Haven't you always wanted to change a game's programming to let you win? That's the premise behind Double Fine's Hack 'n Slash the entire game is designed so you can hack your way through it. Obstacle in your way? Change its properties so you can push it to the side. Low on health? Change a bush's "on_fire" property to on and tell it to give you hearts. The only trick is you have to figure out what each setting will do, which is where much of the fun comes from.

My first thought when I start the game demo at PAX East sit that the concept is just too bold. How can you build a game where players can change its properties to win? It sounds so abstract in theory, but Double Fine's execution is both intuitive and delightful. I take control of Alice, an elf armed with a USB sword that, when shoved into a door, block, or anything with the correct slot, brings us a debugging interface. You can alter how many spaces a block will move by changing its variable, or even switch a pushing block to a pulling block by giving it a negative number. Not every item in the game can be manipulated, but plenty can.



It seems like a cute gimmick, but there's more going on. These are actual debugging variables for the game elements, according to Double Fine. I'm playing with the same switches that the designers use when crafting the game's areas and puzzles. That's pretty cool.

Hack 'n Slash is also a Double Fine game, which means it's pretty funny. Alice's dialogue references The Legend of Zelda with a wink and a nudge, and her sprite-like companion is a clear riff on the dreaded Navi from Ocarina of Time. The art is bright and colorful, and the debugging windows have a Final Fantasy NES feel to them.

As I navigate a puzzle by hacking various blocks, I wonder how hard it is to design puzzles that require the player to break the game to fix. The game will be completely "hackable," as its code is basically in plain text files and all of its art are in simple .png images. Double Fine tells me that with so much access to the variables in the game's code, it expects players will crash the game a lot. The developer is putting warnings in place, and backing up save games on a pretty frequent basis.



Hack 'n Slash's first three acts (out of four) should be out on Steam Early Access in the next two weeks. I'm looking forward to seeing just how breakable the game is, and if it keeps me chuckling as much as the demo did.

Now here s a classy move: tinyBuild s upcoming JetGetters met its $50,000 funding goal on Kickstarter, but the developer is giving backers their money back because of a delay in the development cycle. The game is still coming out, backers will still get their rewards, and it sounds like tinyBuild s in better shape than ever, so it s good news all around.
As stated on the Kickstarter page, JetGetters was delayed because tinyBuild found an investor to help it expand its developing and publishing efforts. Because of the time it will take in bringing our new partners up-to-speed and hiring on additional people for JetGetters we have decided to cancel the Kickstarter, tinyBuild said. The main reason for this is because we feel strongly that if we promise something, we better damn well deliver on it and with the few month delay we won't be able to deliver JetGetters this year.
To make sure nobody feels burned by the change of plans, tinyBuild is also giving all backers the $51 tier reward: all seven of tinyBuild s games, including No Time To Explain.
If you haven t heard of JetGetters, it s a flying multiplayer shooter where you re able to hijack your enemy s ship, similar to high-flying shenanigans you pull off in Just Cause 2. Producer Alex Nichiporchik s original pitch video explains the rest.

World of Warcraft was released a decade ago. Thanks to Moore s law, in terms of advancements made in PC hardware, that might as well be a century. After all that time, Blizzard is finally ready to update the character models in the upcoming Warlords of Draenor expansion. They ll look better, but don t worry. Even if you ve been playing World of Warcraft on the same machine for years, you probably don t need to upgrade it for Warlords of Draenor.
You shouldn't be worried about any big drop in performance; things will most likely remain very close to what you are experiencing right now, Blizzard said on its official forum. So if you're satisfied with what you have right now, then there shouldn't be any need to change anything.
As Blizzard explains it, your character isn t usually naked, so most of the polygons and textures being drawn and rendered are attributed to the armor you re wearing, the surrounding geometry, and enemies. Blizzard is also applying a squish to anything related to stats and reducing the amount of visual clutter you see in fights with a lot players. You ll see less colorful magic explosions, but better performance too. And of course, if you really feel like the new character models are giving you a hard time, you can also disable them.
New character models are just one small change coming to the game in Warlords of Draenor. Chris hands-on is a better look at the big picture.

PAX East s designated indie games fiefdom was, unsurprisingly, overflowing with interesting projects. Secret Ponchos. Gods Will Be Watching. Subnautica. Not A Hero. Below. Many of the other games on display were known quantities that we d either played previously or are playable now in a pre-release form. The one that stuck with me most was Darkest Dungeon, a roguelike that had somehow slipped through my sensor array.

Among the legitimate pile of roguelikes available in 2014, Darkest Dungeon s point of distinction is the way it makes mental health a gameplay mechanic. Characters accumulate stress through battle and other encounters, which then takes the form of character traits. Left untended, these stresses can manifest in a variety of behaviors that create gameplay challenges (anger, paranoia, depression, sadism, and more). How you manage your heroes through these stresses is an integral part of the game, the FAQ reads.

The look of the game suits its theme, too: I love the groundedness that Darkest Dungeon s gloomy, low-fantasy art brings it, and I m curious to see how the gear and party management aspects of the game mesh with its campaign structure. We ll continue to follow the game closely leading up to its release; Red Hook Studios completed a successful Kickstarter for Darkest Dungeon on March 13.

Forget trying to make the Citizen Kane of games, that's been done. Indie dev Broken Window Studios has its sights set on a far weirder goal. They want their horror game, Grave, to deliver the same discombobulating sense of strange as David Lynch's weirdo classic Eraserhead.

The new trailer for the game gives an interesting sense of how the game's shifting, procedurally generated world, will present a series of strange challenges for the player. It's also worth noting that the transition between day and night is a key part of the gameplay. Take a look



I have some concern that the using-light-to-defeat-enemies mechanic is a little too familiar from Alan Wake. When I ask designer Tristan Moore whether he considered going without enemies, he tells me: "We always intended for there to be encounters in Grave. One of my major influences for starting on the project was the Salvador Dali-inspired short film Destino, where at one point it becomes dark and a statue frighteningly comes to life. We really liked the idea of splitting emotional levels between a safe, (but strange), day experience and a more threatening night time."

What's particularly interesting to me is the disorientating atmosphere what is that spinning monolith? and the fact Grave will support Oculus Rift, for a truly immersive freakout. Perhaps I'm just missing home, but the deadpan UK accent gives proceedings a deliciously chilling vibe. Actually, I'm pretty sure that the voice on the trailer is that of Aby Moore, who's the artist on the game, and is also married to Tristan.

I note this as a reminder of how indie development is a labour of love, and in this case a family affair and also as a way of segueing into the fact that Grave is currently a third of the way to reaching its Kickstarter goal, with two weeks left to run. So, perhaps appropriately for a game with survival horror elements, they're cutting it fine.

So what happens if they don't hit that goal? "We can pursue alternate funding, attempt another Kickstarter campaign in the future, or continue to work on the game in our spare time," says Tristan. "We didn't have any experience running a Kickstarter project prior to this and because we're a small indie team without many prior credits, it has been difficult to get media access." Well, we can help there.

If you're thinking of backing Grave, why not check out the demo first? It's entirely free, and you can grab it here. The full version of Grave is due out in 2015, and you can currently also find it on Steam Greenlight. I'm going to check the demo out. I hope it lives up to the Lynchian comparison, because if so that means the studio might eventually go on to make its Blue Velvet. "Right click to use laughing gas."

Have you played every single game in your Steam library? No? Neither have I and that accomplishment is apparently just a small sand grain in the over 288 million games in Steam collections that have never felt a press of the Play button. That's a surprising figure from a new report by Ars Technica researching the most active and popular games on Steam straight from the recorded statistics of some of the platform's 75-million-strong community.

Ars' method for its number flood involves sampling registered games and their played hours via profiles and their unique Steam IDs. With the help of a server for computational muscle, Ars randomly polled more than 100,000 profiles daily for two months to pull together an idea of which games see the most time on everyone's monitors. In other words, your Backlog of Shame (don't deny it, everyone has one) probably took part in some SCIENCE at some point. Exciting.

Some caveats exist, though. The data Ars looked at for its research only extends back to 2009, when Steam brought in its "hours played" tracking system. Owned and played/unplayed games are thus slightly skewed to not account for older releases from the early noughties, and any length of time spent in offline mode wouldn't get picked up by Steam either. Still, Ars claims its results deliver a good picture of Steam gaming trends for the past five years albeit with some imperfections.

Predictably, Valve's personal products stack high on the list in terms of ownership and most played hours. Dota 2 takes the crown with an estimated 26 million players who ganked faces at some point in the MOBA, but free-to-play FPS Team Fortress 2 follows closely behind with a little over 20 million users. Counter-Strike: Source rounds out the top three with nearly 9 million players, but it's also collecting dust in over 3 million libraries.

As for non-Valve games, Skyrim wins in activity, barely edging out Counter-Strike: Global Offensive with 5.7 million estimated active owners. Civilization V kept 5.4 million players hooked for Just One More Turn, and Garry's Mod boasts 4.6 million budding physics artists.

Want to know what the most unplayed Steam game is? It's Half-Life 2: Lost Coast, the Source tech demo given free to pretty much everyone on Steam who bought or fired up Half-Life 2. It hasn't been touched by an approximate 10.7 million players. I guess that old fisherman is feeling pretty lonely right now.

My favorite stat is the total of played hours divided by game mode, more specifically the separate multiplayer clients of the Steam versions of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and Black Ops. The single-player campaigns for each respective title sits modestly within the mid-20-hour range, but the multiplayer side balloons well into the hundreds of hours. It's a pretty obvious indicator of where the biggest chunk of popularity resides in FPS gaming, but it's not like you wouldn't get weird looks for claiming you play Call of Duty for the story anyway.

See more of Ars' results in both number and pretty orange graph form in its report.

Twice a month Wes guides you through the hacks, tricks, and mods you'll need to run a classic PC game on Windows 7/8. Each Pixel Boost guide comes with a free side of 4K screenshots from the LPC celebrating the graphics of PC gaming's past. This week: Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast.

When it comes to Star Wars games, they don't make 'em like they used to. In the late 90s and early 2000s, the Dark Forces and Jedi Knight series married fun first-person action full of iconic weapons and sound effects with stories and characters from a larger fictional world. Kyle Katarn! Mara Jade! Luke Skywalker! They were all there, and the games they were in were good. After the first two Dark Forces, LucasArts handed the reigns to Raven Software, who amped up the lightsaber combat and multiplayer. All of the Jedi Knight games are available on Steam, so I relived my childhood Star Wars fandom with Jedi Outcast and took 25 4K screenshots in the process.



Install it

You can download Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast for $10 on Steam. If you're feeling nostalgic for the whole series, though, the $20 Jedi Knight collection includes every game in the Dark Forces / Jedi Knight series. On Windows 7 and Windows 8, Jedi Outcast should run fine without needing any special installation procedure or running the game in compatibility mode. If you do run into OpenGL issues, check out this solution from the LucasForums.

Run it in high resolution

Want to play Jedi Outcast at 1080p? 1440p? A pretty simple config edit, courtesy of the Steam Forums, will make that possible.

First, run the game's singleplayer and multiplayer .exes (if you plan to play multiplayer, anyway) so that they will generate config files.
Look in SteamApps\common\Jedi Outcast\GameData\base and find jk2config.cfg.
Open the config file and run a search for "seta r_mode" which is currently set to "x." Set the value to -1.
Search for "seta r_customwidth" and set this to your screen width. Set seta r_customheight to your screen height. For 1080p, those values would be 1920 and 1080.
Add the line seta cg_fov "xx" to the bottom of the config file. Replace the xx with the FOV you'd like to use. The default FOV is 80, and a slightly wider FOV of 90-100 makes sense for widescreen.
If you plan to play multiplayer, make these same changes to the jk2mpconfig.cfg file.

Save your changes and you're done! The game should now run in high resolution. Keep in mind the menu and cutscenes won't look so pretty, but the game will be sharp and clean on your modern display.

Mod it

Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast doesn't need any mods or patches to run well on modern Windows. Some of its faces and textures look surprisingly good for a 12 year old game, though the environments are as barren and angular as you'd expect. There are a whole bunch of mods, including a few total conversions, floating around out there. Want to play as Darth Maul? Check out the classic Dark Origins total conversion.

The most exciting mod for Jedi Outcast is a work-in-progress total remake of the game, using Raven Software's original source code. If the project ever finishes, it'll give Jedi Outcast a shiny new look. Still, we always appreciate seeing classic games running with their original assets in high resolution, which is why we've got 25 screens of Jedi Outcast below.

Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Oucast at 3840x2160 on the LPC

These screenshots were captured by downsampling on the Large Pixel Collider. For more guides to running classic games on modern Windows and more classic game screenshots, check out Pixel Boost every other week.

In 2012, Peter "Durante" Thoman wrote the popular mod DSfix for Dark Souls: Prepare to Die on PC, fixing its locked 1024x720 resolution and other issues. In 2013, he released a similar fix for Deadly Premonition. We asked Durante to analyze the PC port of Dark Souls 2 in a series of articles.

After an initial outing on PC which was barely serviceable rendering at 1024x720, locked at 30 FPS with unusable mouse controls From Software and Namco Bandai have a lot to prove with this sequel. For Dark Souls 2, PC was reportedly considered a major target platform from the start. In this article, I'll first investigate the technical quality of the port compared to Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition and the console versions of Dark Souls 2. Then I'll have a closer look at the options included in the game and analyze their impact.

A Good Port
Dark Souls 2 on PC is a massively improved effort compared to its predecessor. It renders at any resolution a given system supports, its framerate varies smoothly up to 60 FPS, it performs well even on modest systems more on that topic later and it comes with a wealth of graphical options. The following table summarizes most of the improvements:



The most egregious oversights in the first port resolution and framerate are completely solved. Even less pronounced issues like surround sound problems and faulty keyboard/mouse controls are fixed. Small touches make it obvious that the game was truly developed with PC in mind: for example, the EULA which shows up when you first start the game can be scrolled with the mouse wheel.

A common fear among gamers was that From would make good on their promise of 1920x1080 but stop there instead of supporting truly arbitrary rendering resolutions. Something similar happened recently with the otherwise excellent port of Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. Dark Souls 2 has no such limit.
Assessing the Assets
One big question has loomed over the PC port of Dark Souls 2: how different will it be from the console versions? Would the improvements be restricted to resolution and framerate, or would there be changes to the game s textures and models?



In the image above, the game data file archives (*.bdt) for the PC version of the game are shown. Note that their total size is ~10.7 GB. On the other hand, the following table shows the size of the data files for the PS3 version of the game this was determined by inspecting a disc dump of the PS3 data:



Note that the total size in this case is ~5.7 GB, and that the files with the Hq prefix in the PC version have no equivalent in the PS3 version.

Previously, PC gamers were sometimes disappointed when, after large downloads, a given size discrepancy compared to console versions was entirely down to higher-quality movie files or additional localization data. This is not the case for Dark Souls 2: there is only one separate pre-rendered movie, and it is actually smaller in the PC version (likely due to better compression). The localization and font data only takes up around 30 MB in total, and is in fact the same on PC and PS3. In short, everything indicates that the 5 GB difference is caused by higher quality asset data, and a preliminary analysis of the content of these archive files confirms this assumption.

In addition to these main game asset files, the PC version includes a sfx9999hqres.ffxbnd file in the sfx_hq folder, which appears to store higher-resolution assets for special effects (such as torch light or particles). It is also about twice as large as the standard sfx9999res.ffxbnd file, which is the same on both PC and consoles.
Performance
Before jumping into the options, a quick word on performance. I originally intended to provide measurements and graphs here, but Dark Souls 2 generally performs so well on my system that there s no need. With all in-game settings maximized and rendering at 2560x1440, I never noticed a single drop below 60 FPS on my PC (equipped with a Core i7 920 CPU and Geforce GTX770 GPU). In fact, the GPU was generally below 60% loaded in order to maintain that framerate. Even medium-range systems should easily maintain a solid framerate, particularly at the more common 1920x1080 resolution.

Another relevant aspect of game performance which is independent of framerates is the length of loading times, which is particularly relevant for Dark Souls 2 in light of their distracting duration in the console versions. The PC version, with maximized settings, consistently loads in 3-4 seconds from my traditional 7200 RPM HDD, and presumably installing the game to an SSD could further lower these times.


Opting for More
Dark Souls 2 comes with a nice selection of options, and most of them are straightforward. Texture quality sets the resolution of textures, Anisotropic filtering sets their filtering quality at oblique angles, while Antialiasing , Motion blur , Camera motion blur , Depth of field and SSAO toggle their respective setting on and off. Some settings, however, merit a closer look.
Shadow Quality
This option has three settings: low, medium and high. They adjust the quality of dynamic shadows. Low produces blocky, poorly filtered shadows, while medium and high incrementally improve both the shadow map resolution and filtering. As far as I can tell, the console setting is either low or medium , or perhaps a combination with the resolution of low and filtering of medium . The image below illustrates the settings, but it cannot convey the full extent of the difference in motion the lower resolution shadow is more prone to blotchiness and instability between frames.

Click for full resolution image.
Depth of Field
The depth of field effect in Dark Souls 2 is not particularly unusual, but it is very well-implemented and beautiful without being overstated. It is also quite efficient performance-wise, so I suggest keeping it on. Unlike initial versions of Dark Souls 1 with my resolution fix, the effect scales up very nicely to high rendering resolutions.

Click for full resolution image.
Motion Blur
Dark Souls 2 gives us the option of individually toggling camera motion blur and object motion blur. The former is caused by quick camera movement, while the latter applies to objects or characters moving quickly. Separating the two into individual options is very welcome, as some people dislike camera motion blur, but no one should miss this excellent object motion blur implementation. The screenshot below illustrates the object motion blur effect in battle.

Click for full resolution image.
Water Surface Quality
This accurately named option adjusts the rendering quality of water surfaces. Low appears to completely disable reflections, while high adds dynamic highlights on top of the static reflections enabled by medium.

Click for full resolution image.
Effects Quality
This setting appears to control the quality of a variety of alpha-blended effects (such as torch flames), but further investigation will be required to find out what it adjusts exactly at each level. One very fitting new feature in Dark Souls 2 compared to its predecessor are so-called god rays, a dynamic effect which approximates light shafts from bright light sources:

Click for full resolution image.
Texture Quality
Here we can see the likely cause of the (almost) doubled size of the PC version compared to the console versions. While texture quality is already decent at the default medium settings, it is truly excellent at high, with most textures even holding up well when playing at 2560x1440 not something you can say for many games. The following screenshot compares at the more common 1080p resolution, but if you look at it in full size and compare the details in the moss on the tree trunk you can still easily see the step up in quality (sorry for the slight misalignment of camera and models, you have to exit and re-enter the game to change texture settings).

Click for expanded, full resolution image.
Model Quality
I could not, at least in my current preliminary investigation, determine what this setting does. It could be related to model quality in multiplayer, since this is something that I could not test yet, or it may only influence a select few models, none of which I saw in my short period of evaluating the setting.

So far, I checked the player character model, a variety of early-game NPCs, level geometry in the starting levels and a few enemy models. Of course, one option is that the setting is quite simply broken at the moment. A small indication supporting this idea is that changing the model quality setting does not require exiting and re-entering the game, while any changes to e.g. texture quality prompt the player to do so.
Antialiasing and Ambient Occlusion
The former of these settings enables the game s built-in post-processing anti-aliasing, which appears to be the high quality version of FXAA3. The latter turns the ambient occlusion effect on or off. Both of these settings, and some higher-quality alternatives, will be discussed in more detail in our upcoming Dark Souls 2 tweak guide.
Conclusion
With Dark Souls 2, From Software and Namco Bandai deliver a PC version of their game which not only fulfills all the standard expectations in terms of resolution and framerate support, but also adds additional options beyond that. Crucially, they have included high-resolution texture assets which generally fit even the expectations of gamers who play beyond 1080p.

One might also claim that, even if they never acknowledged the modding of their first port, they did certainly learn from it. Whether it is large changes like the inclusion of ambient occlusion, higher resolution textures and good mouse controls, or smaller but equally useful additions such as the ability to turn off the UI or skip the introduction logos, there is a lot in Dark Souls 2 at launch which modders only added to the PC port of the first game over time.

While it is not quite the (almost generational) leap which was initially shown in previews, Dark Souls 2 on PC is a better experience and a more beautiful game than even a fully modded Dark Souls 1, and it also performs well on a wide range of hardware. It adds effects which greatly enhance the visual impact of some scenes, such as dynamic godrays, improves the resolution of environment textures, greatly improves shadow resolution and filtering, and maintains the highly detailed equipment models, textures and ambient specular reflections which were a hallmark of the original Dark Souls graphics.

Of course, we wouldn t be PC gamers if we were not always looking to get even more out of our games. In future articles we will look at some tweaks using generic tools in order to further improve Dark Souls 2 s graphics, and later on investigate its technology in more depth to determine what else might be possible with game-specific modifications.

Come back soon for more from Durante. In the meantime, have some Dark Souls 2 4K screenshots.

A lot has been written about The Astronauts use of photogrammetry technology to create Ethan Carter s environments. Their artists take thousands of photos of an object, like a rock or a bridge, then feed it into software that turns it into a minutely detailed 3D model. The results are remarkable, but what about the game itself? I ve seen an early build in action roughly the first hour of the game and it has some interesting ideas to go alongside those handsome visuals.

You are Paul Prospero, a private detective with supernatural powers. When you sense parts of a crime scene, whether it s a pool of blood, a body part, or something more innocuous like a rock, shimmering portals will appear and reveal clues and past events that you then piece together to solve the mystery. The Astronauts say they trust players, and clues won t be obvious. You ll actually have to do some legwork to find them, then connect them to the rest of the scene.

The setting is Red Creek Valley, a vast stretch of countryside in the midwest of the United States. In my demo I see Prospero explore a misty wood, before emerging into the sunlight of a vibrant, forested valley. The dense, natural-looking foliage is particularly good, swaying realistically in the wind. It s an open world, so anything you see in the distance can be explored, and the scale is dizzying. Exploration is a big part of the game, and The Astronauts are littering their environments with optional clues and story elements to reward players who take the time to poke around this amazing landscape.



When you find a clue, Prospero won t do the old adventure game thing of announcing what it is. Instead of a VO saying Hmm, looks like a blood stain , words will pop up visualising his thought process: fresh, animal, clean ground, few days, accident. His powers can also be used to locate items that will help solve the case. In one example he notices a divot where a rock used to be. He senses it, and a portal shows him its location. When he finds it, it s covered in blood and explains what was used to fracture the skull of a murder victim he d found earlier.

It doesn t feel completely organic, but it s a better approximation of being a detective than most games manage. Once a scene has been investigated, you have to order your clues chronologically to solve the murder. This is done through a menu, which jars a little with how elegant the contextual interaction in the world is, but the demo I saw wasn t even pre-alpha, so I m sure they ll tweak it. Even so, the progress they ve made, especially for a small indie team, is really impressive.



Despite the weird paranormal bits, the game is nicely understated. It s clear the developers are trying to create something slow and thoughtful, and the atmosphere is palpable. They say it s a game to play in the dark with headphones. The open world means you can explore at your own pace, with no pressure to solve the crimes and advance the story. They ve even considered making it so that you can walk from the start of the game to the end without ever solving anything. They want you to take your time and savour the world, but you don t have to if you d rather just pursue the story.

Other facets of Prospero s powers are explored briefly in my demo. One moment sees him wandering through a forest as vicious-looking traps spring up. Each one he senses reveals more pieces of a portal that eventually transports him to what seems to be an alternate dimension where thousands of human bones litter the ground. This all relates, somehow, to a story written by Ethan Carter, a boy with his own powers whose disappearance brings Prospero to Red Creek. Honestly, I was confused by the whole thing, but I think that s the idea. There s a deep mystery here waiting to be unraveled, and I m looking forward to finding out more as I explore this beautiful, atmospheric world.

Three Lane Highway is Chris' sometimes earnest, sometimes silly column about Dota 2.

It's scary, talking to strangers. You probably spent the first ten years of your life being told not to do it, the second ten years of your life trying to summon the courage to do it, and the third ten years of your life doing it but wishing that you were somewhere else. Playing Dota 2 by yourself complicates this already complicated scenario. Language differences. Age differences. Wildly divergent opinions on topics like 'who's fault was that' and 'what are reports for'.

I'm going to outline the best ways to go about communicating in solo ranked matchmaking. You'll notice that all of the statements that I've chosen to highlight are preset phrases that can slotted into the game's chat wheel. These are automatically translated when you use them, which affords you an obvious advantage when matched with people who don't speak the same language as you. The best thing about using the chat wheel, however, is that it makes you look like you've been muted. This is the fastest way to convince assholes on the internet that you are one of them, earning you the kind of edgy cred coveted by awkward thirteen-year-olds everywhere. All of the benefits of being a histrionic pint-sized racist, without having to actually be one!

Sorry

I find it helpful to always apologise clearly and well in advance, which is one of two things that my Dota experience has in common with my love life. Preferably, you'll apologise right when the game begins, as your heroes plop down into the fountain and you all begin the busy work of determining whose fault everything is.

Saying 'Sorry' at this point will make everybody feel better. In this way you can express sympathy for the 2800 MMR midlaner who knows that he's really probably actually somewhere in the 5700 range and yet somehow somehow! he's ended up trapped in the trench with shitbirds like you. Imagine being him. He dreams of restoring himself to his rightful place, playing mid against Dendi. He dreams of the moment when Dendi will give him a look and say good and then moments later he'll be onstage at TI4 lifting the Aegis of Champions into the air and then Dendi will walk over and clap him on the back and be like gooood and everything will be light and money and hope and maybe he'll get to meet Purge, too.

Your presence in this young midlaner's life is more or less proof that dreams are born to die, so damn right you'd better apologise.

Get back!

Let's be real: I have 'Get back!' bound to the 'B' key, and it's the best decision I've ever made. Do not allow cumbersome radial menus or finicky chat stand between you and and the ready expression of cowardice. There is no finer way to cover your ass than being the guy who thinks that everything you're currently doing is a bad idea. If you get wiped, it's because nobody heeded your warning. If both teams disengage, then it shows that you've got your finger on the pulse. If your team fights anyway, and you win, then at the very least you're the sensible one.

Never underestimate its ironic potential, either. Hammering your 'Get back!' key while your team is being relentlessly fountain-farmed at the end of an unwinnable game is a way of enlivening a difficult time with fun questions. Where would we get back to? Is it possible to climb into the fountain itself? What temperature is the water? Where does the water come from? Could Slark, like, get up in there and swim away? Questions.

Dive!

'Dive!' is primarily useful because it lets you sound like a cool submarine captain: but don't believe for a second that this is the extent of its utility. Nobody likes a buzz kill. Plans are for StarCraft players. Call for a dive, rush in, fluff your disables, and die! Anybody who doesn't follow you in is obviously new. Except that 'Get back!' guy. He's cool.

Missing!/Enemy returned

There's nothing worse than forgetting to let your team know when an enemy has gone missing. This makes you culpable for anything that goes wrong in the match until that hero returns. By failing in this way you've handed everybody else on your team a free shot at calling you an asshole, and that is simply not how this game is best played. Dota 2 is about taking it in turns to call each other assholes.

For this reason, bind 'Missing!' and 'Enemy returned' and get used to spamming both along with your regular abilities or right-click attacks or whatever. Enemy hero wandered behind a tree? Missing! Enemy hero wandered back out from behind a tree? Enemy returned! Tree? Missing! Tree! Enemy returned!

Adopt the mindset of a toddler playing peek-a-boo: if you can't see them, they could be anywhere! They could be closing in on mid right now! Mid must be warned! Disaster must be averted! They are probably still behind that tree.

We need wards.

Here's an interesting fact: 'We need wards.' and 'Okay.' are the only preset chat options that end in a full stop. Is that an interesting fact? Probably.

In any case, this additional punctuation indicates that these are firm, assertive statements. There's nothing indecisive about saying 'We need wards.', and the full stop is there to ensure that you intone it in the same low voice you'd use when saying "we need to talk" to your partner.

That's what 'We need wards.' means, really. It means "this isn't working out". It means "our lack of vision on the other side of the river means that you don't take me seriously". It means "you don't care if I get ganked". But it's not all negative. By saying 'We need wards.' you are indicating a desire to open up a dialogue, as long as that dialogue concerns things that you do not like about somebody else.

Ultimate ready

Don't rely on strangers to check when your ultimate ability is going to be ready. Using the chat wheel or alt-click is a much more dependable way to indicate that you're hot to trot. Of all of the preset phrases that can be used passive aggressively 'Well played!', 'Game is hard', 'Nice' this is my favourite. Declaring that your ultimate isn't ready as your team rushes blindly into the enemy jungle is a way of suggesting a retreat without committing to a full declaration of cowardice along the lines of 'Get back!'

Best, though, is using 'Ultimate ready' to goad your team into fighting. I like to poke the button over and over, letting my allies know that hey! I've got something we could be making use of right now and hey! maybe we should initiate and hey! those supports aren't going to Culling Blade themselves, are they? Look at this! Echo Slam! You like it when I Echo Slam, don't you? Nudge, nudge, nudge.

If you keep it up, I've found that eventually somebody will give in and humour you. This is the other way that Dota is like my love life.

Sorry

It's usually a good idea to apologise afterwards as well, I find.