The Foundation update to No Man's Sky brought a number of big new features to the game, including base building, freighters, the Survival Mode, and stackable inventory items. But one especially interesting feature has gone largely overlooked: The addition of communications terminals that "allow explorers to leave sub-space messages for others to find." 

There was some initial confusion about how, or even if, the new communication devices worked, based on some early messages posted in the No Man's Sky subreddit. But players now have them figured out, and they're currently sharing messages with one another across the cold void of space. The missives are short and sweet, kind of like an intergalactic Twitter: Some of the communications provide directions to significant landmarks, while other simply offer up some variation of "hello."   

Hello Games took a big hit for promising, and then not delivering, the ability for players to meet each other in the game. And this obviously isn't the same thing, but like the Foundation update itself, it's a step in the right direction. Regardless of what you think about No Man's Sky, it is undeniably a vast and sprawling game. Amidst all that, I think that stumbling on proof that you're really not alone out there would make for a very cool moment indeed. Quite whether that quells all the angry spacefarers out there is another matter.

More images of the new messaging devices in action can be seen on imgur.

Last month, I had the absolute pleasure of being in the same room as Eric Barone, creator of Stardew Valley, and Yasuhiro Wada, creator of the Harvest Moon series and the upcoming Birthdays the Beginning. The two developers had never met before, and came together to play each other's games for the first time, then chat—farm game maker to farm game maker. 

Afterwards, I sat down with both of them to talk farming inspiration, Japanese releases on PC, and how making games has changed since the first Harvest Moon. You can watch the video above to hear that conversation.

When I spoke to Barone back in March, he told me Stardew Valley actually started out as a Harvest Moon clone to teach himself how to code in C#, before it slowly evolved into what it is today. Barone said he had "grown up spending countless hours playing Harvest Moon and [is] a huge Harvest Moon fan," but that he could never find a suitable substitute on PC. So he made his own.

Watching him meet Wada, the man who created his inspiration, was a fun moment. Both developers had such a clear respect for what the other had done. Though Wada and the Harvest Moon series are legendary at this point, Stardew Valley has now sold close to two million copies since its release in February, making it a massive success of its own. 

Our conversation also revealed that Barone is facing some of the same struggles Wada faced with the original Harvest Moon 20 years ago. Localization can be time consuming and difficult for a small team. It was a limiting factor in Harvest Moon's early days (and resulted in some infamous translation goofs), and is a problem Barone is currently working through. The two developers also both found success around the age of 27, and Barone joked that he feels like he may be following in Wada's footsteps.

This meeting, along with our first face-to-face meeting as PAX West, reaffirmed my appreciation and amazement at how humble Barone has stayed in the face of overwhelming and unexpected success. He's truly a class act, and has continued to support what is already a great game. It also got me more excited than I expected to be for Wada's next game, Birthdays the Beginning—a god game that should feel right at home on PC, and has very little in common with Minecraft despite the deceptively similar graphics. 

At the risk of sounding like I'm in a support group: I am autistic and I play Dota 2. Unfortunately, from my experience, the Dota 2 community has a poor understanding of autism. I can't count the number of times I've seen 'autist' used as an insult. I recognise that there is always going to be an element of any online community that will refuse to change, but I'd like to take this opportunity to give a bit of information to the rational majority.

To put it in the most general terms, autism is a lifelong developmental disability. It affects how you experience the world and interact with it. Your senses can be over-sensitive, or under-sensitive, and social interaction can be challenging. Your brain is wired differently from most people, and also from other autistic people—nobody is autistic in the same way. Autistic people make up at least 1% of the population, so you will have probably met somebody with the condition. You have almost certainly played an online video game with an autistic person.

Indeed, anecdotally it seems that autism is rather well represented in online and tech communities. Computers are easier than people, more predictable. This is not to say that I don't desire social contact, but I find it difficult to navigate social situations with ease. I just need a little more time and solitude to recover from heavy socialising. Having an environment where communication is usually limited to the rules of a game is a release.

It's hard for me to put my thoughts into words quickly. When playing Dota, I can recognise when a hero has moved out of position and that now is the time to gank, but organising my mouth to say “ATTACK NOW!” takes longer. I tend to communicate using the chat wheel, with pre-set phrases, and by pinging the map. I am thankful there is a system set up that allows me to talk to my team-mates without having to use voice chat.

I don't speak much even when playing with friends. I tend to interrupt them, as it's a struggle to tell when it's my turn in a conversation. I stammer and fumble trying to express myself, especially when I'm concentrating on something else—for example, last-hitting, or micro-managing units. However, I am perfectly capable of understanding what other people are saying, and I enjoy doing my best to be a team player. 

Autism is not a learning disability, though some autistic people may also have one or more of those. Autism is commonly associated with dyslexia, dyscalculia and dyspraxia—that is, problems with reading, writing and movement. I am clumsy, and have accidentally attempted to teleport back to base in the middle of teamfights multiple times in the past. However, I don't have a learning disability myself—it's more like I have a deficiency in common sense.

It is incorrect to call an autistic person a 'retard', and the word 'autist' isn't used by anybody in real life. Even my spell-checker says that it's not a real word. Incidentally, and I know I'm not going to be the first to say this, but please don't call players 'retards'. I've met wonderful people with learning disabilities, and they don't deserve to be brought down to the level of those who choose to jungle Legion Commander. 

Being autistic does come with benefits, however. I can hyper-concentrate on a game when I am not interrupted. It's like the game becomes my world and I'm able to devote my entire attention to it. This is a common trade-off with autism: extreme-focus in exchange for multi-tasking. 

I also have a rather good memory for trivia. This is important, as Dota and other competitive games tend to build up entire libraries of situational facts and unusual interactions. How is Sven's cleave affected by armour? Damage block still works, but the cleave damage is not reduced by how much armour you have. I admit, it's a fringe case, but we all know in the long run everything matters. I always try to learn more, so I'm not caught out. I don't know everything and I get facts wrong on occasion, but I have a drive to better my knowledge.

Based on what I've just said, you might be thinking “I know a pro-player who must be autistic!” Please, don't. Every autistic person is different, and autism is far more than a collection of tics and idiosyncrasies. The chances are good that you are not an expert in neurology, and seeing a player being awkward in an interview is not sufficient for you to diagnose them. You're just adding to a stereotypical perception of autism that you've seen on TV. This is a genuine disability that can profoundly affect your existence, and requires a qualified professional to examine essentially your entire life history with you and your family. To my knowledge, autism has never been professionally diagnosed on account of a Twitch stream.

I would not be surprised at all if there were prominent players or personalities who are autistic. Indeed, I'd love it if somebody went public and became a role model, but it would be their choice to do so. Discovering you are autistic can be intensely private, and I would not want to throw it around like a Pudge hook. Unless I knew somebody well personally, I would not attempt to talk about their potential autism, and I certainly would not do so in public.

It's too easy to be lazy in the language you use. Competitive gaming is fighting into the mainstream, so it's pointless to isolate and shrink our community with insults and ignorance. I'm not saying you have to like everyone, or like how everyone plays the game, but a little understanding and care makes our world a better place and makes us all better players. We can still have fun, and make jokes, and laugh—because no matter what, you suck if you jungle Legion Commander. Kappa.

Norra Djurgårdstaden is an area in central Stockholm that’s currently undergoing substantial urban redevelopment. The Swedish Building Service, Svensk Byggtjänst, has partnered with city officials and, with a focus on long-term sustainability, the on-going initiative plans to add 12,000 new homes and 35,000 workspaces to the region in a bid to offset its ever-increasing population. How does this relate to the world of videogames? City-building simulator Cities: Skylinesis at the forefront of the project. 

By simulating real-life environments and scenarios in-game, Paradox and Colossal Order’s city-builder is being used by real-world city planners to explore ways to support the needs of the new district’s residents. “Norra Djurgårdstaden is seeking new ways of engaging people that are normally not involved in the discussions of the future of our city, and how to plan for its desired direction,” says project director Staffan Lorentz. “Games can be an entry port for a new group having a real say and having new ways of looking at things.”

That’s where Cities: Skylines comes in. By way of three weekend-long workshops, Stockholm city officials have joined Swedish Building Service representatives, Paradox and Colossal Order developers, and members of the public to discuss how the proposed district will look and function once development is complete. Special considerations such as environmental schemes to reduce fossil fuel consumption and the installation of surplus cycle lanes and public transport routes have been flagged as top priority, thus these scenarios have been applied and tested in-game to see how they might play out in reality.

As such, the district in its entirety has been mapped out both via a scaled physical model and within Cities: Skylines—with city planners applying and reapplying digital iterations of the area following visits to and from the real-world building site itself. Without prior training, technical blueprints mean very little to the average citizen. Therefore the point of the coinciding workshops is to showcase the scheme in earnest—fully realised in three dimensions against relatable surroundings—which in turn serves to help the learning process.

“I think the most exciting part about all of this is that it isn’t just a PR stunt,” says Paradox’s COO Susana Meza. “Actually, people are genuinely wanting to solve some of the problems and issues that might arise when city planning in this day and age, but also innovate around it. The fact they have the people who’re are actually making the decisions, sitting on the budget, involved in this and using a new medium I think is extremely cool—but also brave.” 

Using games as a public consultation tool is something the Swedish Building Service is already familiar with, having collaborated with Mojang and the United Nations in 2012. Named Block By Block, this project was a similar city-building scheme that used Minecraft to encourage fresh perspectives and helped citizens have a say in the reconstruction process of their own neighbourhoods. The Norra Djurgårdstaden project, on the other hand, operates on a grander scale and therefore marks a more sophisticated collaboration between city development and videogames. 

Yet Cities: Skylines in its vanilla state isn’t without its limitations, and to this end renowned Cities modder Alexander Oberroither was flown in from Austria to attend the last workshop. Here, he explained how the game might better portray reality with the use of additional user-made mods beyond the base game. “I see potential in Cities: Skylines being used for a lot of different things in real life, and this workshop fulfilled its purpose in allowing us to find out which direction the project is going,” says Oberroither. “I really enjoyed my three days [taking part]. I learned a lot and I hope that I can make use of it when I start studying spatial planning at the university in October.”

In light of the most recent workshop, the Swedish Building Service plans to review its findings and decide how Cities: Skylines can best be used in pushing the project forward. When the time comes, no matter how close the game’s interpretation is to the project’s final incarnation, the ways in which Cities: Skylines has been used to help visualise proposals, discuss city functions, and, ultimately, design buildings is quite remarkable and is something which could pave the way for similar ventures down the line. 

“I think that today most people have an association with games, be that yourself or your kids playing with them, most people are exposed to games in one way or another,” adds Meza. “As such, it’s a super powerful medium to do something more beyond providing entertainment. I think we’ve just scraped the surface. Games are something everyone is talking about now—we have every possibility to make an impact.”

In the case of Norra Djurgårdstaden, its residents are the ones who’ll be impacted the most. “Engaging citizens is part of the future,” says Norra Djurgårdstaden local Ann Edberg. “It’s fantastic to be able to participate in the creation of a new part of Stockholm during its development process, rather than just experience it once it’s done.”

Photos for this feature by Pelle Jansson/Cowmob Photography.

 At its core, League of Legends seems to want nothing more than to come across as a polished, dignified, and grown-up sport that can sit alongside the traditional sports. It comes across clearly through the high production values, the besuited casters discussing games, and even the way that off-season madness is handled.

As League continues to grow and evolve, it’s interesting to see the way we talk about roster changes. There are wild rumours about world champions heading to North American teams, fans clamouring to know how much SKT T1 paid for three-time world champion Faker’s contract, and Reddit wondering which young talents will end up on a LCS team. Riot Games have already started programs like the Scouting Grounds to reach out to young talent who are interested in playing pro. This is a great start, and it was a blast watching players, coaches, and candidates talking on Twitter about the endeavor. The Scouting Grounds and Challenger circuit are both ways to watch young players succeed, but there’s one sport that League could learn something from: the UFC.

Reality show rundown

The Ultimate Fighter is a reality show that shows professional MMA fighters living together and training together as they compete. The ultimate prize is a contract with the UFC. UFC fighters coach the candidates, preparing them for the ultimate fight (and they stand to benefit as well, if their fighters succeed, with benefits like title shots). Ultimate Fighter is a total blast to watch, and a great reality TV program, but it has also been a crucial part of bringing the UFC into the mainstream and introducing it as a “real” sport to people who might otherwise be uninterested or believe the stigma of the UFC as a bloodsport.

Ultimate Fighter winners and contestants have gone on to successful careers within the UFC, and viewers get an inside look at what it takes to be part of this field. It’s a win-win proposition. Now, let’s imagine that we applied this to the comparatively zany, but equally competitive world of League of Legends.

Embracing the silly side

Esports is, by its very nature, a little ridiculous. There are countless stories from the rich history of League of Legends’ professional scene: a player getting scurvy, fights in gaming houses, epic rivalries, a player screaming Rick Fox’s name upon entering a lobby in Korea, and more. As much as League tries to appear like a profoundly adult competition, it’s hard to escape a history that is partially defined by players like Dyrus, his pillow, and Imaqtpie. This isn’t a knock on them; esports’ bizarre and ridiculous history is part of what makes it so fascinating to follow. A reality show that follows up and coming young pros could do well to embrace this and build into it. Over 1,700,000 people have watched a video of Rampage Jackson destroying a door on the Ultimate Fighter. Imagine what the esports equivalent might be?

There’s also the fact that League has an abundance of various ways to watch the game. Collegiate, challenger, LCS, foreign leagues... there are a thousand ways to watch competitive League of Legends, but a reality show based around finding and training talent could afford the ability to be more light-hearted. The standard competitive league formatting is wearing thin. Why not shake things up?

The value of a showcase

One of the reasons I advocate for a reality show format is because it’s fun to watch, but there’s also very real value in showcasing young talent. There are very few competitors who stick around and play for years: a player who is in their mid-20s is considered relatively quite old in League. Many players suffer wrist or hand issues after years of playing, and others find that they are interested in pursuing a romance or raising a family. A pro has a short shelf life, and it eventually becomes time to replace them.Each region, in order to be competitively viable, needs a pool of young talent they can pull from when the old guard eventually reaches the end of their careers. EU, as a region, recently suffered from this during the most recent split. When North America imported European talent, EU struggled to fill that void. Some of these players, like Origen’s brief ADC Toaster, were thrown immediately into the deep end. While the Challenger circuit is meant to be a way to build local talent, the scene has major issues that have yet to be resolved.

Visibility matters

The Scouting Grounds was meant to be an answer to some of the above issues. Four teams, made up of unknown talent, went head-to-head in a tournament. Each team was supported by a LCS team, and pros got to try out their coaching skills. Members of the media were embedded in Mountain, Cloud, Infernal, and Ocean, and the games and results were livetweeted. This was all in good fun, and it seems to have been a valuable experience for everyone involved—but it was also frustratingly opaque for anyone who wasn’t on the grounds as the experiment unfolded.

While the VODs are all available after the fact, it’s hard to tell how many people are aware that they could watch along. The highest viewed video in the playlist sits at just above 20,000 and the rest of the games are around 2,000 views. Even the first result for “Riot Games Scouting Grounds” leads to a broken page. Oops, indeed. 

The Ultimate Fighter is a show that is, on the surface, a fun pastime. Beyond that, it’s also had a massive impact the industry. It may not seem like a natural source of inspiration for esports, but Riot should consider the reach that the show has had. It’s a runaway success that’s wildly entertaining to watch and has helped advance UFC’s mainstream success. Scouting Grounds has an amazing formula, but Riot didn’t take it far enough. It’s time for a Scouting Grounds reality show that follows in the footsteps of Ultimate Fighter and finds similar success in advancing esports. Riot, please.

This article was originally published in late 2016, but since today is Batman Day, whatever that means, here we've retrieved it from our archives. Enjoy.

Batman: Arkham Origins

Andy: Origins isn’t a terrible game, but it’s clear throughout that it wasn’t developed by Rocksteady. The new sections of the city are pretty uninspiring, particularly the industrial district and that tediously long bridge you have to travel back and forth across. And there’s no feeling of flow as you navigate the world either. I constantly find myself with nothing to grapple or land on, halting my momentum, which never happens in the other games.

Samuel: The city suffered from feeling anonymous. It may be my imagination, too, but I swear there was something off about the timing of counters compared to Rocksteady's Batman games—the same muscle memory felt like it didn't serve me well in Origins' combat. Having said that, I loved the crime scene investigations they added to Origins, which I (think) Arkham Knight ended up borrowing when you had to track down Oracle after she'd been kidnapped. They were probably the best bits of detective work in the series, and I did enjoy the one in Black Mask's penthouse. 

Andy: I noticed the weird timing of the combat too when I reviewed it for PC Gamer. I looked into it at the time, and apparently WB Montreal had to recreate the combat system from scratch for some reason. Which may explain why it feels a bit like a bad cover version of a great song.

Samuel: It's definitely a thing. I rinsed the challenge rooms in Arkham City and can still get a high score in every single one when I pick them up now—they feel irritatingly different. One thing I did like about Origins was the way the Cold, Cold Heart DLC adapted the classic Batman Animated Series episode 'Heart of Ice'. While WB Montreal's game mostly lacked the big hitter villains, I still felt like it was a worthy contribution to the games' own Batman canon. Troy Baker was an impressive Joker, and I enjoyed the fiery young version of Bruce Wayne, too, who knocks out an early villain in one punch instead of the whole thing turning into a boss battle.

Andy: I do like the younger, angrier Batman we get to play as in Origins. Kevin Conroy’s version of the character always sounds totally in control of his emotions. A mature, level-headed veteran of the crime-fightin’ business. But in this game he’s shouty and short-tempered, frequently arguing with Alfred, which is a nice way of making a familiar character feel different.

Tom S: There are some decent isolated bits of Origins, probably enough to make it worth playing for Batman fans—the tower converted into the Joker’s theme park, for example. However there is a sense that Origins is scraping around for new ideas. They expanded Gotham city and added… a warehouse district. The glue grenades and the non-lethal lightning fists feel like the sort of upgrades you might see on a cheap Batman toy rather than anything the Dark Knight would actually use. If you’ve completed every sidequest in Arkham Knight, crave more Bats, and don’t mind putting up with slightly-wrong combat then play this I guess?

Phil: I haven't played Origins yet, but, based on your recommendation there, Tom, I'm… well, still not sure if I'll bother.

Samuel: It shows you can take the basic elements of a great game and make a comparably weaker product out of it, which is largely how I felt about what I played of Wolfenstein: The New Order's Old Blood expansion.

Batman: Arkham Knight

Andy: The batmobile really is a piece of shit. Those sections where you’re forced to fight dozens of identical drones with overly-telegraphed attacks is utterly mind-numbing. But when you’re doing what Batman does best, namely skulking around in the shadows and terrifying goons, Knight is a really, really good Arkham game, if a little too familiar at times.

Phil: The Batmobile churn really hurts Knight. There are some cool ideas here, like the military outposts—the best of which are mini-puzzles, challenging you to work out which of Batman's ever-growing toolset is key to clearing away the specific configuration of guards. That stuff is great, as are about half of the sidequests, the main mission design and so much of the writing. Best of all is the dual combat encounters, which turn the fluid dance of Batman's combat into a brutal duet. But then you're back in the Batmobile, side-dodging away from predictable fire patterns, or circling round a tiny bit of the city, trying to endure the incredibly dumb stealth sections.

Samuel: I didn't like the tank combat sections, particularly the stealth parts—but driving that thing around the city feels great. It's a gorgeously animated, hefty piece of machinery. It completes the Batman fantasy, in my opinion. In the post-game, with the city cleared of robot tanks, just bombing around and taking out clumps of criminals feels like the beginning of a Batman comic in motion. I've softened to Knight over time. The titular villain isn't particularly good, and they recast the Scarecrow in a way that made him sound way too similar to Hugo Strange in Arkham City, meaning the main narrative lacked a bit of City's menace and direction.

Andy: Yeah, the Arkham Knight himself is an incredibly lame villain. Troy Baker does his best with the script, but he isn’t intimidating at all. He sounds like a Californian surfer. Whenever he showed up, taunting me from his big dumb tank, I just felt annoyed. “Not this asshole again.” But I did love the section where Batman and Robin team up, even though it was criminally short-lived. The double-takedowns were really well animated and fun to pull off, and I think they tossed that idea out far too quickly.

Samuel: Totally with you on the Robin bits—phenomenal, especially The Joker singing to Batman while Robin sneaks around the stage in the background. I think Telltale's Batman game shows you can miss the mark with adapting the Dark Knight for a game and miss the most exciting parts of his universe and lore. The interactions between Batman and Robin, Oracle or Nightwing demonstrate a total understanding of why all the individual pieces of his world are so exciting. Those co-op moves with his allies are the perfect extension of those character relationships. The sidequests are more of a mixed bag. Chasing after Firefly in the Batmobile was just poor filler, but Man-Bat offered quite a spectacle, while Two-Face's heists were a nice remix of the game's existing stealth elements.

Phil: I don't know Batlore, but I liked the freaky pig-dude. He was messed up.

Samuel: By far my favourite sidequest in the game. The way they used the music and lights to point you towards where another body had been found. Doing those autopsies was disturbing, and even as someone who's read a bunch of comics featuring Professor Pyg, his reveal was a total surprise. Rocksteady isn't afraid of deep cuts in Batman lore. While it was only a momentary bit of narrative, the Hush sidequest had a neat and clever resolution, too.

Tom S: Arkham Knight has some of the best individual moments of the whole series—including the spectacular Robin co-op level and the levels that let you seamlessly infiltrate a couple of blimps in mid-air. Sadly it is a more inconsistent game overall. Everyone rightly hates the interminable tank sections (which get ridiculous towards the end of the game), and the PC version’s terrible launch didn’t help matters. It’s definitely worth playing if you enjoyed City, but it’s not the best Arkham game.

Batman: Arkham Asylum

Andy: The later games refined the brutal, rhythmic combat to something approaching perfection, and improved on almost everything else in some way, but I’ll always prefer Asylum’s focus on a single, wonderfully fleshed-out location over the sprawling open-world bloat of the sequels.

Samuel: I get that this focus (and the brilliant, memorable Scarecrow sequences) makes Asylum a popular choice, but it's a flawed game compared to the others in my opinion. This becomes apparent in the final third of the story where it feels like you're fighting versions of the Bane boss fight over and over again with those giant titan guys. The final fight with The Joker is kind of bad. The Killer Croc section drags on well past its welcome, too. There are no good boss battles in Asylum—nothing remotely close to the clever, Metal Gear-ish scrap with Mister Freeze in City.

City's paced so it keeps building in energy to its final act, and constantly showing you new parts of the world. Cutting out repetition and throwing in new ideas was essential for the series to grow, in my opinion, and while bigger doesn't always equal better, the escalation in ambition between the games is staggering. Few knew who Rocksteady were when Asylum was released. Now they're world beaters. To go from making the BioShock-y corridors of Arkham Asylum to building the Blade Runner-esque nighttime sprawl of Knight in just six years is absurdly impressive.

Phil: I think I might prefer City, but that's largely because I've never liked Metroidvania design. This is a very, very good version of it, but ultimately it's still a lot of back-and-forth between the same few areas. (You could argue the same for open-world Arkham, albeit on a bigger scale, but I think the way you traverse the larger space makes all the difference.) There are some incredibly accomplished setpieces here, and I love the simplicity of the combat before the extra gadgets of the later games. But Samuel's right about its pacing problems. Even some of its best sections—the weird, fourth-wall breaking Scarecrow vignettes—are lessened by the rubbish searchlight-based stealth puzzles that follow.

Samuel: For the time, it was a real surprise that someone had made a Batman game that good—the last decent effort dates back to the SNES. Its counter-focused melee combat system was deservedly influential, on the surface lacking the frantic speed and necessary button presses of something like Devil May Cry, but gradually growing in complexity as they weave more of the Dark Knight's tools into your arsenal. I've made this observation before on PCG, so apologies, but I remember feeling like Rocksteady had almost used this sequence from Batman Begins as their starting point for Batman's melee and stealth abilities in the Arkham games.

Andy: I’ve always been a fan of fiction that takes place in one location, so that’s why I think Asylum is still my favourite. Rocksteady absolutely stuffed that place with history and detail, and I like that the more time you spend there, the more familiar it becomes. I finished City and Knight and by the end of both I didn’t feel like I connected with the setting as much. I also like how lean Asylum is compared to the sequels, with simpler combat and fewer sidequests. It feels more elegant and streamlined than the busy open-world games. And there aren’t as many distractions being constantly thrown at you, which makes for a better-paced, more focused story overall.

Tom S: I liked the bit when you hit Bane with the Batmobile. That was some excellent Batman.

Batman: Arkham City

Andy: For me, City is when the Arkham series really started to feel like a Batman simulator. Being able to freely run, glide, and grapple around the rooftops of Gotham is brilliantly empowering, although I do find the constant chatter of bad guys in your ear massively annoying.

Samuel: When City was released, I remember thinking, 'this is all I've ever wanted from a Batman game'. Like you say, Andy, being able to glide around and grapple felt fantastic, both of which were elements of limited usage in Asylum. I loved the upgrades and momentum tweaks they made to the gliding—getting around that city felt phenomenal. It's also a very complete-feeling vision of Batman's universe, which I appreciate. Everyone from Mister Freeze to Calendar Man to Hush makes an appearance, complete with a not-embarrassing version of Robin. The Mad Hatter sidequest is brilliantly trippy. Rocksteady just get why Batman is so cool. Hugo Strange is a tremendous and very specific choice of (the apparent) main villain, too, offering a menacing tonal contrast to the Joker in Asylum.

Phil: I love any open-world game with good traversal. I even love Prototype, which I know is a bit rubbish. Arkham City isn't rubbish, and, as Andy and Sam have already mentioned, its grappling hook/glide combo is top notch. It makes for a stronger core Batman fantasy than in Asylum—now you're hunting high above the thugs, free to engage or ignore them. In some ways it's a baggier game—that's inevitable given the structure—but it still holds true to everything that made Asylum great, and offers, to my mind, a better roster of villains and a more interesting story. 

Tom S: The Mr. Freeze fight is ace, and an example of how Arkham City evolved beyond the ideas introduced in Arkham Asylum. The open world and the traversal have since become an integral part of the Batman fantasy for me—I can’t go back to Asylum—but City also has better storytelling (when it’s not just shouting exposition at you through loudspeakers). It’s the most complete and well-paced game of the series, with a brave and interesting ending. Some of the boss fights are absolute pants, though.

Samuel: Whereas I felt like the Riddles were a little exhausting in Knight, in City they were spot-on as neat visual or logic puzzles I could solve while travelling between parts of the story. The combat was significantly improved over Asylum, too, and mastering Batman's sets of tools in the challenge rooms—like Mr Freeze's ice bomb—meant that I ended up playing the post-game content for a lot longer than the story.

Shoutout to Rocksteady's artists, too, who created the most gorgeous, fan service-y alternate costumes for the Arkham games. I'm sure The Batman Incorporated skin in City was included just for me. While I think City is the most consistent of the four games, they've all got individually interesting elements, and Origins aside, I consider them all wonderful in their own way.

The Worms game Tom billed as "a love letter to Armageddon", Worms WMD is a cordial throwback to the team-based strategy 'em up's roots. Its latest incoming update—Liberation—is free and adds a wealth of new tools, weapons and vehicles to help destroy its handful of new levels. 

Free to download as of December 7, WMD's Liberation update adds five new single-player level; four new weapons, including the Mischievous Drone, the W1 Rocket, the Worm Stinger, and the Tasty Worm Lick; and 12 new customisation options, like the Bicorne, Beret, Chinese Hat, and Rubber Glove. 

On top of that, the update adds a new theme "to battle upon including new buildings and tunnels to explore"; while a new drillboat vehicle marks the first seafaring mode of transport to be added to the series. 

In typically off-the-wall Worms fashion, here's some of that in motion:

Free-of-charge, Worms WMD's Liberation update will be made available on December 7. Grab the base game for £19.99/$29.99 via the Humble Store.

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After a rocky start, Zenimax's flagship multiplayer, The Elder Scrolls Online, has steadily found its feet. Dropping its subscription model, and introducing features such as the Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood have gone a long way in making it one of the best MMOs around. Its latest batch of goodies focuses on the Crown Store—ESO's in-game marketplace. 

As of today, Crown Crates will be added to the Crown Store which contain a "randomised selection of useful consumables and collectibles that are valued more than the price of a single crate." Within these crates, players stand a chance of gaining unique cosmetic items, pets and/or mounts, as well as items you may have missed in expired limited edition offers. 

"Whenever you purchase a Crown Crate, you will always be awarded four items, with the chance to get a fifth item," reads an update post on the ESO blog. "In the event you receive a mount, pet, costume or personality that you already own from your Crown Crate, you'll be awarded a new resource—Crown Gems—in its place. You will also have the option to convert several items obtained from Crown Crates to Crown Gems any time you want."

The post continues to say items that can be manually traded include utility-type items, such as: potions, poisons, riding lessons, and experience scrolls, among other things. Each Crown Crate will be tied to a "special season" to be cycled quarterly. Storm Atronachs mark the first season, which can be viewed in this gallery: 

Furthermore, the Crown Store's December showcase adds a host of costume upgrades, crafting options, and mounts—such as the Great Elk and Ice Wolf. Full details on the specifics can be found this way. A limited edition White River Ice Wolf Pup will be available between December 8-12. Cute. 

The two-week delay to play Watch Dogs 2 on the PC has been worth it. As I suspected in my hands-on impressions of the PC version earlier this month, it runs well, has a ton of graphical options, and comes with a complete set of quality-of-life adjustments for mouse and keyboard players. 

I played the game for a total 15 hours on three different PCs to get a feel for how it runs on different hardware, and overall it’s a pretty picture.

HomeGPU: AMD R9 NanoCPU: Intel Core i5-4690kRAM: 16GB DDR4

My home PC can’t push Watch Dogs 2 to the max, with the anti-aliasing as the primary framerate culprit. Even so, it still looks nice, and I can run it on a custom arrangement of high to ultra settings at a constant 60 fps in 1920x1080.

WorkGPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 TiCPU: Intel Core i7-5960XRAM: 32GB DDR4

My work PC does a fine job as well, though my monitor’s higher 2560x1440 resolution means every graphical setting requires a bit more juice. On a mix of high to ultra settings, I’m able to run the game at around 60 fps (plus or minus 10 or so frames depending on weather effects and draw distance). Again, anti-aliasing is the biggest resource hog. Anything above 2x FXAA knocks takes me down to 45 fps or so, and I’m not happy using mouselook with anything less than 60 fps.

LPCGPU: Nvidia Titan X (2)CPU: Intel Core i7-6950XRAM: 128GB DDR4 

At 4K (3840x2178) with the LPC, our absurdly powerful computer, I could turn up everything and get a solid 40 fps. I know that 40 fps isn’t ideal for PC gaming, but at 4K and with as many bells and whistles as Watch Dogs 2 has, it’s pretty impressive. For a third time, anti-aliasing proved the biggest frame hog, and turning it down helps a ton—the 4K resolution makes it less important, anyway.

Graphics settings 

If you’re curious, here’s a look at all the graphics settings. Good news, there’s an FOV slider even though it’s a third-person action game. It’s not really necessary, but there anyway. Shadow and reflection options are broken down into several sections each, a few with some fairly advanced tech. One option makes shadows blur the further they are from their casting source—a small flourish that won’t make or break the illusion one way or the other, but a welcome one anyway. There’s even an option to turn San Francisco’s signature fog on and off. Since I live in a section of the city that’s always in a cloud, I was tempted to keep it off, but that wouldn’t be faithful. 

It won’t run like butter with everything turned up, even on the best PCs out there, especially if you’re pushing resolutions above 1920x1080. But that isn't an indication of poor optimization.  It's an indication of how scalable Watch Dogs 2's PC options are. If you want to run it on a PC with a few years under its belt, chances are you can without sacrificing too much fidelity. If you want a PC game to push your $10,000 custom build to its limits, Watch Dogs 2 has enough high-end graphical options to give it a run for its money. 

Control options

Having spent about 15 hours playing Watch Dogs 2 with a mouse and keyboard, it's easily a superior option to using a gamepad, at least in terms of accuracy and convenience. Controlling Marcus is as natural and quick as an FPS with mouselook since his animations have been sped up to accommodate jerky movements. Vehicles feel nice too, despite the typically awkward on-off analog control of key presses. You can tweak everything from steering sensitivity to how quickly the car camera auto-centers to face forward when you're making a turn. Every key for every control method—Marcus, vehicles, drones—can be reassigned. There's a lot to play with, more than we're used to with the majority of PC ports these days. 

Look for our Watch Dogs 2 review later this week. 

When it rains it pours. Following the release of the first major No Man's Sky content update earlier this week, comes a new patch designed to fix a number of smaller issues. Posted to the game's Steam page earlier today, the update might interest those who've encountered bugs preventing progress.

Chief among these is NPCs who refuse to engage in conversation, thus denying mission critical dialogue. This is fixed, as is a bug which caused important Exosuit inventory items to mysteriously transfer to the Starship. While this will no longer happen, those already affected by the bug will need to wait for the next patch for a fix.

Elsewhere, a notification will pop up now alerting users to any installed, unsupported mods; Azerty keyboards now have better support, and you'll now be told if you acquire a blueprint that you already own. Some instances of the game crashing have also been smited.

You can see the full notes over here. Here's what Chris thought of the expansion when he played it earlier this week.