Sengoku, Paradox Interactive's feudal Japanese strategy game is released tomorrow. To celebrate they've made a demo available in advance. The demo lets you play as two clans for fifteen years of game time but there's no option to save or load your progress. Still, it should whet your appetite for tomorrow's release.

You can get the demo from the Paradox Sengoku website. If you're still on the fence, check out our Sengoku preview, in which Tim Stone tries to impregnate his teenage niece.

Though Sengoku hasn't been confirmed to be released on Steam, posts on the Steam forums a few months ago reveal that it appeared in some gamer's libraries by mistake.

We'll have more on Sengoku soon.

Pre-release code for the hotly anticipated Minecraft adventure update was leaked over the weekend. The code was initially distributed to trusted users for testing, but was then opened up to everyone, with Joystiq are reporting that Mojang developer Jens 'Jeb' Bergensten was in fact behind the 'leak'.
Notch gave people his blessing to try it out, but asked that they report any bugs they found.

You can find details of how to download the pre-release version on the Minecraft Forums. Jeb reports on twitter that the release version of 1.8 will be available once he's fixed the bugs reported so far.

For all our coverage of the new update, check our adventure update tag.

Earlier we brought you news about the Syndicate remake, along with some small, low quality screens that had been grabbed during the early rumours. Now EA has released high quality versions, plus two extra shots which show off some Blade Runner-esque cityscapes.

Click through for the shots.

 
Ever wanted to be Han Solo or Malcom Reynolds? Then The Old Republic's Smuggler class is for you. This trailer shows his progression through the game, including both the 'gunslinger' and 'scoundrel' variants. On display is a lot of slick gunplay, some cool gadgets and and the occasional tactical withdrawal. It makes me a bit sad that my fellow PCGers have elected to go Imperial instead of Republic, I guess I'll just have to watch Firefly again instead.

The Old Republic European beta will be starting shortly, with the game due out later this year.

This new trailer for Saints Row 3 shows the Saints facing off against cyberpunk posers the Deckers, who apparently used their amazing hacking skills to steal all your money. Clearly the only sensible response is to 'broadcast your subconscious into their usernet', and fight them to the death inside an eighties depiction of virtual reality. It might not make much sense, but that's what we've come to expect from a Saints Row 3 trailer.

Saints Row 3 is out on the 15th of November in North America and the 18th of November in Europe.

EA's own digital distribution platform, Origin, will soon be supporting other publisher's games. EA CFO, Eric Brown revealed the first details at a conference in London recently, report Gamasutra. Brown said ""Initially, Origin is set up to deliver EA games, but very soon, we'll be delivering third-party content to Origin." Exactly which publishers will be involved is yet to be announced.

The CFO also revealed that the service has had over four million installs since the platform was first released a few month's ago. All EA games now force users to set up the client as part of the standard installation process.

Brown anticipates a spike in numbers over the Christmas period: "We're fairly excited about Origin... we have about 4 million installs of the client, we expect that number to climb substantially as we enter this ... holiday season." He's probably thinking of Battlefield 3 and The Old Republic when he says that. Just like we are now.

We recently talked to Vale's head about Origin in our Gabe Newell interview. EA's digitial distribution service has been a contentious subject over the past few months, but don't worry if you need to catch up. You can read all of our Origin news in just one click.

UPDATE: Check out our Syndicate screenshots post for better versions of these pictures.

A remake of classic isometric strategy game series, Syndicate has been announced. The first details landed over the weekend.

The remake is being developed by Starbreeze Studios under the codename name 'Project Redlime' and will be a first person shooter with separate single player and four player co-op modes. The details first appeared on NeoGaf, after being picked up from a store page mistakenly uploaded to Origin. Shortly after that EA confirmed the game, and mentioned that a an official Syndicate website be launched shortly.

It's rumoured that the remake will feature hacking mechanics which will let players slow down time and see through walls by 'breaching the digital world around them'. All sounds a bit Matrix 1 to us. Meanwhile the co-op mode will apparently feature 9 're-imagined' levels from the original Syndicate.

Check inside for the first screens.

Apologies for the tiny resolution. We'll update as soon as some better quality shots are released.

Games such as Minecraft have a lot to answer for. Back in the old days, even with an indie release, you paid your money and you knew what you were getting. Now, increasingly you’re not buying into a game so much as a vision – a skeleton on which greatness will hopefully one day hang like so much delicious meat. For the time being, Space Pirates and Zombies is still one of those skeletal games.

Tomorrow though, who knows?



The action is an odd mix of topdown shooter and very basic 4X strategy. You’re in charge of a mothership on a journey to the galactic core in search of riches, bouncing from star system to star system to collect the tech and supplies necessary to survive. Every star system has jump nodes that you must bribe or blast your way past, along with two opposing factions to either help or hinder in exchange for goodies and XP. As you climb the levels, blowing up enemy ships via relatively simply arcade combat, you earn unlock technologies that level you up from a single mining tug to a small fleet of customised ships, which in turn let you smash through ever more heavily protected systems.



There’s a bit more to it than that, but SPAZ is far more of a shooter than such initially similar-sounding games as Space Rangers 2. There’s that faction system for instance, but it’s no more complicated than every star having two groups at war, with whichever one that happens to like you willing to trade for blueprints and favours instead of shooting you on sight.

Mostly though, you fly canned, randomly generated missions for whichever side you choose to back – though with faction rep being system specific, even this has little consequence. It all gets very grindy, very fast. This is not helped by the suicidal AI or having to zoom out until everything is barely a dot to avoid being obliterated by off-screen fire. You can choose to play on a big map where the number of systems makes progress glacial, or a small one where the difficulty spikes force you to grind until your clicking finger turns to dust, but either way it still boils down to glancing at the numbers and levelling up for another thrilling round of My Space Cock’s Bigger Than Your Space Cock.



SPAZ doesn’t necessarily need more depth, and does get more interesting as you push through the galaxy, but don’t expect fast progress, or much variety from system to system. By the time I’d played the millionth ‘shoot the barrels’ type mission, I was watching my TV more closely than my monitor. This side of the game, however, is by far the most likely to be bulked up in the next few months, and both the premise and shooting action are solid enough to support that. As a gamble, you can do worse than Space Pirates and Zombies. To be certain though, keep an eye on the patch notes.

I’m guessing Haemimont’s last Latin American despot simulator didn’t go down too well in Havana or Buenos Aires. In Tropico 3 if you chose Che Guevara as your avatar you got an inspiring workhorse with alcohol and anger issues. Picking Juan Peron meant donning the dinner jacket of a flatulent moron.

This time out Che’s only vice is his paranoia, and super-smart Juan leaves the gaseous emissions to his chemical works. Welcome to the subtly tweaked world of Tropico 4.

While this instalment confirms the series as gaming’s most charismatic city builder, it’s hard to shake the feeling that the Bulgarian devs are running out of ideas.



Exhibit ‘A’: the introduction of pointless building plans and inconsequential ministers. Exhibit ‘B’: the extra foreign presences. I’m perfectly willing to accept that my tiny banana republic must spend much of the Cold War delicately courting the two superpowers, but should I really be worrying about relations with the Middle East, the ‘European Union’ and the famously insular Chinese? The Tropicos have always overflowed with tangy period flavour. Anachronistic additions like this only dilute that flavour.

The same could be said for some of the new structures. Many of the added buildables – amenities such as the shopping mall, aqua park and cruise liner – augment the game’s lucrative but frothy tourist-industry side. Personally, I’d much rather have seen transport or civil engineering improvements. Four episodes into the series, and we still can’t set up bus routes or tram lines, dig tunnels or build bridges. Just as in Tropico 3, the most pressing late-game concerns are usually traffic jams and garage provision. Huge island communities can get by with a single restaurant or pub, but seem to need a vehicle supplier on every corner.

The most useful new facilities have to be the weather and fire stations. Erect these and your populace is protected from the worst ravages of volcanoes, tsunamis and twisters. More tiresome than fearsome, these natural disasters are accompanied by some of the game’s most toe-curling humour. When the DJ narrators make sly references to El Presidente’s colossal ego or economic illiteracy, giggles are sometimes justified. When they make jokes about tsunamis and earthquakes, it’s hard not to think about Japan and Haiti, and cringe.



I did find myself chortling at the nods to the Chilean miner rescue and Icelandic dust cloud. The 20 story missions milk recent news events mercilessly. Crammed with optional challenges and intermediate goals, the campaign episodes feel more structured and, perhaps, a tad easier than those in Tropico 3. They are, however, just as silly, and just as effective at turning spare time into sprawling shore-to-shore cityscapes. You know how it goes. You tell yourself you’ll go to bed after the construction of your first pineapple plantation and cannery. You finally crawl off to Bedfordshire four hours later, the happy overseer of a tinned fruit empire Señor Del Monte himself would be proud of.

I suspect the fresh batch of infectious salsa rhythms has a part to play in Tropico 4’s compulsiveness. (There’s just something about those driving Latin beats that makes me want to build another cigar factory and abduct another opponent.) The streamlined interface also ensures the game is dangerously easy to play.

Don’t let anyone tell you they didn’t enjoy this palm-fringed politics-’em-up. Do, however, report them to your local party official, if they claim not to be bothered by the game’s woeful lack of revolutionary spirit.