See this hat I’m wearing? The one with the dark tuft at the top? You should be afraid when I wear this hat. Very afraid. Because this hat means I’m grumpy>. But it’s okay, I’m not grumpy at you. I’m grumpy at unidentified tech sorts at Bethesda Softworks who last night released the first patch for Skyrim. A patch whose only effects was to limit what we can do with the game. It was released without fanfare or explanation, but forums swiftly figured out its purpose.

The 18MB downloadette is essentially there to stop the game from running without Steam: the main executable is now tied thoroughly into Valve’s security, unreliable offline mode et al. Nothing remarkable there, save for the surprising fact that it was at all unbound at release, but one of the upshots of this is that we’re now limited from faffing about with said executable. Most particularly, the large address aware third-party patch that enabled Skyrim to use more than 2GB of system RAM.

Update: a new LAA workaround that apparently does the job without altering the exectuable! Phew. Now can we have official> support for all our lovely RAM please, Bethsoft? (more…)

Just in case there were any doubt left that the owners of Lego Universe were completely bonkers to just close down their subscription game without trying a free-to-play model, DC Universe is reporting a slight increase in revenue since they made the switch. The small matter of an extra 700% per day. Eurogamer spotted that the very enthusiastic Sony Online Entertainment president, John Smedley, tweeted his good news. News that will surely be yet another blow to the subs model.

(more…)

Actually, I’m not quite sure what age kids really start riding bicycles, at least without stabilisers and/or a worried parent holding onto the back of the saddle. I think I was at least around> seven when I first managed a brief, unassisted pedal down a country lane (and, more excitingly, was rewarded with a second-hand Superion for my efforts. I still have that somewhere) so I’m going to go ahead and say that Blizzard’s MMO should be capable of such a feat.

Yes, World of Warcraft, the main man of the MMO industry, has been around for seven years this week, which is an alarming prospect. How did it get so old? (By which I mean ‘how did I> get so old?) And it’s remarkable it’s only seen three expansions in that time, given what a cash-cow it’s been for Blizzard, Vivendi and Activision. There are gentle celebrations in honour of this birthday, primarily in the form of a ‘feat of strength’ item dropped into the inventories of any players who sign in between now-ish and December 3. (more…)

Gold bullion! Pieces of eight! Booty in unimaginable quantities! All these things and more await in free open world platformer Treasure Adventure Game. It’s a rather self-explanatory title, like if David Cameron went by the name Laminate-Face Eton Man or Richard Branson was simply called Money Beard. TAG, as I’m calling it, is the first release from Robit Studios, which appears to be a fellow by the name of Stephen Orlando. There’s a downloadable beta available now and the finished release should be available next weekend. For free! The simple aesthetic and emphasis on exploration remind me of Knytt but there are plenty of baddies to fight as well. It says so right there in the trailer, which is buried beneath the X below.

(more…)

It’s on days like today, when there is NO PC NEWS AT ALL, that I remember to return to Neko Games. The creator of the wonderful Hoshi Saga series has always created a new gem since my last visit, and it’s just as true today. Today there’s Ouka. It’s similar to the star-hunting antics of Hoshi Saga, in that you’re aiming to complete lots of very short Flash-based puzzles, but this time it’s all about clicking on the flower. How you can go about doing that is the unique puzzle for each level, with that unique Neko Games logic. And then, wait, oh my goodness, is that a new Hoshi Saga too?

(more…)

Brick vs Byte usually concerns the top ten best-selling games on Steam vs the top ten best-selling games at UK retail over the last week, but as both charts are barely changed from last week and frankly that’s no fun whatsoever to read about, we instead contacted our Future Industry Analyst Dr Ian “Ian” McGuess to provide an accurate look at what he’d expect said charts to look like thirty years hence. Here’s what his spreadsheets came up with. (more…)

It’s not a real war unless there are flags involved. How else would we keep score, or fully understand who is in charge? Thankfully, Battlefield Heroes now has a capture the flag mode. Admittedly, I did have to check the date on this several times to make sure capture the flag wasn’t actually added in 1842, but it really was added just now. No doubt to compete with another cartoony free-to-play team-based FPS that may be thinking of adding just such a mode in the future. Or that may indeed have had such a mode since its original incarnation in 1996. To jolly things up, there’s a trailer to announce the news and it has a rather spiffy voiceover, reminiscent of a rigid lip.

(more…)

Throwaway, highly entertaining but with annoying music tower-ish defence-ish game time! The Engineer is not a TF2 fan-game as such, though I rather suspect there is at least some inspiration in there. It’s most of the way towards tower defence, but errs a little towards the Orcs Must Die take on things – you’re a mobile character with your own weapons, setting up death-gizmos in order to stay alive. But you cannot stop, not for a moment. (more…)

I’ve had mixed feelings about The Secret World for a while now. As more details have emerged, I’ve found it hard to hide my excitement about the real world setting and mad mix of mythology, but I’ve been struggling to shake the suspicion that stitching them to an MMO framework could squander the potential of the scenario. The promise of classless builds and a strong narrative were intriguing, but they were only promises. That is, until last week when I spent a day playing the game and saw just how convincing it was.>

(more…)

Let me begin by saying this is not a spoiler. This is a random sandbox event caused entirely by something I did, and is in no way scripted into the game. Your Lydia could live forever. So…

There are few NPCs in games that have inspired me to write a song. Well, there’s one. And her name is Lydia. This is the story of her death.>

(more…)