John is missing. He flew out to GDC last week stowed inside Brendan’s suitcase to save money, I’m sure you’ll remember, but on the return journey Brendan’s bag has gone missing. Vanished. Didn’t flop onto the luggage carousel. The airport have no idea. John took a few cans of pop and bags of gross American chocolate in with him so I’m sure he’ll be fine, but where is he? Amsterdam? Boise? Hong Kong? Honolulu? I’m sure he’ll turn up. For now, here I am, I am taking over the Steam Charts for another week.

If there’s one lesson to learn from last week’s 10 top-selling games on Steam, it’s that fancy open-world games are quite popular.

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A few of the things I have had to do in order to get a workable version of HDR (also known as high dynamic range), the new-ish display technology that significantly ramps up brightness, darkness and vibrancy, on my PC (not including the acquisition of a fancy monitor):

– Try four different display cables– Adjust as many as seven different brightness/contrast/colour etc shaders per game>. (I have spent long, unhappy hours doing this to date)– Manually turn on HDR on the monitor, manually turn HDR on in Windows then manually turn on HDR in the game settings. Or sometimes HDR off in Windows but on in the game then alt-tab back to Windows and turn HDR on, and off, and on, and off. Or sometimes alt-tab and alt-tab and alt-tab and alt-tab and alt-tab until HDR suddenly, randomly kicks in. When I exit the game, I have to manually turn it all back off again or Windows is unusable.– Install an unfinished preview build of Windows 10 whose HDR isn’t totally broken on Nvidia cards.– Almost completely lose my sense of whether anything is actually different after all of this.

The egg yolks in Final Fantasy XV were a bit shinier, though. (more…)

Assuming you’ve played an hour or two of Assassin’s Creed Origins every day since its original launch last October, you might now find yourself running out of things to do and see in Ubisoft’s absurdly large ultra-budget adventure through ancient Egypt. Thank god for mandatory DLC, eh?

Today, the second (and final) major component of the Origins season pass rolls out. Dropping sci-fi weirdness in favour of classical Egyptian mythology, Curse Of The Pharaohs has Bayek and friends square up against a cadre of returned undead kings across new locations in the physical world and the afterlife, the latter of which is probably> not covered by the historical tour mode.

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From a publisher as huge as Ubisoft, and in a series as chart-dominating as Assassin s Creed’s Discovery Tour represents an unusual and welcome ambition. The mode, available as free DLC for Assassin s Creed Origins or as a standalone game, strips out all the combat, levelling-up and collectibles in favour of a promised educational experience. It takes the strongest facet of Origins its detailed and enormous depiction of Ancient Egypt and adapts it into something almost entirely new.

Ubisoft isn t alone in remixing its games in this way, however. The Discovery mode for Origins follows in the squelchy footsteps of Frictional s Soma, which added a Safe Mode last December that removes any mechanical threat from its monsters. Traditionally, the concept of games has been closely tied with that of challenge , but these modes sidestep that. And in doing so, they remove a barrier to entry for less experienced players who want to explore their worlds. Even if the execution doesn’t necessarily match the idea, this is a good thing.

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The blizzards of Siberia have gone on holiday to the United Kingdom this week. But the RPS podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show, doesn t do snow days. The pod squad have trekked hard through the whiteout (from their bedrooms to their computers) to gather on their respective microphones. To what end? Well, to talk about the weather. Blizzards, thunderclouds, sandstorms and, er, night-time? In videogames, it all counts.

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The announcement of the Discovery Tour was a source of much rejoicing. Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed games have for many years built these extraordinarily detailed cities, that are swiftly disposed of as the series’ annual development cycle demands fresh urban grist for the mill. The recreation of Ptolemaic Egypt was by far Ubisoft’s most remarkable, and the idea of using it as an educational tool, a living museum of sorts, was well received.

In practice, Discovery Tour by Assassin s Creed: Ancient Egypt (to give it its given name) is a peculiar thing, made with much ambition, but seemingly little understanding of how education actually works. (more…)

We’ve only just started exploring the newly released Discovery Tour for Assassin’s Creed Origins, but there’s something we thought you should know. Gone entirely are all the marble boobies and winkies. For what we can only assume are “educational purposes”, the game’s many statues have been rather daftly covered up by a plague of seashells. (more…)

Lace up your walking boots and fill your canteen, as today Assassin’s Creed Origins wanders into a world of tourism. Today the game receives its new Discovery Mode in a free update, letting players freely and peacefully explore Ancient Egypt and enjoy guided tours written with historians. Ubisoft also sell this mode as a separate standalone game, cheaper and without any of that murdering. I’ve not played AssCreed Oranges yet because I have so many open-world murder simulators already half-finished, but I am tempted by wandering. (more…)

On top of being a broadly pleasant surprise and a very strong return to form for Ubisoft’s open-world murder-sandbox series, one of the key selling points of Assassin’s Creed Oranges for me was a promised feature that wasn’t quite ready in time for launch.

Ubisoft are finally making good on their plans next week. On February 20th, the Discovery Tour mode will be arriving as a free upgrade for existing players (or as a $20 standalone product), converting the violent saga into a serious educational product featuring 75 narrated and guided tours through ancient Egypt.

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I have been, since November, utterly enamoured with digital Ptolemaic Egypt. Assassin’s Creed Origins snowglobe version of the kingdom makes it excellent fodder for long, meandering walks and screenshots of tantalising vistas, but it’s the small vignettes of daily life and scenes of mundanity that make Egypt feel less like just another theme park.

Since the first Assassin s Creed, Ubisoft Montreal has used scale as its default weapon. Huge towers, massive crowds, more map icons than the eye can handle. But while, yes, Origins is still a gargantuan game, it s one that spends a lot of time zoomed in on the streets instead of hovering around the rooftops. It s inspired me to do the same, accompanied by the game’s impressive photo mode. It pauses the action and unlocks the camera at the press of a button, letting you tweak the image with filters and by changing things like contrast and depth of field. (more…)