There’s something I can’t tell you about BioShock Infinite. Not because it’s a spoiler – I’ll avoid those too – but because I can’t quite communicate it. It’s something I felt after playing Half-Life 2, and again after playing BioShock 1. It’s the sense you get after experiencing something so vivid and rich that you know you’ll never be able to fully describe what it felt like. But I’ll try.

"‘City in the clouds’ doesn’t really express the sheer size of it: there seem to be several of those in every direction."
That’s not how I expected to feel after playing Infinite for the first time. They’d kept it out of journalistic hands until suspiciously close to release, and the trailers and walkthroughs didn’t give a good sense of what kind of game it was. Somewhere in my head, I just copied BioShock 1 from the bottom of the sea and pasted it into the clouds.

Some of that is accurate. In BioShock 1, you played an outsider discovering a failed utopian city at the bottom of the sea; in BioShock Infinite, you play an outsider discovering a failing utopian city floating in the sky. Both games let you explore an extraordinary place, piecing together its story from evidence left lying around. And both games alternate that with combat: you wield both conventional guns and a suite of basically-magical powers that let you do interesting things to your enemies.

Once you arrive, though, it’s hard to call them similar. ‘City in the clouds’ doesn’t really express the sheer size of it: there seem to be several of those in every direction. Columbia’s huge districts are disjointed, drifting in loose formation as the impossible flotilla tours the world. The first one I explore feels disjointed in itself: half the buildings seem to be bobbing and lurching independently, like some weird dream. Curving skyrails take massive carriages of cargo, like sidewinding trains. Airships propel themselves slowly between districts on twin fans. And the smoke from every chimney streaks in the same direction: we’re moving.



But the most startling difference from BioShock 1 isn’t the views: it’s the people. Rapture was a failed utopia, Columbia is still very much in the process of failing.

"Exploring a dead place by yourself, with you being this cypher, we’ve kind of done that."
Plenty of times in my five hours, I’d enter a new district of the city where no-one has any particular reason to hate, fear or shoot me yet. Columbia is full of civilians milling around, gossiping, griping, and going about their business. It’s exactly what Irrational Games had avoided doing not only in BioShock, but in its spiritual predecessor System Shock 2, simply because it’s so hard to make it work. I asked creative director Ken Levine: what changed?

“If we went back to that now, I think people would say we were just repeating ourselves. Listen, it would have been a lot easier. We would have been having this conversation two years ago... but exploring a dead place by yourself, with you being this cypher, we’ve kind of done that.”

Was it as hard as they feared back then? “So, I don’t want to bore you with my problems, but the writing task was monstrous. It was huge. I remember the first level I wrote, the first draft for this prologue, I sat back and looked at this script, and I realised this script alone was longer than my entire script for BioShock.”



As I’m playing it, though, it’s not a game of long conversations. A lot of that work seems to have gone into a depth of story, rather than length. Even more so than in BioShock, the density of information encoded into the world around you is overwhelming. Every poster is propaganda for a faction you’ll meet, or a product you’ll buy, or a cryptic hint to one of the game’s dozens of connected mysteries. Pre-television viewing booths show flickery greyscale government infotainment, with title-card dialogue and jaunty music.

"Almost every line of dialogue has some payload of information about this foreign place."
Plot characters still leave audio diaries of their thoughts lying around, but now they’re joined by living people having normal conversations. And almost every line of their daily lives has some payload of information about this foreign place.

“It’s damned inconvenient when buildings don’t dock on time,” a well-dressed man complains to his companion as I walk by. “Yesterday I had to take a gondola, rubbing shoulders with all sorts.” If you’re ‘someone’ in Columbia, your destination comes to you.

Later on, I actually see it happen. As I’m walking towards a bridge, Chas White’s Home and Garden Supply shop floats slowly towards me and docks noisily with a pair of metal teeth jutting out of the street, clanking into place and steadying as it locks. A nearby troupe of a cappella singers harmonise over the noise.



It’s all terribly... nice. It has the atmosphere of a cheerful village fete, but in a village that couldn’t exist. At one point, we seem to be in a cloud: a thick haze turns everyone in the street to silhouettes, picked out by spectacular rays of golden sunlight. Confetti floats through the air, and hummingbirds pause to probe flowers. Two children splash each other in a leaking fire hydrant.

"Blood geysers all over my face. I’m drenched. Everyone’s screaming."
Half an hour later, for reasons I won’t go into, I’m ramming a metal gear into a man’s eye socket until blood geysers all over my face. I’m drenched. Everyone’s screaming. Four more men are coming for me, and this blunt steel prong is all I have to kill them with.

I skipped ahead there for two reasons: one, I don’t want to spoil why violence does finally break out in BioShock Infinite. It’s a moment that will become notorious in gaming, and a hard one to forget.

Two, I wanted it to sound jarring, because it is. Extremely, intentionally and upsettingly so. When I ask Ken about it, he describes the intended effect as “biting into an apple and finding the worm at the core”.

It works as that. But it’s also jarring in another way. A moment ago I’d been enthralled by this place, fascinated by how different and fresh it was, hanging on every word of these people’s everyday lives. When I realised my next task was to ram a piece of metal into eight different people until they were all dead, part of me thought, sadly, “Oh yeah. Videogames.”



It’s not a new thought, it only stands out here because Infinite is so superb at conjuring this place and luring you into its story. When I mention it to Ken, he’s sympathetic. “It’s an intensely bizarre concept that you play a character – whether it’s Uncharted, or this game, or even like an Indiana Jones movie – who’s essentially a psychopathic mass murderer. You’re fucking insane. I’m very aware of this issue... it’s something we actually attempt to confront at some point.”

"It’s strange to see white-on-black discrimination so unflinchingly depicted."
The other thing Infinite confronts, with surprising directness, is racism. I’m so used to games having some orc- or elf-based analogue for it that it’s strange to see regular white-on-black discrimination so unflinchingly depicted.

“I didn’t want a game that just had some racism in the background,” says Ken. “I wanted you to be engaged and confront those issues – in the same way we confronted you with what capitalism does when it goes to its maximum extreme.”

“In this game we think it’d be honest to deal with these topics, and these aren’t topics we take lightly, and they’re not necessarily going where you think they’re going. This is not... I don’t want to spoil anything.” Well, mission accomplished.




It’s a very story-driven game – you’re always heading to an excitingly new part of the city with a specific purpose. As far as I played, it never lapses into a formula, which gives it a sense of adventure and discovery that BioShock didn’t always have. And the places it takes you to are what really made me fall in love with it.

"You’re always heading to an excitingly new part of the city. It never lapses into a formula."
I’m in a temple. Soulful gospel music echoes through the dark halls as I wade through knee-deep holy water. Spectacular statues sparkle in shafts of sunlight. A preacher’s speech to his damp-robed congregation crosses the line from passionate to unhinged.

I’m on a beach. There’s actual sand, and an ocean of sorts. I can still see Columbia in the sky... and after a moment I realise I’m still in Columbia. The ocean runs off the edge of this district in a vast, Niagara-style waterfall.

I’m in an exhibit, of sorts. A huge statue of Columbia’s first lady catches beams of brilliant pink light, as plaques tell the story of her life. In the next room, a spectacular diorama has larger-than-life statues of dozens of soldiers tumbling off a cliff, a frozen snapshot of a massacre, shrill opera music blaring out of bad speakers to underscore the unmoving drama.

I’m in a mansion, old and gloomy. Stairs lead up. A banquet hall is to the left, and I see what looks like a butler in there. He’s facing the wall. I walk around to get his attention, but he just stares blankly. I look at the table. It’s piled with rotting food, and there are crows everywhere.



Even taking it slowly, these new places come at a rate and a density of detail that feels like sensory overload. Each one has that depth of story I described earlier: dozens of clues and hints and references and traces of people’s lives and stories. And each one has an extraordinary visual design that makes you stop and gawp.

Most of them, of course, are also battlegrounds. At first, I didn’t think much of Infinite’s combat. Not just its videogameyness in a world that’s otherwise so real; I also felt like I didn’t have a lot of options, and you’re fighting a crazy number of soldiers and turrets. There doesn’t seem to be a good way to avoid getting hit.

"Taking cover gets you cornered. Hooking onto a skyrail and going full throttle makes you too fast to track."
It gets better when skyrails are introduced. Steel tracks worm their way through the plentiful empty space in Columbia, and your sky hook lets you launch yourself onto them and ride them like a rollercoaster. That, ultimately, is how you avoid getting hit. Taking cover usually just gets you cornered by someone you can’t take on at close range, but hooking onto a skyrail and going full throttle makes you too fast to track.

From there, you can aim a jump to any of the various platforms and vantage points, pounce on an enemy with lethal force, or just stay on the rail until it loops around, to get an overview of the war zone.

Your set of abilities expands gradually, and the spaces you’re fighting in get bigger and have more interesting stuff going on in them. So to get a sense of how it scales up, I asked to play a late-game fight.



The first thing I do is hop on a skyrail and take a tour: a bunch of heavily armoured soldiers are shooting at me from a central balcony, some more from a moving airship, and a half-robot giant – a Handyman – is stomping around below.

As I watch, he jumps onto the rail I’m on and sends an electric charge through it, shocking me. I stay on until I’m in a position to pounce on one of the armoured guys on the central balcony. My flying skyhook attack knocks him clear off it, but his partner fights back hard. My shotgun doesn’t do much against him, so I try a new ability: Charge. I fly forwards and slam into him with alarming force, and he goes down.

"Elizabeth's most useful ability is to open a ‘tear’ – a rift in space that brings forth some useful object."
I’m low on health, so I run over to some medkits – or rather, where some medkits could be.

Your companion, Elizabeth, joins you in combat, riding skyrails with you, tossing you ammo, and reviving you when you’re down. But her most useful ability is to open a ‘tear’ – a potential rift in space that brings forth some useful object or feature. You can see all the potential tears in an area in grey fuzzyvision, and ‘use’ one to ask Elizabeth to make it real. She can only sustain one at a time, and by this point in the game, a big combat space like this has at least eight.

So I ask Elizabeth to open the tear in front of me, grab a medkit from the box that appears, and heal myself. I decide to try another new ability: Undertow. As I hold down the right mouse button, a tendril of water creeps out of my hand, curls around the arena, grabs onto the Handyman and sucks him in front of me. Oh, thanks Undertow!



I switch to Shock Jockey and electrocute him while he’s wet, then ask Elizabeth to open a nearby tear that brings in a pool of water. I try to lure the Handyman into it in order to shock him again, but he has an annoying habit of jumping directly to me. He’s pounding me to oblivion with his articulated fists.

I skyrail over to a high balcony to get away. A tear here handily contains a barrel of rocket launchers, so we open it and I grab one. Another tear has an automated turret, so I tell Elizabeth to open that one before we move on.

"Late-game combat is still hectic, but you’ve got a lot of options."
The Handyman chases, and is pelted by both the turret and my rockets as I ride away. He grabs the rail in both hands, but I’m wise to it this time: I drop down just before the current shoots through the metal. I hit him with two more rockets as he leaps around the arena, then use Undertow – intentionally this time. A snake of liquid seeks him out and pulls him to me, and holds him in place for a second. I use the time to back up a little, switch to Charge, and hold down the right mouse button. The moment he’s free, I slam into him full force, and he crumples.

Late-game combat is still hectic, but you’ve got a lot of options and they’re more satisfying than just shooting dudes with the bog-standard weapons. The constant skyrailing and leaping around make it fast, dramatic and acrobatic to play.



I’m glad the combat gets more interesting, but combat wasn’t the most common complaint about BioShock – it was the ending. I ask Ken if he agrees that BioShock got less interesting after the Andrew Ryan encounter. “Yeah,” he says succinctly.

"The ending of the game is the most ambitious thing we’ve ever done, as a company."
I ask if they’ve learnt anything from it, hoping for a post mortem. Instead, he jumps straight to BioShock Infinite.

“I would say that the ending of the game is the most ambitious thing we’ve ever done, as a company. It is either going to be something incredibly wonderful, or people are going to burn down our office... So I can’t tell you whether people will like it or not. I can tell you it is absolutely different to anything you’ve seen in a videogame.”

It’s the sort of ridiculous thing Peter Molyneux would say. But after playing BioShock Infinite, after coming away with an experience I can’t fully express, and after thinking back to the scene in Andrew Ryan’s office in BioShock 1... I half believe it.

Through more than 12 years of Counter-Strike, I continue to play cs_office tirelessly. Here's why I consider it one of the best multiplayer maps ever.



Thanks to Tyler for editing this video, he's a hero.

I can think of a few reasons why us folks in Europe would envy our American cousins: they have a better selection of content on Netflix, their car chases are quite a bit more exciting, and they can just about pull off wearing a stetson. Just about. Thankfully, that list is now missing one vital component, as Scribblenauts Unlimited has finally been allowed to exist in Europe. The game suddenly appeared on Steam yesterday, after a miserable three-month delay.

If you're not sure what they're all about, the Scribblenauts games revolve around a kid named Maxwell and his magical notebook, which brings whatever he writes in it to life. The third game, Unlimited, features a more open world, while this Steam version excitingly comes with Steam Workshop support as well. There are already a rather staggering 12,000 pieces of content on there, including this handsome Nyan Launcher.

Scribblenauts Unlimited will set you back £22.99.

In response to their game appearing on The Pirate Bay, the developers of Anodyne - an atmospheric top-down Zelda-a-like - have hosted their own, official torrent/magnet on the site, in addition to reducing the price of the game (on their website at least) to $1+, until Monday. For the next few days, you can grab the - rather great - dreamlike adventure and pay what you want for it, as long as it's $1 or over.

The torrent/magnet comes with the following message from developers Jon Kittaka and Sean Hogan:

"We'd like to make a living by making games that will give people memorable experiences, but we know not everyone can afford them. So that's why you can download a torrent of our game, Anodyne, and if you'd like and are able, also purchase the game! We're also on Greenlight, trying to get onto Steam. So please consider giving us your vote!" You can do that here.

This comes after Sean gave the unofficial torrent his blessing a few days ago (even going so far as to hand out free keys), elaborating on the decision over on Reddit. "Yeah, piracy is inevitable so it's better to embrace it - plus, it gives lots of people who couldn't normally afford the game the opportunity to play it - and I think when you're a small group of developers (only my friend Jon and I made Anodyne), it's better to have lots of people able to experience your game. We hope enough people will like it and the word will get out, eventually allowing us to get onto Steam, which then lets more people see and play Anodyne!"

Remarkable stuff. You can get Anodyne here, and see a trailer of the game below.

"Let's Reboot" takes a look back at a classic in need of a new outing or a beloved series gone stale and asks how it might be best redesigned or given a much needed kick up the backside. The Rules: Assume a free hand, and a decent budget, but realistic technology and expectations. This week's sacred cow - the series that made us all want to be a mighty pirate of the Caribbean.

Ah, The Secret Of Monkey Island. One of the most beloved games of all time, a king amongst adventures, and home of some of PC gaming's favourite characters. Even thinking about laying hands on and poking around in such a classic is likely the height of heresy and arrogance. So let's! Just for fun, here's how we'd take Guybrush Threepwood back to his roots, without rooting him in the 90s.

Sometimes you have to take a step back if you want to move forwards. When doing salsa, for instance.

The obvious path with Monkey Island is "Just make a really funny point and click adventure!", and ignoring the fact that there's no place for the word 'just' in that sentence, that could work. Telltale's Tales of Monkey Island was a good revival a few years ago, and I'd happily play a second season of it. Since we're playing the thought experiment game though, and thus don't need to worry about tedious trivialities like budgets and marketing and death threats, let's try for something a little more ambitious.

Unlike most of its peers, Monkey Island offers many other possibilities - in particular, the chance to put the word 'adventure' back into 'adventure game' by ditching most of the 90s design tropes entirely. Yes, I'm saying that our Monkey Island reboot will not be a classic point and click adventure.

At this point, you're probably making this face.



Don't worry. We're not talking about pulling a Syndicate - god forbid - but coming at the series from a different angle. It's not puzzles that made Monkey Island special, but comedy, character, setting and premise. That's the starting point here. How do we make a modern comedy game? How do the characters best support that goal? How do we make both Guybrush and the player want to be a not-so-mighty pirate once again, while still respecting the series' heritage?

...

Well, for starters, we're going to get rid of most of it.

With the exception of Escape From Monkey Island, obviously, this has nothing to do with the games themselves. The Curse of Monkey Island is an excellent adventure, and Tales was a great continuation of the series. I mean no disrespect to the series' actual handlers when I say that the first thing we need to do is hit reset. It's simply that over the years, Monkey Island has become weighed down by a couple of problematic plot tumours and general problems, and the best way to fix them at this point is to just grit our teeth, grab a scalpel, and slice them off while we have a chance. The big ones:

Problem A: The Marriage of Elaine and Guybrush

A glint like that makes me worry that the genie from King's Quest VI is cross-dressing again.

Without wanting to get One More Day about this, having these two get married was a dreadful idea for both their sakes, and it's been a pox on the series ever since Elaine declared her love at the start of Curse. They hooked up at the end of the first game, yes. By the second, they'd not only broken up, Elaine had written a book about the relationship called "Next To Nothing", and Guybrush absolutely torpedoed an attempted reconciliation when he crashed her costume party on Booty Island.

Their relationship needs that edge to work - they're a mismatched couple, not soulmates, and while there is obviously romance involved, their general relationship works better as big sister and little brother than husband and wife. Not to mention Elaine knowing that she should know better.

Having them together is also disastrous on a narrative/puzzle level, since part of what makes Elaine a good character is that she's far more competent than Guybrush. Not for nothing have the three games where the two were in a relationship had to start by benching her - in Curse, turning her into a gold statue for the entire game, in Escape, leaving her to do 'serious' stuff while Guybrush plays pirate, and in Tales, splitting the duo up and leaving her a pawn to be feuded over for much of the story.

All this is bad in many ways, but Elaine herself suffers the worst from it - a character who should be really good and a foil for Guybrush, instead of being forced into a "Now, don't be silly, dear," role. Elaine may not need saving from the Ghost Pirate LeChuck, but she could do with a helping hand here.

Problem B: Guybrush And LeChuck - Mighty (?) Pirates!

Goodness, Guybrush, this cupcake recipe is most interesting. I mean, ARRRH!

Both of these characters suffer from the same problem, from different angles - too many games. Guybrush has accomplished far too much to still be a loveable underdog (Monkey Island 2 made him a braggart for a reason), and LeChuck had too many defeats to be scary. Tales of Monkey Island was a great attempt at bringing him back as an actual threat, but more is needed.

Worse, the spiritual gimmicks are played out now. He's been a ghost, a zombie, a demon, a human (twice) and a voodoo god. We can't just throw a dart at the board and say "Oh, but he'll be REALLY scary as MechaLeChuck!" and expect it to work. So, we won't. Instead, we need to go back to basics.

Problem C: The Times They Have A Change-Ed

These gags are like chilli powder. A sprinkle adds spice. Too much just means pain. And shitting fire.

Since Monkey Island 2, everyone who worked on the series has broadened the nature of the world - and while that's led to some really fun stuff, it's also taken it from an endearingly anachronistic world into a pretty silly one. The early games' theme park elements exploded with the end of Curse actually having LeChuck's evil plan involve a demonic rollercoaster. Escape then took things to eleven by adding gags like a restaurant called Planet Threepwood and... and far worse. Shudder. All the shudders.

Tales of Monkey Island was much better about this, but cranked up the folklore aspect of the world with merpeople and learning to talk fish and so on. That in itself isn't a problem, especially in the series as it is at the moment, but making it casual enough to feel banal to the characters did rob the attempted magic. Think the original Pirates of the Caribbean, where a single ghost ship was a big deal, versus On Stranger Tides where every ship has a gimmick. Nothing kills magic like too much magic.

So, how might our reboot's story go? Time to put down the scalpel and reach for the broadsword.



A long time ago, in a mugging not so far, far away

Given the things on the "To Fix" list, you've probably guessed the first part - we're pulling a Star Trek and heading back in time a little. The weird ending of Monkey Island 2 offers an easy route to that, discounting the other games as all a dream. That's disrespectful though, so instead we're going to blatantly steal from Star Trek and have a voodoo created alternate timeline. If you disapprove of stealing from Star Trek, it's okay. We're also stealing from Shrek 4. The idea is to add a certain mystery if you've played the earlier games, while also providing a new baseline for newcomers to roll with.

That baseline is that rather than being the naive pirate from The Secret of Monkey Island, we now meet Guybrush in his more blowhard form from Monkey Island 2. Complete with the beard. He's a self-proclaimed pirate without a ship, which nobody fails to notice, mostly surviving by telling tall tales around the Caribbean until everyone gets bored and he moves on. A drifter rather than a pirate.

Nobody actually believes him though, and not without cause. He seems utterly convinced that he destroyed the Ghost Pirate LeChuck, saved Governor Elaine Marley and charted a ship to the mythical Monkey Island... all exactly as we know happened, but can't have. Elaine only vaguely remembers him as a bumbling pirate she once spared out of pity. Nobody's even heard of this "Monkey Island" he's so proud of having sailed to. Finally, his epic boasts of taking down the Caribbean's greatest monster using only his wits and a handy bottle of ghost busting rootbeer go down as well as you'd expect.

Not least because the Ghost Pirate LeChuck is still very much haunting the seven seas.

He can hit you. You can't hit him. Ghosts are cheaters like that.

The Reboot of Monkey Island, as it were, needs to master three trials of its own - to allow for wit, to enable comedy, and unlike previous games, to actually feel piratey. That means that while the original games were entirely cerebral games, there'll now be an action element that- No! Wait. Don't panic. Look, Full Throttle and Quest For Glory got away with adding extra elements, and even The Secret Of Monkey Island stretched itself out a little by making Monkey Island itself more RPG in style than Melee.

For our purposes, 'action' doesn't mean button mashing or reflex tests - at least not on the critical path, though there's some scope for harder challenges around the edges, as we'll get to. Think more Sid Meier's Pirates than Tomb Raider - an injection of new game mechanics to freshen things up and provide the piracy experience that the originals never really did, but for the benefit of comedy and story.

Time to let the flow of the conversation control its... well... flow.

Take conversations as an example. The old methodical dialogue tree system has had its day and is getting put out to pasture. Sorry, but it's time. It worked better in the days before spoken dialogue. Our Monkey Island reboot instead uses a system more like Alpha Protocol/The Walking Dead, where choices have to be made on the hop. Where those games use it to fill conversations with dilemmas and big decisions though, this is in service of another master - allowing for dialogue and banter that actually has proper comedy timing for once. Look at Portal 2 to see how important that is.

(CLARIFICATION EDIT: Think 'reflowing the conversation stream' here.)

Not every conversation would go like that, of course - that would be overkill. The important ones would though, with Guybrush automatically picking a funny option if the player doesn't. Others would simply be click/response jobs, with quick gags, reminders and push-offs, and Guybrush smart enough to hand over any necessary objects/information without the need for a lengthy wind-up chat every time.

The same system can also be used for combat, in an evolution of insult swordfighting. Instead of dueling barbs, the focus is now on wit mixed with choreographed awesomeness. Basically, this:



The main catch isn't so much challenge as the torture of repeated jokes, so fail states would be kept at an absolute minimum or shrugged off. In a sea battle for instance, maybe you'd lose half your gold, adding a gambling system that makes you cash in when you can afford the next tchotchke or plot coupon. In a sword-fight, an arrogant opponent might play things straight for two rounds, but then just start going "Blah blah blah" and throw the fight out of boredom. There are always ways to play things. After all, it's not like you couldn't die in Monkey Island and Monkey Island 2...

It's hilarious how many people got stuck here. (Hint: Pick up the idol.)

This sense of pace and purpose runs through the whole reboot, doubling down on what makes Monkey Island a unique setting rather than simply a quirky world. In the original game for instance, Guybrush wanted to be a pirate for no particular reason, and that was fine. This time though, he has a more personal stake in earning respect and getting what he wants. His life depends on it.

Either enraged by stories of this pirate claiming to have defeated him, or having some lingering hate from the other timeline, our newly restored Ghost Pirate LeChuck begins the game wanting Guybrush dead. This isn't too much of a break from the original two games, where he was a threatening figure seen from afar. Now though, he takes more of a personal interest. Where Guybrush goes, destruction soon follows - and this isn't a LeChuck played for comic effect. Instead, this is LeChuck before the sting of defeat, at the height of his power. Think Brian Blessed, burning whole islands into ash on a whim, and really held back only by delusions of civility - especially in front of Elaine - and having an enslaved army that really isn't that bothered about evil, and only jumps to attention when he's on their backs.

Of course, things wouldn't be that serious. We're talking about a guy called "LeChuck" here. The gag is simply shifted from "LeChuck is an incompetent failure" to other comedy avenues - how characters react to his hammy bombast for instance, or situations where he's forced out of his comfort zone. A dinner party at Elaine's mansion, maybe, where he's unconvincingly faking being alive and charming for her with the help of someone else's ill-fitting skin around his ghostly blue form, with Guybrush completely oblivious to how close he is to being throttled until his head pops off like a champagne cork.

And WHAT were you plundering in my bathroom, exactly?

Speaking of Elaine, this rebooted version of her is also little different. She's still Governor, though of a new island rather than re-using Melee or Plunder or Booty - at this point, she's been in charge of half the Caribbean at some point, so one more island hardly matters. This is where Guybrush washes up after an initial attack by LeChuck, hoping to prove his stories true, only to find that she's not willing to help.

Like LeChuck though, something persists. She's not in love with Guybrush, but she does find herself oddly tolerant of him - even as his every act causes her trouble, embarrassment, or just plain gets in her way. Her new island is a Tortuga type port with a heavy pirate presence that she keeps order over by being extremely good at what she does. As Guybrush soon finds though when he agrees to defeat a mysterious ship that's been preying on the lily-livered locals, she's got her swashbuckling side too. If only because how else would you get an island full of pirates to pay their damn taxes?

I imagine her having a very nice ship, of course. Should, y'know, someone have to 'borrow' it for an odyssey around several quirky, conveniently flammable islands, with both a fleet of the damned and its original owner in hot pursuit. Hypothetically, of course. Purely hypothetically...

Governor Phatt, LIVING THE DREAM.

Going darker in tone doesn't mean a less comic game. As I've discussed elsewhere, one of the great benefits of a seemingly sinister world is that the lighter moments shine all the brighter - Largo's defeat in Monkey Island 2 for example, where the game spends a big chunk of time building him up as a viable threat to Guybrush, only to repeatedly humiliate him. That's the kind of baseline here we're dealing with here - a world where a pirate bar should look like a scary place, undercut by the residents, and villains have dignity to be stripped away by Guybrush's luck and cleverness.

Why is that important? If you chart comedy on a graph - because that's hilarious, amiright? - most games would look like three different types - a series of peaks and troughs, a jagged line that looks like Elmer Fudd having an orgasm into an oscilloscope, and the flat line of failure. The second is what most games have gone for - yuk, yuk, yurk. If a gag doesn't work, no matter. There'll be another along in a second. The catch is that a game doing that soon establishes a level that players can get accustomed to - a little like how horror games' jumpscares are more effective at the start.

Monkey Island 2 knew exactly how to fuse comedy and sinister for best effect.

Instead, our reboot will aim for peaks and accept troughs in the aim of getting the peaks as high as possible - boosted of course by gags, surreal objects, background detail and so on to keep a general level of good humour going throughout. This allows for drama and genuine menace, which can be defused in funny ways - a comedy technique called 'bathos' - as well as exciting set-pieces that don't necessarily need a punchline. Tales of Monkey Island for instance featured a long sequence of Guybrush very painfully getting the shit kicked out of him by LeChuck, while the extended gag about his torture machine in Monkey Island 2 didn't diminish the fact that Guybrush was in genuine danger. In context, anyway, even if in reality the worst that could happen was a fake-out.

One of the best things about Monkey Island as a setting - the series, not the island - is that it offers great scope for a journey, where every island can have its own unique theme. Like the first two games, our reboot starts on a murky one with lots of bullies and casual cruelty opportunities to set tone. The main characters' comedy moments would primarily be based around situational gags and wit and being the straight-men to and instigators of slapstick rather than explicit clowns.

That's why the design gods invented secondary characters...

Lucky this just got erased from the timeline, huh?

Well, obviously Stan has to return. Three words: Previously Owned Tattoos.

Coupled of course with some brand new mechanics...



Well, that or sit on his arse and wait for you to show up. He'll be more active this time.

Our Monkey Island reboot isn't an open world game by any stretch, though it does operate on a number of different scales - to both allow freedom to actually play pirate once you've acquired a ship from the first island, and tightly lock things down for the sake of plot and comedy and puzzles.

Essentially, it's a game with three scales - open water, islands exploration, and set-pieces - and not just for purposes of throwing in a couple more game modes, as we'll get to in a moment. If we're going to give the player a ship, it seems like a complete waste to only use it for a map screen. Instead, this is where we get to reinforce the piratey side of the game - three sheets to the wind, and some freedom to explore, find lost treasure, have battles and offer a kind of home base to play with. The reboot nature of the story even handily resets Guybrush's competence level - things are different now.

Exploration would be limited by a few things, including initially impassable environmental hazards and your sailing range. Each island or other point on the critical path unlocks the next, but you can also go out of your way to explore, find buried treasure, raid more challenging opponents than the ones on the critical path, and such. Guybrush would also have his Captain's Cabin, slowly filling up with tchotchkes and trophies and photos either bought with plundered gold or automatically unlocked by progress - think Alpha Protocol, but taken to the level of the Phatt Island Wanted Poster. Photos for instance could be clearly staged for effect rather than actually showing what happened, or a grateful pirate show his gratitude with a present - a clearly ticking time-bomb that blows up during the end credits.

Insult swordfighting was always cool... but damn, it took forever. We need to be faster.

Mostly, this would be to restore some of the freedom lost by a linear story. There is however at least one crossover point where Guybrush has to demonstrate his piracy skills by raising enough money to get into a location. Instead of the Three Trials system though, it would simply be going out to do things like raiding ships or finding buried treasure by decoding cryptic maps until you have enough. Later, these remain available as opportunistic things, but mostly for the benefit of completeness, Achievements, hunting for weird and wonderful Easter Eggs on the edges of the map, or just taking a break.

The two worlds can also meet in other ways, such as a 'random' encounter on the high seas that pays back later on, or the chance to bribe someone instead of solving a particularly difficult logic puzzle. In most cases though, money remains useless and puzzles still have to be solved via good old wit and moxie. These sequences exist to make the world feel larger and back up the atmosphere, not replace the adventuring bits. Even if the adventuring is itself quite a bit different to before...

The island maps stay. They help add a sense of scale. They'd just be joined by a more open sea.

As before, most of the real adventure takes place on land - and if you've played The Walking Dead or Heavy Rain, you probably have a rough idea where this is going. We're not talking QTEs though, at least not on anything like that scale. Instead, we're talking set-piece design. Mostly.

The second scale level in the reboot is island exploration, which uses a combination of classic maps and hub type areas for wandering and disposable gags. These play out much like adventuring of old. You can pick up items, being restricted to things that you could reasonably pick up, and temporarily carry any heavier ones. Pretty standard stuff, mostly there to talk to characters at will, collect sub-quests like treasure maps or pointers to things to go find on the open seas, or gain access to the next plot area or areas, depending on how many objectives are currently on the slate.

The best stuff though is in sealed off spaces (not necessarily interiors) that are self-contained, so you never have to worry about whether you have what you need, and built around scenes as much as puzzles. Comedy. Drama. Dramedy. Even Comedra, if it's not fighting Godzilla. These wouldn't be Assassin's Creed style mission markers or anything so crude, and there would be some things outside to help blur the lines more than, say, Star Wars: The Old Republic's GIANT GREEN QUEST WALLS!

At their simplest, these sequences would be very similar to classic puzzle solving adventuring, just with the benefit of knowing you definitely have access to what you need and thus won't need to spend hours pixel-bitching across multiple islands for something you missed. At other times, you'd strap in for a non-stop parade of silliness, humiliation congas or genuine drama - LeChuck and his army burning down a port for instance and Guybrush having to escape, or the two fighting and Guybrush having to buy time with a useless sword until he can manouver a way to jump out of a window and swim away.

(CLARIFICATION EDIT: As an example from the existing games, think Elaine's party in Monkey Island 2. You'd get in with the dress and invitation, have the run of the place, do a couple of puzzles and talk to people, and get the map piece or equivalent goal. You just wouldn't leave until you were done, and would know that you had everything you needed on hand, keeping the focus tighter.)

Ah, sweet bathos. A great technique, but one that takes prep to pull off.

On the surface, that sounds limited, and the result would likely be easier than the classic games - though given how fast people go for walkthroughs these days, adventures are honestly better off going for experiences rather than challenges. You could have a stealthy bit combined with an observation puzzle for instance, or a complex room escape in a jail cell; a scene devoted entirely to a conversation, or a fiendish puzzle that absolutely would not be a sliding block job. As long as things kept changing up and the story never ground to a halt if people didn't want to go smell the flowers, it'd work.

The main advantage of set-piece design though is that it allows for far, far more authorial control, and thus much funnier staging and writing. With a suitable gimmick to either rewind or negate death without forcing the player to sit through the same joke a million times, you open up so many more comedy techniques than pure cut-scenes or individual lines will ever allow. On its own, it would feel ultra-linear and distinctly lacking in agency. The ability to have a couple puzzle lines running at once would dilute that though, as would the ability to hit the water and feel some sense of direct player agency.

Still a hell of a challenge - writing, choreography and execution? Yep. But we have a big fictional budget, and as such, can hire the best fictional people for the job. And you can't put a price on that.

This would be a set-piece. It just wouldn't mean travelling to Scabb and back to solve.

And that's our imaginary Secret Of Monkey Island reboot - not a sequel, but one possible way forward. How would you reboot the series for modern audiences and current technology? Squirt your brain-thoughts below, and keep your eyes out for more armchair hypotheticals soon.

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, is it possible to follow the letter of the law when you don't even recognise the letters? Luckily, turns out everyone speaks 'gun'.

Sadly, this is not the Georgian I was hoping for. I really wanted this to be a Police Quest set in the Regency, full of cries of "Cease and desist, you bounder, lest you also become a cad!" But no. We're talking the country of Georgia, whose Ministry of the Interior - if the story is accurate - thought it would be a great idea to have a game promoting the fine work of the police in a "virtual hunt down of criminals and Russian spies." It's free. And there are two parts - neither of which I understand a word of.

I'm almost positive this will not prove to be a problem.

Remember - no Russians.

Probably the best starting point here is to compare Georgian Police - technically, yes, its full name is just "Police" - with the American made Police Quest. One is a ridiculous, surreal journey into a world of weird protocol where everyone speaks in their own convoluted language. The other is Georgian Police. We've looked at the original Police Quest before, and... wow. Get a cuckoo clock. On the plus side, at no point does the designer of Georgian Police try and make you admire his balls.

And my balls are doing fine too, thank you for asking.

Georgian Police is a little more restrained... for about a minute or so, before turning into the most hilariously out of place Unreal shooting gallery ever. You're a cop, called to a hostage situation... I think... who accidentally ends up being the only one to infiltrate the building with a pistol. About five femtoseconds later you pick up an AK-47 rip-off, and damn near the entire rest of the game consists of clocking up the kind of bodycount that Rambo, Jack Bauer and smallpox can only dream of.

There may be more to it than that, but if so, the intro very rudely not being in English makes it rather hard to tell for certain. Luckily, with the help of a magic elf who appeared a while ago and said I should start burning things, I've scraped together this translation that should explain everything.



As a demonstration of Georgia's historically-not-so-finest, it's... a little unimpressive, isn't it? Their response to a threat is to start shooting wildly in a public area, and of an entire group of them, exactly one ends up saving the day. No, the lady cop doesn't follow him in. He goes through that grate, emerges in a toilet, and from that point goes full Terminator until all the crime is gone. All the crime.

Aw, man. Are you a zombie? I'm not trained for zombies. Unless they're Russian zombies. Long story.

Given that this is an official thing, this is a seriously scrappy UDK game - not bad models and textures, even if at least one has a dubious origin - but with no niceties whatsoever. There isn't even a death sequence. Die, and the game just ends on a menu. As for how it plays? Well...



This probably isn't too surprising though, as it's officially a pre-Alpha game - one that looking around the web, never actually got finished in this form. It still counts as released however, having apparently (since I couldn't find it) been put on the Ministry's website for download in a bid to raise the profile of the Georgian police. Mission complete, I guess. You'd not have thought about them today without it.

This was only the first step though, and instead of... y'know... finishing the game and polishing it, it looks like everyone involved decided that Alpha was the new Gold, and moved onto "GeoPolice Part 2" instead. This is... quite a bit more advanced. It still involves lots of shooting. Now though, you don't just have terrorists and crooks to worry about. The villains are much more dangerous.

Shepard, either I get a Reaper in a holding cell or I get your badge. YOUR CALL!

No, no, just teasing because of the blatant theft of the Mass Effect conversation wheel. The local bad guy (I assume) isn't a Reaper here to harvest the flesh of the Earth. That would be ridiculous.

He's Stephen Colbert.

Tonight on the Report, drug trafficking, prostitution, and your painful death!

There is a lot of talking before the action kicks off in this one, and no way to skip a single line of it. The basic plot, as I deduce it, is that... you know, I've got nothing. A cop who looks like he'd be more at home behind a desk, and his partner with an oddly bared midriff go to have a polite talk with Stephen Colbert in a hotel, before she slinks off to poke around and returns with another guy who's apparently a prisoner of Comedy Central, and a couple of guards wearing scary black suits.

No! Not the midriff!

About a minute later, you're not simply gunning down bodyguards, but Special Forces types...

Wait, do you work here? If so, why the balaclava? Doesn't everyone know who you are already?

The escape is bizarre. Main Guy Cop and Lady Cop escape, guns blazing, and Lady Cop pulls Presumably Prisoner Guy - stop me if I'm going too fast for you - into an elevator. Hilariously, Main Guy Cop is about to get in when the doors close on him in a way that suggests Lady Cop blowing him a kiss just before they slam. That leaves him on his own to fight through a gauntlet of combat so floaty that the Ministry of the Interior seems to really really want the world to think that Georgia is on the Moon. I suppose that's one way to distract and deal with Russian spies...

The hotel is deserted, aside from terrorist/Special Forces guys, which explains Rule 374 in the official Police Handbook - "Don't Do A Bust During Convention Season". In retrospect, should be higher on the list. Main Guy Cop moves like the Bionic Man but dies like a mayfly, making for a really weird sense of pace. Maybe Georgian Police's ambition is to offer some tactical play. If so, that's adorable.

I'm Max Payne. I'm Max Payne. I'm Max Payne...

Having killed a not inconsiderable number of the world's criminals, Main Guy Cop reunites with Lady Cop and escort the prisoner to an interrogation cell at the police. They talk for quite a while.

About what? No idea. Crime, probably.

Right. Well, at least we know none of us are vampires. That's something.

Whatever information is yielded from the discussion does bear some fruit though, sending both cops to a small - and in fairness, not badly done - bit of town that looks a bit like City 17 before the Combine. Here, Lady Cop takes over for an adventure section, wandering around and asking people about the Reapers as before, but somewhat oddly, repeatedly pulling a photo out of her bra for people to look at and comment on. Nobody seems impressed, though one guy does hold it for quite a while. I suspect if you need to know the Georgian for "Oooh, still warm..." this is the game to teach you.

Mommy said not to touch anything that came out of a stranger's underwear. Especially a cop's.

Should you want to find out what happens though, here's a YouTube playlist of the whole thing. Sorry, no translation on this one - you'll just have to wing it. There's no more shooting, but there are lots of tears, so I suspect whatever this was about wasn't much of a comedy laugh riot. There was talk of a third part coming, along with an English translation, but that seems to have fizzled out. Still, never mind.



You know what? I think we need to go back to Police Quest, don't we? Yes. Yes, we do. Its time shall come soon, because the weirdness absolutely doesn't end with the first game. Not even close.

When assaulting a keep in Chivalry: Medieval Warfare, a throaty battle cry is appropriate—it keeps the adrenaline pumping as you cut down your foes. When flailing at plated footmen sailing through the air because of a low-gravity server modification, yelling takes on a whole different, comedic purpose. See (and hear) for yourself in this video.

Try to survive the first ten seconds of the armored acrobatics without laughing yourself hoarse from players jabbing at each other in mid-air while screaming like Dragon Ball Z dropouts. If humanity had landed on the moon during the 12th century, this is probably what it would've looked like.

Thanks, GameSpy.

This week in eSports: which StarCraft II tournaments are making the switch to Heart of the Swarm, and which will hang onto Wings of Liberty a little longer? We've got the answers. Also, could World of Tanks break into the eSports scene? With an announced $2.5 million prize pool, it might be on the right track.

Get it? Tanks... and tracks... and... yeah, forget I said anything. Actual content below!

Wargaming.net looks to roll onto the scene
Earlier this week, World of Tanks creator Wargaming.net announced an eSports tournament with a $2.5 million prize pool. Set to kick off some time in 2013, we're interested to see if World of Tanks might be the first non-RTS, non-MOBA to gain a widespread following as an eSport. With its huge player base, especially in the European market, it's certainly a possibility.

StarCraft II


The 2013 GSL Season 1 Code S has progressed to the quarterfinal stage, and both the MLG Winter Championships and the Intel Extreme Masters Season 7 World Championships are right around the corner. The next few weeks are going to be some of the most action-packed in StarCraft II this year, leading up to the release of the Heart of the Swarm expansion.

Upcoming Events
Only eight players remain in Code S for the 2013 GSL Season 1: INnoVation, Symbol, Curious, PartinG, Soulkey, TaeJa, RorO, and MC. The first quarterfinal match will take place Feb. 21, with the semifinals scheduled to start on the 28th, and the finals on March 9. Also of note, the GSL has announced that the Up and Down matches for the next GSL season will take place in Wings of Liberty, rather than Heart of the Swarm.
https://twitter.com/Khaldor/status/302337090199379969
However, the Code A qualifiers will be making the switch to HotS.

Watch it: GomTV

The Intel Extreme Masters Season 7 tournament will run from March 5 through 9 in Hanover, Germany, with a $100,000 prize pool. IEM has announced it will be holding the championship in Heart of the Swarm, and is being advertised as the first global HotS tournament. The 24 qualifiers include MC, Grubby, Socke, Mvp, TLO, Stephano, and viOLet.

Watch it: ESL TV

The MLG Winter Championship's Showdown matches are wrapping up Week 2, with winners of each single-elimination match automatically qualifying for the Winter Championship itself March 15-17. New qualifiers since last week include Rain, SaSe, BabyKnight, Stephano, Bly, and ThorZaIN. Upcoming matches include Ret vs Feast, Creator vs NesTea, and Mvp vs Curious.

Watch it: Major League Gaming

Other Stuff
This week, we got a chance to interview pro StarCraft II casters Alex “Axeltoss” Rodriguez and Nick “Axslav” Ranish.

Day's Funday Monday segment gives the Zergs their turn this week, as he casts replays of fans operating under the restriction that they may only attack using Nydus Worms. If you're looking for something... marginally less cheesetastic, the Day Daily has spent a couple days this week highlighting one of my favorite players since the StarCraft II beta: Team Liquid's TheLittleOne.

Axslav continues to break down the MLG Winter Championship Showdowns in Rules of Engagement. Have a look if you want to familiarize yourself with some of the developing pro strategies in HotS, and want to make intelligent-sounding comments to the people at the BarCraft when the big tournaments roll around in the coming weeks.

League of Legends


In a push to foster more college-level eSports, Riot has announced their official Collegiate Program for League. Using a dedicated site, you can search for an existing club at your school, or start one if such a thing doesn't already exist. We're curious to hear from the university eSports fans out there: Where does collegiate level play fit in, in a scene where so many of the pros are college-aged (younger, in some cases) in the first place?

Upcoming Events
Two teams have established strong dominance in Riot's Season 3 so far. On the North American Circuit, Team SoloMid lead with 1875 Circuit Points, with CLG Prime trailing in second with 1150. In Europe, Moscow Five are showing even greater supremacy: they stand with 1400 Circuit Points, over the mere 650 of second place CLG EU. The season is just getting started, however, and anything could happen. Upcoming matches include Curse vs Vulcun, Dignitas vs GGU, and SoloMid Snapdragon vs Team MRN.

Watch it: League of Legends Championship Series

Other Stuff
The 3.0.2 patch (previewed in the video above) brings some chase buffs for Nasus, adds some more rune choice flexibility for Akali, some power scaling changes to Riven, and some changes to items that reduce ability cooldowns.

Dota 2


In a rare MOBA crossover, successful European Dota 2 (and CS 1.6) team Natus Vincere are planning on opening a gaming house in the U.S., and, they told ESEA News they're considering signing a (likely North American) StarCraft 2 or League of Legends squad. This announcement came on the heels of their Dota 2 team being knocked out of The Defense 3 in the lower bracket by Team Fnatic.

Along with Fnatic, Team Evil Geniuses still remains in the lower bracket, having been knocked down by Virtus Pro. They will have to best the winner of Mousesports vs Team Liquid for a shot at retribution. Fnatic's own fate will be decided when they pitted against the loser of Dignitas vs No Tidehunter, scheduled for tomorrow.

Watch it: The Defense

Other Stuff
Ymir the Tusk has become the latest Dota hero to make his way into the game's current incarnation. Billed as a durable initiator, you can get introduced to him in the video at the top of this section from DotaCinema.

That's it for this week, eSports faithful. Let us know in the comments what you think of this week's stories, if there's anything we missed, and what eSports events you're most looking forward to in the coming weeks.

Blizzard is preparing to deploy the 2.0.4 patch for StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, the last major patch before Heart of the Swarm, which will implement many of the changes teased for the expansion. A new interface, the new training modes, and the new replay features will all become available. Basically, everything except the new campaign, the new XP system, and the actual HotS multiplayer units will be included. Read on for specifics.

The official list of changes specifies:

An all-new user interface with new menu screens.

The launch of in-game Clans and Groups.

New Replay features, such as Watch with Others and Take Command.

A multitude of Editor improvements.

New matchmaking options: Training Mode, Vs. AI Mode, and Unranked Play.

All-new AI Options, including AI Communication.

Players Near You, so you can find other StarCraft II players on your local network.

New customizable Observer UI.

The patch is set to go out "in a few days," which would mean sometime early next week. If you're still not sure what to expect, have a look at our previews of the new interface and the new matchmaking tools.

Unknown World's Natural Selection 2 has kept its horned head low throughout Aliens: Colonial Marines' pasting from critics, but in a forum post, Unknown's PR head Hugh Jeremy now says the NS2 team feels only sadness in place of its initial awe and even fear of the bigger-budget competitor.

"The degree to which we feared Colonial Marines was, in hindsight, crazy," Jeremy writes. "Potential release dates for NS2 were discussed with reference to ACM's potential release date. Around the lunch table, we pondered the lambasting reviewers would give us if they were simultaneously reviewing a AAA mega-budget aliens vs. marines title.

"At shows like GamesCom, PAX East, and E3 I walked around the ACM super-booths in awe. I spoke to ACM PR reps, and they had no idea what NS was. I watched the demos (especially the E3 one) and thought, 'How can we possibly stand up to these guys on the aliens vs. marine stage?' I walked around the Power Loader in multiple countries and shook my head at the poor luck of having to face this Sega/Gearbox monster in our launch window."

Jeremy sympathizes with ACM's dismal performance, but he's also bummed over the fact that a game with "a launch trailer that probably cost more than 30 percent of the entire development budget of NS2" failed on delivering the Aliens experience sought after from fans.

"I'm filled with sadness," he states. "Sadness at being an Aliens fan and not being able to experience LV-426 like I had imagined I would. Sadness that we spent so much time being afraid of a game that we have beaten on Metacritic by 30 points. With that marketing machine, with that moneypot, with that kind of development time, with that kind of bullet-proof intellectual property, ACM should have been an absolute hit."

Responding to a suggestion from an NS2 player asking if Unknown Worlds would capitalize on the void left by ACM, Jeremy flatly put such an idea to rest, writing, "No, UWE won't be milking the poor reception of ACM. To do so would make us wankers, and it would be dishonorable. Remember when Medal of Honor: Warfighter exploded? Activision ran a targeted ad campaign hitting every single Warfighter keyword with Black Ops II pre-rolls and banners. I'm sure it got them sales. But it also said much about the kind of company they are."