Traditionally, the IndieGala bundle has focused on some of the lesser known indies, especially when compared to the more famous games that headline the Humble Indie Bundles. That's not quite the case this time around. Sure, you can debate the definition of what does and doesn't constitute an indie studio, but I think everyone would agree that Bioware are well outside of that label. Odd then, that Mass Effect 2 is a beat-the-average reward for the Gala's latest collection.

And it gets weirder. Rather than the bundle-standard charity recipients, proceeds for this round are being shared between Launch Academy - a Vancouver-based startup "incubator" - and the campaign of Matt Toner, the New Democratic Party candidate for Vancouver-False Creek in the upcoming election for the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia.

It all centres around Vancouver - and an effort to support the city's gaming industry. Which almost explains the Mass Effect 2 connection. Bioware may be based in Edmonton, but they did include Vancouver in the trilogy through a multiplayer map. That was Mass Effect 3 though.

It's a strange situation - especially when it's directly funding a politician. Admittedly, he's running on a campaign that centres around the rejuvenation of Vancouver's gaming and tech industries, but that's a single issue out of many, with little indication given by Toner as to where he stands with regards to other debates.

Still, if you're unconcerned with the potentially troubling aspects of the bundle, and just want some cheap games, you can get Mass Effect 2, Shank 2, Shadowgrounds, Kill Fun Yeah, Zombie Driver HD and Gimbal for $5.82 or more. More games are due to be added in the bundle's second week.

Given the level of unchecked infrastructural carnage caused by a single Rico in Just Cause 2, packing over a thousand of him into a single instance of Panau sounds like a really bad idea. Or a really good one. It depends on your fondness for explosions, crashes and parachutes. Either way, it's an experience, and one you can participate in this coming weekend with the next public test of the Just Cause 2 Multiplayer mod.

Still firmly in the test phase, it's a glorious mess of a mod. I popped into one of the infrequent public tests last year, and was met by hundreds of players congregating around the airport, attempting to jack planes and helicopters and generally cause chaos with an arsenal of guns and rocket launchers. Basically, it's not one to go into with any kind of plan.

The test kicks off around 9 AM GMT on Saturday, at which point you'll be able to download the updated client and jump into the mod's single server.

Eventually, the team plan to release the mod and let player's set up their own servers, which will no doubt tone down the madness. While there's still no news on when the release is planned, the mod's makers have assured that the speculation around a possible Just Cause 3 won't affect development. "The ASSUMED presence of JC3 does not affect the status of the mod whatsoever. As we've said before we really only run tests when there is something new to test."

Inspired by this team round-up trailer for top-down co-op heist game Monaco, I've started to assemble my own crack squad of international thieves. I've already secured "The Foot" - whose freakishly swollen left hoof should prove useful for kicking down doors - and "The Steve". He doesn't have any innate criminal super-skills as such, but he does have a van, which strikes me as useful.

Back to the game, which has eight of its own top kleptomaniacs to pick from. The Steam page contains the class rundown:


The Locksmith: Blue-collar infiltration expert
The Lookout: She can see and hear everything... a natural leader
The Pickpocket: A hobo with a monkey and a penchant for crime
The Cleaner: A silent psychopath... Jack The Ripper in pink
The Mole: Big and dumb... likes to tunnel
The Gentleman: He doesn't always wear a disguise, but when he does, he looks fantastic
The Hacker: Armies of viruses shut down security... a modern day warlock
The Redhead: Manipulative and murderous... a lady always gets what she wants


Damn, it's no use. I just can't persuade famed mouth storage unit "The Gerbil" to join our team. I'll have to open up for applications. Stick you criminal nickname and special ability in the comments. The Steve will get back to you. Until then, Monaco is out April 24th.

Path of Exile's Race events are an interesting idea for the free-to-play ARPG. They're short-form transitory leagues - anything from a few minutes to a month, depending on the event - that require a fresh character and prioritise quick-fire levelling and high-placed class rankings. So either a fun bit of competitive monster mauling or a weaponised carpal tunnel generator, depending on your perspective. Either way, devs Grinding Gear have announced the second season of click-crazed races.

This time around, events have been spread more evenly to support different time zones. There will also be more races - 260 in total, ranging from twelve minute solos to a month-long party marathon.

Grinding Gear are also planning a new "signature event" - a 135 minute solo event that will run 45 times through the season. As well as the points you'll receive for winning an individual event, the top three players out of all the signature event winners will a special alternate art Demigod's Triumph - as will the top twenty players across the combined season.

Prizes will now be awarded across a larger scale - the lowest at 7 season points, and the highest at 1,000. Unique "spot prizes" will also be randomly awarded at the end of each race, drawn from the pool of players who scored points in that event.

Season Two is due to kick off tomorrow. You can see the full schedule here.

Thanks, Massively.

The apocalypse was never going to be easy. It's meant to be a desperate and wretched struggle for survival against exhaustion, the decaying world, and probably mutants. But humans aren't the only ones that have to suffer. PCs do too, if these Metro: Last Light system specs are anything to go by. While there's a broad scale of requirements - the minimum being admirably inclusive of older systems - the optimal rendering of the murky, oppressive underground is going to need a seriously robust rig.

Minimum

Windows: XP (32-Bit), Vista, 7 or 8
CPU: 2.2 GHz Dual Core e.g. Intel Core 2 Duo
RAM: 2GB
Direct X: 9.0c
Graphics Card: DirectX 9, Shader Model 3 compliant e.g. NVIDIA GTS 250 (or AMD equivalent e.g. HD Radeon 4000 series) or higher

For 3D Vision Support:

NVIDIA GTX 275 or higher
120Hz Monitor
NVIDIA 3D Vision kit for Windows Vista, 7 or 8


Recommended

Windows: Vista, 7 or 8
CPU: 2.6 GHz Quad Core e.g. Intel Core i5
RAM: 4GB
Direct X: 11
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GTX 580/660 Ti (or AMD equivalent e.g. 7870) or higher

For 3D Vision Support:

NVIDIA GTX 580/660Ti or higher
120Hz Monitor
NVIDIA 3D Vision kit for Windows Vista, 7 or 8


Optimum

Windows: Vista, 7 or 8
CPU: 3.4 GHz Multi-Core e.g. Intel Core i7
RAM: 8GB
Direct X: 11
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GTX 690 / NVIDIA Titan

For 3D Vision Support:

NVIDIA GTX 690
120Hz Monitor
NVIDIA 3D Vision kit for Windows Vista, 7 or 8


Metro: Last Light is out May 17th.

After an extended closed beta period, Red 5 will be inviting you to help squash bugs with the open beta of Firefall, the free-to-play MMO shooter, due to kick off July 9th. You'll even get to choose the method with which you dispatch these unwanted critters: be it fastidiously filed reports targeting development issues, or jetpacks and plasma weapons chewing through the in-game beasties. Personally I know which sounds more fun. I do love intense form-filling action.

The open beta will release with item store and all, making this one of those 'soft launch' deals. Red 5 will continue to add content after the release, including "episodic story campaign, more dynamic missions, world events, and open world PvP."

For those in the closed beta, those tests will continue up until the open launch. Future updates promise battleframe crafting additions, new Chosen battle instances, a "Power Level" system for cities, and Melding exploration.

For more on Firefall, you can read our preview here. Trailer below.

Welcome back to our Viking Analysis Desk for a look at the third development diary for The Old Gods, the upcoming, pagan-focused expansion for Crusader Kings II. This entry focuses on prepared invasions, and clarifies some information about which types of pagans will be able to do what, and to whom. Let's dive in...



Immediately, in this first screenshot, we can see confirmation of a Scandinavian portrait pack. That hasn't exactly been a secret for those who have been paying attention, but it's good to see some more variety being injected into the mix in terms of character faces. It's also hard to tell from this resolution, but it kind of looks like the unit model on Akershus, just above the tooltip, might be new. Every major expansion so far has also launched alongside a unit pack, so again, nothing too earth-shattering.

We also get a look at the new "Become King" ambition, demonstrated briefly in the Old Gods livestream, which allows pagans to get a free Subjugation casus belli on any other pagan ruler within the de jure realm they seek to control. Based on the wording of the dev diary, it sounds like this Subjugation system will only work with pagans fighting other pagans, but is not restricted by culture.

We can also see the new Petty Kingdom system in play. The border on Hrane's portrait indicates that he's a Duke-tier ruler, but due to his culture, his written title will be "King."



In this second screen, history buffs should be drawn to the lower right of the interface. It seems the three successor kingdoms of Charlemagne's Karling dynasty have been renamed from Francia, Burgundy, and The Holy Roman Empire to the more 867-appropriate East Francia, Lotharingia, and West Francia. What will cause them to revert to their original names by the time 1066 rolls around, your guess is as good as mine. We know the historical names in Scandinavia are tied to the new "Norse" culture, which will eventually splinter into Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish. It's possible that the existing "Frankish" culture has been changed to refer to earlier Frankish people, and will, at some point, evolve into "French."

Scotland, it seems, is still called Scotland, rather than the 867-appropriate Strathclyde. And thus the case of Official Forums v. Game Designer Chris King shall continue.

More excitingly, we get a look at the Prepared Invasion mechanic we've heard about, which allows leaders with relatively few feudal holdings to call on warriors from across the land to aid their conquests. It looks like this will be restricted only to Norse pagans, and require a one-time expenditure of 500 prestige. The diary also clarifies that Prepared Invasions will only be usable against non-pagans.



Finally, we have this image of good ol' Rurik, the Norse founder of the state that would become modern Russia. There isn't a whole lot new in this one that isn't already pretty commonly known about the expansion, but we do get our first look at the indicator for non-reformed Norse pagans taking prestige loss for going too long without warring or raiding. For those interested in minutiae, we can also see that Rurik is Attractive, Gregarious, Ambitious, Just, and Deceitful.

The other little tidbits we got from the diary deal with the Invasion casus belli. Like Muslims, any pagan can declare an invasion on any neighboring county. For Norse pagans, this ability extends to any coastal county on the map, making their naval mobility all the more intimidating. Granted, we have been told that navigable rivers do not count as coastline, so they won't be able to just invade, say, Paris, on a whim. That's what raids are for.

Additionally, Altaic pagans (notably the Mongols), as well as the nomadic Magyars, who go on to become the Hungarians by 1066, will be able to declare invasions of entire kingdoms with their mounted hordes.

I've been drafting a weighty scroll of questions for the Paradox team about the Old Gods, which will be dispatched to them by raven before the day is out. Keep a keen eye for the full Q&A on the near horizon.

Ah, Van Helsing. Originating in Bram Stoker's Dracula, the oft-hatted-and-trench-coated Victorian hero is both the most famous vampire hunter outside of Buffy, and the star of one of my favorite critically-panned movies of all time. He's now stylishly diving into the action RPG space with The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing (well, technically you're the literary Van Helsing's son), an indie monster hunting tale from Hungarian developers Neocore Games.

The game is set in a darkly romanticized version of 19th Century Europe that's moody enough to stand beside the likes of Diablo II and Path of Exile. You take control of the titular Van Helsing some time after his legendary father rid the world of an era when creatures of the night ruled the world. Now, however, a new darkness is rising that has something to do with the weird, unstable technology that has risen to prominence. That's not to say that the traditional beasties of Gothic literature won't make an appearance. There were more werewolves than you could shake a bag of Beggin' Strips at in the 45-minute demo I played, and any Van Helsing game without vampires would be like a Blizzard story where one of the main characters doesn't turn evil at some point.



Van Helsing hews his way through the slavering hordes of nightmares much as his brooding genre brethren do. Left click moves you around and triggers contextual melee attacks and interactions. Right click is your ranged attack, which can be either weapon or magic-based. You can only have one of each equipped at a time, with your hotbar slots devoted to secondary abilities called Tricks that can grant benefits like quick healing and temporarily stopping time.

While it may seem odd to only have two attack buttons, almost every core damage skill in the game has significant customization available. Aside from just leveling up the base ability using skill points, most have branching modifiers you can invest in that change their function slightly. On top of this, you can put points into a set of modifiers (three per skill) that compose a supercharged version of this skill, activated by spending a resource called Rage. For instance, your basic sword slash could be built up with a +Damage, +Speed, +Range loadout, with all three modifiers going into effect when you trigger rage. Alternatively, you could go +Damage, +Damage, +Damage, or any other combination of modifiers you've unlocked for the skill.



Van Helsing is accompanied in his familiar ARPG questing, slaying, and looting by Lady Katarina. A unique story companion, Katarina is a female spectre who can help you in combat, store loot, and sell things in town while you continue to mow through the legions of darkness. She has her own equipment slots, attributes, and skill trees as well. You can build her to be a sturdy melee combatant if you're more of a "hang back and pick things off with my crossbow" sort of player, or invest in more support-driven abilities if you'd rather remain in the thick of things.

Most of the characters I ran into were fully voice-acted, and done rather well. Van Helsing and Katarina, in particular, have an enjoyable back-and-forth with high quality voice over. I didn't play long enough to get much of a sense of the overarching story, other than it feels very mystery-laden, steampunkish, and avoids trope overdose in the early stages.

That being said, it's a bit hard at at first to not feel restricted in terms of build diversity. In most ARPGs, we're used to having our pick of several, distinct classes with wildly-varying playstlyes. In the Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing, you're... well, always Van Helsing. There are only two major trees: a melee focused one and a ranged/magic-focused one. Granted, you will find a lot of diversity in each, and they're complimented by a tertiary screen for your unlockable Tricks and Auras. The latter are gained through story and quests, but level up just like any other skill once unlocked. You can have two passive Auras and two active Tricks equipped at a given time.



It's also worth noting that switching between weapon and skill sets is fairly quick and easy to meet changing combat circumstances, so you don't need to feel tied down to only four buttons through the whole game. On the other hand, I didn't find myself wowed by the Rage system. It might have been due to my low level, but there wasn't a hugely noticeable impact on the flow of combat when I triggered it.

As a sucker for dark, Victorian fantasy, I'm looking forward to The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing. Even if it doesn't turn out to be the most polished ARPG, or the most fun in moment-to-moment combat, the story presentation is already hitting the mark enough to almost guarantee I'll finish it once. That's just fine. I'm not a "grind for the best gear for months" ARPG player—I'm perfectly content to see the campaign to the end if the characters and plot are interesting. You can read more about the game on Neocore's dev blog. Van Helsing is set to release, crossbows loaded, sometime later this year.

The last time we heard from Guido Henkel, one of the original producers of Planescape: Torment, it was in connection with his Thorvalla Kickstarter. That particular effort fell significantly short of its funding goal, but Henkel has bounced back with Deathfire. It's a first-person, real-time RPG described as similar to Legend of Grimrock, and will be a more linear, story-driven game made with a smaller team and scope than Thorvalla would have required.

"The work load on would have been enormous, requiring us to build a team with over twenty people to get it done right," Henkel wrote on his personal blog. He went on to express that he "always loved to make games in an intimate environment."

"The games I consider my best were created with small teams, sometimes extremely small teams, even," he wrote. "There is something to be said about having the agility of a small team and the ability to rely on your team members on a personal level."

What we know about Deathfire so far is that it will be first-person, 3D, and a focused experience (unlike the Infinity engine, free-roaming style of RPG that is experiencing a resurgence through the likes of Obsidian and inXile). The player will be able to choose from six races and eight classes, customizing a few dozen skills along with the usual Dungeons & Dragons Strength, Constitution, Dexterity, Intelligence, Wisdom, Charisma attribute spread. You will also have the option to take positive and negative traits, such as phobias and superstitions.

There's no word yet on when we might see Deathfire, nor whether Henkel might throw his hat back into the Kickstarter ring with a less daunting goal. You can read more about what has been revealed so far on his blog.

It seems like we were just recommending that you vote for Frozen Endzone on Greenlight, and now it's become one of 18 games to be given the thumbs up for Steam distribution in the sixth set of approvals. A total of 83 games have now been approved via Greenlight's crowdsourced vetting sytem, 28 of which have been released on Steam so far. See the full list of new additions below.


Agarest: Generations of War
Angry Video Game Nerd Adventures
Battle Worlds: Kronos
City of Steam
Cradle
Dead State
Dead Trigger
Death Inc.
Dreamfall Chapters: The Longest Journey
Elsword
Faceless
Frozen Endzone
Hammerwatch
Legend of Dungeon
Pinball Arcade
Planet Explorers
Rush Bros.
Shovel Knight