Why can't the Autobots and Decepticons ever get along? Well, sadly they're programmed to punch each other forever. That does make the Transformers setting a fitting one for a game about brutal, neverending war, however. It's a slightly unexpected direction for Jagex, the creators of the relatively peaceful MMO, Runescape, so we caught up with vice president David Nicholson to ask him about building new bots and the challenges of capturing the magic of a much-loved series.

PC Gamer: What lessons have Jagex learned from the launch of RuneScape 3 in launching Transformers Universe?

David Nicholson: Well, to borrow an analogy from the music industry, Transformers Universe can be likened to a band s second album following a hugely successful debut. One thing that we realised very early on is that we needed a new team to build this world we were envisioning. Jagex spent a lot of time attracting the right kind of talent in order to be able to build this brand new team that could craft and develop a fresh and exciting new IP. We obviously wanted to learn from our past experience, but we also wanted to ensure that the organisation was able to build on it and bring new ideas, and new ways of working, into the mix. So here we are, a few years later, and we re almost at the point where we can share all the hard work, all the late nights, the lost weekends and all the team discussions with the players and the fans. And that is both immensely exciting and also very humbling.

PC Gamer: How have you found the fan response to the Transformers you ve created for the game?

David Nicholson: (Laughs) Well, being able to design and implement our own Transformers could have been a double edged sword, especially when it comes to the fans and their respect and love for the Transformers brand. We re really pleased, the fan response has been overwhelmingly positive. It s obviously a huge honour, privilege and responsibility to introduce new characters into the Transformers universe. Throughout development we ve worked very closely with Hasbro, sharing our initial thoughts and ideas, taking on board their feedback and working within the existing Transformers canon.



PC Gamer: Can you talk about the process of creating new Transformers, and why you felt it was important to generate new ones for the game?

David Nicholson: The actual task of introducing new characters starts with research. Hundreds of Transformers already exist across movies, TV shows and books, so we want to make sure we re not overlapping with something that s already in place. After that, it becomes a collaborative process between the creative team and the concept team as they start working up concepts, and develop initial thoughts on names biographies and back stories for the characters. It s an exhilarating process. We re really excited about the characters that we ve created, and can t wait for players to get their hands on them.

PC Gamer: Where did you take inspiration for the type of game Transformers Universe is?

David Nicholson: MMOs have been a growing genre for many years now and it s been interesting to watch the transition from traditional MMORPGs through to MOBAs and on to war games like World of Tanks. We don t like being pigeon-holed and feel that Transformers Universe, as a blend of strategic, tactical and collaborative game play is best described as a 'multiplayer online tactical action' game. There s huge competition out there for people s attention, from games, films, TV, books and more, and we think Transformers Universe can really stand out because not only is it Transformers, and millions of people around the world have grown up with this brand for 30 years, but we ve got a game that, irrelevant of the brand attached to it, stands on its own merits. The game plays to many strengths. It offers players the chance to collect these great Transformers warriors and lead them into battle; it lets you go head to head against players from around the world; and it features game modes that suit your style of play. Ultimately, who doesn t like huge robot warriors that can kick ass and who also have fantastic and growing back stories. It s the perfect mechanical storm!



PC Gamer: Can you talk a bit about the background of the story and how that was created?

David Nicholson: We ve been able to build on established lore and really take Transformers Universe off in a unique direction. Narrative will be an important part of Transformers Universe and the way gamers play it will impact on how the story develops. We ve worked very hard with Hasbro on building out the storyline for Transformers Universe, and as part of that we ve added award-winning music video and feature film director, Alex De Rakoff, to the team to help establish tone and narrative for the game too.

PC Gamer: What are your future plans for rolling out content?

David Nicholson: Obviously our current focus is on delivering a great product for launch. We are using the beta period to get feedback from real players and understand what s working for people and what isn t.

After that we ll be more open about our future plans. We ve got plans for content updates, significant narrative events that are really going to steer the story and a pipeline of numerous bots that players are going to meet post-launch. But, at the moment, the focus is all about the here and the now, and that means releasing a product that is worthy of the Transformers brand as well as being worthy of the fans loyalty and patience.



PC Gamer: How does the pricing structure work for the game?

David Nicholson: Transformers Universe will be free-to-play and content will not be gated by a subscription. If you ve got the time then you ll be able to get everything you want without spending a penny. We want players to experience the best of what we re offering, while allowing those that are a little more time constrained the option of getting into the experience a little quicker.

PC Gamer: Are you hoping to pick up fans of the movies with the release coming this summer?

David Nicholson: Firstly, and I say this from the perspective of being a Transformers fan, it s going to be a bumper summer for people like me! It s completely serendipitous that the film and Transformers Universe are released within the same time frame. There is very little content or story overlap between the film and the game. That said, the fact that there is another movie hitting the screens at a similar time as Transformers Universe is being played, can only bode well for both the hardcore fans and the more casual observers. You can enjoy the movie experience and then come home, log on and continue the adventure in the comfort of your own home

War of the Vikings has released its first update addressing a number of bugs and balance problems, as well as adding two new maps and a new player class: the Shieldmaiden. Though the maps and new player class are available to everyone, a the new Shieldmaiden DLC will be required for anyone hoping to customize the look and style of their new warrior.

The Shieldmaiden is designed to add some defensive depth to the tactics in War of the Vikings. New oversized shields and a special defensive stance make Shieldmaidens perfect for defending choke points. While making female characters available for all is a welcome addition, charging $5/ 4 for the privilege of customizing the female avatar, and only her, seems a bit tone-deaf.

New balance tweaks have slowed down bows for all non-archer classes, given axes bonus damage against shields, and a number of other changes that should give different weapons more variety in tactics. New game modes, an addition that I was really hoping would come soon, are not on the list. The two new maps are a nice addition, but without new ways to play on them, my enthusiasm for the game remains a bit diminished.

Surely it follows that with a new chipset should come new chips, right? And with Intel s latest motherboard chipset, the Z97, having just launched promising support for both the Devil s Canyon Haswell CPU updates and the next-gen Broadwell die-shrink, it s hugely disappointing not to be sat here extolling the virtues of some fine new processors too.

But what can the new Z97 chipset offer in this first Republic of Gamers Maximus VII Hero board from Asus? Well, to be fair to them quite a lot, but very little of it is actually related to Intel s latest chipset. Right now these Z97 boards are going to live or die by their feature sets, and in typical RoG fashion Asus has thrown not just the kitchen sink, but an entire Magnet showroom at the Hero.

What the new chipset offers over and above the previous Z87 is the ability to run the incoming Devil s Canyon Haswell chips as well as provide compatibility for Broadwell processors some time next year. The other big ticket item is that it also provides some PCIe lanes for the new M.2 format of PCIe-based SSDs.

That could be big news as the new M.2 drives are going to be all the rage in the mobile sphere, and the prospect being able to plug the same speedy boards of Flash into our mobos for lightning boot drives is tantalising. The promise is that with a pair of PCIe lanes they should be able to deliver up to 1GB/s performance, topping the 600MB/s maximum SATA can offer at the moment.

The new M.2 interface will offer super-speedy SSDs...in the future

Unfortunately the only M.2 drives around at the moment are still based on the SATA spec and so can t live up to their M.2 billing. That means we re still waiting for any hardware to make the Z97 chipset s two new features in any way relevant.

But this RoG Maximus VII Hero can offer much, much more. Most of it is aimed directly at gamers. Where to start? Well, there s the new SupremeFX onboard sound card, offering physical shielding from the rest of the board to cut out the electro-hiss you can get through headphones, as well as a bunch of audiophile extras like high-end audio capacitors and a hefty software suite.

Another neat gaming addition is the Keybot microprocessor on the board. Simply plug your basic keyboard into the specific USB port and through the Keybot utility you can assign whatever macros you want to any of the function keys on your board. You can also set up some function keys to wake your machine up with different overclocking profiles should you so wish.

But what about performance? Sadly that seems to have little relation to the motherboard these days. Either everyone s mobos are just as good or the CPU and GPU have far more bearing over how well your system performs.

Overall there s little performance difference between this Hero and the Z87 version. There s no improvement in gaming performance or overclocking i7 4770K is still locked at 4.7GHz as a maximum.

One seriously feature-rich motherboard, just waiting for some CPUs to do it justice

Considering that it s the exact same price as the board it s replacing it s not really much of an issue, though 165 / $270 is still a lot of money for a mobo. It remains a great board though, with a beautiful, angular aesthetic and a seriously healthy feature set too.

If you d been thinking about a Z87 board before, then you d have to shift over to Z97. If you re thinking of replacing a Z87 board, however, there s little reason in any of them right now to make the change worthwhile. That may change when Devil s Canyon finally breaks cover, but we ll see come June.

Okay, look, I've got a confession to make. We will get to all the newsy stuff about how Elite: Dangerous is entering a new alpha phase, thus bridging another of the many gaps between its inception and public release. But that's not really why I'm writing this. I'm writing this because of an excellent video that's surfaced showing the game's new hyperspace jumps. Let's ditch this paragraph of boring text, and get to the exciting space stuff...

(The exciting space stuff starts around 40 seconds in.)



!!!

When I eventually get my hands on both this game and the consumer model of the Oculus Rift, I will never be seen again.

Anyway, the news. Alpha 4 is set across a 200 cubic light-year volume containing five star systems, all centred around the Bo tes constellation.

"They include spectacular sights such as an unusual quaternary star system and ringed gas giants, and are part of contested space between the Federation and Independent systems," explains a press release sent out by Frontier. "Additionally IP 98-132 is an anarchy which is rife with pirate activity." I'm not one hundred percent sure, but I think some of this might be fictional.

In addition to hyperspace jumps, ships can now also super-cruse for accelerated travel within systems. Having not played the game, I cannot confirm whether or not you activate super-cruising by leaning one arm out of your ship's window.

This is now Elite: Dangerous's last alpha phase. As of May 30th, the game will move into beta.

TL;DR: Space! Fuck, yeah!

(Thanks to Reddit for the video)

Sir, You Are Being Hunted is like being hooked up to an Earl Grey drip and bludgeoned with crumpets. It s a tut at the weather. It s a framed picture of the Queen. It s a pissed old regular at the village pub. The developers call it tweedpunk . I call it very British . It s to the UK what the Fallout games are to the US, and it has an utterly unique visual language.

A stealth game at heart, you ll forage through spectral swathes of British countryside for mysterious fragments and bring them to a shrine. Badass robotic gentry with tweed jackets and flat caps stand in your way. Such open parameters should leave ample room for experimentation, the perfect structure in which to house a whirring, spluttering anecdote generator, but developers Big Robot don t use the space interestingly enough.

This space comes in five randomly generated varieties: castle, industrial, rural, mountainous, and fenland, each sailed to by boat. Traversing these gloomy isles, as you can imagine if you ve ever actually walked through a field, isn t very exciting. Endless wandering is sometimes enhanced by a stunning sight - pink sunlight streaming through gnarled branches, a family of factories belching out thick grey smoke, flocks of crows passing before a forlorn moon, dull lamplight seeping from an old farmhouse - but mostly it s thorny hedgerows, dead grass and industrial ruin. Hey, at least it captures the misery of Britain, then.



But a Dear Esther-ish hiking simulator this ain t. Remember, sir, you re being hunted. It starts slow, with three or four hunters to dodge. They roam the land in small groups packing slow-firing shotguns. Soon, however, more powerful foes visit - bog creatures, robot attack dogs, headless riders on hover horses, teleporting scarecrows who can only be vanquished by staring into their glowing eyes and walking towards them. Despite this upwards curve, threat levels generally stay the same because you re always looting beefier weapons. As opponents improve, so do you.

Outfoxing the AI is fun at first. In one encounter I litter the road with bear traps, then toot a trombone to bait the gentlemen machines. In another, I throw bottles to kite them down an alley then chuck in dynamite. Then I light my pipe and get dizzy drunk on stout because shut up you don t know me. As a sort of thickety sandbox in which you combine items and outwit AI, however, Sir is limited because weapons aren t interesting enough. There are four firearms, a hatchet, bear trap and dynamite, and I soon ran out of ways to combine them.

You can only save at shrines, so one wrong move can wipe clean 20 minutes of progress. This is a dynamic stealth experience in which randomised enemies and locations are designed to keep players on their feet, but there s too much unpredictability, too many variables. Take the sporadic enemy patrol routes. At one point in some sombre Victorian village I was trailing a posse of robots on the opposite bank of a winding river, sure they were leaving, when without warning one spun around and spotted me, alerting his gang. I thought robot brains were meant to be logical, not liberal.



Crouching behind a wall or barrel provides sanctuary, but on the downside you re, well, looking at a wall or barrel. While there are welcome stealth aids - a meter to show how visible you are, a lean button, and robots with bright red laser eyes to designate their sightlines - the best technique always boils down to crawling through grass like a tortoise, and this makes for a slow, slow game.

The act of scavenging isn t enjoyable, either. Because you can t enter houses, you ll simply walk up to the door and hit F, treating it as less like accommodation and more like one big crate. In a game all about atmosphere, these churches, sheds, barns and factories sit like inert Lego blocks on the landscape. They don t feel functionally attuned to the world.

Survival elements, meanwhile, are an intrusion. If you don t eat pies and cheese to keep your vitality up, you ll drop dead. You can catch rabbits and cook them by igniting log piles with matches, adding a nice degree of crafting into proceedings, but levels don t invite you to live in them, to carve out an existence. This is a game in which you re perpetually trespassing on some angry farmer s land. You need to get in, find your magical macguffins, and get out.



Gags manage to mask some of Sir s flaws. Item descriptions raise a smile: the hatchet is good for splitting logarithms, while one village sign darkly advises us to D i e Slowly. Then there s the title screen option to change the game s name to Madam, You Are Being Hunted in the name of equality. Indeed, along with the darkly designed world, humour is Sir s biggest draw, from the imaginative assortment of dapper robots to the fact you can actually eat marmalade and drink flasks of tea - surely a videogame first.

But Sir needed more than a strong cuppa. It needed more items, more ways to experiment with enemies, and more to ease often unforgiving stealth.

War Thunder was already pretty war-y, what with its battling sky-tanks. Or "planes". Now, though, it's even war-ier, thanks to a new update that introduces ground-tanks. Or "tanks". The long-teased Ground Forces expansion has been released into open beta, giving a new altitude for players of the free-to-play combat game to fight across. Naturally, the launch trailer features lots of angry metal boxes rolling across some fields.



To add tanks to your 'hanger' (read: tank shed), go to the Research menu's Army tab and buy them in the usual way.

You can see the full patch notes for update 1.41 below.


Ground forces are now available for all players in open beta test (Ground Forces progress achieved by players in the CBT will be wiped);
New planes, which include the MiG-3 armed with cannons, the I-185 reference model, navy version of the B-25 - the PBJ-1 in two modifications and two new jet-powered Me-262 in the German tree, Griffon powered Spitfire fighters for Britain;
Cockpit for all versions of the Ki-45 heavy fighter;
Optimization of shadows and update of visual effects;
Updated ammunition and ballistics.

The time is now. It is the age when the Autobot and Decepticon war comes to browsers across the globe. To celebrate the summer launch of Transformers Universe the new free-to-play robo-battler we ve teamed up with Jagex to offer PC Gamer readers a special offer ahead of the worldwide roll-out.

Sign up to Transformers Universe and, upon the game s release, you ll be awarded a free playable warrior PLUS an exclusive, not-available-anywhere-else PC Gamer warrior re-spray.

You can sign up using this link: https://www.transformersuniverse.com/pcgamer-offer

To take advantage of this limited-time offer, players need to sign up before Monday 19th May 2014. Get a sneak peak of the action in the latest trailer below.

If Hearthstone has done anything, it's proven that you can make a compelling game about sheep. Now, a new collaboration between Wallace & Gromit creators Aardman and the UK's Nominet Trust is hoping to give the world more sheep-shaped digital adventure; hopefully without the corresponding white-hot hatred of jerk mages. Shaun s Game Academy is their new initiative, and it's designed to help kids get into coding.

Part of it is a competition, in which entrants can use the characters, places and props from Aardman's Shaun the Sheep. More importantly, the Academy's website contains a series of modules, designed to teach young coders how to use M.I.T.'s Scratch platform.

Technically, the site's accompanying trailer is pitched below my age bracket. At the same time, it's backed by Jumper from the Castle Crashers soundtrack, and it turns out that's enough to keep me engrossed throughout.



"Children are eager to make their own projects online, but many don t have the opportunity to do so," said Nominet CEO Annika Small in a press release. "Combining digital making with young people s everyday interests is a great way to create digital activities that are relevant and fun. This is why we are really excited by this partnership with Aardman Animations and the launch of Shaun s Games Academy."

If you know (or are) a young person interested in game design, it could be worth taking a look. The deadline for competition entries is September, 2014, and prizes include a tour of the Aardman studios.

Bohemia Interactive are 15 years old. And while I forgot to get them a present, they're going to give you one: a free weekend trial of Arma 3, and a free copy of ARMA: Cold War. In addition, the entirety of the Bohemia catalogue is now on sale on Steam. If you're a fan of military simulations or of underwater puzzle games about secret agent fish it's going to be a weekend to remember.

The Arma 3 weekend trial gives you full access to the game, including multiplayer, scenarios, and the newly completed campaign, until Sunday, 1pm PDT (9pm BST). To install the game, head over to the Steam page, and track down the tiny link hidden inside the words "click here to install".

For Arma: Cold War, the game previously known as Operation Flashpoint, you can get it free forever, as long as you claim it over this weekend. Just head onto its Steam page and click the big 'Play Game' button.

To see the full sale event, head to the Bohemia Anniversary sale page.

There probably isn t much demand for video games starring North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, but here s one anyway. Entitled Glorious Leader!, the sidescrolling shooter is set in Pyongyang during a United States military intervention. As Jong Un, you will shoot your way through hordes of Americans across seven retro-themed levels. The game will feature Dennis Rodman and unicorns. How could it possibly disappoint?
It s fairly tongue-in-cheek of course, and early signs point to a game which perhaps aims to subvert the latent patriotism contained in the narratives of the big blockbuster shooters. Jeff Miller, founder of studio Moneyhorse, ensured ABC News this week that his sympathies do not lay with the notoriously oppressive regime, but the game will likely attract criticism for its cutesy cartoon depiction of a very real, and very severe problem. Whether Moneyhorse can get the tone right is probably a more interesting question than the quality of the gameplay itself.
It s the most unique place on earth far as I can tell, and I didn t know how to process my thoughts on the country, on what they re doing wrong, on what the international community is doing in response to it. I thought making a game would help me figure out how to have a voice on it," Miller said.
Glorious Leader! will release for PC in November. Check out the trailer below.