In a Reddit AMA thread posted yesterday, development team members of Assassin's Creed 3 assured that the PC version of Connor's American vacation will include a new patch ironing bugs present in the console version and sprinkling in DirectX 11 improvements.

"We've added extra DirectX 11 support for the PC version, so you'll notice some significant increases in texture resolution (double-res in most cases, but quadruple in some), tessellation (which is like, the new DX11 hotness) and some other shader improvements that will have an impact," Ubisoft Senior Community Developer Gabe Graziani wrote. " will include all of the console patches out at the time (so, that includes any patches we might be releasing in between now and PC launch). In addition, PC has a special patch designed to ensure that everything runs as smoothly as possible."

Other questions answered by Graziani and the rest of the participants—including Writer Matt Turner, Creative Director Alex Hutchinson, and the enviable-sounding Team Historian Maxime Durand—touched upon design decisions, requested multiplayer modes (naval battles!), and an island full of bears. (Yes, it exists.) One poster queried the team on their awareness of complaints against a perceived "pro-American" take on the War of Independence through Connor's Redcoat wreckage. As Hutchinson put it, the team staunchly opposed any discriminatory intent, but everyone felt "depressed" as a result.

"We started laughing, then we were depressed as we realized nobody would believe us until the game shipped," he wrote. "Then we felt validated when it did ship and most people noticed. Then we were depressed again when we realized all the people who carried on about it before we shipped weren't going to say sorry."

Dishonored depicted a city in the throes of a commerce- and people-killing plague spread by nests of vermin as Corvo Attano stuck it or snuck it to his wrongdoers. Yet Dunwall also plays host to a secondary epidemic far less sinister in nature: words. Speaking to New World Notes, Dishonored co-creative directors Harvey Smith and Raphael Colantonio revealed the freeform stealther holds "roughly 90,000 words in AI-driven one-liners and spoken dialogue and another 40,000 written words in the form of notes, books, and graffiti." Sticking to the novel-sized script is a sizable cast of around 100 characters, half of which exist in the tattered books, journals, and clippings peppered upon Corvo's journey.

Smith and Colantonio also shone a whale-oil lamp on the literary, music, and film influences shaping Dishonored's narrative cocktail, saying, "Many people on our team made mention, on a weekly basis, of various influences from Herman Melville to Mervyn Peake. You could point to Thomas Burke (for Limehouse) or Dickens as general influences, and as people who have added to the cultural map that most of the team shares.

"During development, we discussed the works of H. P. Lovecraft, Michael Moorcock, Neil Gaiman, and others. Films like Gangs of New York, Perfume, and Anonymous factored into our research. As we've mentioned before, some of us love the Decemberists and took small influences from the lyrics of Picaresque and Her Majesty."

Both Smith and Colantonio felt "most proud" of Dunwall's emergent nature and how players experience the mass neurosis of the crumbling city, but a few embedded plot elements earned Arkane's love. Spoilers: "The Heretic's Brand, Campbell showing up later as a weeper, Emily's final drawing (based on high/low Chaos), and the Empress' little room of leftover stuff in Dunwall Tower."

The rest of New World Notes' interview spotlights some more interesting tidbits on level design and Dunwall's identity.

A user on the SteamRep forums who goes by base64 has potentially uncovered evidence of organized Team Fortress 2 market fraud. On Sunday morning, the community investigator noticed an unusual jump in the price (in TF2's common currency of Keys) and volume of Earbud trades. Earbuds, if you're not familiar, are an especially valuable TF2 item. Further investigation revealed that the Keys used to purchase the Earbuds at an above-average price had consecutive or regularly alternating (odd or even) original ID numbers, which indicates they were likely purchased in bulk directly from the Mann Co. Store.

That brought up questions, like, say, why would someone purchase thousands of Keys for $2.49 each, trade 28 to 30 of them at a time for Earbuds, and then sell those Earbuds for 700 Russian rubles, for a loss of about $47 each? Base64's thorough investigation can only lead to educated speculation, but it's all very suspicious.

The big drama version of the story is that Russian mobsters are using Team Fortress 2 to launder money. Since this isn't a Neal Stephenson novel, the more likely story is that someone's sitting on a few stolen credit card numbers. Some SteamRep posters say base64's research reveals "nothing new," suggesting that this activity is commonplace. Whatever the case, credit to base64 for uncovering so much via Valve's API and interviews with Earbud sellers involved—if nothing else, it's a fascinating study of digital forensics. Check out the post for the full investigation.

(Via PCGamesN)

This blink-and-you'll-miss-it Splinter Cell: Blacklist footage messes with my head. For one thing, I'm ecstatic over the inclusion of deep shadows and a sneaky Sam Fisher performing a very Chaos Theory-esque stalk-'n-drop. Ubisoft's message here only feeds a morsel of hope to stealth-core nuts like myself leery of the Great Goggled One's trigger-happy turn, but it's still a pleasing affirmation of Sam's dominion of dark. For another, I can barely see anything. Just as planned.

Spaceborn mega-RTS Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion has just released its 1.1 patch. The update adds a massive amount of changes, including over forty new maps. No that was not a typo, I really meant forty, four-zero. Given the average length of a Sins game, I estimate the time it would take you to learn all these new maps as slightly longer than than the lifespan of the universe.

Many of the new maps are balanced for competitive play, meaning that resources and starting locations are mirrored, making sure no-one has an unfair advantage. Perhaps Sins is attempting to become the world's slowest e-sport? I can imagine it as the test match cricket of the internet world, where tournaments take two weeks to complete and the audience spends most of their time having a nice picnic.

There's also big changes to the role of corvettes, who had previously found themselves as a ship without a role. Now they're immune to many of the nasty effects that the enormous Titan class ships can deploy, turning them into the game's designated giant killers. Now instead of responding to a Titan with one of your own, you'll be able to send a fleet of plucky corvettes to pop a torpedo down its exhaust pipe, making guarding your biggest vessels far more important.

You can find the full patch notes on the Sins of a Solar Empire forums. If you don't yet own the game, you can find out why you should in our Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion review.

Thanks, PCGamesN.

Mojang have officially released their 1.4.4 update to the 8 million copy selling phenomenon Minecraft. As with all one-point-something-point-something updates, it focuses more on bug squashing than feature adding. When you next load up the client, you can look forward to no longer seeing squids happily breathe on land (sadists) or chickens with inverted head movement (who would even notice that?)

While this patch is only a relatively small bug hunt, it's also the first official release for the much larger 1.4.3 update, which stops some lag-induced errors that would see players randomly receive fall damage. The full list of fixes for 1.4.3 is here, with the added 1.4.4 enhancements here.

Meanwhile, PCGamesN have been keeping up with a Reddit thread that's attempting to decipher the cryptic message that Notch issued for Minecraft's 8 millionth sale celebration. So far they're not having much luck, but do report that the string (69I960EHE0A4A0IVG0EHE02500R4R0G1T30PLJ00V6V0EHE0V1U01V10U5U0VGV0V4R, in case you'd forgotten) does make for a cool world seed with a "weird" cave system. So that's nice.

It's time! The second trailer for Grand Theft Auto V has finally arrived. No, there's still no mention of a PC version, but since every previous GTA game has eventually found its way to PC, we're fairly confident this one will too. The new trailer spotlights Michael, Trevor and Franklin, the game's three protagonists, but also includes some new info.

Firstly, planes! More importantly, fighter planes. Also, a car tumbling out of a cargo plane with a man in it. Have Rockstar been taking some tips from Saints Row 3? Also dogs! We joked about them back when we rounded up the rumours from the first GTA V trailer, but now it turns out we were right. We're awesome when it comes to rumours, as long as you ignore the time we thought Michael was Tommy Vercetti.

If it actually let's us control the things shown in the trailer without quicktime events - i.e. jump from the roof of a train, seconds before it crashes - then this looks potentially great fun. Anyone have qualms?

Review by Michael Grimm.

Imagine a jigsaw puzzle of something great – say, an anthropomorphic Lamborghini bench-pressing a dinosaur. Now imagine the pieces are all the wrong shape and will never fit together. You can still make out part of the Lamborghini’s flexing bicep and the dinosaur’s worried expression, but it’s not what it should be.

That puzzle is Cortex Command, a 2D action game with bits of squad strategy and base building, none of which quite fit together. It casts you as a brain-in-a-jar that calls down troops, tools, and guns from space to eliminate other enemy brains-in-jars. Gold pays for all this and can be harvested from the ground, meaning it’s wise to have a few cheap units dutifully digging away to feed your war machine. This is where the UI and AI start messing everything up.

Fog of war is available on some of the maps.

You’re limited to direct control of one unit at a time, so you have to rely on the AI’s help, but your commands work sporadically at best. Robots ordered to mine for gold will do so until they decide not to. Pathfinding and movement AI seem to barely function. The targeting, however, is excellent, so even if your opponent is tripping over his own legs into a QWOP-inspired heap, he can still shoot your head off.

During my first mission I assembled a diverse squad and planned a tactical strike on the enemy bunker. Alpha squadron would push back the enemy so that Donald, the explosives expert, could blow a hole in the roof. By the time I reached the enemy, half my troops had dropped their weapons or lost a limb, two had killed themselves with their jetpacks, and Donald had dug a hole to the bottom of the map. Well done, Alpha squadron. I tried some of the AI mods and found them helpful but not revelatory.

Cortex Command features a campaign mode and standalone scenarios. Of the two, the scenarios are generally more structured, and break the game into manageable chunks. I had the most fun with the Dummy Assault scenario, where I sent wave after wave of dead men into a robot controlled bunker. Campaign mode is barely explained, though it tries to stitch the combat into a turn-based conquest mechanic where you capture points across the world. The metagame doesn’t make a difference when even the most basic missions are arduous, requiring the perfect combination of patience, skill and luck.

Turrets have the added bonus of not dropping their weapons.

Multiplayer is limited to local split-screen only, though attempting to play a game this spotty competitively could only end in tears. Co-op fairs a bit better if you’re playing on a TV – gathering four friends around a computer monitor seems unlikely.

Cortex Command is a long way from being a game that people are going to feel comfortable paying £12 for. It looks neat, the basic gun combat is fun, and the destructible terrain works well, but the pieces don’t fit together, and the failed AI makes it a drag to play.

Good news for lovers of neon: Distance, the new effort from the creators of the excellent free racing game Nitronic Rush, has just been Kickstarted. Nitronic Rush was one of our surprise favourites of 2011. Made by some students from DigiPen, it was about tumbling through a tron style futuristic glowing future city in a transforming rocket car. Distance promises even more of the same, only with multiplayer, mod support and all the other bonuses that come with having an actual budget.

With only two and a half days left on the clock, the Kickstarter has just nudged over its $125,000 goal, currently standing on $128,328. Now that that's been achieved the inevitable stretch goals have been revealed. Taking the current total up to $150,000 will grant the game a full replay mode, where players can used free and fixed cameras to capture their racing prowess for inevitable YouTube montages. It'll be a tight squeak to get to that number in the next 60 hours, but based on previous late-day Kickstarter surges, it's entirely possible.

If you'd like to donate to Distance, you can do so at their Kickstarter page. If you want more information you can can check out our enormous Refract Studios interview, or read our old Nitronic Rush article. Or you can just download Nitronic Rush and try it out for yourself.

Remember last year when seemingly every day there was a new security vulnerability that had us scrabbling to change our passwords? Well bad news. Eurogamer's own Richard Leadbetter received an email from Origin informing that his account's password and email address had been successfully changed. Only problem: he never issued any such request.

This NeoGAF thread (which contains justifiably strong language) confirms that this isn't an isolated case. The problem now is that Origin's email confirmations don't state what the new address is, and with both that and the password changed, there's seemingly no failsafe in place to rescue the account. According to one GAF user, because dates of birth have also been changed, affected customers are also failing EA support's security check.

Fortunately card details should be safe. Even if you've previously saved your details to Origin, the store obscures all but the last four digits and requires you re-enter the Card Security Code for all purchases.

Using some quirks of the EA's Xbox Live profile, GAFers was able to track down the new owner of his account, as well as the Russian email address it was now registered to. All that remains is to see how EA will handle the compromise. For now, all they've told affected customers is that they're “escalating” the issue.

In the meantime, maybe change your passwords. Again.