Maybe it's that I kinda miss Sea of Thieves—despite enjoying it I haven't made time to play since the first week of its release—but anything with ships, sails, cannons, and sea monsters will draw my eye these days. Maelstrom, now in Early Access, has all of those, plus it's a battle royale game. Fifteen ships enter, one ship leaves.

I can't say Maelstrom takes place on the open sea: at times it feels like there's precious little room to maneuver in this ocean filled with jagged rocks and towering islands that both provide cover and damage your ship if you collide with them. And naturally, more and more of the map is being closed off as you fight. As players are eliminated, dead seas encroach and push the remaining ships together in the center of the map. It's not just a forcefield this time: the dead seas signal the approach of sea monsters who will rise from the blackening waters and smash your ship into splinters. This isn't a battle royale game where you can hide outside the safe zone and apply bandages to win.

There are three races in Maelstrom: human, dwarf, and orc, and each race has three different ships to choose from. Each ship has different perks and drawbacks: one might have better armor but slower speed and less maneuverability. A dwarven steamship I'm fond of doesn't just have cannons along the side but also at bow and stern, allowing you to fire in every direction—though in much smaller volleys than other ships. It all depends on how you want to approach combat: decide if you want to be better at long-range attacks rather than close-up combat, choose between being fleet and nimble or something more like a floating tank. You pick one ship as your first vessel, and can buy the rest later as you accumulate gold from playing matches.

Cannons aren't the only way to damage enemy ships. You can ram them as well, and certain ships are built more for ramming than anything else. You can also board other ships, sort of: pull up alongside another ship and activate the boarding attack, and you'll throw grappling hooks over, latch onto the enemy hull, and your tiny, unseen crew will do some damage before the attack expires. There are also special abilities you can earn: the only one I've gotten so far is a fireball that explodes from my bow, sweeping across the water and doing damage to anyone in its path.

It's a fun and fast-paced game as you swivel around to unleash broadside attacks, try to stay out of the line of fire as your cannons are reloaded, grab currents to speed yourself up and dart between the islands, and race to collect the floating goodies dropped when another ship is taken out. 

As you play and earn gold—there are NPC ships floating around the arena that you can sink and plunder—you also progress. As you level up you can add shipmates that give you faster sails, quicker repair abilities, and other bonuses. This means you might wind up facing ships that have better cannons than yours, improved hulls, and special attacks you haven't unlocked yet yourself, something I hope is taken into account via matchmaking. It's one thing to reach the end of a battle royale match and find yourself outgunned, but it's something else to be at a severe disadvantage right at the start.

Maelstrom is a nice-looking game built in Unreal 4, with pleasing effects and sounds, and lots of enjoyable details in the world and ship design (orc ships, amusingly, are pulled by two armored sharks). I only wish there was a bit more elegance to it: your hull integrity is displayed as a big, chunky white grid around your ship, and a massive indicator shaped like a trident extends into the water to let you know when you can fire. It's helpful that these elements are so easy to see, so you're never confused about your ship's health and capabilities, but it detracts from the art and design for these indicators to be so overbearing.

The toughest part of Maelstrom, from what I've played, has been getting a full match. Several times I've spent long minutes cruising around the lobby with three or four other players, ramming and bombing each other while we waited for more to show up, only to eventually quit because they never did. A successful battle royale game needs a solid playerbase so matches can begin quickly, and with a progression system it's doubly important to ensure players can find appropriate opponents. Maelstrom doesn't appear to have drawn much of a crowd, at least at this stage of Early Access. Here's hoping that changes soon, otherwise it might just sink.

BattleTech is a great tactical mech combat game, but it can be quite a time sink. You can turn off cinematics and follow cameras in the settings menu to help skip between turns more quickly, but it can still take a while to move through a typical engagement. Sometimes I just want to rattle through a mission, grab my salvage, and fly to the next system.

Reddit user mruts has a good solution that uses Battletech's debug mode to quintuple mech movement speed. There are other solutions that involve using CheatEngine and modifying text in the file structure, but they tend to affect the game logic, and not just the movement speed of the mechs. The debug console also lets you toggle the speed boost back to normal at any point.

To enable debug mode in BattleTech I followed Redditor wolf-grey's method. You simply create a text document in notepad, paste the following text, and save the doc as Battletechdebug.reg

-----------------------

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00  [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Harebrained Schemes\BATTLETECH] "last_debug_state_h176629417"=dword:00000001 

-----------------------

Then you double-click the saved file, launch Battletech and press control, shift and the minus key at the same time in battle to summon a little debug menu at the top left of the screen. Click on the 'speed' button to activate 5x mech speed, and then press control, shift and minus again to get rid of the debug menu.

Here are the results.

Wolf-grey lists this as a solution for Windows 10 users, but I'm using Windows 7 on this PC and it works fine. You can find an alternative method at the top of the reddit post. 

I've tested it a bit in campaign and skirmish and haven't had any ill effects, but all the usual caveats apply. Back up your save games just in case, there might be unforeseen problems with any tweak you make like this. Also, I haven't tested it in multiplayer either and would expect speed mods to mess with multiplayer synchronicity.

I'd love to see the developers add a quickplay option to let us speed up the game using dev-sanctioned methods, but until that, or modders produce the definitive speed mod, this should hopefully help.

Thrones of Britannia, Total War’s first Saga spin-off, might not be as sprawling as its main series cousins, but it’s still full of complications and new wrinkles that you’ll want to wrap your head around before setting off to conquer Britain. Whether you’re planning on leading pesky Vikings on coastal raids or uniting squabbling English kingdoms with words and wars, these tips will make your reign more successful.

Groom an heir

One of the first things any king needs to do is to prepare for their inevitable death. Thrones of Britannia sees the return of mortal faction leaders, and while they can become extremely powerful generals and governors, they’re still fleshy and vulnerable. If old age doesn’t get them, then sickness, assassination or decapitation might. You will have to end up playing as the heir, so if your eldest son is a drunk dimwit, it might be time for a change.

Desirable traits aren’t the only thing you need to look out for, though. If your heir is unpopular then nobles might decide to revolt the moment the heir takes over. If you can’t find anyone competent in your own family, you can always adopt a noble. But remember that adopting a large, bearded general is for life, not just for Christmas. You could do a lot worse than adding an experienced leader to your family tree, but that doesn’t mean you should be going out and getting new sons on a whim.

Dole out estates

There’s one thing in particular that’s guaranteed to make you more than a few enemies within your own kingdom: estates. When you swallow up a bunch of territory, you’ll notice once-loyal nobles spitting at you in the street, not taking your calls and conveniently forgetting to tell you about group activities. It’s not immediately apparent why, until you hit up the estates screen.

When you add an area that contains an estate to your realm, it’s immediately added to your own personal collection of estates and nobles start to get jealous. You want to start handing them out to your best buds—or the ones most at risk of rescinding your invitation to their birthday party—the moment you get them. Try to keep a few for yourself, however, because they can also be given as gifts to nobles who are pissed off with you for an entirely different reason.

Control leader traits

You can directly control a leader’s development by choosing what followers they receive whenever they level up. They also develop separate traits over time with or without your input. You can influence what traits they get, however, both directly and indirectly. Generals can earn some traits immediately when you complete specific objectives—like surviving a siege or fighting when at over 50 years of age. You can encourage other traits gradually over time.

If you’ve got a governor who you wish was a little sharper, for instance, you might want to build a library in the province they’re running. You can also find them a wife, whose traits then affect the leader. That’s more risky, though. It costs money to find a wife in medieval Britain, it seems, whether it’s for the faction leader or a random noble. Also, beware: not all traits are positive.

Make farms a priority

Marching up and down Britain with occasional breaks for bloody and gruelling battles burns a lot of calories, so armies need to be well-fed. At first, you’ll be limited to a single army thanks to low food, but you’ll have enough money to build and upgrade some farms, allowing you to expand your forces in a few turns. 

Resource buildings like farms and mines are no longer constructed inside settlements and are instead represented by small villages that don’t have any garrisons. This makes them a lot more vulnerable to attack, and it also means you don’t have to besiege a settlement if you only want more farmland. Once you’ve upgraded your own farms, then you start looking for ones to pinch.

You can never have too many shields

Shields are still incredibly important in Thrones of Britannia. This is the age of the shield wall in Britain, where warriors snuggle up close together behind a wall of wood and metal, waiting for screaming horses and men to smash into them. Every unit has a role, but it’s the shield-bearing infantry that are in the spotlight this time.

Plenty of shields means that you can dig in and make a mini-fortress out of men; one that can handle even terrifying cavalry charges. While most infantry units have shields, the size and accompanying weapon matter. Spearmen can make squares, giving them more defence against cavalry, while elite swordsmen can make shield castles to shrug off even more arrows.

Skip naval battles

After a break from them in Warhammer, manual naval battles are back in Thrones of Britannia, and they are still best avoided. This is tricky however, because Vikings are quite fond of attacking from the high seas.

Most warriors aren’t experienced seafarers, so whenever they’re on the water, they’re seasick, making them rubbish in a scrap. Vikings have stronger stomachs, however, giving them a distinct advantage at sea. They love hunting down boats and going on raids, so you’ll inevitably be thrust into a sea battle. They’re ponderous and messy, so my advice is to just auto-resolve them. If you’re playing as a less nautical faction, that means you might have to swallow extra losses, but it’s a small price to pay for staying dry.

Total War Saga games, of which this is the first, are smaller standalone games that hone in on a flashpoint in history. This time it's the age of Alfred the Great, King of the Anglo-Saxons and historical celebrity. It's fertile ground for a Total War romp, with the British Isles heaving with people who really don't like one another, especially the kings. And there are a lot of them. How many kings could you really fit in Britain, you're perhaps wondering. The answer is loads. Too many, really. Hence all the wars.  

The assassination attempt on my king, Áed of Circenn, splintered the alliance of Scottish kingdoms that had previously been united against the Vikings. All of Scotland then erupted in war. It actually worked out, giving me—the terrible pragmatist that I am—an excuse to swallow up all of my one-time allies and consolidate my power. With everyone at one another's throats, I was able to pick them off one at a time, Vikings included.

Each of the ten playable factions is part of a cultural group that comes with certain allegiances and grudges. The Vikings might not always get along, but when the Gaels rise up against them, you'd better believe they team up, or at least get pressed into service by the most powerful king. How long that lasts depends on how long the king can keep his vassals and nobles happy, or how quickly he can kill troublemakers.

With everyone being at a similar technological level and fielding visually indistinguishable bearded warriors, they're not as obviously different as the Romans and Germanic tribes (or the Empire and the Orcs), but each has a mechanical hook that helps make them stand out in a lineup. Viking Dyflin dabbles in the nauseating slave trade, West Seaxe hosts Witans that determine the kingdom's future, while Circenn has a legitimacy system that encourages leaders to placate the north by going out and doing great deeds, usually at the end of a spear. 

King's quest

Unique events and story missions offer up more flavour while having a knock-on effect, drawing in other kingdoms. Circenn kings can hunt for the Stone of Destiny, for example—a coronation bauble that Scotland and England have argued over for centuries. The hunt is a quest that, much like Warhammer's, sends armies all across the map in search of glory and treasure (and, of course, lots of battles). The quest forces Circenn to occupy several settlements, however, kickstarting little wars all over the islands. 

These events also appear for AI kingdoms, creating a lively map where major crises play out whether you're involved or not, though you'll usually hear about it either way. While you're getting in fights with the Welsh, the Viking kingdoms to the west might be joining forces to pay the Gaels back for attacking one of their settlements, while everyone up in Northumbria is kicking up a fuss over their murdered monarch.

As the undisputed ruler of Scotland, I was getting ready to enjoy the fruits of my labour. Some of my subjects didn't appreciate being conquered, however, and a small band of rebels managed to cause a ruckus and take over a town. In the battle to reclaim it, the king died carving a path to the heart of the settlement. The rebellion was crushed, but only a few turns later the whole kingdom imploded as nobles rose up against his heir. 

Holding onto my kingdom proved to be a lot trickier than building it. Thrones of Britannia's kingdoms and borders are fluid, with wars, uprisings and politicking forcing the archipelago to constantly shift. Old kingdoms once thought long gone can reappear, while powerful nations can be shattered in a few years. In the early game, when there are still five kings for every person, the cavalcade of events and battles means that it's never not interesting, in stark contrast to the victory conditions that become the focus later. 

To the victor

There are seven victory conditions in Thrones of Britannia. Long and short conquest victories return, tasking players with gobbling up a specific number of provinces, but they're joined by two types of fame and kingdom victories, as well as an ultimate victory that can only be achieved once you've completed another long victory and defeated an invading fleet that's determined by your faction. The new additions aren't great. 

Fame victories are especially hollow. All you need to do is generate fame by simply playing the game, and not even well. Fight, build stuff and just generally engage with Total War and you'll end up winning. Kingdom victories, on the other hand, are basically the same as conquest victories, but instead of conquering everyone, you've also got to conquer some specific provinces, their number depending on the faction.  

As the Anglo-Saxons, I achieved two victories by turn 30. In turn 20, the King of Miede died and I inherited the entire kingdom, instantly giving me a kingdom victory. I'd done nothing. Ten turns later, I also got a fame victory, though I'd not been aiming for it. It means that if you're playing as a large, established kingdom already, you're only a few turns from technically winning, absent any satisfaction. The solution, you might think, would be aiming for the ultimate victory. 

With two victories behind me, I found myself in a rut. I had countless vassals, more money and food than I could waste, and nobody who could stand up to me. There were still uprisings, but they were just small things compared to the wars I'd already fought. I started manufacturing problems. I adopted an ambitious noble, who started causing trouble because he thought he also deserved to be the heir to the throne. I was making purposefully terrible decisions just to occupy myself. This wasn't the case with every faction, though. I spent well over 200 turns leading Circenn before I ran out of engaging things to do. Even that's a problem. There was no impetus to conquer the rest of Britain. 

The events and unique missions that should have been spurring me on and firing me up to go on another war-bender dried up, leaving me waiting for the ultimate victory and the promise of one last, titanic clash. My enthusiasm had petered out by the time the ships arrived.

It's disappointing to end a game on such a sour note, especially when Thrones of Britannia brings with it a lot of positive changes that I hope will be continued through future Total War games, and not just the Saga series. For all of its tweaks, it often drills down into what's great about Total War as a series. For a long time Total War has been stuffed to the gills with systems that can sometimes get in the way of a good scrap. Leader progression, building chains and agents have consistently become more elaborate and diverting. Thrones of Britannia is comparatively neater. Creative Assembly has liberally sheared off agents, trade and military buildings, weaving the mechanics once attached to them into other systems. It's both slicker and more cohesive than any of its predecessors, though the streamlining does make some parts of the game feel perfunctory. 

Most of Thrones of Britannia's intermingling and streamlining of systems feels like progress, though. Pour one out for agents, because they're completely gone. Only in Warhammer has it felt like agents—or heroes—offered enough to make it worth putting up with what terrible pests they are. But even though they've been cut, agent abilities are now replicated by leaders. 

Eschewing both Rome II and Warhammer's skill trees, leaders now develop exclusively through traits and followers. Traits once again appear over time, based on how a leader acts (or doesn't act), as well as their environment. Keep a leader inside a settlement with a library, and they'll become more scholarly. If they win a decisive victory, they'll be able to command more respect and throw their weight around more. 

Followers, on the other hand, are dramatically different. Instead of being random hangers-on that leaders collect, they are manually unlocked when a leader levels up. If you want them to be more loyal and less likely to start a civil war, for instance, then you should give them a priest. Much like an agent in previous Total War games, the priest will also decrease public order in enemy territory. This removal of superfluous units from the campaign map makes sense for a faster-paced Total War such as Thrones of Britannia, although I'm not convinced that this alternative to agents is quite a one-size-fits-all deal.

While agents are out, there are still plenty of other units just itching to be recruited, a process that has changed considerably. Waiting for an army to finish recruiting is not a particularly fun way to spend a few turns, so Thrones of Britannia gives you one instantly. If you've got the cash and food to support 20 units, then you can get all of them straight away. They won't, however, have a full complement of troops. It's the skeleton of an army, filling up over time as new troops arrive. Instead of being stuck in a settlement, it can move around, get in fights and even go off and do a spot of conquering. 

So much busywork is cut out. There's no more constructing the same archery ranges and barracks over and over again, or trudging armies halfway across the map to reinforce a village where, for some reason, nobody can learn how to hold a bow without this one very specific building. There's definitely an argument that some of the need to plan out a long-term strategy is reduced when you can summon an army almost anywhere in your territory, but there's still a significant cost, both upfront and in the maintenance of the army. And since it takes a few turns for them to muster enough men to get to full strength, they won't be tough enough to handle an an enemy force that's actually prepared. 

Even if you've got fat coffers and a population that's hungry for a fight—people can get tired of constant warring, eventually, reducing public order—you're not going to be able to keep all of your settlements safe. Thrones of Britannia's map is incredibly dense, with potential targets rarely more than a couple of turns away from each other. Armies can rapidly swallow up territory, especially since most settlements are undefended villages that support the main fortified towns. These places make for particularly tempting morsels for raiders, as the lack of a garrison makes them easy to sack. It's thematically rather appropriate for a game rich in musky Vikings, but more than that, it creates new ways to put pressure on an enemy, denying them much-needed resources. If they're occupied, they can also become potential staging posts where armies can gain a foothold and seek shelter during winter.  

Reinventing history

Thrones of Britannia doesn't quite go back to the drawing board when it comes to the real-time brawls, but it does reconsider several things, along with bringing back welcome features like guard mode and formations. Shields get a lot of time in the spotlight this time around, and they can be used to completely halt cavalry charges and more effectively protect against assaults of pesky, eye-gouging arrows.

Once the initial cavalry charges have been repelled, however, the battles largely play out the same way they did in Attila. Critical hits mean that a lucky shot can kill an enemy outright, while warriors will now stand closer together so they can huddle behind the shield wall. But these, much like several other tweaks to combat, don't noticeably change the tempo or tactics.

The subtler differences between Attila and Thrones of Britannia may become more apparent in multiplayer, but there's less of an impetus to get into the nitty gritty when playing against the AI. On the default difficulty the computer is a bit overzealous, committing almost everything to a big push, only occasionally hiding units in forests or embarking on sneakier strategies. On the campaign map, the AI is quick to take advantage of the weak points in your kingdom's defences and retreat when it's bitten off more than it can chew, but it struggles more when it's on the defensive. 

In several battles during my first game, the AI got rather confused and let me walk to victory. In one case, the entire enemy force got so spooked by the cavalry that appeared behind them that they started pacing on the spot until they decided to charge at my army, one unit at a time, until they routed. In another, an indecisive fleet couldn't pick between two landing areas and, instead, sailed between them for the entire battle, allowing me to conquer a city nearly unopposed. Several of these AI cock-ups happened in quick succession, but haven't appeared since, after several days of playing.

Thrones of Britannia is the most unusual historical Total War instalment since 2010's Napoleon. Though it's still a historical Total War right down to its core, it feels like every feature must have been on the chopping block at one time or another. It's bold and surprising, but it's also a game that's often at odds with itself. It attempts to condense the Total War experience, throwing everyone into conflict and cranking up the pace, but it does little to stop the significant lulls that can happen in the mid and late game. Indeed, while the events and busy map initially make this one of the most engaging games in the series, it can suddenly devolve into one of the dullest once some of the pieces have been knocked off the board. 

Fallout 3 is, somehow, ten years old later this year. Having only played through the Capital Wasteland once myself, such a milestone might prompt a return—and if I do, I might play with kvatchcount's Simply Uncut mod installed. 

By my count, Simply Uncut reintroduces 53 NPCs, weapons, armour sets and schematics missing from the full release game. Margaret, for example, is the blase Galaxy News Radio technician that's heard on-air when/if Three Dog dies, but is never actually seen in the game. 

Mister Mulberry, on the other hand, is a bespoke Mister Handy found in Megaton; while Officer O'Grady appears in Vault 101 upon the player's return. "It was unknown exactly his original purpose," says kvatchcount of him, "but seeing as he had his own unique police baton, it was deduced he was a stereotypical Irish Officer. Placing him where he is now felt right."

On the weapons front, Simply Uncut adds a unique shotgun named Pa's Fishing Aid, brass knuckles named Love Tap, a bat named Curse Breaker, an American Assault Rifle named Wanda, and loads more. Armour sets include the likes of Pink Power Armor, Chinese Jumpsuits and The Devil's Pigtails. 

Full details on all of that and more can be gleaned from Simply Uncut's Nexus page, which is also where you'll find installation instructions. Creator kvatchcount notes the base game's Broken Steel, Mothership Zeta. Operation: Anchorage, Point Lookout DLC are required. 

Nixxes Software is a Dutch videogame developer who specialises in porting games from consoles to PC. Having partnered with Nvidia and Square Enix to bring Rise of the Tomb Raider our way in 2016, a similar collaboration will deliver Lara to desktops in Shadow of the Tomb Raider later this year. 

As you might've spied last week, Tom wasn't overly taken with what he's played so far, but did acknowledge Shadow's intriguing premise, and the promise of what's to come. A neat-looking, Predator-aping cinematic landed on Friday—and the following 'Developing Shadow of the Tomb Raider for PC' video dropped shortly after:

In a blog post, Nvidia says: "Following the success of this collaboration, we’re pleased to announce that we’re working with the studios once more on the PC version of Shadow of the Tomb Raider. This collaboration will bring all the benefits of the GeForce gaming platform including GeForce technologies, GeForce Experience features, Game Ready Drivers and much more to deliver the definitive PC version for the Tomb Raider series."

Nixxes' porting portfolio includes everything from Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver to Tomb Raider: Legend, Hitman: Absolution and Kane and Lynch 2: Dog Days among many other games. 

Check out Tom's early impressions of Shadow of the Tomb Raider in full over here. In case you missed it last week, here's the aforementioned cinematic: 

Shadow of the Tomb Raider is due September 14, 2018.

Cheers, VG24/7. 

Two cyborgs have traveled back in time to Fallout 4: one wants to kill you, one wants to protect you. That's the Terminator-inspired idea behind Marked for Termination, a new mod that adds two NPCs to your game when you reach level 10. The baddie, who presumably also looks exactly like Arnie, will hunt you down wherever you are on the map and attack on sight. It cannot be killed, which means you can try to incapacitate it or—probably a better idea—run for the hills.

Thankfully, the other cyborg will stay by your side at all times, and won't override any existing companions. They too cannot be killed, which means they'll always be ready to step in when the time comes. I like the idea of crouching in cover and watching the two machines duke it out until one of them needs to crawl away and repair itself.

To ensure the mod isn't a constant annoyance, the enemy cyborg travels around the map at a walking pace, which means that if you're always moving then you should be able to stay just out of reach. The mod's creator, ToroMontana, says "it's just for fun, mayhem and putting you on constant alert", adding that they may update the relative power of the cyborgs based on feedback. 

I'm not sure you could play the whole game with it because constantly skirmishing with an unkillable enemy could get annoying fast, particularly if they're stopping you from getting where you need to be to advance the story. But it does sound like a fun distraction, or even something that could be central to a role-playing run. Now we just need to work out how to make Sarah Connor in the character creator.

Grab the mod from its Nexus page.

Basingstoke looks like an adorable game about a group of scientists in a southern English town—until a group of angry alien monsters starts ripping your lungs and stomach out (and yes, the physics engine models those organs individually when you burst into bits). 

It's a roguelike, out this week, about escaping the smoking ruins of a town following an experiment gone wrong, and it wants you to use its collection of craftable weapons only as a "last resort", relying primarily on stealth and distraction. That means sticking to the shadows and chucking a mixture of bottles and poisoned kebabs at your undead enemies to keep them occupied.

If you do end up in combat, which is inevitable, then you'll die in one hit, but you'll have the weapons to hold your own. You'll find enough crafting materials throughout the world to whip up a variety of powerful weapons, from flamethrowers and blowpipes to cricket bats and chainsaws.

As you play you'll unlock new characters for future runs, and they'll all have different gadgets, crafting recipes and abilities. The starting character, the tourist, can take snaps with a selfie stick (I'm not sure how effective that is against the undead, but there you go), or spend money at shops, while the Thief will be able to crack open safes and security panels, which will presumably net you some decent weapons.

I like the look of its fast pace and goofy physics, which you can see in the trailer above. If you fancy diving in, it costs $25.49/£20.22 on Steam, GOG and the Humble Store, which includes a 15% price cut until Friday.

Developer Puppygames is responsible for, among other things, tower defense game Revenge of the Titans, which was rather good.

Thanks, RPS.

Fifteen people suspected of developing and selling hacking programs affecting PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds have been arrested and fined a combined total of $5.1m, developer Bluehole has announced.

Writing in a Steam post, Bluehole said that other suspects are still being investigated, and that in the cases of those arrested, cheating programs included malicious code designed to steal user information. 

Local authorities working on the case, translated via Bluehole, said: "15 major suspects including 'OMG', 'FL', '火狐', '须弥' and '炎黄' were arrested for developing hack programs, hosting marketplaces for hack programs, and brokering transactions. Currently the suspects have been fined approximately 30m RNB ($5.1m USD). Other suspects related to this case are still being investigated.

"Some hack programs that are being distributed through the internet include a Huigezi Trojan horse (Chinese backdoor) virus. It was proven that hack developers used this virus to control users’ PC, scan their data, and extract information illegally.”

I can't find any currency that has the abbreviation RNB, so I presume it's actually supposed to be RMB, the abbreviation for renminbi, which is the official currency of China—the conversion is roughly right. It's not clear whether all the arrests were made in one country or not.

"We’ll continue to crack down on hacking/cheating programs, until our players are free to battle it out in a totally fair environment," Bluehole added. 

This feature was originally published in Retro Gamer issue 175 in late 2017.

Wolfenstein 3D was so good that, when id Software took an early version to Sierra in 1992, the publisher quickly tabled a $2.5 million offer to purchase the pre-Doom dev studio. It's difficult to understate how impactful a game Wolfenstein 3D was—how much it changed things, how it raised the bar, decided it still wasn't high enough and so tore it off and threw it over a mountain. There were first-person games before id's effort, there were better games with more longevity since—most from id itself—but Wolfenstein 3D was the game that kickstarted everything, and made established publishers have a ‘holy shit' moment that made them slap $2.5 million dollars down on the table.

It shouldn't surprise you to hear that, in the end, Sierra's offer wasn't followed through. id was willing to sell—even going so far as to create a cute little piece of artwork to celebrate the purchase—but wrangling over payments, with John Romero requesting $100,000 up front alongside a letter of intent, meant ultimately Sierra backed out of the deal. Wolfenstein 3D would still happen, though. Its release directly spawned Doom and Quake, and influenced an entire genre still enjoying ludicrous popularity to this day. It didn't need $2.5 million to be a global phenomenon. It just needed the team at id to sit down and make it.

"My least favourite part of Wolf3D was actually making the levels!" John Romero, co-founder of id and project specialist on Wolfenstein 3D, says. "They were so boring to make. Commander Keen levels were a ton of fun because there was so much to them. Doom levels were even more fun to create—but Wolf3D's levels were just so simple to design because there weren't that many elements to the game." This meant actually crafting levels for the game was a tough order, and towards the end of things John was having to bribe cohort Tom Hall into keeping on going with the promise that he'd be able to buy himself a Honda NSX—if only he'd finish those levels: "I would say, ‘C'mon—let's finish these levels! NSX, NSX, NSX!'"

But this all jumps forward many years in the evolution of Wolfenstein as a series—id Software did not create the series, nor has it been the sole gatekeeper of it over the years. Rewind back to 1981 and you'll find a relatively unknown, overlooked and forward-thinking 2D stealth-adventure game for the Apple II by the name of Castle Wolfenstein. Created by the late Silas Warner, the original was ported to Atari 8-bit machines, DOS and Commodore 64 before being followed by Beyond Castle Wolfenstein in 1984. "Wolfenstein is the original stealth shooter," John says, "I'm really proud of the legacy of Castle Wolfenstein—the series that Silas Warner created out of thin air. His inspiration came while watching the 1961 movie The Guns Of Navarone. That night, Silas was at a 7-Eleven and played Berzerk for the first time. He thought about taking the design of Berzerk and replacing the robots with Nazis, and voila, Castle Wolfenstein's idea was born.

"He combined his game with another of his creations, The Voice, which could play back digitized audio, which is how the talking Nazis came about. This was all very revolutionary in 1981, and unless you were playing on an Apple II back then you have no idea how awesome the game was at the time." These originals set the scene, with a castle, Nazis, violence against said Nazis, digitised sound and, honestly, not a huge amount other than that tying them to later releases. They were influential, of course, and John admits he and the id team had tried to incorporate elements from these games in the series' 3D debut: "We replicated a few of the features in the original game such as dragging dead bodies and opening crates. We even got it working so if a guard saw a dead body he tried finding the player."That's where the similarities began to fade, though—Wolf3D was shaping up to be a quick run-and-gun that felt great to those playing it. "The problem is that the game came to a dead stop when you did these things," John says. "We didn't want to slow it down so we actually removed the features and left it fast." The intention—the initial idea, even—was always to make a 3D version of Castle Wolfenstein, but in creating the game it soon became something similar only in setting and name than anything else. What we ended up with was a game of mazes and exploration, secrets and hidden gold stashes, Nazi soldiers shouting, 'Halt!' and SS officers crying, 'Mein Leben!' when gunned down. It was nothing short of revolutionary for the time, but the worry was still there: would a reimagining of a little-known, decade-old title be able to succeed?

The first of BJ Blazkowicz's Nazi-bashing adventures blew away all expectations—and these were already high. Players in 1992 were pumped for the release. Even with the weight of expectation on its shoulders, the game outperformed even id's expectations—a hoped-for $60,000 first royalty cheque landed with $40,000 more than that on it. "The press for Wolfenstein 3D was incredible," John says. "People were mentally devastated when they played this hyper-fast 70fps Nazi-killing blastfest. They wrote all about it in the pre-internet magazines of 1992. We followed up with Spear Of Destiny and sent it out on 18 September, 1992. So for about a year and a half after the launch of Wolf3D we had pretty much the most popular FPS around… until Doom launched."

The inevitable array of ports followed, with new weapons, missions, graphics and more added to different versions—and these ports would continue well into the mid-Nineties even while id moved further away from the game-changing game it had come up with. First Doom, then Quake—id Software had other home made projects to concentrate on, so Wolfenstein remained fallow but not forgotten for a number of years. An aborted attempt to make a sequel at Apogee under the stewardship of id alumnus Tom Hall became Rise Of The Triad, but other than that, the game that had taken around four months to develop had no follow-up for almost a decade.

The return

Nine years after Wolfenstein 3D had written a new rulebook for games, a return was on the cards—and Gray Matter stepped up to develop Return To Castle Wolfenstein. While id had moved on from the series, there was still a lot of love for it internally. "Many of us wanted to see a new Wolf game made and were searching for a development team," Todd Hollenshead, then-CEO of id explains. "We knew Gray Matter well and had been impressed by their work on Redneck Rampage (as Xatrix) and on the Quake II mission pack they developed for us. Drew Markham, the studio head of Gray Matter, came to our offices one day and pitched us on the idea of him and his team developing a new Wolfenstein game."The demo Drew showed us that day was jaw-dropping. It was a perfect demo because it captured the imagination of what the potential could be for a modern Wolfenstein." This dark, atmospheric reimagining of Wolf3D brought a more robust storyline to the fore along with a much greater emphasis on the occult—along with bringing back BJ and his proclivity for shooting Nazis in the face. "When Drew left the office, we all knew that he was going to be the guy we handed the franchise over to take forward," Todd adds.

One of the people who worked on the pitch demo was Maxx Kaufmann, art director on Return To Castle Wolfenstein, who explains the process. "We did a snow level demo, there was a courtyard and a little interior of a castle," he says, "One of the funny things was we had an alarm—if you didn't kill the guys in the proper amount of time a guy would run off and set off the alarm, and the alarm was from Raiders Of The Lost Ark—the woman yelling, ‘Alarm!', so it was pretty funny. We just put in our take on what we thought Wolfenstein would be, and it was cool snowy outdoor castle little level, it couldn't have been more than like five rooms—but it was a combination of the five rooms, the interior and exterior and the AI having the ability to set off the alarm that I suspect was what made them go with us."

With the development team chosen, work began with Gray Matter reporting to id, which was working directly with Activision as a publisher. This was a relationship that ran relatively smoothly: "Really id just let us go. BJ Blazkowicz—what he looked like and how he was represented—was a big deal," Maxx explains. "The story they let us go with—they had a knowledge of it, but I don't remember us changing gears or anything with what we wanted to do there. My impression was that they liked what we did and they had trust in us and thought we were going to do a good job." It was elsewhere id did step up to the plate—specifically to manage the expectations of the publisher. "They told Activision, ‘The game's going to come out when it's going to come out, and it's going to be a good game.' They absolutely made sure that Activision didn't rush," Maxx remembers.

Instead of a master-servant relationship, RTCW was made with collaboration and a spirit of helpfulness in mind. While id's involvement was limited, people from the studio were involved in helping out with areas like animation, advising on art and helping to research in areas like World War 2 timelines for added authenticity. In a game featuring robotic, Tesla-coil-powered undead Nazis. "There was a ton of World War 2 research that went into the development," Todd explains. "Including uniform designs, weapons (both actual and fantasy), and even locations for parts of the games to take place. I think that helped us convey a more compelling singleplayer narrative and helped make the player feel like a war hero saving the world from Nazis."

But things were by no means po-faced—Maxx pointed out some of the best fun he had in making RTCW involved the outlandish themes featured in the game. "The idea this Nazi technology had gone beyond, so you had these Frankenstein creatures, the electrical currents going through them and stuff—it just added to the visual interest and excitement. Excitement is a term I would use on our end to do something that was different—it wasn't just straight World War 2." 

Fun doesn't immediately mean it was an easy process, of course, and Maxx recalled how being given a single day off during development was cause for celebration: "I was so excited to have a Sunday off in a month," he laughs. "I was excited about having one day off. That's how crazy we were working. It was every day of the month, and if you had a day off, you were excited. I don't know if I could do that now, I was young then—but I just remember, it seems so funny now, being excited to have a day off: ‘Thank you! Oh my god I have one day off! This is great!' Like, you couldn't do your laundry, you couldn't do anything... you weren't even in your house that much that you could get it dirty."

The dreaded crunch might be viewed differently through a modern lens, but Return To Castle Wolfenstein released to rapturous applause, greedily guzzled up by players eager to see what the homecoming king could bring to the genre it lit a fire under. Some of those players were even located inside id's office. "RTCW is my favourite of the franchise and one of my all time favourite games," Todd says. "I can't even remember how many times I played the entire singleplayer game start to finish. We would have contests at id to see how far you could get using only the knife or until the alarm was sounded and guards were called on you while the game was in development."

The game ended up with a much bigger impact on the wider sphere of things, though, thanks not to its ‘good versus evil—gone crazy' premise (copyright Maxx Kaufmann, 2017), but because of something Wolf3D didn't feature in the first place: multiplayer. With then-unique modes based around objectives rather than just killing anyone you saw, class-based systems and an early capture the flag all on offer, it delighted all but some Doom and Quake purists. And it was from the healthy multiplayer scene on Return To Castle Wolfenstein that an entire developer was spawned, Splash Damage.

"RTCW almost didn't have any multiplayer," Todd reveals to us. "Gray Matter was behind schedule and had no resources to put on multiplayer. From id, we enlisted Brandon James from Nerve to sit down with a few of us and come up with a whole new design and from that point singleplayer and multiplayer were developed almost completely independently with the exception of id being in the middle, guiding and assisting with both." Part of that process saw the enlistment of mod teams to help with things like building new maps and—in the case of Quake III map pack veterans Splash Damage, then a ragtag bunch of amateurs—help with development of patches. This relationship built up between the fledgling studio and the masters at id soon led to bigger plans, with the small team at Splash Damage putting together a single-player demo for a RTCW expansion it had been told about.

"We were asked to pitch for a Wolfenstein project—I think it was a mission pack for RTCW," explains Arnout Van Meer, co-founder of Splash Damage. "So what we did, as a multiplayer team which had only worked on multiplayer content, was pitch a single-player mission for the game. We managed to get a full level with full voice acting, NPCs, new weapons and more done in a week—we sent it to Activision on a Sunday and when they got back to us they gave us a multiplayer project. Which made a lot more sense."This project shifted from a mission pack to a multiplayer-only add-on, rebadged and renamed as Enemy Territory: Wolfenstein, and suffered through a fair bit of uncertainty and confusion until its eventual release as a free, standalone multiplayer game. Rather than being ignored and forgotten, it—like Wolfenstein 3D before it—set the standard for the genre, blew the gaming public away and, ultimately, resulted in those at Splash Damage earning the team full-time careers in development. "I don't know what Splash Damage would even be if id and Activision hadn't decided to put Enemy Territory out as a free goodwill gesture," says Ed Stern, lead writer at the studio. "It was a really good game, but it was just the most colossal stroke of good luck. There wasn't anything like it at the time."

Under the stewardship of id and Activision, Splash Damage went through a huge learning experience in development of Enemy Territory, cutting content, dealing with bottlenecks, fiddling (then unfiddling) grenade physics and so much more. But all along it was supported by the established studio and publisher, partly because the game being made was so very new. "One thing we started doing was having RPG elements, introducing XP to a first-person shooter," Arnout says. "It made it so much more accessible to players—you could die while going for that objective, but you improve over time and your character gets better. We were one of the first games to do that."

The modern age

While the impact of Enemy Territory: Wolfenstein is still being felt in the world of online gaming as a whole—so much of what it introduced, or at least popularised, is the standard these days—it was the Wolfenstein series that briefly took the RPG element to heart, with the release of Wolfenstein RPG on iOS in 2008. This was a fine distraction in the series, but not really enough to keep the committed fans happy—they wanted something new, something big, a continuation of what began with Return To Castle Wolfenstein. They got… Wolfenstein.

"I think Raven always believed they had great ideas to bring to Wolf, but were thwarted by that awesome demo that Gray Matter gave us," Todd explains. "Nearly ten years later on, they finally got their chance to pitch us on all their ideas with a cool demo of their own." With Activision keen for Raven and id to work together and Gray Matter no longer existing, the decision to pass on the Wolfenstein mantle to another studio once again was taken. Jason Mojica, level designer at Raven on Wolfenstein 2009, was just a junior on the project but saw how eager even the veterans were to make something great. "Our veterans were on point when nothing was holding them back, they were a powerhouse of raw dev. As a junior at the time, it was such a nice place to be, soaking up experience. They were very good at keeping an open mind and listening to everyone's suggestions. We had a very strong team mentality."

But even with the talent at the helm and the enthusiasm of working on an already legendary series, the reputation of Wolfenstein 2009 ended up being, it's fair to say, not stellar. The game was serviceable and had some nice ideas—it looked good and played well enough—but there was a spark missing from it that people expected from such a trailblazing series. All the same, those who worked on it still had a fondness for it. "Back in 2008 I was very much a junior, just enjoying the process around me," Jason says. "I didn't have much thought on the holistic design of the game. The flaws or issues that occurred weren't as noticeable to my eye. Now, after being in the industry for so long, those types of things are pretty glaring. I would agree with some of the criticism, but It's hard for me to think negatively about the game, since I enjoyed working on it so much." And Todd agrees, "Wolfenstein 2009 gets overlooked. I think much of that has to do with it being released in the middle of a console transition and a development philosophy shift away from just totally selling out for the PC game."

So the series remained dormant once more, this time with players not quite as eager for the next entry to the series. Of course, with the ravenous hunger not quite being there from the buying public, there was the shortest gap yet between two mainstream Wolfenstein releases. We saw another gap though this time it was only five, until Bethesda (now owners of id Software) handed the licence to MachineGames. How did they turn out? Well, we asked John, the main proponent for making Wolfenstein what it is today, for his thoughts. "I think the most recent New Order/Old Blood games were so well done. I'm a big fan of them," he says. "Awesome graphics, super violence, great story. Really, it's just so well made. We brought the series back to life with our 1992 Wolfenstein 3D, followed by Spear Of Destiny. For a while it was looking like Wolfenstein would be coming back every ten or so years.

"It's nice that it's such an active series now with Bethesda at the helm. Silas [Warner] would be proud."