Space Engineers, a sci-fi open world sandbox game, has been in Steam Early Access for over five years. The developers announced last week that the title would finally leave Early Access on February 28, and sure enough, it's now officially a finished game. To celebrate, Space Engineers is now 20% off on Steam, and it's free to play for the next three days.

If you're completely unfamiliar with it, Space Engineers describes itself as an "open world sandbox game defined by creativity and exploration." You can build space ships, outposts, space stations, wheeled vehicles, and more—in both creative and survival modes. It received a major visual overhaul earlier this month.

You can buy Space Engineers right now on Steam for $15.99, 20% off the original price. There's also a four-pack available for $47.99 (also 20% off), if you want to build crazy contraptions with friends.

Space Engineers, one of the best space games on PC, is finally leaving Early Access after more than five years and 200 updates. The stellar sandbox will reach 1.0 on February 28, accompanied by a major survival overhaul. It will be one of the biggest overhauls it's seen and, according to Keen Software's Marek Rosa, Space Engineers will evolve from a sandbox into a game. 

The update will bring with it new blocks, including hydrogen engines and wind turbines, a progression system that will help orient new players, a new spawning system and scenarios. The latter, says Rosa, is a feature's he's particularly proud of, giving players new challenges to overcome. The game will launch with two of them, but more are planned. You can see more of what's heading to Space Engineers here. 

Leaving Early Access is apparently just the beginning of Space Engineers' journey (five years is a long time to get ready) and additional scenarios, blocks and more are in the works.  "We’re going to take Space Engineers to exciting places when it comes to gameplay, immersion, and challenges," says Rosa. 

It's been quite a long time since I last played Space Engineers, but it's still provided me with lots of entertainment. Messy co-op was where it shined, and my fondest memories are of building weird space robots and smashing them into my buddy's weird space robots to see who would win. Many of them sadly ended up hurtling into the void of space after the collision. Thanks, physics!  

I'm looking forward to smashing more things in space come February 28. And judging by the many update videos, I've got a lot of catching up to do. 

Co-op build 'em up Space Engineers, one of the best space games on PC, just received a major new update that overhauls the graphics and changes the way that surface vehicles work. A video for the update, above, shows that the game indeed looks better than ever, with lots of new particle effects and a freshly polished colour palette.

On the visual side, the changes really are substantial. You can read about them all in this blog post, but in short there are new textures, lighting effects, an optional cinematic mode, eye adaptation to sunlight, more lighting contrast and camera shake. The update has been a year in the making.

Most of the audio changes, which you can also read about in the blog or in the full change log for the update, tweak existing sounds to make them more impactful (you now hear a heavier sound when your character falls to the floor, for example), adds new sounds and changes the way the game prioritises sounds based on the distance of their origin from your character.

The changes aren't all on the presentation, though. Guns are more precise, players move faster, and gravity behaves more realistically. Some of the biggest changes have been made to surface vehicles (or "wheels", as the developers calls them). Players will now find that they're easier to handle, and you can hit a button to perform a suspension jump—handy if you get stuck on the environment. 

Again, all the changes, including a long list of bug fixes, can be found here. 

This article was originally published in PC Gamer issue 302. For more quality articles about all things PC gaming, you can subscribe now in the UK and the US.  

In a Steam sale long ago, on a whim, Samuel picked up the sandbox and construction game Space Engineers. For this feature, he and Phil teamed up to build a spaceship in it, to leave Earth in that spaceship and to fly it to the Moon—all without knowing how the game actually worked, or paying any attention to its tutorials.

Finding each other 

Phil:  I launch a creative mode server, spawning in a base on Earth. Samuel joins, and... Sam, where are you?

Samuel: I’m 66km away, Phil, having spawned in the Earth’s atmosphere, and I’m in a landing craft which means I’m essentially falling with style rather than actually controlling where I’m going. You can’t just spawn next to a co-op partner in this game straight away, which is a bit annoying. But damn it, I want us to build a spaceship together.

Phil: I create a new faction, the PCG Space Boys, in the hope of getting a permanent waypoint marker for Samuel’s location. That doesn’t work. Instead, because I had to leave my original faction, my entire base becomes hostile to me. I flee to a nearby hill, set a manual GPS marker and wait. Then I build a sign, because what else are you going to do when you’re stranded alone on a hostile planet?

Samuel: Phil fiddles around until he finds out how to set a waypoint, and now I have to get to him. This means fitting atmospheric thrusters to my landing craft, which makes it just about fast enough to leapfrog across the world to where Phil waits for me. It’s fast enough to get me there, but not so fast that I can actually take off from the ground for more than ten seconds. When I reach my destination, I see a HELP sign very cleverly made out of spaceship parts. “I’m on top of the E,” Phil tells me. We meet at last.

Phil: We need a flat location to construct our ship, but we’d be building around machine gun fire if we did it back at my base. Instead we head to the valley below, and hope the ground is even enough to facilitate the construction of a spacefaring vessel. I bet NASA never had to deal with this shit. Another problem is that I don’t know how to play this game. Even building that HELP sign took longer than I’d care to admit. I plop down a cockpit, but sideways, embedding it in the ground. This won’t do at all.

Building a spaceship

Samuel: This is a PC Gamer ship, so damn it, we will build it out of red and black bricks. Phil’s cockpit is purple—and sideways. I start by placing a new cockpit and attach it to a block, so that the vague shape of a spaceship begins to take form. We agree that the ship needs two cockpits, because there are two of us, so we stick those together. I add two reactors, so the ship can actually take off, and then we start fitting thrusters onto it, which should—in theory—allow us to touch the stars. I also attach a couple of gyroscopes. I don’t know what they do, but they should probably be there, because science possibly.

Phil: While Samuel builds an impressive looking frame, I muck around in the background figuring out how things work. I place a couple of massive floodlights near our build to improve nighttime visibility—both to learn how electrical systems function, and because it sounds like the sort of thing a helpful, knowledgeable co-op partner would do. Samuel is fiddling with power sources and gyroscopes—all things I don’t understand—so to further mask my incompetence, I jump in and add thrusters. Lots and lots of thrusters.

Samuel: To be honest, on the quick play of Space Engineers I had before this, I basically just taped loads of thrusters to a cockpit and hoped for the best. So really, Phil and I are just as incompetent as each other. Who better to reach the Moon than us? 

Phil: The ship isn’t very aerodynamic-looking, but the sheer number of thrusters should count for something. As a final touch—because I appreciate the majesty of space travel—I strap a couple of seats to the top of the ship, creating an ad-hoc viewing platform. Again, it’s not scientifically advisable, but we seem to be invulnerable in creative mode, so what’s the harm?

Samuel: These seats, I should point out, are not in a contained environment, so humans probably shouldn’t sit on them on a moving spaceship. I sit down anyway and prepare for lift-off.

To the moon

Phil: The view from inside the cockpit seems weird, making it hard to get my bearings. I press W and nothing much happens. I press the spacebar, and we start to build some momentum. We reach an impressive height, but I’m navigating entirely with the altimeter because I can’t tell what’s happening outside my window. It almost looks as if the atmospheric engines are at the bottom of my viewscreen. But that would mean I was upside down, and perpendicular to the bottom of the craft. Surely not.

Samuel: Hmm, what design error could possibly have caused that? I’m not sure. It feels oddly rewarding to see our piece-of-crap spaceship break out of the Earth’s atmosphere, though, and to see the world behind us vanish. Hang on a minute. When I started the design of the ship, did I accidentally attach the cockpits so they were looking upwards instead of forwards? Is that what I did, Phil?

Phil: I think that’s what you did, Sam. That would explain why pressing the up key makes us go forwards. On the plus side, we’re 10,000 metres up in the sky—that’s basically space. On the down side, getting to the Moon would mean doing the entire journey looking 90 degrees away from the Moon. I don’t think I’m that good of a pilot.

Samuel: How did I not notice this during the test flight? I did wonder why you kept saying “the ship’s upside down!” when from my perspective in the cockpit it was clearly the right side up. You can’t muck about when it comes to the Moon. I decide to get off my chair in the middle of space and sort it out. It turns out this is a terrible idea—I float away uncontrollably.

Phil: I know it seems like I’m leaving you stranded in space, Sam, but this ship doesn’t have brakes. I turn off the engine and we both plummet back to Earth—me in the ship, Samuel in nothing but the astronaut suit he spawned in. Fortunately, we land only a couple of kilometres apart. We fix up the cockpit so that it points in the right direction, and, now that I can see where I’m going, we make it easily back into space. The Moon is quite some distance away, though, and even after we stop on an asteroid to add yet more thrusters, reaching it looks like it could take some time. I press W and wait.

Samuel: I have to go to a boring real-life meeting, which lasts for ten minutes. The Moon seems miles away when I leave. The second I come back, Phil is about to collide with the thing. We did it! We went to the Moon! What happened while I was away, Phil?Phil: I alt-tabbed out to do some work. Space travel is pretty majestic.

Beyond the infinite (Mars)

Phil: Sam, I’ve found a thing in the construction menu called a ‘jump drive’. If it works, I reckon we could reach Mars. Either that or it’ll go horribly wrong and we’ll be stranded forever in deep space. Either way, it could be a laugh.

Samuel: Originally, I wanted us to reach the Moon, and even that seemed unlikely to me about 30 minutes ago. But we did it! Fuck it: let’s go to Mars. It’s right over there. How far away can it be?

Phil: I suspect that Space Engineers doesn’t model most of the forces that would prevent our ship from getting off the ground. Plus we’re on the Moon now, and there’s basically no gravity. What I’m saying is let’s just awkwardly bolt the warp drive to the bottom of this ship. We use about six nuclear reactors to power it all, but it seems to work. This is exciting! I punch the warp drive. “Jump drive is only 11.26% charged.” This is going to take a while.

Samuel: Crikey. If the other bits of the ship are space Lego, this is space Duplo. It’s gigantic. This is one ugly-ass vessel, and I’m still sitting on top. Will going into hyperspace not destroy my body? 

Phil: We fell to Earth and survived, so you’ll probably be fine. The power charges, I point at Mars and punch that drive. I’m told off by the game for trying to warp into a gravitational body. Why does breaking physics have this many rules? I aim off to the side, and try again. A box appears asking me to confirm the ‘blind jump’. Yes, dammit! Don’t question my orders. Finally, we jump, and arrive... not on orbit around Mars. 

Samuel: I’m alive! Mars is bigger now, but no, we’re not exactly there yet. Going there manually could take forever. Can we jump again to get closer? Phil’s been in the pilot seat for a while now, so I’m basically a passenger, beholden to his expertise.

Phil: We could always swap seats, but this thing still doesn’t have brakes. Anyway, I’ve found the button for decreasing our warp distance. We can’t jump into a planet’s gravitational pull, but I can reduce the distance until we’re at the point closest to its gravity field. After that, it should be a reasonably short trip to the surface. I do, and it is. We’re on Mars!

Samuel: It’s a surprisingly impressive version of Mars, too—the texture of the planet looks very realistic as we enter the atmosphere. We take pictures of each other in front of our crappy-looking, house-shaped spaceship, like rubbish astronauts. I celebrate the freedom of being on Mars by spawning some gigantic wheels in an effort to build a big space car, a surefire sign that I’m procrastinating and that we need to switch the game off and write about our journey to Mars. Kudos, Phil! I feel like I was slightly useless for basically the entire back half of that trip. 

Phil: Your moral support was an invaluable contribution, Sam. And so were your screenshots.

Welcome to the thirty-second episode of the PC Gamer UK Podcast, home of possibly the longest tangent in our history. Around that, you’ll hear about Samuel and Phil’s slapdash adventures with Space Engineers, find out whether Phil understands what’s happening in GoNNER (no), and learn why Samuel isn’t a music journalist. Also, we answer a bumper crop of your questions – as asked by our Discord community.

You can get Episode 32: ...But one final point on Hard-Fi here. You can also subscribe on iTunes or keep up with new releases using our RSS feed.  

Discussed: GoNNER, Space Engineers, Oxenfree, Reigns, Elite Dangerous

This Week: Samuel Roberts, Phil SavageThe PC Gamer UK Podcast is a weekly podcast about PC gaming. Thoughts? Feedback? Requests? Get in touch at pcgamer@futurenet.com and use the subject line “Podcast”, or tweet us via the links above.

This week’s music is from Oxenfree.

After three years orbiting Steam's Early Access initiative, Keen Software's Space Engineers has entered its beta phase. 

Following on from a pretty hefty update last week, the ever-expanding space-set sandbox game sees new features such as a total block redesign, new multiplayer netcode, and a tutorial campaign installed as part of its stable launch.  

"This update also marks the transition of Space Engineers moving to Beta phase," says the developer's head honcho Marek Rosa in a blog post. "The most important thing to remember with this announcement is that there is still more content, improvements and many optimizations to come. As an example, we can confirm that one of the things being worked on currently is a new HUD which should significantly increase your immersion in the game. Beta simply means that we feel the game now has a solid foundation." 

We've got two trailers for you now in light of all that. First, one which explores the new features the Space Engineers beta brings with it: 

And second, a dedicated beta trailer which shows off some flashy first-person gunplay and interstellar battling:

The Space Engineers beta's full list of new features—which includes the likes of Magnetic Boots, voice chat, and customisable fonts, among a host of other things—can be found over here.

Bundle Stars has launched its biggest ever sale which is live right now until August 22.

With timed deals and sale-length discounts alike, the Summer Sale includes a mix of contemporary hits and old classics offering discounts on certain games (via Steam keys) at 90 percent and more.

The F.E.A.R. bundle includes the original game, Fear 2, Fear 2: Reborn, and Fear 3 with 90 percent off, meaning you can snag all four games for 3.26/$4.99. Rocket League 4 Pack is also going at minus 47 percent for 31.49/$41.99, while Space Engineers is 5.69/$7.49 until 10am BST/2am PT August 12.

New deals are added on a daily basis, however other highlights include:

• Saints Row 4 -80%: £2.99/$4.99
• Mad Max -70%: £7.49/$11.99
• Tropico 5 Complete Collection -75%: £7.49/$9.99
• Goat Simulator + GoatZ DLC -75%: £2.75/$3.75
• LEGO Batman Trilogy -66%: £7.49/$12.49
• Broken Sword Complete Pack -83%: £6.75/$8.99

Buying anything from the sale grants you automatic entry to Bundle Stars HTC Vive prize draw information on which is detailed post-purchase.

The Bundle Stars Summer Sale runs from now until August 22. Browse the full list of bargains at your leisure by heading this-a-way.

Space Engineers is, in the words of its developer, "a sandbox game about engineering, construction, exploration and survival in space and on planets." You can build space stations, planetary outposts, and pilot ships.

"Space Engineers is inspired by reality and how things actually work," they say. "Think about modern-day NASA technology extrapolated 60 years into the future. Space Engineers strives to follow the laws of physics and doesn't use technologies that wouldn't be feasible in the near future."

As well as a 50% off sale on Steam this weekend, the game will also be free to play. Check your Steam library and it'll be sitting in there waiting for you. It's an Early Access game, but packed with features, including the recent addition of moddable, destructible planets. You can read all about that here.

Hoping to win the prize for "biggest feature implemented as a result of early access player feedback", creator Keen Software House has added entire planets to its game Space Engineers.

Space Engineers has been in Early Access for two years and was originally intended to be a physics-based "Minecraft in space" type affair, in which you mined asteroids and built spaceships and space stations. "Planets weren't part of our initial development plans," CEO Marek Rosa said, "But we quickly realized how passionate fans are about it."

Rosa also added that the team's aim is "always to make our community happy", which would explain why they've added a survival mode, multiplayer support, and now the long-requested ability to land on and explore planets.

Different planets (currently split into three types: Earth-like, Mars-like, and "alien") have different biomes with different atmospheres, resources, and climates. You'll be able to build bases or entire cities and try to survive, fight aliens/pirates/drones, or if you're in the mood destroy the planet entirely.

If you're tempted to give Space Engineers a go now, make sure to check out the full list of features so you know what to expect.

Each Friday PC Gamer s editors venture into the opinion mines, hoping to chisel out nuggets of raw, shining, truth. Ugh, you ve got truth all over your hands…

THE HIGHS

Chris Livingston: Sky-O-Stocked: Infinite One of my favorite early-access games, Space Engineers, is planning to take the "space" portion of its title a bit more seriously. Much like actual outer space, Space Engineers is eventually going to be infinite, practically. In a blog post by Marek Rosa, Founder of Keen Software, he lays out the details of an upcoming Exploration feature:

"The exploration feature will add a practically infinite number of ships and stations to the game world, so there will always be something new to discover, explore, acquire and conquer. You can imagine it like this: you are traveling in some direction and there is an asteroid, so you decide to check it and see if there s something in its tunnels, in its proximity or on its surface. Or you just fly through empty space and boom, a lost wreck shows near you."

It would take quite a hefty PC to render countless ships and asteroids, so they'll only be generated if you're in their vicinity, and drop out once you've moved on. What's more, Rosa is asking the community if they'd like their custom-made ships and space stations to be used in this infinite universe in exchange for adding the creators' names to the game's credits. They're polling the community now to see if they players are on board, and at the moment, more than 90% of players are currently in favor of using community creations rather than procedurally generated ships or hiring new designers for the task.

Personally, I'd say combine all three of the options: hire the best builders from the community to make new ships and see if they can also come up with a solid random ship generator. Either way, the idea of getting in a ship and doing unrestricted space exploration sounds exciting to me. My current space station is such a shoddy, poorly-planned embarrassment I wouldn't mind rocketing away from it and never returning.

Evan Lahti: Epic gets busyFortnite is real! Seemingly. Alpha sign-ups for the game were being offered all the way back in April, and Epic has finally opened up its ambitious Minecraft-like survival and building game up to testers. It's been so long since we've had something new from engine-maker Epic, and with this an a new Unreal Tournament on the way I think we'll have at least two highly-moddable games on the horizon for next year.

Tim Clark: Sir, when a man is tired of London… Earlier this week I found myself reaching for an appropriate image to convey extreme leakiness. A collander? Too obvious. The roof of my old flat which used to gush during any major rainstorm which, living in Bath, meant always? Too personal. I needn t have bothered. I should have just said leaky like Ubisoft , because right now, among major publishers, there are none more leaky. And so it was that with Assassin s Creed: Unity still being frantically patched into respectability, news broke of the next game, Victory, which we now know will be set in Victorian London.

To which I say hurrah and huzzah. I ve been banging on about how a fog-shrouded London—all stovepipe hats, Hansom cabs and Jack the Ripper slayings—would be an amazing backdrop for the series for years. Will the game be any good? Probably. I say that on the basis that whilst III was a dull old drag, IV was one of my favourite games in recent years. Given that Unity has been a dip on the graph, it ought to mean Victory is a glorious upswing. If only for reasons of nominative determinism. As to whether Ubisoft leaked it on purpose, I would say absolutely not. I don t think hinting at a brighter (and, uh, foggier) future while people are struggling with what they ve just bought in the present is likely to mollify anyone. Nonetheless, for London alone, Victory s loose-lipped reveal is my high.

Samuel Roberts: Syncing on Big Ben This is a contentious one, because the reaction I ve picked up on to the Assassin s Creed Victory s announcement is either, not another one! or fix Unity first! Both fair points, there are too many (I tend to skip years with the series) and Unity is still subject to ongoing updates. But as someone who lives in the UK and is familiar with the Victorian era through a) boring school history lessons in which I was likely daydreaming about Civ II instead of actually working and b) Alan Moore s From Hell, I thought that Ubi s interpretation of London looked amazing in the leaked screens for Victory.

The smoke rising above the skies, the slightly exaggerated colour palette so it looks ever-so-slightly steampunk-y. And hey, environmental design and art direction are elements of Unity that most people agree are still pretty impressive, so I see little reason to doubt Ubisoft s ability to get London right here. The rest of the game? Not sure I can vouch for that just yet.

Phil Savage: Keep on Shovellin According to its developer's Twitter account, Shovel Knight has sold over 300,000 copies. I'm pleased because, coincidentally, I started playing it this week. It's brilliant; almost surprisingly so. I'm usually pretty cool on 2D indie platformers. There are over 70-gajillion available, but only a handful I really like, let alone feel compelled to complete. Braid, Super Meat Boy, Bit.Trip Runner 2, Spelunky, and now this.

It's great because the controls are perfect—as precise as is necessary for a Duck Tales-inspired pogo-ing platformer. It s also great because the challenge is pitched just right. Die, and you lose gold. But rather than lose it permanently, it'll float around the site of your demise—giving you the chance to go and get it back. It's one of those clever Dark Souls lessons that desperately needed to filter into other genres. Death isn't a thing to be punished; a lack of progress and improvement is. Great, too, is its size. Shovel Knight is filled with secrets and hidden surprises, inviting you to keep pushing further into the world map. I think I will.

Chris Thursten: ML-GG WP GO NEXT MLG's return to Dota 2 amounts to more than just another tournament. It's a subtle but significant recalibration of the competitive scene, and unlike most of these announcements it affects amateur players too. They're incorporating the MLG Pro Point system with JoinDOta's own ladders, creating a coherent way for teams to measure their progress.

While those big prizes will almost certainly go to top-tier teams, a system like this allows for greater upsets and more mobility. The lower tiers have needed something like this: a bit of money and muscle behind the concept of a year-round ladder. Dota's in-built team matchmaking doesn't amount to much, and community-generated equivalents are low-impact and isolated. This deal marks a step towards something more permanent, and I'm pretty excited to get my team involved.

By 'involved' I mean 'languish in the starter bracket for another season', but hey. It's still good news.

THE LOWS

Chris Thursten: What s going on, strip lights? Are you okay Sure, sure. Deus Ex has a new engine. There s a new game on the way. It looks pretty. I get it! I m excited too. No series represents PC gaming quite like this one, and so on. We asked for this.

I look at that single screenshot, though, and I think: what s up, strip lights? Why are you hiding in the corner like that? Are you okay? Are you nesting? That s not a very orderly way to arrange yourselves. Oh god. Is somebody else nesting in you? Because that sounds like something that a Deus Ex protagonist would do. Did a cyborg gather you all up, stack you in the corner, and then squat in you, brooding like a big motherly trenchcoated cyberpunk partridge? This seems like the most likely explanation for why you re like that. I hope you re okay.

This is the most significant videogame problem I have had this week.

Samuel Roberts: GTA V pulled by Target, K-Mart in Australia Two Australian retailers have pulled GTA V from shop shelves this week—I should point out these are the next-gen console versions, though I expect the PC version to get a similar reaction when it releases. This comes in response to a petition about violence towards women in the game. I don t endorse all of the horrendous things you can do in GTA V—indeed, some of the first-person kills added to this new version in particular are brutal to the extreme and even make me uncomfortable, but I don t see how pulling it from shelves solves any kind of problem. I should also point out that these first-person murders can be, on occasion, hilarious.

Raising awareness about objectionable elements in a game like GTA V is more than fair enough, and indeed, is healthy in that it educates consumers about parts of the game that they may not be comfortable with. I don t think taking it off shop shelves is the best response, however. Not that it will matter on PC—most people will just download it on Steam anyway. But this is what ratings boards are for, and consumers should be trusted to make their own decisions.

Chris Livingston: Broken For Ages The second half of Double Fine's Broken Age adventure game has been pushed from 2014 to early next year. While I'm all for games to be released when they're ready, rather than being rushed out the door to hit an arbitrary date, I suffer from what I like to call "A Stupid Forgetty Brain," in which details of games I play quickly begin to slip from my memory into a soupy, indistinct fog. Already, I've begun to forget what I did in the first half of the game. There was a spaceship, or something? And I ran around in the clouds for some reason? I'm worried that by the time the second half of the game is finally released, I'll have absolutely no memory of the first half, and I'm starting to wish I hadn't begun playing until the whole thing was finished. Yet another peril of paying for a game before it's done.

Phil Savage: This is a low Not really. This is totally a high that, through a bit of linguistic trickery, I will magic into a low. Shhh, don't tell the others.

We've recently had three great gamejams: the Procedural Generation Jam, 7DFPS and Indies vs PewDiePie. Between them hides a ridiculous selection of delightful things. Nothing this week has made me laugh as much as Infini-Quest did. Not even Super Wolfenstein HD, although that did come pretty close. Then there are games like Photobomb—a well executed game mechanic and a pretty effective statement of the potential dangers of trial by social media. Or the endless investigative challenge of The Inquisitor.

Oh yeah, this is supposed to be a low. So: there are too many of these experimental delights to reasonably try. Who knows how much great stuff we've missed?

Tim Clark: Elitism Uszaa, Riedquat, Diso, Orerve… Lave. If you re old as balls, like I am, then those names will mean something to you. They re planets on the short range map of the system you arrive in when you boot the original Elite. I was reminded of them, and my own decrepitude, at a pre-release event for the new Elite this week. There I got to play the game on both a 4K monitor, and using a DK2 Oculus Rift. Why is this a low? Certainly not because of any issue with the game, which feels like a worthy modern spin on one of the most important games in the canon. No, my sadness, is based on the fact it reminded me that, unlike Wes, I still haven t sampled the newer Crystal Bay prototype.

That sadness was compounded by the fact that I m unlikely to anytime soon. Elite: Dangerous goes into full release on 16 December, whereas Oculus Rift s production model has a tentative release date of 2015 . Which feels pretty loosey goosey whichever way you look at it. What I am certain of is that the Rift is how I want play the game. In my hands-on/eyes-in time with Elite I didn t experience the dreaded nausea, but did feel the deliciously Cronenbergian rush of the new. It feels like something properly different, which even an ultra hi-res monitor can t hope to compete with. So my low is also really a high, which means, like Phil, I ve cheated. Unless you count my own rapidly failing body as a low. Which I probably should.

Evan Lahti: Sad birthdaysOn its 15th anniversary, Quake III needs some love. Not every game can live forever, and we shouldn't be too rough on id for Quake Live's underwhelming history—if anything, it suffered from being one of the early adopters of free-to-play among FPSes. Still, with the resurgence of competitive games in general, and CS:GO specifically, you have to feel like there should be more excitement around a classic like Quake III getting a content boost.