The Just Cause 2 multiplayer mod was released earlier this week, adding multiplayer support to the tropical island of Panau. It instantly became our mod of the week, and we jumped in together at lunchtime to see if we could survive the chaos.

No-one survives the chaos, it turns out, but that's okay, because a barrage of ridiculous things are happening around you all the time. Here are but a few.

Andy grabbed onto someone's chopper and wouldn't let go



The Just Cause 2 multiplayer mod lets you teleport to various checkpoints with a quick chat command. First stop: the airport. We'd played an early beta test of the JC2 multiplayer mod, and already knew that airports tended to be a hotspot. We were not disappointed. The sky was full of spiraling jets and attack choppers trying to shoot each other out of the sky - the perfect opportunity for a spot of trolling.

In Just Cause 2 you can press F to grapple distant vehicles. If you hit a chopper, you'll dangle haphazardly beneath with a gun in your free arm. Normally choppers are piloted by passive NPCs, but in the multiplayer mod they're piloted by angry, angry humans. There's little a chopper can do with an illicit passenger, though. This person wobbled around trying to shake Andy off, and then tried flying low to scrape him against a building, to no avail. Andy was soon killed by stray bullets.

An army of jumbo jets tried to bring down the Mile High Club blimp



Our next stop was the Mile High Club blimp, a party boat suspended high above the archipelago. This place was so manic that we stayed there for the remainder of the hour.

You can't bring down the Mile High Club blimp, but that didn't stop players from trying. We were playing on a pretty lawless server, which means anyone can spawn any weapon or vehicle they wish from a menu. Naturally, players started spawning the biggest planes they could and repeatedly rammed them into the blimp. The blimp withstood the charge and gradually became enclosed in a collection of blackened jumbo corpses.

Tom outran a crashing jumbo jet



The last place you'd want to be during a jumbo jet vs. blimp free-for-all is on the deck of the blimp. It's mostly given over to a snazzy neon bar, but there weren't many drinkers around on account of the risk of being completely squashed. In an accidental moment of dramatic self-preservation, I zip-lined across the deck as one landed behind me. It screeched to a halt a few metres behind me in this picture, taken moments before I was shot by an attack chopper.

People start "dangle jousting" with machineguns



The skies are full of fire in the Just Cause 2 multiplayer mod, in the open server we played on anyway. Some servers require you amass points to purchase weapons, but with hundreds of players, each with their own attack chopper or rocket launcher, our collective hour was incoherent, but wonderfully manic. The carnage was so intense we felt a bit aimless at first, but as soon as you start setting challenges for one another the mod comes to life.

In a savvy move, Avalanche have knocked 80% off Just Cause 2 on Steam. The mod is free, and also on Steam, so there are few barriers if you want to try it out yourself, and I'd certainly recommend it. I'd also recommend turning off the chat with F3 if you do, though. It's a bit of a free-for-all in there.

Like a carnival barker standing in front of a strange-looking circus machine, the wonderfully chaotic Just Cause 2 wants you to take a ride. Syncing up nicely with the official Steam release yesterday of its massive and free Multiplayer Mod, JC2 is seeing a steep discount. The 80 percent price drop to $3 on Steam for the standard version of the action game runs through December 19.

It's not the first time and it almost certainly isn't the last time we'll see a deal like this for JC2, but with the full launch of the Multiplayer Mod, there's likely to be maximum-level shenanigans going on. With its giant Panau playground, which on some mod servers could potentially hold many thousands of players simultaneously, you'll be chasing cash and wreaking havoc. There are also plenty of servers with smaller player counts, for those of you who might want a more contemplative skydiving and stunt-flying experience. It's a giant playground and real showcase for what a dedicated modding community can accomplish.

Check out our Mod of the Week feature for tips on navigating the mod as well as an intro to some of its various limo-racing, jet-hijacking possibilities.

It's justifiably our mod of the week and, after an intense week-long beta period, it's set to officially release in just a few short hours. One lone figure brought chaos and destruction to the island of Panau, but Just Cause 2 Multiplayer brings exponentially more. It gives players the chance to start events, compete in races, or just hang out in the airport for five seconds before being killed. The mod's launch trailer rounds up some of the many available actions.



Just Cause 2 Multiplayer Mod will be launching directly on Steam later today, likely around 6pm GMT.

You're parachuting over the island of Panau, as you've done countless times before. This time, however, you're not alone: the sky is full of chutes. Planes streak by, wildly firing at each other, while a crowd of people with grappling hooks all try to hijack the same helicopter. On the ground, two dozen limousines careen past in the midst of a race around an airport. The Just Cause 2 Multiplayer Mod doesn't boast a server of 24 or 36 players, but hundreds, potentially thousands, all in the same game at once. Panau, already a ridiculous place, just got truly nuts.

In the Just Cause 2 Multiplayer Mod, there are no NPCs on Panau. No enemy soldiers, no AI citizens. There are just other players, and the first time I joined the server, there were over 1,200 of them. On the same server. On the same map. At the same time. Naturally, it's utter chaos, and far more chaos than even Panau is used to. Planes and choppers fill the skies and cars, trucks, motorcycles, and tanks fill the streets. Respawning takes place in the air, so players are constantly parachuting in, guns are always firing, and the sound of explosions in the distance is nearly constant. Plus, everyone has a grappling hook.

This town ain't big enough for 2 parachutes. Let alone 1,200.

Can you grapple onto a moving vehicle and hijack it? Yep, just like in single-player. However, since the driver is another player, they can do the same thing right back, leading to some comical business as you and the driver and possibly several other players desperately try to commandeer -- and re-commandeer -- the same vehicle over and over again. Speaking of vehicles, if driving around at top speed isn't fast enough for you, holding shift will give you a boost -- such a boost your land-based vehicle may eventually launch itself into the air and fly across the map.

I knew it was you, Rico. You broke my heart.

Besides committing acts of random violence on strangers, is there anything else to do? Sure! Press T to open the typing tool, then type "/race". This will add you to the racing queue, and when it s full, you ll be automatically transported to the starting line of the next available race. With over a thousand players bouncing around the server, it takes just a few moments to gather enough players, and the race, when it begins, is almost always stocked with dozens of people.

Granted, it's Panau, so dozens of limos racing isn't the weirdest thing to happen at an airport.

Sometimes it ll be a 30 person motorcycle race where the first gate is at the top of a nearly sheer cliff. Another race is on a tiny figure-eight course on solid ice, meaning tons of skidding and crashing and head-on collisions where the track crosses itself. There's even a skydiving race, from the Mile High Club to the ground.

Acquiring a plane means doing everything you can to make sure no one else acquires a plane.

Winning races, killing other players, and sometimes even dying will result in you earning a little money to spend with the mods Buy Menu (used by pressing B). There you can purchase vehicles -- planes, choppers, boats, or land vehicles -- which will immediately appear with you inside them. You can use the same store to buy weapons and gear, and your money will carry over between gaming sessions.


Looking for action? The Mile High Club is hosting a never-ending war.
I don t know how often this will happen in the future, but while I was on the server, Woet (one of the JC2MP developers) made himself the subject of a massive manhunt. I m in the snowy mountains," he announced. "First one to kill me gets 1,000,000." Tracking down a single player in the massive world of Just Cause 2 seems like an enjoyable, possibly epic quest, but in truth, with nearly 1,300 players, many of them in jets, all of them money-hungry, it took only a minute or so for Woet to be killed. A bounty system would be a great regular feature, though, drawing players in from all corners of the massive map one a singular mission to hunt down a lone players.

You have my attention.

While you tend to spawn in the vicinity of other players, you can occasionally find yourself stranded far from anyone else with no transpiration and no money to buy a new ride. Luckily, you can teleport to a busy spot by typing "/tp airport" (or the name of whichever spot you'd like to visit.)

During my time on the server, the fewest amount of players I saw was around 500, and the highest was about 1,400. And while there can be a bit of lag from time to time, for those kinds of numbers it's actually been a pretty smooth experience. One thing I could do without is the global chat: it's spammy, full of horrible people saying terrible things, and with hundreds of people all using it at once, the text scrolls by too fast to be useful anyway.

34 drivers, one tiny ice-covered course. Gonna be some whiplash.

Installation: The mod is scheduled to officially launch on Monday, December 16th. It's on Steam, so you can install and launch it like you would any other Steam game.

It's so simple when you think about it. How do you make Just Cause 2 more chaotic and hilarious? You increase its number of players from one to multiple thousands. Only, it turns out that creating something chaotic, hilarious and stable is a lot more complicated. That's why the mod Just Cause 2: Multiplayer has, until now, been restricted to occasional test weekends, giving fans just a brief window to shoot, grapple or drive their way to mega-carnage. That's about to change, first with a week-long final beta, before - soon after - an official release.

And just to ensure that havoc is easily available to as many people as possible, the mod's creators have announced that the mod is coming to Steam.

"Since August, we've been in radio silence, working hard on the mod," writes Phillip Larkson, one of the mod's developers, before announcing the mod's Steam release. "You'll be able to download the client and server from Steam," he explains, "just like a normal game. This means complete Steam integration, including joining on your friends and more."

First though, one final beta test is planned. It will start this coming Saturday, 7th December, at 8am GMT, and will close a week later on the 14th December. The beta is also being run through Steam. To take part, head to the Just Cause 2: Multiplayer key distribution page, and sign in to grab a Steam redeemable code.

As for the official release mod, it won't be long after the beta. "Two days before the test, we'll release a detailed changelog; and after the test, we'll reveal the release date," Larkson announces. "One thing is for sure, though: come hell or high water, JC2-MP is coming out this year!"

The Deus Ex: Human Revolution Director's Cut does seem to be a matter of pride for Eidos Montreal. Director's Cut builds are a common way to offer new players a jumping-on point long after launch, but few redesign sections of the original game to account for fan feedback. When it comes to Deus Ex: Human Revolution's boss fights, the negative feedback was loud and unanimous. They've been reworked with new level geometry to allow for multiple approaches, thank goodness.

The Director's Cut also includes a 45 minute "making of" video, developer commentary, a strategy guide, and "major enhancements" have apparently been made to the energy system and enemy AI. There have also been "striking visual improvements", which seem to amount to toning down HR's yellow tint, colloquially referred to as "the piss filter" in certain corners of the Internet.

There's a sensible tiered pricing system to the Director's Cut. It's £12 / $20 if you buy it new, and that includes all Tong's mission (originally a pre-order bonus) and the excellent Missing Link DLC. If you own HR without the DLC, you can upgrade to the Director's Cut for £6 / $10. If you own the DLC and want the new boss fights, commentary and other improvements, it'll cost £3 / $5. It's available on Steam now.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution is brilliant. Here's our Deus Ex: Human Revolution review, and our review of the Missing Link DLC. And a video why not.

There sure has been a lot of activity with the Deus Ex franchise lately. After Eidos Montreal announced a new entry in the series, we get another, albeit much more tenuous, piece of information. A recent casting call for a "confidential video game" makes it sounds like the developer is either about to start or has already started shooting motion capture for the next game.

The casting call asks for a Japanese male to play a character in good physical condition who "has a mild Japanese accent, able to range from professional with his superiors, militant when undercover, and smirky when talking to enemies." The shoot would take place in Montreal, Canada, which is of course where the studio in charge of the Deus Ex franchise resides. But what might be the most indicative of this game's true nature is the description of the character's job: "Hiroshi Saito is an Illuminati Shadow Agent. His current assignment is to infiltrate the Augmented Rights Coalition, to replace its leader and to discredit its movement by committing a series of attacks in their names."

The Illuminati are a staple of the Deus Ex series, and the last game in the series, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, dealt with the emergence of "Augmented" people. "Augs" were mechanically-enhanced citizens who marked the beginning of that world's transition into cybernetics. Prejudice against Augs was a prevalent theme within the game, as some people feared their capabilities and believed that they violated what humanity's natural evolution. The inclusion of an Augmented Rights Coalition heavily implies that this sequel will pick up where Human Revolution left off with Augmented citizens.

All of this comes off as a big neon sign pointing to plot points for the next Deus Ex game to me. And even though this is the farthest thing from official you can get, I 'm just excited at the prospect of a new one.

UK newspaper, The Sun, have included fictional Sarif Industries cyborg eyeball tech in a roundup of "AMAZING GADGETS JUST AROUND CORNER". Such technology, they say, "is in its infancy now" but "will be commonplace to our grandkids."

When we spotted a tweet about the article from Good Gaming about the article I had to nip to the local corner shop to see it. Here it is. Page 28, item five in the feature, today's finest facepalm from Britain's most popular paper.





It looks like they've been fooled by the apparently extremely convincing Sarif Industries viral marketing site, a fabrication of Eidos Montreal and Square Enix.

Augmented eyeball tech does exist in a basic form. Last year the BBC reported on retinal implant surgery that restored a semblance of sight to two blind men. We are still a long way from Sarif Industries eyeballs and, sadly, Sarif Industries elbow chisels.

This sort of thing happens more often than you might expect. A while back an ITV documentary mistook ARMA 2 footage for real war.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution's Director's Cut will be with us in just under two weeks, and it sounds like a significant augmentation to the game. But one thing Square Enix had kept hidden away in their top secret HQ was how much it would cost for people who already owned the original version. Worryingly, we didn't even know if there would be any concessions to early adopters. Now we do, and there will.

Here's the pricing structure that's been announced:


New purchase (if you don’t already have the game): £12.99/€19.99/$19.99
Own the basic game (with no DLC): £6.99/€7.99/$9.99
Own the game and Missing Link DLC: £3.49/€3.99/$4.99


That's great news, especially with this new version addressing some of DX:HR's few criticisms. This director's cut tweaks the boss fight, AI and graphics, adds a New Game+ option, developer commentary mode, and a making-of video. You also get all previous DLC, including Missing Link, bundled with it.

It's such a good move from SE, that I might join Adam Jensen in doing a little dance.



DX:HR - Director's Cut is out October 25th.

Sleeping Dogs took a strange trip before it hit retail shelves and digital download services. It started out as another entry in the True Crime series before Activision cancelled it in 2011. Then, Square Enix picked it up and re-branded it as a new game with developer United Front Games. Sleeping Dogs released in August 2012 with overall positive reviews, and now United Front Games is teasing a successor.

Today, the developer announced that it is working on "another game based in the Sleeping Dogs universe" and referenced a trademark registration dubbed Triad Wars—players will recall that Sleeping Dogs starred an undercover cop named Wei Shen who infiltrated the Hong Kong Triads.

This comes after the consistently bad news that publisher Square Enix has dripped out over the course of 2013. The publisher partially blamed Sleeping Dogs for its poor financial year, despite it selling near two million units and Tomb Raider and Hitman: Absolution selling over 3.5 million units. All three of those games also enjoyed varying levels of critical success and were no doubt expensive as hell.

The trademark page mentions mobile phones, but it's likely that Square Enix is just preventing infringement across all platforms. After all, Sleeping Dogs was a technical behemoth on PC . We won't know until 2014 since United Front has pledged no new info until then. Maybe it is a full-fledged sequel. Or maybe it's a MOBA. Either way, it could sell 4 million copies and Square Enix might still call it a failure.