Borderlands 2
Krieg the Psycho

Krieg the Psycho became Borderlands 2’s newest playable character a couple of weeks ago, and we’ve seen some fascinating behind-the-scenes info on the homicidal melee artist’s creation from Gearbox.
But did you know that Krieg struggles with an inner voice? A newly released short film for Krieg shows his chance meeting with Lilith and how he became a member of the vault hunter gang. Krieg is already kind of a ridiculous character, but the depiction of the suave inner voice struggling to be heard just makes him even funnier.

Enjoy some truly fantastic lines like "I'm the conductor of the poop train!" and "I have the shiniest meat bicycle!" Krieg is a terrifying character, and not just because of his size and all the killing.



If you’re confused and scared by all these fancy guns and their bullets, simplify your life with a big axe made out of a saw blade. Krieg is ready to go, and he’ll probably be a lot of fun to play in the upcoming D&D-inspired Tiny Tina DLC.

PC Gamer
Dragons Prophet thumb


The words spoken by the narrator of these two trailers for free-to-play MMORPG Dragon's Prophet imply that bad things are happening in their respective areas. His tone, however, says differently. "Dark conspiracies have infected Laedis," he announces in a cheerful, avuncular manner, as if telling you about some recent holiday. Then again, I suppose he's got every reason to be chipper. With the game now in open beta, he's not the one that has to sort it all out.

Here's what you're dealing with. First up, there's that aforementioned trouble brewing in Laedis:



Then you get to discover the Fate of Satsuma Satuma:



"More than 300 dragons, each of their own different skills are waiting to be tamed and trained by you," explain European publisher Infernum. "Use their skills in combat - tailored to your own style of play. Build your own houses, and join forces with your guild to create towns and villages. The Crafter among you can use your dragon to collect resources that you can turn into powerful items."

They also promise that, as of yesterday's open beta launch, no more character wipes will occur.
PC Gamer
What we want from Mirror's Edge 2
PC Gamer
Xenonauts thumb


XCOM: Enemy Unknown went a long way towards tactically scratching my turn-based itch. But while it's slick, pacey action did a great job of capturing the threat and tragedy present in the original X-Com, that doesn't mean there isn't room for something deliberately slower and more methodical. The original is still easily playable, especially thanks to restoration projects like OpenXCom, but it would be nice to be working with a modern UI for a change.

Which is why Xenonauts has such promise. There's a clear aim to rejuvenate what made the original X-Com such a meaty experience for tactics fans. So it's good to see that the game's secretive organisation of planetary defenders is about to get much more visible, thanks to a release on Steam's Early Access program due later today.

"Xenonauts is a spiritual successor to the classic X-Com strategy games from the 1990s," explains developer Goldhawk Interactive. "We aim to improve the graphics, add new content and streamline the interface whilst still retaining all of the key mechanics of the original games. Devoted fans should love this game, but we’re also keen to introduce the joys of old-school grand strategy to a whole new generation of players who might not otherwise experience it!"

All previous pre-orderers will receive optional Steam keys once the alpha is live on Valve's service. Players will gain access to the most recent stable build, "V18 STABLE," with more experimental iterations available as an opt-in option through the client. That'll lead into V19 STABLE, with which the developers hope to introduce a new UI, air combat auto-resolve, and a finished final mission.
PC Gamer
Prison Architect - Alpha 10 thumb


With every update to Introversion's Prison Architect, the lives of its incarcerated 'guests' become that little more harrowing. The alpha 10 patch is only slightly different - it instead gives your prisoners a way to express their increasing displeasure. Unfortunately, rather than anger management sessions, or rehabilitative education, their new means of release is good old fashioned rioting.

A new "thermometer" system has been introduced, which combines the collected annoyances of your prisoners, measuring them against each inmate's breaking point. When the anger level rises too high, a riot breaks out, with prisoners capturing buildings throughout your complex. To deal with this, two emergency services have been added: paramedics and riot police. Or you could try not pissing them off in the first place.

Alpha 10 also brings Workshop support to the Steam build of the game, letting you share your best prison architecture with the community. "We are continuously blown away by some of the prisons our community build," Introversion say. "Layouts that we’d never considered, or packing an entire jail into 12x12 squares, or nightmarish concrete hellholes. Now you can share your best prisons with the rest of the world via the Steam Workshop. From the main menu in game you can access our workshop integration, and from there you can publish your prison, or play other peoples prisons at the click of a button."

Finally, Introversion have ported the game to Linux. While they've targeted Ubuntu 12.04 as the starting point, they say it should be widely compatible across a variety of distributions.

To see the full Alpha 10 changelist, see this forum post, or watch the update video below.

Deus Ex: Game of the Year Edition
Deus Ex Nihilum


Since the release of Deus Ex: Human Revolution, you'd almost be forgiven for uninstalling the original Deus Ex. After all, it's been 13 years, surely you've wrung every single drop of entertainment from its old Unreal Engine. Wrong! With the "alternate continuity" mod Deus Ex: Nihilum, there's another 10 hours of cyberpunk adventuring to be had. The Lesson? Never uninstall Deus Ex.

Here's the set-up:

"In 2049, unsavory conditions are rampant throughout the world. As soon as it becomes clear that a terrorist attack in Shenzhen, China, was carried out by perpetrators with ties to international groups and that Hong Kong may be their next target - the United Nations Anti-Terrorist Coalition (UNATCO) dispatches their first nano-augmented agent, Mad Ingram, into the city to prevent the situation from escalating any further."

The upshot of this is a new campaign, lasting around 7-13 hours. Creator 'FastGamerr' notes that Nihilum isn't designed to revolutionise its base game. "In many regards I've also tried to make it feel like an expansion pack to the original game, i.e. trying to follow the original's spirit in elements like story, gameplay and dialogue. The plot can be interpreted as a shadow parallel to the original game's story - following similar events through a different lens."

Which means it's not as wildly divergent as something like The Nameless Mod. Still, it's a handy new excuse to experience the dark and oppressive world of the first Deus Ex. As if anybody needed one.

You can download Deus Ex: Nihilum from ModDB.
Back to the Future: The Game
Walking Dead thumb


The shambling Humble menace has claimed fresh victims. Not content with sucking the price out of assorted indie games for the excellently varied Humble Indie Bundle 8, they've also ambushed Telltale - creators of the brilliant The Walking Dead adaptation - in order to feed their Weekly Sale. Can they ever be stopped? Remember to aim for the wallet.

In addition to The Walking Dead - which is available to those who beat the average price - you can pay whatever you want to get:


Back to the Future: The Game
Sam & Max: Devil's Playhouse
Poker Night at the Inventory
Hector: Badge of Carnage
Puzzle Agent 1 & 2
Wallace & Gromit's Grand Adventure


Which, combined, is a seriously large selection of adventure, both episodic and otherwise. Not all are great, admittedly, but there is fun to be had, even outside of the developer's masterful zombie tale.

The Humble Weekly Sale will run for the next six days.
PC Gamer
infinitecrisis


For a game that’s still in closed beta, Infinite Crisis is doing quite well for itself. The free-to-play MOBA has partnered with eSports behemoth, Major League Gaming, and will be among League of Legends and Black Ops II as a featured title in future competitions.

The newborn partnership isn’t waiting for the game’s official release, and will stream a match between pro teams “Complexity” and “Curse” on Tuesday, June 11, at 12 p.m. PDT on both the MLG and Infinite Crisis websites.

Infinite Crisis is being developed by Turbine, who are best known for making Lord of the Rings Online, and features the usual suspects from the DC Universe (Batman, Wonder Woman). The game takes place in a crazy multiverse, so expect to see a few steampunk versions of the DC characters you know and love

We went hands-on with Infinite Crisis last month and found it played more like League of Legends than it did DOTA. The biggest break from the traditional MOBA design seems to be “map-altering” events that tear the world asunder as you exchange blows with the enemy team. For example, a meteor shower could rain destruction over the map, altering the way you traverse the area.

The game's release date is still "coming soon" but you can create your own top tier team of super friends by signing up for beta access on the official site. Just tell them Batman sent you.
Fallout: New Vegas
Fallout: New Vegas mod Project Brazil

Project Brazil, a mod project for Fallout: New Vegas, is the type of labor of love that makes the PC modding community a very special thing. The mod features a new Fallout 3-size map, a new vault, an original cast and 5,000 lines of professional quality dialog from over 20 actors. Creator Brandon Lee headed a small team of dedicated die-hards who spent four years building an unofficial sequel so they could release it into the great big internet for absolutely free.
The game is set in the secluded Vault 18 near the San Bernardino mountains sometime after the events of Fallout 2. Vault 18 has managed to stay out of the war until a prominent member of the vault community is revealed as a member of the Enclave, and the entire vault erupts into civil war.

Released in three installments, the first of which drops tomorrow on NexusMods, Project Brazil focuses a lot on what Lee calls Black Isle-style character-driven content. “We really focused on your S.P.E.C.I.A.L. stats with our own internal Fallout: Project Brazil philosophy, and those 7 stats really show up everywhere, especially in dialogue options,” Lee writes in the Nexus Mod writeup. “Your skills largely affect things like combat, crafting, healing, but we took the "speech" skill, and made it exclusively a skill that affect things like standing at a podium and delivering a legit speech to an audience, and how high your speech skill is will determine if a small army or group will help you, and how much they're willing to sacrifice.”



Episode 1 will take about three hours to complete and about seven hours to completely explore. The only thing required for installation is a vanilla copy of Fallout: New Vegas. Watch the Nexus Mod page for release sometime tomorrow.
PC Gamer
payday2

The folks at Overkill Software have released a new gameplay trailer for Payday 2, the latest game in their bank robbing franchise. If there’s one lesson to be learned from it, it’s “leave no witnesses.”
If you aren’t familiar with the previous game, Payday: The Heist is a four player co-op game where you and your crew are work together and take it to the American banking system. It's sort of like Kane & Lynch, only with more masks and less nakedness.
Overkill Software also released some pre-order information along with the trailer. Most of it involves extra mask designs and some extra cash for your crew, but those who pre-order on Steam and add $10 to the $39.99 price tag also get the original soundtrack, two beta keys, a digital guide on how to pull a heist (we think it’s a strategy guide, but the press release wasn’t clear) and blueprints for places to heist. Hopefully those blueprints aren’t of real places.
We sat down with Payday 2 not too long ago and liked what we saw. It’s still too soon to tell if Payday 2 will be to video games as Heat was to movies, but we’ll just have to keep our fingers crossed until August.
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