Today marks the twentieth anniversary of the release of one of the greatest roleplaying games ever made. Set in a world so vast that you could combine almost every open world game released since and cram them all into one of its regions, and allowing the freedom to buy real estate within that world, it remains one of the grandest games of its type.

It is The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall [official site] and I have loved it for two decades.>

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Survival isn’t enough for the youth of today, oh no, they must make sure everyone no one else survives. Battle Royale ’em ups have spun off from open-world survival games, bringing a faster, learner experience of rummaging in bins until you get a nice rod to stab a stranger in the neck. Heck, half of ’em are directly cut out from open-world survive games – like H1Z1: King of the Kill [official site] from those former Sony Online Entertainment folks at Daybreak Game Company. It’s now slated to launch out of early access on September 20th, seven months after splitting from H1Z1.

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No Man’s Sky is about two things: exploring procedurally generated planets, and inventory tetris. The latter might not have been what people were expecting, but if you’re playing the game, you’re going to spend a lot of time shuttling elements back and forth between two inventories, deciding whether to discard some titanium in order to make room for thamium9, and trying to squeeze in enough crafted upgrades to try feel like our character is actually a spaceperson rather than a slightly lost mining robot with a penchant for taking (often beautiful) photographs.

Managing resource and artifacts can be an integral aspect of a game, from Diablo and Grimrock to NEO Scavenger, but given the amount of time and effort this aspect of No Man s Sky takes up, is it a good> game of inventory tetris?

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Today, in news I didn’t think I’d be writing: peachy-keen action-RPG Titan Quest [official site] has received a huge update, more than ten years after its release. Everyone who owned Titan Quest on Steam is now upgraded to the Anniversary Edition, where performance is improved, bugs are fixed, balance is tweaked, GameSpy guff is cut, and oh, the Immortal Throne expansion is included free too. Cripes! The game’s now sold on GOG and all. Unlike the terrible creature wearing the skin of Atari, the creature that’s trying on the skin of THQ seems quite friendly so far.

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League Of Legends‘ [official site] Lead Gameplay Designer, Andrei Meddler van Roon, was in Birmingham over the weekend as the UK’s huge LAN event, Insomnia, was also playing host to League Fest a dedicated League Of Legends event. I couldn’t get up there but I managed to get a bit of time with Meddler on the phone and, after recommending the Sea Life Centre, we got to discussing the recent patch kerfuffle, the rhythm of game tweaks, favourite game additions and more:

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New weapons, items, enemies, bosses, and rooms are coming to Enter the Gungeon [official site] in a big ole update. Developers Dodge Roll Games today announced the ‘Supply Drop Update’, due to hit the roguelikelike shooter this autumn. Our John really liked Gungeon so good! This is good. Another free update is due to follow Supply Drop too, before a “full-blown” expansion arrives “early next year”. Pew pew.

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Space-bastard MMO EVE Online [official site] will go free-to-play in November, devs CCP announced today. It’ll introduce a new limited character type that anyone can play for free, keeping The Good Stuff for people who pay a subscription fee. Which is probably a good way to get more people into EVE. It has brought us exciting space-stories of grand betrayals, bankers funding wars and maybe destabilising EVE, propaganda, blockading trade hubs, notorious space-lords, and more than I can reasonably fit in this one sentence, but EVE is not an inviting game. This might help.

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British Telecommunications (BT) have filed a lawsuit against Valve claiming patent infringement. The action was brought “based on Valve’s continued willful infringement” of four patents (I’ll go into what they are in a moment) and was filed in Delaware on 28 July.

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Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.>

A collaboration between Maxis and Firaxis, Sid Meier’s SimGolf oddly plays at times more like a Bullfrog ‘Theme’ game than like the other games from its two prestigious developers. You build a golf course, earning money with which to expand, and occasionally play a few holes yourself.

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How does Battlefield 1 [official site] tie into Battlefield 1942? Will this prequel’s story be impossible to follow without playing the other 1941 games first – or at least reading the extended universe novels? How many confusing audiologs will be awkward in-jokes? Is it even the same timeline? Finally we can discover the answers to these questions and more, as Electronic Arts today launched a free open beta test for the World War 1 multiplayer first-person shooter. Head over to Origin to download and play.

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