Oh Dark Souls, you perpetual tease. Namco Bandai have unleashed the Dark Souls 2 launch trailer, which makes sense, because the console release is this week. For those of us wanting to play the game on PC, its brutal delights will be hidden away until the end of next month. Hopefully we can make it through those extra weeks without devolving into maddened undead husks.

As for the trailer itself, it's also a bit of a tease. It's entirely CGI, which, on the one hand, is a bit of a strange move for a launch trailer; but on the other, means that you'll be relatively safe from spoilers.



Dark Souls 2 is out April 25th. While you wait, camp out at your nearest bonfire and read Ben's interview with the game's co-director Yui Tanimura.

I'm going to do an impression of the first minute of this Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls trailer. "Lore lore lore lore, Zakarum faith, lore lore." After the somewhat underwhelming opener, though, we finally get to the good stuff: an ability round-up of the expansion's new Crusader class. He's a tanking kind of character, with a taunt ability that will draw enemies' ire. That doesn't mean there's not plenty of power behind his mace-swinging arm.



Reaper of Souls is out on March 25th, and sounds like an exciting addition to Blizzard's ARPG. For details on its holy addition, you can read Kat Bailey's hands-on impressions of the Crusader. Even if you're not planning to get the expansion, let Tom explain to you how the recent 2.0.1 patch has dramatically improved the game.

Can it run Crysis? If you re using Linux, the answer will eventually be yes. The German developer behind the first Far Cry and the Crysis series announced that it will show off its impressive CryEngine running natively on Linux for the first time during GDC.
It s not licensed by as many developers as, for example, Epic Game s Unreal Engine, but State of Decay, Xbox One s Ryse, and MechWarrior Online are some of the games built with CryEngine, which is good news for Linux users and future Steam Machine owners.
We knew that Crytek was working with Linux as far back as July 2013, when it posted a job opening for a programmer responsible for creating a Linux version of its 3D engine. Crytek didn t say in the announcement what game it will demo or if it will create Linux versions of its existing line-up, but it did say it will show off its free-to-play shooter Warface and a brand new mobile title, The Collectables.
It should be a pretty interesting GDC for Linux this year. AMD will be there to talk more about Mantle, its low-level API that could potentially support Linux down the line, and Nvidia will also be at the show, presenting a session about Porting Source to Linux with Valve s Rich Geldreich.

Just a few days after Blizzard prophesized the impending end of Hearthstone's beta, it's decided to surprise everyone by releasing the Warcraft-ified online card battler after three months of testing. The game is free to play, and the only requirement to get started is to hit the giant purple Play Now button at the official site.

Blizzard's adding some extra in-game bonuses in celebration of the game's abandonment of the beta label. Winning three matches in unranked Play mode gets you an electric-blue Hearthsteed mount for your World of Warcraft character to stylishly block everyone's access to the mailbox. If you rack up an impressive 500 wins in ranked Play mode, your chosen hero portrait turns golden and gets a couple extra special animations while casting spells or fighting. Everyone knows "Grumpy" Garrosh Hellscream could use a little more bling in his life, at least.

More usefully, today's patch adds a new recovery feature. Accidentally disconnecting from a match isn't a disaster anymore, as you now have a minute to reconnect and pick up where you left off with no penalty.

If you want to know how Hearthstone fared during its beta, or if you need more thoughts on the game before trying it yourself, check out our review.

Oculus VR, the company behind the Oculus Rift virtual reality goggles, announced on Tuesday that it hired Atman Binstock as its new Chief Architect. We don t usually report on industry hires, but Binstock was one of the lead engineers at Valve behind the VR room we heard so much about during the company s Steam Dev Days event.
Before joining Valve, Binstock led projects at RAD, DICE, and Intel. He says that Michael Abrash convinced him to come work on virtual and augmented reality at Valve. Two years later, we ve solved some of the basic problems, proven great VR is not only possible but truly magical, and now I want to bring it to the world, he said on Oculus VR s website. I m incredibly excited and humbled by the opportunity We re just scratching the surface of what s possible, and I can t wait to discover what s next!
Binstock will lead the Oculus VR research and development team in Seattle, which is currently hiring engineers. As we ve previously reported, at the moment, Valve is supporting Oculus VR s efforts rather than pursuing its own VR hardware.
Confirming what we ve heard last month, Oculus VR said that it s ramping down production and distribution of the the Rift development kit as it s approaching 60,000 units sold. It also said that it will have more news soon, and we know it will be at both GDC and E3 this year.

Ever since its open beta began in December 2012, Hawken's basics have been easy to pick up. Big, stompy robots shoot and scoot with agile dodges. The modes are a slice from the same shooter pie everyone's familiar with, and it's a snap to load up and jump into a team deathmatch in less than a minute. Maps paint worlds of well-worn neon-lit cityscapes and desolate badlands. Hawken is like the mohawked, studded-jacket-wearing punk brother of MechWarrior Online: a youngster with a brash streak, but definitely its own brand of cool.

Hawken's also growing up. It transitioned to Steam last month, moving away from a dedicated launcher and enticing new recruits with an Early Access initiative and a couple purchasable bonus packages. Now it's once again fully Free to Play. Two years of patches and adjustments have streamlined Hawken and stripped away unused features, making it easier to get into than ever. After two weeks of playing Hawken on Steam, I'm still skeptical of its F2P monetization, but faster-paced combat reminiscent of Quake and new mech classes kept me coming back for more.
Mecha-groove
Maneuvering your mech into a superior position against an enemy is all about boost-assisted side-strafing. Those moves are now easier to pull off. Strafing on the ground doesn't consume fuel any longer, so I had extra juice for longer sprint burns and higher hovers for some death from above. I'm glad for the extra flexibility, and the change simplifies fuel conservation while simultaneously keeping Hawken's dodge-or-die dogma intact.

Spotting important information quickly from the cockpit still takes some effort. I could easily discern health, fuel, and ability status via large, friendly rectangles stretched across the bottom of my screen, but taking a read on the enemy wasn't so simple. Red names and enemy health often dim and smudge against the backdrop of industrial grime and metal guts flying everywhere, especially with motion blur and PhysX effects cranked to max. Determining successful shots with hit-markers was tough in the thick of it all. Hawken could use opacity/contrast options for brightening up crosshairs and text.


A costly war
Bringing new mechs into the garage works a little differently now. Previously, ranking up would unlock additional mechs at certain thresholds, particularly after achieving the rank cap for an active mech. That's been replaced with an unabashed redirect to microtransactions and spending Hawken Credits currency earned by playing matches and Meteor Credits bought with real moneydollars.

This is where Hawken's F2P element complicate the sense of progression. I'm urged to get into the grind with tantalizing mech and item previews, but I'll need to either gather enough HC playing with an undergeared disadvantage or take a shortcut to what I want with MC. Crushing the enemy team and scoring high points gets me around 170 HC per match, so dedicated players can cash in for a new mech within a couple days or so.

I get Adhesive's need to pull revenue from an in-game economy. My concern stems from a different kind of cost: personalization. The tuning system from Hawken's earlier versions is gone. The only measure of stat adjustment for my bot comes from equipping internal components with both positive and negative changes to armor, damage, and heat rate. I can certainly swap my primary and secondary weapons for a different set, but the guns I can use are available for most mechs.

To top it off, items and internals are unlocked for only one mech at a time, and I soon found myself returning to Hawken's shop to resupply frequently. It s a shame the system is set up this way I wasn t particularly happy having my completionist streak punished by multiple rounds of item grinding simply to kit out my available mechs.

There's upsides to all of this, though. With tuning gone, gear disparity between beginners and veterans is much more even. Armor values for every mech have been halved in other words, fights are shorter and faster. Death comes swiftly. Tanky-type mechs such as the Brawler and Rocketeer can't soak up as much damage as they used to, but the tradeoff is worth it: bursting an enemy from 100 to 0 in less time it takes to blink is a real possibility, and that's a pleasing nod to old-school frag-fests like Unreal Tournament or Quake.


New treads
Adhesive have kept to a strong focus on furnishing extra content for Hawken, adding more mechs with specialized playstyles.

The Technician is a roving med-bot that sticks a repair beam onto nearby allies while debuffing enemies for increased attack damage. Played right, it's an asset for any team, since getting healed by a Technician saves the trouble of switching to defenseless self-repair mode. I enjoyed scrambling with my teammates to scrap a spotted Technician their value on the field makes them clanking bullseyes and piloting one while buddied up with a guardian is a great alternative for beginners who don't want to use the starter CR-T mech.

The Predator is like Team Fortress 2's Spy. Instead of a classy suit, it sports a sleek chassis, and instead of a knife, it sticks a railgun up someone's exhaust vents. It can cloak, masking its presence from radar and making it difficult to see. It excels at picking off weakened targets from mid-range and getting extra close for ambushes, but like its cigarette-twirling counterpart, it quickly crumples under fire.

The Incinerator is the newest mech on the line and perhaps the most interesting. It absorbs heat generated from its primary minigun weapon to expend it all in fiery explosions or lob fireball grenades. I found the Incinerator best for steady pressure transferring heat to damage means holding down the triggers as long as possible, and the endless flow of fire is great for weakening enemies for my teammates to finish off.

The new blood(oil?) fits in well with Hawken s previous robo-roster. Concentrating on repair and area denial add a few extra layers of team cohesion, but players aren t punished if they just want to flame in and stick to bullet smackdowns. That degree of choice is pretty excellent for a F2P game, and I m glad to see such flexibility show up more often outside of Team Fortress 2.

Four new maps have also shown up throughout Hawken's beta period. Front Line is a symmetrical and spacier arena housing both open areas for sharpshooters to prey upon and clumps of grimy industrial structures reminiscent of Prosk's cyberpunk theme. Facility is a dusty mining platform of ramps, jump pads, and tight corridors with plenty of blind corners and an elevated peak with a commanding view of the arena. Last Eco is a dense circular patch of jungle that makes it tough to spot enemy outlines. Wreckage boasts frenetic close-quarters fights in the rusted remains of a crashed starship.


Steeling time
In its newer form, Hawken is a potent exercise of how well you've refined your shooter skills. Adhesive's changes have homogenized what you're given access to, but how you handle your mech in battle now boils down to quick reactions and precise aim instead of throwing the dice against encountering overpowered item and weapon builds.

The F2P model still needs tuning. Hawken hasn't quite stumbled into the pay-to-win pitfall, but the limited benefits from spending hard-earned HC or MC at least let custom paint items apply to all my stabled mechs, for goodness sake means you'll definitely hit that Market button more than once. The starter mech is more than brawny enough to jump into the fray as any other class type, but be prepared to spend hours playing to unlock new toys.

Still, Hawken rocks big time during actual combat, and I'd recommend at least trying out a couple offline practice rounds with AI-controlled enemies to get started. If you want to experience the competitive side of Hawken, you can do so without spending a single microtransactional cent. The true price is measured in time, but for what Hawken offers steep unlock grind and all is well worth the hours you sink into it.

Titanfall is upon us, and that means Respawn's fast-paced FPS has high-fived Spyglass for luck before dropping onto many a hard drive with a 48GB shockwave. That's a staggering size for a strictly multiplayer shooter, and many pilots want to know the reasons behind the significant storage chunk. Speaking to Eurogamer, Respawn Lead Engineer Richard Baker provides an answer: uncompressed audio.

35GB of uncompressed audio, in fact. As Baker explains, the intent was to shore up CPU resources on lower-end PCs to tackle Titanfall's wide range of gunshots, ambient noise, and robot warcries without taking a hit on performance. That meant packaging purer and less system-heavy sounds with the roughly 13GB of map and visual data.

"We have audio we either download or install from the disc, then we uncompress it," Baker elaborates. "We probably could've had audio decompress off disc, but we were a little worried about minimum spec and the fact that a two-core machine would dedicate a huge chunk of one core to just decompressing audio.

He continues: "So, it's almost all audio. On a higher PC, it wouldn't be an issue. On a medium or moderate PC, it wouldn't be an issue. It's that on a two-core with where our min spec is, we couldn't dedicate those resources to audio."

The results are there for all to see in Titanfall's rather undemanding requirements, and it's nice to have a better idea of what's gobbling up our drive space. We're in the thick of an in-progress review for Titanfall, but so far, it looks and plays like one of this year's best releases.

We re all a little Kickstarter fatigued at this point, but once in a while we see a project that s worth talking about regardless of how it s being funded. Duelyst, a squad-based tactical combat game that originated as a board game is a perfect example.
Counterplay Games pitches it as a fast-paced one-on-one multiplayer game. Each side assembles a team from a roster of more than 100 units and spells, and battles on a tactical map (a grid) with the straight forward goal of defeating the opponent's general, similar to the Fire Emblem games or the tactical phase of Heroes of Might and Magic. While it seems like it has a multiplayer focus with ranked battles and both asynchronous and real-time matches designed to last about 30 minutes, it also has a single-player mode where you can practice and earn new units and spells.
The Kickstarter page gives me plenty to get excited about. Duelyst was first conceived as a tabletop board game, which makes me think the underlying mechanics are rock solid, and the developers involved have worked on impressive titles like Diablo III, World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade, Rogue Legacy, and others.
But really, it s the creative character design and gorgeous pixel art that I m most excited about. Just look at it:






Duelyst is hoping to reach a humble goal of $68,000. It s already at more than $36,000, with 29 days to go. You can find out more about the game and become a backer on its Kickstarter page.

Illustrations by Marsh Davies

All week long, we're peering ahead to what the future holds for the PC gaming industry. Not just the hardware and software in our rigs, but how and where we use them, and how they impact the games we play. Here's part two of our five-part series; stay tuned all week for more from the future of PC gaming.

The future of PC gaming is online. So is the present, actually Twitch livestreams and massive League of Legends tournaments are already integral pieces of the PC gaming community. As the audiences for livestreams and eSports surge over the next few years, our broadband infrastructure's going to be hard-pressed to keep up. Here's our look at what the future holds for online gaming: bigger and better eSports, the culture of livestreaming, and the slow spread of fiber Internet that could hold us back from our gigabit dreams.
Esports: Making hardcore games accessible
By Rob Zacny

Open up Twitch at any time of day or night, and the odds are good that you'll find a competitive gaming stream from somewhere in the world. An insomniac or early-riser might greet the day with an evening StarCraft or League of Legends broadcast from Korea. Take a break from a dull workday, and you might find a Dota 2 tournament in Eastern Europe or a Counter-Strike: Global Offensive match taking place in Sweden or Germany. You can watch the latest matches in Riot's League of Legends Championship Series with dinner, where the best players in Europe and the United States are showcased with production values that rival or surpass some TV broadcasts of more traditional sports.

Esports are global in a way that few traditional sports are. They transcend national borders, language barriers, and markets. They are also defined by their allegiance to hardcore PC gaming. While mainstream gaming was becoming increasingly focused on mass-market blockbusters, eSports celebrated deeper experiences that rewarded skill, commitment, and cooperation. Thanks to eSports, PC gamers around the world can play demanding RTS games, MOBAs, and shooters with a community of millions.



That has had tremendously exciting implications for PC gaming. There was a time, just five or six years ago, when it seemed like high-skill ceilings were about to be permanently lowered in favor of accessibility and mass market appeal. You didn't have to be a professional gamer to be depressed about the disappearance of fast-based twitch shooters in favor of slower, ostensibly more realistic military shooters, or the shrinking RTS genre.

This is always the anxiety behind dumbing-down complaints: some of us want more. You don't have to play games where you spend hours studying build orders, working on tactics, and coordinating with friends. But it's nice to have the option to forge that kind of relationship with a game, where you don't just skim the surface, but dive so deep that you understand how the pieces fit together.

Esports have proved there's a huge audience for that, and one that will reward developers who don't compromise in the name of accessibility. Look no further than the growing success of Dota 2, with its legendarily steep learning curve. Dota 2, like many eSports-focused games, is not a game that rewards its players over a period of months, but years.

That's a big ask for a lot of players, but eSports lower the barrier to entry by showcasing these games at their best, and demystifying what it is that makes them special. Even if you never play a ranked match or compete in a local LAN tournament, you can appreciate and engage with the most advanced gameplay in the world.

And players have responded around the world, proving that high-skill, competitive games have a bright future and a tremendous audience that's hungry for them. But it is a PC-based audience. The PC is the lingua franca of eSports, the only thing that unites these huge, disparate international audiences.



That means PC gaming is likely going to remain the home for these kinds of experiences, and we're going to get more of them. In the last year, Wargaming.net has launched major eSports initiatives to showcase what's possible in World of Tanks. Wargame: European Escalation has been spotlighted by Europe's Electronic Sports League. Between GDC and E3 last year, it sometimes seemed like every developer was trying to keep an eye toward the eSports potential of their upcoming games.

It doesn't really matter whether a game turns into a major eSport on par with CS: GO or Dota 2. Nor does it matter if eSports ever become so massive that they are broadcast in primetime on a cable sports network.

What matters is that eSports celebrate, preserve, and promote some of PC gaming's greatest traditions. In gaming landscape rife with Quicktime Events and meaningless scavenger hunts, eSports show that greatness awaits those who are patient enough to work for it. They ensure that the PC will remain a remain a place where players can earn achievements that don't need a badge or an icon. Esports can and should open up the hardcore to the masses, and the PC is the perfect place for that.
Smile! The game you're playing is live
By Cory Banks

Unless you suffer from debilitating performance anxiety, chances are good that you ve tried livestreaming. Thanks to services such as Twitch and apps like the free Open Broadcasting Software, it s super easy to capture gameplay video or stream your playthrough live on the Internet. Which means the future of PC gaming is a comment room full of viewers, mocking your Hearthstone deck.



Humiliation aside, this near-instant access to people playing games, live right now, means that a game s watchability a word I just made up is just as important as its playability. Esports is the prime example: the importance of a user interface that not only conveys info to the player, but the 300 people watching that player jungle in League of Legends, cannot be overstated. But even non-competitive games will embrace streaming in the future, with brighter colors and cleaner UIs. It s just smart business: YouTubers playing your game is the greatest kind of marketing, and there s no better way to discover or learn a game than to watch someone play it.

Livestreaming will also allow us to enjoy games when we simply can t play them, an important factor as our community matures and responsibilities grow. With a family and a full-time job, you might not have the spare 400 hours to conquer in Europa Universalis IV. That s okay: other streamers will have content ready for you to watch on demand. It s yet another way PC gaming will become more social, in the living room, in eSports, and in front of the camera.
Faster, fiber! Spread! Spread!
By Wes Fenlon

As we venture into the future of PC gaming, with games gobbling up 30 gigabytes in a single download, we need a brave new broadband service to lead us to the land of plenty. A service that casts off the heavy chains of bandwidth caps and delivers Steam games unto us at the rate of a gigabit per second. A service with a name that inspires hope, and awe, and salvation. It shall be known as...fiber.

Fiber Internet will shepherd us into this new age of high speed bliss. At least, fiber will lead a chosen, geographically privileged few to affordable gigabit (1024 megabit) connections. 2014 and 2015 will be big years for fiber rollout in the US, but Google Fiber and Verizon FiOS two of the best-known fiber services are, combined, only available in two dozen US cities.

The city count is increasing, but slowly. Google Fiber is launching in Austin, Texas and Provo, Utah in 2014, and AT&T has already launched a competing fiber service in Austin.



Some cities, like Chattanooga, Tennessee, have taken matters into their own hands by building public-owned fiber networks. Gigabit Internet costs $70 per month in Chattanooga. If you're not in the mood to cry, don't compare the price-per-megabit to what you're currently paying your ISP.

More cities plan to follow Chattanooga's lead. If those plans bear out, select gamers will have access to incredible download speeds without dealing with Big Cable.

The future doesn't look as bright for the rest of us. A January 2014 court decision overturned the FCC's net neutrality regulations, theoretically making it possible for companies like Comcast and Verizon to prioritize traffic on their networks. This could have a very real effect on PC gamers. Comcast could charge bandwidth-heavy services like Twitch a premium for reliable access to gamers--in other words, an Internet fastlane.

There's more bad news. Netflix's monthly ISP reports indicate that US service providers deliver an average throughput of less than 2 mbps during prime hours. Most online games even big ones like Battlefield 4 require deceptively little bandwidth, and a steady 2 mbps should keep the bullets flying lag-free. But streaming and cloud gaming demand more bandwidth and rock-solid reliability.

Twitch requires a bitrate of 1.8 - 2.5 mbps, higher than the average throughput Netflix reported for US providers. Nvidia GRID, Nvidia's take on cloud gaming (think OnLive), recommends a 10 mbps connection.

One more downer: Comcast is bringing back the bandwidth cap in seven states, testing the waters with a 300 gigabyte monthly limit. A weekend of heavy Steam downloading and constant streaming could easily blow through that limit.

We need fiber to meet the rising demands of livestreaming and cloud gaming. It's the future of broadband in the United States, and it's expanding, slow and sure. As sci-fi author William Gibson would say, the future simply isn't evenly distributed yet.

GOG has reversed its decision to include regional pricing on some upcoming games, calling it a mistake after nearly 10,000 (mostly negative) comments poured into their forums. In a thorough apology, GOG co-founders Marcin Iwinski and Guillaume Rambourg write that they should never have made that call.

Some background: when GoodOldGames.com relaunched as GOG, it formalized two central values: that every game should be sold DRM-free, and every game should be sold for the same price everywhere in the world two declarations that stood it apart from competitor Steam. Gamers in Australia should never pay more than gamers in Sweden, GOG declared, and absolutely no one should suffer through DRM. Publishers of some games, like Age of Wonders 3, weren t totally on board with abandoning regional prices, so GOG began to budge on the flat-price promise in order to get more games into its DRM-free storefront.

We didn t listen and we let you down. We shouldn't sacrifice one of our core values in an attempt to advance another. We feel bad about that, and we're sorry, Iwinski and Rambourge wrote today. Us being sorry is not of much use to you, so let s talk about how we will fix it.

The most interesting new change: when GOG fails to get a publisher to agree to flat, worldwide pricing, GOG will eat the difference themselves. We will adamantly continue to fight for games with flat worldwide pricing. If that fails and we are required to have regional prices, we will make up the difference for you out of our own pockets.

From now on, games at GOG will be sold around the world at US prices either because the publisher agreed to it, or because the price increase is being offset by store credit from GOG. It s a great deal for international gamers, and a graceful exit to a turbulent two weeks in the GOG community. Check out the full apology at GOG.