PC Gamer

Men of War may be one of the most generic sounding game names ever devised, but this is a unique and challenging RTS series that blends incredibly detailed troop micromanagement with huge battles spanning entire towns. The latest entry into the series, Assault Squad, is holding an open beta now on Steam, so if you haven't had a chance to try Men of War's intense cocktail of massive tanks, fragile soldiers and extremely questionable voice acting then you're in luck. Read on for the full details.

To get playing simply head to the Men of War: Assault Squad site and sign up. Once you've fed the site your email address it'll spit out a code. Enter this into the 'Activate product' part of Steam and the cyber gods will furnish you with 2 GBs of Men of War beta code. The open beta will let you play the new skirmish mode  as one of two factions on a small selections of maps. Up to four people can play at the same time, making for some tense competitive and co-operative action among the completely destructible scenery of Men of War's battlefields. Not sure it's your cup of tea? Why not have a look at the video below.

PC Gamer

If you'd asked me last week how I thought I'd be spending the afternoon of November 3rd, 2010, 'Disembowelling a narwhal' and 'Building a cathedral out of meringue' would have come higher on my list of probable activities than "Playing a strategy game set during the Chincha Islands War ". Totem Games' decision to turn a series of obscure mid-Nineteenth Century naval engagements between Spain and a South American alliance into a briny tactics title, takes eccentricity in wargame design to a glorious new level. Suddenly Hussar's Hungarian War of Independence and HPS's Dien Bien Phu efforts seem positively mainstream.





What drove a Russian studio to recreate such a dim and distant conflict? Having played ICIW for a few hours now, I suspect it wasn't a deep interest in the subject matter. Disappointingly, the game fails to include versions of the key battles of the war, or model any of the broader strategic factors that ultimately led to Spain getting its stern kicked. If it wasn't for the ship names and the flags flapping above taffrails, the series of moderately diverting naval skirmishes that make up the so-called campaign would be utterly generic.

Things that I'm hoping to see in the first patch:

The Chincha Islands
Call me old-fashioned, but when a game includes a topographical feature in its title I expect to see that feature in the game. The absence of land in any shape or form not only scuppers history (port bombardments and blockades were an important part of the war) it also ensures the battles feel desperately samey.
Weather
If Totem aren't going to let us hide behind islands, they should at least let us sneak about inside fog banks.
Crew
Shouldn't maritime wargames have, um, sailors in them? Not only does ICIW not include 3D crew it also appears to lack 2D or numerical representations. There is simply no suggestion that vessels have humans aboard. The omission means you can't take morbid pleasure in whittling down enemy manpower. That's a flogging offence in my book.
Damage Control
Beyond telling your ships where to go and how quickly to get there, there isn't much for player-admirals to actually do at present. Some thorny damage control decisions might help. If I want to keep everyone at their battle stations while fires rage and water rises, that should be my choice. Entire games have been based on less.
Demastings
A naval wargame in which masts never fall is like a French Revolution game without decapitations or knitting.
Peruvian Sea Shanties
If they don't exist then Totem should have scoured Moscow's 'Little Lima' district until they found a person imaginative or drunk enough to make some up.
A New Name
The fact that this was possibly the only war in human history caused by one nation taking possession of another's source of bird excrement (gull poo exports from the Chincha Islands provided 60% of governmental revenue in Chile) deserves to be recognised on the box cover. I propose Ironclads: Chincha Island Wars 1866 is relaunched as either Ironclads: Guns, Guano, & Glory or Ironclads: Blue Water, White Gold.
PC Gamer

Darkspore is the spiritual successor to the cutesy evolution sim Spore. It's a Diablo style hack and slash game that lets you fight with a character customised using an enhanced version of Spore's fantastic creature creator, grafting living weapons and armour enhancements onto your creature as you find them. It's also launching and open beta, and is looking for people to sign up.

The mutated forces of Darkspore have overrun the galaxy, now it's down to you to save the universe by blasting the evil mutants back to their spawning pits. There's a four player co-op mode which asks players to mix and match their weapons and evolutionary traits to make the most devastating team possible. Each hero character has their own unique brace of special abilities, and can be customised in different ways as you level up, letting you take on even more powerful Darkspore and gain even more powerful weapons until you've successfully evolved into the most dangerous creatures in the galaxy.

If you fancy giving the game a shot, head over to the official Darkspore site and click the 'Beta Sign Up' button on the right. You'll be asked to give your name and email address and EA will make contact later with first details of how to get onto the beta. Spore's amazing character creator always had tremendous potential, it'll be interesting to see how it's put to use in an action game. The game's due out in February 2011, here's a trailer showing some of the bug splattering action.

Borderlands Game of the Year

Last week we mentioned that Borderlands was about to receive an update that would raise the level cap, adding even higher level monsters and even more ridiculous loot. The update is now live! If you have Steam the update will apply automatically the next time you boot up the game. If you have the Windows version of the game, you can download the patch manually from the Borderlands site. Now you'll be able to take on level 58 Badass Loot Midgets and battle even harder Skag monsters. It'll all be worth it when that level 58 rocket-loaded shotgun drops.
Team Fortress 2

Scouts are throwing bottles of milk at people. Snipers are dressed up like crocodiles, but they’re firing pee-filled darts instead of bullets. Spies are stabbing you with a knife that hides your body and steals your identity. Pyros are bludgeoning people with a car battery on a stick. Team Fortress 2 has, once again, gone utterly insane.

The Polycount Pack is 17 community-created items that Valve have introduced into Team Fortress 2, our favourite online shooter. To get them, you can wait for the items to drop, or you can buy them. You can buy individual weapons for anywhere between 60p and £3, and hats cost as much as £12. The Polycount bundle costs £30, and that’s a lot of money. You don’t have to buy it; you could just wait, or beg for items on friendly servers in your sexiest voice, but it’s definitely easier to just shell out the cash.



It contains items for the Spy, Soldier, Pyro, Sniper, and Scout classes. Each class gets a themed hat and a couple of items – wearing all of them confers a bonus. This means that the new hats actually impact the combat: if I want to wear my Respectless Rubber Glove instead of the Attendant cap, I don’t get to move 10% faster. That’s annoying.
Boxes and bugles
The Soldier receives the Black Box, a rocket launcher that can heal you for 15 health on every hit, but, frustratingly, only carries three rockets in its clip. The Battalion’s Backup is a bugle that charges up as you take damage, and when that bar is full, you can unleash a powerful defensive buff that protects nearby team members. Wear those with the Grenadier’s Softcap, and you can bask in the glow of a 20% damage reduction from sentry fire. Suddenly you’ve become the Medic’s new favourite pet.



The Sniper’s Croc-o-style set, when you’ve equipped all four items, makes you immune to headshots. Your rifle fires darts of pee that can’t score headshots either, instead dealing damage and coating the enemy in crit-yielding Jarate. Some of the other sets of items are more prone to switching up – the Pyro’s new Degreaser is a flamethrower that does less burn damage, but greatly increases the speed with which you switch weapons. This makes it ideal for your trusty Axtinguisher. Likewise, you might not care for the Spy’s new cloak- replenishing pistol or Fez hat, but his new knife is incredible. Stab someone in the back and it hides their body, instantly disguises you as them and makes almost zero noise.

Are these items essential? Nah: you can still own the enemy team with the vanilla weapons. The new items all have their drawbacks. On the other hand, are they fun to use? Do they give you great options without crippling your less cash- happy opponents? The short answer: yes. If only it was £10, I’d even say you had to buy it.

Jaz McDougall
PC Gamer

Tribes Universe developers Hi-Rez Studios have been talking recently about their upcoming reboot of the Tribes series. They've revealed more about what the classes in the game will be like, the role vehicles will play and the tech behind the project.

Speaking to Ten Ton Hammer, Erez Goren, Tribes Universe Chief Designer and CEO of Hi-Rez Studios laid out their plans to have "a territory control meta game and a high level of world immersion to ensure that players feel that they are participating in an evolving, persistent world and not just a shooter match," adding that, "Tribes Universe is designed primarily around large-scale PvP. One difference from most typical shooters is that there are more roles to play and all players don’t have to be engaged in pure shooting. For example, a player can specialize in transport of other players, focus on defense repairs, or focus on coordinating groups of players in a large scale attack."

Tribes Universe won't restrict players to straightforward 'Healer', 'Tank' or 'DPS' classes, either. "the game is designed around every player being able to do significant damage in addition to support functions. A player can wear heavy armor and shields and be more of a ‘tank’, or carry more repair devices as an ‘Engineer’, but there are no defined classes. There is also a lot less healing than is typical in an MMORPG game."

As has been previously announced, there will be vehicles in the game. Erez mentions they will be "an important part of the game", but aren't likely to be forming the brunt of an attack, saying "they will mostly be designed for support functions rather than to be primary damage dealers. Support functions include transport, forward spawn locations, ammo replenishment, stationary defenses, etc."

If you fancy getting an early look at the game, Hi-Rez are currently looking for alpha testers. For more information about the game, check out our post on the Tribes Universe announcement.

Dragon Age: Origins

Bioware have announced that they're working on a Facebook game. It will be called Dragon Age Legends, and will let you and your friends group together to unlock items in Dragon Age 2.

Like Dragon Age 2, Dragon Age Legends will be set in the Free Marches. You'll be able to customise and upgrade your character, and then go questing with those on your friends list, growing a kingdom and sharing loot, earning in-game items for Dragon Age 2 as you progress. The game is set to be released in February 2011, and there will be a beta running from January. It bears similarities to Dragon Age Journeys, a flash game released before Dragon Age: Origins which also offered players some sweet loot ahead of Origin's release. If this Facebook outing is anything like Journeys, then Dragon Age Legends is sure to give us a sneak peak at some of the locations and characters we can expect to see when Dragon Age 2 is released on March 8th 2011 in the US, and March 11th in Europe.

PC Gamer

Well, we're boned.

Fate of the World puts you in control of the GEO, a fictional organisation with a remit to tackle the world's environmental problems, and the political, economic and social issues that spawn from them. It uses accurate scientific data to simulate the world, and via a series of turns you decide policy - a little nuclear power over here, a switch to electric cars over there - and watch the results. It's like Football Manager for carbon footprints. I got my hands on the beta, and the one mission currently available challenges you to address the Oil Crisis.

They should never have entrusted this task to a guy called President Doom.

I'm thirty years in to the mission and already changing temperature levels are causing drought and food shortages across the developing world. Meanwhile, dwindling oil supplies have prompted a global recession; rapidly altering habitats have led to mass extinctions; wars have broken out in Latin America, North Africa and the Middle East; Europe and South Asia have just thrown out the GEO entirely for our unpopular policies; And our agents in Russia keep disappearing due to "troubles."



My problems started immediately. Your first step in Fate of the World is to hire agents in the world regions you want to influence. I went for a couple in North America, Europe and Japan, as I guessed those would be the three worst polluters and the most important to make changes within. Each agent employed in a region gave me a slot in which to deploy a card.

The cards are how you set policy, and they vary in type, duration, popularity and cost. You could select to establish a Technology Office, say, which costs $25, takes 5 years (the length of a single turn), and which increases your popularity in any region it's deployed. Other cards let you do everything from boost renewable energy sources, to protect forests, to put a cap on business carbon emissions. In later stages of the game when time and technology have progressed, your options differ. By 2090 I'm using artificial intelligence to regulate North American markets and Smart Grids to more efficiently use power.

In my first turn I chose caps on carbon emissions across all three regions, and switched it up between funding renewable energy, nuclear energy, and trying to protect land, soil and forests. At the end of the turn, the game updated my status. Emissions had increased more than expected over the time period, population had grown by hundreds of millions, and by 2120 - the date I have to reach to win this mission - current projections suggest Earth will be inhabited solely by smouldering piles of ash.

Worse, the emissions caps have driven investors out of those regions and in to North Africa, South Africa and India; areas I'd previously ignored. All three are thrilled by the new jobs those dirty businesses are creating, and I was far less popular in those regions to begin with. On the next turn, when I try to impose the same emissions caps, they throw me out the country.



I never make it to 2120 successfully. Regions that kick me out occasionally let me in again - each time prompting a message like "North Africa opens door to Doom" - but only for a turn or two before they evict me again. By the time it's game over, polar bears and grey whales are extinct, roughly 2 billion of earth's population has died, and the southern hemisphere is in a near constant state of war. Whatever I do, the world seems screwed, and it's a little hard to work out how my decisions relate to the planet's increasing rubbishness.

My hope is that in the full game, Fate of the World's developers embrace not only the seriousness of their subject - and they're obviously going to great lengths to make it scientifically accurate - but its potential for extreme and ridiculous solutions. I want to limit the whole world to only one child per family. I want to introduce a radical program of space exploration and attempt to establish off-world colonies. I want to drop a giant ice cube into the ocean in an attempt to cool the entire planet.

It bodes well that one of the six planned missions is called "Dr. Apocolypse" and inverts the premise: your aim is to instead destroy the world, making it as uninhabitable as possible. But I want similarly radical choices in the ordinary missions, letting me explore the accurate statistical models by being an insane dictator.



Mostly, in playing it, I'm struck by how potentially powerful Fate of the World is. Simulations, even those that endeavour for accuracy and realism, aren't objective. In its currently unbalanced state, Fate of the World is probably too hard, and the consequence is that I come away thinking that our planet's very real problems might be insurmountable. In the coming months the game will be balanced to make it easier, but the eventual simulation will still cause players to come away with their own ideas: about the viability of nuclear power, the problems of population growth, and a dozen other topics.

In other words, players are going to come away thinking about the fate of the world.

You can pre-order Fate of the World now at the official site for £9.99 + VAT and gain access to the beta immediately. It's due for full release early next year.
PC Gamer

After a long wait, Lord of the Rings is now free to download and play for players in Europe. Read on for how to sign up, and details on some of the new additions to the game. You'd be a fool of a Took not to try it.

To create a free account simply head to the Lord of the Rings site and sign up on the right hand side. If you're signing up as a free player, you won't even have to enter your credit card details. There are several tiers at which you can play the game, free players won't suffer from level caps or a lack of quests, but VIP members who pay a monthly fee will have access to a larger inventory extra chat, mail and auction services.

The update also adds the item shop. In-game Turbine points can be used to buy items, quest packs and expansions. These points can be earned by questing in the game, or purchased to save time. Lord of the Rings Online went free-to-play in the US not long ago, and earned itself an extra million subscribers in the process. It seems likely that it'll see similar success in Europe, so there's never been a better time to get your Gandalf on. See you in Hobbiton.
PC Gamer

Free to play fantasy MMO Allods Online has had a chequered past when it comes to its take on microtransactions, implementing systems that encourage players to pay for items to overcome death punishments. The most recent update has taken significant steps towards resolving some of the problems that many Allods players have been struggling with.

Initially, players who died while scrapping in Allods Online's universe of floating islands would suffer a stacking 25% stat debuff that would last up to an hour. This could only be removed using Incense, an item that had to be bought with real money from the in game item store, or from other players at auction for extortionate amounts of in-game money. This system was changed earlier this year. Now, upon death, there is a roughly 10% chance that one of the items you have equipped will have their stats reversed, rendering them useless. This can only be stopped by preventing the curse using a Holy Charm, or by removing the curse after the fact using a Scroll of Purification, both of which had to be purchased from the item store, or from the player auction house.



The changes caused an uproar among much of Allods Online's playerbase concerned that they were being forced to purchase items in order to be able to play the game competitively, meaning that Allods Online was technically no longer a free-to-play MMO. The latest update goes some way towards reassuring these players, adding a series of daily quests that will allow players to earn Holy Charms and Incense without having to buy them in the item shop. All existing players on the European servers will also be receiving a free gift of incense and Holy Charms if they log in within the next 30 days.

For more information on the latest update, the full patch notes can be found on the Allods Online forum. If you fancy giving Allods Online a go then the client can be downloaded for free over at the official Allods Online site.
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