Bonnie. Russell. Shel. Wyatt. Vince. Five survivors, five stories set in the ongoing zombie apocalypse. And, I suspect, a bit of a trap; a clever title so that if I say "400 Days isn't very long," Telltale's writers can instantly snap back "Are you kidding? It's a year and a bit!" and dance the winner dance all the way back to San Rafael.

Luckily, while it only works out as an hour or so of The Walking Dead goodness, it feels longer - five fifteen-ish minute vignettes that hit the ground running and waste little time from there. The disadvantage of this is exactly what you'd expect, that dipping so briefly into these lives doesn't allow for the same connection as hanging out with the same survivors for several months. By cutting right to the point though, Telltale gets to explore a much wider range of stories - and more importantly, characters - than Lee and friends, whose dilemmas had to be designed to last and ripple over a whole series.

Kill or spare? Remembering, of course, that this is The Walking Dead, where sentimentality rarely goes rewarded.

Of the five stories, I really enjoyed three, didn't like one, and was neutral about another - not a bad ratio, and even the duff one had a couple of atmospheric and interesting moments to call its own. All focus on suitably different characters and journeys, with the zombies even more pushed to the background than in the original series. They're there, they're a threat, and sometimes they jump out and yell "GARRRGH!" (which is zombie for "BOO!"), but the actual drama comes from the survivors and their growing realisation of just how screwed they are.

By far my favourite of the set was Shel's chapter, which explores a protector relationship from a different angle to Lee and Clementine's. She's a big sister trying to do the best she can, struggling with the fact that little sister Becca isn't so little any more. The two live with a group of other survivors in a small commune where things are actually going pretty well. Even so, Shel is painfully aware that there's only so much longer she can shield Becca from the harshest realities of their new lives, and that's only made tougher by the fact that Becca doesn't actually want to be treated with those kid gloves.

I'm being intentionally vague because these stories are short enough that any real details are a bit of a spoiler, but this one works so well because Becca is a much more realistic character than the honestly too-adult Clem and, being The Walking Dead, there are no good choices on the table. The Walking Dead is at its best not when simply cynically portraying humanity as the monsters, but when forcing its characters to make the choices that lead down that road despite their good intentions. This is easily the series' best attempt at that. It elegantly but quickly establishes everything it needs, serving up a satisfying, thematically complete, potentially moving (depending on your choices) story in less time than it takes most games to explain how to open doors. It's fine, fine work, and a great example of how much Telltale's storytelling skills have have improved since the face-full of gigantosaurus snot that was Jurassic Park: The Game.

Can't wait for Fables, especially if it can do the character moments without the constant risk of jump-scares.

The other two stories I really enjoyed, Wyatt's and Russell's, are simpler, and built on excellent character writing. Wyatt and a friend are fleeing some mysterious assailants in their car, but really their story is all about the bromance. It's fun to have a pair of TWD characters who genuinely like each other, rather than one simply feeling responsible or them having no choice but to stick together. Their mild bickering and obvious camaraderie is refreshing. Russell's section works in a similar way, except that it's a getting-to-know-you affair about him, a kid on his own, simply being given a lift by a creepy and mildly crazy driver who'd likely be found hanging out with Tallahassee at the Zombieland bar.

Of the remaining stories, I didn't care much for Vince's, purely because it felt more like a short movie that occasionally remembered to stop for button presses than an adventure with choices to make, not least because as a prisoner on a transport bus, he literally spends most of it chained up at the back. The final one, Bonnie, I didn't like at all. It's built around what for now at least is nothing but a MacGuffin, is mostly an extended chase sequence about someone we barely know running from someone we don't know at all, and with a really clumsy use of what I normally refer to as "Schrödinger's Cock-up" - actively changing something crucial in the world to screw the player over an action. That's a dangerous trick, because if a game gets caught pulling it, all player investment is instantly severed. It got caught. All player investment was severed. Even if it hadn't though, this was a seriously dull story.

But like I said, one dud out of five isn't bad, and the others more than made up for it.

Vince's story is okay in and of itself. It just doesn't seriously need a player.

The events of 400 Days will have some impact on the upcoming Series 2, but take place long before the present day, so these specific stories may or may not play a direct part in it. (There's at least one moment that briefly continues a thread from Series 1, so it's best to play from a save if you have one, but it's far from essential - you will need to own at least episode one of the first season to download 400 Days, however) There's also a hint about what might be next, albeit it's so vague as to just be a teaser, unless it relates to something sinister that I don't know about in the comics.

Preview or not though, this is DLC well worth picking up. The new stories are a great way to slip back into this world, and very entertaining in their own right too. My only big disappointment was that I wanted/expected them to combine more directly, rather than being linked primarily by geography. There are definite linking points, some overt, others hinted at, but this is firmly an anthology rather than a multiple perspective story where everyone keeps crossing paths to uncover one big thing.

For The Walking Dead, of course, that's absolutely fine. 400 Days fits what came before, while also feeling like its own thing - exactly as DLC should - with Telltale taking full advantage of being able to do five different stories instead of picking just one. At £4/$5, it's also surprisingly good value. True, it's over quickly, but there's lot of content here - even if it is compressed and occasionally shows the limits of its scope with a missing option or two. If anything, it's surprising how much pathing there actually is, with decisions managing to have an impressive amount of weight in even the short time we spend with these characters. Series 2 may return to their stories, it may just put these survivors in the background for the next set to have a quick chat with and never think about again. In the here and now though, they feel like they matter, and that's what counts - even in a world with nothing left to lose.

Almost all of the team converge for the final episode of the PC Gamer UK podcast. Chris, Graham, Rich, Tom and Phil discuss a great many indie games, Company of Heroes 2, Sleeping Dogs, and answer your questions from Twitter. Join us for one last wild tangent.

Our US team will continue to produce their podcast, so this isn't the end of PC Gamer in audio form - but it is goodbye from us. As I say at the end of the episode, I've loved doing this and I've appreciated hearing from everybody who enjoyed the cast over the year I've been running it. We're looking into alternatives, and if you follow us on Twitter we'll hopefully have something for you soon.

Graham - @Gonnas
Chris - @CThursten
Rich - @richmcc
Tom - @pcgludo
Phil - @octaeder

You can download the MP3 directly if you like, and find all of our prior episodes on iTunes. Here's the YouTube version.

Show notes

Rich's moustache is briefly visible in this Vine.
Rich's Company of Heroes 2 review.
Chris has been playing Imscared, and also recommends Hide.
That Creepypasta Morrowind story. Warning! It's spooooooky.
Zafehouse Diaries, a game that - to be fair - should have been called Zafehouze DiarZ.
Nope, I've still got no idea where Rich's Wagner metaphor was going.
I got the URL for our new Planetside 2 website entirely wrong. It's pcgps2.enjin.com.
Slave of God, Increpare's clubbing sim.
My open letter to the internet regarding the Half-Life 3 joke.
The Saints Row 4 E3 trailer.
...and that's that. Thanks for listening, for sending us questions, and for sticking with us over 93 episodes. I've had the time of my life. Nobody puts podcat in the corner.

Life for many residents of Dishonored's Dunwall city is brutal, short, and dark. Fortunately, the possibility of a sequel to Arkane Studios' take on steampunk stealth appears to be anything but grim, according to recent comments made by Bethesda marketing VP Pete Hines to IGN.

When asked if he saw a future for a Dishonored series, Hines had the following to say: “In general, we try not to wade into anything as a one-off in the first place,” Hines said, “so yeah, for sure. The success of that game and how proud Arkane is of it and what goes on at any studio when they put out something like that and all the ideas that are coming out, certainly it’s something that we feel is a franchise.”

As we saw in its recent DLC The Knife of Dunwall, there is no shortage of strange and interesting characters in Dishonored who would be ready to pick up a blade and continue Arkane's story. Hines also used the game's trajectory as a way to talk about how publisher Bethesda views the development process within the various studios it works with. The possible creation of a Dishonored series is "specific to Arkane," he said.

“What we do or don’t do on Dishonored has zero effect on id, Tango, Machine Games," Hines said. "Each one, in some respects, kind of acts in a silo. It doesn’t really matter what those guys are making. ‘What are you good at? What are you going to work on next? What are you going to do next? Okay, that’s what we’re going to do.’ It’s as simple as that.”

A sequel to id Software's Rage, for example, is "to be determined," as that development team is currently at work on different, unnamed game, according to Hines. "Right now, focus is on their current project," Hines said. "They are full bore on that. What I’ve seen of it recently, I’m super happy about it. We want them to stick to that until we’re ready to talk about what that is. But let’s wait until we get there first.”

Thanks, VG24/7

The picture - the header of our Thief review from 1999 - may be a bit of a giveaway, but why not? It's Friday, after all. We can indulge in a little bit of misty-eyed nostalgia without fear of our bosses asking us why we're staring wistfully into space and making bow and arrow and mimicking guard-clubbing animations over and over again. That's the sort of freedom only the weekend can bring. Here's what we're planning to play between now and Monday, but what will you indulge in?

We like to live on the cutting edge here at PC Gamer, so this weekend Phil will be playing a bright new thing from Looking Glass called Thief: The Dark Project. Apparently it has these things called polygons and features lots of emergent crime and - wait - it's not 1998? Oh well, that's okay, Phil's planning to modernise it with the NewDark patch, which should help it run on his fancy pants modern computer box (it's not even beige!). He likes stealth. He likes crime, but he's never played the original Thief, so it should be an interesting education. Will cudgelling those broad, sharp-shouldered guards prove as interesting in a post-Dishonored/Deus Ex: Human Revolution world? We'll see.



Rich, meanwhile, is still playing Rogue Legacy from last week, but is also planning to dip back into Dota 2 to relax. Okay, maybe not relax. to hone his sense of focus in a highly competitive arena, which is Rich's equivalent of a summer break, really. Dota 2 fans can look forward to a proper release for Dota 2 in the coming month or so. The release itself is largely symbolic given the number of invites swimming around players' Steam inboxes, but it might come with a significant update and new heroes. Beyond that, there's The International 3. I'm determined to learn enough about Dota 2 before then to understand what is going on. I'd like to get in on the cheers and excitement triggered by plays like these:



I was lucky enough to review Saints Row: The Third, and liked it very much indeed, which is why I'm excited that Chris is going to give it a go this weekend. He's played the (very funny) opening hours, but there's so much yet to discover, the laser-shooting VTOL jets, that whole section set inside a computer, the bit with the tiger. After just a few hours, you have more toys than Batman, and the city is yours to boss. It's a riotous little power fantasy, elevated by a lust for silliness and a sense of abandon that, for some reason, reminds me of Dead Rising. I'm pretty sure there wasn't a penis bat in Dead Rising, though. FOR SHAME.



Graham will spend the weekend peering over a fine glass of port, listening to Tchaikovsky and calmly taking over the world with art in Civilization V: Brave New World. The second expansion, due out next week, adds new cultural victory conditions, and lets you use great artists in more interesting ways. If he doesn't come back to work in a top hat and start lecturing us on renaissance values then I will be surprised, and just a little bit disappointed.



Apparently it's going to be gloriously sunny here over the weekend, to which I say NO. I demand RAIN and TRENCH COATS. Evocative sci-fi adventure game Gemini Rue will answer the call, giving my mouse pointer control over the fate and actions of a hardboiled space-detective and an imprisoned amnesiac. Will our jump-suited captive regain his memories? Will our coated friend escape the clutches of the sinister Boryokudan? Will I ever master the fiddly cover-based gun combat system? Don't look at me, I'm only a few hours in. I might just stand in one of those beautifully drawn streets and listen to the rain for a while instead.



That's us, but how do you plan to escape the sunshine this weekend?

Children are a tricky subject for an often violent medium. They are evil, but society still seems invested in protecting them. Luckily we have Teacher Story: a free-to-play JRPG in which you beat up children with education, using a turn-based battle system to shoot knowledge and inspiring speeches into their uninterested heads.

Each pupil has a health bar that consists of stupidity and a shield of boredom. Every turn you pick from a randomly rolled set of skills, focusing your unbridled tutoring might on an individual student, table, or row of the classroom. Depending on the skill, you'll start to chip away at their boredom and stupidity, but only have a set number of turns to fully educate these young minds before the lesson ends.

Special events also occur throughout the lesson - everything from a snap question, which you can choose to take or not, to thrown objects and crippling sleepiness. And specific traits can have an effect on your resolve - cracked knuckles and a clicking pen will wear away at your composure.

It does cross the line into the slightly uncomfortable free-to-play systems popularised through Facebook gaming. Your piggy bank fills with fake money as you complete missions, but you have to spend it to skip the ridiculously long 6+ hour wait between missions. Need to use some resources during a mission and you might not have enough to afford those 50 virtual coins. In which case, you're stuck in the Escherian waiting room abyss:



Unless, that is, you pay some real cash pounds. While it's enjoyable, I'm not sure Teacher Story really justifies that sort of investment. Taken instead as a fun tactical battler that you check on every now and then, it's much easier to warm to its many charms.

You can play Teacher Story at teacher-story.com, surprisingly enough.

It's The Day After Independence Day, which as legend has it is the day an exhausted Will Smith had a bit of a lie-in after he punched that alien and met film's Jeff Goldblum just hours before. What better time to get lost in an ancient ruin, interrogate a bunch of animals, play Breakout 17 times simultaneously, or take part in a cruel, unusual puzzle game? Read on for those things I said – that is, if you've managed to find your spectacles first.

The Ruins of Machi Itcza by MNWS Play it online here.

Finding these collectibles is the KEY to success. Oh shut up.

It's hard enough finding your way in most mapless 2D platformers without throwing tricksy room changes into the bargain. Machi's very purple ruins are a confusing place to explore, connecting in a disorientating, jumbled-up way which is memorable, if a little annoying with it. If you've not quite had your fill of 1-bit platformers yet, you might consider getting lost in Machi Itcza. (Via Indie Statik)

Deducktion by Tuttle Games Play it online here.

To be fair, cats seem fishy at the best of times.

Jessica Fletcher is my hero – even though part of me is convinced that she done all them murders – so I'm a big fan of all these amateur sleuthing games that have been cropping up lately. The cutely named Deducktion puts you in the role of a duck investigating the hideous knocking over of a bin after a pizza party. Your suspects: a cat, a dachshund, a skunk and a mouse. Something smells funny about one of them, and (as the game randomly settles on a culprit) it isn't always Pepe Le Pew over there.

BRICKSMASH by Draknek Play it online here.

I like to imagine that each mini game of Breakout has its own mini-Breakouts, and so on and so on and so on and ow now my head hurts.

So you like Breakout huh? Well how's this for an ironic gift/punishment. Draknek's BRICKSMASH is a Breakout clone with a twist: you're playing a whopping 17 games of it at once. You're not just keeping track of the main game but the 16 smaller ones above it, which erupt into extra missiles when cleared. It's a brilliantly maximalist take on the old arcade game, and a surprisingly refreshing use for a series that's been remade, reborn and outright cloned roughly eight billion times in the last thirty years. (Via Free Indie Games)

I Can't Find My Glasses by ElijahT Play it online here.

This is clearly the best screenshot we've ever featured on PC Gamer, and if you don't agree, maybe you need an eye test?

As a speccy four-eyes myself, I know the pain of losing your glasses only too well – though I'm thankfully nowhere near as short-sighted or seemingly colour-blind as the unfortunate soul in I Can't Find My Glasses. The first thing you need to do is RTFM, TFM in this case being the list of the controls in the 'instruction' box under the game screen. Without knowing that you can squint by holding the right mouse button and moving the mouse up and down, ICFMG is a lot harder than it should be – and it's already maddeningly, fiendishly, compulsively difficult. Brilliantly blurry stuff. (Via Free Indie Games)

3LIND GAME by Sergey Gerasimenko Play it online here.

Developers: if you insist on using numbers as letters in your game titles, could you at least throw yourself into a wood-chipper first?

3LIND GAME is not a fair puzzle game - far from it. It constantly breaks its own rules, turning the concept – it's sort of a bit like Snake, only not – on its head at the start of every stage. It throws extra stuff in mid-level to keep you on your toes, and it once boinged me with a Monty Python-style finger seconds after I'd made it through a difficult obstacle course. It is, however, a devious, smart and beautifully constructed experience that rewards your creativity with plenty of its own. (Via IndieGames)

Pesky dataminers have been combing through the World of Warcraft test server updates, and found references to a real-money item purchase. The spell, called Enduring Elixir of Wisdom, was added to the Public Test Realm in patch 5.4, offers a 100% XP boost, and mentions an "in-game store". Community manager Zarhym confirmed that Blizzard were considering microtransactions, albeit while using the softest, most player placating phrasing possible.

"We are currently exploring the possibility of adding a way for players in certain regions to make purchases directly within the game," Zarhym wrote. As part of this process, elements related to this will be appearing on the PTR. We’ll provide additional updates on our plans as development progresses."

The key part seems to be "certain regions", potentially making this a planned solution for areas where the subscription model has struggled to hold. (Although, technically that's every region.)

Beyond that, would it matter for an XP boost. Levelling quicker doesn't provide an massive advantage over other players - it's just a way of speeding the ascent to the end-game. And it's important to remember that we've no idea what items would be made available, even if they did come to Western regions.

Thanks, Polygon.

Silas Greaves is probably full of shit, but that’s OK. He’s a bounty hunter with a million stories to tell, and happy to share them for a whisky or five. Like the times he rode with Billy the Kid, or when he won the praise of Injun magic men, or that shootout he had with Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (simultaneously). In short, tales of hanging out with just about every celebrity in the Wild West... and convenient excuses for why nobody can quite remember seeing him there.

This isn’t just a framing device for Gunslinger’s nine missions, but a big part of what helps this downloadable budget title wash away the foul taste of Call of Juarez: The Cartel. As expected, it’s a linear shooter set in a romanticised version of the Wild West (which the game itself at one point admits is complete balls). It’s also a shooter Greaves and his audience comment on throughout, the narration routinely changing the world to fit the story on the fly. At one point, for instance, you fight through a mine full of dynamite that only an idiot would go into with guns blazing. “That’s why I didn’t,” rasps Greaves, rewinding the story to tell it ‘properly’.

This doesn’t disguise the linearity, but it does make the straight path much more interesting. My only big complaint about the execution – aside from the fact that the dialogue was recorded as individual lines, and so usually fails to mesh into a smooth narrative – is that Techland didn’t use this gimmick on a full-budget game with scope for even bigger, more varied setpieces.



Restricting Juarez to raw gunplay certainly doesn’t hurt it, because the shooting is excellent. While not rewriting the rules of FPS, there’s a real weight to the weapons, while the action is a mix of regular shootouts and switching to a special slow-mo Concentration mode to take out whole groups in the blink of an eye. This ability regenerates quickly, providing an interesting power balance where you can’t take much damage, but regularly get to go full ‘Angel of Death’ on whole crowds. There’s also a very clever system where, with enough charge, you get a 50/50 chance of dodging a slowed-down incoming bullet that would normally be lethal. Get it right and you stay in the fight.

Combined, the two parts work beautifully. The story keeps things slightly off-balance and constantly throws up interesting moments, while the minute-by-minute gunplay makes murdering your way through that story intensely satisfying.

Yes, the graphics – and the cutscenes illustrated with static, hand-drawn images – are constant reminders that this is a budget game. Far from being diminished by that, however, Gunslinger impresses with just how well it spent its pennies. And, more impressively still, it makes the idea of another Call of Juarez game at some time in the future surprisingly appealing.


Expect to pay: £12
Release: Out now
Developer: Techland
Publisher: Ubisoft
Multiplayer: None
Link: www.bit.ly/11lSOvb

Commander Video takes the rhythm based auto-running of BIT.TRIP RUNNER and (deep breath) BIT.TRIP Presents... Runner2: Future Legend of Rhythm Alien, and retrofies it into a browser-based endless platformer based on the sequel's 16-bit bonus stages. Think Canabalt, but instead of the catastrophic destruction of an invaded cityscape, you've got spiders and springboards and a constant stream of rainbows. Much better.

It's not as responsive a platformer as the main game, and the randomly generated levels mean there's no syncing to the beat; but the basic actions remain the same. You'll jump, slide and kick your way through a series of increasingly difficult obstacles, collecting gold to unlock new characters along the way.

Head to the Commander Video site to play. And if you'd like a score to roundly trounce, here's my latest one:



Thanks, Eurogamer.

Congratulations reader, you are now enjoying the News Post of the Year. Admittedly it has won no awards, nor received any critical praise. But I figure if games can give themselves a self-congratulatory Game of the Year edition, why can't I? The most recent sighting is for a Borderlands 2: GOTY bundle, references to which have been found in the Steam database. While the distributor's back-end listings can be an unreliable measure of future releases, it's not against type for the series.

If it is real, here's what will be found inside Borderlands 2: A Game That Was Released In The Year That It Was Released edition:


Captain Scarlet’s And Her Pirate’s Booty
Mister Torgue’s Campaign Of Carnage
Sir Hammerlock’s Big Game Hunt
Tiny Tina’s Assault On Dragon Keep
Ultimate Vault Hunter Upgrade
Mechromancer Pack
Psycho Pack
Creature Slaughter Dome


Basically, it's a full round up of the extra levels and new characters introduced since the games release. Of course, for now there's no official confirmation on the existence of the pack, so also no word on its price or release.

Oh, and do me a favour: don't go telling people about this whole News Post of the Year thing. Otherwise they'll all be at it.

Thanks, MP1st.