Rivals of Aether hit Early Access in late 2015, offering a pixellated take on the classic (and modern) Super Smash Bros. formula. What's that formula, you ask? A bunch of cutesy characters beating the ever-loving crap out of each other, is what the formula is.

The game launched out of Early Access today, which means it's feature complete. If you've been playing during the Early Access period, the game's single-player components will be of most interest, since they're making their debut. For everyone else, the game boasts a 1v1 or 2v2 Versus mode, a Story mode, a wave-based Abyss mode and Online Versus. There's also a Tutorial and Practice Mode for newcomers.

Here's a trailer to get you in the mood. The game is $14.99 on Steam.

It's been a couple of weeks since the last update to PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, but this week a patch will arrive for public servers on Tuesday—it's currently on test servers already—and it's aimed pretty squarely at lousy rotten no-good cheaters.

First, a fix to prevent a 'lag switch' cheat, in which a player increases their ping to such a degree that they aren't where they appear to be and thus can attack and kill other players from relative safety. To combat this, players whose ping exceeds a certain (unstated) value will be locked in place, "unable to move, rotate, and attack others."

Another fix is being added to prevent players from removing foliage from the game by editing an .ini file. Sounds like some people just can't live without a chicken dinner, even if it means deleting shrubs just so they can see a little better.

Also of note: flashbang grenades have been a bit problematic in that they can sometimes cause game clients to freeze and crash, so for the time being they have been removed from the game.

There's also a handful of bug fixes and improvements, so have a look at the full patch notes below. And, if you're playing the battle royale shooter these days, we've recently published a great guide for finding the hottest loot locations in PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds.

Client performance improvements

• Slightly improved the drop in FPS when driving vehicles

Anti cheat

• In order to prevent using "lag switch" to cheat, the characters will now be locked and will not be able to move, rotate and attack others when the ping exceeds a certain value
• You will no longer be able to remove the environment foliage by revising the .ini file

Custom games

• Fixed the issue that was causing the sound to break when there are too many vehicles in a small area

Bug fixes

• Partially fixed a bug that caused the character to get stuck in different objects in the environment
• Partially fixed a bug that caused the game client to freeze
• Fixed a bug that caused the crosshair to still be visible while in no-UI mode
• Temporarily removed the flash bang from the game as it was causing game clients to freeze/crash

There's a feeling I get whenever I fire up a Souls game for the first time that no other videogame gives me. It's a lovely gut-wrenching blend of excitement, fear and anxiety wrought by the thought of exploring new fantastical and awe-inspiring locales—all the while knowing I'll be stalked by whichever grotesque entourage of monstrosities Hidetaka Miyazaki has dreamt up this time along the way. Last night I started Dark Souls 3's second and final offering of DLC and welcomed the lead butterflies back with open arms. 

The Ringed City—which can only be accessed when you've offed the base game's four Lords of Cinder and have successfully powered through its previous Ashes of Ariandel add-on—is thought to be the Souls series' last ever outing. Given Ariandel somewhat failed to live up to the post-launch standards set by previous series instalments, much rests on this one's shoulders as far as closing the series is concerned. 

I've only clocked a couple of hours so far, and while I've enjoyed butting heads with its new monsters—I spent an inordinate amount of time outrunning the lightning-firing angels, seriously—and its first major Demon Prince boss, the true star of the show up to this point has been its Dreg Heap and Earthen Peak Ruins settings themselves.

Setting in the Dark Souls series has been discussed almost as much as its brutally-unforgiving difficulty, its huge variety of equipment loadouts, and its fascinating open-ended lore. The original Dark Souls is a masterpiece in level design, creating a sprawling interconnected world where even the most incompatible of environments are weaved together with wonderful precision—and the absence of fast-travel teleportation until the latter stages of the game lends this fluent puzzle credibility.  Players are often forced to weigh up the pros and cons of venturing in certain directions against both their Soul Level and the enemies housed in certain areas, which only highlights how important its layout, and an understanding of such, is. 

As deftly outlined by YouTube fellow Hamish Black in his series Writing On Games, part of what makes the original Dark Souls' setting so important is its ability to portray both physical in-game ascent and descent in its earlier stages as themes. Ascension, says Black, is rewarding while descending into its depths stands to illuminate how unforgiving it can be. Black even suggests the way in which the ringing of the first bell compares with game's descent into Blighttown can make or break you—that it can determine whether or not you are a Dark Souls player at all.

This claim is stretching a little too far for me, but I do agree that the way the original Souls leverages ascent and, crucially, descent as concepts and mechanics is fantastic, so much so I'm not sure Dark Souls 2 could ever have bettered it. 

It didn't in my eyes, and an over-reliance on fast-travel and maps which just did not fit well together resulted in a world that feels jarring. Each arena is well designed in its own right, however too often feels detached from what preceded it. The game's Earthen Peak, for example, leads you upwards through a labyrinth of windmills and tunnels that overlook the Harvest Valley below—but when you reach the Iron Keep beyond, it's surrounding by rivers of molten lava.

Dark Souls 3, with Miyazaki back in charge, goes a long way to restoring this sense of cartographic wonder—with destinations that compliment its lore and again play with the ascent/decent idea—dragging players seamlessly from the Profaned Capital to Anor Londo; from Farron Keep to Archdragon Peak and everywhere else along the way.  

Within a universe that operates in cycles, where history is bound to repeat and reinterpret itself, what I've played so far of The Ringed City is a masterstroke in underscoring the end of the line. We're thrust into the "mangled remnants from every age and every land", as it steers us ever-downward into a world folding in on itself. Looking at it, nothing makes sense but, as it depicts remnants of individual past worlds all forced together, why should it? 

Now, we've gone beyond anything we've ever known. And where the Kiln of the First Flame was once recognised as the end of the line, it instead marks the peak of where we are now. The MC Escher-like backdrops of the Dreg Heap depict worlds long-forgotten as we make our way towards the lowest point of the Souls universe, and their impossible architecture and perspective serve to accentuate how absurd and futile each passing journey towards linking the flame really is. 

This is the ultimate descent and, despite only being accessible once you've finished everything else, this DLC is as unforgiving as it gets. Even beyond the angels which spew incessant showers of lightning or curse magic from above, the swamp-dwelling and brutally-strong Harald Legion Knights, or the three-tiered Demon boss fights, the world itself is designed in such a way that it's an absolute slog shuttling successfully between its bonfires. This may be the Souls series' last outing but it's going down swinging. And despite its difficulty, it's blooming gorgeous. 

I may only two or so hours in, but I've fallen in love with The Dreg Heap already and am bound for The Ringed City next. I guess this is my last chance to Git Gud, as they say, but, if history really is doomed to repeat itself in the Souls world, I reckon I've got a few more trips to the bonfire left in me yet.

As we mentioned in our guide earlier this week, sound is an important element in PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds: it's key to listen very carefully for player footstep, car engines, and of course gunfire, especially when that gunfire is directed at you. Battlegrounds developer Bluehole posted an in-depth explanation of how gunshot sounds work in their battle royale shooter, and it's worth a listen (technically, a read) for anyone playing.

When someone shoots at you in Battlegrounds, you might hear three different sound effects, though what you hear, and when you hear it, depends on the distance between you and the person shooting, and how close their bullet comes to hitting you.

First, there's the sound of the gunshot, which has a propagation delay. "The propagation velocity is 340m/s so if a pistol is shot 340m away from the listener, he will see the muzzle flash first and hear the gunshot after 1 second," writes Marek, Battlegrounds' lead gun designer.

If you hear a 'whizz' sound that means a bullet has flown past you. You may also hear a crack sound, which is the "bullet bow shockwave." This occurs when the bullet, flying at supersonic speeds, passes you. The radius for the whizz and the crack are different, with the whizz radius being considerably bigger. In other words, if you hear a whizz and a crack, the bullet has passed very close to you, and if you only hear a whizz, it was close but not that close.

The image above demonstrates how that all works. An example is also given about the series of sights and sounds that occur when someone shoots at you from 1,000 meters using an AWM, which has a 900 meter-per-second muzzle velocity:

1. You see the muzzle flash
2. After ~1 sec you hear the crack/whizz (assuming no air drag)
3. After ~3 sec you hear the gunshot

The post continues:

"We blend between different sound samples based on distance (the maximum distance and attenuation characteristic is also affected by suppressor attachment). The close gunshot sounds louder and more clear than the distant one. In the current public build, all bullets generate a sound crack effect. We've changed this mechanic by adding a velocity check, so bullets travelling slower than speed of sound will not generate the crack effect but just whizz."

Paying close attention to these sound effects should give you a better idea of the distance someone is shooting from, how close they're getting to hitting you, and even what sort of weapon they're using.

Bluehole expects Battlegrounds to spend six months in Early Access, and as we reported earlier this week, the game is off to a strong start, earning over $11 million in its first weekend on Steam.

In the early days of League of Legends, it was a total free for all in terms of roles and classes. Vayne was originally showcased as a mid laner, you could take Singed and Veigar bot, and jungling was a constant clown show. It was a simpler time, where we understood the game less but we may have enjoyed it more. I still remember talking to my friend in hushed tones about the amazing strategies coming from the best region, Europe. (Our Korean overlords hadn’t shown up to devastate us all yet.) I shared this amazing strategy called the Eurolane, where you took the ADC out of mid and put them in bot, along with a support. This configuration caught on, and is now the standard. Everyone has a neat and tidy role, and characters that fit outside of the mid/jungle/top/bot/support configuration are reworked until they do.

There’s just one problem: nobody wants to play support.

The support struggle 

Every team needs a support, which is a character who has some kind of utility and can survive on a limited gold stream. Some supports heal, others disengage or start fights, and still others bring utility like crowd control to a team. Janna, Soraka, Leona, and Lulu are all supports, but they all do very different things and slot in with different team compositions.

In an ideal world, players would look at this varied cast of supports who all have unique strengths and weaknesses and select one that works with their team comp, which would lead to a fun and fair match. Unfortunately, this is League of Legends, and nobody wants to play support. When you queue up, you have the chance to select your preferred roles... unless you have to autofill, because nobody wants to play support. Team Builder was a system that allowed supports to instantly get into games and select a comp at their leisure, because nobody else wanted to play support. Blind pick is a system where five people scramble to call and lock in their picks so that they don’t have to play support. League of Legends offers a multitudes of ways to engage in the game, and no one wants to play support in any of them.

What’s the issue?

In order to talk about the fact that nobody wants to play support, we’re going to have to ask ourselves why no one wants to play support.  It’s a problem in many competitive games, like when you’re dealing with the guy who will not switch off Genji in Overwatch, but it feels more pronounced in League. Here’s why.

First, League games are noticeably longer than matches in Overwatch or Heroes of the Storm. You could be playing support for up to an hour, with no escape beyond surrender. Playing a bad support game turns from an annoyance to seemingly unending torment. You have to spend a long time in lane with your ADC. Sometimes, that ADC is a kind soul who congratulates you on your Thresh hooks and appreciates your warding. More often, they dive in without you, ignore your carefully calculated plans, and then call you all manner of terrible names.

Finally, there’s the fact that even though you’re trudging through this nightmare morass, dutifully putting down wards and keeping your allies alive, no one really appreciates you. No one notices the clutch support play that wins the team fight at Baron, but everyone congratulates Jhin on his pentakill. A lot of players are forced into support by autofill or team pressure, chained to an ADC and forced to prop them up for the first third of the game, and then given a reception that ranges from ‘cold indifference’ to ‘active hostility’.

It’s rarely an experience that converts players into being active, happy support mains.

Evolution and revolution 

With all of this in mind, it makes sense that the support champion pool is constantly expanding and mutating. There are constantly champions that aren’t “true supports” that sneak into the support pool anyways. In some cases, like Morgana, their original role is forgotten. These support innovations usually come from the pros, who are constantly analyzing and testing the game. They notice that Morgana’s shield and binding make her a potent support, or that Annie’s AOE stun allow her to force fights in the bot lane.

The problem is that fans see this and rejoice, because it means they can play support, but hopefully have fun doing it. They lock in Miss Fortune or Malzahar or Zyra because the pros did it, and then they build full damage and bask in their independence. If the game is going to force them into support, then at least they can have fun while they do it, right? Their teammates whisper ‘no’ as they watch their Zyra support pick a Doran’s Ring to start, but at least the support player is having fun for once in their life.

Riot is continuously coming up with solutions to the support problem. Autofill is one of those experiments: will people happily play support once in awhile if it means faster queues for everyone? Riot has also increased the free champion pool to include more supports, given rewards to people who queue for needed roles, and offered the honor system as a way to feel validated by your peers. Support champions have fun and engaging kits, cool visual designs, and they don’t need to spend all of their money on wards anymore.

All of these efforts haven’t been enough to get people legitimately jazzed about playing support. It’s one of the unfortunate risks of League being a team game: no one wants to be the team support when they can be the superstar getting all of the kills. As Riot’s champion design becomes more sophisticated and complex, they may finally crack the code that gets people eager to buckle down, drop wards, and lend utility to their team.

Watch Dogs 2 has lots of forthcoming add-on content, and Ubisoft has been kind enough to lay it out for us in the form of a "content roadmap". There's stuff coming as soon as April, including a new PvP team-based mode called Showdown, as well as multiplayer motocross, eKart and drone races.

Meanwhile, in May, the No Compromise DLC pack will release, which adds a new single-player mission in the form of Moscow Gambit, as well as six single-player race time trials (with leaderboards) and a bunch of clothing sets.

It's the June stuff that's most interesting though, in particular support for 4-player parties "to explore the city and play activities together". That presumably doesn't include single-player missions, but instead all the side-quests and races.

The full rundown is available over on the Watch Dogs 2 blog.

Hey, remember how much of a pain it was to access the DLC area of the original Dark Souls? Well, From Software has mellowed over the years, and getting to Dark Souls 3's The Ringed City DLC is actually pretty easy. You'll need to have finished the previous expansion, Ashes of Ariandel, but otherwise accessing the bonfires that'll take you to the new area is very simple.

In fact, there are two bonfires you can use to access it. One is a new bonfire behind where the player spawns in the Kiln of the First Flame (ie, the final boss arena in vanilla Dark Souls 3), pictured below:

The second is found where the Sister Friede battle takes place in the Ashes of Ariandel area. Again, this is right behind where the player spawns at the Sister Friede bonfire:

If you're not seeing the bonfires in either of these places, chances are you've either a) not purchased the content b) not updated your game files or c) not completed Ashes of Ariandel. 

While getting to The Ringed City's new areas is easy, completing it will not be. I hope you like being shot at from above!

By now, if you’ve any interest in survival platformer Rain World, you might have cottoned on that it’s hard. I said as much in my review, and many have echoed the sentiment since the game launched yesterday. Still, you probably want to persevere. While the game does have a cryptic yellow ghost as a guide, that little jerk barely explains the game’s weird systems. So that’s what I’m going to do, in as spoiler-free fashion as possible. These are for beginners, by the way: hopefully this guidance will make the opening hours less painful and more enjoyable, as you’ll kinda know what’s at stake immediately and, happily enough, you’ll know how the game works right from the beginning. 

The importance of hibernation

Apart from dying at the hands of Rain World’s enemies, this is probably the main barrier to entry for newcomers. The game explains that you must eat in order to hibernate, and that hibernation can only be done in special waterproof chambers which also serve as save checkpoints. What it doesn’t explain is that every hibernation has a deeper effect on the world, and crucially, so does every death.When starting out, understand that every hibernation and death moves you up and down a ladder respectively. Rungs on this ladder are marked by a symbol. Why is the symbol important? Because you need to be on the right “rung” in order to unlock certain crucial thoroughfares to other areas of the world. Ie, these things.

Notice the symbol at the top of the left glyph, above slugcat? That needs to correspond with the symbol on the bottom left of the screen – the “rung” I was currently on when I took this screenshot. What if you’re not on the right rung? You’ll need to hibernate enough times to climb onto it. Yeah, that’s painful I know. But such is life. 

The importance of death

While hibernating will move you up a rung, if you die, you’ll move down a rung. That means if you’re climbing (or let’s face it, grinding) to reach the correct “rung” and die on the way, you’ll lose a fair bit of progress. Keep dying, and things will get even worse. Does this suck? Yes. Do you need to deal with it if you want to play this relentless videogame? I’m afraid so.

Is there a way to make death suck less?

Yes, there are little golden flowers – usually found around the vicinity of hibernation chambers – which will lock you to the current rung on the ladder for one death. It’s better than nothing. 

How do I deal with being (and feeling) rock bottom?

The ranking / symbol / season system is punishing, but it does at least demonstrate that even though you feasibly could be moving through the first handful of Rain World’s areas quickly, you really shouldn’t. The way I survived was thus: try to roleplay the slugcat. If you were a useless little cat-that-is-also-a-slug, would you move on from an area while perfectly good food is still available, especially given food (which doesn’t respawn) is scarce? Make sure you’re well fed before daring to rest at a new hibernation chamber. Do a few quick reconnaissance runs (but get back before the rain!) Take it slowly. Focus on eating. If you’ve got empty food slots, make sure they’re bloody well full. I can’t stress enough: playing this game like it’s a rush through levels, is bad. Take your time. Focus on survival. Move on when you have to.

About that rain…

Bring up your map. The little dots around the rung / season meter in the bottom left of the screen counts down to when it will start raining. Keep an eye on it.

Can I survive outside of hibernation chambers if it rains?

Haha, no.

So, where do I go?

There are broadly two places you can go in the beginning of Rain World. Avoiding spoilers, both of these areas are gated by one of those symbol doors pictured earlier in this article. I’ll just say this: the first one of these doors you’re likely to encounter is the one you’ll need to go through. Or to be more specific: don’t go down, go up.Or, if you want spoilers: go to the bloody Industrial Estate. That is, up into this purple glowing tunnel and through the glyph door (pictured below: if you don't know where this is yet you probably don't need to move on).

Slugcat is very bad at jumping. How do I make him less bad?

You can’t, but there are skills that he has that you might not know about. Doing a long jump is well explained at the beginning of the game, but he can also do a backflip jump which is achieved by pulling back at the moment you start jumping. Practice a bit: it’s fiddly but once you figure it out, you’ll be happy. Also, there are poles strewn around the world which you’ll probably use to throw futilely at enemies. They have another useful function too: throw them at certain types of walls and they’ll stay there, meaning you can feasibly get places you thought were impossible. Make sure you aim properly though, because once they’re stuck in walls you can’t pull them back out.Also, I was stumped in the early hours thinking certain jumps were impossible. It’s worth persevering sometimes, and remember if you’re plunging towards a platform you’ll need to press “up” at the right moment in order to catch it.

Why should I persist with this game when real life is difficult enough as it is?

Because it’s a fascinating world and progress is rewarding. But yeah, life is difficult enough as it is. I’m confused, really. Tell me if you arrive at an answer.

Day of Infamy, a standalone WWII rework of modern combat game Insurgency, is worthy of the 'Day of' moniker—which in this case references Roosevelt's Pearl Harbor speech, but also tips its hat to the classic Half-Life mod and eventual standalone game Day of Defeat. It's what I probably imagined Day of Defeat would like in the future, back when I was staying up all night playing it in the early 2000s.

For a more modern comparison, because Day of Infamy does play differently than its DoD cousin, it's pulling me in like the launches of Red Orchestra 2 and Rising Storm did. It shares a lot with those games—friendly-fire and officers who can call in airstrikes, for instance—but with simpler weapons and tighter, blockier Source Engine maps, striking a balance between Red Orchestra’s ‘you can manually bolt your rifle’ authenticity and the action of classics like Medal of Honor: Allied Assault. It's nice to hear the ping of an M1 Garand again.

At one point, hunched in the corner of a crumbling apartment with a bolt-action rifle, I listened as metallic footsteps approached and faded away and approached again. I didn't dare hit Tab to see who was alive, but suspected I may be among only two or three still-breathing teammates, while the others waited to spawn in a new wave of reinforcements—it gave me those late game Counter-Strike nerves, when you know your whole team is watching your last stand.

My stalker could have hit Alt to creep, silencing his footsteps, but I heard every clang as he trudged around the building looking for the holdout keeping the point secure. Then, a cloud of flames erupted through a doorway to my right. The flamethrower's burning tip appeared through the door first, the hunter followed and turned to his left where I was crouched in a kitchen, and I shot him in the chest. (Damn campers.)

Had I missed, I'd have been charcoal, and as it turned out, we would've lost. That level of pressure has been rare in Day of Infamy so far—I've played about five hours—as wins tend to be more decisive. But I did witness one match come down to a knife fight, and another end with half of a team hunting down just one guy from my side. Watching from the dead ranks, we cheered him on as he evaded like experienced prey, darting through buildings, doubling back, eventually falling to a burst of machinegun fire.

Smoke and errors

Outside of those arena shooter-like standoffs, success in Day of Infamy is half planning, half execution. The most frustrating moments (outside of being blown up by a plane in my spawn) occur when I get the former part right, but flub the follow-through. I suspect a troop of reinforcements will jog down an alley to the right, for example, but I'm a second too late deploying my machinegun's tripod and what would've been four easy kills ends in waiting 25 seconds for another respawn wave.

But as ABC's Wide World of Sports reminds us, the thrill of victory must contrast with the agony of defeat. In my first properly good match, which put me in the upper third of the scoreboard, I found a perfect spot to cozy up with my machinegun sights, wasting the better part of two waves as they sprinted between buildings—even hitting some through smoke cover.

One minor detail unexpectedly boosts the thrill of Day of Infamy: you can't see your K/D ratio while alive. You aren't meant to know whether or not you just winged someone, or if spraying through clouds of dust and smoke had any effect, until you're between lives. If you can’t see a body—which is often, with how much smoke is used—the only way to know your target isn’t aiming back at you is to go look (or get shot). Several times I took a long shot with a bolt-action rifle, but had no idea if I hit the mark until I opened the scoreboard later while waiting to spawn. The delay only makes it more gratifying to learn that an unlikely shot was on target. The little number by your name is so tiny, even it can’t seem to believe that you ticked it up with that shot.

I only wish talking to my team were more fun so far. The built-in voice chat works well, but last night it was dominated by a few witless sacks of head cheese spewing racial slurs as they tried extremely hard to be seen as brave provocateur scamps. No one wanted to talk to the racist tryhards, so for the most part, no one else talked.

It’s possible I was just unlucky to end up in that group, and muting players mitigates the problem, but it was a disappointing first impression of the community. When I do find a team that’s communicating in a fun way, calling out enemy locations and coordinating attacks—which also happened, briefly—Day of Infamy can absorb hours just as well as Day of Defeat did back when I was in high school.

During Larian Studios' hugely successful Divinity: Original Sin 2 Kickstarter campaign, backers were given the opportunity to vote for their favourite skill schools that'd be introduced as Stretch Goals at a later date. To this end, as part of the project's 35th Update, the early accessible role-player has now added Summoning and Polymorphing to its sorcery-endowed bounds. 

To mark the occasion Larian has also launched two separate trailers, both of which explore the new abilities from distinctly different angles. The first is a shorter, more generic cinematic which skims the specifics inside two and a quarter minutes:

The second, which is far more interesting, sees Larian's Swen Vincke explaining the new schools by way of plates, stuffed alpaca toys, condiments, feather dusters, and rubber kitchen gloves—before diving into the game itself and then offering a more thorough look at both Summoning and Polymorphing in practice.

As detailed via the game's Kickstarter campaign page, the Summoning school lets players conjure personal elementals which match the ground surface they're summoned onto. For example, fire elementals launch fire attacks at foes, while water elementals provide players with healing buffs. The full list of Summoning powers can be found over here. 

According to Larian the Polymorph school, on the other hand, was "by far the most popular" skill school in the Kickstarter vote and sees "the best and worst aspects of other creatures" taken to the battlefield. In practice, this has players transforming into specific animals while harnessing specific traits. 

There's seven in total en route to Early Access, including:

• Bull Horns—Magnificent horns sprout from your forehead. You can rush at your enemies and gore them.
• Tentacle Lash—With tentacular (it’s a word, look it up) limbs, lash out at the enemy and Disarm them.
• Chicken Claw—Turn the target character into a chicken. Squawk!
• Heart of Steel—Your skin turns to steel, increasing Physical Armour and regenerating a portion of it every turn.
• Chameleon Cloak—Become one with the shadows so that you're invisible to your opponents.
• Spread Your Wings—Grow wings that unlock Flight skill. You ignore ground surfaces as long as you keep moving.
• Skin Graft—Reset all cooldowns, yet also strip off all Physical Armour and Magic Armour. Removes Burning, Poisoned, Bleeding.

Divinity: Original Sin 2 is out now on Steam Early Access priced £29.99/$44.99. Full details of both the game's Summoning and Polymorph skill schools can be found here.