Well, that crept up on us. You may have noticed that it’s Christmas. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the PC Gamer team are about to abandon their desks for a week to enjoy the company of their friends, family and the Steam sale.

We haven’t abandoned the site; over the next couple of days we’ve asked left Roger the Christmas Robot in charge of the CMS. He’ll be posting the Game of the Year awards, our grand 2012 preview, and some interviews and opinion pieces.

We’ll also be playing all of our favourite games online, so don’t be a stranger. Come and find us. You’ll see us in the TOR guilds, on Battlefield 3, and in our Steam community.

From everyone at PC Gamer, have a very merry Christmas, and a happy 2012. We’ll see you online.

Even though Lego Lord of the Rings has been announced, we reckon they’re fast running out of franchises to render in acrylonitrile butadiene styrene. Lego James Bond is the one we always mention when we see the Traveller’s Tales guys, but so far we’ve had no luck convincing them that squashing a plastic version of Sean Bean with a giant satellite array would be a very good thing.

Flickr user Catsy has completely inspired us to believe that a Lego version of Half-Life would be the way for Lego to go. As Kotaku reported, he/she has created a Lego version of Gordon Freeman using stock Lego bits and bobs, equipped with a customised Overwatch Standard Issue Pulse Rifle made from a Lego tommy gun.

As Catsy notes, Freeman needs a little more smoothing and painting. But between his/her and Orrange Stahl’s attempts at Lego Half-Life, we think there’s more than enough to convince the Danish toy giants to create Lego versions of Freeman, Alyx Vance, The G-Man et al. Who knows, maybe they could even make a game of it.

Realistic military sim ARMA 2 has been updated to version 1.60 by developers Bohemia. The patch covers Operation Arrowhead, the British Armed Forces and Private Military Contractors DLC, the original Arma 2 and Arma 2: Free. Among the whopping 158 changes are a new anti-aliasing mode, new scripting commands, smoother multiplayer, netcode fixes and improved AI. More important fixes include, “AI no longer considering a car horn as a threat,” and “Dead body temperature was not saved.”

The Bohemians have also created a Christmas message for all their fans, which is so incredibly festive we’re about to explode in a shower of tinsel and fake snow.

Changelog highlights after the break.


New features: FXAA Anti-Aliasing mode, user-definable memory allocators, new scripting commands, new commandline options
Multiplayer is much smoother, no more warping, includes number of fixes, optimizations and improvements
Netcode, VON and dedicated server fixes plus configuration additions in place
Singleplayer received visual states smoothing and prediction (notable e.g. on distant units)
AI is improved, especially (but not only) in combat, AI has received numerous bug fixes
Aircraft & Helicopters simulation received slight improvements
ARMA 2, ARMA 2: OA, ARMA 2: EW campaigns and stand-alone missions received special treatment to get rid of most from really annoying bugs
official expansions & product combinations unified in way to allow easier operation of all distributions (separated installs/Steam/Desura) for build-in expansions manager
Documentation to accompany these changes is available on our community wiki BIKI: http://community.bistudio.com/ and our BIForum http://forums.bistudio.com/
ARMA 2: BAF and ARMA 2: PMC got their share of fixes too

PC game download service Direct2Drive is becoming part of Gamefly, the US video game rental service. According to Direct2Drive’s site, they’re aiming to make the process as smooth as possible, but we’re a little concerned about what will happen to gamer’s precious Direct2Drive collections.

Worryingly, it seems that certain titles are available on Direct2Drive that aren’t available GameFly. Anno 2070, for instance, is available on Direct2Drive, but it’s not on Gamefly. Compounding this is the fact that Gamefly won’t be hosting Prima Guides, too.

Direct2Drive is advising customers to download their favourite purchases from Direct2Drive, as well as non-game files such as those precious Prima Guides. The Direct2Drive site advises that “Some older titles may not be available immediately after the transition, and will be added later.”

It’s not all bad - for US residents, at least. Gamefly subscribers have unlimited access to a host of games, including World of Goo, Prince of Persia, Penumbra and, er, Freddi Fish: The Case of the Haunted Schoolhouse. These titles are available for no extra charge, but it’s unclear if the rental service will ever be available in the UK. “At this time, GameFly's by-mail rental service for console and handheld titles is only available in the U.S.,” says Direct2Drive’s FAQ.

The transition from Direct2Drive to Gamefly begins in January. We can’t help but wonder if the inevitable bumps are going to throw at least two Direct2Drive users in Steam’s direction.

Nothing says large-scale futuristic warfare quite like footage of slowly rotating men. It looks like we'll have to wait until the new year to see any videos of Planetside 2 in-action, but the latest faction vignette gives us an idea of how the three factions differ. You can choose to play as the sturdy, well drilled Terran Republic, the slick, high-tech Vanu or the desperate, under-resourced New Conglomerate. The Vanu's love of purple alien weaponry put them ahead in my book. Which is your favourite?

EVE Online hit quite the patch of turbulence over the past year, but CCP's finally attempting to put things back on track. Better still, the recent "Crucible" expansion was just the tip of the space iceberg. In order to further EVE's newfound back-to-the-basics approach, senior producer Arnar "CCP Zulu" Gylfason is giving the deck over to Jon "CCP Unifex" Lander - formerly head of CCP's Carbon tech team. Speaking on EVE's official website, Lander outlined what's next for the MMO that's inspired equal amounts of long-form love poetry and spittle-soaked hate ranting.



"The task ahead of us in 2012 is not to be taken lightly," he wrote. "We are changing EVE’s internal project structure to bring it in line with a product that has nearly 200 people working on it and making sure that everyone is concentrating on delivering a game which has real value for our players. As well as changing the project organization, we will also be spending time on improving our internal tools, pipelines and processes to improve our efficiency and effectiveness for the future."

"Finally, we will be concentrating on those features we already have in the game after 8 years of development. Yes, we will be iterating (it‘s not a dirty word) on those features which need some polish, balance, fixes and general love. The releases throughout 2012 will be an extension of the type of release we had with Crucible with the addition of a theme to help us scope and tie the work into a really compelling and coherent package. The first theme is going to be War and everyone is getting very excited about it."

War! What is it good for? Spaceships, apparently. Good to know.

We like Star Wars: The Old Republic so much that we put a (very big) number on it, but it definitely has a few kinks that need ironing out. Foremost, certain servers are more crowded than movie theaters on Episode One's opening day, but their occupants are as disappointed as, well, Star Wars fans on Episode One's opening day. Server queues abound, and - unfortunately - BioWare says they're not going away any time soon. If patience isn't your strong suit, however, the RPG behemoth suggests starting anew on a different server. Sadly, character transfers aren't an option - at least, for the time being.



"Character transfer is a common request for these servers," the developer wrote on its official forums. "The ability to transfer your characters is being worked on, but there is no ETA on when it will be available."

In the meantime, BioWare plans to "gradually" up population caps, but don't expect anything drastic. After all, that'd be like attempting to put out a fire with more fire. But hey, it could be worse. Unless you're bound and determined to power level so quickly that you become a Death Star, TOR's all about the story. Playing a Jedi? Jump over to a less populated server and try a Sith. It's hardly the end of the world.

Christmas is canceled: there will be no podcast this week as we're busy decking the halls of our magazine to get the latest issue to Santa's printers in time. Daniel Erickson, Lead Writer for Star Wars: the Old Republic, swung by the office to cheer us on and chat about TOR on its launch day. We chat about his favorite light and dark side moments, which classes are just plain evil, and why faction changes just don't make sense in the Star Wars universe.

We hope you'll have a fantastic holiday season full of wonder-frags and epic loots. Look for podcast #300 in the new year. It'll be the cat's meow.


PC Gamer Interview with Daniel Erickson

The latest Batman game is an awe-inspiring vision of an entire city turned into a prison. It’s every bit as neck-snappingly brutal as its predecessor, but this time Batman’s got an entire city at his disposal. Plus, you can climb on ceilings as Catwoman which really enfreshens the action. Steam’s knocked 50 per cent off the game, as well as the skins pack, in their current sale, but it’s only on for the next couple of hours. Quick! Like a bat!

Welcome to the PC Gamer Ultimate Christmas Giveaway! This is the biggest competition we've ever done: packed with peripherals, games, and exclusive items signed by some very important people. Why are we doing this? Because it's Christmas! And we love you.

The Ultimate Christmas giveaway will run until Christmas Eve. Every day we'll be posting about a new prize that's up for grabs, and you'll have 24 hours after the time of publishing to enter. Sadly, we're only able to open this competition to UK residents.

We at PC Gamer understand that not everyone who reads our website has a supercooled doomrig of awesome, we know some of you are gaming on older PCs, which is why we're giving you the chance to win a new graphics card and some RAM. We've got a PNY GeForce 550 and a PNY 4GB DDR3 RAM kit up for grabs, enough to suddenly propel your struggling old PC into the latest generation of gaming.

Check inside for details of how to win.

To win these lovely prizes just answer me this question:

What's your excuse for not upgrading yet?

The best, most creative, funniest and most obviously fraudulent excuse will win the prize. If you win, you'll get a private message via the forums. Let us know your address and we'll send you your prizes shortly after Christmas. Remember, this competition is open to UK readers only. Also, if you don't claim your prize within three weeks of being notified we'll offer it to someone else. Full terms and conditions can be found here.

Good luck everyone! Come back tomorrow at 4.30 for the next prize, which involves pimps, hos and the colour purple.