A wide-ranging Half-Life 2 mod called MMod, which has been in the works for nine years, is out now, and it reworks Valve shooter's visuals, gunplay and enemy AI.

Combat is the focus, and the mod adds new weapons, changes weapon handling, and introduces new animations. I'm a big fan of the new idle weapon animations that you can see in the trailer above: when stood still, Gordon Freeman will wipe the scope of his crossbow to clean smudges, or lovingly stroke his trusty rocket launcher.

As for new weapons, the video above shows that you can grab a turret and haul it around, spraying down enemies. You'll also be able to aim down sights on some weapons, such as the basic pistol. 

The mod redesigns both the audio and visual effects, and tweaks the graphics in general. It certainly looks prettier than what I remember of the original—I like the new glowy eyes for the Combine soldiers—and particle effects are far flashier. 

MMod also "hardens" the AI and gives the Combine new actions to perform, such as firing underslung grenade launchers. 

It's already garnering praise over on its ModDB page, where you can download it. Make sure you have a clean install of Half-Life 2 and both Episodes 1 and 2, as well as the free community-made Half-Life 2: update, which the mod runs off. 

Thanks, Dark Side of Gaming.

Hitman 2 is essentially more of its predecessor, which is no bad thing. However IO Interactive has certainly made it look a bit more impressive, with denser crowds and some extra bells and whistles. But how well does it run compared to 2016's Hitman?

A major talking point here is that DX12 was dropped for the new game, which is odd considering it was in the previous version. It's even more confusing considering Hitman was one of the best DX12 implementations. It speaks to the amount of extra work maintaining two separate APIs requires, and with a lack of AMD branding this round, apparently DX12 was deemed unnecessary.

In terms of hardware, most mainstream GPUs (GTX 1050 Ti / RX 570 and above) can run Hitman 2 at 1080p and 60fps or more, and while you'll also benefit from a faster CPU in some areas (especially larger crowds), just about any CPU from the past five years should suffice.

As for features, Hitman 2 does okay, with some minor omissions. There are 10 graphics settings to tweak, but no global presets. You can cap the frame rate at 30 or 60 FPS (with Vsync), or disable Vsync and run fully unlocked. There's also no option to change the field of view, though it does auto-adjust based on your resolution. Similarly, you can play the game in 21:9 aspect ratio but you'll get black bars on cutscenes. You can rebind keys to your heart's content, but if you're using a controller you'll have to use the default settings. And finally, mod support is not present in any capacity, so outside of hacks and reshade mods we don't expect to see much in the way of user generated content.

Let's dig into the settings a bit more.

Hitman 2 settings overview

Hitman 2 offers 10 graphics settings, without really giving you an idea of how your performance will be affected if you change them around. We've tested them all using both a GTX 1060 6GB and an RX 580 8GB, with the game running at 1080p.

At Ultra, the RX 580 has a slight edge over the GTX 1060, and that trend continues as you work your way through the various settings and compare them to the maximum. We've set each of the individual options to the minimum value as noted below, to see how performance is (or isn't) affected.

Level of Detail Low: You'll see about a seven percent increase in performance by turning the level of detail down, but of course it will decrease the quality of the visuals in the environment.

Texture Quality Low: Another pretty self explanatory one, turning this down means you'll see lower resolution textures, giving you around a three percent boost. Generally not necessary unless you have a card with 2GB or less VRAM.

Texture Filter Trilinear: Texture filtering is how an 2D image is displayed on a 3D model. Bilinear is the simplest, and mipmapping uses lower resolution textures for distant objects. Trilinear filtering smooths the transition between mipmaps, keeping the quality up when you're looking at far away things, although it will still be a little blurry. Anisotropic filtering is a higher quality mode and looks a bit better. Opting for trilinear gives about a three percent boost in performance.

SSAO Off: Screen space ambient occlusion is an approximation of ambient occlusion used in real-time rendering. Essentially it tries to determine which parts of a scene shouldn't be exposed to as much light as others. Sometimes it's great, sometimes SSAO gives things an ugly looking 'anti-glow.' Turning it off here gives you a 10 percent performance boost.

Shadow Quality Low: This is the biggest factor in performance when talking about individual settings. It affects the quality of soft shadows and the distance for detailed shadows, but you'll see a pretty handy 12 percent increase in performance.

Screenspace Shadows Off: This one won't give you as much of a boost as simply turning the quality down. You'll get about a five percent increase.

Reflection Quality Off: Simply put, this option makes reflections in mirrors and water look better. Plus, turning it off will barely change your performance at all based on our testing (which may not have had 'enough' reflective surfaces).

Motion Blur Off: Turning motion blur off hardly affects performance, so if you like the effect feel free to leave it enabled.

Dynamic Sharpening Off: This counters effects caused by temporal anti-aliasing, and in testing we saw a slight dip on the RX 580 but a slight increase on the GTX 1060 (but basically margin of error).

Simulation Quality Best: Same story here, although the actual dips and boosts in performance are fairly negligible. This setting improves the amount and fidelity of crowds, cloth, destruction, and the particles system, depending on your CPU, and it affects audio. Slower or older CPUs may benefit more when turning this to 'base,' but we saw little difference in testing.

MSI provided nearly all of the hardware for this testing, including all of the graphics cards. The main test system uses MSI's Z370 Gaming Pro Carbon AC with a Core i7-8700K as the primary processor, and 16GB of DDR4-3200 CL14 memory from G.Skill. For the Core i9-9900K, testing was performed on the MSI Z390 MEG Godlike motherboard, using the same memory. I also tested performance with Ryzen processors on MSI's X370 Gaming Pro Carbon. The game is run from a Samsung 860 Evo SSD for all desktop GPUs.

MSI also provided three of its gaming notebooks for testing, the GS63VR with GTX 1060 6GB, GE63VR with GTX 1070, and GT73VR with GTX 1080. The GS63VR has a 4Kp60 display, the GE63VR has a 1080p120 G-Sync display, and the GT73VR has a 1080p120 G-Sync display. For the laptops, I installed the game to the secondary HDD storage.

Hitman 2 graphics card benchmarks

Most of the graphics card testing is as you would expect, with the beefy Nvidia cards, which dominate our best graphics cards list, coming out on top at all resolutions and graphics settings. The super expensive RTX 2080 Ti really shows how good it is at 4k with maximum ('ultra') quality still easily breaking 60fps. Everything else struggles while it still chugs along quite nicely. It beats out the RTX 2080 by around 24 percent, and then it's another steep drop down to the 1080 Ti and beyond.

The best AMD can manage at these settings is the RX Vega 64, which falls between the GTX 1070 Ti and GTX 1080, but the RTX 2080 Ti gives you a performance increase of a whopping 50 percent. For about triple the price.

Unless you're breaking the bank on a graphics card, you'll probably want to stay away from this resolution and graphics setting.

Ultra at 2560x1440 makes for slightly better reading, although the cards closer to the budget end of the scale won't handle this very well either. The 2080 Ti comes out on top, of course, but it's only a small step down to the RTX 2080. We're starting to hit CPU limits as well, even with an overclocked i7-8700K.

The RX Vega 64 sits between the GTX 1070 Ti and 1080 again, while the 580/570 cards slightly outperform their 1060 counterparts. If you're looking for this resolution and graphical quality above 60fps, you'll want at least an RX 590 or above (and perhaps tweak your settings slightly).

Down to 1920x1080 then, and the gaps start to close up, particularly at the top. Everything from the GTX 1080 up to the RTX 2080 performs basically the same, with a couple of percent increase in performance for the 2080 Ti. The RX Vega 64 isn't far behind either. Basically, we're hitting CPU limitations.

Just about all of the cards run above 60 FPS just fine. You'll have to go back a generation or two or find a budget card not to hit that mark. Even the GTX 1060 3GB handles it fine.

Drop the graphics settings to 'medium' (we use the 'medium' or 'moderate' setting where available, with SSAO and screenspace shadows off) and most cards will run Hitman 2 like a dream. However, the budget GPUs like thethe GTX 1050 / 1050 Ti and RX 560 still struggle with maintaining 60fps.

Elsewhere, our test sequence clearly hits the CPU harder, as from the GTX 1060 3GB right up to the RTX 2080 Ti, you'll only find about a 10 percent performance difference.

For integrated graphics solutions, the Ryzen 5 2400G with Vega 11 Graphics does reasonably well, averaging 40fps. Oddly, dropping the resolution to 720p and minimum quality doesn't really help it run any faster, so it's bumping other bottlenecks. Intel's HD Graphics 630 meanwhile comes up well short of being playable, mustering just 17fps even at minimum quality and 720p.

Hitman 2 CPU Performance

For CPU testing we're using the MSI RTX 2080 Duke. A powerful graphics card like this will best highlight the performance potential for each of the CPUs we tested.

At 3840x2160 ultra, all the CPUs handle it around the same, with only a three or four percent drop in performance when you compare the Ryzen 5 2600X to the Core i9-9900K. Everything else stays even closer in quality. It's when you start dropping the resolution and the graphics quality that you start to see the big differences come into play.

At 2560x1440 Ultra, the i9-9900K still performs the best, with the Core i7-8700K OC not far behind. The other CPUs then start to see a drop off in quality. The Core i3-8100 is 22 percent worse off compared to its big, big brother. The AMD CPUs fair better than the i3, but there's a big jump up to the Core i5-8400 and the rest of the Intel CPUs at the top of the list.

At 1080p, the Core i7-8700K OC actually jumps above the i9, at both Medium and Ultra. The rest of the list stays in the same order. The AMD CPUs range between around 21 and 25 percent worse performance compared to the i7 at both graphics settings. 

Hitman 2 notebook performance

Over to laptops, it's about as you'd expect, with desktop GPUs outpacing the mobile versions even though they sound beefier on paper. At both medium and ultra, since we're limited to 1080p displays on two of the three laptops, the desktop GTX 1060 outpaces even the GT73VR 1080, and by a pretty huge margin at medium quality.

The desktop 1060 is 25 percent faster at medium, while at ultra the mobile GPUs catch up a bit and the GTX 1060 is about seven percent better. Meanwhile at the bottom of the scale, the GS63VR 1060 starts to struggle a bit and generally does best by turning down a few settings.

Closing thoughts on Hitman 2 performance and hardware requirements

IO Interactive gives the following system requirements, but unfortunately makes no mention of target framerates, resolution, or settings. Based on the specs, I'd assume 1080p 30fps for minimum, and 1080p ultra 60ps for the recommended PC.

MINIMUM:OS: OS 64-bit Windows 7Processor: Intel CPU Core i5-2500K 3.3GHz / AMD CPU Phenom II X4 940Memory: 8GB RAMGraphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 / Radeon HD 7870DirectX: Version 11Storage: 60GB available space

RECOMMENDED:OS: OS 64-bit Windows 10Processor: Intel CPU Core i7-4790 4GHzMemory: 16GB RAMGraphics: Nvidia GPU GeForce GTX 1070 / AMD GPU Radeon RX Vega 56 8GBDirectX: Version 11Storage: 60GB available space

In terms of 'realistic' system requirements, we recommend a GTX 970 or about for 1080p 'medium' quality at 60fps, while 1440p 'ultra' gamers will want a GTX 1070 or above for 60fps. 4k is mostly the domain of extreme hardware like the RTX 2080 and 2080 Ti, which are the only GPUs to break 60fps averages in our testing. Don't neglect the CPU either, though Core i5-8400 and above will get pretty close to maxing out any current graphics card.

Overall, Hitman 2 is an excellent game, and it garnered our Best Stealth Game of 2018 award. Not surprisingly, performance ends up being very similar to the previous outing in most respects, though the removal of DirectX 12 support still feels weird.

Hitman (2016) saw numerous updates over time that improved performance, including support for multi-GPU under both DX11 and DX12 modes. It's not clear if the engine and environment changed so much that maintaining both APIs was deemed 'too difficult,' or if DX12 was dropped simply because it didn't provide enough of a benefit. Or maybe the switch in publisher from Square Enix to Warner Bros. Interactive is to blame. Whatever the case, it's still an odd change of heart.

I also miss the built-in benchmark mode of the previous release, not because it was absolutely necessary but because it makes it easier for others to compare performance with our results. Left to my own devices, the benchmark sequence consists of running through a large crowd in the Finish Line mission. All of the people likely put more of a strain on the CPU than GPU, which may explain some of the results, and other 'lighter' areas in terms of crowd control may run at higher framerates.

Once again, thanks to MSI for providing the hardware for this testing. I used the latest Nvidia and AMD drivers at the time of publication, Nvidia 417.35 and AMD 18.12.3. Testing was completed in December 2018, so a few months of patches and driver updates have helped to equalize performance. AMD and Nvidia GPUs generally perform about the same, for the various performance levels, though that means AMD still has no alternative to anything above the GTX 1080 / Vega 64. Hopefully that will arrive in 2019.

Speedrunner Can't Even has smashed their own Portal world record, completing Valve's puzzler in a mere 7:07.

It's an out-of-bounds run, which means they're constantly glitching through walls and empty space. I like that, occasionally, you'll catch a glimpse of part of the game you recognise, and then suddenly it's gone, and you're somewhere else entirely. The level of precision is properly impressive.

Can't Even reckons they can shave two seconds off the run, but it still easily beats their own previous world record of 7:12. The leaderboard at speedrun.com hasn't been updated yet, but you can see that Can't Even is well ahead of the competition—the next best runner is now a full 14 seconds slower.

They're also in the top 25 for in-bounds runs, which take roughly three-and-a-half minutes longer.

If you're a speedrunning fan, don't forget to mark January 6, a week today, in your calendar—it's the start of the annual Awesome Games Done Quick event. The schedule is live here.

Thanks, Kotaku.

If you're a fan of relaxing, detailed Cities: Skylines builds then you should set some time aside to watch YouTuber TazerHere create Berrysville, a small, decaying town in Texas, on Route 66. 

He uses lots of mods and custom models to create a very believable place, and the full playlist is worth watching both to find out how TazerHere clicked and dragged it together and for the stories he builds into each area. The last video in the series, above, probably sums it up best: it's a flythrough of Berrysville complete with user-submitted tales about the history of the town, its buildings, and the people that live there.

The stories are entertaining and varied: you'll find out about the murder of a hardware salesman, a haunted motel, how the town's first church burned down, and how the mayor forced through plans for Berrysville's first McDonalds. It really brings the place to life. 

All the videos are well-filmed and edited, and the building is sped up to cut out the boring bits. If you enjoy watching, you can download the full build from the Steam Workshop.

Thanks, Kotaku.

Videogames are full of many things: Guns, knives, ventilation shafts, castle sewers and mushrooms you can jump on. More than anything, they're full of words. Words that tell you where to go and what to do, words that create characters and drama, words that bring wholly imagined worlds into being. To celebrate the best words in videogames this year, I decided to turn to the people who write them. I asked a whole bunch of videogame writers to tell me about their favorite story this year, and to also pick out a particular bit of writing to highlight: a singular story moment, or dialogue, or bit of flavor text that suck with them long after the game was over.

Here's what they had to say. For more on the best writing in games this year, check out our Best Story GOTY award for The Red Strings Club and our feature on the brilliant localization of Dragon Quest 11.

Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire

Best writing: I'm going to cheat a bit and talk about a game I helped write: Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire. In the interest of objectivity, I'm not bringing up any of my contributions.

So we have these characters called "sidekicks." They're companions you pick up along the way who don't get the full "companion treatment" of personal quests, deeper relationships, or emotional arcs. That said, sidekicks are more than just fighting mannequins—they get their own unique voices, personalities, and in some cases intellectual growth. My colleague Kate Dollarhyde wrote the sidekick Rekke, who the player discovers shipwrecked, having sailed from a distant land. He speaks Seki, a mysterious language Kate painstakingly invented, and over time Rekke learns to communicate with the player and share his story.

What I think works about Rekke is that his origins are so far removed from the context of the game that he approaches the plot as a stranger squinting at the unusual locals. While all of the other characters bicker over political alliances, cultural struggle, and religious tension, it's refreshing to have Rekke observing from the sidelines and taking it all in with a sense of lighthearted bemusement. He's a breath of fresh air when intrigue and annihilation get a little too overwhelming. It also helps that he's perfectly charming.  — Paul Kirsch

Best writing: Hands-down, it's the "Nemnok the Destroyer" quest from Pillars of Eternity 2. You're trying to rescue this kid from a cult whose members worship this giant demon, Nemnok—and, frankly, Nemnok's kind of a dick. Turns out he's just an imp with a giant ego under a giant-making spell, and once you defeat him you can take him along with you as a loud-mouthed pet for the rest of your playthrough.

I don't know if I would have enjoyed the rest of the game half as much without Nemnok shouting put-downs with poor grammar at me from my pocket (and occasionally trying to pick up my crewmates). He's an adorable little asshole and I would die for him. Sometimes when I'm sitting at home I'll find myself quietly chanting "Nem-nok! Nem-nok! Nem-nok!" I think... I think I'm part of his cult? — Sam Maggs

The Red Strings Club

Best writing: This year I greatly enjoyed playing The Red Strings Club, a cyberpunk noir adventure game revolving around brain implants that can alter your mood, morality and sense of self. I feel that these kinds of games often disappoint when it comes to asking the hard questions about free will, identity, personal politics, and what doing the right thing is, in a context where everyone is manipulated at one degree or another. But "Red Strings Club" didn’t shy away, and includes many thoughtful dialogues where there is no right or wrong answer.

One dialogue in particular stuck with me: if you could alter everyone’s mind, of course you wouldn’t do it; you'd know it’s wrong. But what if you could at least prevent people from committing suicide? What if you could prevent depression, or say, racism, without changing anything else in people’s personalities? Would you do it? This branching dialogue with a clever, non-judging AI was so well crafted and interesting, it turned the whole game into some kind of philosophical experiment that had me think really hard—and reloading a saved game many times.  — Sachka Duval 

The Return of the Obra Dinn

Favorite story: A friend of mine who was a history student once explained to me how he was using old insurance papers and last wills to figure out how common people were living a couple of centuries ago. Just a list of personal items could reveal many secrets, even though he knew that it was barely a shadow of what these men and women were really like. I thought of that conversation again while reaching the ending of The Return of the Obra Dinn. The player is an insurance inspector, and after investigating the fantastic events that happened to the crew on that doomed ship, which involve all sorts of otherworldly creatures and gruesome deaths, she simply files a report: a list of names, causes of death, brief accolades and the estimated value of their personal possessions. The rest, as unique as it was, will be forgotten.

I loved how each individual story is mostly left to the imagination, and in the end only amounts to an insurance assessment. But the player has seen what was hidden underneath those few lines and numbers—the bravery, passion, treachery, cowardice, love... That’s the beauty of it: the mundanity which remains as sole testimony of the turmoil of life. Interestingly this was also true of Lucas Pope’s Papers Please, where entire lives and fates were contained in a few ID papers, for the player to judge. In both games I saw a bittersweet homage to the multitude of fleeting anonymous stories that is humankind.   — Sachka Duval

Deltarune

Favorite story: While its story is just getting started, Deltrarune, the surprise follow-up to 2015’s Undertale, is probably the one that struck me the most of all the PC games I played this year. Creator Toby Fox has a unique knack for tone-setting, and a quirky, confident personal style that won me over in Undertale, especially as I approached its spectacular finale. Deltarune carries that spirit forward in an unmistakable way. It starts off even stronger than Undertale did, deftly introducing a humorous and heartfelt cast of characters I want to learn more about whenever the rest of the game unfolds. The highlight is Susie, a big, scruffy, scary misunderstood loner/bully who won me over almost instantly.

Undertale was a wonderfully unique game, and from what I played of Deltarune, it looks as though Toby Fox and his collaborators are well on their way to creating a worth successor with lots more surprises in store. I would say ‘I can’t wait', but it’s really the opposite—I can and will. I’m happy to wait as long as it takes for something like this to be fully realized. — Greg Kasavin 

Into the Breach

Best writing: A bit of writing that most stood out to me in a PC game this year comes from Into the Breach, the outstanding and elegantly crafted turn-based strategy game from the creators of FTL: Faster Than Light. Into the Breach presents a grand conflict on a very small-looking scale; using little grid-based battlefields, the game expects you to believe that the entire world is under siege by an alien menace. And it’s completely convincing at this, thanks partly to little snippets of dialogue attributed to the buildings your squad of mechs is charged with protecting.

My favorite, most efficient little bit of this type of writing in the game is a two-word sentence: “Dad, look!"

I just love everything about this when it appears in the context of the game. You see it pop up from time to time near a tiny little pixel building. Then, all of a sudden, you are reminded it’s a building full of innocent people you have to protect, who are putting all their faith in you. They give the game an emotional weight and a sense of place to accompany its terrific design. For me, these snippets of flavor text from Into the Breach did a ton of work in making the conflict in the game feel more real and personal.  — Greg Kasavin

Star Control: Origins

Favorite story: I’m going to highlight Star Control: Origins, because while I definitely have issues with some of the mechanics, the script is wonderful. Star Control 2 is a tough game to live up to, with some of the best and most memorable aliens in the business. Just look at Star Control 3. But Origins pulls it off, whether by punishing you for running out of fuel by making you listen to Star Trek fan-fiction, or the increasing frustration of Earth as you keep bringing interstellar weirdos back home.

There are better stories in terms of overall plot and twists and all that jazz, but I can’t think of a game I smiled and laughed as much at in 2018 and damn it, that’s worthy of a mention in my book. — Richard Cobbett

Yakuza 0

Best writing: I’m cheating a bit because technically I played it before this year, but I’m not about to give up a chance to spread the word of Yakuza. I adore this series, and Yakuza 0 is arguably the best of it. In particular, I want to highlight the localisation team. It’s often overlooked, but you play games like this or Phoenix Wright or the Mario RPGs and the contribution of localisation can’t be overstated. Yakuza is a masterpiece of the form, balancing the gritty crime story at its core and the utter insanity of all the side-quests around it, while leaning into the cultural side of its twin cities, Kamurocho and Sotonboi, in a way that feels both like visiting a foreign country and being completely at home.

That said, weirdly, the big moment that springs to mind isn’t one of the big dramatic showdowns, or jokey encounter for series lead Kiryu and newly playable Majima to play the ultimate straight-men against, but a single line in a quest to—no kidding—buy porn for a curious child, despite being so embarrassed that avoiding the eyes of people in the area immediately turns it into a stealth mission. "Begin your dubious quest!" it declares. If only all RPGs were so honest.  — Richard Cobbett 

Honorable (console) mentions: Spider-Man and God of War

Favorite story, Spider-Man: I can say this because I only worked on the DLC, but it has to be the Spider-Man PS4 golden path. Not only did the team manage to craft a story that felt like you were playing through a Marvel movie, but the characters and their stories also hit me in the feels in a way that few super hero films ever have. Focusing on an adult Peter and his relationships—with MJ, with his aunt, with Otto, with his own powers—connected me to Spider-Man on a real, (super) human level. They absolutely knocked it out of the park.  — Sam Maggs

Favorite story, Spider-Man: My favorite game of the year, hands down, was Insomniac’s Spider-Man. Not because of the sensational score, ultimate cast, or spectacular swinging, but because of Peter Parker and his amazing friends. It’s the rare triple-A game that understands a protagonist is more than just a cool set of powers. Insomniac understands that radioactive blood might make you a hero, but it’s the people in your life that make you super.

By opening the gameplay to multiple characters, including Miles Morale and Mary Jane Watson, Insomniac showed us the heart of Spider-Man. Not only that, they allowed us to see the villains as three-dimensional characters capable of good, but unable to overcome their darker natures. But most importantly, it allowed me to sweep up garbage at a homeless shelter. The game didn’t tell me to, nor did it reward me—not even so much as a Trophy. It just let me do it, because that’s what Peter Parker would do. — Walt Williams

Favorite story, God of War: Full disclosure, I worked with Richard Gaubert on a game at Sony that was cancelled.  So we're friends.  I know he's a father and how important that is to him and how that influenced his writing of God of War.

I don’t always play the latest games when they come out. I sometimes don’t get to them until a year after they’ve been released. I haven’t played Red Dead Redemption 2 yet and I was a huge fan of the first, but in terms of the newer games I’ve played this year, I thought God of War had a wonderful narrative. The dialogue is sharp and emotional and the voice acting is fantastic. Kratos and his son, Atreus, have a touching and troubled and realistic relationship. Kratos lost his wife and Atreus, his mother, and she was their primary connection. With her gone, they now have to forge a new kind of relationship. Atreus wants his father’s love and support, but fears him and doesn’t understand him as he was never around much.

Kratos is not one to express his feelings and the emotional armor he wears to protect himself creates the conflict that fuels so much of their relationship. Richard Gaubert, Matt Sophos, and Cory Barlog did a great job of creating characters the player can connect with and a deep and believable father and son relationship. It’s always better if gameplay can mirror the emotional and narrative aspects of the story and in God of War that’s exactly what they did. Father and son must work together to succeed and for that to happen, they must come together. I’m a sucker for father and son stories.  (I loved Field of Dreams.)  So God of War really connected with me.

I don’t want to spoil anything, so I will be as vague as I can be about my favorite moment.  (But this is a minor spoiler.)When Atreus falls ill, the pain and fear Kratos feels is palpable and what he must do to save him is epic and emotional. I believe the number one job of a game writer is to create an emotional context that drives the game play. You have to make the player care and God of War made me care.  —  Haris Orkin

Having already reached number four in our Top 100 list earlier this year, we're delighted to name Subset Games' Into The Breach our Ultimate Game of the Year for 2018, joining past winners like Divinity: Original Sin 2, Dishonored 2, Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain, and Alien: Isolation. Check out the now-completed list of GOTY awards and personal picks. 

Tom: Into The Breach shows that you can create tactical intrigue without force-feeding the player a 100-page manual. This game gives you an eight-by-eight grid, a few enemy types, and squads of cool mechs with different attacks and… that’s it. It even tells you exactly what’s going to happen next turn, and it’s still a fascinating tactics game that you can enjoy in snackable short sessions. It’s elegantly designed and accessible enough to appeal to people that might not think of themselves as strategy gamers. Battles feel like emergent puzzles rather than serious tests of martial skill, but it’s still quite hard, particularly when parts of the arena start flooding, or collapsing away completely.

Evan: When you unlock a new set of mechs it feels like ripping open a new set of Pacific Rim action figures, a trio of robots that form a unique fighting style. The Flame Behemoths torch everything. The Rusting Hulks use smoke to disable enemies. The Steel Judoka are all about setting up sweet suplex combos. And upgrading these bots almost always feels like a tough choice between survivability or movement, between attack power and utility. Into the Breach's dedication to less-is-more design makes this possible.

Samuel: Like FTL, it's a perfect modern form of strategy game that's engaging and easy to pick up without being too complicated. Plus you can play it in tiny chunks. One of Into The Breach's strengths over FTL is how difficulty scales: easy is a steady way to enjoy the game and get used to its systems, while normal is tough moment-to-moment but well-balanced. Each set of mechs is like playing an entirely different game—and the sense of discovery that comes with working out how their various abilities fit together to dismantle a Vek assault in a single turn feels like magic. The path to unlocking them all gives players a generous amount of game to dig into. 

Then there's the touch of letting you abandon a timeline in the event that the Vek wins—which will happen a lot. Not only does it give you a sense of continuity between playthroughs, letting you keep some form of progress, it also underlines what a hopeless, unending battle it is that your little mech dudes face. The little bits of narrative here or there do enough to bring the world to life without ever wasting a second of your time. 

Then there's the variety provided by the game's different islands: airstrikes, trains you have to defend, evil AI battlebots, temporary allied units, being able to dump acid on enemies, blowing up mountains to stop the Vek reproducing. There's so much here to keep things surprising.

Wes: One of Into the Breach's small, brilliant decisions was putting the focus of each mission on saving civilians, rather than your own mechs. It has me doing scary math every turn: should I put one of my units in the line of fire to take a hit? If they die, losing some of the special abilities they've accrued by leveling up, is that worth the trade-off of protecting the precious energy meter? A single civilian loss can feel devastating, but this framing sets the tone for the whole game. It's about surviving, not killing 'em all, and lasting long enough for the Vek to retreat had me pumping my fists like it was a massive victory.

I also appreciate that almost everything in Into the Breach feels finely calculated and deliberately un-random, except for the grid defense stat. In most runs that number's going to stay low, maybe 20 percent, meaning you have just a one in five chance of a building deflecting damage that should've destroyed it. But when that happens—when the clouds part and the god of RNG bathes you in a pure, protective light—euphoria.

When it happens twice in a row when you're facing certain ruin? Post-euphoria. Is that a thing? Whatever's better than euphoria. Game of the year.

Phil: That you can see exactly what your enemy is going to do before they take their turn is everything. There are no surprises, just precise, accurate information detailing exactly how screwed you currently are. It's great if you can finish a turn without any buildings being destroyed, but it's rarely enough. You also have to avoid taking too much damage yourself and, if you ever want to upgrade your squad, complete a bonus objective too. But, because you know how and where your enemy is going to attack, you have a chance to turn things to your advantage. To push a bug here into the path of another enemy's attack. To deliberately take damage in order to save a valuable building. To not kill an enemy, but instead move them in such a way that they'll block reinforcements on the next turn. Into the Breach is constantly putting you in impossible seeming situations, but also gives you the time, information and tools to think your way back out.

Check out Alex Wiltshire's original 93%-scored review.

EA has added a handful of third-party games to its Origin Access Premier service: Darksiders 3, management game This is The Police 2 and surveillance game Beholder 2. It's the first time that non-EA games are being made available exclusively to Premier subscribers.

The basic Origin Access, which is $5/£4 a month or $30/£20 a year, has an ever-expanding "vault" of 167 games, which you can download and play at any time as part of your subscription. Origin Access Premier—$15/£15 a month or $100/£90 a year—has an extra seven. Previously, they only included new EA games such as FIFA 19 and Battlefield 5, but now it appears EA is happy to add newer third-party games too.

The games were added before Christmas, but I still think it's worth mentioning now because it suggests that EA might add more third-party games to the Premier subscription in future.

It also further differentiates the Premier from the Basic tier: as Samuel wrote last month, Premier is only really worth it if you love sports games and shooters, but that could change if it gets some excellent non-EA games. Personally, I'm still happy with my Basic subscription, but I'll be keeping a close eye on what games are added going forward.

Darksiders 3, which came out last month, is a decent action game marred by a few flaws, as I wrote in my review. This is The Police 2 is pretty poor, judging by Tom's review. He said it had a solid core but "too much bloat". I know less about Beholder 2, a state surveillence game that came out this month, but Andy was intrigued after spending a few hours with the first game. 

EA also added eight games to the basic Origin Access vault earlier this month, including Star Wars Battlefront 2, Knights of the Old Republic (both 1 and 2) and A Way Out. The full list is:

• Star Wars Battlefront 2
• A Way Out
• The Count Lucanor
• The LEGO Movie Videogame
• Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic
• Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic 2
• Star Wars Rebel Assault
• Star Wars Rebel Assault 2

Skytorn, the procedurally-generated Metroidvania from many of the folks behind Celeste, has been cancelled, developer Noel Berry has announced.

Berry started working on Skytorn more than five years ago, but he and the rest of its team halted development to make Celeste, which came out in January this year. Just before Celeste released, Berry said that Skytorn wasn't dead, and that the team would finish it off in the future. But that plan has now changed—in a blog post this week, he revealed that the team has abandoned Skytorn, largely because they "just never figured out what it was".

The game was "broken" at its core, Berry said: it was a procedurally-generated adventure game without permadeath, which "clashed" with the Metroidvania themes. 

"Taking out the procedural parts felt like it defeated the purpose of what the game was, so as it shifted towards a more linear adventure, the procedural map stayed but simply got more and more constricted, until the procedural-ness of it didn’t really mean anything — it was just… there," he said. 

"And this is a lot of overhead for basically no payoff. Why make a procedural game at all if you don’t really get the benefits of it being procedural?" Finishing Skytorn would require the team to "throw away a lot of the code and gameplay design", he said, which he and others weren't prepared to do.

"I’m really sorry for those of you who were excited about this game. We were too. We poured a lot of time, energy, and heart into the project and we’re definitely sad it’s never going to see the commercial release we were hoping for." 

You can watch some 2016 gameplay of Skytorn below.

Lastly, Berry said that the Celeste team would be "sticking together", and would share news about their next game in the new year. That echoes what his Celeste co-creator Matt Thorson said last week while announcing new, free, ultra-tricky levels for the platformer. 

You can read Berry's full blog here.

I'm a big fan of great screenshots, and every year provides a new batch of beautifully staged grabs from videogame photographers. Earlier in the year, I asked our readers to submit their favorite shots, and I've included some of those here. I've also included hi-res work from Frans Bouma, Andy Cull, and Larah Johnson (aka HodgeDogs) with their permission.

For more, check out the submissions in the comments here, as well as last year's collection. Enjoy!

Assassin's Creed Odyssey

Shadow of the Tomb Raider

No Man's Sky

Hitman 2

Fallout 76

Far Cry 5

Forza Horizon 4

Star Citizen

Monster Hunter: World is getting an Assassin's Creed-themed crossover event, complete with outfits that make you look like Ezio Auditore da Firenze and Bayek of Siwa.

The event is live on consoles right now but, sadly, PC gamers will have to wait until an unspecified "later date".

When it does arrive, you'll be asked to complete a tricky new quest called “SDF: Silent, Deadly, and Fierce", in which you'll slay high-level monsters. Finish it and you'll be granted a Senu Feather—get two feathers and you can trade them in for either the Bayek Layered Armor, which you can wear over your existing armor, or the Ezio-style Assassin's Hood. 

When worn, the hood boosts your damage when attacking from a stealth state, and makes you faster when running or climbing. You can see it in action below. 

In another crossover event, The Witcher's Geralt is due to arrive in the hack-and-slasher early next year.

We named Monster Hunter: World our action game of the year—find out why here.