Dark Souls 2 was officially announced last night at the Spike Videogame Awards, but our friends over at the Edge magazine hive-mind have already been to see it. Indeed, it's on the cover of their next issue, out on December 20th.

According to the data readouts from the Edge Seeker Drone dispatched to assess progress on the sequel, a good deal of creative control has passed into the hands of new directors Tomohiro Shibuya and Yui Tanimura, while Hidetaka Miyazaki ascends to a higher plane of management. How this will change the series direction is a big question - already the sequel would have to deal with conflicting pressures: the need to replicate the potency of Dark Souls' challenge and the need to make itself more accessible.

Accessible doesn't mean easy, necessarily - but arguably more could be done to prevent massive game systems, like Dark Souls' Covenants, from going entirely unnoticed by the majority of players. At the same time, part of Dark Souls' allure was its cryptic, resistant mythology, unpicked only after many hours of play.

Will that elusive quality be consigned to history? Shibuya: "I personally am the sort of person who likes to be more direct than subtle," he tells us. " will be more straightforward and more understandable."

Meanwhile, Carlson Choi, Vice President of Marketing for Namco Bandai, said, "From Software is going to take a very dark path with Dark Souls II; players will need to look deep within themselves to see if they have the intestinal fortitude to embark on this journey."

Did he just threaten us with a colonoscopy?

Anyway here's Edge's cover to whet your appetite.

Every week, Richard Cobbett rolls the dice to bring you an obscure slice of gaming history, from lost gems to weapons grade atrocities. This week, they'll never stop The Simpsons - but in the mid-90s, oh, how they should have tried to stop the games. With the possible exception of one...

It is written that once in every generation, buried in a mountain of terrible, terrible licensed games, there will be... well, a diamond is pushing it. An emerald, perhaps? A topaz, potentially. More than just another bit of licensed crapola anyway. Meet a game that looked at the technology available to it back in 1997 and thought "You know what? I could actually do something pretty cool with this..."

Random, but not as random as his robot battlesuit from the arcade game...

The Simpsons games. However many you think there were, oh, I pretty much guarantee there were more. Very few of them made it to PC thankfully, but console gamers in the 90s faced an all-out minefield of abominations with Bart Simpson's face on them - a result of them mostly coming from the show's early years, before everyone realised that Homer was actually the main character. Konami's Arcade Game remains one of the most fondly remembered, in all its surreal glory. Bart vs. The Space Mutants was pretty damn bad, but at least in an interesting way. It was unique, at least.

After that... oh boy. A torrent of stuff with names like Krusty's Fun House, and horrible minigame collections like Virtual Bart and Bart's Nightmare, and completely forgotten stuff like Escape From Camp Deadly... not to mention stuff where clearly nobody involved was even slightly interested. Bart and the Beanstalk, anybody? Science has objectively proven that this game had no excuse to exist.

Ah, the internet. All the world's wonders, drip-feed through a 56k modem at 0.01Kps. On my ISP anyway.

The PC wasn't spared all of these, sadly, though it did dodge most of the bullets. Instead, in the height of the 'hey, we can put lots of crap on a CD' multimedia age, it got Virtual Springfield - one of the least remembered Simpsons games, but still one of the best attempts at bringing them to the screen.

Well, up to a point. Really, there's not a lot of 'game' here. Some, not much. The basic goal is to collect about 70 cards all over town. What actually made it cool? Actually wandering all over town.



For fans of the show, this was awesome. There's never been a 'proper' map of Springfield, of course - it's a town built on negative continuity, even before it was moved down the road on trailers after burying itself in garbage. Virtual Springfield offered one though, with Myst style exploration of its streets, adventure game style interiors, and some of the worst mini-games ever created by man or beast alike - but mini-games starring The Simpsons, so still pretty cool for about five minutes or so. That might not sound like much, but it's about five minutes more than most other attempts out there.

(Not to mention a full half an hour longer than Dilbert's Desktop Games...)

Ha! Muppets Inside did it first! Take that, The Simpsons. Someone finally beat you!

It works because it actually feels vaguely alive. You don't have freedom of movement, and can only go into a few of the buildings you see - though they're the obvious ones like the Simpsons House, Nuclear Plant, Krusty Studios and Moe's Tavern - but you can wander around the streets and characters are constantly driving past, popping in for a line, or doing something in the background - at least to the levels that pre-rendered graphics can do. Their animation quality is beyond terrible, but at least the voice actors showed up to record new lines instead of just relying on dialogue ripped from old episodes.

Pictured on the right, the exact moment everyone involved got bored with this project.

It's the attention to detail that makes it fun to explore. Go into the Kwiki-Mart, and the background tune is a musak version of Baby On Board - the barbershop song that made Homer and co world-famous for roughly the seventh time in the show's run. Open the freezer at the back and the secret passage is there to visit Apu's rooftop garden. On the magazine rack are thirteen parody covers, including Queen Victoria's Secret ("What's under that dress? Another dress!"), Obnoxious Co-Worker Magazine, and The Bison Enthusiast. It's not exactly a case of every pixel hiding a joke, but there are more of them in about three of Virtual Springfield's screens than many other entire comedy games.

Why, in my day, our floppy disks WERE floppy! And that's how we liked 'em!

Things do get a teeny-tiny bit creepy when you go to the Simpsons House though. It's nothing overt, just the realisation that you're not really a guest of the family or anything, silently going from room to room and prying through their things in a methodical kind of way that brings to mind... oh... Dexter Morgan investigating a potential kill. Just look at Marge here. She's clearly terrified of the lunatic.

Don't... provoke... the possible murderer...

That sensation gets worse when you head upstairs, standing silently as Lisa phones the Corey hotline and delivers a lengthy "UURRRRRRRRH" of satisfaction, or glances over to say "I don't know whether I feel elation or shame at your obvious need to dig deeper into my inner being..." or realise that Snake the convict is in the bathroom. A fellow inmate on the lam? Who knows? Only The Shadow.

If you need to pee yourself... doing it in front of your PC is a spectacularly bad idea. Seriously. Electricity. You fool. To see a Simpsons approved bathroom though, you have no choice but to head for Homer and Marge's en-suite instead, where on the toilet you'll find... oh my...

Gasp! On immediate viewing, that appears to be filth!

...

No, wait, it's okay. Turns out it's just magazines like:

On second thoughts, that's worse. Was it Homer or Marge who bought this? And why?

Well, with the exception of...

Hi, I'm Troy McClure. You may remember my penis from such publications as...

Even with animation this primitive, Virtual Springfield only manages to squeeze so much onto its disc - it doesn't take long to wear out what it offers, see all the jokes, and start craving an era where open worlds would allow more than just murdering people in the street but in fact wouldn't end up bothering. If you actually bought it over a real game, you'd be disappointed. Unless that game was Riven.

For what it was though, it's a rare example of a multimedia game that deserves to hold its head up for the right reasons, not simply to make it easier to chop off its head and throw it into a handy cesspit, and a reminder of the days when The Simpsons was actually good. How long ago those days seem, unless of course you're crazy or have less sense of taste than a professional firework swallower.

BioShock Infinite is incredible, but it isn’t perfect. After reflecting on what I loved, I took a moment to think over what aspects of the game produced a shrug after playing the first three hours on Thursday.

Infinite has been delayed to March 26 to accommodate polish and bug fixing, according to Ken Levine--time that I’m hoping is spent improving the game’s combat, which I was a little underwhelmed by.

https://twitter.com/IGLevine/status/277167941299105792

Vigors

Does a Plasmid by another name maim as sweet? Not so far. Vigors draw on a mana-equivalent called Salt in BioShock Infinite. You should receive this criticism with a grain of that: I’ve only played the first two or three hours of the game, so it’s fully possible that Infinite’s powers get significantly more interesting.

The ones I played with, though, felt sort of interchangeable. Murder of Crows unleashes a cloud of ravens to annoy and root single or multiple enemies. Bucking Bronco is a wave of seismic force that pops up an enemy, rooting and levitating them in the air for you to shoot. Possession takes control of sentry turrets or enemies (who fight on your behalf, then commit suicide after about 60 seconds). And Devil’s Kiss was an area-of-effect fireball projectile.

Part of why I felt let down, I think, is that I see Infinite’s fiction as a unique opportunity for weird, unconventional magic. The spells I slung were familiar variations on the Hypnotize, Enrage, Incinerate, Security Bullseye, Insect Swarm, and Cyclone Trap Plasmids from BioShock. Maybe more importantly, using them didn’t imbue me with the awe I remember experiencing in Rapture. I have high expectations for these powers, but kinetically and in terms of how they’re presented as particle effects, I wasn’t wowed. Strategically, too--in their un-upgraded form most powers had a secondary function to deploy them as a proximity-triggered ground trap by by holding down Mouse 2 to charge them. In the situations I faced, it always felt more natural and effective to me to just cast directly at one or more enemies rather than lay a trap.



Enemies
BioShock’s combat had a messiness to it that I liked. The madness of splicers and the disproportionate agility of Big Daddies contributed a set of enemies that were aggressive, antagonizing, and unsettling. Even when I was knocking these mutants dead, I liked that I never felt completely in control.

Infinite’s baddies in the first three hours are much more human, and fighting them didn’t make me feel that same urgency. On Medium difficulty, I didn’t feel the need to flee, backpedal, or deploy a Vigor in anything but a calm manner. I didn’t die once on this difficulty. This may be a moot complaint--things felt more comfortable on Hard for the 20 minutes I got to play it--but I left hoping to encounter more unnatural foes. The police officers and other Columbia security you fight in the first few hours were ordinary.

A fight we were shown (but didn’t get to play) seemed to have what I wanted, though. In this shootout, Booker used a section of Sky-Line to transition between tiered platforms, pursued by an enormous mechanical man leaping like the Hulk all the while.

The caveat, again: I’ve only played the game’s introduction. But during it, Infinite felt like a less systems-driven game than its grandparent game, and more one where enemies were released into the environment at pre-determined moments. One of my favorite aspects of BioShock was the way its combat operated as an mild ecosystem--Big Daddies and Little Sisters had a mechanical relationship that manifested spontaneously while intersecting with combat between other enemies. I don’t need a Columbian duplicate of this to enjoy Infinite; I’m simply hoping to see more variety in enemy behaviors when I play it again.



One final note: though damage numbers are toggleable, I couldn’t turn off the damage indicator. I'd love to go further and disable the crosshair too. I also couldn’t rebind ironsights to right-click (your Vigor button), though I’d expect that to be changed before release.

Weapon feel
Tom and I agree about this. The ragdoll of the enemies is expressive, but the guns themselves lack a kinetic punch. They’ve probably improved since BioShock 2, but my standard for weapon feedback, recoil, and animations--especially in a single-player-only game--has been raised by games like Metro 2033, Borderlands 2, and Far Cry 3. The arms that I touched fell short of these games. I couldn’t put down the game’s sniper rifle fast enough, which felt ordinary and unsupported by tactile audio. With all this considered, I’d still say I don’t have a negative impression of Infinite’s combat; just a lukewarm one.

The latest expansion for Crusader Kings II is looking to launch the fleets of the medieval merchant republics, offering a very different gameplay style to the feudal lords we've lived through so far. Using trade, wealth, and political savvy, you'll have to lead your Patrician family to greatness in Venice, Genoa, Pisa, the Hanseatic League, or Gotland. We sent our spymaster to "Extract Details" from project lead Henrik Fåhraeus, which you can dig into below.

PC Gamer: What are the main differences you will notice playing as a patrician instead of a feudal leader?

Henrik Fåhraeus, Project Lead: First off, you will probably notice the graphical and interface differences; the new GUI skin, the clothes of your character and the new "Republic" button in the top bar. Then, as you explore the interface changes, you will discover your "Family Palace", which is a special Holding that you can upgrade with buildings just like a Castle or City. You can also build trade posts in all coastal provinces on the map. This is yet another new type of Holding that provides both you and the province owner with more income, and, if upgraded, with other perks. The Republican game is not a game of thrones and dynastic alliances, but of trade and gold. The great merchant republics seek to control the coasts of Europe with trade posts and cities.

Do Republics exist as their own discreet nations on the board and capture territory like the existing states?

HF: Yes, they do. In fact, they are already there, as players might have noticed. For example, Venice, Genoa and Pisa are currently republics, but they are not playable. With patch 1.09, their special mechanics become much more fleshed out, with trade posts, Patrician families, new casus bellis, etc. The new expansion - "Crusader Kings II: The Republic" - makes them playable (and adds some new graphics, such as unique clothes.)



How do religion and Casus Belli operate for republics?

HF: There is no change to the religion mechanics for republics, but Patricians do have access to some additional Casus Bellis: they can seize trade posts from rivals, they can take coastal cities from anyone in order to support their trade posts, and they can take entire coastal provinces if they already have a city there. Republics are also subject to the new Embargo Casus Belli, which can be used against them by external powers in order to destroy their trade posts for an instant sum of money, representing seized assets.

Can your dynasty be "elected out" of power, like the Elective succession system in the existing game? How do you go about preventing this?

HF: Yes indeed. There's no such thing as a free lunch. Doges might rule for life, but when they die there is an election where the next Doge is selected from among the five great Patrician families; the Lucchese, the Bonnanno, the Gambino... no, wait... well, you get the point. The new Doge will normally be the oldest, most prestigious family head, but players can also boost their chances by investing money in their "campaign fund" (for bribes and such.) However, losing an election is not Game Over; you just keep playing and planning how to regain control of the republic. In fact, it will be very hard to keep control of the Doge position for many consecutive terms…



Are there any specific things Republics can do that feudal domains cannot? Anything they can't do?

HF: There are some rather major differences. Republican gameplay centers around cities and the amassing of gold rather than castles and territorial expansion. Patricians can build Trade Posts in coastal provinces, which will generate serious income for them (and give a slight boost to the local Count too.) Republics can, of course, also expand the usual way through conquest, and they can gain alliances with feudal lords through marriage. However, inheritance between the two types of realm is blocked. For example, if you marry a countess, your oldest son might become Patrician after you, but your second oldest could inherit the county from your wife, and so on.

How do republics interact with their vassals? What happens when a republic conquers a feudal territory?

HF: There is no real difference. Just like republics can be vassals of feudal lords, they in turn can be in fief to republics. However, the five Patrician families do play a very special role within republics, competing for trade and trying to get elected Doge.

Are the new trade mechanics specific to republics, or can anyone make use of them?

HF: The new trade mechanics are quite specific to republics. Only Patricians can own or build trade posts. However, feudal lords will benefit from their existence since they increase the wealth of all cities in the same province. Feudal lords (and rival republics, of course) can also choose to embargo a Republic, destroying its trade posts, for a short term money gain (and Piety, if it's an infidel Republic.)



How do you handle things like the Hanseatic League existing alongside, for instance, the Kingdom of Denmark? Are they considered a vassal? How do they interact with the feudal lords in the overlapping territories?

HF: The Hanseatic League is modeled as a vassal Republic to the Holy Roman Empire. It consists of cities, some of which exist inside normal feudal counties, and at least one of which is a county capital (Lübeck, usually.) This is the way Republics tend to flourish; they take minor cities and build trade posts, only bothering with conquering entire counties when it is opportune or necessary to reduce the cost of building new trade posts. Incidentally, the Hansa, while it does not exist in 1066, can come into existence through special events.

What benefits do you get by controlling trade, and how do you defend your trade routes? Will we finally be seeing naval combat?

HF: Trade posts are a lot like regular holdings (cities, castles and temples), but they can be built in any coastal province, not just your own (though the cost increases with the distance from your territory). Only one trade post can exist per province. Bigger trade zones (areas of connected trade posts and controlled sea zones) yield more money, so you want to try to maintain chains of trade posts and to hold trade posts in a majority of the ports around a sea zone. If someone wants to take or destroy your trade posts, they normally have to win a war against you first - though Patricians within the same republic can also plot to take each other's trade posts. You can upgrade your trade posts with various buildings (again like other holdings), which can, for example, increase the maximum size of your Retinue. There is no naval combat involved; we still feel that it would not suit Crusader Kings II very well.

Is there a mechanic for starting a new republic? Can republics have "de jure" holdings and things like that?

HF: Feudal lords cannot switch over to Republican style gameplay, but they can create proper vassal Merchant Republics by granting a county and a Duchy to a vassal Mayor in a coastal province. Republics have a "de jure" title hierarchy just like everyone else, which they can use to expand in the good old fashioned way...



What benefits does becoming Doge give you? Does it grant you power over the other patrician families?

HF: Being Doge is a huge advantage because it gives you control over all assets in the Republic; levies and taxes. Of course, you also get to dictate top level foreign policy...

This expansion fills in one of the remaining blanks in Crusader Kings II - the great merchant republics of the era. You can now take the Most Serene Republic of Venice to greatness, or one of the other republics (though why would you, with a glorious name like that? Forza La Serenissima!) Playable and improved Republics is one of the most requested features by our players and a very natural progression for the game. Even if you do not buy the DLC, you will be able to interact with the fleshed out computer controlled Republics and their trade empires, and, since we are such nice guys, the free patch (1.09) will contain a whole slew of other neat little features (some of which people have actually even asked for.)

Thanks to Henrik and the Paradox crew for the info. The Republic is set for release in Q1 2013. Keep an eye on the Crusader Kings II official site for more.

Lock, load, and roll out with T.J., Logan, Evan, and Tyler as we share our experiences on the war-torn battlefields of PlanetSide 2, and bring you news from every wavelength of the PC gaming spectrum. Far Cry 3? XCOM? Ron Gilbert? We've got it all. Plus, is talking about whether or not games are art, in itself, art? Were we too hard on Telltale's The Walking Dead? Why am I still typing when there's science to do? Just hurry up and listen to...

PC Gamer Podcast 339: Designated Marksman

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Quake II was one of the first FPS epics to espouse the pristine logic of firing rockets at one's feet to jump higher. Id's memorable shooter didn't skimp on the bullet count either, and in celebration of its 15th anniversary yesterday, Creative Director Tim Willits shared a few did-you-knows (via Eurogamer) surrounding the art and multiplayer.

For instance, just three artists crafted the 2D and 3D visuals for Quake II's entirety, delivering an orange-tinged world of metal and flame shuddering beneath a massive human military offensive. An earlier suggested title for the game was WOR, but id changed the name after realizing Quake II's fast-paced action better suited the renowned series.

Lastly, Willits' multiplayer arena of choice, The Edge, hides over 50 trick jumps for handy hoppers, though Willits only designed two of them. The rest were discovered by early adopters of ye olde drum-and-bass jump videos.

The remainder of December holds further commemorations for PC gaming greats of the 1990s. WarCraft II hits 17 in just two days, with id following right behind with a 19-year-old Doom anniversary on Monday. Planescape: Torment, Black Isle's masterful RPG, turns 13 next Wednesday. Id returns yet again with tough platformer Commander Keen's 22nd birthday on the 17th, and nothing boosts holiday cheer like the sorcerous cultists of Raven Software's Heretic which dings 18 on the 23rd.

Look up in the sky! Is it a toucan? Is it Vaas' ever-expanding mohawk? Neither: It's a tattooed tourist evoking the animal spirit of the flying squirrel by strapping on a wingsuit and hurling himself off one of the highest peaks dotting Far Cry 3's Rook Islands. Why? Because the squirrels commanded it. Other animals show up during BillerKee's lengthy descent such as an amazing glimpse of a tiger ambushing a boar pack and the startled barks of guard dogs. Alerted pirates are left in the...er, air, and I challenge you to not white-knuckle your chair at least once as you see how close Jason Brody skims the dirt.

Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli's enthusiasm for incorporating burgeoning free-to-play business models into the PC-melting Crysis franchise is about as strong as a nano-maxed punch. Like hunting space squids with a bow and arrow, though, such a marriage takes time. In an interview with Rock, Paper, Shotgun, Yerli believed that the free-to-play future he envisions "won't happen tomorrow" and Prophet-ized a peaceful coexistence between free and fee.

“I don’t think F2P’s a mutually exclusive way of looking at things," he explained. "I mean, the future is definitely free-to-play, but likewise, retail can co-exist with it. Premium games can be free-to-play. When I said free-to-play’s gonna be our future, I meant that and I hold to it. But I didn’t mean it for tomorrow.

"When I say there will inevitably be only free-to-play games, I mean that there might be ones where you can just download them with a free-to-play business model, or you can go to the store and buy it for $60. So that’s what I meant: There’s gonna be free-to-play available, which brings the entry level down to zero from a price perspective.”

Yerli also revealed prior considerations for turning Crysis 2's multiplayer into a free-to-play standalone while packaging Alcatraz's journey as priced content, but the final product wound up combining both in the traditional retail combo. Crysis 3—which de-cloaked its North American February 19/European February 22 release dates today—will follow suit, but Yerli hopes for something a little less spendy in the future.

"My desire is that everybody can just play Crysis and don’t have to spend money from day one," he said. "So people don’t have to think, ‘Oh, do I really want to pay $50 for that game?’ I don’t want that question to be asked. I just want them to be able to give it a try. And then they can make their choices about spending money. That’s honestly why I’m most excited about free-to-play: Regardless of storytelling, single-player, multiplayer, and co-op experiences, I think there’s an answer to all of those problems.”

It seems seemed Valve, one of the two big competitors in the MOBA genre with its in-house Dota 2, has had struck a distribution deal with rival League of Legends developer Riot. As of last night, Steam's database was updated with entries for the English, Spanish, French, and German versions of the League of Legends client.

League of Legends is still arguably the biggest PC game on the planet, with more than twice as many active players as World of Warcraft had at its peak and offering some of the largest prize pools in eSports. We don't have as many hard numbers to look at for Dota 2, but the player base is growing, its major tournaments offer comparably insane monetary winnings, and Valve hasn't even officially released it yet. (We did finally go ahead and review it, though.)

So what could be the motive behind this unlikely alliance? It's not much of a stretch to say that Steam users who hadn't previously heard of League of Legends might find their way to the Fields of Justice. But since it's free to play with in-app transactions, it's not like Valve will be getting a cut of anything. The League client is also self-updating, so it wouldn't make much sense for Valve to expect people to use Steam to get updates out of convenience and -- hey, what's this Dota 2 thing?

Whatever the case, this is an example of two of the biggest rivals in the PC space electing to coexist. And that's something we can't really complain about.

UPDATE: It seems Riot's communications director Vladimir Cole has clarified that these entries do not indicate the distribution of League of Legends on Steam in the near future.

"For a brief period of time after League of Legends launched in 2009, players could purchase a digital collectors edition of the game," he said in response to the community. "This was distributed through a variety of channels (Steam included) via our European partners. We ended those distribution arrangements in 2010, but a small number of players still have this version of the game in their Steam inventories, so that's why it occasionally pops up. There are no plans to change our current distribution model of providing League of Legends direct via signup.leagueoflegends.com."

It's time to bring the Lord Regent's reign to an end as No Trace reaches its man-possessing, pipe-hopping, accident-staging conclusion. This time, it only takes a few tweaks to the day to day running of Dunwall Tower to turn one guard's innocent clumsiness into, well, one guard's deadly, explosive clumsiness.

Featuring the only shot fired in the series, the problem with scaffolding, and probably the last time anyone will let me near a license-free music archive.



Thus always to tyrants.

If you've watched the series so far, thanks very much! If not, you can see the rest of the episodes here and subscribe to our YouTube channel for everything else we do. Tom's Dishonored review provides a more detailed look at why the game is among the year's best.