The new Counter-Strike beta is a GO, and Evan has been on the frontlines to bring us his thoughts on the rebooted counter-terrorist warfare. Josh fills us in on the biggest updates to hit WoW, EVE, and DCUO this week, while Greg and Chris barely make it out of their encounter with Serious Sam: BFE with their miniguns intact (and live to tell about it). And, try as we might, we just can't help ourselves but talk about Skyrim. Then again, who could blame us?

PC Gamer US Podcast 297: Friendly Fire

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Ezio and Altair are finally on their way out the door (and off a ledge, and into a conveniently placed haystack), and that's a very, very good thing. After all, Revelations marks the third entry in the story arc AC II kicked off. Ezio's getting old, and - depending on who you talk to - so are his high-flying, face-piercing antics. So, what's next for the series? A much-needed vacation? Hardly.



“Assassin's Creed is a big brand not just for us, but for the industry,” Ubisoft senior VP of sales and marketing Tony Key told list. "The meta story is supposed to be carried on forever. We can go on with this brand where we want to – that's the exciting part about the way it's constructed. As we've said all along, this is the end of Ezio's story arc; it's a great place to jump in the franchise and anyone who has played the previous games should have some satisfaction with the answers they get at the end."

The gaming industry, of course, hasn't gone a holiday season without having Ezio leap down its chimney since 2009. Key, however, insists that the yearly model doesn't come at the expense of quality.

"One thing I keep hearing is, 'How can you make it in one year?' We work on it a lot longer than one year and that's part of it; we have multiple studios. Assassin's Creed is a blueprint brand. What that means is it has a lot of resources focused onto it. We constantly have people thinking about it, so we have a lot of people working on future iterations, while these games are being made we're already thinking about the next one," he explained.

"I hope people are getting over the idea that we rush them out; we don't make Assassin's Creed games in one year. That's something we want people to understand, and hopefully the message can get out."

Regardless, 2012 will almost certainly see yet another entry in the ornately cloaked parkour through time simulator thanks to a certain series plot element. Will it finally be a major change of pace, or simply more of the same? Fingers - symbolically chopped off to make room for a hidden blade or not - crossed for the former.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqxX99tspw8

Associate Editor Chris Antista and I sit down to talk about the beefiest force in Tribes, the mighty Juggernaut. This powerhouse of a class touts Super AP grenades and the Spinfusor MKD. The real demolition starts when I wield the fear-inducing Fusion Mortar, the Jugger's bread and butter of destruction. Watch as I delve into the action and illustrate why the Juggernaut is the thinking player's tool of carnage.

The last year has been a roller-coaster for Eve developers CCP. The Incarna update added a series of unpopular features like the Captain's Quarters and an item store selling expensive cosmetic items. A series of leaked CCP emails intensified the controversy, leading to an emergency meeting between CCP and the player-run Council of Stellar Management, who called the disaster "a perfect storm of CCP communication failures, poor planning and sheer bad luck."

Since then CCP have been apologetic. A long open letter to the Eve Online playerbase said sorry for CCP's direction, and later CEO Hilmar Petursson told us that the developers would change their tack and become "much more focused on the more classical aspects of Eve Online." This week the winter Crucible update epitomised that strong change in direction, adding new spaceships and making dozens of tweaks requested by fans.

It looks like Eve is getting back on track, but what prompted CCP's decision to build the cutting edge tech required to add the Captain's Quarters in the first place? And what went wrong? We had a chat with Eve senior producer Arnar Hrafn Gylfason to find out.

It seems that Incarna was part of a concerted attempt by CCP to widen Eve Online's appeal. Gylfason suggests that Eve's abstract, complex nature was proving too much of a barrier for new players. "being a spaceship isn’t appealing to a lot of people," he told us. "People want to be a person, someone they can identify with and get into character with."

Gylfason said that as a result, CCP became "too focused on introducing the new technologies into EVE in terms of avatar gameplay, introducing massive new expansions with avatars, with new art and things." In hindsight, he admits that these features were additions "that the core community weren’t really excited for but had potential new markets."



CCP are keenly aware of Incarna's faults, and Gylfason spoke to us honestly about the why Incarna failed. While the technology behind the new character creator and the captain's quarters was impressive, Gylfason acknowledged that "we didn’t really do any gameplay around it, it was just “here are some characters, you can walk around and that’s it. That’s all you can do, you can walk around inside a small room.”

"Sure it’s a good step to being able to be a person and being able to see your person, but it’s a more important step for that person to be able to do something rather than just walk around. And I think that’s where we ultimately failed."

Now, Crucible is taking the first steps to set that right, adding new spaceships and fixing many elements of the Captain's Quarters that have been frustrating players. The Incarna episode was a thorny setback for CCP, but they're still determined to help Eve grow. "In the months leading up to Incarna, we failed to properly acknowledge the sentiment of the community and I think that’s a lesson we’ve learned extremely hard," said Gylfason, adding that it's "hopefully a mistake we’re never going to make again."

Assassin's Creed: Revelations is out today folks! Tom S will be taking a crack at it, if only to find out if his ridiculous strategies from Brotherhood still work. You see while most assassins stealthily approach the target, Tom prefers to attack them with a giant axe. While most assassins engage in skilled swordplay, Tom throws a huge two handed sword into his enemy's head from several meters away. While most assassins respond to being cornered by fleeing across the rooftops, Tom kicks them in the balls until they die from it. He is the least stealthy assassin ever.

Check inside for an axe throwing, ball kicking selection of PC gaming news.


OXM gather up eleven things you'll need to know about the upcoming Rainbow 6: Patriots.
Joystiq say Battlefield Heroes will be adding new content every day till Christmas.
Shacknews say Bungie have released all their old Marathon games for free. With updated graphics and source code.
Would you like to watch the Star Wars Death Star run in Minecraft? ParadiseDecay has you covered.
Harry Partridge re-imagines Skyrim as a Saturday morning cartoon.

 
What do you think of Revelations readers? What is the best Assassin's Creed game?

Bit of Friday fun for you – I'm testing a group of heatsinks for the next issue of the mag and was persuaded to try this out by the chaps at QuietPC.com. It's the Nofan CR-95C, a completely passive cooler that claims to be able to chill a 95W quad core Core i7 processor.

Naturally, I was a little bit skeptical.

Even though the latest generation of CPUs run almost impossibly cool for their processing power output, and the Intel stock cooler that ships with a Sandy Bridge Core i7 is the smallest I've seen since we had Pentium 3s in the lab, the idea of using a fanless heatsink seems utterly bonkers. There's no way you can possibly remove enough heat without using a fan, surely?

Apparently so. In the tests I've been running, the CR-95C actually beat the stock cooler on the testbed rig shown above. That's without the assistance of a single case fan to help disperse heat. In terms of temperatures, I used Prime95 to load all four hyperthreaded cores up to their maximum ability, and the heat peaked at 77 degrees – around five degress less than using the Intel cooler.

Cooling the chip back down after use took longer, of course, but within five minutes of idling it was back to under 30 degrees Celsius. And the best thing is that in a proper case, with well designed airflows and case fans, it should work even better.

You'll need a big case mind. The CR-95C really is enormous.

The thing is, even though I've seen it working, I think I'd still be skeptical of installing it my gaming rig. It might be illogical to worry about the 'what if it falls over after eight hours' scenario, but I can't get rid of that niggling doubt, and feel like I need the reassurance of fans if things start to get out of control. So I'm going to test it further over the weekend to be sure.

The other downside is that at £100 it's a lot of money to shave off a few decibels – with cheap air coolers being so efficient and quiet any way, you'll need an almost slient room and very quiet power supply to actually hear the difference.

Still, it's a remarkable achievement all the same.

While everyone’s going doo-lally about Star Wars, another licensed sci-fi MMO based on a loved franchise is feeling sadly neglected, like an old dog who’s just had to give up his favourite basket because of a new puppy. Star Trek Online was a bit of a failure on release, but it seems that Cryptic still has faith in the MMO, and the “seasons” (read: updates) have added new content and addressed player’s issues.

The latest “season”, numbered five, has been detailed on the official STO blog, and adds the Borg Invasion of Defera (which we inevitably read as DEFRA), Federation and Klingon Academies, as well as a brand new event calendar. Gameplay improvements include a “Duty Officers” minigame (we bet they get shot a lot), the ability to Transwarp to episodes, and a Dilithium Economy.

The new “season” is available now for current subscribers, and will be released for all when the game goes free-to-play on January 17 2012. Hit the jump to see the full list of new and improved content and gameplay.


New and Improved Content

Borg Invasion of Defera – An all new action ground combat map that features multiple play areas, boxes, and a variety of game play.
Re-envisioned Borg Strategic Task Force (STF) maps – These were cleaned up and streamlined to improve play. Then they were given a “Normal” version so everyone can experience the content, as well as an “Elite” version for some seriously challenging play. And finally, we threw in some great new rewards and elite gear that you can earn.
Federation and Klingon Academy – All new academy maps to explore and do non-combat game play.
Lore Missions – A whole new type of non-combat play. Learn about the Star Trek universe while playing these fun little missions.
Patrol Mission Revamp – The patrol missions got a new feel, now requiring some exploration to discover them. They also got better Skill Point rewards.
Event Calendar – A new event calendar that features nearly a dozen new events that happen around the clock.
Threaded Storyline – The whole storyline for STO has been put together in a cohesive way by threading the Episode content. Now it’s easy to know what to do next, and to play through the core storyline.
Tighter Klingon Storyline – The Klingon game play was tightened up to play starting at level 21, so that the whole experience for Klingon play is improved.

New and Improved Game Play

Duty Officers – This is a whole new game play experience within STO. Collect, trade, and manage your Duty Officers as you send them on assignments. It’s a great down-time activity and really fun!
Space Skills Revamp – The whole set of space skills in STO was taken apart and put together in a way that makes it a lot clearer what you’re getting with your valuable skill points.
Transwarp to Episodes – We’ve made it even easier to get around the galaxy to key content. All of the episodes now feature the ability to transwarp to them.
Faster Leveling – The leveling curve has been adjusted through the game, particularly at the earlier levels.
Dilithium Economy – The game now ties together the various daily missions, Duty Officers, and end game play around a new currency called Dilithium. Dilithium adds value to players at all levels from the early game onward. It replaces many of the narrow use currencies previously in the game, such as Marks, Emblems, Badges, and Merit.
Dilithium Exchange – You can trade Dilithium to other players for Cryptic Points, giving you a way to get your hands on Cryptic Points without spending money.
Mission Journal Upgrade – The mission journal UI got an upgrade to make it faster and easier to find that great content you want to play.

Other Improvements

Social Map Facelift – The key social maps in the game, such as Earth Space Dock and Qo’noS, got a facelift. They are now better organized, better performing on lower end graphics cards, and easier to get around.
Tutorial Facelift – The tutorial mission set got a nice scrub and cleanup to make the experience better.
General Game Polish – Many hundreds of bug fixes across the whole game were rolled in to really improve the overall game experience.

Sci-fi MMO Star Wars Galaxies’ servers will close on 15 December at 9PM PST (1PM GMT), according to a post on the game's official forum, and reported by VG247. The Galactic Civil War will end 24 hours earlier, with various battles and events ocurring during the morning of 15 December.

It’s been a grand intergalactic journey for Star Wars Galaxies - the game's been up and running since 2003, and eight years certainly isn’t a bad lifespan for an MMO. In that time it’s had three expansions, a spin-off trading card game and a novelisation. It also survived the Sony Online Entertainment mega-hack that occurred earlier this year.

Part of its closure is undoubtedly down to BioWare and EA’s upcoming Star Wars MMO, The Old Republic. The fact that Star Wars Galaxies has been online for such a long time casts doubt on Activision head Bobby Kotick’s claims that The Old Republic won’t be able to sustain its Lucasfilm licence fees.

Terraria is really, really cheap on Steam for another few hours, which is good news because Terraria's great. Check out our Terraria review to find out why. It just received a huge 1.1 update adding new monsters, weapons, accessories and a hard mode. It's available on Steam for just £1.50 / $2.50, a quarter of its normal price. Before you get started, check out our Terraria Beginner's Guide. It'll give you a few useful pointers to help you survive your first few hours, including instructions on how to build your first home.

Terraria's also part of Steam's new Daily Wishlist Giveaway. If you have a set of ten games in your wishlist you'll be entered into a draw to win them just by clicking on the Steam Terraria page, so make sure you're logged into Steam while checking out the deal.

Notch has mentioned on his blog that he'll be handing over the Minecraft design reigns to Jens Bergensten, the Mojang developer who has been working alongside Notch on Minecraft for the last year. "He will have the final say in all design decisions, so he will kinda sorta become my boss," says Notch. "I’ve promised him to not pull rank. ;)"

That doesn't mean Notch is leaving. He's planning to have a bit of a rest after years of solid development on Minecraft, which was finally released a few weeks ago at Minecon in Vegas. "Personally, I will now rest for a while, then get back to work refreshed and eager. I’ll be helping out with Minecraft, of course, but also starting work on some new project," he says.

Minecraft's still set to grow, with plenty of new updates and features, but it'll be interesting to see what Notch does next. Whatever it is, it'll be very highly anticipated after the extraordinary success of Minecraft, which just sold its 4,216,379th copy.