Have you already clicked all of Torchlight 2's many monsters into a fine paste of gibbed chunks? Then the Synergies mod could be exactly what you're looking for. It's a huge overhaul of the game, billed as a "Full Conversion" that adds in a number of new Elite-class mobs, extra maps and bosses, and an entirely new class. Amazingly, this is all without the still unreleased GUTS game editor.

The new class, the Necromancer, is a nice balance of Embermage style magic attacks, the Outlander's holds and status effects, and a ridiculous number of summoned monsters. The primary skill, Skull Barrage, is brilliant: a multiple projectile attack that, at maximum level, lays down exploding pustules of poisonous goo.

Elite mobs provide a bigger challenge throughout the campaign. Really, though, the mod is geared toward the end game, adding in "raid like dungeon chains", new world bosses, overworld maps and armour sets. While there's nothing new visually - mostly thanks to the absence of Runic's official mod tools - there have still been enough changes made to give Synergies a different flavour to the vanilla game.

Synergies is available to download from the official website, and comes packaged with a number of other community mods. Here's a video of the Necromancer in action:

The first half of this trailer for the latest World of Tanks update looks exactly like a nature documentary. Watching as a herd of Chinese tanks roamed their natural habitat, I half expected them to start mounting each other while David Attenborough breathlessly enthused about their distinctive markings.

The second half? As is mandatory for all trailers, the second half goes a bit dubstep.



Amazing.

The 8.3 update is now live and adds 17 tanks in the new Chinese Tech Tree, including the WZ-111, the Type 59, and other improbable combinations of letters and numbers.

According to Wargaming, "Since the Chinese tanks, for the most part, are a hodgepodge of different parts, their role on the battlefield will be a special one. The biggest impact, as you can see from the tech tree, is that Chinese light tanks go all the way up to tier VIII which will increase the options of speedier tanks on the battlefield in higher tier matches."

"That's not to suggest that the other tank classes will be left out. In fact, mediums will be capable of inflicting serious damage thanks to their guns, and heavy tanks (in some cases) will actually have heavier armor than their Soviet counterparts."

The update also brings a huge selection of balance changes to the other nation's war machines. You can see the full list here.

Thanks, Strategy Informer.

The War Z may have ended up a rushed mess of a game, but people looking for DayZ style zombie survival action (yet inexplicably unwilling to just play DayZ) could now have a new title to try. Despite the name, DayZ Origins has nothing to do with Dean "Rocket" Hall's original, but instead is an Arma 2 mod "inspired" by DayZ. It also claims to give an ultimate end goal to the game of running around an open world, trying not to be eaten by the dead.

DayZ Origins runs on an adapted version of the Taviana community map. It features a remote island called Survival City, where rich survivors have built a safe haven protected by walls and elite mercenaries. According to the game's description, "if you manage to get in, you will have a chance at grabbing some of their finest weaponry and supplies."

Also included is "Patient Zero", a mutated super zombie, and the likely origin of the outbreak. "Capturing/killing this zombie might have the cure for the zombie infection."

Other features include ramshackle survivor-made vehicles - a counterpoint to DayZ's military hardware - that look like something cobbled together in Gary's Mod, as well as persistent levelling and lots of new building interiors to scavenge.

Here's a teaser trailer:



It looks like an impressive undertaking, and the need to team-up to assault Survivor City could be an elegant way of encouraging co-operation over a shoot-on-sight lone wolf attitude. Still, I'm not sure about the name. Piggybacking off of DayZ's success seems cheap, especially after the confusion caused by the similarities between War Z and DayZ. Sure enough, the YouTube comments page already contains people asking if this is DayZ Standalone, which can only exacerbate the problem.

You can download DayZ Origins here. More screenshots below.

Total War: Shogun 2's add-on release schedule has shown a remarkable dedication to historical accuracy. First there was the Rise of the Samurai, then, inevitably, the Fall of the Samurai. Now comes the Bundle of the Samurai, giving you the chance to get a 2-for-1 deal on Samurai with Total War: Shogun 2 Gold Edition.

Gold Edition contains Shogun 2, both Samurai-centric add-ons, along with almost all of the game's DLC packs. The exception is the Blood Pack, presumably for rating reasons. No pricing details as of yet, but the Gold Edition is due for release March 8th in Europe and Australia, and March 5th in the US.

Devilishly entertaining puzzle-platformer Escape Goat is going to receive a sequel, as revealed to those fine folks over on Indie Statik. While the fundamentals - solve single-screen puzzle rooms as a platforming goat and its adorable mouse sidekick - will largely remain the same, the graphics are getting a complete overhaul, thanks to artist Randy O'Connor (who worked on Waking Mars).

While the first game had a level editor, MagicalTimeBean's Ian Stocker is still pondering whether or not to include one this time. As he explains in the announcement's accompanying interview: "This is yet to be decided, since something like this could delay the release by over a month. It's possible that it will be added after launch if I don't have time to get it into version 1.0. I'd really like something like this, because there are some amazing user-created levels for EG1, but I bet most players don’t know where to find them (hint: my forum at magicaltimebean.com/forum)."

Aside from the new art style, additional hats are a shoe-in (well, a hat-in), seemingly as a companion to the current 'magic hat' power-up, which allows the goat and the mouse to swap places. Escape Goat 2 is expected to be finished sometime this year, and if you've never played the original, here's what you've been missing out on:

This week has seen the release of several pre-rendered cinematic trailers. Exciting though they were, brows were raised, then furrowed, then frowned in the PCG office as we noted how precious little these dramatic scenes reflected the actual action of the game.

It need not be so. Even fully pre-rendered trailers can do a better job of encapsulating the games they promote - and probably do a better job of selling them too. We cast our minds back to our favourite trailers of yore, and picked out the five that we felt best captured the games within, while offering visuals that are every bit as thrilling, powerful and cool.

Supreme Commander
 


Save for a snippet of pre-rendered CGI at the beginning, this is pretty much just an expertly-edited grab from the game itself. Not only does this, succinctly explain the action and features of the game, but it creates an epic four-minute trajectory of awesome escalation. Then the camera pans back from what seemed surely to be its climax, to reveal yet another immense level of robotic carnage. Even now, six years after Supreme Commander’s release, the trailer still makes it look like the ultimate future of the RTS.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution
 


A cinematic trailer done right, Human Revolution’s pre-rendered preamble introduces us to the world with expert scene-setting. It quickly sketches out the themes and setting, establishing Jensen as an embittered cyborg with super powerful robo-arms, a vengeful purpose and uncertain allegiance. And then its action sequences, while slightly more fluid and dramatic than possible in game, do describe powers at the player’s disposal: invisibility, x-ray vision, and retractable elbow chisels. It may have flash camera angles, bespoke mo-cap, and sumptuous subsurface scattering - but it’s an honest evocation of the glories of the game itself.

Team Fortress 2
 


The jaunty crime-caper music and freeze-frame introductions make it clear: TF2 doesn’t have classes so much as characters. The game’s team-shooter action takes a backseat here to showcasing the vibrant art-style and humour, as well as articulating the distinct roles and capabilities of each of TF2’s nine classes. A multiplayer shooter might normally offer scant cinematic thrills, or struggle to communicate what it’s about without a dry breakdown of its mechanics - TF2 elegantly dances round these problems without being disingenuous about the game’s contents.

BioShock
 


There’s no in-game footage here, but BioShock’s trailer nonetheless captures a tremendous amount of the game within its short three-minute running time. Its opening panning shot establishes Rapture - its majesty, its dereliction and the ideals that created it. Then the trailer quickly and unexpectedly segues into a thrilling action scene, witnessed in firstperson. The ferocious combat seen here is more dynamic than that of the game, certainly, but the battle establishes the core relationship of the game: that between the little sisters and the big daddies. And, by putting you in the head of an child-stealing aggressor, also demonstrates the game’s ambiguous moralities.

GTA 4
 


There’s little in the way of explicit action in this trailer, even though it’s shot within the game engine itself. Action isn’t what the trailer is selling, however - it’s selling the city itself. As Niko struts through its succession of quick cuts, the sheer variety of Liberty City is elegantly illustrated, and Niko’s many guises suggests at the freedom the player will have to self-define within that space. Meanwhile, the exquisitely cool LCD Soundsystem track reaffirms Rockstar as gaming’s foremost tastemakers. It’s a brilliantly simple and boldly idiosyncratic trailer, intriguing and evocative in equal measure.

I wasn't aware that - deep breath - Penny Arcade's On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness 3 was getting a sequel, much less one that wraps up the tril...quad...tetralogy once and for all. But it is, it's coming this Spring, and it will be slightly different from the last one. How slightly different? Well, if developer Zeboyd's interview with IGN is anything to go by, very slightly different indeed. How do you feel about an open overworld, in a less linear game with more optional areas/secondary routes and secrets? You feel good, obviously, because those things are great.

"Rain-Slick 3 took place entirely in one city," Zeboyd's Bill Stienberg explains in the interview, "but Rain-Slick 4 takes place in an entirely new world, essentially. That gives us the freedom to really open up the game to a large and varied environment and let players explore." It's down to Zeboyd having more creative freedom in this fourth and final PAOTRSPOD, putting their own stamp on the story as well.

Excitingly, Zeboyd also reveal their plans for the future, which involve a "sci-fi/spy RPG", which they'll probably take to Kickstarter to fund. Robert Boyd spills the beans. "Code name acronym: CSH. Distant future setting, female protagonist, on-map battles, more animated sprites, cool level-up system. In short: the works." Whatever CSH ends up standing for, Zeboyd aim to take their 2D RPGs to another level with this one. "Chrono Trigger has held the position of best 16-bit style RPG for too long -- it's time for that position to be challenged!"

Having retired from world-saving heroics, Christopher Livingston is living the simple life in video games by playing a series of down-to-earth simulations. This week he’s following footprints and examining poop in an effort to hunt the wiliest and most elusive creature on earth: the turkey.


Remember that scene near the beginning of Jurassic Park where a kid says a velociraptor skeleton looks like a giant turkey? And Dr. Grant says that raptors are pack hunters, and explains how one raptor distracts you while two of them attack you from the side? And then he shames and belittles the kid in front of everybody by pretending to disembowel him? And we all laugh, because the kid deserves to be humiliated for daring to express his opinion to someone older and more educated than him?

Well, we all owe that kid an apology, because he was RIGHT. Turkeys and velociraptors are one and the same. Trust me, I know. I've been hunting turkeys all day.

The hunting simulation I'm playing this week is called The Hunter. Now, I've never been hunting in real life. I just don't find the idea appealing. First, nature is full of bugs whose instincts tell them the best place to live the rest of their lives is inside my nose. Secondly, I have a poor sense of direction and get lost easily: twice in my life rescue crews have had to pull me, confused and dehydrated, from inside an IKEA. Finally, I don't enjoy hunching over with my face in my hands and sobbing uncontrollably, which is what I assume I would do if I ever shot an animal. I hit a rabbit with my car fourteen years ago, and I still visit his grave every year, flowers in hand, the gentle rain mingling with the tears on my face. I'm sorry, Mr. Hoppers. I'm sorry.

That jet is gonna look great hanging on my parlor wall

Virtual hunting, though? I'm down with that. Plus, hunting in The Hunter is a lot like detective work. Picture your favorite fictional detective, say, Sherlock Holmes, Columbo, Veronica Mars, or maybe Rick Deckard from Blade Runner. Now, picture your detective walking slowly through the woods where nothing happens for approximately three hours. Then, your detective stops, looks down, and examines some poo. Then, he continues walking for another four hours.

See, The Hunter is not like Far Cry 3, where animals are packed shoulder-to-shoulder in the wilderness, constantly lunging at you in a desperate attempt to be carved into a new wallet or ammo pouch. These animals don't want to die, so they do their very best to not be seen by you, employing a clever strategy known as "not existing." Seriously, it can take ages of walking slowly through the woods before you even hear an animal, and even longer to actually see one. Take this deer I've been hunting all morning.

Nature: Like A Toilet, But Outside™

After ten solid minutes of walking through the woods, I hear a faint deer bleat, which sounds roughly like a frog being stepped on in another country. I examine my Huntermate, a gizmo I carry around with me, which pinpoints the location of the bleat and tells me it was made by a mule deer. I spend another five minutes walking to the area the bleat was broadcast from, then spend another ten minutes poking around the area. Eventually, I find some tracks, which my Huntermate is confident were made by the same deer. I follow the tracks for a few minutes, find another set, and follow them for a while longer. Eventually, I find some poop my deer expelled (and recently, according to my gizmo). Now I know which direction he's headed, and that he's close by. The hunt is about to kick into high gear!

What I would probably wind up doing on a real hunting trip.

Kicking a hunt into high gear means slowing everything down even more than it already was. When an animal is nearby it's a good idea to walk in a crouch or, better yet, go prone and bellycrawl. I know this is necessary: yesterday I spent about two hours tracking footprints and turdpiles only to discover all the deer I was tracking had fled because I was walking around upright, something they consider suspicious.

To a deer, this is basically the Death Star

So, yes. Hunting amounts to slowly walking for absolutely ages, examining tracks and poops, then crouching for ages, then lying down and crawling for ages, all which results in almost never even seeing the animals you are hunting. Did I also mention it's quite thrilling and completely addictive? It is.

Here's the thing. While the endless walking, crouching, and crawling can be a bit tedious, it also creates a huge amount of anticipation and tension. After a completely uneventful half-hour walk, just hearing a turkey gobble a half-mile away is an absolute thrill. Seriously, I get more of a charge from hearing a pheasant or boar make faint noises in The Hunter than I do from seeing a dragon appear in Skyrim, and it's all due to anticipation that builds up from nothing happening.

Son, you picked the wrong forest to nibble leaves in.

Play Skyrim for an hour and you'll kill three dragons. Play The Hunter for an hour and maybe you'll be lucky enough to track and even spot a deer. Maybe. My shortest hunt to date took 48 minutes, ending with me tracking two deer and killing one. Last night, I spent almost two hours tracking a black bear through a rainstorm. I didn't actually see the bear itself until the final two minutes: up until that point it was just me creeping around in a downpour peering at footprints and enormous turds. And it was great, every single second of it.

Walking on all fours? You'll never be in the circus that way.

Okay, back to the turkeys. Earlier I mentioned how Jurassic Park taught us that velociraptors are pack hunters: one acts as a distraction, keeping your attention, while two others rush in from the side to attack you. The turkeys in The Hunter do something similar. I'm slowly tracking one turkey by following its footprints and poops. I've been doing it for about twenty solid minutes. I don't seem to ever be gaining on it. It never seems to stop walking.

The real problem is, while I'm tracking my turkey, I keep coming across tracks and poops from other turkeys. This is maddening. Every twenty feet I find new prints and new dumps made by other turkeys, and every time I do, I feel like abandoning the turkey I'm following to pursue what will hopefully be an easier, closer mark. When I start following a new turkey, the same thing happens: my new turkey starts hauling ass away from me and my path is suddenly filled with the alluring droppings of my original turkey or some other mysterious third turkey.

The trail leads to the ocean. Damn you, AQUA-TURKEYS!

Turkeys, clearly, operate like raptors. One keeps your attention, while two others sneak in from the side to silently empty their bowels right next to you. Every time I've gone after a turkey it's been a fruitless exercise that results in my wandering in circles, constantly find new tracks and never finding the bird I'm after. I don't even have a single screenshot of a turkey to display here. I've successfully hunted several types of deer, a couple elk, one boar, two pheasants, and a 275 pound black bear. But I just can't crack the turkey code.

Turkey footprints look like arrows pointing in the wrong direction. Clever girl.

Conclusion: The Hunter is a really well-made hunting sim, and you might think about trying it. You can play it for free with one rifle and one type of deer to hunt, but beyond that it's a trip to Micropayment City, and everything (guns, scopes, ammo, lures, camping gear, even individual temporary hunting licenses) will cost you real money.

Maxis' SimCity reboot limits cities to "about the size of SC4′s medium sized cities." We've heard why the restriction is in place, and though it could be patched in the future, it's staying that way for now. That just leaves the question: is it bad?

Building a new Port Foozle
 
As I mentioned in my preview, the size restriction means a high-population city must be dense, but you don't have to strive for a high-population city. Instead of population growth, you could focus on attracting tourism from high-population cities elsewhere in your region, for example. For the purpose of examining scale, however, I started a new city in the closed beta and focused on increasing density as fast as I could. Note that high density roads and many buildings are off limits in the beta.

It's not the prettiest grid, but at about 45 minutes in, my city is starting to go vertical. Notice the small apartment buildings now scattered in my residential zones.

Scale includes detail
 
My first observation is that scale has more than one definition. There's a finite number of buildings that can fit into a perfectly gridded city, and that's one definition of city size, but detail should be considered too. When I zoom in, my city feels much bigger than it did from News Chopper One.



Imagine two photos: the first is a 5 megapixel photo of a large city, and the second is a 10 megapixel photo of a smaller city. Which is bigger depends on the question—are you talking about the city or the photo? SimCity's detail far surpasses SimCity 4's, so it could be argued that it's actually bigger, even though there are fewer square miles of virtual land to work with.

Limitation forces specialization
 
My second observation is that the size restriction forces specialization. If my city were three times bigger, it could eventually become a coal mining college town with a great tourism and gambling industry. Having an omnicity may not be especially fun. It would lack focus, and because cities interact with others in a region, we won't need every city to be everything.



What I really want is asymmetry
 
My final observation is that I still want more space to build, but even more than that, I want an asymmetrical plot, like the one I've sketched out below.



SimCity's cities look so small from the the air partially because they're confined to a perfect square. It's unnatural, and if the borders adapted to fit the terrain and were just a bit bigger, I think that feeling of confinement would be mitigated. Right now they look like they were stamped down, which ruins any illusion that these are cities which could exist.

My proposed border (and I don't pretend to know what kind of programming wizardry would be needed to create such a thing) would make the city fit more naturally into its surroundings and create the opportunity to design more interesting-looking roads and districts. So more than just bigger, I'd like to see SimCity's borders go amoeba. What do you think?

It seems today is a good day to speak to the community and ask them how you should update your game. Following the news that Terraria is being ported to consoles with a bunch of new features including split-screen support, a world map and even a new final boss, developer Andrew 'Redigit' Spinks has hinted at a potential update to the PC version of the game. He's taken to the forums to ask players what they want to see, and (at the time of writing) he's received 40 pages worth of replies.

Posing it as a hypothetical question, Spinks posted the following: "Say I am considering doing an update for the PC version of Terraria... In the event that such a thing were to take place, what would be some things that you would be interested in seeing?" Responses include "steal shamelessly from the console functionality", Steam Workshop compatibility, ropes, quicksand, better wiring and larger map types. So far, Spinks appears fond of another pet/s (possibly of the turtle variety), ocean biomes, and more holiday content.

I second the vote for Steam Workshop support, which would give the game an edge over the newer, more feature-packed console versions, and potentially soften the vitriol of those who are angry that it even exists. ALSO: a donkey. I would like a donkey. What about you?

Thanks, PCGamesN.