In Fallout 3 you gained special abilities called perks every time you levelled up. Some perks would do simple things like boost your attributes and open up new conversation options. Others, such as Mysterious Stranger, would randomly call in a revolver wielding rogue to help you out in firefights. Obsidian's follow up, Fallout: New Vegas will have a whole new selection of abilities. Obsidian have sent us a brief but early look at three of the perks you'll be earning as you fight your way through Sin City.


Slayer!


This perk increases the speed of all  melee attacks by 30%, letting you wield anything from your bare fists to a golf club with ninja efficiency. The increased speed will be especially useful when fighting in VATS, letting you queue up more strikes on your opponents.
Spray 'n Pray


This perk significantly reduces the damage of friendly fire, so you'll be able to nuke an area without having to worry too much about the safety of your companions. This perk is even more useful in Fallout: New Vegas because the companions you recruit will themselves grant you extra perks. Hang out with world-weary veteran Cass, for example, and you'll be able to gain toughness by drinking whisky.
Super Slam!


Another good perk for players who like to get up close and personal, taking Super Slam means unarmed and melee weapon attacks have a chance of knocking down your opponent, leaving them vulnerable to a further beating. This promises to be especially comical when fighting larger beasts such as Super Mutants, or their house-sized brethren the Super Mutant Behemoth. The bigger they are, the harder they fall.

Fallout: New Vegas is out next week, on Tuesday October 19th in America and 22nd October in Europe. For more information about the game, check out our preview here.

After a long period of secrecy, Valve have finally revealed the new game they've been working on with one of the key developers of Defense of the Ancients community: it's Dota 2. DOTA was the common abbreviation of the original game type: fan-made maps where players control and level up a single powerful hero, while lesser AI troops fight alongside them. But Valve are using it as the full title here: it's just Dota 2. Read on for the first details.



This is, of course, what key Defense of the Ancients developer IceFrog has been working on since Valve hired him. And it's not the reinvention some might have expected: GameInformer say, "Dota 2 basically is DotA-Allstars with new technology," and that "The single map games take place on is functionally identical to the one that you can download for free today in the Warcraft III mod." Allstars being the version of the game that IceFrog developed.

Defense of the Ancients has been massively successful, but never quite mainstream. It's pretty obvious Valve's priority was to keep what made it work intact, and bring it to a much bigger audience. But that's easier said than done: it's not quite like any other genre, and both the original game and spin-offs like League of Legends and Heroes of Newerth have been tough to get into for new players.

Valve's Erik Johnson explains that they're going to solve this by rewarding the community for helping each other learn the game.

"I think the interesting thing is us adding a second layer where the community is a service to each other. That's the real shift that we're trying to build here. Valve is going to keep building software around Dota and around the community and around Steamworks for Dota, but we're also going to build this system where the community can bring service to each other and be recognized for it."

GameInformer have more on how they're doing that, and some great artwork of some of the 100 heroes the game will carry over from the original. Let us know in the comments whether this is exciting to you, or whether you were hoping for more.

This is the fourth game in the Gothic series of fantasy RPGs, but it’s the first with new developers Spellbound at the helm. The new "Arcania" title is an attempt to signify a fresh start for the franchise, but there’s nothing especially new about Gothic 4.



When the game begins, everyone is dangerously close to living happily ever after. In traditional Gothic style, you play as a nameless hero marked by destiny. He’s just proposed to his true love and the happy couple are expecting a child when suddenly, and inevitably, disaster strikes and his idyllic village is razed by the troops of the evil King Rhobar.



With fiancée, family and friends dead, it’s time for some revenge. Our man sets out on a mission to find a mystical forge hidden in the mountains, and to obtain the power to take down the mad monarch who wronged him. So begins a seamless adventure that has you travelling to every corner of the island, appeasing needy peasants, looting meandering dungeons and slaughtering boatloads of gibbering goblins.

Arcania’s huge, wide-open areas offer a gorgeous, if utterly familiar, rendition of a traditional medieval fantasy world. Rolling farmlands hide dungeons packed with a variety of typical foes. Soggy wooden townships are populated by meadguzzling peasants, and every single one of them has an errand to run.
Mead is murder
You name it, somebody wants it doing. Arcania’s inhabitants are some of the neediest I’ve ever encountered – thanks to some consistently awful voice acting, they’re also some of the most irritating.



Arcania is at its best when you’re in the wilderness, slaying foes and exploring the beautiful world. The fast and accessible combat system will be familiar to Gothic 3 players: left clicking unleashes melee strikes or magic bolts, while right clicking enables you to block or dodge. Enemies glow obligingly before unleashing their most powerful strikes, and survival depends heavily on getting out of the way and counter-attacking. There are a few disciplines to master, including melee combat, archery and magic, but I quickly fell into the rhythm of the old zap ‘n’ stab, an ultimately tiresome tactic that got me through every single fight. The slim offering of skills meant there was never sense that I was building my own character, simply opting in to one of several pre-designed combat styles.



Arcania’s systems may be shallow, but I still became completely hooked. The game transitions effortlessly from open areas to claustrophobic dungeons, from mountain ranges to tightly packed towns. I fell easily into the rhythm of exploring, fighting off a mob, rounding the next corner and exploring some more. Arcania’s greatest strength is its comforting sense of rhythm and its gorgeous, gradually unravelling world. The expert pacing had me rocketing through the 15 hours or so it took to complete the main quest.

Gothic veterans may be left cold by this uncomplicated outing for the series, but for those looking for a good old-fashioned fantasy romp, Arcania has its charms. It’s predictable and shallow, with horrendous voice work, but if you go in expecting no surprises, there’s some incredibly addictive adventuring to be had.

E-sports are boring, I've always felt. I wanted to follow them, have a favourite team or know who any of the players are, but almost every time I watched a game, I just couldn't keep up. It looked like there was skill involved, but I couldn't really relate it to my own experience of those games. But the scene has changed, and I've changed my mind. I think professional gaming has come of age.

The last time I looked into the competitive scene thoroughly was for a feature on it in 2006. I was sent out to the E-Sports World Cup in Paris, not to cover the results of the tournament, but to watch the games, interview the players, and just tell you guys if this was something you'd enjoy if you got into it. I came away impressed by the talent, intelligence and even personalities of the players I met, but no more able to actually follow a tournament match and understand it.

4 years later I'm sitting on a train, transfixed by my laptop screen, pulse racing. I'm watching Cool play oGsTop on Kulas Ravine, and I care more about the outcome of this game than any I've played myself in months. Top has a screen-filling swarm of Thors, mechs the size of buildings, streaming in to Cool's base. Cool has nothing. But Cool has just done what Cool does, what you can never let Cool do if you ever play him: he's hatched 12 Ultralisks.

The resulting battle actually makes me gape. I don't think anyone on the train notices, but if they did they probably wondered what the hell I was watching. What else can you watch that makes you sit bolt upright, mouth agog? Pro gaming isn't just a good spectator sport, it's now one of the most exciting and entertaining ways to waste your time.



What happened, really, is that the scene grew up. Commentary got good. Spectating got better. Sites sprung up to organise and collate replays. It's now trivial to find easy sets of YouTube clips, cast (commentated) by pros who understand the significance of what's happening, and who know how to give you a feel for it even if you don't understand all the terms.

But all of this happened while StarCraft 1 was still the best competitive strategy game out there, and it's so damn ugly that the Western world stopped paying attention to it. The E-Sports World Cup I attended didn't even have a StarCraft league.

That's why StarCraft 2 is a pivotal moment in pro gaming. It's inherited the massive competitive interest in the first game by preserving that delicate asymmetrical balance, but it's also a new, sexy, accessible game we're all playing and talking about. The scene that's got so good has just shed its skin, and in its new shiny, easily understood form, it deserves to catch on.

The funny thing is, I don't even particularly like StarCraft 2. You don't have to, to enjoy watching it. Any more than you have to be an athlete to watch the football. I find micro-management fussy and frustrating at the competitive level, but I love to see a seasoned pro get a perfect surround with his Zerglings on a hapless fleeing Reaper.

If you don't know what that means, it doesn't matter. Without spending a lot of time explaining terms, well-commentated StarCraft 2 matches have a way of teaching you the game by osmosis. I finally know what 6-pool and 14-pool mean: it's the number of resource-gathering drones a Zerg player creates before making a Spawning Pool to unlock offensive units. 14 is standard, safe play. 6 is "Fuck the economy, I'm going to kill you or die trying right now."

The match I mentioned with Top's Thors and Cool's Ultralisks was part of the Korean GomTV StarCraft 2 League - the GSL - with English commentary by Tasteless and Artosis. The smart, witty and nail-biting narrative they give the games is what finally turned me into an excitable e-sports fanboy. Tasteless is personable, often funny and self deprecating. Artosis is an encyclopedic font of nerdy details about the mechanics of StarCraft 2, often able to predict a player's full game plan - and its chances - from the first few units they make. And they're both pros themselves - at one point Tasteless has to get a replacement partner, because Artosis is actually playing the match they're commentating.



When you're watching big armies clash, it's obviously exciting. But at the highest level, a game like StarCraft 2 involves subtle plays with enormous significance that you could miss without good commentary. There's a moment in an earlier match of the GSL when TheLittleOne uses an invisible Ghost unit to call in a nuclear strike on a large group of oGsHyperdub's tanks. It creates a huge red marker on them, so of course they pack away their stationary guns and move out of the way. Since it's no longer going to hit anything, the Ghost cancels the nuke.

I'd normally find this pretty disappointing - nothing really happened. But the commentary makes the true significance - and genius - of the move clear. Without firing a shot, taking a hit or spending any resources, one tiny unit had just negated a massive enemy force, rendering them powerless to stop an assault on a base they were built to protect.

Watching pro StarCraft 2 players, commentated by pro StarCraft 2 players, has changed the way I think about all games. Not just intellectually, but as I'm playing them. If I shot off a few rockets in Team Fortress 2 without killing anything, I used to think "Oh well, I guess that annoyed them at least." Now I think "Oh wow, I just crippled that Medic. He's going to have to leave his Heavy to go and get health, and that's going to take the backbone out of their offense. Now I can force the Heavy to wind-up his minigun to retaliate, and duck behind that ledge so he wastes time or ammo without getting a hit."

It's not exactly the level of the pros, but it makes tactical play a clear and satisfying accomplishment, rather than a vague series of failed kills that gets you no points. I now have an internal commentator scratching his head at my screw-ups, applauding my sprees and analysing my decisions. I don't know if it's making me a better gamer, but it's making it a lot more fun.

I started with SC2Casts.com - I recommend it. It pulls in pretty much every YouTube video of a professional match, all with commentary, and tells you who played and what tournament the match is a part of - if any. Some are just one-off ladder matches between sparring pros, some just for fun. Other times huge sums of money are at stake, and once you see a few good matches of a tournament, you'll find yourself following it slavishly.

Husky and HDStarcraft are the titans of StarCraft 2 commentary - anything cast by them is going to be a good, and accessible. In our new issue, Rich picks out an epic match between TheLittleOne and Hasu as a classic Husky cast, and "a ridiculous game of Zergling and mouse" cast by HDStarcraft. All these are free.





But if you want to follow an incredibly exciting tournament, or if you've ever wanted to hear a grown man shout Edgar Allen Poe in excitement over a Raven-class science vessel deploying a point defense drone at a crucial moment, you should watch the GSL. The first season has just finished, with a spectacular conclusion and a surprise champion, and a season ticket to watch all 63 matches on their site is currently half price at $9.95. To avoid spoiling who makes it to the final, I'll just link the very first match and you can take it from there. The first round of every match is free to watch, but you need an account.

Or you can just click around on SC2Casts and you may find someone else is to your tastes. Either way, link us your favourites in the comments.

We know Battlefield, we PC gamers. The team-based war series was born on our gaming beasts. We’re au fait with all the basic tips and tricks, the tactics tried and tested across almost a decade on the field of battle. Yes, we know you can stick C4 on a jeep and drive it into baddies while you cackle – we did that back in Battlefield 1942. What new stuff have you got for us, Bad Company 2?



Quite a bit, as it turns out. The latest game in the series really delivers in the field of sneaky, nefarious and downright evil tactics. The tightly focused squad setup – in which only four people can be in direct communication – means that finely honed tactics with a few buddies are more than possible. Since the game’s launch, a good few of these have been practised, polished and perfected by the planet’s best fake soldiers.

Some of these tactics are simple, but some are scarily innovative: a proportion of the internet’s evil geniuses enjoy doing such things as affixing a tracer dart to a friendly UAV, flying it into an enemy base before letting rip with rockets targeted at their own machine. In the spirit of that kind of advanced bastardry, here are the 12 best tips and secrets for getting ahead in Battlefield: Bad Company 2’s multiplayer modes.

1. Load bearing


Objectives are often placed inside rooms; learning which structures can be collapsed is an easy way to avoid getting your hands dirty. Concrete houses can be felled; Portakabin-esque houses will stay up no matter the barrage, forcing you to get in close. Nelson Bay, for example, has stages with objective points in both kinds of building – hit the indestructible one first to split the enemy’s defences, then bring down the other with continuous fire.

2. Objective lost


If your aim is the destruction of Rush mode’s MCOM stations and nothing else, take C4 and the explosives leg pouch specialisation. Get near enough to the objective and start lobbing your plastic explosives – keep going until you’re dry, then chuck a grenade against the station. If you’re up to the flying, stick a friend’s C4 to your UAV and pilot it against the station. Detonate it up close and the station will take heavy damage.

3. Hey, that's mine


A sneaky one, this, but two well-stocked players can cut through objectives like soldier-butter when using this tactic. Take mines and the explosive leg pouches and sprint for MCOM stations. Crouch as soon as you reach them, yourself and a friend hurling mines at the floor. Retreat a safe distance (or don’t, to go down in a blaze of miney glory) and pop the mines with a bullet. They’ll eviscerate the station in one blast.

4. Assault


The Assault class is misnamed. Used properly, they’re mobile gun-turrets, launching endless grenades from the rear in an assault. Take the grenade launcher attachment, find a safe spot – up on Laguna Presa’s hills is a good bet – and drop an ammo box. From there, pop explosions all over the map, closing off choke points with repeat bombardments. If you’re taking smoke grenades, they will kill with an accurate close-range shot.

5. Mismatch


Another class bastardisation: the shotgun is great for sniping. Pick an auto-shotgun – the Saiga is ideal – and the 12 gauge slug specialisation. You’ve now got a rapid fire, long-range weapon that kills in two shots and doesn’t have a lengthy sighting procedure. Use as an engineer to support the backline, sticking close to friendly armour and picking off enemies moving toward your forces. It’s also invaluable for downing UAVs.

6. Eagle eye


Taking the recon’s auto-spotting scope is pointless – hammer Q instead and enemies will light up. If you’re tracking a moving target, take the shot quickly – they might be dinged up from another fight and an easy kill. When dealing with a stationary enemy, take your time and aim high. It’s better to miss with the first shot and pop the second in their head than to alert the foe and have them disappear.

7. What a drag


Essentially, this is your mind’s auto-correction and, once learnt, makes sniping a breeze. Conventional wisdom says later rifles are better, but dragshooting needs a light, quickfiring gun – take the SV98 or the GOL and move fast around the map, taking potshots at fleeing enemies. If you’re caught up close, take a shot and sprint away. Never spend longer than a few seconds in your scoped mode.

8. Tracer tong


Tracer darts have been sped up since the game’s launch, making tagging helicopters and vehicles an easier challenge. Engineer weapons are a little piddly, and wasting a sidearm slot on a non-killy gun isn’t a fantastic idea, so instead it should be the Medic who takes the tracer dart gun. His machinegun rarely runs out of ammo, and he’s got time to sight and shoot vehicles from his safe, cushy position in the middle of the squad.

9. Killer Carl


The Carl Gustav rocket launcher is the best of the bunch for the Engineer. While comparatively weaker against vehicles, it’s so useful in a scrape that firing an extra rocket isn’t that much of a hassle. The Carl Gustav will kill an enemy soldier with one shot, and is so quick to fire that it provides a viable close-range tactic. It also takes much less time to target than the other rockets, making non-tracer helicopter shots a possibility. Ker-splode!

10. Hel-o there


Helicopters – in classic Battlefield fashion – are tough to handle, but can be lethal in the right hands. If you’re in an attack chopper – the Havoc or the Apache – use the pilot’s missiles to attack armour from the rear while the bellygunner shoots human targets. Priority targets are anyone shooting back up at you – obviously – but know the level’s anti-air guns. There’s one at both ends and in the centre of Atacama desert, for example: pop these first.

11. Spawny git


Transport helicopters are mobile spawn points first and attack vehicles second. If you’re piloting a Blackhawk, move and hold in random patterns, letting your gunners know when you’re stopping. If you hear a tracer’s beep, get away fast and hole up before lugging your team back into combat. All you’ll need is a pilot and a gunner to hold the foe’s attention – make the other members of your squad parachute down as soon as they spawn.

12. Class act


Utterly vital in all game modes – and the thing that separates the elite Battlefielders from the rest – is kit switching. If your squad’s Medic goes down, don’t let him respawn. Instead, pop over and grab his gun, switch to the paddles and revive him. He’ll be dressed in your kit, but you’ll have saved a ticket, and finding another downed kit to swap between is easy enough. Riding kits like this means you can go for entire maps without ever respawning.

Turn your copy of Fallout 3 into a mutant masterpiece with these 10 essential mods. Giant mutant geckos, plasma guns that dissolve your enemies, thunderstorms and bullet time are just a few of the many additions made by this collection of top updates. Used in combination, they can bring new life to the Capital Wasteland and turn your copy of Fallout 3 into a desperate fight for survival.


1. Fallout 3 Mod Manager

Wait! Step away from the mods! If you install them now you'll have to spend hours rummaging through the guts of Fallout 3's file structure, changing .ini files and hitting it with a stick to make it work. For the sake of your sanity, make sure you have the Fallout 3 mod manager installed first. It gives you complete control of which mods are active and does all of the fiddly file altering stuff for you. The load order of the mods you have installed is important, too, so it's a good idea to check each mod's readme file for details of where they feature on the list.
2. Fallout 3 Wanderer's Edition

This huge overhaul turns Fallout 3 into a survivalist nightmare. Enemies are tougher, weapons are more powerful, ammo is scarce and you'll have to eat, drink and sleep to stay alive. Fortunately, you're given a host of new skills to help you cope, including the perfectly implemented, if unexplained ability to use your AP points to enter bullet time. Depending on how high your charisma is you can also recruit up to 5 followers, and kit them out to form your own personal roaming death squad. Wanderer's Edition changes the game a lot, but almost all of the new features can be tweaked or turned off completely, so you can simply discard updates you don't like. This mod is especially effective when used in combination with Mart's superb Mutant Mod. This mod won't work without Fallout Script Extender, so be sure to grab that first.
3. Mart's Mutant Mod

Do you miss the cute gecko things from Fallout 2? Do you miss shooting them in their stupid, lizard faces? If the answer is yes then this is the mod for you. It adds dozens of new species of creature to the Capital Wasteland and extensively revamps their AI. Many monsters will now hunt each other and smarter enemies will loot corpses for better weapons. Monster size has also been randomised, so you might occasionally find yourself up against a twenty-foot long scorpion, or a house-sized Super Mutant. In an earlier build, the mod's creator, Martigen, found that the wandering traders kept getting killed by the aggressive new wildlife, and has given them a fearsome retinue of power-armoured mercenaries as added protection.
4. Fallout 3 Reanimated

Once you notice the animation flaws in Fallout 3, you can't unnotice them. From the rigid idle poses to the way soldiers seem to break their own wrists when aiming assault rifles, there are dozens of immersion breaking niggles throughout the game. Professional animator, Alendor, decided to hone his skills and fix one of his favourite games at the same time with this mod. It's a work in progress, but the changes made so far are so good it's already worth a download.
5. Project Beauty

Fallout 3's NPCs are a huge improvement on Oblivion's potato-faced citizens, but many still linger uncomfortably in the uncanny valley. Project Beauty replaces many of the faces with carefully tailored high resolution versions designed to fix unnatural complexions, add detail and generally make everyone look more like people, and less like weird, plastic-faced Autons.
6. NMC's Texture Pack

NeilMC is the very definition of a dedicated modder. Over the course of a year he has single-handedly replaced almost every environmental texture in the game with a new, high resolution version. The resulting texture pack makes the Capital Wasteland a vastly more beautiful place, while still retaining Bethesda's original art direction. The pack comes in several sizes, so be sure to download the version that best suits the power of your PC.
7. FOOK 2


The first Fallout Overhaul Kit was a ramshackle arrangement of different updates, moulded into one solid gold mod. FOOK 2 improves on every aspect of the first overhaul, adding over 150 new weapons, 30 new items of clothing and 80 odd shiny new textures for existing items. Factions and NPCs will now use a much greater range of weaponry and the new clothing adds even more variety to the wasteland. FOOK 2 manages to enhance the core Fallout 3 experience and bring more variety and colour to the wasteland, without changing the game you love. If you want to combine the huge item update of FOOK2 with the total overhaul of Wanderer's edition, then be sure to grab this patch to make them play well together.
8. Fellout

Sometimes the smallest changes can have a huge effect. Fellout removes the mucky green smog that hangs over the Capital Wasteland, replacing it with bright, arid sunshine. The beautiful new sunsets alone make this worth a download. A word of warning, though: With Fellout installed, night time truly is dark. Be sure to make use of the upgraded pip boy torch or the night vision modes supplied in FOOK2 and Fallout Wanderer's Edition, or just hide indoors when night falls.
9. Energy Visuals Enhanced and Energy Weapons Advanced

Nothing says “please stop attacking me” like a white hot death ray to your enemy's face. Modder 'Your Evil Twin' realises this, and has revamped energy weapon special effects to make them look and feel even more devastating. Spectacular new critical hit animations can flay the flesh from your enemy's bones, or dissolve them into a cloud of glowing green bubbles. Energy Weapons Enhanced, by the same author, adds dozens of excellent new energy weapons, from energy bolt sniper rifles to plasma cannons, giving you the perfect excuse to enjoy the new effects.
10. Enhanced Weather

The calamitous thunderstorms added by Enhanced Weather can make even a casual stroll sound like the end of the world. Snow storms and radioactive rain have also been added along with a dynamic weather system that makes the slow transition between different types of weather feel realistic. You even get a stealth bonus from the new thunderstorms, your enemies will be so unsettled by the lightning they'll never see you coming.

That's just ten of the best chosen from hundreds of excellent Fallout 3 mods. Head over to the Fallout 3 Nexus for more.

I'm fascinated by what developers did before they became famous. Peter Molyneux's first company wasn't a games developer, and it failed, but he had so much fun running a business that his first game was a management simulator called The Entrepeneur. Before DICE hit it big as the creators of Battlefield, they made the excellent Pinball Fantasies. And before Treyarch became the keepers of Call of Duty, they made a third-person sword-fighting game where you controlled the sword directly by moving the mouse.

The game is Die By The Sword, released in 1998. It's sort of incredible, filled with the kind of ingenuity you'd hope for from a new company. It's also got the same lunatic flailing as Trespasser, released the same year. Since the descriptions sounded great - and Tom got all excited when I mentioned it - I've bought a copy and started playing. I've taken video of the game's intro and my first pathetic sword-swinging attempts below.



I hope Call of Duty: Black Ops has cutscenes as good as this. Here's my first couple of minutes trying to play the game.



After a couple more embarrassing defeats by kobolds, I decided to try the tutorial. Michael York! The tutorial is narrated by Michael York from Logan's Run.



The technology for controlling your swinging sword was called VSIM, and while it's hard to learn how to use, it's clearly an ambitious idea. The game's readme.txt gives an idea of the expectations the publisher had for it:
"Die By The Sword is the beginning of a new generation of games and technology. Once you play and become accustomed to the greater control of your character, you will never be able to go back to the old technology that limits your control. The physics based modeling technology created by Treyarch called VSIM is a huge leap forward for games, bringing with it new techniques of gameplay that were not possible before. This technology is just in its infancy and we haven't begun to scratch the surface of its possibilities. Imagine that someday hooking your whole body up to an input device and having the character in the game react exactly as you do. While it's been attempted before, it's never really been possible to do it as accurately as we can with VSIM. And while you may not want to play a game where you have to hook your body up to an input device, VSIM is not bound to any restrictions that would prevent this.
"The VSIM technology is really the future of animation and character control. Die By The Sword will become a classic and forever known as the game that set the standard."
It never quite took off like they hoped, but when all I previously knew about Treyarch was that they made the bad Call of Duty games, this makes me like them a lot more.

Die By The Sword is available from GOG.com.

Space MMO EVE Online can be a cruel place for a new player. After you've created your moody space rogue, complete with thousand yard stare and expression of reserved determination, it's hard to know what to do and easy to jump into un-policed 0.0 space and get blasted by a wandering pirate. The new retail release of EVE, called the Commissioned Officer Edition, hopes to fix that. It's created especially for players who are completely new to the game.



As reported on VG247, the Commissioned Officer Edition comes with a 30 day subscription and a Cerebral Accelerator Implant. Sadly, this isn't some form of nano-technology you can insert directly into your brain, unlocking the secrets of EVE's vast, player-ruled universe in a few minutes. You use it to buff your character instead, granting him a significant boost to all of his skills for the first 30 days of play. The new edition will also come with a massive poster full of tips on how to survive your first month in the cosmic wilderness.

The COE will only be available as a physical, boxed copy, and is scheduled to hit stores in the US on October 19th, with a European release to follow soon after. All this comes just ahead of EVE's huge Incursion update, which arrives in November.

If you took Plants vs. Zombies, replaced all the zombies with armed peasants, replaced back gardens with the fantasy world of Beneril and orbs of sunlight with sweet gold, then you'd have something similar to the horribly addictive, free to play browser game Warlords 2.



The key difference is that in this analogy, you control the zombies. Waging war in Beneril means politely sending troops one by one down a series of lanes towards the enemy. You win by getting a certain number of warriors to the other end of the screen, which will mean overcoming the defensive forces marching the other way. Every unit has its weakness. Archers beat heavily armoured Halberdiers, Swordsmen chop down fast paced Spearmen and mounted units can clear entire lanes with a well timed dash. Gain enough momentum and you can unleash a charge attack that fills every lane with a unit of your choice, often breaking the deadlock in close contests.



Win a battle and you'll loot some coin, which can then be used to upgrade the speed, armour or effectiveness of your individual units, or buy entirely new ones to give you more flexibility in the next fight. With the day won, it's off to the world map screen to choose which province you conquer when. For the more heavily defended countries, it's worth holding back for a while to buy some specialist siege machines, or at least hire some blokes with ladders so your other troops can scale the walls.

With ten races and 54 units to play with, there's a deceptive amount of depth to Warlords 2. Once I started the campaign, I found it ridiculously hard to stop. All I wanted enough was enough gold to buy the next unit. I'm only one hundred gold away from being able to hire a 'Scythe Whirler', which is exactly what you don't want heading down a narrow lane towards you.

There's something afoot over at Valve headquarters. Last year, Valve hired IceFrog, the brain behind Defence of the Ancients Allstars. Yesterday IceFrog posted on the Defence of the Ancients forums to say that Valve will be announcing a new game later today. Combine this with the fact that a few months ago Valve filed a trademark for 'DotA', and shortly after that, Duke Nukem voice actor John St. John tweeted that he had a great time at Valve "recording for DotA" and we can't help but conclude that Valve's new game might have something to do with the classic Warcraft 3 mod, Defence of the Ancients. We'll be bringing you more information as soon as we have it.