PC Gamer
hard_reset
Indie game bundle bundler Indie Royale (five times fast, go!) is now selling its St. Patrick's Day Bundle. The biggie on the roster is Flying Wild Hog's cyberpunk shooter Hard Reset, which is available as a Steam key, Desura key, and DRM-free download. The bundle's current price is $4.58 (roughly £2.91), but it'll increase with each minimum-rate purchase, and decrease whenever someone pays above the minimum. Hard Reset alone is currently $20/£13 Steam.



The bundle also includes point-and-click adventure Jolly Rover, abstract RTS Vertex Dispenser, and DLC Quest, a well-liked parody which originated on Xbox Live. There are bonus games, too. The developers of DLC Quest have thrown in overhead shooter Lair of the Evildoer, and the creator of Vertex Dispenser is offering an exclusive puzzle-oriented version called Vertex Vortex Remix Cortex, which is even more fun to say than "indie game bundle bundler."

Now I just need to find an indie beer bundle and this St. Patrick's Day will be the best ever.
PC Gamer
bg enhanced edition
Following an enigmatic, tedious countdown timer (that broke the website upon expiring for 40 minutes and counting), Overhaul Games has announced Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition.

BG and BG2 have been available on GOG.com for awhile, so what'll this contribute? According to the developer, original game content. Overhaul Games told Joystiq: "This is the Enhanced Edition, it's not a repackage. We have the original source code and are doing a significant update." I've separately reached out to the developer for more information.

Right now, the game's announcement page is still busted, so I'm not sure whether to tell you to keep F5ing or not. I'll update with any additional information as we receive it.

Update: Overhaul has passed along the raw text from the game's website, which I'm pasting here. Trent Oster also revealed in a tweet that the Enhanced Edition will include the Tales of the Sword Coast Expansion. "Since its initial release in 1998, Baldur’s Gate has entertained millions of fans around the globe, and has received countless awards. This classic saga of mystery, intrigue, and adventure has set the standard for Dungeons & Dragons® computer roleplaying games ever since. Overhaul Games has assembled a talented team of artists, programmers and designers to enhance this timeless classic. To remain true to the spirit of the game, the team includes original Baldur’s Gate developers. Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition™ and Baldur’s Gate II: Enhanced Edition™ will feature a re-forged version of the Infinity Engine with a variety of modern improvements."

Below, someone captured this image from the announcement page before the website's server collapsed.

PC Gamer
RISEN2-all-all-screenshot-103
I arrive on Tacarigua and start looking for work. The Inquisition want me to deliver a message to the pirate camp across the island. To get there I'll need to buy a map off Governor Di Fuego. But before the guards will even let me approach him, I need a shirt.

Like the first Risen, and the Gothic series before it, Risen 2: Dark Waters doesn't do power fantasy. After a short, plot heavy stint on the opening island, the nameless character of the first game is sent to the island of Tacarigua with a sword, a pair of trousers and the broad instruction to infiltrate a band of pirates. How to survive long enough to come close to completing that task is left entirely to the player to work out.

It's disorienting. So many games coax you through their opening hours, but Risen 2 has no quest markers, no mini-map and only broad hints from the NPCs as to the location and process of completing missions. It's also hugely liberating, and overcoming the challenges presented can be a profoundly satisfying experience.



The plot starts with the protagonist working as an officer for the Inquisition—a sort of empire expanding amalgam of the Spanish and British. Their supply lines have been cut off by a Kraken, sent by the titan lord Mara. After receiving word of a weapon that can defeat the sea-beast, he's tasked with infiltrating the pirate gang of its owner, the legendary Steelbeard.

That means going undercover—shedding allegiances in order to plausibly pass as one of the game's rum-guzzling rapscallions. And while I started with nothing, I was free to work for anyone—from the slave-keeping governor, to a drunken, bitter slacker selling plans to a heist of the nearby rum distillery.

In the first few hours I stole everything I could get my hands on from both pirate and Inquisition factions, performed countless odd jobs and even persuaded my companion Patty to spend a day in the kitchen by suggesting she also swipe some provisions to help our quest.



I liked the way paying attention to conversation options in Risen 2 rewarded me. When the governor of Tacarigua attempted to sell me the map of the island, I persuaded him to hand it over for free because I needed it for another mission I'd accepted on behalf of the Inquisition. But I was also permanently locked out of completing a sidequest that could have netted me a handy 1,000 gold simply because I was too friendly with one character on our first encounter.

Other beneficial interactions hinged on my skill at intimidation and persuasion. Learning to do anything in Risen 2 is a complicated process. Completing missions and killing things (even the docile turkeys) gives Glory. This can be spent on increasing your Attributes: five traits that govern competence in broad areas, such as aptitude with blades, general toughness or potential success at special conversation options.

But specific actions, like pickpocketing, or even kicking and crouching, must be taught by trainers. It's here that things quickly get expensive. My predilection for larceny had me quickly rising up the cunning skill tree, but it came at the cost of combat skill and resistance to attacks. The game is full of tough choices for character advancement—do you spend money on an improved weapon, or on a skill to let you use your existing weapon more effectively?



Thick jungles and crumbling tribal ruins may make for an interesting RPG setting, but graphically the game struggles to do its pirate setting justice. Background textures are generally low-res, especially on buildings and scenery, trees shift in size to hide the low draw distance, and characters regularly clip through pieces of their clothing. Risen 2’s atmospheric lighting engine manages moments of beauty now and then, though. As I veered off the path connecting the two factions, I stumbled across a cave hidden in a cliff face. Inside, crystal formations growing out of the wall cast some cool, eerie light on my path that behaved differently than my torch. But compared to The Witcher 2, Risen 2 doesn’t have the same fidelity. While it may throw more vegetation and bright, primary colors at the player than its polished, Polish peer, it can't match it for detail or realism.

But the technical lapses pale in significance against the game's most troubling area: combat. It's highly situational—fights against animals are simple, despite some variety by type, whereas human opponents can provide a drawn out challenge. Enemies have an annoying tendency to spam attacks, and creating an opening can be a fiddly and imprecise process. As a result, battles are as much about health management as they are swashbuckling adventure.

By the third island it had begun to show some variety. Guns work in place of a projectile magic attack, taking a big hit from an enemy health bar, but needing a long recharge time before the next use. I also discovered a native tribe who taught me the art of voodoo. The demo finished before I could experience its use in combat, but the available recipes suggested cursed voodoo dolls and black magic.



The other application of voodoo did provide some use. The alchemy skill finally made useful all the various plants I'd collected along the way. Brewing up a thief skill-boosting potion, I bolstered Lockpick enough to clean the tribe out of a locked chest full of even more ingredients. Despite the many areas where Risen 2 is deliberately obtuse, the math behind its primary systems is transparent enough to make effective use of them.

It's a game that leaves me equally optimistic and worried. If it can make the most of its unforgiving quest structure, it could become a deep and lasting experience for anyone looking for something more intricate than the genre currently offers. But by the end of the demo, when I was made to fight eight tribesmen with an endless supply of spears to throw, I was cursing the cheap attempts to up the difficulty. Hopefully the full game will include enough skills and variety to bolster its weakest elements.
Team Fortress 2
photoshop masterpiece
Sometime soon, I'm going to be called to defend the honor of PC Gamer against Notch, Robin Walker, Yogscast, Freddie Wong, friends of PCG Brian Brushwood and Veronica Belmont, and other people that are more important than me. The men behind TF2 Mix-up have organized another showmatch, a 9-on-9 battle royale between web celebs that benefits Child's Play.

Want to play with us? Donators are eligible to fill a vacant player slot. On April 1, the event's organizers will randomly pick three donors who will each be offered a place in the match along with some signed merchandise. Donate more, and you'll increase your chances. Donate here. The match's date is secret, but it should be held sometime in April. We'll post the match video once it's available, assuming I don't dishonor you all.
PC Gamer



I loved the first Max Payne, and I still appreciate Remedy's ambition today. It's a great game. That said, after playing it again recently, I realized that some of my fond memories of realistic physics and ultra-lifelike characters might have been contaminated with just a teensy drop of nostalgia since 2001.

If you're bothered by the "new" Max Payne of Max Payne 3, with his varying amounts of hair on varying bits of his head, the series' original cast is at least a reminder of how much 11 years of technological progress can do for a guy's looks. The video above is my tribute to the smirking Max Payne who once was (who certainly looks good for the time), as remembered by the new, not-smirking-quite-as-much Max Payne.





When developing the original Max Payne, Remedy did not have a budget for actors, so writer Sam Lake and other developers played the roles. Lake is the original face (and smirk) of Max Payne.
The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Enhanced Edition
Witcher 2 thumbnail
"I don’t want Witcher to be sold by crappy stores which don’t care about the consumers." That's what the impressively titled Marcin Iwinski - co-founder, Member of the Board and Business Development at CD Projekt Group - had to say at GDC last week.

The diversity of video game retailers is a contentious issue at the moment. UK retail chain GAME's share prices are at an all-time low. If the cover of industry magazine, MCV is anything to go by, they're already dead. Marcin has been predicting the decline for years: "It’s funny because I’m speaking at the conferences, lectures and whatnot for the last six years of saying 'digital, digital, digital' and nothing happened. Then... kaboom! We're at the tipping point and off we go."

"Look what have done with Steamworks," he continued. "They’ve offered a lot of stuff and are forever linking the developers with the platform. All of their offering is free so... is there any better strategy? No. Give a lot of value."

Marcin says that other digital distribution platforms need to innovate, not immitate if they're to succeed: "Look what the other guys are doing 'Oh, we’ll copy Steamworks.' GOG has a unique offering because we go a totally different way, we offer free downloads of free additional materials, and we sold over 40 000 copies of The Witcher 2 on GOG. It was the second biggest market for us."

Marcin also confirmed that The Witcher 2 will eventually end up on EA's rival distribution platform, Origin.

"It will be on Origin. I'm a big pilot of the user experience so I’m checking along the platforms; is it good, is it friendly?"
PC Gamer
customizable_ui_thumb
Finally, The Old Republic will allow us to change our UI completely to match our personal tastes! We've played around with the new UI customization options coming to the game in early April with patch 1.2 and have seen how flexible they really are. Here's how you can use them to customize your own UI.



The default UI
Here's the base UI you'll see when starting the game. Nothing fancy--just the bare bones. It works great, but there's so much more we can do with it now!



Add action bars and find the new UI customization menu
Click on the small icon with a plus sign on it at the top-left of your main action bar to open the menu for your new interface options. A few default options will be listed there, such as Default (keeps it as-is), Extended Quickslots (which adds the maximum number of action bars to your screen), and Retro (which mimics World of Warcraft's interface).

I recommend starting by activating the Extended Quickslots profile, to give you all the options on screen for you to work with. Custom profiles that you've created and saved will appear underneath the pre-made options in this menu.



Move, scale, and destroy to your heart's content
Selecting Open Layout Editor at the bottom of that menu will cause everything in the interface to glow green. Do not panic--you didn't break it. You're now free to move everything you see on the screen.

The large box in the middle houses all the variables for editing your interface. The top portion allows you to save your current layout as a new template, such as "Josh's totally radical Sniper setup." The section just below that allows you to set the global scale for your interface, shrinking everything in unison to a size more to your liking. Personally, I prefer about 70% to show me more of the game world.

Clicking on any element opens up the options menu specific to that element in the bottom half of the layout editor box. Click on the minimap for example, and you'll be given the option to alter it's scale independently of the rest of the UI, it's alpha (transparency), flip it vertically, or even disable it altogether.

Everything that's always on screen can be tweaked this way, giving you complete freedom to put things where you want them and the shape you want them in. Unfortunately temporary UI panes like the character window or crew skills window pane cannot be changed, but I still found the new customization options to be incredibly freeing and I'm much more happy with my new interface. I hope you are too!

Risen
Risen 2
Pending unscheduled Kraken attacks, the swashbuckling sequel, Risen 2, will hit shores on April 27. The pirate ArrrrPG will have guns, exotic monsters and plenty of sunshine, but there's some serious pedigree behind it. It's made by Piranha Bytes, the chaps behind the Gotchic series (before it was handed off to Spellbound with Arcania: Gothic 4). It's set in a series of archipeligos plagued by sea monsters and bandits, and it looks very shiny indeed. Check out the recent Risen 2 screenshots for a look at Risen 2's lush jungle islands.
PC Gamer
Baldur's Gate
A countdown has appeared on the mysterious Baldur's Gate teaser site we mentioned a few weeks back. There are just four and a half hours left on the clock at the time of writing, which means we'll soon know what all this is about. But what could it be? A HD remake? A re-release for iPads and mobiles, a new game entirely? We can only speculate for now. Hopefully we'll get some answers when that clock hits zero at 7pm GMT/ 3pm EST / 12pm PST.
PC Gamer
Diablo 3 box art
Blizzard have finally announced a release date for Diablo 3! It'll be released digitally and in shops internationally on May 15 and is available to pre-order now on Battle.Net. It'll arrive a bit later on June 7 in Latin America and Russia.

Alongside the release date announcement, Blizzard have revealed the Collector's Edition. That comes with a skull of Diablo with a crystalline USB stick that looks as though it'll plug into the demon's forehead. There's a copy of Diablo 2 and its expansion, Lord of Destruction on the stick.

The collector's edition comes with a few cosmetic bonuses, too. You'll get a set of "glowing angel wings," a bonus banner and items that will let you dye your armour sets. It'll also unlock a "Fetish Shaman" pet in WoW and some portraits for StarCraft 2.

The set also comes with a behind-the-scenes blu-ray making of documentary, an art book and a soundtrack.

It's been a long twelve year wait since Diablo 2 came out, but the sequel is finally almost here. Blizzard have spent the last few months stripping out features that they feel need more long term care and attention, now it looks as though they've finally honed the campaign to their satisfaction. Who's looking forward to Diablo 3?





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