Even the grim-faced Commander Shepard sometimes needs a break from saving life, the universe, and everything in Mass Effect 3. He might be in luck: two new screenshots teased by BioWare Producers Michael Gamble and Casey Hudson over Twitter hint that the next DLC involves hitting a high-tech casino. Oh, and there's also a fully armored Krogan hitting things with a hammer. Sorry, Shepard, break's over.

Scant details surround Shepard's next adventure, but BioWare Designer Jos Hendriks told forumgoers back in December that the next DLC's story and contents required "all hands on deck" at BioWare Edmonton, the team responsible for pushing out DLC content for the RPG. Composer Sam Hulick, Joker voice actor Seth Green, and Kaidan Alenko voice actor Raphael Sbarge all tweeted their involvement with the unnamed add-on. This is starting to sound a little more complicated than a story about Shepard blowing all his space-credits on space-craps.

Keep your ship's sensors calibrated to PC Gamer's frequency for more information in the future. In the meantime, enjoy the screenshots.

EVE Online's complicated inter-corporate politics are often held together by fragile diplomatic treaties and economic agreements. So fragile, in fact, that a single misclick can lead to a fracas that quickly snowballs into all-out warfare. That's what happened to two of the spacefaring sandbox MMO's largest player alliances in the Battle of Asakai, a massive fleet vs. fleet onslaught involving 3,000 players piloting ships ranging from small interceptors to gargantuan capital ships.

Straight from the wreckage-strewn outcome of the battle, we're breaking down the basics of what happened for everyone to truly fathom one of the biggest engagements in the game's history.

The nutshell

On January 27, two of EVE's largest allied groups—the ClusterF*** Coalition and the HoneyBadger Coalition—clashed with full force in the low-sec Asakai VI region of the Kurala constellation. Both sides continually supplied reinforcements for hours, including Supercarriers and Titans, two of the largest vessel types in the game. In the end, the HoneyBadgers emerged victorious against the Clusters (as we're calling them).

The details

The belligerents

The Clusters are led by the GoonSwarm Federation Alliance, a gigantic gamer horde originating from the Something Awful forums. Its leader, The Mittani, keeps and updates one of the most popular blogs charting the various events transpiring within EVE.

The HoneyBadgers are a coalition leading the Test Alliance, the primary collection of EVE gamers populating Reddit. A sub-alliance within the HoneyBadgers, the Pandemic Legion, focuses on PVP and inciting fleet actions wherever possible.

Years before, the Test Alliance was part of the HoneyBadgers in a hulking super-coalition. Seeking to carve out a piece of the galaxy for its own, a large portion of Test broke away from the accord to form HoneyBadgers, an independently operating group still pledging allegiance to Test but not to GoonSwarm. Strained relations between Test and GoonSwarm reached a breaking point after the leadership threatened open warfare against each other.

The cause

A single misclick.

No, really: A Titan pilot beneath the Cluster banner was attempting a "bridge"—using a ship to act as an artificial warp corridor for other ships—to Asakai VI when he accidentally warped himself straight into a very surprised Pandemic Legion fleet. The pilot, named Dabigredboat, immediately came under heavy attack as the Legion pounced on the extremely valuable ship.

The battle

Both Dabigredboat and members of the Legion "bat-phoned"—called in reinforcements—additional members of their alliances over the course of the battle. Eventually, nearly the entirety of Test and GoonSwarm became involved in the tremendous tussle, including the deployment of extra Titans and Supercarriers into the fleets.

Titans and Supercarriers are two of the most expensive, deadly, and rare ship types in EVE Online. A single Titan, bristling with gun emplacements and heavy armor, can need upwards of over 900 pilots to beat down into submission. Read that again: 900 pilots. And there were more than one of those behemoths in the battle.

The results

For the HoneyBadgers, losses sustained included six Dreadnoughts, 11 Carriers, and one Supercarrier. The Clusters suffered far worse: 44 Dreadnoughts, 29 Carriers, five Supercarriers, and three Titans.

Ultimately, GoonSwarm leader The Mittani called the Battle of Asakai "a complete rout" for the powerful Something Awful alliance. Estimated ISK (EVE's in-game currency) cost in damages are still being calculated, but early totals reach beyond 700 billion for both sides combined.

The full might of the HoneyBadger and Cluster fleets in pitched battle. Notice the umbrella-shaped Titan cruiser on the right.Source: themittani.com

Multiple Titans eventually warped in to add their withering firepower to the frenzy.Source: themittani.com

The cloud of blue and red blips in this map overview represent all the pilots involved in the battle.Source: themittani.com

When we last left psychic-sniper/assassin-turned-Zerg-empress Sarah Kerrigan at the end of StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, she had been restored to her human self by the efforts of good ol' Jimmy Raynor. Well, sort of. She still has those tentacle things instead of hair, and apparently retains the loyalty of at least some portion of the ravening Zerg swarm. I got to join the conflicted Kerrigan aboard her organic Zerg flagship recently and see a handful of new missions in StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm, from about the middle of the campaign.

The Leviathan, a gigantic Zerg creature that serves as the swarm's mobile base of operations in the campaign, bears some resemblance to Raynor's Hyperion from Wings of Liberty. It does feel a little more claustrophobic and less... alive (ironically, considering the entire thing is actually alive). While the Hyperion had a handful of different ship areas to visit, all populated with ambient conversations and the like, the Leviathan offers a mere two (as of this build), that have less going on in them overall. It may just be a glorified framework for menu screens, but I'm hoping it will feel a little more fleshed out in the final release. (Get it? Flesh? Oh shut up, I'm hilarious.)



Aside from the bridge, which is some kind of toothed orifice (I hope it's a mouth; please let it just be a mouth...) where you will interact with your advisers (and, occasionally, prisoners), I was able to skitter over to a couple other areas. The evolution pit is where you will evolve your units (more on this later) to create a custom Zerg army. There's also the Kerrigan upgrade screen, which will let you select talents once you've earned enough levels in the campaign missions. This, oddly, is not modeled as an organic part of the ship, but rather a more traditional menu display.

Speaking of levels, Heart of the Swarm is doing things a little differently than, say, Warcraft III. Kerrigan is your persistent hero unit throughout the campaign, and she gains "Levels" (as opposed to experience) for completing mission objectives. Typically, the objective required to finish the mission gave me a nice chunk of Levels, and optional objectives were available for smaller, bite-sized bonuses. Once you pass certain thresholds (10/20/35/50/60 out of a cap of 70), you will get to select one of two talents.



Talents can be swapped freely between missions. A few of the more interesting ones included a chain lightning type spell, an automated hatchery ability that resurrects 10 killed Zerglings on a countdown timer for free, and the ability to hatch Drones in pairs for the same cost.

Kerrigan isn't the only thing you can customize, however. Each of your core units will be able to select one of three mutations, which can be swapped freely between missions for no cost. In addition, as the campaign progresses, you will unlock Evolution missions, which will let you choose between one of two variants for a given unit. Unlike mutations, evolution choices are permanent. Mutations continue to be available (and your options seem to largely stay the same) after you have evolved a unit, totaling six possible versions of each beast in the swarm.



Here's a unit-by-unit breakdown:
Zerglings
Evolution lets you pick between:

The Raptor, a Zergling that does more damage, and can leap up cliffs and into combat, or...
The Swarmling, which spawns in groups of three instead of two, and only costs 1/3 food instead of the usual 1/2. Yes, this means you could create an army of 600 Swarmlings.

Mutation lets you select one of the following on a mission-by-mission basis:

Increased life
Increased attack speed
Increased movement speed

Banelings
Evolution lets you pick between:

A new, Raptor-like variant called the Hunter that can leap up cliffs and into the middle of unit formations, or...
The previously demoed Splitterling, which spawns two, smaller Banelings upon detonation.

Mutation lets you select one of the following on a mission-by-mission basis:

Increased damage to primary target
Increased splash damage radius
Acid splash heals friendly units in the blast radius

Roaches
Evolution mission was not shown.

Mutation lets you select one of the following on a mission-by-mission basis:

Increased damage vs light targets
Armor increases when below 1/2 life
Full speed movement while burrowed

Hydralisks
Evolution mission was not shown.

Mutation lets you select one of the following on a mission-by-mission basis:

Activated ability that increases attack speed on a cooldown. Great, we have to micro Hydras now?
Increased life
Increased attack range

Up Next: The missions themselves





Aside from the evolution missions (which are very hard to lose, and seem more like tutorials to help you choose which unit evolution you want), I got to try my hand at three scenarios that put my admittedly awful, Aluminum League Zerg skills to the test. First off was a mission to an ice planet, where periodic flash freezes would lock all units aside from the hostile, native beasts in place. By killing their leaders and assimilating their DNA, I was able to adapt my chittering forces to the cold. Going out of my way to do this multiple times gave extra benefits, like increased vision and damage in the frigid environ. This felt very "Zergy," for lack of a better term, and I hope it shows up often in the campaign.

The Protoss I faced off against on the ice world weren't so lucky. Each time a flash freeze came, I would have a very brief window to tear apart their heavily-fortified positions with no risk, while they looked on in horror from within their frosty cocoons. This created a sort of rhythm to the mission. When the protoss were unfrozen, I would go hunting more natives to secure the bonus objectives for a power boost and some extra Kerrigan levels. When the flash freeze hit, it became a race to dismantle as much Protoss infrastructure as I could before their units and base defenses came back online.



Next up was a more traditional mission where I had to make sure no Protoss shuttles made it through any of three spaced-out warpgates to warn the larger fleet of my presence. It was the least imaginative of the new missions, and also bordering on fall-asleep-on-keyboard easy on the Normal difficulty. Even as someone who is absolutely terrible at Zerg in multiplayer, I was able to more than lock down the primary objectives with a few Hydralisks and spore crawlers on each gate, leaving most of my army to handily secure all of the bonus objectives, and even go as far as to nearly wipe the Protoss off the map well before the mission ended.

In the final mission, I was given control of a mostly defenseless larval Zerg queen, smuggled cleverly onto a Protoss ship that held a menagerie of captive creatures. Dodging my way around patrolling zealots initially, I had to infest and burst forth, Alien-style, from increasingly larger beasts to evolve my unimposing hero and birth an entire Zerg brood within the bowels of the vessel. It was an interesting take on the sorts of stealth missions we've seen in RTS campaigns before, allowing me to transition from skittering around in the shadows to stomping through defenses with impunity.



What remained to be seen, for the most part, was where the story arc of Heart of the Swarm will take us. The new, re-humanized Kerrigan's relationship with the Zerg remains somewhat cloudy, as do her ultimate goals. Chances are she's still not a big Arcturus Mengsk fan. With any luck, we will finally get to flay his face from his skull and use it as a doily. Whatever the case, Blizzard's imaginative mission design and commitment to high production values are still in evidence. I look forward to assuming control of the swarm once again when the expansion launches in March.

Looking for multiplayer details? Check out our hulking interview with Dustin Browder.

Preview by Michael Gapper

Releasing Black Ops 2's DLC in honking great map packs as opposed to Modern Warfare's one-map-per-month schedule is good for his designers, says Treyarch's design director, David Vonderhaar. It's good for finding themes and good for experimenting with the usual rules behind Black Ops' multiplayer maps, and while that's not to say that Revolution is a Battlefield 3-style “nothing but tanks!”, “nothing but close-quarters!” explosion of creativity, it's trying out new things with cover, corners and map interactivity to test whether the old Treyarch design rules are still valid.

The Treyarch rulebook (actually more of a rule-Powerpoint-presentation) governing engagement distances, first engagements, spawning, angles of attack, cover height and map structure tends to make modern Call of Duty maps feel similar but also makes it hard for any designer to build a bad map. They're rules with deep foundations, and they run almost entirely contrary to the name on the box this DLC doesn't come in: Revolution is about micro-updates rather than wholesale changes to COD's oh-so-delicate formula.

Hydro, Mirage, Grind and Downhill are all based on those same Treyarch design rules as described by online director Dan Bunting – three 'lanes' across the map with lots of space for flanking - making most maps into oval or circular paths around a central murderbox filled with claymores and madmen with shotguns. There have been some adjustments however: some cover heights prevent players from returning fire, one map uses curved corners to deny corner-strafing, and two have interactive elements to monkey with the workings of the murderbox. I played all four at Treyarch's studios where I also ate three slices of fruit bread and a chicken sandwich which, while delicious, in no way swayed my verdict on the DLC.

HYDRO


Hydro is a big grey concretey map set atop a dam with a central hub which regularly floods and kills anything standing in the map's lower channels. “I'm really into the Call of Duty competitive scene and Hydro is a super-competitive map,” says Vonderhaar. “It's almost symmetrical and it plays super, super, super-fast. It's also interesting because we've done one of the things we like to do at Treyarch – a big rush of water will eliminate the entire centre path, and it actually matters. You can use it to split the map and split the opponents.” Hydro plays best in Team Deathmatch or Kill Confirmed where the central channel becomes a meat grinder and limited sightlines keep sniper domination at a minimum.

MIRAGE


A Spec Ops: The Line-style sand-blasted hotel in Dubai, Mirage's central hub is the hotel's lobby and the left and right channels couldn't be more different. On one side a crashed bus creates a narrow chokepoint while a large pool on the opposite side makes for a large, open and coverless space where sand banks allow quick access to first-floor windows and turn otherwise defensible elevated positions into deathtraps. It's the smallest of the new maps and plays a great game of Search and Destroy – bomb one goes near the largely indefensible pool, but bombing the pool first makes the second bomb at the sheltered bus crash chokepoint almost impossible even with your tastiest Scorestreaks dropping from the sky.

GRIND


“Grind is based in Venice Beach California – the birthplace of skateboarding,” says Dan Bunting in a studio about twenty minutes from Venice Beach California – the birthplace of skateboarding. “Our lead level designer came up with the idea of making a map in a skatepark and I really didn't get it, but we trusted him and it's my personal favourite of the four maps.” Now, as a skatepark Grind is pump, but as a shooter map it's the best of the four, particularly in Domination and Hardpoint where every control point is made difficult to defend by the curved walls of the quarter pipes which surround the arena. The central hub includes what might be a skate shop with a claymore-friendly staircase, while one channel is a twisting series of quarter pipes opposite another channel built from full and half-pipes.

DOWNHILL


The first multiplayer map with a snowman, Downhill is set in the French Alps with a central hub made dangerous by cable cars which are both mobile cover and an instantly deadly man-squasher if you try crossing the ski lodge without observing the Green Cross Code. Of all the maps it's Downhill which feels the most familiar – channels littered with boulders for cover, lots of sniper vantage points, and a clear bias towards Capture The Flag where the map's sheer length and the difficulty of negotiating the cable car terminal at speed raises some interesting tactical questions and turns some of the more rocky parts of the map into circular Benny Hill chases while you wait for backup to arrive.

DIE RISE


Die Rise is Revolution's new Zombies map filled set atop a skyscraper where narrow corridors and insta-kill drops make it the hardest Zombies map ever. Just finding a decent weapon without falling to your death is a challenge, and since most of the paths through the level are one-way only, it's easy to get split up from the rest of your team. It's far too easy to get mobbed and far too easy to get stranded and it's altogether a thoroughly unpleasant place to be, in the best possible sense.

TURNED


Turned is billed as a competitive version of Zombies, but that's misrepresenting it entirely. Set on just one tiny map, Turned feels more like an obligation than a good idea; an answer to fans' demands to play as a zombie without ever considering why someone would want to be a zombie or how it might be fun. Left 4 Dead, for instance slots you into the regular co-op campaign as a more powerful creature in an asymmetrical deathmatch of sorts, but Turned is a five-player free-for-all game of high-speed Tag. Zombies can sprint but are unarmed, the sole human player is slow but armed to the teeth, killing a human lets you play as the human, and whoever accumulates the most time with meat on their bones wins. Except in practice, the bonus for being alive when the clock runs out is so massive, in our games it was the last man standing who won every time.

But wait, there's more!


Revolution is home to the first downloadable weapon in COD history, which has already scared the pants off everyone hoping the game stays balanced. Now, all Black Ops 2's weapons are balanced in the same way – designers have ten 'points' to spend on characteristics like range and power – but not all weapons are born equal and the Peacekeeper is an SMG with the range and stopping power of an assault rifle. It's every bit as scary as the pro players feared but while it's probably the easiest weapon for any newcomer to handle, anyone who's graduated to something more specialised will retain an advantage. Probably.

Revolution is available tomorrow on Xbox, which is how I played it, and in four weeks on PC because Heaven forbid Microsoft's DLC exclusivity deal should also include Windows. There's little new to Revolution's adversarial maps but that's the Call of Duty formula now – a not-at-all secret recipe of cover heights and engagement distances and eleven herbs and spices that are made all the more visible when Treyarch subverts them. It's a peek behind the curtain. Black Ops 2's first DLC is carefully designed and flawlessly executed but it's maths, not magic; method, not madness; an interesting convolution labelled a revolution.

Big news for Dota 2's esports community. ESL have announced a brand new tournament with the largest prize pool outside of Valve's own International. Dota 2 will be the second game to be part of the RaidCall EMS One, a new competition based on the ESL Major Series. The $156,000 prize will be split across four seasons through 2013.

According to the announcement, "The best teams from Europe will compete for an overall prize fund of 156,000 US-Dollar. The entire tournament will be broadcast by ESL TV. Almost every week you will enjoy multiple days with the best matches presented live by our new Dota 2 caster; topped off by four live event finals every year."

The tournament's caster, qualification process and structure are all still unknown, but should be announced on the competition's pre-page soon. While it's EU only for now, ESL project manager Lari Syrota confirmed on Reddit that US and Asian teams are being considered for the future. He also clarified that a team needed only three of five European members to be eligible.

CS:GO was the first game to be announced for the EMS One, and will also split $156,000 across four seasons. That competition will be hosted by casters Joe Miller and Paul 'ReDeYe' Chaloner.

Given the popularity for weird (and wonky) sims covering a plethora of professions, I'd be amazed if something like Surgeon Simulator 2013 didn't already exist in some dark corner of Eastern Europe. For the rest of us, this will do nicely. It's a hilarious entry for the Global Game Jam 2013 (theme: beating heart) in which you perform a heart transplant using a control and physics systems that are completely unsuitable for the delicate nature of the task. Basically, it's QWOP meets Operation. QWOPeration!



There are many games about killing people, but very few manage to instil a sense of panic and fear while you do it. As I incompetently cut through a rib cage, watching lungs fly out and hearing my character gibber helplessly over the Casualty theme tune, I realised I didn't even know how to perform a heart transplant, let alone do it well. Turns out heart surgery is pretty tricky. Who knew?

Thanks, Mike Bithell.

All too often, multiplayer gets short shrift at preview events - there's too little time to test the features and none of the cooperation and competition you get from playing alongside your friends. But with Crysis 3 we got a chance to experience multiplayer as it is meant to be: with multiple players. Seven of our writers braved snowflakes and Britain's horrendous rail network to bring you their thoughts on Crysis 3's online offering. Each gives their impressions of the Hunter and Crash Site modes below.

Tom Francis:

We played two different modes: Crash Site, which is basically king of the hill, and Hunter. Hunter's more interesting on paper: two players start as permanently cloaked nanosuit guys with bows, and everyone else is an ordinary marine trying to survive until the timer ticks down. When marines die, they come back as hunters, making it even harder for the few left. Because it's so hard to see hunters at any kind of distance, most of us huddled in dark corners or dead ends and waited. Unfortunately, this works. Your objective is just to survive, so you're incentivised to avoid action and hope nothing at all happens. If anything does, it's usually an arrow out of nowhere killing you instantly.

I had a lot more fun with the more conventional Crash Site mode. Everyone has the normal nanosuit in this, so you can all switch between cloak and armour modes, but you also pick a class. I liked Scout: fast, light armour, shotgun. I'd sprint around in armour mode, power-jumping and mantling up onto higher ledges, then cloak as soon as I saw anyone. If you find partial cover and crouch, you're pretty hard to spot in cloaked mode. And when you're still, it doesn't drain much energy. So I'd wait until I was fairly sure I knew where they were going, burn through the rest of my energy sprinting to where they'd be, then decloak and shotgun.

Cleverly, I noticed I got killed a lot less doing this than squabbling over that crash site everyone seemed so interested in just because it's the objective of the game. When it comes out, I'll probably play team deathmatch to repeat this tactic until people get good enough to shut it down, then stop playing forever.



Craig Pearson:

I am the opposite of Tom, so much so you can just call me Mot. I enjoyed Hunter a lot more than Crash Site, though the latter was standard-issue manshootyface fun. No, Hunter is where I’ll probably spend some time post single-player.

Everyone knows I have an affinity for cloaked characters with one-hit kill skills, and dropping into the transparent boots of the Hunter was instantly gratifying. He’s always cloaked, and armed with a bow. Such a get-up should leave me slowly stalking people through the leaves and streets, but there’s also a two-minute countdown to contend with, and any normal character killed is turned into a Hunter. It turns a potentially tense situation into a hilarious dash for cover: pipes with one exit were coveted by the stalked, they’d cover into them like the cowering cowards that they are (unless I was with them, in which case it’s a tactic of unparallelled genius), holding onto the shields that dot level, and putting up an ad-hoc human wall.

Those bloody shields. Crysis 3 finally remembers that there was an element of slapstick in the first game, and the shields are a nod to that. They can be tossed with lethal force by the defenders. If it so much as grazes the covert killer’s knees, then he drops. I’ve died under piles of the death discuses.
Tellingly, I laughed each time. The ‘hero closet’ defense might be obnoxious and unsportsmanlike, but it’s also really funny to follow the radar to a clot of red only to find a bunch of soldiers hiding in a pipe.



Dan Griliopoulos:

"Why did CounterStrike get rid of riot shields again?" Rich, Chris and I wondered, as we squatted side-by-side in a sewer, like the dirtiest phalanx. It doesn't speak well of a multiplayer mode if it incentivises you to hide in a tiny area, hurling your shield whenever your proximity sensor beeps too much or when the water at your feet starts sloshing too rhythmically.

Thanks to this tactic, to my preternaturally good skills at running away and hiding, and to my luck in driving the stupidly-lethal Pinger (a giant tripedal robot) in the Crash Site mode, I found myself at the top of the leaderboards. This meant that I was unlocking all sorts of goodies as I levelled up rapidly. Unfortunately, the game spends so much time telling you how great you are at the end of each round that there's no time to change weapons. It took me four rounds to build a custom class and the silent sub-machine gun class I built was so crap that I dropped from the top of the leaderboards to the bottom for the last session.

Neither mode was original or perfect; the Hunter's bow is spectacularly inaccurate (so I just meleed victims to death) and Crash Site is unbalanced by the overpowered Pinger. With friends it was fun, but I won't bother playing on release.



Rich McCormick:

I really like winning at stuff, so when Dan, Chris and I discovered our dead-end sewer in Hunter mode was a pass to an easy Hunter mode victory, we gravitated toward it on all successive rounds. Backed up against the wall with two shields and a shotgunner covering the only entrance, we were in a nigh-on impregnable position. When people were able to, um, pregnate us, they’d only be able to kill one before the other two hurled their shields full-force into their face, killing them despite their fancy cloak.

I had more fun in Crash Site mode. I kept my eyes on the skies as others scurried around below, watching the map’s hovering alien drone as it prepared to poop out a pod. When it did, I guided my heavy machine-gun toting soldier to its location, stood within capture radius, and engaged my armour mode. When another force got there first, I used my suit’s super-jump to launch myself a few feet into the air and fired a rocket at my nano-bootied feet, shredding enemies forced to stand within the pod’s prescribed space.



Chris Thursten:

The lives of the men and women of Pipe Town have been well documented already, so I won’t dwell on that particular aspect of the experience. Hunter mode basically turned the game into a first-night-in-Minecraft terror scenario, with the exception that riot shields are prettier to stare at than dirt blocks and as far as I know there’s no MAXIMUM LUMBERJACKING option. There is, however, some kind of killstreak upgrade that prompts the nanosuit to bellow ‘MAXIMUM NANOSUIT’, which made me laugh. How much of the nanosuit was I wearing before, nanosuit? Just a codpiece?

I remain curious about who or what is represented by the nanosuit voice, incidentally. I know it’s probably the suit, but I like the idea that it’s Prophet. Just, you know, muttering to himself. MAXIMUM PUTTING THE KETTLE ON. MAXIMUM HAVING CORRECT CHANGE FOR THE BUS. MAXIMUM FEELING A BIT SELF CONSCIOUS NOW.

The way that the arrival of new objectives in Crash Site can be anticipated by watching the trajectory of the inbound dropship (which becomes the designated capture point) is a neat touch, creating little running battles that I prefer to the scraps over the capture points themselves. Wiping out the enemy team as they’re all bunched up is fun when you’re doing it but can feel a little like having the rug swept out from under you when you’re on the receiving end. This is because defenders are usually so locked into the fight happening around them that they don’t notice the sniper, rocket or drop attack before it’s too late. No denying that hopping from rooftop to rooftop to land the perfect team-wrecking ground slam is pretty satisfying, though. MAXIMUM PHYSICS.

The airport map won the vote more often than not because it packed a lot of different arena types into a relatively small space - corridor fighting, indoor and outdoor open areas, multiple elevations, and, you know, pipes. The museum map we played was much less enjoyable - I spent a lot of time getting killed by stray bullets from the mist, and the repetition of certain assets - particularly those storm drains - made its circular layout pretty disorientating, at least for me.

I did have fun, though. Crysis 3 is incredibly keen to play and replay your best moments - and those of your friends - and this is a smart move given that its combination of superpowers and high concept weaponry already makes for decent anecdote fuel. I think the rhythm of each gametype could do with tweaking, though - at the moment, I can’t see myself playing hunter mode without a full group of friends. Or a riot shield.



Tom Senior:

I've always preferred the concept of the nano-suit to its various in-game implementations, but I got a cheeky kick out of the suit's cloak functionality in the Crash Site capture point mode. You can stay still and invisible for ages while surveying the battlefield, and choose the precise point at which you want to super-leap over the cap, and super-punch everyone below into nano-oblivion.

Map design is much improved over the second game. The Airport arena had a nice mix of exposed sniper spots on the raised fuselage of the crashed jet, and a warren of filthy sewers for shotgun rats. The classes fielded predictable loadouts, the assault guy rocked a meaty assault weapon, the heavy weapons chap favoured a jittery light machinegun, and the shotgun guy ran around cloaked doing what shotgun guys do best - laughing maniacally and blowing people away at point-blank range.

I'd like to have had a chance to play Crash Site with Hunter mode weapons, though. Crytek saw fit to give non-hunters (or huntees) bonkers murder-tools to balance out the whole permanently-invisible one-shot-kill enemy nonsense. The auto-shottie was nice, but the machinegun that fires a million rounds per nano-second was in a league of its own. It's a shame that Hunter mode is a game about hiding in a fucking box.

Oh, and the whole thing’s couched in a web of levelling systems, unlocks, achievements to create the addictive gradual progression curve that’s all the rage these days, and there’s kill-streaks to be earned in-game, the funniest of which is Maximum Radar, a comedy term for an all-seeing, all-knowing minimap.

The best moments I had with multiplayer in Crysis 3 were the silliest. I wish Crysis would embrace how ridiculous it is. I’d like to see less pseudo-military seriousness and more rubber-muscled men firing rocket launchers at at maximum speed. Nevermind, time to boot up Unreal Tournament instead.



John Strike:

Do you love getting punched in the face by an enemy that you can't see? Then you're going to loooooove Hunter Mode.

As a Cell your sole objective is simply to stay alive for a set amount of time but it's not as easy as you'd think when your enemy, the Hunters, have silent crossbows, are harder to see than Arnie's Predator and have your position nailed on a sat-nav. Luckily you're suitably prepared with a choice of classes/weapons and a 'hunter scanner' to let you know when your guests have arrived. Cast your mind back to the heart pumping sounds of the marines' alien detector in the second Aliens film and you'll recall a sound that put sweat on the palms of your hands. Now imagine your next door neighbour putting up an Ikea shelf at 10am on a Sunday morning and that's pretty much the sound of Crysis 3's version of a proximity detection device. Generally speaking Hunter Mode involved scurrying around the map for the first few seconds before ‘les invisibles’ arrive, franticly searching for the most acutely angled camping spot in which to park yourself and await the inevitable.

In stark contrast Crysis 3's more traditional Crash Site mode was a lot more enjoyable. One map in particular offered a variety of different hiding spots and escape routes in the context of a crashed and crumpled plane and its surroundings. Although less refined and balanced as Call of Duty Maps, it adopted a similar scale and the pace of the multiplayer experience of it felt spot on. Attacking and holding a single objective allowed cheeky flanking manouvers and avoided choke points whilst keeping the action focussed and aggressive.

I had a lot of fun with Crash Site mode and I'd hope that there was more behind my not enjoying Hunter mode further than the fact I was utterly dump at it.

While browsing RogueBasin, I happened across the wonderful Wayward, a browser-based graphical roguelike with echoes of Ultima Online, Dwarf Fortress and Minecraft. Which means: Survival! Crafting! Treasure! An ace chiptune soundtrack! And lots of other things worthy of !s. The game's currently in beta, but I didn't notice any missing features or bugs - Wayward strong like ox. You can play it right here, and you totally should if you like desert islands, survivalism or hitting rats with twigs.

Like all good things, creator Vaughn 'Drath' Royko's Wayward starts with your character washing up on a beach, the sole survivor of a shipwreck. The tile-based/turn-based movement marks the game out as a roguelike, but with a heavy survivalist element: genre staples such as treasure chests and levels have seemingly been done away with in favour of crafting and Elder Scrolls-style learning by doing. There is also swimming, and sharks (a la the screenshot at the top of this post).

If you'd rather play Wayward offline, there's a handy downloadable version located here. Oh and here's a trailer for beta 1.0:

We recently made the case that trailers should stop mucking about with thematically tenuous CGI trailers and just show us the damn game. I'm now going to undo all of that work by praising this, a Bioshock Infinite trailer that contains no game footage whatsoever. I do this because, 1) I'd really rather not see any more of the game before it's released, and 2) it's pretty marvellous in its own right, exploring the city of Columbia through the medium of an 70s educational documentary. It's like Look Around You for alternate history.



It's a great concept well executed, nicely mimicking the eerie synth backing and dry, dramatic narration of the era. Top work! Although, if you'd prefer to see the actual game in action, you can head here instead.

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: