The series might have fizzled out awkwardly, but I’ll always have a place in my heart for Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars. Fast-paced strategy, three campaigns (and one expansion) of cornball FMV, respectably balanced multiplayer and it’s good-looking even today. Despite being produced in just one year, EA LA even managed to cram in solid mod support. Cut to present day and there’s still a steady trickle of mod releases and unofficial matchmaking servers keeping its community alive. Here’s my mammoth (tank) guide to getting into C&C 3 in 2019, and a few notable mod picks. (more…)

Following feedback from Planet Zoo beta players who were unhappy that its fancy Franchise Mode was only playable while online, Frontier Developments have announced they’ll add a similar mode supporting offline play. Franchise Mode is one of three modes originally planned, giving players more to manage while running multiple zoos around the world. But it ties in online system like trading animals with other players (to ensure genetic diversity in breeding programmes, obvs) and it’s just not playable offline. So hooray that Frontier now plan to make a fourth mode which offers a lot of Franchise mode’s features without the online bits.

(more…)

On my third or fourth game with Throne Of Eldraine, I realised I was going to lose if my opponent just kept stuffing his own damn cat into an oven again and again.

Throne Of Eldraine is the newest Magic: The Gathering set, coming to both the physical game and, more importantly for our purposes, Magic: The Gathering Arena. It’s a mix of Arthurian high fantasy and fractured fairy tales. The barrow witches at RPS sent me on a quest to play it in a preview event arranged by Wizards, and I have come back with a wealth of first impressions.

(more…)

With a back catalogue including Duke Nukem 3D, Doom, and Wolfenstein 3D, Bobby Prince certainly helped define the sound of much of early 3D shooters. Like most folk, though, I reckon he’s also a fan of getting paid for his work. Last week, the musician raised claims that 2016’s expanded re-release Duke Nukem 3D: 20th Anniversary World Tour included his music without asking nicely beforehand. Now publishers Gearbox, their CEO Randy Pitchford, and Valve Software are all facing a lawsuit from Prince for allegedly distributing Prince’s music without permission, nor paying him royalties.

(more…)

EGX 2019 is almost here, which means it’s also nearly time to start preparing our big indie game developer nets so we can trap a bunch of them onstage and get them to tell us all their secrets. That’s what EGX 2019’s Rezzed Sessions are all about: giving you a glimpse behind the curtain about how games are made and the biggest issues facing developers today, from game subscription services, finding funding, and just what exactly that strange hole shape icon is in Wilmot’s Warehouse. All this and more will be coming up on the very first day of EGX 2019, which runs October 17th-20th at London’s ExCeL – and you can find the day’s full schedule below.

(more…)

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, much like its players, will live and die by its roster of guns and weapons. Fortunately, from what we played of the open beta in September, the gunplay is not only as fantastic as ever but also as diverse as ever thanks to the new Gunsmith system, which offers a wealth of customisation options that affect the base stats of each weapon.

We’ll walk you through how the Gunsmith system works in this here Call of Duty: Modern Warfare guns & weapons guide – as well as detailed numeric stats on all 37 guns we were able to take a look at during the Modern Warfare open beta.

(more…)

What ever could cause the gentle builders and farmers of Minecraft to beat their ploughshares into swords and go on a murderous quest? Apparently Minecraft Dungeons does have a story to explain this, according to the game’s opening cinematic, as shown during MineCon over the weekend. Perhaps more relevantly to people who wanna murder mobs with their pals and yoink loot, Mojang have also opened signups for closed beta testing. First, that plot-pushing intro.

(more…)

As planet Earth continues its inexorable trajectory toward the encroaching black hole, and ever more aspects of our daily lives are being affected, even the weekly Steam Charts are feeling its affliction.

This may seem a more trivial aspect of our final months, but I believe it’s vital to recognise the severity of the impact here to better understand the wider implications for how deeply calamitous this situation really is.

(more…)

Agent 47’s no stranger to the mile-high club. Jetting off from Paris to Mumbai, New Zealand to Italy, I don’t want to think about how large our chrome-dome killer’s carbon footprint must be. Snuffing out billionaires is absolutely one way to offset your emissions, but surely there are greener ways to murder your way across the planet. Did you even know there was a climate strike going on while you booked tickets to the Maldives, Agent? For shame.

But we didn’t just come to Hitman 2‘s new Haven Island DLC to up our kill count, did we? There’s mischief to be done – you there, tour guide, what’s the best thing to throw my luggage at around these parts?

(more…)

Have you ever heard a football or basketball or (snort) baseball fan talking in depth about their passion? The numbers they can memorise alone puts some EVE veterans to shame. Some of them probably take it even more seriously than some of the players. Meanwhile, what’s a star ballchucker to do in their downtime, with the press circling and anything dangerous or unhealthy off limits? There’s only so much you can do when confined to a hotel.

It’s not really a surprise then to see footage of the NBA’s San Antiono Spurs playing StarCraft in between games back in 1999. Sport and games: together at last.

(more…)