While its Early Access period provided an open-ended survival experience in the frosty Canadian wilderness, The Long Dark was always getting a story-oriented mode as well. Dubbed Wintermute, the first two episodes of the five episode series are already out, and studio Hinterland has announced today that the third episode will release this December.

Episode three will follow Dr. Astrid Greenwood, providing a different perspective of events that occurred in the previous two episodes. "You’ll meet new survivors, explore a new region, and find out more about the events prior to, and after, the First Flare event that engulfed Great Bear Island -- and perhaps the rest of the world -- into 'the long dark'", the new update reads.

As for the reworks of the first two episodes, they'll now offer a "more open and flexible mission structure", in an effort to make the narrative-centric episodes a bit less linear. There's an overhauled dialogue UI, a new intro sequence for episode one, and even "major" new story elements: in other words, it'll definitely be worth replaying these. There are plenty of other additions and changes too, which you can read about in the diary entry.

But all this cool new stuff comes with a caveat: "Please note that because so much has changed, in-progress playthroughs of Episode One or Two will be wiped when the Redux versions are released in December," the post continues. "Players who have already completed the original versions of Episodes One and Two and who wish to just continue directly to Episode Three will not be affected by the save wipe. So, if you are in the midst of a Wintermute playthrough and don’t want to lose your progress, you have until December to complete it."

As for the sandbox survival mode, a new update arrived for that in June, adding a new region and an overhauled cooking system.

A player has created a tribute to Hello Games founder Sean Murray in No Man's Sky by carefully arranging construction tiles on a planet's surface. The tribute is pretty big, as you can see from the images above and below, so if you happen to be flying over a planet and spot Murray's face looking back up at you, you're not crazy.

"I got an image of Sean, removed the color, resized it to 37 x 50 pixels, posterized it to 4 levels, then used the resulting image as a guide and counted carefully. Time consuming, but not difficult," tweeted the tribute's creator.

The tribute, and its creator's base, are in the Euclid Galaxy, and the portal address of the planet was provided on twitter in case you want to give it a flyby yourself.

Thanks, Destructoid.

The law enforcement management sim/adventure This Is the Police 2 went live today on Steam. And if you're saying to yourself, "But I thought it wasn't supposed to come out until August 2," then you're pretty much reliving the conversation I had earlier today with the PR rep. As it turns out, the game did come out early—and there is a reason. 

Remember in 2016 when This Is the Police was delayed by a couple of days, not due to any technical problems but because publisher EuroVideo forgot to click on "ready for final approval from Steam?" Putting This Is the Police 2 out early, apparently, is a way to balance the cosmic scales. 

"For the sequel, they decided to flip the scenario and secretly launch it a few days before the planned release date as a call back to that," the rep told me. He also admitted that he wasn't sure whether or not they were actually going to go through with it until yesterday.

This Is the Police 2 sees Jack Boyd, the anti-hero of the first game, evade the noose and take up a job advising the sheriff of a remote, small-town police force. The corruption-driven narrative of the first game is bolstered by the addition of an XCOM-flavored layer of tactical combat. Does it work? Read our review (which also went live today) to find out. 

Donut County is a story-based physics puzzle game about raccoon and a hole in the ground that steals people's trash, and based on that description alone you can probably tell whether or not it's something you want to play. If it is, then you'll be happy to hear that publisher Annapurna Interactive announced today that it will be released to one and all on August 28. 

The Steam page explains what Donut County is all about, sort of: "Raccoons have taken over Donut County with remote-controlled trash-stealing holes. You play as BK, a hole-driving raccoon who swallows up his friends and their homes to earn idiotic prizes," it says. "When BK falls into one of his own holes, he’s confronted by his best friend Mira and the residents of Donut County, who are all stuck 999 feet underground… and they demand answers!" 

Mechanically, you'll explore homes, each one providing a unique environment to bang around in, steal stuff and combine it into different, weirder stuff, and then fire that stuff back out of the hole to solve puzzles, or maybe just because you like breaking things. The ultimate goal is, apparently, to swallow up the entire county. Because that's what raccoons do, man.

It sounds weird, and I like weird, but what makes it noteworthy is that it's being developed by Ben Esposito, a level designer on The Unfinished Swan and design consultant on What Remains of Edith Finch. That suggests that there's at least the possibility of more going on in the game than a raccoon, a hole, and smashing things for kicks. Maybe there isn't, too, but I'm anxious to find out. Donut County will also be available on GOG, but isn't listed there yet.   

Deep down, I think we've all wanted to burn down a house.

Not out of vengeance, or a half-baked insurance scam, or to send a message to a crosstown mob boss. To me, pyromania is simply the most relatable form of gleeful mass destruction. Who isn't a little bit entranced by a towering inferno? Of course, in real life you can't work out your emotional baggage through incendiary therapy without getting the cops called on you, but videogames fill the void.

If we're being honest, games have only recently really helped us get in touch with our latent pyromaniac instincts. It was difficult to program inspiring flames on a Commodore 64, and the less said about Doom's pepperoni pizza take on lava the better. But that started to change in 2008, with the release of Far Cry 2 and its unprecedented wildfire mechanics.

"To me [Ubisoft] really nailed how fire should feel and I loved how it would burn the grass and environment, such a wonderful touch," says Bill Munk, creative director of Killing Floor 2, which itself is a game with an incredibly satisfying flamethrower. He's right. Open world sandboxes weren't exactly a rarity in the late-aughties, but Far Cry 2 was one of the first times our machines packed the processing power to handle the physics estimations necessary to set those open-worlds on fire. We haven't looked back since.

"I really think flame weapons are so fun because of the extreme destruction they cause to NPCs and to the environment," continues Munk, when I ask him why he thinks players enjoy a healthy bit of incineration every now and then. "It's such a fun power trip, not to mention fire-based weapons are generally more forgiving on how accurate you need to be with your aim." 

Today, we're seeing games that play with fire on a more granular, mechanical level, rather than the engine-porn stagecraft it's been used for in the past. The best example I can think of is probably Larian Studios' Divinity series, which has persistently injected an immersive suite of environmental effects into the relative solemnity of a turn-based RPG.

I've always found this screenshot, where a rustic wooden platform is scorched to the depths of hell, to be an effective shorthand for why people who don't necessarily play a ton of strategy games still fall in love with the absurdity of Original Sin's magic systems.

"We tried to tweak duration, area and availability of fire skills so that the player is frequently put into position where their battle plan is spinning out of control and they need to improvise and take risks," says Nick Pechenin, systems designer of Divinity Original Sin 2, when I ask him how fire has been a useful tool in Larian's game design. "It was also important to us that although the ways in which surfaces are created and interact with each other have almost no randomness, smallest deviations in how the player targets their skills and positions their characters lead to wildly divergent outcomes, essentially generating fresh combat experiences every time."

It was fun to hear someone speak so intelligently about the mechanical theories behind cauterizing your enemies. For me, fire effects in videogames aren't about all clever design. Fire taps into my baseline, brain-bypassing id—the caveman wants and needs of my idiot gamer brain. But I suppose that's how it should be. A good blaze should be emotionally and aesthetically resonant, and when done right, it serves a distinct gameplay functionality buried deep below our perception. To borrow a J-school aphorism; it is showing, not telling, to the highest degree. With that, here are some PC games that excel in the art of pyromania. 

Return to Castle Wolfenstein

The urtext of video game flamethrowers; a lot of people's first quintessential next-gen experience back in 2001 was torching bunkers in that gorgeous, liquid-orange id Tech 3 goodness. I remember this thing being a little bit overpowered, mostly because of its ridiculous range, but frankly any good flamethrower should be. The only good Nazis are the ones conflagerating to death at your feet. 

For bonus Nazis-on-fire action, check out this trailer for the 2009 Wolfenstein's Flammenwerfer.

Far Cry (series)

We talked about Far Cry 2 above, which will always and forever be the crown prince of video game fire effects. But we also must give a nod to the other games in the series, specifically Far Cry 3, which had its finger on the pulse of the nation when it included a level where your shit-for-brains protagonist burns down a marijuana growing operation while a Skrillex/Damian Marley collaboration blasts off in the background. (It was 2012, what did you expect?) Truly a magnificent moment in the history of gaming that will only continue to get more hilarious as time goes on. 

Terraria

Terraria does such a great job with its physics for a 2D platformer, and one of my favorite ways that manifests is when you're digging through the sediment and throwing down an endless bread crumb of torches to guide your way back to the surface. It can be a pain to farm gel and wood to make sure you never run out light, but there's something kinda dramatic about zooming out and seeing the vast network of dimly-lit mineshafts you've inadvertently created. Especially for someone like me, who's always been bad at the aesthetic parts of crafting games. 

Alien Isolation

Alien Isolation is a game about being completely screwed, but one of the very, very few times you feel like you have a chance in that awful, no-good, godforsaken spaceship is when you've got the flamethrower on your side. One big angry ball of flame is all it takes to put the xenomorph on its bony heels, and that respite can be downright euphoric. The flamethrower as the odds-evener, as it should be. 

Diablo (series)

Blizzard prefers a heavy touch when it comes to their aesthetic design, so it's no surprise that their darkest franchise lays it on pretty darn thick whenever we make a journey to the underworld. Diablo's hell is absolutely unreasonable; a giddy orgy of blood, lava, blackened gothic chapels, and belching geysers of flame. Personally, I'm partial to Azmodan Lord of Sin, best known for lobbing infernal orbs of molten rock at your hapless barbarian (a mechanic that was later beautifully integrated into Heroes of the Storm). Good on you, Blizzard. We can only hope that Diablo 4 brings an even heavier dose of hellishness. 

Shovel Knight

This is PC Gamer, which means we can't mention Super Mario 64, or Banjo Kazooie, or Sonic The Hedgehog on this list. That's a shame, because the mascot platformer is forever betrothed to lava levels—nothing quite ups the ante like the chance to singe the overalls right off of Mario's nubile body. Thankfully Yacht Club, who has dedicated its existence to bringing picture perfect 8-bit-esque adventures to Steam, picked up the slack. Of course Shovel Knight has a lava level, and of course it learns from the masters by bringing a candyflipped Bowser's Castle that's challenging, dramatic, and thoroughly retro. If we could bottle and administer the feeling you get when you use that indestructible shovel to traverse the lakes of Hell, everyone on earth would realize that videogames are a force for good. 

World of Warcraft

It's been a long, long time since I played a Fire Mage in World of Warcraft, but one of the most satisfying feelings that MMO ever produced was the Presence of Mind/Pyroblast combo back in vanilla. I'll break it down for you: Pyroblast was this ridiculous, deep talent-tree spell that let you hurl a massive fireball at an enemy after a six second casting time. That made it kinda useless, because the downtime was so heavy. That is, unless, you also specced into Arcane to pick up Presence of Mind, which, when activated, would make your next spell cast instantly. You see where I'm going now, right?

Presence of Mind/Pyro quickly became my favorite thing to do to people in Warsong Gulch. I'd reckon to guess that it led to more Alt-F4s than anything else in Warcraft's early years. Well, that's not true. Remember when Rogues could stunlock you for, like, half a minute? Man, maybe World of Warcraft Classic is a bad idea.

Team Fortress 2

It's pretty hard to balance a flamethrower in a multiplayer game. Usually they're either totally weak and watered-down, or an ultra-scarce pickup that you see once every 20 games. So hats off to Valve for not only building out the Pyro as a crucial part of the Team Fortress fabric, but also making him fun to play! Torching a crowded control point feels great, but every good Pyro knows the value of the secondary shotgun when you get locked down in a dual with a Scout or a Soldier or something. The variation between the loadout makes you feel useful and multi-dimensional, rather than the kid hogging the cool weapons and sandbagging the team.

BioShock (series)

I love the way Jack's hand looks when he's got the Incinerate plasmid equipped. All of the biological upgrades in Rapture are horrifying in their own visceral ways—I never ever need to see that Insect Swarm cutscene ever again—but something about walking around BioShock's dead corridors with a left hand that's smoldering from the inside out is awesome, and troubling, and could probably serve as a tentpole for some half-baked fan theory. In this Randian dystopia, the Left is on fire! I also think BioShock does perhaps the best job of letting us live our deepest, truest arson fantasies. Just snap your fingers and set anything on fire. Easy as that. Great for clearing out crazy people in a fallen kingdom, and also probably great for party tricks. 

Dark Souls

You have to think that From Software knew their take on pyromancy was awesome, considering how it's, by far, the easiest school of magic to use in a game that's famous for its abstruseness. No degenerate attunement system, no gatekeeping stat requirements, just throw on your fire glove and start roasting skeletons. Everyone who's spent some time in Lordran knows exactly where they were the first time you were invaded by some refined griefer who rained ungodly hellfire on your poor, PvE-tuned knight. We all rushed back, retrieved our souls, and vowed to get our revenge in New Game Plus. And probably started learning pyromancy.

Yesterday we looked at some weird discoveries players have been finding while playing No Man's Sky Next, but today we want to celebrate some of the alien creatures we've spotted on our travels as well.

Such the enormous crabby monstrosity above. I like him because it looks a bit like he's got a bushy moustache below his beak.

That's definitely a moustache, right? I hope so, because I named it Mr. Moustache.

Below are the rest of the best creatures we've discovered since No Man's Sky Next was released.

Above is probably the biggest boy I've spotted so far: if you enlarge the image by clicking in the upper right corner, you'll just be able to make out my Gek character standing by the creatures rear right foot. He's a biggun! Got a little armor plating and some fins, too. For style or aerodynamics? Only he knows for sure.

On the other end of the size spectrum is this little fella. He's so short I couldn't even see him while he was hopping through the orange grass, but he eventually made it to a clearing and posed for a picture. I think he evolved from a space potato.

Speaking of small, I found a little herd of two-legged antlered aliens being hunted by a much larger critter. I killed the predator and started feeding the little joggers, who began following me around on their wee little hooves. A storm was brewing so it was eventually time to go.

Above is one of Andy Kelly's finds, a creature which looks prepared for just about anything. I see a beak, I see feathers, I see flippers, and it's bipedal. That about covers all the bases.

I feel like crab monsters are a bit overdone in No Man's Sky—I see some version of them on nearly every life-supporting planet—though it's enjoyable when they're quite large. As a bonus, this one had a wolf-like pal at his side.

Winged creatures, once known in No Man's Sky for being a massive pain in the ass to scan, haven't seemed to change much in Next, though this four-winged bat was pleasantly smiley.

This is perhaps my favorite creature because it looks perfectly reasonable. It's got a few feathers: perhaps I've caught it mid-evolution from dino to bird or vice versa. Or maybe it just uses feathers for keeping cool and looking good.

Another of Andy's finds, if it held real still and closed its eyes you might think it's a weird rock formation. That's not a bad survival skill to have, though visitors do have a habit of shooting rocks with mining lasers, so maybe it's best to keep moving.

Crabs, crabs, crabs. Like I said, they're everywhere. These are flying, though, sort of, or at least doing an air-scuttle. I don't know what they're doing up there when all the food is (presumably) on the ground, but hey, I'm not gonna tell 'em to land.

This plant monster is like a bag of eyes that sprouted some leaves. It doesn't get any prettier, either, as after I shot it and rolled it down a hill I found another disturbing feature. Some things are best left undiscovered.

Finally, this beauty that's a bit hard to puzzle out. It's got a long neck, a weird horn on its head, and legs that have about six too many joints (or perhaps the perfect amount of joints for whatever it happens to be) and a tail that looks like a spoiler flipped vertically. When I fed it, it stuck its head in the sand. Maybe it's trying to diet.

As we reported earlier, superstar DJ Solomun brings Los Santos to the world in his latest Grand Theft Auto 5-set official music video (see above). Today, he's got company, as GTA Online welcomes Italian duo Tale of Us to the Big Smoke. 

"As your new Nightclub sends shockwaves through the San Andreas party scene, English Dave is busy recruiting the best new talent to ensure your club’s reputation is top notch," explains this Rockstar Newswire post. "The latest rumor? Tale Of Us, Italy’s finest purveyors of lush and melodic techno, are available for hire and ready to step up as resident DJs in your Nightclub."

Live in LS now, Tale of Us debuts new and exclusive music from their latest album Afterlight—which will feature on Apple Music, Spotify and Los Santos' newest radio station Los Santos Underground Radio in the coming weeks. "Kicking things off this week is an LSUR-exclusive mix—Solomun, recorded live from the hottest club in Los Santos, with more mixes set to arrive in the coming weeks," says the Newswire. 

With its new tunes, comes two new modes of transport—which the developer says range from the sublime to the ridiculous. The former is captured by the four-door "superiority complex on wheels" Enus Stafford; whereas the latter is represented by a new camo-covered, nightclub-promoting blimp, emblazoned with the latest act's logo. Here's an action shot of both:

Guest List rewards this week include another complementary $100,000 bounty, vehicle liveries and some 'Galaxy & Los Santos Underground Radio' t-shirts. Property discounts are plentiful with 25 percent off Hangars, Bunkers, Executive Offices, Garages, Special Cargo Warehouses, and Biker Clubhouses. All of the above's respective renovations are 25 percent off, too. 

Oh, and there's talk of a "lost relic resurfacing" some point soon. We're told to "keep a lookout for the first clue to unlocking this unique totem later this week." I wonder what that could mean. 

More on everything mentioned there can be found this-a-way. 

Phantom Doctrine is a bit of an enigma. With a secret base you build across a campaign and turn-based combat on an isometric grid, it walks and talks like an XCOM set in the Cold War. But from what we've played, this isn't simply a reskin where sectoids are swapped for Soviets—refreshingly, Russia isn't the bad guy at all, but a secretive group known as The Beholder Initiative.

Instead of soldiers, you build a roster of agent-operatives, who populate a world map filled with enemy agents. Unlike XCOM, both your spies and your enemies can be captured, put under the influence of each other's brainwashing, then released back into the world for later instruction. Perhaps you'll lose track of your Czech agent Wendigo in Kiev, only to have them return to you weeks later at 1 HP, unsure if they escaped bravely or are actually a double agent.

A new video given to us by CreativeForge games explains how espionage and conspiracy-untangling fit alongside the trappings of XCOM—check it out above ahead of Phantom Doctrine's release date of August 14.

Planet Alpha began life in 2013 as a side project of then IO Interactive person Adrian Lazar. It popped its head above the parapet earlier this year—under the collective banner of Planet Alpha ApS Game Studio and Team17—and it's now got a release date: September 4, 2018. With its interchangeable environments, hulking robot baddies, and vibrant and varied landscapes, I think it looks gorgeous. 

But don't trust me, trust this trailer:

Aptly named 'Survival', the above depicts the plight of the hapless player who can "rotate and control" the alien planet they've wound up stranded on. Through its puzzles, stealth, platforming, and, clearly, survival mechanics I'm getting Inside, Limbo and even Earthworm Jim vibes from the above.

"Planet Alpha is the work of passion of a small but very ambitious team. We are building something special and we’re putting everything we have into it," said Lazar earlier this year. "Developing the game for over four years has been a roller coaster, so when we looked for a publisher we were very selective. 

"I am thrilled to have found in Team17 a partner who can offer us the resources that we need to bring this game to the players, but more importantly I'm excited to have a partner that truly believes in Planet Alpha as much as we do. I cannot wait to share our creation with the world." 

More information on all of that lives on Planet Alpha's website and Steam page. Here's another look at its announcement trailer:

Planet Alpha is due September 4, 2018. 

It’s no secret that Sam Lake is a Twin Peaks fan. The influence of Mark Frost and David Lynch’s cult series is felt in every game he writes, from the Pacific Northwestern folk horror of Alan Wake to Max Payne 2’s Address Unknown. This fictional TV series concerns a man being haunted by strange spirits including a backwards-talking pink flamingo. “Mirrors are more fun than television,” the bird says in a distorted, otherworldly voice. “She has dyed her hair red.” 

Address Unknown is the inspiration for A Linear Sequence of Scares, a brief but memorable level from the first act of Max Payne 2. Max visits contract killer Mona Sax, who’s hiding out in an apartment above an abandoned funhouse based on the show. Max comments that the place was shut down after the series was cancelled in the ’90s. But as he makes his way through it, the place is fully operational, complete with corny jump scares and cardboard recreations of scenes from the show. 

The show itself is a wonderfully creepy Lynch send-up, and can be watched on television sets scattered throughout the game. It’s never played straight, however. Remedy sometimes takes its stories a little too seriously, but Max Payne 2 is self-aware: particularly in the way the events on the TV shows Max catches snippets of reflect his own story. “When entertainment turns to a surreal reflection of your life, you’re a lucky man if you can laugh at the joke,” Max monologues as he enters the funhouse. “Luck and I weren’t on speaking terms. Or maybe the place was just too lame to be funny.”

The funhouse represents the city of Noir York, where Address Unknown takes place. The streets are made from plywood and cardboard, with parts folding away to reveal trippy tunnels swirling with psychedelic patterns, representing the show’s hero slipping into madness. “A funhouse is a linear sequence of scares,” Max says. “Take it or leave it, it’s the only choice given.” A sly nod, perhaps, to the fact that Max Payne is, for all its clever setpieces and narrative quirks, still a totally linear action game. “It makes you think about free will,” he continues. “Have our choices been made for us?” 

Later, Max escapes into the inner workings of the funhouse, where the animatronic characters who populate it are stored. Remedy was obviously proud of its advanced physics system, and one of the rooms here is full of props to knock over and shove around, including a ball placed near a tempting pyramid of paint cans. And it’s this area that leads Max to Mona’s hideout, where he finds her in the shower singing Late Goodbye, a song by Finnish band Poets of the Fall that is heard throughout the game.

Weirded out

While I love Max Payne 3, it couldn’t be more different from Remedy’s entries in the series. Rockstar’s game is a macho revenge story served straight-up, but the games written by Sam Lake feature elements of the surreal, of mythology and the occult. This isn’t always successful, of course, but the Address Unknown funhouse is the best expression of his knack for the weird and provocative, making Max Payne 2 more than just another action game.

A Linear Sequence of Scares is one of the most fondly remembered levels in Max Payne 2—which is odd considering you don’t fire a single shot in it. But maybe that’s why. It’s a rare moment of peace among all the cinematic, slow-motion bloodshed, giving you a chance to explore, rather than fight against the world. It’s also just really weird, even for a Remedy game, with a surreal, inscrutable atmosphere that’s undoubtedly inspired by David Lynch, but doesn’t feel like a lazy pastiche of his work. 

Quantum Break, Remedy’s most recent game, has the odd moment of humour, but otherwise it’s too straight-faced. I don’t know what the studio’s next game is, but I’d love to see it go back to the tongue-in-cheek humour of Max Payne and Alan Wake. I admire its ambition to tell mature stories, but you can still do that with a bit of dark comedy thrown into the mix. I honestly can’t remember a standout level from Quantum Break, but I’ll never forget my descent into the twisted depths of the Address Unknown funhouse.