I love a lot of local multiplayer games, but I'm rarely in the same room as the friends I want to play them with. Steam's new Remote Play Together feature, which is available in the beta client, looks to solve that enduring problem by jury-rigging online multiplayer into games which don't support it. And it works, somewhat amazingly.

Only the host needs to own the game, and after they launch it, they can invite friends through the Steam friends list (just right click a friend's name and select 'Remote Play Together'). Once a remote player joins, the game is streamed to them in a fullscreen window. The difference between Remote Play Together and a regular broadcast is, of course, that it also gives viewers mouse and keyboard control, or recognizes their controller as one connected to the host's PC. 

It's remote access to a PC, which is nothing new, but limited to the game window. I tried to see if input could leak into the desktop environment by sharing a windowed game, but the best I could do is get a remote player to move my cursor out of the window. You can't troll your friends by pressing Alt-F4 remotely to close the game or anything like that—it'll just close your own window.

You also can't fancy yourself a small-time Google Stadia competitor by inviting friends to play singleplayer games on your PC. I tried using the feature with Slay the Spire and Disco Elysium, but the Remote Play option wasn't available. Right now, 4,254 games are supported, and you can find the list of them here.

Above: Rayman Origins on my screen, with Wes hosting.

The test results

Our testing confirmed the obvious: the quality of your experience will vary with the quality of the host's internet connection.

We started with so-so conditions. I hosted TowerFall Ascension for Wes on a notoriously inconsistent Comcast connection with 8-to-10 Mbps upload speed. I ran it on an ultrawide, 2560×1080 monitor, which meant the black bars at the sides of my screen were being streamed to his 1440p, 16:9 display. Wes said it looked like garbage.

We then switched places, with Wes hosting on his 100 Mbps fiber connection, running the game at 1440p. It looked great on my end, and I was surprised to find that I didn't feel like I was at a disadvantage as we fired arrows at one another. Of course there had to be some latency, but I couldn't sense it.

In both TowerFall Ascension and Spelunky, my Xbox One controller was detected instantly. When Wes tried to host a game of Rayman Origins, however, I had to use the keyboard. I might've been able to get it to detect my controller by fiddling with Steam Big Picture settings, but I sense that some games are just going to be stubborn.

In those first two games, though, everything worked perfectly. All I had to do was accept Wes' invite, and a few seconds later I was looking at the game, able to interact with the menu as player two. In TowerFall especially, once we were past character selection, it genuinely felt like I was playing a built-in online multiplayer mode.

Above: TowerFall Ascension on my screen, with Wes hosting.

Later, I tested Enter the Gungeon and TowerFall Ascension with a friend who lives in the Midwest. I'm in California. We had trouble getting it to work initially, but both games were playable despite our distance. (Note that the host's stream passes through a Steam server before making its way to the other players, so the location of that server adds a variable.)

With him hosting Enter the Gungeon, I noticed a bit of input lag, but was able to adapt. The real problem was how artifacted it looked at times. In a fast, busy game like that, you need to see the enemies crisply and I couldn't. Now and then it would hitch for a good second. It was technically playable, but I'd never want to play that game at that quality.

This time when I hosted TowerFall, however, he said it looked fine on his end, and though he noticed some input delay, we went toe-to-toe for a match. Network conditions are fickle. The only advice I can give is to have the person with the fastest internet connection host the game you're trying to play, and to ask the stars for advice as to when their upload speed will be at its peak.

Above: Enter the Gungeon with non-ideal network conditions.

Image quality and latency won't be a big deal for all games. Part of the reason I picked TowerFall for testing is that it requires precise timing, but turn-based games will obviously be ideal for the feature. It's too bad hot seat local multiplayer has gone out of fashion over the past couple decades.

Acknowledging that Remote Play won't always work perfectly, as nothing reliant on network conditions can, I'm excited by the opportunity to crack open games I haven't played in ages with people who I've moved away from in the process of relocating a couple of times.

It's also heartening to see Steam iterating on these experimental features. The past couple years of Valve history haven't been the most exciting. It's announced some VR games, but we haven't seen them. The world bounced off Artifact so hard there's a new crater somewhere in Washington. Until the recent library redesign, the news about Steam has typically involved equivocating statements about what it will and won't sell (the line seems to be drawn at 'whatever people get really mad about').

But this new feature is playful and generous. Depending on how well it works in the long run, it could improve sales of local multiplayer games by broadening their audience. For those who already have a collection of local multiplayer games, it's a way to get more out of the games they own. Everybody wins, as far as I can tell.

Steam is already the best game launcher, but the past few months have reinforced the idea that Valve isn't resting on its success. I haven't tried streaming services like Parsec to see how they stack up to Remote Play Together, but it's certainly the most convenient way to solve the problem of never being in the same room as the people you play games with.

You can chart the progress of PC gaming in many ways: the force of a shotgun; the substance of dialogue; the scale of an RTS. 

But behind all the obvious stuff, wafting leafily the background, is the humble tree. And trees are important. They tell us more about the inexorable march of progress than gunfeel ever could. Firstly, because they illustrate the lengths developers will go to immerse us in a game by adding extraneous detail we might ignore. And secondly, because ‘gunfeel’ isn’t even a word. 

Join me, then—a digital lumberjack, armed only with a Collins Gem copy of All You Need To Know About Trees and 11 synonyms for wood—as we learn to tell frond from bough in the history of trees in games.

For more hot tree-based content, head over to James's piece on where trees come from in games, this piece ranking chopping down trees in survival games, Tim's ode to the trees in Firewatch, Chris painting 100 trees and this interview with a Skyrim modder photographing lots of trees. Holy what, why does this website like trees so damn much?

Early days: roots manoeuvre 

Genus Maledictis

An interesting-to-someone-who’s-spent-too-long-looking side effect of the simplicity of early games is that trees are more than set dressing. In some titles, they’re the closet thing you have to an enemy. Examples of this go back to the ZX Spectrum. In 3D Deathchase, for example, you foolishly ride a motorcycle through a dense forest and trees are the only thing that can kill you; you’re not so much chasing death, as driving directly into it. The looming threat of these homicidal trunks is lessened somewhat by the fact they look like IKEA table legs, which also explains why my BJURSTA Extendable gives me night terrors. It was a formative time.

Pinus Chillaxus

To find a PC-specific example of an early tree, we need to scamper forward to Skifree. Most of us remember it for that bastard yeti, but it’s likely trees were responsible for more anguish. They’re sad, mean, twisted little saplings that poke out of the snow, threatening to cut short your perfect slalom in an eruption of bark and shattered bone. They resemble a prison tattoo of a child’s drawing of a tree, and are more memorable and threatening for it. If it isn’t already there, burn this image into your mind right now—we’ll need it to compare with The Witcher 3 later on. 

The '90s: Copse Out Conflictus ridiculam

As graphics improved during the '90s, the gaming tree burst into life: think of this like blossom season, with the swollen buds emerging into a fantasy of colour and shape (so long as the colour is green and the shape is treeish). Lovely 2D foliage is everywhere, but 1993’s Cannon Fodder can be singled out for being so absurdly generous with its jungle. Even the box art is aggressively green, like it wants to fight you for not being made of leaves. At the time, snaking between those lurid branches felt like being in Platoon. And then there’s Mortal Kombat 2’s living forest, which brought trees literally to life in 1995. You could argue this planted the seed for other lumber-based elements in fighting games—like Tekken’s possessed wooden training dummy, Mokujin, or Forest Law—but only if you’d spent too long researching trees in games.

Prunus puzzlus

‘Enough of your 2D fronds, you bunterish copse enthusiast!’, you probably cry. And you’re correct to do so. We need to examine 3D trees to understand how far we’ve we’ve still got to go, and Myst gives us a useful example. Now, Myst is a pretty game. But the trees here look more like wizards’ hats than actual foliage, and that’s a different feature altogether. Rocks, buildings, skies: all wonderful. But if you want realistic woodland, you’re going to have to wait, or click onto the next page.

Elsewhere, we’ve got the likes of The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall. Its leafy illustrations look smart, but they are all suspiciously similar. This is a great place to take stock, though. No series demonstrates coppice development quite like the Elder Scrolls. It’s the gaming equivalent of Understanding Tree Improvement 101 (if we ignore the brief diversion to the Mushroom Kingdom in Morrowind). We’ll come back later.

Turok: 1997’s Dinosaur Hunter was also impressive. Looking back, it felt like you were pushing past endless fronds in thick jungle. But 21 years later, those palms look rather lonely poking out of that misty landscape, like Jurassic Park via Silent Hill.

Bellum Blowupem

And while we’re still in the 90s, let’s stop off at Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines. This provides a great contrast to the snotty green smears of Cannon Fodder, and puts five years of progress into context. The variety of greenery is impressive enough to recall the tiny trees available at those quietly sinister model train shops. We’re not at the actually-looking-like-real-trees stage of development yet; but they do look like models of actual trees, and that’s something.

The '00s: Wood you kindly?

Maxis Decimus Deciduous

Remember the dark days of page one, and 3D Deathchase, when trees held dominion over men, motorcycles, and men on motorcycles? Well, 2000 was the year the woodworm turned. The Sims gives us control over trees, letting us purchase, plant, and gently rotate trees in a way that signals our ultimate triumph over nature. Large or small, indoor or outdoor, alive or dead: every type of tree is ours to manipulate. And, in a further act of ghoulish humiliation, The Sims even lets you decorate a murdered tree in the name of Christmas. Mankind’s victory is absolute. 

Then there’s Halo: Combat Evolved. Released on PC in 2003, the first Halo captivated people with grass you could stare at for days—but the forests are equally appealing. Thick forests in Halo (the level), menacing vines in 343 Guilty Spark, icy pines in Assault on the Control Room: Combat Evolved has more types of tree than it does guns.

Spectatus Tropicana

And now things get real. The branchmark by which every other game that followed would be measured, and, back in 2004, easily the most realistic jungle ever rendered. Hang gliding over Far Cry’s indecently dense foliage felt like nothing else: the dream of a hallucinating druid, trapped inside your home computer. It was reason enough to spend all your money on a PC powerful enough to play it at maximum settings, and few technical leaps forward since have felt quite so overwhelming. If only Far Cry’s mutants looked as good. 

Settingus Maximus

The forest moon of Endor from 2005’s Star Wars: Battlefront II deserves a quick mention for bringing to life one of the most recognisable woodlands in cinema, and World of Warcraft offered a variety of forests that still feel nourishing now (as well as the ability to turn into a tree if you’re a Druid). And, in 2006, the Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion showed us an overwhelmingly lush Cyrodiil. But we can’t linger here too long; 2007 is waiting. The All Ghillied Up level of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare shows trees reclaiming the shattered landscape, and wins extra points for basically letting you play as a tree. And Resident Evil 4 set the standard for bark detail in games—yes, it’s a thing. Leon could probably take rubbings of those things. But once again, Crytek steals the show with an unparalleled PC classic. Crysis lets you shoot down trees, making the foliage tangible, and on max settings it still looks better than most games now.

Arbor Hominem

And finally for the 2000s, we pay homage to Harold. Perhaps not the most realistic tree in games—and certainly not the most handsome—but he does give us one of the best sidequests in 2008’s Fallout 3. 

The '10s: Barking orders

Pinus Draconicus

Progress in the 2010s is harder to spot. Partly because the advancements are more subtle, and partly because Crysis still looks better than everything. But The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, released in 2011, at least makes it easy to see how far the series had come in terms of herbal fidelity. Skyrim is a love letter to the nordic spruce; a landscape of leafy grottos, autumnal forests, and those majestic, lofty pines. You can even chop logs and use a sawmill, reminding us of man's largely one-way relationship with trees.

Scribo Misticus

Minecraft’s blocky forests were a visual somersault backwards, but they did let us interact with wood in ways that meant crafting mechanics would be a part of every game for the next 200 years. You can punch, chop and reshape wood, and there’s a fine variety of planks on offer—it’s like B&Q, but with fewer pigmen. If you haven’t made a treetop retreat in Minecraft, you’re playing the game wrong. Another standout is Alan Wake, released on PC in 2012, which delivered deep, misty forests that are as atmospheric and evocative as they come. We also had the Kmart/Lidl Twin Peaks of Deadly Premonition a year later, which helpfully undermines my earlier point about everything in the 2010s looking great. And then there’s Proteus, also released in 2013, which reminds us that trees don’t have to be meticulously detailed to look striking.

Apocalyptus Herba

As we approach the end of our forest bathing stroll, we return again to Crytek, who accidentally made the first Crysis so pretty that everything that’s followed has looked guff. Crysis 3 is almost an exception, but the foliage has lost some of its depth and lustre, even though the game is set in a post-apocalypse when nature has reclaimed the cities of humanity—perhaps in revenge for the humiliation suffered in The Sims. Battlefield 4 also has excellent foliage, but you were probably too busy flattening buildings and complaining about the linear campaign to notice. 

Gusty Venefica

And finally, we come to it. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is the sort of game you stop playing just to watch the trees. When you first reach Velen and see those weatherbeaten leafy landscapes, you feel like dragging your rambling relatives to your 4K monitor so they can appreciate the glory of nature without going outside. And CD Projekt Red clearly love a good thicket, as evidence by the variety on offer: we’ve got hanging trees, sacred trees, dead trees, possessed trees. No game has ever featured boscage in so many starring roles (I told you I used a thesaurus). Cast your mind back to the grasping shrubs of Skifree, and revel in 22 years of planking progress.

But also: it still doesn’t look as good as Crysis. 

Ranking the games in the Far Cry series isn't an especially easy task given that for the most part it's been a widely varied collection of shooters: Far Cry 1, 2, and 3 were all distinctly different from one another, and while Far Cry 4, Far Cry 5, and Blood Dragon were quite similar to Far Cry 3, Primal threw us a curve and plopped us in the Stone Age. Another issue with ranking them: the Far Cry games are all pretty good! There are no stinkers in the series, meaning there's no one to really dump on. This makes things harder.

But just because something isn't easy doesn't mean it shouldn't be done. Below we've cobbled together a highly-unscientific ranking of the Far Cry series (sans Instincts, which only appeared on console). As with all of our rankings, this list is iron-clad and inarguable, so we expect nothing but collective head-nods of sycophantic agreement in the comments.

Here they are, the Far Cry games listed from worst to first.

Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon

Developed: Ubisoft Published: Ubisoft2013

Samuel: Blood Dragon is a pleasingly concentrated and beautiful slice of Far Cry 3, wrapped in a joke that maybe wears a bit too thin. It essentially offers everything the main game does, but in a sillier and more explosive framework, designed as it is to poke fun at '80s movies and games in general—the latter of which is a contentious point for some. 

But it's so clearly enjoyable for what it is. Neon versions of Far Cry 3's creatures wander the landscape, and it's refreshingly streamlined, with no crafting and simpler progression systems. Throw a cyber heart to lure a Blood Dragon, watch the beast turn up to wreak some havoc, then move onto the next outpost. If the 20+ hours of game waiting in Far Cry 3 or 4 seems daunting, this is a pleasingly complete microcosm of the Far Cry experience.

Far Cry Primal

Developed: Ubisoft Published: Ubisoft2016

Chris: Cranking back the clock—way back, to 10,000 BC—would seem a good way to take the series in an entirely new direction. There are no guns in Primal, of course. No cars, no aircraft, and absolutely no radio towers (thankfully). In some ways, it's pretty amazing that the familiar gameplay of Far Cry fits so well in an environment without automatic weapons and off-road vehicles.

The flip side is that Primal feels too familiar to really stand out. Stone Age or not, it's still unmistakably a Far Cry game and never really feels like a fresh experience. The ability to tame animals to fight alongside you is new, and while combat restricts you to bows, clubs, and spears (there is, enjoyably, a bee-filled pouch that acts as a grenade), the hunting and crafting you spend much of your time doing isn't any sort of departure from the series. Despite sending you thousands of years into the past, Primal winds up feeling a little too similar to Far Cry 3 and 4.

Far Cry 5

Developed: Ubisoft Published: Ubisoft2018  

Chris: Far Cry 5 is built on the foundation of 3 and 4 with only a few tweaks on the established formula. The small changes are welcome, though: there's no skill tree, so you can unlock perks in any order you want, giving you the freedom to build your character to fit your playstyle. The crafting system of the earlier games has been trimmed down, too, so you unlock additional weapon slots and ammo bags through perks instead of having to hunt specific animals. Far Cry 5 wants you to get into the beautiful and chaotic open world of Montana with as few roadblocks as possible.

But flying in the face of all the freedom you're given is the unpleasant habit the game's bosses have for kidnapping you. They'll routinely drag you from your open world adventures and force you to listen to their long, rambling monologues. Worse, the villains are bland and forgettable, with gimmicky battles required to beat them. 

Far Cry 5 is still a fun and ridiculous sandbox of mayhem and destruction, but better bosses, and better writing, could have given it a higher ranking on our list.

Far Cry 2

Developed: Ubisoft Published: Ubisoft2008 

Chris: Far Cry 2 is the favorite of several of the PC Gamer staff, but favorite doesn't automatically mean best*, and loving something doesn't mean you need to be blind to its flaws. From crippling you with malaria before you even manage to escape the intro, to restricting your sprinting to a few steps before running out of stamina, to roadside checkpoints that repopulate with suicidal bad guys the moment you glance in another direction, traveling the map can quickly become an exhausting and frustrating affair. 

Making up for that, however, is everything else. The location, a sun-scorched province in Africa, is one of the most convincing environments a shooter has ever visited. The fire system is still fantastic, better even than the ones in later games, where flames spread through dry grass, up into trees, and across buildings, useful for flushing out and trapping enemies, but also often requiring the player to scramble to safety. The story is refreshingly nihilistic and bleak, the sprawling map leads into another, bigger one halfway through the game, and the gunplay (provided you're using guns you bought, as the ones you pick up off the ground are garbage) is fantastic.

*Note: I do really think it's the best, but we held a staff vote and I'll abide by the results.

Samuel: I appreciate the ambition of the story and the presentation of the world, though it's not particularly enjoyable next to the more recent games. I know that's an unpopular answer: Far Cry 2 is a favourite among game design academics, and fair enough. But sometimes you want to ride an elephant into a base, and that's okay.

I too appreciate Far Cry 2's fire and buddy system. Another touch I love about this game, that I assume Firewatch later borrowed, was the idea of the map being an object you hold in your hand. I haven't played the game in years, but I'll always remember that as a clever way of heightening the reality of that world.

Far Cry 3

Developed: Ubisoft Published: Ubisoft2012 

Chris: Rather than casting you as an ex-Green Beret or hired merc, Far Cry 3's Jason Brody was supposed to be just some random bro who finds himself in way over his head. Naturally, you're still completely capable of killing hundreds of people, flying wingsuits around, and doing everything else the trained killers from the previous games could, but for at least an hour or two Brody yammers on about how he's just a bro who doesn't know what he's doing. It's not especially convincing.

This game also served as Far Cry's dive into crafting, which was largely baffling: having to hunt multiple animals to make a wallet that could hold more money, for instance. Far Cry 3's animals are much more fun when they're the ones doing the hunting, leaping out of the jungle to attack goons and rebels alike, who are often already in the process of attacking one another. The whole island is like a explosive set of dominos, where tipping one leaves a chaotic mess in its wake. There are times when just watching the carnage is as enjoyable as participating in it.

Luckily, you can break from the extended and often not-great story missions (you're trying to rescue your friends and repair the boat to escape, despite having access to lots of working boats, but whatever) and do whatever the heck you want. And, it solved one of the big issues with Far Cry 2: once you took over an outpost, it was yours. Enemies didn't repopulate, and they certainly didn't repopulate the moment you drove off-screen.

Tim: My memory is so shot to pieces now that the two main things I recall about Far Cry 3 are that 1) it was my favourite Far Cry, largely because it ditched the whole "having malaria as a gameplay mechanic" thing, and 2) what I loved most about the game was its signature weapons. For some reason I found collecting each of these—from the meaty Bull shotgun to the deranged Shredder SMG—absolutely compelling. 

Unlocking them required an arduous amount of macguffin collection (this being a game that routinely tasks you with skinning 10 mongeese to craft a new wallet), but the chase for these white whale weapons was what drove me to keep going. Once I had them all my interest flamed out fast. An itch/scratch relationship I recognise only too well from my exotic weapon collection in Destiny. Actually, the other thing I remember about Far Cry 3 is that it genuinely felt like going on holiday. A ridiculous, action movie holiday accompanied by assholes, but a sunshine break nonetheless. 

Far Cry

Developed: Crytek Published: Ubisoft2004

Chris: It's hard to say how the original Far Cry holds up after a decade—we haven't played it in nearly that long—but at its release it was almost shockingly good. While it demanded a lot of our hardware at the time (it was a Crytek game, after all), it at least had some flexibility in graphical settings and still looked pretty great even on mid-range PCs.

James: The original Far Cry stood out for its massive open environments and the aggressive AI soldiers within. Firefights didn’t take place in a tightly scripted series of corridors—thick vegetation and a rudimentary stealth system turned encounters into an improvisational game of cat and cat and cat and cat and mouse (you). A few hours in, monsters get thrown into the jungle combat stew, and suddenly the enemy mercs are no longer sitting comfortably at the top of the food chain—not that they’re eating the monsters or you, I hope. Luring men to monsters and then hiding in a bush became the new headshot, an early push towards testing more skills than how quickly a player can point and click. 

By today’s standards, Far Cry’s take on sneaky open arena combat feels noticeably dated, with enemies that have acute senses and preternatural aim anyone would envy. This is also before the era of elaborate back-stab animations, so stealth takes more patience and guesswork than it should, but even so, it’s easy to appreciate Far Cry for its obvious influence on open-ended island-hopping FPS design. 

Far Cry 4

Developed: Ubisoft Published: Ubisoft2014

Chris: For a series that had been reinventing itself with each release—Far Cry 1, 2, and 3 were all markedly different from one another—Far Cry 4 was a noticeable departure. It built on the gameplay of the previous entry without completely reimagining it. Coming just two years after Far Cry 3, Far Cry 4 felt incredibly familiar, but the changes it did bring were all for the better.

Rather than the overly vocal Jason Brody, protagonist Ajay Ghale is more subdued and quiet, letting the player fill in the blanks of his personality. Instead of simple bad luck stranding him among scores of warring soldiers and freedom fighters, Ajay has a real reason for being in the region of Kyrat: he's returned to scatter his mother's ashes, and the region's rebels are a military group founded by his father. What's more, Pagan Min, the colorful and charismatic baddie, once had an affair with Ajay's mother, making Ajay's appearance in Kyrat a personal one in several respects.

Kyrat itself is a wonderful and chaotic playground, sprawling and mountainous and with plenty of new ways to get around in it, like gyrocopters and a grappling hook, plus the familiar wingsuit that this time can be accessed almost immediately. The insanely aggressive wildlife makes a return, allowing us to unleash them on unsuspecting enemies and providing no small amount of random, ridiculous carnage. Plus, you can ride elephants, bowling over vehicles and tossing enemies into the air.

Alongside the scripted story missions, outpost takeovers once again comprise the most enjoyable part of the game, freeform assaults that can be accomplished any way you like. Outposts are bolstered by the addition of strongholds: massive and well-protected forts that are even tougher and more fun to liberate. This being a Ubisoft game, the map is littered with all sorts of other activities, challenges, and points of interest. They don't all really add much but, but they do ensure there's something to do just about everywhere you roam. Throw in co-op (except for story missions) and Far Cry 4 is a heavily packed and gloriously fun sandbox of destruction. 

The official Far Cry 5 reveal is still a couple days out, but Ubisoft today released the first full-on promotional image for the game, and it is—to put it mildly—provocative. 

The image depicts a group of heavily-armed, heavily-bearded men, plus one woman and a wolf, positioned in a very Last Supper-like pose around a table festooned with a slightly-modified US flag—crosses instead of stars—and with a vaguely menacing messiah figure at the center. There are guns and ammo all around, of course, and a badly-beaten man sitting in front, his hands bound and the word "Sinner" scrawled across his back.   

Bringing the series to America in what appears to be a very believable context of religious extremism and right-wing survivalists is a bold move. Previous Far Cry games have been set in remote locales crawling with fictional villains (and even mutants at one point—how far it's all come) and were easy to dismiss as pleasantly distant and fully fictional. That may not be so easy with Far Cry 5, which is bound to upset some people—although I think it's the most interesting thing Ubisoft has done with the series since Far Cry 2. 

The Far Cry 5 full reveal is set to take place on May 26. Have a look at the full art below.

Ubisoft has rolled out a brief teaser for the recently-revealed FPS Far Cry 5, confirming that the game is headed to the remote, rugged environs of Montana.

The teaser is simply a clip of a young man out for a job through grassy, wind-kissed field and a , and the very homey "Welcome to Hope County, Montana" logo laid overtop. But it jibes very well with a recent leak on Reddit from a self-proclaimed participant "in a focus group in a major metropolitan area" that took place last year, where Ubisoft apparently showed off its ideas for the game.

"The general thrust of this game is that it will take place in present day, and feature the protagonist taking on a Jim Jones or David Koresh-like religious cult in a small town in Montana that's been populated by, essentially, Doomsday-preppers bent on furthering their cause. So, modern-day weaponry and modern-day vehicles, plus a hilly, mountainous backdrop," the post says.   

"They showed us some basic promotional videos featuring a heavily—HEAVILY—religious angle to the evil. A person (presumably the protagonist) walking through a town that was completely empty, only to walk into a church to discover the congregation is made up of everyone in town staring in rapt attention at a shirtless lunatic leader brandishing an assault rifle in one hand and a Bible in the other." 

The Redditor acknowledged that the information was a year old and so could quite possibly be out of date, but religious extremists taking over an isolated small town does seem like a reasonable basis for a Far Cry-style videogame. And if you're going to do that kind of thing, where better than Montana? 

The full Far Cry 5 worldwide reveal is set for May 26, which is this Friday. We'll keep you posted. 

Update: The post originally referenced a video of a slightly-polluted Montana river, which unfortunately turns out to be unviewable in the US. I've replaced it with the one above, and if you happen to live elsewhere (or want to check out one of the other three Far Cry 5 teasers that are now online), you can take a shot at Ubisoft's primary YouTube channel.

Ubisoft announced today that four of its biggest franchises will be returning for its 2017-18 fiscal year (which we're currently in, and ends March 31, 2018). Far Cry 5 and The Crew 2 are both on the way, and the oft-delayed South Park: The Fractured But Whole is (hopefully) coming, too. The publisher also teased a new Assassin's Creed, although details—like, for instance, a subtitle—are being held back, possibly for a full-on E3 reveal. (Though Egypt is heavily rumored to be the setting.)

"Over the last three fiscal years, Ubisoft has—with remarkable success—created numerous new brands and rebooted Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon," Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot said in a statement. "These successes have strengthened our visibility for the coming two fiscal years, with a line-up of releases principally comprised of established franchises. In 2017-18 we will see the exciting returns of Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, The Crew, and South Park." 

The Crew is probably the one semi-surprise of the bunch: It had something of a rough launch in 2014, and it was actually one of last year's Ubisoft anniversary freebies—not exactly a sign of a highly lucrative money-maker. On the other hand, Ubisoft recently announced that it had hit the 12 million player mark, which is no small feat, and it hasn't given up on the game by any measure either, releasing the cops-and-robbers expansion Calling All Units in November 2016. 

It's an ambitious lineup, but a strong FY2017-18 (and beyond) has to be even more important than usual for Ubisoft: The conflict has gone quiet in recent months, but Ubisoft is still facing a possible hostile takeover attempt by Vivendi. The company needs to do everything it can do to bolster its position—and as quickly as it possibly can.

Naturally, details are in very short supply at this early stage, but tweets from Ubisoft UK at least give us some logos to look at.   

It was rumored in January, and then effectively confirmed in February, that despite releases in the franchise coming every year since 2009, a new Assassin's Creed game would not come out in 2016. Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot said at the time that the long-term goal was not to "come back to an annual cycle, but to come back on a regular basis" when the series returned, which it was assumed would happen sometime in 2017. But Tommy Francois, Ubi's vice president of editorial, told IGN that it may take even longer than that to get things back on track.

"We believe alpha for these games needs to be one year before release. We're trying to achieve that. That's super fucking blunt, I don't even know if I'm allowed to say this. This is the goal we're going for: Alpha one year before [release], more quality, more polish," he said. "So if this means biting the [bullet] and not having an Assassin's game, or a Far Cry [in 2017], fuck it."

Getting to an alpha state as quickly as possible is vital, he explained, "because the more time we have for this the more polish we have, the more time we can change, refine, swap systems. You just can't take shortcuts."

He also clarified that the pause isn't an attempt to dodge over-saturation Francois said Far Cry has "only been going up in sales" but strictly a creative decision, to give studios a chance to get away from the usual "Ubisoft open-world formula" and try different things. "I do think we need to break that formula," he said. "This year we've given Far Cry and Assassin's some time to decant, innovate, and polish. The objective behind this is exactly that."

Ubisoft hasn't been shy about delaying other major projects in recent months, either: In August it pushed back two planned Division expansions in order to focus on straightening out the core game, and earlier this month it pushed South Park: The Fractured But Whole, which had been slated for a December release, into early 2017.

Back in June, Ubisoft announced that it would give away a free game every month for the rest of the year as part of its celebration of 30 years in the business. First up was Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, and then in July we got the stealth classic Splinter Cell. For August, Ubi is taking things in a slightly different direction.

We could not celebrate Ubisoft 30th anniversary without talking about Rayman. Created in 1995 by Michel Ancel, Rayman is one of the few platforming characters that has been created at the 32-bit era that is still alive today, Ubisoft wrote in the blurb accompanying the freebie. Rayman 1 was released on Atari Jaguar and is today the Ubisoft game that has traveled across the most different platforms.

The writeup also includes an interesting bit of trivia: Rayman was designed without arms and legs for the simple reason that arms and legs are really hard to animate. Being limbless gives Rayman more speed and dynamism, and it also enables many of his abilities, like the throwing fist and the car shoe.

Rayman Origins, the actual free game in question, is a back to the root 2D platformer that was originally released in 2011. And it's really good, too: A beautifully animated, brilliantly scored, exquisitely judged platformer, as we said in our review. You can't get much better than that.

Rayman Origins isn't actually free yet: Despite being the game-of-the-month for July, Splinter Cell reamins on the table for now. The Ubi 30 giveaway page says Rayman Origins will take its place in mid-August.

Update: There actually is a firm freebie date, not on the Ubi 30 page but on Twitter: Rayman Origins will go free on August 17.

In Face Off, PC Gamer writers go head to head over an issue affecting PC gaming. Today, Tom and Wes argue about boss fights, which have been around nearly as long as video games themselves, and whether they re an outdated concept.

Wes: YES. I ve played many great boss fights in my day, but far too many big games shoehorn in boss fights when they don t need them. Boss fights once made perfect video game sense in linear, side-scrolling levels. Get to the end of the stage, fight the big bad in charge, and move on to the next. And that s still fun! But as games have evolved with open worlds and non-linear levels and forms of gameplay more nuanced than shoot slash punch bad guy, boss fights don t fit as well. Bioshock and the more recent Deus Ex: Human Revolution are two modern examples of boss fights gone really wrong. Bioshock needed an emotional climax, not one that involved shooting a roided-up bad guy. And Human Revolution betrayed the core of its gameplay by making you shoot it out with its bosses, which is something the new Deus Ex is thankfully addressing. Boss fights can still be done well, of course, but they re most definitely antiquated.

Tom M.: NO. Boss fights aren t always fun, but used correctly they can be vital to the pacing of a game. Boss fights don t just represent the end of a level, they are a change of pace after a long stretch of similar gameplay. You ve been running around shooting and beating up bad guys for a while, but how are you going to deal with this new enemy? That s when the concept of a boss fight really shines; when it s not just a bigger harder enemy, but instead challenges you in some interesting and different way. I completely agree that AAA games have recently misused the boss fight trope, treating it more like an expected practice than a place to shake up the game s design, but that doesn t mean boss fights as a whole are an outdated concept.

Wes: Sure—I d look like a big dumb idiot if I said all boss fights today are lame and crappy. There are still good ones! But I think there are two big problems with how boss fights are implemented. In big-budget games, they re often used to facilitate some dramatic cutscene or story moment, which means taking control away from the player or forcing you to play in a specific way. That sucks. And in general, I think too many games use boss fights because they re expected. Boss fights are part of the language of video games, but they re a very old word. And I d like to see more games creating new words instead of falling back on the Middle English that is the boss fight.

Tom: I actually don t mind boss fights being more rigid or scripted than the rest of a game. Making open world experiences where the player has lots of choice is a very difficult thing to do, and too much freedom can sometimes make for a crummy story. Boss fights are the perfect moment for a developer to bring the story back under their control a little bit to let them reliably tell the story they want to. Of course, the boss fight shouldn t take certain options or playstyles away from the player that the rest of a game has made them accustomed to, like in Deus Ex for example. Those fights should be climactic and should represent a shift in the story. Even if they re expected, they can play a vital role in the rhythm of a game.

Wes: Ah, so idealistic! Time and again, boss fights in big-budget games do change up the play style you ve been taught just to show you something cool. Even the Batman games, which have fantastic combat, lose their lustre when they put you in an arena to slug it out with a boss. Think of the end of Asylum, when the Joker gets all beefy and slugs it out with Batman. It s a great game, but that s a cookie cutter boss fight that relies on antiquated video game language. How do we make a big, climactic battle? Hm, how about lots of punching? But the Joker would never do that! He d do something clever. A smart, modern take on the boss fight there wouldn t end with a punching match. I d like to see more games have confidence in what they do best. To use a pretty traditional 2D game as an example: I don t even remember the final boss of Rayman Origins, but I do remember the incredibly challenging and rewarding final platforming sequence leads up to it. Surviving that level is the true boss of the game.

Tom: Lots of games have also tried doing boss sequences or boss levels instead of a straight up fight, and I love that. I think it s great when games don t adhere to the formula, but that s not the solution for every game. Assassin s Creed doesn t really have many boss fights, instead a particularly special baddy will get a mission all to himself. That s cool and different and doesn t shoehorn a stupid arena fight into an assassination game, but I also don t remember a single one of those missions. You know what I do remember? Every single boss I fought in Dark Souls 2. I still agree that developers will put cookie cutter boss fights unnecessarily into games that don t need them, but it s by no means a concept that s lost it s value. It s just more valuable in certain types of games.

Wes: I may not remember the characters of many Assassin s Creed targets, but I do remember some of my more epic assassinations—and I loved that those characters could be killed silently and instantly, if you planned the perfect stealth kill. That s a smart modern twist on the classic boss fight, too me--it elevates what s best about Assassin s Creed, instead of suddenly changing how you play the game. And hell, I love Dark Souls bosses too—I don t hate the traditional boss fight, I just think many games today could do something more interesting with them. It seems like we re mostly on the same page. So...what games are really doing creative boss fights right these days?

Tom: The first example that jumps to my mind is Titan Souls, a game made up of nothing but boss fights. It takes the kill the big monster in an arena concept to its extreme and cuts the fat off everywhere else. If you need to be convinced that compelling and exciting boss fights are still possible in modern games, Titan Souls will do that and then some. Terraria is another good example; each boss is difficult and unique, but also represents a tier of progression. The game has an open world with no fake constraints, but you can mostly only reach bosses in a certain order, each one giving you the means to fight the next. These games embrace the boss fight as the effective tool it is; a change of pace, a milestone in your progression, and a generator of wow moments.

Wes: I ve played my fair share of Terraria, but I ll be checking up on Titan Souls. If killing each boss doesn t make me feel a deep and intense sorrow in true Shadow of the Colossus fashion, though, I m going to hold you responsible for my irrational expectations.

Tom: Titan Souls was the first game that made me physically jump out of my chair when I killed a boss, and I did so for every single one. Consider your expectations rationally high.