Next up on the ever whirring Guild Wars 2 update conveyor belt: Blood & Madness. It's a seasonal update, which means either we've nearly arrived at Halloween, or that Canadian Thanksgiving is scheduled to take a dark turn. Perhaps silly, more than dark, with an update announcement page that makes mention of, among other things, the Grand High Viscount of Candy Corn and the Candy Corn Elementals. Good name for a band, that.

Planned events for this update include a face off against Bloody Prince Edrick, the appearance of Mad Realm Doors, the challenge of the Mad King's Labyrinth, and the return of the Mad King's Clocktower. And if you were thinking ArenaNet couldn't extend the update's regressive mental health theme any more, there's also the Lunatic Inquisition, a PvP survival mode between teams of villagers and "lunatic couriers".

As always, the update also tightens up some of the MMOs looser areas. This time, combat ground targeting is getting some attention, along with tooltips for traits and skills. ArenaNet are also taking another balance pass on skills and traits, this time with an eye to helping support builds.

Blood & Madness will begin on October 15th.

So, Garrett is a ninja that lives in a clock tower now. I'm not sure how I feel about that. I always had him pinned as the sardonic vagrant sort, scraping a difficult living eating mice in stolen basement spaces to avoid the authorities. That's the trouble with Thief, I've filled every dark low-poly corner of the game with assumed lore. In the long years since I first played it, it has become a better game in memory. It's easy to forget how blind and thick the guards could be, the silly hats they sometimes wore, and those damn giant spiders.

How can Eidos Montreal ever hope to meet the expectations of Thief fans? They've certainly ticked off the general feature list well enough. Hiding in shadows - check. Rope arrows, fire arrows, water arrows - check. A dark city full of bawdy crooks and racked with sociopolitical strife - yep. I spent a few hours sneaking around the market hub district that surrounds Garrett's clock tower home, and came away worried. I got a good whiff of the grimy, mysterious atmosphere I associate with classic Thief, but in the final ten minutes - side missions completed - I ran around the level easily coshing sword-wielding guards into unconsciousness in dull face-to-face combat. Hmmm.

Garrett has always been handy with a weapon, but he's always been vulnerable, and that vulnerability is a vital source of tension in the Thief games. I'd charitably guess that the demo was set on super-easy mode for newbie journos, but even discounting combat, escaping from any threat was a trivial matter thanks to Garrett's ability to squirrel up to higher levels where the guards can't follow.



I was set loose in one portion of one of the districts that'll make up The City in the final game. That gave me several blocks of uninterrupted territory to explore, which implies there's a very generous amount of explorable space in the full game. The street level was populated with loitering citizens and roaming pairs of guards under orders to nick me on sight. Luckily for Garrett, it's possible to get around using the unpatrolled balconies and rooftops above. Ladders, tiered stacks of boxes and grates can be used to get to higher ground, and Garrett has Assassin's Creed-esque traversal skills to help him get there quickly. Hold down the dash button and he'll vault over fences, jump gaps and scramble up climbable surfaces.

I met hairy crook, Basso, in a quiet corner of the district. He gave me a list of four items to steal from various houses near the clock tower. Each was located in an unoccupied room that could be accessed from high windows I quickly leveraged open using Garrett's truncheon. Once inside, a blue haze would highlight useful objects like suspicious picture frames, betraying the location of hidden safes instantly. Activating Garrett's "focus" ability (which can be entirely turned off in the final game) highlighted all the loot and locks in the room. Its purpose seems to be to make the game idiot-proof.

Stealing feels good. Any glittering item of value can be used buy arrows and gadgets from dodgy street vendors, so you're encouraged to lift anything that isn't nailed down. Garret snatches loot greedily, as though shovelling it into his mouth. His pale hands are constantly exploring the environment. You can run his hands around the edges of a picture frame to find hidden switches. His pale fingers hug the edge of cover when you hide. His quick and careful movements are performed with the poise and dexterity that you'd associate with a master thief. It makes you feel like an expert.



There are other nice atmospheric touches, too. Guards grumble to themselves as they plod along. You'll overhear arguments through closed windows as you skulk about the rooftops. These will gently drop little world-building tidbits that hint at the struggles emerging from The City's rich/poor divide. Sometimes, a note you'll find in on a mission will offer leads on other potential heists. I discovered a note that implied the local tailor had come into unexpected fortune. Garrett murmured something about checking it out, and a new objective appeared on my list. These little side missions are self-contained stories of greed and murder that add a little extra flavour to The City.

There was no urgency or challenge to the missions in the hub area. They feel like a way to give the player resources and narrative colour without any pressure, but Thief thrives on the fear of being discovered. Once I slipped into a bedroom and froze completely at the sound of someone talking on the other side of the wall. Later I realised that these little rooms you can find all seem to be unoccupied. That person I heard was never going to walk in on me. The nerves faded, and so did my interest.

One mission shone, though - a quest to steal a man's metal hand. This instanced house location came with its own bonus objectives that encouraged me to stay hidden and not knock out any guards. There were a couple of ways into the premises, and the claustrophobic, well lit interior meant I had to get creative with Garrett's stealth abilities.

Light and dark are, of course, terribly important. In shadow, you're extraordinarily well hidden. A guard would have to almost trip over you before raising the alarm. Garrett can now quickly "swoop" to quickly and quietly dart about, which is useful for moving between patches of shadow or, I discovered, staying on the other side of a banquet table as a guard slowly patrols around it. The moment the guard left the room, I swooped over to the candles on the table and put them out with a wave of a hand.



This mission was also responsible for the prime moment of panic I experienced during the demo. I'd found my way into the upper floor with a bit of ninja climbing, turned all the lights out and ventured out into the well-lit hallway. I took crept up to a corner, peered carefully around the edge to see a guard RIGHT THERE. I slipped backwards into the darkened room, hoping that he'd walk right by, but when he reached the doorway he turned. I stood still, just metres away from him, hidden by the dark. I knew I'd be fine as long as he didn't STEP FORWARD OH GOD.

With each step he took I took one back and to the side, crouched and silent. The guard loudly announced that he might stealing a few nick-nacks for himself, to nobody in particular. I, meanwhile, slipped into a closet and watched through the slats hoping he'd somehow render himself unconscious. I could have taken him in a fight (I could have taken everyone in the building in a fight), but the objective encouraging me to stay hidden artificially dragged Thief closer to what it needs to be.

It has the tools to be a reasonably good stealth game, but it desperately needs an element of danger to make that effective. I worry that the free-running, third-person takedowns and focus mode will alienate fans of the classics. For everyone else, it'll struggle to offer something new in a post-Dishonored world. My various arrows did little to provide alternative approaches to the environment. My rope arrows were only good for thwunking into pre-ordained posts jutting out at carefully placed locations, and the two gadgets I unlocked - a crank for undoing screws and a wire clipper for sabotaging pulley-boxes - were reskinned door-opening devices. The City is a rich and detailed place, I only hope it still has more to show us than this.

Here's a trailer that focuses on the Exalt: those covert enemy operatives that Tyler revealed in his XCOM: Enemy Within preview. They're an enemy within, you see. Within the expansion, within your species, and, as your trailer shows, within your own base. While the trailer consists entirely of cutscene, it does suggest that base defence missions could be making a return.



If that is the case, then hurrah, base defence! The original X-Com's alien infiltrations were an excellent way to escalate the danger of the mounting invasion. It's not quite clear how that would work given the new game's multi-level dioramas, but hopefully the engine can cope. I found XCOM: Enemy Unknown frequently buggy when it came to mouse selection during interior battles over multiple floors.

One of the confirmed Exalt interactions involves you sending counter-operatives to infiltrate their own hideouts. For more on this, head over to Tyler's hands-on report, where he takes you through the tactical choices at the heart of the conflict against these enemy cells.

Were you worried that the new Thief wouldn't be a game? Put those fears to rest. As you'll see from this trailer, Garrett has to escape from a burning building, thereby confirming that yes, it will be an interactive video game. Further evidence exists in the fact that this is the first Thief trailer to show footage from the game as it is played. Sure, it's hidden around cutscenes and narrative brooding, but it's there.



Given how much of Eidos Montreal's promotion for the game seems tailored towards positioning it as a desirable sneak-'em-up for people new to the series, it seems like, for more experienced fans, we need the opinion of someone who's played the thing. Fortunately, Tom Senior did just that. To quote one of his thoughts from his time with the game: "hmmm". You can read his other, more eloquent conclusions in his hands-on report.

Thief is due out February 28th, next year.

Judging by their clothes, Exalt might have accidentally wandered out of The Bureau: XCOM Declassified.

Except in the case of a sitcom gag involving a hilariously awkward two-person costume, covert operatives should generally be of the same species as the enemy if they want to be at all covert. As XCOM: Enemy Unknown is about fighting aliens, and was not filmed in front of a live studio audience, covert operatives never had a place in the earth defense organization—until the human threat was exposed.

The upcoming Enemy Within expansion introduces a "literal enemy within," as Lead Designer Ananda Gupta puts it: a terrorist organization called Exalt with sleeper cells peppered across the globe. The underground group is piggybacking on the alien invasion to seize power from the world's governments, perhaps in hope of becoming the alien puppet government. For us, it means two new mission types against human enemies, and a new strategy layer with a Guess Who-style metagame.

Exalt cells are exposed through intel scans (which cost credits) or when they perform an operation—either a direct attack on XCOM or a propaganda campaign which increases panic. At the outset of my hands-on demo, I discover that Exalt has stolen 376 credits from my coffers, exposing a cell in Egypt. Not much of a take given that their punishment is me violently killing all of them.

Once exposed, an Exalt cell can't operate, but if it isn't infiltrated and destroyed quickly, it will relocate and go back into hiding somewhere else. The first step is to deploy a counter operative, which can can be any soldier except a Heavy, and can only be armed with a pistol. After implanting the agent and letting some time pass, I'm prompted to complete a covert data recovery mission. I could decline and abandon my agent, but I'm not a monster. I'm also not very covert—I'm about to very loudly kill 17 Exalt soldiers.

Exalt reinforcements can include perched snipers.

I put two snipers on my team, because I love snipers, but it feels like a mistake at first. Exalt attacks in big waves, and more grenades and rockets would have created opportunities to splash some damage into groups. Instead, I've got two guys who are good at aiming. But precision is helpful during data recovery missions. It begins with the Encoder, a device across the map which can be hacked by Exalt if they stand within its capture radius for three uncontested turns. Once hacked, the Encoder leads Exalt to the Transmitter. If the Transmitter is captured or destroyed, the mission is over, which means missed shots and irresponsible use of explosives are dangerous.

I'm too timid to save the Encoder—I should have known I'd have a few turns to move across the map before the enemy appeared—but I do manage to wipe out a pack of Exalt soldiers standing in its capture zone, expending one of my two rockets. I fall back to defend the Transmitter, and it looks like I'm in good shape until I'm surrounded by a wave of reinforcements.

I'm terribly outnumbered, but I have two advantages. The first is my operative: In addition to my hand-picked assault team, I can command the counter operative I sent previously. He only has a pistol, but he gets the special ability to hack Exalt comm arrays (if he can get to them), which prevents all Exalt troops from firing during the next turn. When my medic is stuck in the open for a turn while I'm re-positioning her to heal an injured unit, the ability is crucial.

My second advantage is that Exalt's primary goal isn't to wipe out my soldiers. The bad guys' first goal is to reach the capture points, so they'll often give up flanking shots in favor of sprinting toward the Transmitter. They are plenty clever, though, using covering fire on my best sniper and tossing a grenade when I foolishly bunch up three soldiers. Even more frightening are Exalt Heavies—not only can their rockets decimate my entrenched defenders and their cover, a missed shot could take out the Transmitter. Later in the expansion, Exalt Elites will be introduced—I didn't see them, but Gupta teased that the group won't shy away from using genetic modifications.

The new Ghost Grenade stealth-ifies your units.

Near the end of my battle, Exalt units start slipping into the Transmitter capture radius inside the map's central building. I'm just barely holding them back, especially thanks to headshots from my star sniper, who I've backed against a wall. In one harrowing moment, a grenade injures him and destroys his cover, putting an Exalt Heavy in sight, with two other Exalt soldiers standing in the capture point. I can't risk letting the Heavy get a rocket off—never mind that he might turn my sniper to giblets, he might damage the Transmitter—so I ignore the capturing units and take the shot. The sniper is a hero, scoring a hit, but can't finish him off. Miraculously, my second sniper—who's been a bit of a dud the whole battle—hits a low-percent shot from behind a car outside the building and takes the Heavy down. The rest of my troops bring down the capturing units with one turn to go. Safe!

I prefer XCOM's objective missions to the "kill all enemies" missions, and point defense works well. The secondary goal creates more opportunities for clutch moments, heroics, and dramatic sacrifices. The one soldier I lost died to protect the mission, not another soldier, which would have been a tough decision were I playing with my own characters on Ironman mode (no save reloading). I'm also excited for the mystery-solving metagame: After destroying a cell, you'll be given a clue as to which country is harboring the Exalt HQ—e.g. "The HQ is not in Europe"—and after three clues, you can start making accusations. A correct accusation leads to a unique mission to take down Exalt for good, but a false accusation will cause the accused country to withdraw from the XCOM project—it's a dangerous risk, but so is letting Exalt increase panic and interrupt your primary mission.

Along with the already-revealed new locations, mech soldiers, and more, the Exalt subplot gives me confidence that Enemy Within is substantial enough to call me back to world saving duty in November. And Gupta tells me that "even this is not everything" going into the expansion pack. On to the next reveal, then.

As I climbed into the news cockpit this morning, I noticed the familiar flashing of the deep red alert siren. If anything, the warnings were becoming more frequent: a foreboding sign of the future. This time it had been silent for just nine days. Still, that's the life we chose; we knew the risks when we signed up for this job. We knew that periodically - nay, regularly - Star Citizen would make yet another million dollars.

Chris Roberts and his crew have now raised an unprecedented $21 million in crowdfunding for their multiplayer space sim. As Roberts explains, "Your support is now allowing the project to expand on ideas in ways we didn’t originally think possible. Every additional pledge makes Star Citizen a better experience. At the $21 million, you unlock the full salvage mechanic, which allows us to produce the assets needed to make salvaging an in-depth game mechanic akin to exploration or piracy!"

Thanks to the new total, salvaging will be a full career path. Using the flight and FPS elements of the game, you'll search the universe looking for secrets and cargo. The announcement even suggests that you could be the first to make contact with a new alien race.

The Star Citizen team have also announced the $23 million stretch goal: a playable "Xi'an" scout ship that will be unlocked when that total is inevitably hit:

"Xi’an ship design will be focused on a vertical aesthetic and maneuvering jets that can combine to thrust in multiple directions. Gimbaled, larger-than-normal thrusters sit on the four points of a star in the centerline, allowing each thruster unobstructed hemispherical coverage. The Xi’an scout can rotate on all axes and direct four thrusters to the rear or front! Because of this configuration the Xi’an ship has superb linear maneuvering abilities on all axes. This extra maneuverability comes at a cost however. Xi’an ships favor maneuverability over heavy armament or defensive protection."

You can find more details at Star Citizen over at the game's website.

But which animals will we be killing this time?

Far Cry 4 might have been inadvertently outed by Drive/Only God Forgives composer Cliff Martinez. In an interview with the site Lost In The Multiplex, Martinez mentions that his future projects include a "video game called Far Cry 4". Somebody has since broken into that interview, stolen the relevant admission, and sped away into the night like Ryan Gosling in a puffy jacket. Unfortunately for the would-be word robbers, the internet has a built-in time travel machine.



The suggestion that Far Cry 4 is being made really shouldn't surprise anyone. In fact, back in June, Ubisoft's VP of marketing and sales, Tony Key, said that a sequel had been greenlit. Given the commercial success of both Far Cry 3 and its neon '80s-inspired cousin, it seems as if the series is in a much more stable position than it was following Far Cry 2.

It'll be interesting to see what direction a sequel will take, given that, going be past games, Ubisoft can do basically anything and still justify calling it Far Cry. Personally, I'm hoping for at least a small shift back towards the scrappy mess of Far Cry 2. Where Far Cry 3 was an enjoyable and highly polished game, it seemed to lack some of the soul of its predecessor, instead reducing the campaign down to a smooth checklist of actions to be ticked off. What direction would you like to see the series take?

Thanks, Polygon.

The Dark Mod is an excellent Thief-inspired stealth FPS mod from 2009, and so, to an extent, it seems almost inconceivable that any fans of the series won't yet have played it. Of course, that's slightly mitigated by the fact that it was a Thief-inspired stealth FPS mod for Doom 3. It's entirely conceivable that any fans of the series wouldn't have bought that. Running? Gunning? Far too rambunctious. For those shadow-clinging sneaks, there's good news, as version 2.0 of The Dark Mod has been released, turning it into a standalone game.

"We have spent a tremendous amount of time and energy replacing all the sounds, textures, particle effects, and models that we had been using," explain mod creators Broken Glass Studios. "Hopefully this will open up a whole new audience of people who didn’t want to have to purchase a different game in order to try The Dark Mod."

Alongside going standalone, this mod update brings improved audio, graphics and AI behaviour. Many of the missions have also been updated, in response to the game no longer using Doom 3's assets. "Going standalone has been a mammoth undertaking. There were literally hundreds of assets that needed to be replaced, and around seventy maps that had to be checked to see whether any of those replacements broke anything."

For a fuller explanation of The Dark Mod, check out this introductory video:



You can download The Dark Mod for free from the mod/game's website.

The second expansion for Star Wars: The Old Republic has a name and a date. Galactic Starfighter, a free expansion will introduce rail-free space combat to the game for the first time, in the form of 12v12 PvP dogfights. How soon you'll be able to join in depends on your Subscriber/Preferred status in the game.

Subscribers to SWTOR will gain access to the expansion on December 3, followed by Preferred (anyone who has ever been a subscriber or made a purchase in the cash shop) players on January 14, and the scruffy-looking nerf herders that haven't spent money on the game will get it February 4. Everyone will get access at no charge, but non-subscribers will be required to buy a Starfighter Pass from the cartel market to have the same progression opportunities as subscribers.

Player starships will come in multiple classes with multiple roles. The three we know about so far are the light, fast Scout, the offense-heavy Gunship, and the Strike Fighter, which seems to be somewhere in between. You can see previews of each for both Republic and Empire on the expansion's announcement page.

A mere five days ago we saw the launch of a Kickstarter project for City of Titans, the spiritual successor to crime-fighting MMO City of Heroes. Developer Missing Worlds Media has now blown past its funding goal of $320,000 and shows no signs of a significant slowdown. With funds topping $360,000 as of this writing, City of Titans has already unlocked its first stretch goal, an Android port of the Avatar Builder.

In a post thanking Kickstarter backers, City of Titans project lead Chris Hare writes, “It’s going to take a while. We all know that. MMOs take a long time to launch, and we’ll probably slip a deadline or two. We will get other things out to you sooner. Parts, bits and pieces that are fun on their own, that will integrate into the final game. The Character Generator program comes first. Costumes and sliders and backgrounds. Possibly we’ll be able to fit other things into it, but I don’t want to count my chickens before I’ve irradiated their eggs with Kirbonium.”

City of Titans is planned for release in later 2015, so it has a long way to go. The Kickstarter, meanwhile, also has another 26 days on the clock.