Gabe Newell’s choice of Dota 2 hero really means">






Welcome to Three Lane Highway, Chris' new weekly column all about Dota 2.



Sand King is - like Lich, Axe, and, I like to think, Phoenix - a gentleman's hero. Characters with a lot of early and midgame potential are key to setting the pace of the match, and if your team is snowballing off the back of a few crucial early kills then it's likely that someone like Sand King was involved. Opting to play Sand King is a declaration that you are a team player; that you will buy wards and smoke; that first blood will be secured with a reliable two second stun and the sound - distant, like thunder - of somebody listening to Darude.



Sand King is a gentleman's hero. He's also a giant talking scorpion who sounds like somebody strapped a subwoofer to Vincent Price, but you take what you can get.



What does someone's favourite hero say about their preferences, values, or outlook? What does it mean that Sand King is Gabe Newell's personal pick? Moreover, what does all of this mean for Valve? I submit to you: it means something. It means stuff. It certainly doesn't mean nothing. The premise of this inaugural Dota 2 column has unshakable foundations. If you disagree, that's fine, good for you. Here is a review of a processor.



Let's get started, then. I am going to do this as a list, because (a) somebody told me that you loved lists and (b) I am lazy.



His lore

Sand King is the avatar of a magic, sentient desert. He isn't simply the king of sand - he is sand, trapped inside armour that happens to look a bit like a scorpion. His is a singular identity expressed by a much broader collective consciousness. To my mind this is a little like Gabe's relationship with Valve, and, more broadly, like Valve's relationship with the Steam community.



The concept of 'GabeN' is nothing more or less than the expression of the gaming community's sometimes ironic, sometimes earnest need for leadership - leadership that Valve traditionally withholds. Valve will always stress that they work to empower others, to solve short term problems, and to respond to the vast amounts of data they gather from the Steam community. They are a company without job titles, and they claim no titles for themselves.



But the vast majority of human beings like and respect leadership - they want people to thank or blame, not philosophies. Hence GabeN, deliverer of cheap games and withholder of Half-Life 3. The sturdy but capricious ruler of PC gaming, a kingdom that is in reality comprised of innumerable, infinitesimally small and diffuse parts. A king, as it were, of sand.



His attributes

Sand King is a melee support hero and his primary attribute is strength. This places him in a class of character that also includes Earthshaker, Undying, Treant Protector and Omniknight. Strength supports are a little more gold-dependent than their intelligence counterparts due to their low mana and reliance on distance-closing items like Blink Dagger.



This suggests that even as Gabe is working to buy wards, smoke and courier upgrades for his team he must also be careful to find gold for himself. Risks are fine - even encouraged, when it comes to securing first blood - but these risks must be grounded in solid principles. Overextending for its own sake, dying and losing money is a disaster for Sand King. A good support wants to maximise efficiency for everybody. This means both moving constantly and moving reliably, and not everybody is able to balance the two. This mirrors Valve's own attitude to risk, particularly when it comes to tinkering with Steam. Wow, did it get hot in here? These analogies are on fire.



Strength heroes are the sturdiest characters in Dota 2 because they gain both hitpoints and damage with every point in their primary attribute. These are the two stats that really count, at the end of the day, because if you're dead it doesn't matter how big your mana pool is. Gabe's choice of a strength hero indicates that he believes that ideas, companies and people should be able to withstand attrition at a fundamental level. Dreaming big is great, but it needs to be backed up by proven durability.



The trade-off, however, is that tiny mana reserve. Gabe has powerful spells, but he has to use them at exactly the right time or not use them at all. A strength support hero is a continual presence, but action must be taken decisively. This is probably the best explanation for why Half-Life 3 is taking so long: Valve have run out of mana, they've been buying all the wards, and they haven't had time to save up for arcane boots. If you cared, you'd pool them some clarities.



His skills

Sand King is versatile, but the way his skills mesh with one another won't necessarily be apparent to a new player. Let's break them down one by one.



Burrowstrike is classic Valve. It's both a disable, a nuke, and - potentially - an escape, packing tonnes of utility for a modest mana cost. It is more or less effective depending on the skill of the user, but is fundamentally reliable in a way that makes it powerful in the hands of anybody. It can be the spearpoint of an assault or a way of following up on somebody else's initiation; a platform for capitalising on others' success or a means to experiment with new strategies. Burrowstrike is, in short, the Team Fortress 2 of Dota abilities.



Sand Storm is what happens if you use the word 'vision' or 'plan' in an interview with a senior Valve employee. A whirling shroud of avant-garde thinking appears, concealing the man or woman at its centre. Somebody will use the word 'feedback', and almost certainly also the word 'creators'. Then, 'network'. Well-meaning journalists, in this scenario, take anywhere from 25 to 100 damage per second. There's someone in there somewhere, you might think, as your naive writerly dreams erode and crumble. Why didn't I bring sentry wards?



Caustic Finale is an oddity. Some don't invest in it at all, because causing creeps to explode on death is a great way to screw up lane equilibrium. Use it right, however, and that 220 bonus damage at level four can be enough to turn a teamfight. Its inconsistency reflects Valve's work to empower Steam users: sometimes, they explode with creativity! Other times, they explode in a shower of ASCII dicks.



Epicenter. Two seconds of channeling followed by an earthquake that slows movement and attack speed and deals huge damage in a massive radius. You can't ignore it, and you can't escape it. It is a Steam Sale, a new game announcement, and a seasonal Dota event rolled into one. Pulled off perfectly, a good Epicenter shakes the enemy team apart and showers Valve's partners in assist gold. Let's all take a moment to think about serious business people tumbling around their boardrooms while a man bellows 'wombo combo', because that is a fun thing to think about. The problem with Epicenter is that is highly vulnerable to cancellation during the channeling phase. Here's looking at you, Ricochet 2.



It also requires Gabe to pick up a Blink Dagger, but that's no big deal. What's another knife?



Three Lane Highway is Chris' sometimes earnest, sometimes silly column about Dota 2. Originally a Tumblr blog, it's now part of PC Gamer proper.

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title="Permanent Link to Dragon Age: Inquisition trailer and screenshots show wild new landscapes">






Dragon Age: Inquisition producer Cameron Lee has dropped a new trailer and a couple of new screenshots on the Bioware blog showing off the wild lands we'll get to explore in Bioware's next big RPG, and very pretty they are too.



"Each area in the video has its own realistic ecosystem with predators, prey, factions, and opportunities to expand your Inquisition," Lee writes. "The world s population is based on an emergent system that adjusts what you ll encounter based on how your actions tip the balance in the area. You ll see towns attacked by bandits, deer fleeing from wolves, giant s feeding on bears, and countless other scenarios." Click through to see the new video and pics.



The dynamic open world will be spread across several zones, including a chunk of Thedas containing Ferelden, Orlais, the Free Marches and Nevarra. These zones will be populated by a network of fortresses that can be captured and transformed to suit your tastes, and contribute to the ongoing war effort. Find out more about all that in our Dragon Age: Inquisition first look. For more footage, here's a couple of minutes of combat, complete with dragon!