In all our excitement about the announcement of XCOM 2 [official site] yesterday, we missed the cinematic trailer showing XCOM rebels battling snakecops in a futurecity. Perhaps it was for the best: Adam’s happy little dance might’ve gone on so long he ground his legs to stumps had he seen that too. Me, I’m too achy to dance today, so I can safely post about the trailer.

Are you okay to watch it? I accept no liability for any stumpings that may occur.

… [visit site to read more]

It’s happening. We suspected it would but that hasn’t prevented a swift happy dance before posting of the news could commence.

XCOM 2 [official site] is coming in November of this year. No underwater shenanigans and no race into space. Instead, Firaxis are proposing a grim future in which the alien invasion was eventually successful, leaving humanity as second-class citizens on their own planet. A couple of decades after the war, XCOM re-establishes itself as a hidden force of freedom fighters, striking back against the new world order. Procedural levels, new soldier classes, a mobile base, deeper modding support and more more more. Screenshots and details below.

… [visit site to read more]

Rumblings in the towers of Take-Two have gotten me wondering about the status of the BioShock franchise. GameSpot are reporting the publisher’s CEO and potential movie villain Strauss Zelnick calling the series “really important” to Take-Two at a recent conference. According to Zelnick, it’s so far sold a whopping 25 million units, 11 million of which were BioShock Infinite.

Zelnick has previously referred to this as one of Take-Two’s “permanent” franchises, alongside Grand Theft Auto, Red Dead Redemption, Civilization and Borderlands. But things have so far been quiet. No future full-releases have been publicly confirmed for the series – Zelnick notes he has no announcements to make of BioShock’s whereabouts. Likewise, Irrational Games are but a memory. Ken Levine is working on something about blocks or something.

… [visit site to read more]

Maybe it’s just a symptom of getting old, but increasingly I want to revisit games I feel I could yet get more out of far more than I want to play something new. I’ve got these two awful tendencies: one is to run away from something if it’s too demanding, and another is to be so preoccupied with collecting or unlocking everything that I don’t stop and smell the flowers. I deny myself appreciation for and insight about some games because I’m too worried that I’m missing out on some infinitely more ephemeral aspect of them, like whatever’s behind that door or what that high-level spell does. So these are just a few of the games I want to play again, in an impossible world where I had the time to. … [visit site to read more]

An entirely objective ranking of the 50 best PC strategy games ever made. From intricate wargames to soothing peacegames, the broad expanse of the genre contains something for everyone, and we’ve gathered the best of the best. The vast majority are available to buy digitally, a few are free to download and play forever. They’re all brilliant.

… [visit site to read more]

My word, check you> out, Chaos Reborn [official site]. Don’t you get bigger and prettier every time I take a look at you? I quite like the stark, neon outlines it used to depict its assorted bestiary back in the old prototype, then I liked the later move to Fantasy-Tron-With-Figurines, and now I like the ornate, characterful land its latest Early Access update presents even more. X-COM co-creator Julian Gollop’s Chaos Reborn always felt like a boardgame in videogame’s clothing, but its tailor has done so fine a job this time that it’s increasingly hard to see the boardgame beneath it all. Also new as of this update is a whole lot more equipment stuff, so you can unlock customise your wizard as you play. In other words, the metagame has begun. … [visit site to read more]

Who’d win in a war: Pagan Min out Far Cry 4 or Gandhi? Sure, Min’s great at murder and oppression and has a crack army and all that, but push Gandhi too far and nukes will fly. In Civilization V [official site], anyway.

Custom civilisations are one of the more common Civ mod types, but I do like the look of a new mod adding Pagan Min and the nation of Kyrat. They’re mostly focused archeology and exploration, see, though can always deploy those horrible sneaky Hunter soldiers, the gits in the hoods who pelt you with arrows then vanish. Yeah, you can have them.

… [visit site to read more]

Toward the end of February, Richard Moss documented the great AI wars that were sweeping through the Civ V [official site] community. If you haven’t read that feature, you should do so immediately. I’d intended to follow the 42-player AI-only game as updates arrived but when I checked in yesterday, it was my first visit in a good while. And, to my horror, I found that the game had stalled. Something was rotten in the code of Japan and the save file crashed when processing the nation’s 239th turn.

The save file ended up in the hands of Firaxis but Battle Royale organiser TPangolin managed to find a solution before hearing back from the devs. A few hours after I checked in, the problem had been fixed. The AI wars continue and, by thunder, they make for good reading.

… [visit site to read more]

A strange thing happened in the Civilization community r/civ on January 10, 2015. Inspired by similar, smaller-scale offerings by a Twitch.tv livestream and fellow redditor DarkLava (from whom he explicitly sought permission), user Jasper K., aka thenyanmaster, shared the first part of an experiment he was conducting wherein he put 42 computer-controlled civilisations in their real-life locations on a giant model of the Earth and left them to duke it out in a battle to the death, Highlander style (except instead of heads they need capital cities).

Since then, the practice has exploded in popularity. Reddit’s Civilization community has AI-only fever, but what exactly is so compelling about watching the computer play a very slow-paced turn-based strategy game with itself?

… [visit site to read more]

I think this was the game Jim suggested I try out a while back, given it’s an XCOM-like with steam-powered magical robots. I like XCOM. I like robots. Steam’s okay, I guess. Sadly, a few hundred nights of being repeatedly screamed awake had destroyed my ability to remember anything at that point, particularly when it came to the exact name of a game with ‘war’ in the title. Fortunately, today brought news that there’s a free demo of WARMACHINE: Tactics, prompting my bruised brain to offer a sleepy “hey, yeah, man, that might be it, y’know?” … [visit site to read more]