Every few months, I get ambitious; abandoning my modest selection of must-have Skyrim mods, and embarking on a grand plan to build it into something impossibly beautiful. Inevitably, it all goes wrong. The lighting isn't quite right, the distant mountains look a bit off, or whole sections of water have just vanished. But its videos like this a showcase of what can be achieved with RealVision ENB that make me want to try all over again.

ENBSeries mods can be difficult to install properly, but, if you'd like to give it a go, there's a great step-by-step guide on the RealVision ENB forum page. And if you really want to get the game looking like it does in the video, be sure to go through the recommended and optional mod lists, too.

See some of the previous showcase videos below, and for more Skyrim mods, check out our guide.





Thanks, VG247.

It's day 3 of the Steam Summer Sale, and though your wallet might be pleading with you to stop throwing money at your monitor, the bargains keep on coming - and some prime deals await you today. There's a couple of very good deals in the dailies right now, so if you've been waiting for a steep reduction on a certain dragony shouting game, this is your moment to swoop. In case you'd forgotten, GOG.com is having its own sizzling summer sale as well, so be sure to check that out too.

Reminder: if a game isn't a daily deal or a flash sale, it could pop up later in the sale for an even lower price. If you want to be safe, wait until June 30 to pick up a sale-long deal.

5 - Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines
75% off: $4.99 / 3.74 - Steam store page | Note: May be reduced further in a Flash or Daily sale
This isn't a pick from the Dailies or the Flash sales, so there's a chance Bloodlines will receive a steeper discount on top of its already whopping 75% one, but even at its current price this is a steal. Bloodlines is the best vampire game you'll find, and the best Vampire game too - White Wolf's seamy supernatural world has been done justice here, and then some, by the sadly departed Troika, who brought the world the similarly terrific Arcanum. The writing is fantastic, and often darkly hilarious, and there's a fully fledged haunted house for good measure. Be sure to play it with the unofficial patch, however, as it's a buggy, unfinished mess otherwise.

4 - Dragon Age: Origins - Ultimate Edition
75% off: $7.49 / 4.99 - Steam store page
The original Dragon Age has likely been available for cheaper than this at some point during its storied history, but this is an exceptionally good price for the base game and all of its DLC. Bioware's classic RPG managed to recreate most of the best parts of their Baldur's Gate series, shifting the action to a 3D engine and an entirely new universe, and inserting cringeworthy sex scenes so you could have a good laugh amid all the grimdark moral choices and monster-slaying. With Dragon Age: Inquisition out soon, and looking very good indeed, now's the perfect time for a series replay to get yourself reacquainted - or for a first play if you've not had the pleasure yet.

3 - Papers, Please
70% off: $2.99 / 2.09 - Steam store page | Flash sale: Buy it before 8 p.m. EST
Lucas Pope's grim checkpoint simulator is not a game you can win, exactly, but it might be one that you - and your family - can survive if you're lucky, and if you're willing to bend your morality just a bit (or, well, a lot). Stay on the straight and narrow as an immigration officer in the game's fictional, pseudo-Soviet state and you likely won't make enough to survive. It's surely only a matter of time, then, until you begin to bend the rules, to accept bribes from shady characters in order to cover for your costly mistakes. After all, you're not going to let your kids starve, are you? If you've not played this award-winning game yet, this is almost certainly the cheapest it's ever been. Read our review for more.

2 - The Stanley Parable
60% off: $5.99 / 3.99 - Steam store page
We'll refrain from writing this in our omniscient narrator voice and get straight to it: The Stanley Parable is one of the most inventive, funniest, and smartest games we've played. "Effortlessly inventive, frequently surprising and consistently hilarious" are some words that feature in our review. If you've not had the pleasure of Galactic Cafe's endlessly surprising adventure - or the original mod - yet, it's a game about player choice, a game with a fantastic narrator, and a game about being a game, and those are all good reasons to give it a go at such a low price.

1 - The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
75% off: $4.99 / 2.49 - Steam store page
2.49 is silly money for Bethesda's grand, chilly open world RPG (you can also grab it with all the DLC for not much more). As well as being a great game in its own right - see our glowing review for further proof of this - it's a magnificent springboard for all sorts of crazy and not-so-crazy mods, including this heroic attempt to remake Morrowind in Skyrim. There's a staggering amount of value here, from the expansive, open roleplaying of the main game to all manner of free improvements, additions, and madness offered up by the community.

Other great deals today
Remember that games not categorized as Daily Deals or Flash Sales may be reduced further.

La-Mulana (75% off) $3.74 / 2.74
Shadowrun: Dragonfall (40% off) $8.99 / 6.59
Payday: The Heist (90% off) $1.49 / 1.09
Gone Home (75% off) $4.99 / 3.74
One Way Heroics (75% off) $0.87 / 0.57
One Finger Death Punch (50% off) $2.49 / 1.99
Awesomenauts (75% off) $2.49 / 1.74

I'd just installed a Skyrim mod and was standing in Whiterun, noticing that nothing seemed to be happening. Broken mod, I assumed, or more likely I installed it incorrectly. Then I noticed a few NPCs drifting into the outdoor market area. Then a few more. A couple started playing instruments, some began to dance, others stood around chatting. I noticed some decorations were up, and a couple tables of sweets had appeared. As night fell, it became a full-on party with throngs of townsfolk, followed by fireworks. It was one of several celebrations added by the Wet and Cold: Holidays Mod, one of the most enjoyable mods I've ever tried.

NPCs: they're abused, mistreated, killed, stolen from, and worst of all, completely ignored. They trudge endlessly along their preset paths, unable to deviate from their daily routines unless there's a dragon attack or some heroic adventurer runs up to them and starts a conversation (and then leaves in the middle of it). In a world full of magic, drama, religion, and folklore, nearly none of which they get to participate in, the NPCs finally have a little something for themselves: holidays.

This one is for you, Whiterun... the rockin'-est city in the whole damn world!

The Wet and Cold: Holidays mod (note: the holidays themselves are not necessarily wet and cold, that's just the name of a precursor mod that adds effects for the player character getting wet and/or cold), adds a whole bunch of holidays that NPCs can and will celebrate, in a variety of ways and for a variety of reasons. This isn't just a mod that commands them to go to a specific spot in town and dance for a while. There's actually some lore attached.

Tonight -- at last -- I become the taker of sweet rolls.

For instance, the New Life Festival, taking place on the 1st of Morning Star. It's a day of new beginning, and what better way to begin a new year that bunking off work? Shops are closed all day. On the other hand, during the Merchant's Festival, shops are not only open but everything is half-price, and the stores are crowded with townsfolk looking for a bargain. I took the opportunity to buy myself that chef's hat at Radiant Raiment I've had my eye on. Note: the Mage's Guild does not participate in this one. Of course.

Chef's hat. On m'head. Good holiday buy.

On Harvest's End, workers from local farms come into the city to eat and drink, and you'll find the inns and taverns crowded with revelers all day. In the evening, the crowds will spill into the streets to party, and local children will play a game where they chase a goat. (Well, honestly, I didn't see the kids in Solitude chasing the goat, so I did it myself.) On Tales and Tallows, you'll spy some carved pumpkins outside shops and homes, and people will retire early, leaving the streets vacant and spooky at nightfall. Legend has it, the dead walk the streets that night. Is it true?

I am so gonna smash one of those in their driveway.

There's the Warrior's Festival, where local brawlers and swordsmen will visit blacksmiths, and young lads may purchase their first daggers and go positively apeshit with them (I witnessed this). Both Sun's Rest and The Old Life Festival culminate with a fireworks display, provided by the College of Winterhold, beginning after 10pm in all major cities. There's also a Witches Festival, on the 13th of Frostfall, where warlocks and conjurers meet -- well outside of cities, for obvious reasons -- to summon up all manner of magical beasties and presumably, you know, try to hook up with each other. Well, come on. Witches have the same needs as everyone else.

Oooooooh. Ahhhhhhhh.

There are more somber and religious holidays as well, where you'll find townsfolk in the temples, hoping for prayers and magical cures for their ailments or resurrections for their dead. The Festival of Lights takes place in Dawnguard on the 16th of Morning Star to guide the souls lost at sea back to land. (The candles I saw placed all along the shore weren't exactly the blinding beacon I was expecting, but it may have been the hostile, snowy weather that night.)

A lot of people need healing, so get there early, maybe bring a snack.

Don't worry too much about checking the calendar, either. Decorations for holidays will typically appear a few days before the actual event, and a courier will track you down from time to time with flyers advertising the upcoming holiday. And, frankly, it's just fun to visit a city and be nicely surprised every now and then. "Oh, is today Jester's Day already? No wonder everyone's dressed like idiots. It totally slipped my mind!" My advice: install this mod, forget about it, and just run into the occasional celebrating flashmob. There's a full list of holidays, their backgrounds, and where they're celebrated here.

And here I was thinking you'd all forgotten!

Don't care about NPCs? Still need to feel like the entire world revolves around you, Dragonborn? Never fear, there are several holidays to reinforce the fact that you're a total playa and dragon slaya. There's the Day of the Dragonborn, commemorating your defeat of Alduin (provided you did) and a day marking the ending of Skyrim's Civil War, where you either liberated or reunified the land (if you have). If you're embarrassed by that sort of attention, don't worry. There's absolutely no celebration planned for your birthday. (But you'll still receive a little gift and birthday card.)

Installation: You need a few things, like the latest version of the Skyrim Script Extender, to fully enjoy the mod's decorations and NPC adornments. You'll also need the original Wet and Cold mod, and naturally, the Holidays mod itself. Here it is on the Steam Workshop as well.

Every week Andy celebrates a great map, level, or location from a classic PC game in On The Level. This week it s the snowy land of Skyrim from the fifth Elder Scrolls game.

Journey from one corner of Skyrim to another and you ll encounter a range of varied and atmospheric landscapes. Each hold has its own look and feel, which makes the map feel a lot bigger than it actually is. You get a sense that this is a vast country, rather than a small section of a larger world. Each area has its own history, cultures, and climate, resting in the shadow of the colossal Throat of the World the tallest mountain in Skyrim, whose icy peak stretches far above the clouds.

To the south-east there s The Rift, an autumnal land instantly recognisable by its golden trees. Its proximity to the temperate capital of Tamriel, Cyrodiil, makes it one of the more hospitable places in Skyrim. But it s far from idyllic. The hold s biggest city, Riften, is a hive of scum and villainy, and home to the nefarious Thieves Guild. Other places of note include a honey farm, Goldenglow Estate, which rests on an island in the centre of Lake Honrich. Nowhere is safe in Skyrim you ll have brigands and bears to watch out for in The Rift but at least there s no snow.

Head north and you ll reach the volcanic plains of Eastmarch. Adventurers can often be found bathing in its natural hot springs, resting their weary bones. Geysers spit sulphuric water into the air, and it would be the perfect holiday destination if it wasn t for the skeletons, sabre cats, and occasional circling dragon. Continuing north, Eastmarch gets much colder. The area around its capital, Windhelm, is constantly covered in snow and battered by choking blizzards. This is the oldest city in Skyrim home of Jarl Ulfric Stormcloak and its ancient, inscribed walls speak volumes about its storied past.



West now to Winterhold, which sits on the banks of the freezing Sea of Ghosts. This was once the capital of Skyrim, but fell on hard times after the Great Collapse a geological catastrophe that washed much of the city away, leaving only the College of Winterhold mysteriously intact. As a result, a lot of residents of Winterhold blame the college, a school for mages, for the event. The coast of the Sea of Ghosts is home to horkers and other animals, making it a perfect place to hunt for meat, tusks, and fur.

Travel south and the snow gives way to a harsh tundra dotted with scrub and gnarled trees. This is The Pale, an unforgiving expanse of land where farmers struggle to make a living from the frozen earth. The capital is Whiterun, a beautiful city dominated by the imposing palace of Dragonsreach. This once served as a prison for the dragon Numinex, whose skull now hangs above the Jarl Balgruuf s throne. This is where most new Skyrim players find themselves wandering after escaping Helgen. It s also home to Riverwood, a small village sitting at the foot of the Throat of the World.

Further south lies Falkreath, which is warmer than The Pale, but constantly veiled in fog and rain. As a result of this wet climate, it s covered in thick, verdant pine forests and nestled in the middle of one is the town of Falkreath, which shares its name with its hold. The most notable landmark in the hold is Lake Ilinalta, in which you can find the crumbling remains of a supposedly haunted Imperial outpost. Falkreath sits on the border of Hammerfell, the desert home of the redguards, and you can even find a gate that leads there but, for obvious reasons, you can t actually go through it.



North-west of Falkreath is The Reach, whose capital is built on the remains of an ancient dwemer city the ancient race, sometimes called dwarves , that mysteriously vanished and left behind incredible technology. Its buildings are carved into the mountains, and huge waterfalls cascade from its highest points. The Reach is a mountainous area that s rich in ore, although miners lives are made difficult by the Forsworn, a savage native tribe who want to reclaim the land as their own.

And finally, heading north, we find Haafingar. This is the smallest hold in Skyrim, but home to its capital city, Solitude, which at the start of the game, at least is held by the Imperials. The only road into the hold crosses Dragon Bridge, which serves as an Imperial outpost. Solitude sits on a natural stone arch, and has only one easily accessible entrance, making it highly defensible. Beneath the arch is the Karth River, which is home to the bustling ports of the East Empire Trading Company.

It s testament to the quality of the world-building in Skyrim that I was able to remember all this by heart. Of course, it also helps that I ve also spent hundreds of hours there. I rarely play the game these days as in completing quests and delving into dungeons but I do like to return occasionally just to pick a direction and walk. Amazingly, I m still discovering new things to this day.

You can watch the Skyrim edition of Andy s Other Places series below.

Morrowind revival project Skywind looks like a valuable resurrection of Bethesda's 2002 RPG. So much so, that the community responsible for it are also porting another classic Elder Scrolls into the Skyrim engine. The name "Skyblivion" may look like what would happen if you sneezed too hard and smashed your head on a keyboard, but it signals the start of Oblivion's transfer into the newer TES. It's been in the works for a while, but a new trailer has surfaced, showing the progress the team have made.



"Skyblivion is very early in development and as you might have noticed textures and models are pretty much untouched at this point," the trailer's description admits. As with Skywind, the team are looking for help in the creation of this mod. "In order to do this project right we will need help from the community with either the development or simply spreading the word so that we can get people interested in helping out with this project."

If you'd like to get involved, visit the TESRenewal forum. If, like me, you prefer passive anticipation, you can see more of the project below.

While heroes across Tamriel journey to reclaim their souls from that jerk Molag Bal in The Elder Scrolls Online, the MMO's devs have kept to their own quest to vanquish lingering glitches and loopholes such as a pretty serious duping exploit and the dreaded Spell of Disappearing Bank Items. In a message posted today on the official forums, director Matt Firor addressed these issues and other problems in a general evaluation of TESO's current state and the studio's plans for improving it.

One highly visible aspect of TESO's gold-farmer invasion is the presence of bot groups sitting right on top of boss monster spawns in open dungeons to constantly gather high-quality loot and gold. Partly at issue is the game's open-tapping system, where any player can hit a monster once or twice and benefit from full experience and looting privileges. Beyond banning reported bot accounts, Zenimax is still figuring out a long-term solution its latest proposal is a loot lockout timer that's drawn heated debate over its potential to hamper character progression.

"I play the game every day; I see too, and yes, they drive me crazy," Firor wrote. "We have had a daily running battle with them ever since the game launched, and we continue to take measures to keep them away from players, even when it isn t always apparent that we are."

Firor also revealed black market reports account for nearly 85 percent of calls and emails sent to the game's customer support team. It's a good sign of an active community stepping up to do its part to banish the gold-selling affliction out of Tamriel for good, but all the reports are also stretching the response time for open tickets to a lengthy wait another concern Firor is aware of.

The recently discovered duping bug a simple procedure of cloning stacks of items using guild banks hasn't affected TESO's economy, Firor claimed. "We did turn off guild banks to limit the spread of the problem, but that was only until we put up a new version of the game that fixed the exploit later that evening," he explained. It'd be nice to see a more thorough description of how Zenimax detects which items were duped or not, as it's rather easy to launder copied crafting materials through secondary accounts and the sale of crafted items using said materials.

Firor concluded with the announcement of an updated version of the game soon appearing on testing servers with numerous fixes and adjustments to class abilities and item balance. Craglorn, the first adventure zone, will also appear for Veteran-ranked guilds to try out 12-man raid content and 4-man dungeon challenges.

Have you played every single game in your Steam library? No? Neither have I and that accomplishment is apparently just a small sand grain in the over 288 million games in Steam collections that have never felt a press of the Play button. That's a surprising figure from a new report by Ars Technica researching the most active and popular games on Steam straight from the recorded statistics of some of the platform's 75-million-strong community.

Ars' method for its number flood involves sampling registered games and their played hours via profiles and their unique Steam IDs. With the help of a server for computational muscle, Ars randomly polled more than 100,000 profiles daily for two months to pull together an idea of which games see the most time on everyone's monitors. In other words, your Backlog of Shame (don't deny it, everyone has one) probably took part in some SCIENCE at some point. Exciting.

Some caveats exist, though. The data Ars looked at for its research only extends back to 2009, when Steam brought in its "hours played" tracking system. Owned and played/unplayed games are thus slightly skewed to not account for older releases from the early noughties, and any length of time spent in offline mode wouldn't get picked up by Steam either. Still, Ars claims its results deliver a good picture of Steam gaming trends for the past five years albeit with some imperfections.

Predictably, Valve's personal products stack high on the list in terms of ownership and most played hours. Dota 2 takes the crown with an estimated 26 million players who ganked faces at some point in the MOBA, but free-to-play FPS Team Fortress 2 follows closely behind with a little over 20 million users. Counter-Strike: Source rounds out the top three with nearly 9 million players, but it's also collecting dust in over 3 million libraries.

As for non-Valve games, Skyrim wins in activity, barely edging out Counter-Strike: Global Offensive with 5.7 million estimated active owners. Civilization V kept 5.4 million players hooked for Just One More Turn, and Garry's Mod boasts 4.6 million budding physics artists.

Want to know what the most unplayed Steam game is? It's Half-Life 2: Lost Coast, the Source tech demo given free to pretty much everyone on Steam who bought or fired up Half-Life 2. It hasn't been touched by an approximate 10.7 million players. I guess that old fisherman is feeling pretty lonely right now.

My favorite stat is the total of played hours divided by game mode, more specifically the separate multiplayer clients of the Steam versions of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and Black Ops. The single-player campaigns for each respective title sits modestly within the mid-20-hour range, but the multiplayer side balloons well into the hundreds of hours. It's a pretty obvious indicator of where the biggest chunk of popularity resides in FPS gaming, but it's not like you wouldn't get weird looks for claiming you play Call of Duty for the story anyway.

See more of Ars' results in both number and pretty orange graph form in its report.

Every Monday, keen screen-grabber Ben Griffin brings you a sumptuous 4K resolution gallery to celebrate PC gaming's prettiest places.

Skyrim is a permanent hard drive fixture for many here at PC Gamer. We don't tend to go questing for hours on end like it's 2011, but some worlds are interesting enough to warrant a revisit even years later. There's a fantastic mod community that's pushed Bethesda's engine further than anyone thought possible, but it's easy to forget how good vanilla Skyrim looks with just a little enhancement. To demonstrate, Ben has gone wandering in the wilds to bring you this week's set of shots, from Markath to Riften and beyond.



See the full version here.



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Every Tuesday Andy straps on the Oculus Rift and dives headfirst into the world of virtual reality. Is it really the future of PC gaming? Let s find out.

Now that the Facebook buyout story is yesterday s chip paper, everyone has stopped talking about Oculus Rift. Not me, though. The headset is a permanent fixture on my desk, and I m always keeping my eye on sites like RiftEnabled and Oculus VR Share for new demos to try. It s a minefield, though. The open nature of the hardware means there s a lot of crap out there in Rift land, but it s amazing that most of the good ones I feature in The Rift Report are made by one person in their spare. Imagine what a team of 100 developers with a blockbuster budget could do.
A surprise ending in Malfunction


This demo was created in Hutong Games Unity plugin PlayMaker, which lets you create 3D adventure games with little or no coding experience. It s brief, lasting only a couple of minutes, but it s brilliantly scripted and animated. If you have an Oculus Rift, I advise playing it before reading on, because there s a surprise at the end that you should see for yourself.

I wake up in my apartment and wander into the kitchen where my wife is making coffee. I stroll past a mirror and notice that I can see my body, and spend five minutes tilting my head and watching my avatar copy my movements. Looking down and seeing a virtual body while using the Rift never feels quite right, but this is one of the best examples of it I ve seen so far.

It s a fairly mundane domestic situation, until I find the gun. My wife starts yelling, understandably, but it s in Polish (I think) and I have no idea what she s saying. Seemingly unperturbed by her gun-waving husband, she turns to pour the coffee and, suddenly, there s a flash of electricity and she falls to the floor and starts convulsing violently. The screen begins to flicker, revealing that my wife is, in fact, a robot, and I ve been projecting some kind of VR skin onto her.

The machine rises from the floor, rushes towards me, and grabs me by the neck, lifting me in the air effortlessly. Why would they make these robot wives so strong? Its eyes are glowing red with fury, but I still have the pistol. I squeeze the trigger and it keels over. Terminated.

Download Malfunction
Retrofitting VR into Skyrim with Perception


This program lets you inject Oculus Rift support into games that otherwise don t have it. Titles supported include Dishonored, Dear Esther, Skyrim, Borderlands 2, and Mirror s Edge, and although the effect isn t always perfect, it s still a thrill to explore these worlds in VR.

Skyrim feels much more massive in scale, especially when you have to crane your neck to see the peak of the Throat of the World. The rat-infested alleys of Dishonored s Dunwall feel grimier and more claustrophobic. Each game has its own quirks that you ll have to deal with, usually involving changing FOV settings, but most problems can be overcome by searching the forums.

Download Perception
Spying on the neighbours in Private Eye


Private Eye is inspired by Alfred Hitchcock s film Rear Window, in which a housebound photographer spies on his neighbours in an attempt to unravel what he thinks is a murder plot. The influence is clear, from the layout of the buildings, to the cast on your leg. You can zoom in with your binoculars, adjusting the focus to follow people and pick out clues in the environment.

In the demo I played, the structure was a little messy. I didn t really feel like I was piecing together clues to solve a mystery. It s more like an elaborate hidden object game, mixing objectives that relate to the murderer you re trying to catch, and more ordinary things like finding an old woman s missing cat. But, as simplistic as it is, it s a novel use of the Rift hardware, and professionally made.

I love the film noir soundtrack and the amount of detail there is to pick out in the world. This is the result of three weeks spent pretty much entirely in my room going slightly mad, says its creator, who recently showed the game off at Rezzed. To see so many people enjoying Private Eye puts all the sweat, tears and sleepless nights into perspective.

Download Private Eye

Community FAQ

If you have a question about the Oculus Rift, ask Andy on Twitter, or leave a comment below, and he ll answer it in next week s column. Even the silly ones.

Does the Rift affect your eyesight once you remove it and try to adjust to natural light again? Is the transition odd? Dominic Rogers

Not really. You d think it would be more jarring, but I don t feel any sudden change in light when I emerge from the Rift after extended periods of time. But the longest I ve used the Rift for in one session is about 40 minutes while playing Euro Truck Simulator 2, until it got too hot and I had to take it off. I imagine if you spent five hours in the thing, taking it off might be more of a shock to the senses.

How easy is it to switch between the Rift and your monitors? Rich Smith

The way I have it set up, there s no need to switch. My computer recognises the Rift as a duplicate display, so when I load a game up, it appears on both the monitor and the in the Rift. On the monitor it looks like the screenshots above, with two separated images.

What are the top things that induce barf? Do games need to adapt their design, or will players just get used to it? Did you? Marsh Davies

Different things make me queasy at different times. Often I ll get it if I m looking down at my character s legs, then suddenly look up. Others when I m banking sharply in a flying game like Elite: Dangerous. But it seems to affect people differently, so what s fine for me might be bad for you. There are people who can t use the Rift for more than five minutes without feeling like they re going to hurl.

I m sure Oculus have people investigating this, because they ll need to consider the health and safety implications before they release it. You know that warning you always ignore about taking a break every hour while playing games? Surely it must be an even shorter amount of time in the Rift. Even as a seasoned VR user, I m occasionally forced to take it off because I feel sick.