Every week, we produce our Highs and Lows feature, rounding up the week in news, games and whatever else is drifting through our heads when we write it on a Friday afternoon. Since it's the end of 2017, we've produced a special round-up of the year, with contributions across our global team. Enjoy, and check back tomorrow for our lows of the year.

Samuel Roberts: Age of Empires 4 exists

Here something I never would have predicted at the start of 2017: Microsoft bringing back Age of Empires. Not just with enhanced editions of the older games, but with a brand new fourth entry, made by the RTS specialists at Relic. Not loads is known about it, but at Gamescom it came out of nowhere with a trailer, and in 2018 we'll hopefully see a lot more of it.This is the first new Age of Empires in 13 years, which is crazy. Along with MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries, it's cool to see series from that era of PC gaming return. It doesn't get more PC gaming than Age of Empires for me: that series was fundamental to my interest in PC back in the late '90s, after I sampled the first game on a PC Gamer demo disc.

I hope Age of Empires 4 comes with a scenario editor. Earlier this year, I wrote about how much I loved AoE2's scenario editor, and how it let you make 20 William Wallaces fight 20 Joan of Arcs. If we can't violate the truth of history with the most ridiculous large-scale encounters imaginable, it just won't be my Age of Empires. 

Andy Kelly: Paint it black

Okami is one of my all-time favourite games, but for years I had no easy, convenient way to play it. I don’t own any consoles, so I couldn't even play the 2012 re-release, and I had trouble emulating it at a stable frame-rate. So I was delighted this year when it was finally released on PC with 4K support. It finally looks like it looked in my mind when I played it on a PlayStation 2 and a tube TV back in 2006, and I’m stunned by how beautiful those ink wash-inspired visuals still are, even at modern resolutions.

A lot of great stuff was released for PC this year, so it might seem odd that my highlight is a re-release of an 11-year-old game, but I think that proves just how fond I am of Okami. As well as looking gorgeous, it's a grand adventure in the Zelda mould, full of interesting characters, beautiful locations, and puzzle-filled dungeons. It’s just a lovely place to exist in, and I loved every one of its 30+ hours. Yes, it's a big game, and the pace can be incredibly slow, but I can forgive that. It's a game to be savoured, not rushed.

Hell, I don’t even care that it’s locked to 30fps. In light of the game's quality, I'm willing to sacrifice a few frames per second. And I think it's healthy not to let technical limitations dictate your enjoyment of a game every time. When I first played Deus Ex it was at 15fps on a shitty laptop with onboard graphics, and it's still my favourite game of all time. So yeah, Okami is amazing and I'm glad I can play it whenever I like now. I'm listening to the soundtrack as I write this and feeling a powerful urge to return.

Tom Senior: Elite strats

This year I've been cheered by the gentle, ongoing presence of strategy games on PC. It's still rare to get a big blockbuster like Civilization VI every year, but War of the Chosen was brilliant, I had a good time with Dawn of War 3 before it seemed to falter after release, and Total War: Warhammer 2 is going to take over my Christmas gaming time. 

It has been an interesting year for 4X strategy games as well. Stellaris and Endless Space 2 continue to grow, and I look forward to returning to both games next year after they have had more time to mature. Age of Empires Definitive Edition will provide a nice reliable hit of nostalgia in 2018, but like Samuel I'm most excited about Age of Empires IV, whenever that's due. I've been trying to second guess Relic’s approach since the game was announced. The scale of the setting might inspire a move away from the micro-heavy approaches to recent games, and I wonder if we will see a move away from complex progression mechanics and unit upgrade systems in favour of a more sweeping, accessible RTS without the esports pretensions. The future is bright for strategy fans.

Tyler Wilde: Major players

None of my favorite games this year came from Activision Blizzard, Ubisoft, Bethesda, EA, Microsoft Game Studios, Capcom, Take-Two, Warner Bros, or Sega. It's not that these publishers have stopped putting out games I enjoy—many of them published some fine games this year—but that the selection of great PC games is becoming more and more diverse and plentiful. My best of 2017 list includes Divinity: Original Sin 2, Night in the Woods, Rocket League (which didn't come out this year but is still my most-played game), Sniper Elite 4, Absolver, and Torment: Tides of Numenera, none of which were backed by a major publisher. I couldn't say the same thing five years ago. And ten years ago? Forget it.

Chris Livingston: VR isn't dead

This is a weird one for me, because among the PC Gamer staff I've perhaps been the most skeptical of VR (possibly because I lived through the first round of VR pie-in-the-sky promises in the 1980s). And by no means have I changed my views on it: it's simply not cheap or convenient enough to become a part of mainstream gaming. And won't, I think, for another decade. Still, I think (and have always thought) the technology is neat if impractical, and I was a bit worried that after it failed to truly catch on for the PC, it might simply wither and die.

So it's been great to see that some developers and publishers are still embracing it. Bethesda went all in this year, releasing a special episode of Doom plus the entirety of Fallout 4 in VR. Both games have their issues, but they're also both extremely enjoyable through a headset. Rockstar released a truncated version of LA Noire in VR, Croteam brought us Serious Sam VR, and there were some smaller games like Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality that use the technology astoundingly well. Gamers are still interested, too: a Kickstarter for an 8K VR headset asked for $200,000 and received over $4 million.

VR isn't dead, and that's good. There's a long road ahead, major advances in the tech needed, and way more games required. It just needs more time, and the more developers (especially big ones) that keep their hats in the ring, the more time it'll have.

Wes Fenlon: Japanese games had a hell of a year

Japanese game companies have been struggling for years, having to spend more and more money to developer big games that bring in less and less cash as their players switch over to mobile. For a long time, this was only a woe for console players—we barely got Japanese games on PC at all! But holy hell, has 2017 been a great year for Japanese games everywhere. Off the PC, the Nintendo Switch has been a phenomenal success, and it's a joy to play games on. Zelda: Breath of the Wild is one of the best games I've ever played. Yazuka 0 was the talk of the town for months, earlier this year. Persona 5 is the most stylish RPG in ages. Nioh revitalized Team Ninja.

And on PC, the story has been just as great. Nier: Automata proved to be a smash hit beyond all expectations, and it's still being talked about constantly after being out for nine months. Sega and Platinum games brought Bayonetta and Vanquish to PC after years of fans pining, and both look and play as smoothly on PC as they deserve—easily the definitive versions of those games. Resident Evil 7 made the series scary again, something it desperately needed. With every success, it feels like Japanese developers and emboldened to plan PC builds of their games right from the start.

The highlight of my year was tapping into the excitement around Japanese games with an entire week of features devoted to them. The ones I'm most proud of are How Japan learned to love PC gaming again, which tries to capture the how and why of PC gaming finally sticking for Japanese developers, and Phantasy Star Online will never die, a feature about the incredibly welcoming fan communities still playing PSO to this day. I had both of these stories in my head for years, and publishing them was true catharsis. It's hard to imagine Japanese developers topping their 2017 output anytime soon, but that's okay. 2017 was a year of resurgence and renewed confidence, and I think everyone's excited about what comes next.

Jarred Walton: Ryzen shout, the CPUs are out

This year has been insane on the CPU front, and while we didn't award AMD's Ryzen our Best CPU of the Year, it's chiefly thanks to AMD that Intel has pulled out the stops and actually released some compelling upgrades. Starting with the Ryzen 7 parts, and then moving through Ryzen 5, Ryzen 3, and finally Ryzen Threadripper, AMD has become a viable competitor in the CPU realm once more.

My hopes for Ryzen were perhaps too high, but Ryzen 7 is still a very fast processor. The 8-core/16-thread Ryzen 7 models compete well against Intel's i7-5960X, i7-6900K, and i7-7820X, particularly in professional applications. But most games don't utilize lots of cores, so Ryzen somewhat unexpectedly does a bit poorly in games. It comes down to per-core performance, where Intel's architecture is simply better tuned at this stage.

But choice is a good thing, and we should see new Ryzen processors next year that build on this year's successes. Using an updated Zen+ architecture and a 12nm process should allow for higher clockspeeds, and hopefully AMD has refined the core design to improve latencies as well, which would boost gaming performance. There are rumors of new 400-series chipsets, but the new parts should be compatible with existing 300-series AM4 boards. Ryzen was this close to greatness, and the update may actually push AMD over the top.

Tim Clark: Finally winning something

When we moved into our new office our bosses decided to liven up the place with some motivational slogans on the walls. One of these is positioned just behind Evan's head and reads: "Results matter and success feels good". I have had plenty of time to ponder it, it wasn't until my trip to China in the summer that I truly I understood the management inspo. I was there following Muzzy's bid to win the Hearthstone Spring Championship, and though he ended up having a rough tournament, it was fascinating seeing how these young players deal with all the prep and pressure. My feature on that experience is my favourite thing I wrote this year, and China only cemented my love of the tournament scene.

I also got a tiny taste of what it's like to compete. Between the proper matches, Blizzard organised a press tournament to keep us out of trouble. Over the course of multiple 3-2 series victories (two of which I fell 2-0 behind in), and one absolute stomp against a nice Japanese lady who didn't seem to have played the game before. The rush of relief I felt when I won the final—and with a Pyroblast to face, no less—felt better than probably anything I've experienced related to gaming. Plus it meant I got to have my picture take with Ant and (the actual winner) Hoej, both of whom are absolute sweethearts.

Generally speaking I avoid any sort of serious competition, and though this was of course supposed to be a bit of fun, you better believe I took it seriously, even going so far as asking Muzzy for pick and ban advice. So I guess what I'm saying is results do matter, success does feel good. I just needed a children's card game to teach me.

Update: KWCH News has reported that 25-year-old Tyler Barriss of Los Angeles has been arrested in connection with the swatting. This isn't the first such incident in which Barriss has been involved: In October 2015 he was charged with making two fake bomb threats against ABC Studios in Glendale, California. According to Central Track, he may also have been involved in multiple bomb threats made against a Call of Duty: WWII tournament that took place earlier this month in Dallas, Texas. Barriss isn't identified by name, but the report indicates that the Swautistic Twitter account claimed responsibility for "ruining the whole event." 

Original story:

28-year-old Andrew Finch of Wichita, Kansas, was killed last night by police in what appears to have been an incident of "swatting." Deputy police chief Troy Livingston told the Wichita Eagle that police were responding to a report of a murder and hostage situation at Finch's home when he came to the front door and was shot. 

The report turned out to be false, however. More than a dozen people "who identified themselves as being in the gaming community" told the Eagle that it arose out of a dispute between two Call of Duty players, Miruhcle and Baperizer, who were actually teammates in a losing match with a $1.50 wager riding on it.

It's not clear what sparked the trouble but at some point in the argument, according to this tweet (via Dexerto), Baperizer enlisted the aid of another player, who goes by the name Swautistic, to actually initiate the swatting. Miruhcle effectively dared him to do it, but provided a false address (but one that was apparently near his own), which led the police to the Finch home. 

Swatting is a "prank" in which an aggrieved gamer calls in a false police report, accusing a rival of violent crimes serious enough to trigger a heavily-armed response. The police show up at the rival's door loaded for bear, everyone gets taken down, it takes hours to sort out, and in some cases it's all livestreamed.

It is also, quite obviously, a wickedly stupid and dangerous thing to do, making it even more appalling that this is something Swautistic known for (which is presumably why he was asking to do it): After reports of the shooting became public, CoD pro ZooMaa of Faze Clan claimed on Twitter that Swautistic has previously swatted, or threatened to swat, multiple other people.

Finch's family said in a separate report that he was unarmed when he went to the door, and that he didn't actually play videogames himself. Livingston said the police are looking into reports that the initial call to police was a false report; the officer who killed Finch for answering his front door has been placed on administrative paid leave.   

Note: This article was edited on December 31 to clarify that Swautistic, and not ZooMaa, has previously swatted, or threatened to swat, multiple other people.

Whether you like hardcore simulation and strategy or the explosive thrill of mecha anime, games about big stompy robots have always had a home on PC. And with MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries and the turn-based BattleTech coming in 2018, it's never been a better time to be a fan of games about 100-ton death machines.

While mech games span all kinds of genres, they are bound together by the simple truth that piloting suits of mechanized armor into combat is a fantasy that never gets old. It's an aesthetic that dates back decades to the very first MechWarrior in 1989 and now lives on in newer games like Titanfall 2 and Brigador. That's why we've rounded up a diverse selection of our favorite mech games spanning multiple genres—from the traditional hardcore sim to button-mashing character action. Whatever your preference, there's a mech game for you.

Titanfall 2 

Respawn Entertainment gave mech games a much-needed adrenaline shot when it released Titanfall in 2014, but it's Titanfall 2 that fully realized the potential of a shooter that contrasts parkour running and gunning with slow, strategic mech combat. What came as a complete shock, however, is that Titanfall 2's campaign turned out to be one of the best the FPS genre has seen in years.

Each level is an inventive execution on a single brilliant idea, like snapping back and forth between the past and present, that binds together a surprisingly affecting story about the bond between a pilot and his loyal mech companion. It's not nearly as tear-jerking as The Iron Giant, sure, but Titanfall 2 proves that even a story about giant steel robots can have a lot of heart.

Sadly, Titanfall 2 also became one of the bigger gaming tragedies of 2016. Despite packing in a much more robust multiplayer, the sequel couldn't compete against the other popular shooters of that year and its population quickly declined. Don't make the mistake of thinking Titanfall 2 is dead, however. It's multiplayer community is small, but there's still plenty of players in the more popular modes like Attrition—meaning Titanfall 2 is still one of the best mech games ever released.

MechWarrior Online 

MechWarrior Online inherited the august legacy of classic titles like MechWarrior 2 and MechWarrior 4: Mercenaries—both games we’d love to include in this list if they weren’t so damn hard to get running on modern hardware. But make no mistake, MechWarrior Online is a great mech game in its own right. The free-to-play shooter might not have a singleplayer campaign, but it captures the tense thrill of attrition-based warfare in its excellent competitive matches.

Each game is a 12v12 slugfest that ends with players earning currency and experience, and customizing their rides in between rounds. While that comes with its own share of problems like a long grind and microtransactions, MechWarrior Online excels at capturing the slow pace of combat that made the series so revered to begin with.  

Unlike most first-person shooters out there, where players can correct their mistakes with lightning quick reflexes, your life in MechWarrior often hangs with decisions made 30 seconds ago. Being behind the wheel of a lumbering robot makes it impossible to get yourself out of trouble once you get into it, making cooperation with teammates a crucial part of victory.

With an overly complex skill tree and an unintuitive menu system, MechWarrior Online isn't exactly friendly to newcomers. But it has a devoted community that is genuinely welcoming to newbies and has created abundant out-of-game resources to get new MechWarriors up to speed. And once you've gotten everything figured out you'll be able to customize hundreds of different mechs with over a hundred unique weapons systems, with all of it steeped in rich lore born from a classic game franchise.

Strike Suit Zero 

There’s an appeal to the lumbering tank-like combat of some mech games, but Strike Suit Zero captures the thrill of piloting an agile death machine packed with more missile launchers than the entire US Navy fleet. It’s space-faring Japanese mecha at its best.

You start off piloting a fairly standard space fighter, but pretty soon come across an experimental piece of military hardware called the Strike Suit. This suit is capable of switching between fighter mode, where you to fly about space Freelancer-style, and giant killer robot mode where you turn into a Macross-style mecha capable of taking down clouds of enemy fighters at the touch of a button.

The first time you line up your crosshairs on some 30-plus incoming enemy fighters and let loose that wave of missiles will give you chills. It's a mech power fantasy unlike anything else. Power, agility, and flitting from objective to objective while raining death and destruction wherever you go makes you feel like a robot god. And things get even more intense when you start taking on capital ships—the miles-long battlecruisers that will make you look like a bug, but never feeling like one. Thanks to two capital-ship-busting autocannons, you can crack open that battlecruiser faster than they can shout "nani?!" 

MechCommander 

BattleTech is the fantasy of being a warrior-engineer. You trade missiles and lasers with other bipedal tanks, you win or lose, and then you head back to the drawing board to repair damage, refit weapons, reallocate armor, and rethink your all-PPC 80-tonner.

MechCommander was the first game in the series to add 'tactician' to that job description, and it holds up remarkably well as a real-time tactics game. Over dozens of escort, search and destroy, and scouting missions, you command as many as three lances (12 mechs) at a time, waypointing them away from explosive fuel drums and out of the range of turrets as you duel with light, medium, heavy, and assault-class enemy mechs. I love the rhythm of the combat—the plentiful gaps as mechs take a breath to reload, rotate, or take aim. In those moments, you're anticipating an arm being blown off, or whether your Raven will dodge that Gauss cannon.

While MechCommander's progression system for pilots is limited by modern standards, mechwarriors can permanently die, have a set of individual voice lines (the death cry of Rooster, a clumsy yokel, is particularly haunting), and are charming enough. More fun is the battlefield work of trying to shave off just enough of that enemy Masakari or Thor so that you can salvage it, repair it, and bring it into your next battle.

MechCommander is abandonware—get MechCommander Gold, which includes a built-in level editor. Watch this six-minute Windows 10 tutorial to get it running properly. 

Iron Brigade 

Double Fine's not-quite-a-tower-defense-game spin on mechs is one of the most unique thanks largely to its campy B-movie vibe and WW1-era aesthetic. Don't make the mistake of thinking Iron Brigade is yet another tower defense game where you place rows of static defenses that usher waves of stupid enemies into killboxes, however. Yes, each level has you fighting off waves of aliens, and yes there are towers, but your primary defense is your hulking mech that you stomp around in as aliens rush your defenses—and it's simply a ton of fun.

There's a good deal of variety to play around with too. Your mech can equip a variety of different weapons that each bring a distinctive kind of destruction to the battlefield, and there's always an upgrade to work towards in between each mission. There's a balance that you'll want to maintain, however, as more powerful mechs mean weaker stationary tower defenses. New enemy types are readily introduced as well, which gives Iron Brigade a steady pace that makes it hard to pull yourself away from.

But the real star of this show is the weird B-movie quality of the characters and writing. Mech games are often gloomy and overly serious, but Double Fine brings a fun absurdity that perfectly complements the simplistic joy of blowing aliens back to hell.

Supreme Commander 2 

When it comes to sheer scale, nothing compares to Supreme Commander 2. This real-time strategy game is the exact opposite of the intimate brawling of MechCommander, instead reveling in the chaos as legions of robot units blast each other across sea, sky, and land. Battles frequently feature hundreds—if not thousands—of units that you can customize in real-time to adapt to your enemy's strategy. And if that weren't cool enough, you can even build towering experimental units—colossus-sized mechs that dwarf everything else on the battlefield.

With hundreds of units to manage, Supreme Commander 2 can be intimidating for those who already struggle to keep up with RTS games. Fortunately, an improved UI and the ability to instantly zoom out to see the entire battlefield help to keep things manageable even when fighting on multiple fronts while managing production chains. There's a lot of depth here too, as each faction has their own strategies, like the Cybran navy's ability to sprout legs and walk on land.

While the campaign serves as a good introduction to all these layers of strategy, Supreme Commander 2 really shines while skirmishing in multiplayer or against the AI. If you can find a friend to play against, few games will rival the insane scale of Supreme Commander's battles.

Brigador

Brigador is the rare kind of game that feels both nostalgic and refreshingly modern. Its '80s synthwave soundtrack, isometric angle, and gritty retro sci-fi aesthetic mask a brutally punishing indie roguelike that revels in chaos and destruction. When it originally launched in 2016, it was so difficult that it was actually hard to enthusiastically recommend, but the recent Up-Armored edition smooths that curve out while adding even more mechs, pilots, and missions to an already robust game.

With over 56 mechs to pilot and 40 weapons, there's an intimidating amount of customization and playstyles to account for. While the temptation to go in guns blazing is always present, hit-and-run guerilla tactics are often the better strategy. No matter how you approach combat, Brigador always shines in the moment-to-moment action. It's both extremely fast-paced and precise, and you'll need to choose your shots carefully even as you frantically weave down city streets avoiding fire from dozens of enemy units.

The appeal of mech games has always been closely tied with their destructive firepower—the ability to level entire city blocks with the push of a button—and Brigador captures this sensation wonderfully. Environments are fully destructible, and it's a literal blast being able smash through a skyscraper rather than skirt around it. It's still a punishing game where one split-second mistake can spell defeat, but Brigador rewards those who can stomach its challenge.

It's a testament to the strength of Monolith's orcs that they can even survive being stuffed into loot boxes, a fate more ignominious than anything Talion metes out with his swords. In a follow-up piece to his review, Andy Kelly noted that the presence of loot boxes hadn't really bothered him during his Shadow of War playthrough, largely because having them be loot drops made little sense in the first place, and the boxes never felt remotely essential. 

I felt the same way, and it's just as well because he was also correct about the orcs being by far the best thing in the game. The game's actual star, Talion, remains a largely unloveable, uninteresting character—essentially a thrift store Aragon. There's some fun to be had from his unhealthy codependency with Celebrimbor, and I didn't even mind the sexy spider lady thing, but you don't play Shadow of War for grand narrative sweep. You play it to hear orcs run their mouths before you run them through.

The sequel's crop of greenskin were even funnier than their predecessors, from the bard who will hunt you down and sing to you to the pitiful mewling wreck that's left behind after too much shaming. But as before, the best orcs are the ones who weave their own stories into your game. In my case that of course meant Mozû the Blight, the source of pretty much all my pain and enjoyment in Shadow of War.

I'll spare you a repeat of the Tolkien-length backstory and just say that being crushed over and again by Mozû made me more angry than any other game this year. Which, given that my two other main games are Destiny 2 and Hearthstone, each of which is a different sort of salt factory, is really saying something. For a short while my obsession with avenging myself on Mozû burned brighter than both of them.  

Actually, I am the boss of you 

Such was Mozû's domineering presence, that when the fucker finally succumbed to my (as it turns out, fairly obvious) plan to gank him with a bunch of poison-bladed buddies, I legit felt his loss immediately. Without the prospect of Mozû rocking up suddenly with a "RAAAAAAAAAANGER! REMEMBER ME?", grinning from ear to ruined ear, the game lost a lot of its piquancy, and I didn't feel compelled to stick it out for the final round of fortress sieges and light Nazgûl bothering.

Shadow of War, as an experience, definitely suffered from trying to do too much. Seeing each region map open up with so many collectibles and side missions felt somehow draining in a way that wandering around Mordor in the first game didn't. I did like a lot of the additions individually, though. There was enough depth in the skill tree to make builds that felt distinct and fun, levelling up legendary gear sets always scratches an itch for me, and the actual siege sequences were exciting the first couple of times through. That said, it didn't seem to make much difference how you composed your army, and made zero sense that all of your troops wouldn't follow you into the throne room for the final fight.

My favourite moment actually came as part as one of these occasionally tricky battles. I'd lost a couple of times to another orc with an unfortunate set of perks and his aggressive entourage. Down to a sliver of health and staring at a third death, one of my trusted lieutenants suddenly flew into view in classic get down Mr President style, but rather than taking the hit for me, he chopped off the chieftain's head, immediately securing the fortress for me. 

Of course I handed him the keys and a promotion. Maybe some players would've been annoyed by the AI interceding at such a crucial moment, but for me it was a rush. In a game about building up a vast force of brutal killers, you better believe I want them to do something of genuine worth when I actually need it. 

When the third Mordor game inevitably starts taking shape, I hope Monolith is able to somehow triple down on making which orcs you choose for your superteam an even more meaningful decision. It's equally telling that, for all we've written and talked about it, I still don't think any other developer—bar perhaps Firaxis with XCOM 2's War of the Chosen expansion—has been able to create computer-controlled antagonists that seem so gloriously alive. At least until your buddies turn up with the poison shivs.

It was inevitable, wasn't it? PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds keeps blasting through milestones for concurrent players: in September it was 1 million, in October it was double that and now, following its Early Access exit, it's hit the three million mark. To put that in perspective, the next highest game, Dota 2, has a record of 1.29 million (although it hasn't broken 1 million since February).

I did read a few headlines earlier this month claiming PUBG had already reached three million, but it turns out they were wrong (and that there were a few fake charts floating around). SteamDB confirmed the achievement earlier today on its Twitter account, and Steam's official stats page is also showing today's peak players at 3,106,358.

The question now is: how high can it go? I suppose numbers are likely to be inflated right now because lots of people have time off of work and school. And as you can tell by the time gaps between the million milestones, its growth is definitely slowing. But I'd be surprised if player numbers tailed off anytime soon. What's the ceiling? 3.5 million? 4 million? (Whisper it) 5 million? I guess we'll have to wait and see.

Alongside the concurrent player record it's hit another, more worrisome milestone: 1.5 million players banned. Cheating has been a problem for a long time in PUBG and it doesn't seem to be getting any better. Admittedly, I don't see many hackers in game (perhaps I'm not good enough to get matched with them...), but I see a lot of other players posting videos of cheaters slithering around in the prone position faster than you can normally sprint.

The number of bans was confirmed by BattlEye, the game's anti-cheat service.

The development team promised to do more to combat hacking back in November, saying that it was rolling out new methods for catching cheaters. Clearly, whatever it did was not enough, and if there's anything that could hold back the game then constantly coming up against hackers is it.

When I was a kid I read a lot of books that concealed things within expansive and lush illustrations, like Kit Williams' books, Graeme Base's Animalia and The Eleventh Hour, and a series called For Eagle Eyes Only that briefly convinced me I had special powers because my eyesight was so good. I thought I'd get the same enjoyment from hidden object games, but never quite did. The actual find-the-object bits felt completely disconnected from the stories around them, like afterthoughts (although I did enjoy Nightmares From the Deep, which at least had skeleton pirates).

Hidden Folks finally gave me what I wanted. For starters there's no plot, no story vegetables to click through before you're allowed to eat dessert. But more importantly, the art's hand-drawn in a perfect children's book-style, black and white and full of delight. Tiny people wave from windows, monkeys hide in bushes, curly tailed pigs trot about on a farm. Parts of the scenes react as you click on them, so you can roll up tent flaps or chop down bamboo or send a boat down the river to find a certain person or animal or banana or whatever. 

Every action is accompanied by a noise, and the homemade whimsy of the art is mirrored by the sound effects, which were all made by one of the designers using his mouth. A crocodile delivers a rarrr that sounds like an old man, cars honk at each other by going NOOT NOOT, it's all so damn delightful. Once you've uncovered enough of the hidden stuff you get the option to move on to another level or stay behind and keep playing. You can track down the harder things, every last worm or basket of eggs if you want, or jump ahead if you're getting bored.

Each new area is so much bigger than I expected. They make me exhale like a mechanic about to say, "This'll be a big job." There's jungle and city and a desert hippie gathering that looks like Burning Man only fun. New places have been added in updates, and I'm looking forward to trying out the snow levels soon.

Hidden Folks chucks out the mediocre story and adventure-game puzzles that regular hidden object games pad themselves out with like they're one of those crap salads that's 80 percent lettuce. This is just a game about finding things, getting hypnotized and putting your face as close to the screen as you can while you click around on all the interactive bits. It's like a book that reacts to your desire to see what's concealed behind this bus and around the corner of that house.

And when you find that last person tucked away behind a billboard or inside the mouth of a crocodile you feel like the government's about to come and take you away for secret tests, because you're clearly an extraordinary child with a special gift and your country probably needs you.

Valve News Network reported a couple of weeks ago that the venerable online shooter Counter-Strike: Global Offensive might be getting a battle royale mode at some point in the future. But modder Kinsi wasn't willing to wait for it to happen, so they went ahead and created one of their own. 

Called Go 4 The Kill—or Go4TK, to save time and space—the mod features a map more than four times the size of Overpass, and three to four times larger than the Source engine normally allows. As Kotaku explains, it accomplishes this feat by breaking its map into sections separated by mountain ranges: Crossing the mountains places you into what is effectively another map, but everything is connected so you can move back and forth seamlessly. Despite the size of the playing field, performance should be roughly equivalent to conventional CS:GO maps because there's very little "'unnecessary' detail," aside from what's required to provide cover for players.

While PUBG is commonly cited as the battle royale standard-bearer, Kinsi said the inspiration for Go4TK came from a different game. "With Go4TK my aim was to combine two games that I like: King of the Kill and CS:GO," they wrote. "It was mainly meant to be a challenge for myself to push the boundaries of whats possible with server-side only CS:GO modding. From the ground up I've carefully handcrafted everything, be it the map in itself or the plugin allowing for the actual gameplay to ensure the best possible integration." 

There are some significant gameplay differences between Go4TK and CS:GO. Bullet drop and travel time are modeled, running will not reduce firing accuracy, weapons have randomized inaccuracy but no recoil patterns, ADS (aim down sight) is very important if you want to hit what you're shooting at, and if you get shot yourself, you'll bleed—and if you don't do something about it, you'll keep on bleeding until you die. It is also, despite being much larger than conventional CS:GO experiences, a smaller-scale experience than PUBG: Kotaku says the maximum player count is 20, while the Go4TK site says players per game is "targeted at 49."

Go 4 the Kill was actually released back in August, and work has continued since. There have been setbacks as well, most notably the shutdown of North American servers in November due to lack of interest. Kinsi said on Twitter that they might be brought back online soon, "thanks to a generous Redditor," although how long they'll be kept around will depend on how much use they see.

Pathologic 2 is one of the games I'm most looking forward to in 2018. It's the remake of creepy adventure game Pathologic, which came out in 2005 and is considered one of the major influences on the modern survival horror genre. The remake smashed its Kickstarter target earlier this year before releasing a suitably weird trailer, and now developer Ice-Pick Lodge has put out a gif-heavy progress update and gone in-depth on many of the game's systems, including combat and autopsies.

First, let's recap what the game actually is: you're a medic trying to save a town in which a plague is running riot (hence the need for all the autopsies). You only have 12 days to do it, and you have eat, drink, and sleep as well as avoid the infection yourself.

So, onto the update. Shooting is not going to be central to the game, but the team want to make sure the guns are weighty, and they're "not yet happy with how it feels", they said in the update. The gif below does look like it needs some refinement, but I like some of the detail in the reload animation, such as the character pulling back the hammer before each shot (click the full-screen icon in the top right to see it in action).

I like the look of the game's looting system, too. Lootable containers are split into several compartments, each of which can behave differently. One might require a key, for example, or one might contain the plague infection, introducing an element of risk.

The autopsy system from the original game has been refined as well. There will be "no more looting bodies as if they were cupboards"—instead there's an 'autopsy interface' that you'll interact with, which basically means you're clicking and dragging organs. Lovely.

The game's reputation system has been similarly tweaked. In the original your global reputation went up and down depending on your actions, but now that's specific to neighborhoods within the town. So, as you move round the map people will react to you in different ways.

Lastly, the team gave an update about the progress of the game's setting. The town is fully built, but around a third of it still needs refinement, and they still need to create abandoned 'burnt-out' districts that were destroyed in an attempt to contain the plague. "The sense of place is arguably one of the most crucial elements for a game like Pathologic 2, so we’re making sure every corner of the Town feels right," the team said.

Clearly there's lots of work still to do, but what they have so far would suggest they're still on track for a 2018 release. For the full, gif-heavy update, click here.

PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds' transition to version 1.0, marking its exit from Early Access, added a fair chunk of content. You can now run around the new desert map, Miramar, shoot new weapons, drive different vehicles and experiment with the climbing system. All good stuff. But unfortunately, some players have had their fun ruined by performance issues, with servers plagued by lag and rubber-banding.

The development team discussed those issues in a blog post yesterday, and rolled out a patch—the first since version 1.0 released—to try and address the problems. Lag and rubber-banding (or "character position readjustment issues", if you prefer), were caused partly by the addition of the new content, as well as an upgrade to the game engine that rolled out alongside it, the team explained.

To fix the problems, they have "removed some inefficiencies in server infrastructure and optimized in-game servers". Specifically, they reduced "the bottleneck during the game server launch phase and also resolved some server hitch issues". The upshot is that you should have less lag next time you log on.

But it doesn't sound like the team are confident the problem has completely gone away. Indeed, they are trying to come up with new ways to address the issue on a daily basis. "After today’s update, we will be running some internal tests and deploying more updates to gradually mitigate the problem," they said. 

"We are currently examining several measures including server optimization and server logic modification to address the multitude of causes. On top of this, we will continue our efforts to further investigate remaining causes."

The patch has also addressed a few game bugs, the largest of which was giving players a disproportionately higher chance of landing on a Miramar server over one running the game's original map, Erangel. I can't say many people were complaining (it's new, after all), but the chances are now 50/50. 

Click here for the full patch notes.   

Absolver's 1v1 brawling is a layer cake, each sheet tasty on its own without overpowering the others. At the bottom are individual moves—drunken twirls, powerful taekwondo kicks, all-or-nothing haymakers—that are chained together with one button. Sweet and simple. Above the moves, multiple dodging and parrying styles, and then a savory customization engine, where attacks can be chained across four stances. I've spent hours just trying out new combos that auto-cycle my stances, sometimes reserving one stance that I manually switch to when I think my opponent has my core moveset figured out. Instead of high kick, low punch, spin, they suddenly get sweeping kick, twirly dodge attack, jumpy kick. Delicious.

Then there are the dances around ledges, where opponents can be shoved or sometimes just psychologically pressured into slipping to their demise—also great, except when you get force pushed by one of Absolver's special moves.

Finally, with all the decorative edible bobbles at the top, Absolver is about fashion. I haven't concerned myself with style in any other game this year as much as I have in Absolver. Though I find the world drab, the characters are sharp dressers, and using masks to express personality without the need for eyebrow sliders is clever and effective. What's more, Absolver has tactical fashion. Clothes have stats, and affect how much damage you take and how much damage you can deliver depending on your fighting style. They tell you about the player you're up against, and what sort of moves they'll bring. Light, airy dress implies a speedy, dodging style. Or does it?

It's vital to time moves to chain them most effectively, but tricky button presses aren't Absolver's primary focus. Absolver is about misdirection and deceit through and through, from how you design your moveset, to which stances you prefer, to how you dress. Fighting games like Street Fighter deal in trickery, too, but more subtly and with more conditions—namely, perfect input execution—and I've rarely felt capable enough in them to compete against good players in a fun way.

In Absolver, on the other hand, I may have gotten my ass kicked regularly (and after some time away, I'm sure my play is now dreadful), but I was always keen to return with a redesigned fighting style and new plan—to adapt as a player but also as a character. It is perhaps in my head. A better player will beat me most of the time, but feeling like I have the opportunity to surprise them or fool them without perfecting inputs as a prerequisite kept me trying again and again. I only stopped playing Absolver because I had so many other games to get to this year. When a quiet moment presents itself, I will be back in the ring, trying out my drunken spins again.