Ah, Finland. It's definitely a country, and it's definitely where Finnish people live. It's also the setting for Dirt Rally's new update, which brings twelve stages set near J ms . As the video above demonstrates, it's a beautiful, green, tranquil kind of place or at least it is when rally cars aren't tearing through the countryside. 

Codemasters rolled the update out earlier today. It also boasts a new 2000s vehicle class, and two new vehicles in the form of the Subaru Impreza 2001 and Ford Focus RS Rally 2001. You can now create custom championships, while mouse support has also been patched in. Elsewhere, a range of tweaks and updates to existing cars have been actioned, including the handling on 60s, 70s, 80s RWD and 2010s classes.

Full details are over on the Dirt Rally Steam page. The update is free, as the game is still in Early Access.

After about ten minutes in London I ve socked a guy in the face and met Charles Dickens. It s 1868, and I m a spritely twin named Evie Frye. Evie s brother Jacob is playable too, but he s a prat. It s nice to play an Assassin s Creed game as not-a-prat for once. As far as I can tell that s this entry s biggest innovation.

For reasons urgently explained in a cutscene, Evie and Jacob have come to Whitechapel in order to conquer and replace London s notorious criminal gangs. It s not long before we re chasing little artful dodgers through destitute lanes, and climbing awkwardly up the side of Victorian-era buildings.

I play through the entirety of Sequence Three on a PS4 during my two hour hands-on session, so I can t really comment on how the game will perform on PC. Aside from missions, most of my time is spent riding on the back of the train, or bashing around in a horse and cart. The latter operates well enough but is hardly as heady a fantasy as Black Flag s pirate ships, though the ram move is hilariously effective. It s very easy to bulldoze your way through heavy traffic in Syndicate, but that s not to say you should. Oh, and it has a boost button. That s good.

Judging by how Sequence Three was structured, a fair chunk of Syndicate will involve winning regions of London from established criminal organisations. The guys in Whitechapel were pushovers (I pushed the boss off a train carriage) but the sequence served to demonstrate all the things you ll be doing in Syndicate. Befitting your role as a gang leader, you ll be able to recruit people into your gang and level them up. A glance at the progression path reveals that you ll be able to unlock police bribes, and have your crew hang perilous barrels around London in order to fell them tactically upon your foes heads. You can also summon them into battle, and progression determines how strong they are and in what number they ll arrive.

It s typical Ubisoft metagame, but the moment-to-moment gameplay hasn t changed much. Evie is arguably the stealthier of the twins. She s tasked at one point with saving a bunch of child labourers from a Whitechapel factory, and as far as Assassin s Creed stealth sequences go it s decent: there are several ways to enter, and you can theoretically ghost it, but I went for the classic get-in-quietly-and-exit-spectacularly strategy.

I wish Assassin s Creed was like this all the time. Carefully marking out enemies, monitoring their patterns and planning an attack is an enduring and simple video game pleasure. Dealing with the combat isn t so much: it s functionally sound and there s nothing exactly wrong with it, it just lacks grace and impact—and no amount of slow pans while you cleave a cop s throat can change that. Attacking, stunning and countering is easy to get the hang of but you often have half-a-dozen enemies grilling you at once and, well, Evie is no Batman. On the bright side, I suppose this reinforces that Assassin s Creed is a stealth game.

Meanwhile, the parkour still doesn t feel perfect, but here s the thing—I don t know how any Ubisoft studio could go about fixing that at the series current rate of output. Evie and Jacob are far too lithe for their own good, and while switching from climbing up to vaulting down is theoretically simple, in the heat of a long pursuit it s easy to stuff it up—and this is coming from someone who has played at least half-a-dozen Assassin s Creed games. There are improvements over Unity—you won t climb into a window unless you hit a specific button to do so—but this system needs a total rework. At the moment it s merely satisfactory.

The big problem with Assassin s Creed: Syndicate is that it s just not very exciting. London is bleak and beautiful, but it s not very interactive. I wanted to give a coin to some begging children, but I couldn t. I wanted to talk to a clerk in a store, but I couldn t. Victorian London is not the same as 15th century Constantinople or 16th century Rome, but the sheer amount of Assassin s Creed content out there—and the size of each separate game—is slowly eroding this series sense of identity. The rush I felt when entering 18th century Boston or Paris French Revolution is absent. It s London, but so what? It doesn t feel functionally different to the other hundreds of hours I ve spent in this universe. A new city, a grappling hook, two protagonists and some horse and carts just aren t enough—and maybe it s not new features that Assassin s Creed needs. Maybe it just needs time.

Assassin s Creed: Syndicate has the potential to be fun: series tragics will like it. It has the potential to tell a great story—the dynamic between Jacob and Evie is a lot of fun, and the general tone of the game seems to aim for Guy Ritchie in the 1800s, rather than the po-faced severity seen in last year s Unity. I genuinely believe Syndicate will be a decent game, but I think it and the team working on it deserve more. I think this series needs a rest. I think Ubisoft needs to iron out the enduring problems with its parkour and combat, and just… you know, slow down a bit. Don t waste another city.

When there s an element of chance in a board game, whether rolling dice or dealing cards or drawing tiles from a bag, some players will be put off by it. You see them in the comments at board game websites, where someone is always praising the pure strategy of an abstract German game about running a farm for postal trains. But randomness has its place: it can alter a game in ways that force tactical shifts, preventing the same safe strategy from always being the best. Even though it s on a computer rather than your table, Tharsis uses dice the same way.

Choice Provisions game, which I ve been playing an early version of, is about getting a spaceship to Mars. Nine weeks out meteors hit some of the important science bits and two crew die, then the rest have to hold the ship together for the rest of the voyage with duct tape and dreams. It s the panicky part of FTL where fire spreads from room to room expanded into an entire game.

When you assign astronauts to repair damaged modules their performance is represented by dice, one for each action point they have, with three re-rolls allowed. After rolling you can spend some of those dice to reduce the number representing repair work still to be done, but any die that rolls over five can instead be spent to activate an astronaut s special ability (the doctor s healing, the mechanic s hull repair), and each module has its own function that can also be activated by spending dice in various combinations (the greenhouse provides food, life support replenishes action points). Finally, at the bottom of the screen is a research bar you fill up for special bonuses by slotting in one die of each number, one through six, which can be added to from any module. 

Tharsis is like playing four games of Yahtzee simultaneously, only sometimes you re on fire. Additional complications vary from room to room: in one rolling fives might reduce an astronaut s hit points; while in another any twos will be removed from play as if they re being voided out a tear in the hull. It gets complex quickly. You re always being tempted to split dice over three things at once, juggling the numbers and shuffling them around before deciding how many to risk re-rolling, potentially triggering injuries or just getting even lower numbers than you did the last time.

Every turn that passes without everything being repaired brings the ship s structural collapse slightly closer. Assuming the crew survive for another turn, the second phase of Tharsis takes place. In this moment between methane leaks and meteor strikes the crew split up to suggest competing overall strategies sacrificing some of the next turn s action points for the sake of gaining a bonus to hull repair versus consuming more food for the sake of extra action points, for instance and then once that decision s been made, it s feeding time.

Astronaut food

Each precious lump of space food restores one astronaut s action points, giving them more dice next turn. But food is limited, and there s never enough unless someone dies. When the mechanic is slow-roasted by a fire in the airlock, why not put that corpse to use? In Tharsis (at least in the current build) cannibalism is inevitable, but not without consequences. Eating each other reduces the crew s maximum hit points and increases their stress, illustrated as they recoil in horror when you drag red lumps of people meat toward them like you re feeding a reluctant baby with a spoon. ( Here comes the aeroplane! It used to be Jones from medbay! ) The dice gained by these acts of cannibalism turn red and splatter blood across the screen when rolled, as if stained with horror.

"Here comes the aeroplane! It used to be Jones from medbay!"

A thing we inevitably say about video games now is that they re harsh but fair. Dark Souls and Spelunky are hard as balls but play by predictable rules. When you screw up it s entirely your own fault, but in games that involve luck it s a different matter. Put a percentage-chance-to-hit over the head of enemies, like in XCOM or Shadowrun, and some of the fault is taken away from us. If you miss a 90% shot and fail a mission because of it you can blame the random number generator, which is clearly and obviously cheating, rather than admitting you shouldn t have put yourself in a situation where the success of an entire mission hinges on a single shot no matter how high the percentage.

In Tharsis the dice act like a cushion of blame. It s partly my fault I put the technician with only two hit points in a room where she d get killed if she rolled two fives, but it s also the fault of those damn dice for rolling them. In fact it s mainly the fault of the dice, who are jerks. A failure in Tharsis feels less dispiriting than in other games with permadeath, which is nice because I don t always play video games so I can hate myself for not being good enough at playing video games. I can just blame the dice, especially the red ones made of people, which seem to be angry about something. It is definitely not my fault we cooked the mechanic and then carved him into haunted meat dice that never roll higher than a three. Almost definitely.

Fans riled up for November's release of Fallout 4 have done a lot of things to get psyched. Now, from rural Canada, comes a functioning Vault-Tec (Home Division) vault door. The huge door was built by Trey Hill as a way of putting a personal touch on his newly built home.

"I tell most people I built it because I am north and bored, but the real reason is I recently built the house," Trey told PC Gamer. "My wife said, 'since you built us a house, the basement is yours to do what you want.' She may end up regretting that statement."

The vault door, which weighs about 100 pounds and is rolled open and closed by hand, was built on a budget of about $400. Trey spent a month on it in his home in Newfoundland, Canada, bringing a touch of the nuclear post-apocalypse to the entrance to his home theater. Trey is an IT manager for the local school, so the code for a missing web page, 404, seemed an appropriate designation for his vault.

"The hardest part was making the door fit the hole without having it fall through or sit twisty," Trey said. "To fix this, the back side of the cog is slightly smaller than the front, so it slides in nicely and doesn't fall through."

You can see more pictures of the door build and the finished product in Trey's imgur albums. A bonus GIF of the door opening and closing is embedded below.

Microsoft and Adafruit have announced the release of the Windows 10 Core Starter Pack for Raspberry Pi 2. It s for people who want to get started learning either electronics or Windows 10 IoT Core and the Raspberry Pi 2, said Steve Teixera on the Windows Blog announcement.

The kit comes with a compatible set of sensors, electronic parts, wires and cables that work with Windows 10 IoT Core. It also comes with an SD card with Windows 10 IoT Core on it, as well as some getting started instructions and sample code for projects you can make.

A power supply, WiFi module, ethernet cable, breadboard, jumper wires, LEDs, potentiometers, and switches are all included in the pack. There are also different sensors for detecting light, colour, temperature and pressure. There's a lot in there to get you started.

"Many Windows developers are coming to Raspberry Pi for the first time," said Helen Lynn, Raspberry Pi social media editor. "We couldn t be more pleased to welcome them, and we hope they ll encounter much success and plenty of fun building with Raspberry Pi."

The Microsoft IoT pack is currently $115 (including a Pi 2 Model B) on the Adafruit website, or $40 without, but both are currently out of stock. More kits are on the way, though. 

It s been three days since I started building my kingdom. The monsters have been increasing in numbers each night. Our walls still stand, but we lost an archer in the fray. I ve ventured further into the woods than normal to convert some lowly vagabonds into new recruits. I ll need to purchase some new bows for them of course, but that shouldn t be a problem, so long as they pay their taxes. Through a clearing in the forest, I spy a massive stone tablet covered in runic symbols. A prompt to give it the majority of my wealth appears. I have no idea what giving it money will do. It s just a shiny, massive, very curious stone.

I feel the uncanny desire to splurge.

Kingdom is a sidescrolling exploration and base management game—a collaboration between two developers: Licorice from Iceland and Noio from the Netherlands. You play as an entrepreneurial king or queen. Venture out on your horse, hire some folks, and start building. But choose your purchases carefully.

Death and taxes

It's simpler to play than it sounds. You move left or right, combing the forest for new recruits, uncovering ancient secrets, and looking for new ways to expand your territory and technologies. It all operates on a deep economy. Besides walking left and right, every interaction involves the exchange of coin.

Early on, the most essential resources boil down to followers, equipment, and walls. Followers can be recruited with a single coin, which you can toss by pressing down on the keyboard. Some will wander your way automatically, some are camping deep within the forest. You can assign every follower a job by purchasing them a hammer or a bow in your village. As you progress, it s possible to develop new jobs. How many total? No clue.

Hammers convert followers into builders, which then carry out build purchases, like walls and fort upgrades, both of which slow enemy assaults. Bows convert them into archers. They hunt rabbits during the day (dead bunnies yield one coin each) and defend your base from monsters at night. My archers have terrible aim and are the worst, but I still love them. They re too loyal not to.

When night comes (and the sun sets quickly) monsters emerge from the forest and attack your kingdom start-up. The catch is, they won t kill you or your followers, they ll just destroy your walls and try to drain you of your wealth, a game over when it s all gone. Monsters knock over your followers and steal their coins, but only get a chance if you fail to properly prepare. I should ve invested more in that wall! Just one more archer and I might ve made it! Why did I drop six coins on that dumb rune? And so on. Learning how and when to spend is vital.

There are optimal investment paths, but none of the most helpful mechanics are overtly communicated, and with a high difficulty curve, it s important to pay attention and uncover every hidden system and advantage possible.

Mystery meat

Kingdom is the type of game that inspires big FAQs and dedicated subreddits. The pixel art is inherently lo-fi, but surprisingly expressive. Paying attention to subtle cues in visual information can make the difference between a high castle and a barren patch of broken dreams. The same goes for the lovely score. Composed by Amos Roddy (a.k.a. ToyTree) of Portland, the tunes and sound evoke a somber sense of age and mystery, but also function as subtle mechanical cues, vital for understanding the game s systems.

How Kingdom s chain of discovery plays out will likely determine how it fares. The developers plan to support the game after launch and the players reactions will determine what form that support takes. Players will have to crack the many mysteries in the initial release first, the depth of which remains to be explored.

Nothing obvious happens when I give the giant runic tablet my money. Big monsters destroy my village in the night because I can t afford any more bows, and I get a game over. I ve been assured my frivolous rune spending wasn t a waste—I m told it has a vital effect, but maybe wasn t worth every last penny while in dire need of defenses. 

Kingdom channels the same financial anxiety I get after a bad month of budgeting or checking on my college debt. Only I get a do-over in Kingdom. It s not easy, but there s some logic buried beneath its oblique presentation, some hope to get it right.

The build I played was limited and early, but for now, it seems that Kingdom is on track to be a cryptic, gorgeous, and righteously frustrating way to spend time. It releases when it s done, likely this fall.

Even a low-poly fictional dog can make me a little weepy, because I'm a giant baby when it comes to animals. Tugging at my heart strings today is Home Free: an open-world game in which you play as a stray dog.

"You are a dog, lost in a sprawling and unfamiliar city," writes developer Kevin Cancienne. "You wander the streets, searching for scraps, for shelter, for a friendly face. Slowly, you overcome some of your fears. You learn where you can snag a meaty bone, where you can sleep warm and safe at night. Strange streets become familiar territory. One by one, the streets become yours."

The game will also ship with a multiplayer "dog wrasslin" component called Dog Park. Various dog breeds and colors are included in the game, but most important is the GIF of a Shiba Inu sitting on playground equipment below.

Home Free's crowdfunding effort launched this morning and has already raised $12,000 of its $50,000 goal. At this pace, it's likely that stretch goals such as "Cats" and "Tiny Legs" will make their way into the game. Keep an eye on this one. Keeeeeep watching. Stay. Staaaaaay.

A new review aggregation site, OpenCritic, launched today, promising a dedication to transparency and customization. Though Metacritic isn't mentioned in OpenCritic's launch-day press release, the site seems to have been designed from the ground up to address the gaming world's complaints with Metacritic's domination of review aggregation.

Gamers, critics, and developers alike have made clear their desires for a more industry-focused review aggregator, OpenCritic founder, and Riot Games product manager, Matthew Enthoven wrote in a press release. We hope to meet those desires by giving consumers personalized scores; humanizing the critics behind the reviews; and celebrating the games that the industry s passionate developers have worked so hard to create.

Aggregated scores have become so important to the industry that developer's bonuses are sometimes tied to Metacritic, and the user reviews sections have seen developer interference and mob justice. The Metacritic algorithm that combines scores is weighted to count some outlets more heavily than others—it's also a secret. OpenCritic seeks to do away with all that, offering a simple average of all numerical critic scores, and including the author's name on reviews. Users can build a custom score page selecting only from publications they trust.

Metacritic's influence in the games industry has been a controversial topic, and Enthoven's new project could become an interesting alternative. Though if it were to usurp Metacritic, there's nothing to say that OpenCritic wouldn't also become the same quality benchmark for publishers, albeit without all the mystery of a secret weighting system.

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