2014 has brought us a tiny surplus of indie, turn-based strategy games. And happily, they ve all been thematically and mechanically different: The Banner Saga (an elegant Viking epic), Xenonauts (a spiritual sequel to old X-COM), Dead State (a Fallout-like zombie sandbox in Early Access). Halfway is less complex and sprawling than these games, which ends up as both a shortcoming and an asset.

Halfway leans on sci-fi tropes to start its story. Passengers of a massive spaceship awake from cryosleep to find their vessel, the Goliath, overrun with evil cyborgs and out of control, hyper-jumping to a random spot every few hours. You control the surviving crewmembers, fighting your way deck to deck in a couple dozen combat missions.



Structurally, Halfway reminds me of a 16-bit JRPG: missions are represented as connected dots on a map of the ship, and you complete them one by one, with a handful of optional missions along the way. Between combat, you retreat to a hub to equip new gear, talk with your party, and select who you d like to send on the next mission. This is the unbroken rhythm of Halfway: combat, plot progression, gear management, repeat. By the time I collected all eight characters, the game s simplicity was wearing thin.

That simplicity extends to Halfway s combat, for better and worse. Your party characters don t have classes, so they re mostly defined by what weapon and armor you give them, but it feels symmetrical with the scale of the game that characters have just a couple stats and just one active ability each. I liked the natural advantages that presented themselves through this system, and that I could choose which characters to invest in along the way. Linda can heal herself without a medkit every few turns, which makes her a natural tank, so I spent every health stimpack that I found on her to increase her maximum HP. The active ability of Morten guarantees a hit from any range, so I equipped him with my best shotgun, giving him the flexibility of sniping with it every few rounds.



Halfway doesn t have difficulty settings or permadeath, but it does achieve that XCOM experience of narrow victory: plenty of my rounds hung on a 62-percent sniper shot connecting with its target. At the same time, I was frustrated by the a few moments when difficulty arose purely as a result of the equipment decisions I d made or my party composition: two missions surrounded my team with six or seven snipers that couldn t be reached through movement, and I only had two long-range weapons to fend them off with. In situations like these, strategy mattered less than how many health kits I was willing to spend.

What wore on me most throughout Halfway was how unvaried and uncreative the game s enemies are. They re essentially the same from beginning to end, silent robot-zombies that move, shoot, and melee. Worst are the turrets, boring punching bags that soak up damage and grenades and are very overused throughout the campaign. I didn t enjoy using bottlenecks to exploit the AI of these enemies, either, which occasionally let me kill them one at a time on my own terms. Mechanically, there just isn t a lot happening here: something like a fragile, fast-moving suicide-bomber enemy, or an enemy that destroys cover, would ve shaken me out of my tactical comfort zone.



Halfway s narrow design makes it easy to pick up for the dozen hours it takes to complete, and it feels appropriately priced at $13. But compared to XCOM or Xenonauts, it s more akin to sci-fi checkers than an intricate strategy game. For anyone daunted by the massive campaigns of XCOM or Xenonauts, Halfway presents a straightforward alternative.

Details
Price: $13 / 10
Release date: July 22, 2014
Publisher: Chucklefish
Developer: Robotality
Multiplayer: None
Link: http://robotality.com/blog/

For a breakdown of our review brackets and methodology, check out the PC Gamer reviews policy.

Ubisoft has released another update for the PC version of Watch Dogs that should "reduce" stuttering during gameplay, particularly at higher texture settings, and promised that more such fixes are still in the works.

Watch Dogs has suffered from visual stutters of varying intensity since the day it launched, even on high-end video cards. Today's update should address the problem, at least in part, although Ubisoft warned that "some players might still experience some stuttering while playing with 'Ultra Textures' settings on."

"We optimized some of the performance issues that were causing some users to experience high amounts of stuttering while playing Watch_Dogs. Instances of stuttering during gameplay should now be reduced, especially when using 'High Textures'," Ubisoft Community Manager Nik_CtOS wrote. "We ll keep updating you as more fixes for stuttering are currently being worked on."

The update also improves NAT-type error messages, improves support for PCs with multiple network interfaces and fixes a few specific gameplay bugs and crashes.

Based on the response to the post, not everyone is having success with the patch, but some users are reporting significant improvements. The one consistency seems to be, as Ubisoft indicated, that the improvement is most pronounced when using "high" texture settings, while "Ultra" textures seem to be only marginally influenced. Disappointing for gamers with bleeding-edge video cards, perhaps, but it's a start.

In the world of the future the world of Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare one private military corporation maintains the largest standing army in the world. It is beholden to no government; it suffers no check to its power. A power it wields judiciously in an endless, altruistic quest to uplift humanity and lead it into a better, more prosperous future for all. Right?

Well, no. This may come as a shock but it turns out that when you give Kevin Spacey access to walking tanks, flying suits of armor and malleable international leadership, he tends to use them in rather self-serving ways. The corrupting influence of power? Shocking! And he always seems like such a nice, level-headed guy in the movies, too.

Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare comes out on November 4.

Firefall, the free-to-play MMO shooter, is now available. As per PC Gamer's reviews policy, MMOs aren't scored until our reviewer has spent time with the public release. Here, then, is a review-in-progress, charting Phil's initial impressions with the game.

Things get off to a bad start when, upon loading into the game, I recoil in horror at what my eyeballs are seeing. I'll cover Firefall's graphics later, but the tutorial map is perhaps the worst possible introduction to its aesthetic. The textures are blurry, the environments murky, and the characters flat and cartoonish. Compared to this year's other MMO releases, there's none of the vibrancy or charm of Wildstar, and none of the relatively higher-res textures of the otherwise visually bland (and oppressively foggy) TESO.

I head into the video settings. Everything is already set to "Ultra High". Oh dear.

During an introductory meander, I'm shown the game's range of battleframes. These are the jetpack-sporting mech suits that function as the player's class. There's a standard selection of types: medic, tank, DPS, sniper and engineer, and, at the basic level, each does what you'd expect. Initially, I pick the Assault, a mid-range DPS with a plasma cannon. To its credit, Firefall openly allows for class experimentation. It's not your character that levels up, but their individual battleframes. Trying out a new class is as easy as finding a Battleframe Station and switching the loadout starting back at level one for each new frame, but retaining any progression on those previously used.



With my class picked, I walk up some stairs to find a couple of dropships. Nothing happens. At the other end of the launch pad is what looks like a new area, but an invisible wall stops me from reaching it. Eventually, two more players arrive and appear to be equally confused. We shoot ineffectually at some scenery, but it doesn't help. The next section has failed to load. I quit out, and, on reloading, get kicked back to the start of the tutorial. This time, upon completion, I'm successfully queued into the mission instance.

Much of my time in Firefall so far has been about trying to recover from these initial disappointments. And from a more persistent issue: I'm not wild about the game's combat. It's a direct attack system that doesn't use auto-targeting, but it still feels awkwardly placed between MMO and shooter. The biggest problem is the feel of the weapons. They lack punch something I attribute to the way the enemies react when hit (or rather, don't). When killed, the bugs I've been fighting will gib in a satisfyingly squishy way. But, other than for that final blow, they have no response to being tagged by the mini-explosions of my plasma bursts. Sure, they lose a chunk of health, but in a shooter I want firefights to offer more than a mathematical impact.

The most egregious example of this comes much later in my initial session. I'm fighting a mission boss who has a couple of levels over my assault frame. As such, it's a long fight my attacks only taking off a fraction of his health bar. It should be a tense battle for survival, but really, I'm just strafing his slow rocket attacks while spamming plasma fire in his direction. With every hit, his health goes down, and a number indicates how much damage I do. Other than that, though, he's entirely unconcerned by the incoming damage.



None of which is to say there aren't things about Firefall I like. Rather, these issues sour its better moments. From what I've played so far, it seems like a problematic game that, in the right circumstances, can offer moments of frantic gunplay. At times, the sheer variety and number of enemies and the mobility offered by each battleframe's jetpack distract from the weaknesses of combat. It's at its best during hoard mode style defence missions, which, perhaps fortuitously, is what many of its activities involve.

After the tutorial, the first major zone is New Eden. It's here I become familiar with the structure of Firefall. It's also here I get to re-evaluate its look. Up close, Firefall is not a pretty game a problematic fact given that it's played primarily in first-person view. But there is a strong setting. The opening area of Copacabana is bright, vibrant, and filled with weird and colourful coral reefs. At night, it looks bland and uninspired, but during the day, it's actually quite fetching.

As I travel through New Eden, I'm introduced to the various activities the game has to offer. Campaign missions unlock at specific levels, and focus on the war against the Chosen the mysterious humanoids that mysteriously emerge from the mysterious "Melding", a purple death-cloud that (mysteriously) covers huge swathes of the planet. Back in the open world, you can accept missions from the job board, find dynamic events, or try your hand at "Thumping".



This latter option is tied to resource collection, and offers some of the game's most entertaining battles. At any point in the world, you can use a "Scan Hammer" to check nearby resources. Find a good vein, and you call down your Thumper, which crashes to the ground and starts pounding at the earth. You job along with that of any player in the vicinity is to defend the Thumper from waves of enemies until it finishes its collection, at which point anyone who takes part is rewarded with the resources it collects. It's an enjoyable mission type that does a good job at attracting nearby players.

The other activities are less consistently engaging. Job board missions are mostly tasks undertaken for the local populace usually involving clearing out an area or rescuing a person. They're fine, and occasionally inventive, but do require you to listen to the constant chatter of flat, disinterested voice actors. There's padding, too. At one point, I'm asked to make my way out north to meet up with the mission giver. Once I arrive, she asks me to go back to the town I was already in.

Finally, there are dynamic events, which aren't as grand as they sound. They're mini-missions that appear on your map, usually involving rescuing data of a crashed vehicle or Thumper. Again, it's primarily a defence mission, but here the small scale means less reward. They're fine as a stopgap on the way to the next mission proper, but rarely worth the effort of tracking down.

Press 'E' to Distraught Wife.

As I approach level ten in my main battleframe, I'm being reasonably engaged by the world and what it offers. Right now, I'm mostly mainlining job board missions interspersed with the odd Thump as and when the resources make it worthwhile. At the same time, I'm desperately hoping there's more variety down the line.

Head here for the second part of my Firefall review in progress.

Stained developer RealAxis Software has decided not to distribute Steam keys to people who purchased last year's Indie Royale Debut 3 bundle, despite earlier promises to do so. In a message posted on the Steam forums, RealAxis said the game isn't selling and the studio is probably doomed, and encouraged fans to buy it again instead of expecting a Steam key from a cheap bundle.

The Indie Royale Debut 3 bundle launched last summer with a selection of five games, including the side-scrolling action-platformer Stained, that were all in the midst of the Steam Greenlight process. The games were all available through Desura and while nothing was carved in stone, the site noted that "developers have almost always provided Steam keys for Indie Royale games that have subsequently been greenlit and then appeared on Steam."

That appeared to be the case with Stained, as RealAxis said as recently as July 16 that it would distribute Steam keys directly to Indie Royale buyers via email. But those keys were apparently never sent, and in a follow-up message posted on Sunday, RealAxis announced that they aren't going to be.

"This may come as a shock to you guys, but we have decided not to distribute the keys any more to the IR bundle purchaser. The game is not selling at all and there is no hope. I think we are already doomed so we are abandoning the process of distributing the keys," the studio wrote in slightly rough-hewn English. "We will continue to do what is required to make the living and provide support to game related questions twice a week. If you really love this game you should consider buying it on steam else I think you already had your share of enjoyment when you purchased the game via IR-Bundle for 50 cent."

The message states that there's "no need to send any emails," presumably to either inquire or complain about the situation, and posted a brief FAQ addressing some of the more obvious questions. It says the studio has earned about $3000 from the game in total, including 300 copies that sold on Steam during the first week of release, but since then, sales have apparently trickled off to nothing.

Yet while the promised Steam keys won't be delivered, RealAxis isn't actually abandoning the game: The intent seems to be to convince people who enjoyed Stained in the Indie Royale bundle to purchase it again at full price.

"We will support stained for as long as it takes. There is this level creation scripts that runs in blender, so I also want that script to be out and into the hands of the game owner," the FAQ states. "Game will be updated on desura with all latest fixes, in a coming month and all future updates will also come to desura build. So those user can enjoy the game directly from there."

As for the possible okay, virtually certain angry backlash from people expecting Steam keys, the studio said it can't make things much worse. "I think we already have a reason to regret," it wrote. "And trust me with just 300 copies sold and sale is complete dry we are already rotting into the hell."

Stained emerged from Greenlight earlier this month and is now available on Steam for $8 $2 less than the Desura price.

To answer the most important question that surrounds any CGI trailer for the Assassin's Creed series: the song is The Golden Age by Woodkid. As for the video, it via the medium of acrobatics and violence introduces a new character: Elise. Described jointly as "an independent young noblewoman" and a "fiery Templar", she's rescued by Arno, Assassin's Creed Unity's lead character, for purposes unknown.

"Watch Arno in this new cinematic trailer," suggests the trailer's description, "while he is in race against the clock to save a Templar! Who is she? How would our new Master Assassin manage his cornelian dilemma?" Another question: is her reveal a response to the controversy and mixed messages surrounding ACU's lack of women as playable characters? And are you really going with "fiery"?

Other than Elise, there's not too much to be learned: it's a pretty unrepresentative and unrepresentatively pretty slice of the game's world. And let's not forget that this is a world we've already seen through actual game footage.

Last week I wrote about the problem with survival games. Some of you loved the idea of the hypothetical game I described which sidelines monsters and overt danger for a more atmospheric battle against the elements and some of you thought I was mental. After the article was published I was tweeted by Hinterland Games creative director Raphael van Lierop, who said that their game, The Long Dark, is exactly what I m looking for. So, of course, I had to try it.

You play as Will Mackenzie, a 43 year-old bush pilot whose plane crashes in a remote wilderness after a mysterious geomagnetic disaster . The finished game will feature an episodic story that reveals more about this event, but the alpha build I m playing is dedicated entirely to what Hinterland call the survival sandbox. Here the only goal is to stay alive for as long as possible, which is easier said than done in the harsh frozen landscape they ve created. I spent a good chunk of today playing The Long Dark, and I think it might be the closest anyone s ever come to making my dream survival game.



I start a new game and find myself gazing across a sea of trees. I m immediately struck by the art style, which looks like concept art come to life. It s remarkable how much atmosphere they ve managed to squeeze out of those stylised, hand-painted textures. Snow swirls in the wind as I make my way down a hill into a forest. It s a stark, barren landscape, and I feel like I m being swallowed by it. Mackenzie is played by Mark Meer, voice of Commander Shepard in the Mass Effect series, and regularly vocalises how he feels. My stomach feels like an empty pit. he ll grumble if he s hungry. That smarts, but I ll be fine. he says if you sustain a minor injury. It s a nice, immersive touch.

As I wander through the forest, I notice words appearing at the bottom-right of the screen: freezing, starving, dehydrated. I haven t found anything useful yet; just a few skittish deer that I have no hope of hunting. Night is falling and I m about to give in and start a new game, but then I see something in the distance: a wisp of smoke. I trudge through the snow towards it, revealing the silhouette of a cabin. Relief washes over me as I open the door. There are supplies scattered around: bandages, matches, a lamp, canned food. I light the wood burner and it casts a warm glow over the room, which raises my temperature when I crouch next to it. Against all odds, I ve survived the first night.

Or so I thought. I didn t pay attention to my status accessed with TAB and went to bed on an empty stomach, dying of starvation in my sleep. Game over. Even for a survival game, The Long Dark is merciless. Mackenzie s comments give you a general overview of your condition, but you ll have to keep a close eye on your hunger, thirst, fatigue, and temperature meters to effectively manage them. I love how a lot of the tiresome chores that usually define survival games, like endlessly hitting trees to collect wood, can be automated. I can instruct Mackenzie to spend a set amount of hours foraging for wood, and the game will tell me beforehand how many calories this will burn. If I have an axe I ll have a better chance of finding something, but without one there s a good chance I ll fail and find nothing.



Everything you do burns calories, and the more physically demanding the task, the more you ll burn. To keep them topped up you ll have to find food. One of the easiest ways to do this early in the game is to scavenge venison from deer carcasses and cook it on a fire but there s always the risk of contracting food poisoning. You can also find candy bars, soda, and other packaged food in buildings by rifling through drawers and cupboards. The wilderness in The Long Dark is not a vast, empty, procedurally generated expanse of countryside: it s been hand-designed, and there are a lot of interesting locations to discover, including an abandoned logging camp and a hydroelectric dam.

Let s take a moment to talk about atmosphere, which is something The Long Dark absolutely nails. In my second attempt I find myself crouching by a fire I ve built in the broken shell of an old cabin. It s warm enough, even though it s full of holes, and I m well fed, but a blizzard has rolled in, trapping me inside. As the fire crackles I hear the wind roar. Nearby is the frozen corpse of some unfortunate soul who succumbed to the wilderness before me. Occasionally I hear the howl of a wolf, which sounds too close for comfort. The light from the fire dances around the shelter the dynamic lighting effects, incidentally, are really impressive and an impenetrable wall of snow surrounds me on all sides. It s a perfect, and totally unscripted, little moment. An evocative marriage of image, sound, and circumstance that immediately sells the game to me. This is what survival should feel like.



I place my bedroll next to the fire and sleep through the night. The blizzard is gone by morning, and I emerge once again into the wilderness. I explore some more, stumbling upon a derailed train whose payload of logs has spilled over. The environment is always eager to tell stories, and I get a distinct sense that something has gone horribly wrong with the world. Then I encounter my first wolf. I ve seen a few in the distance before, and managed to avoid them, but this one catches me unaware as I m busy scavenging meat from a dead animal. It leaps at me and the game instructs me to hammer the left mouse button to build up my strength, then press the right to strike. But my empty belly means I can t work up the strength, and the beast mauls me to death. Game over, again. From what I ve played, animal attacks in The Long Dark are, thankfully, incredibly rare. You won t be constantly attacked by wolves as you explore, which would have ruined that carefully crafted atmosphere.

There are some things I don t like. Not being able to build fires indoors makes sense in small cabins and the like, but when I had to leave the cover of a large, high-ceilinged generator room in the hydroelectric dam to light one and warm up, the illusion was shattered. Not being able to save is frustrating too, but I suspect the final game will have the option. This is an alpha, after all, but one that feels like it s on its way to becoming a complete game, rather than the glorified tech demo so many developers are releasing these days. Overall, I m really impressed with what I ve played so far. With a focus on atmosphere and environmental survival, it stands out in an increasingly crowded genre, and I can t wait to explore more of this deadly, snowbound wilderness.

The new Unreal Tournament keeps surprising me with how far along in development it is. Recently, for instance, we saw concept art that was, in fact, a fully rendered level. Now, we get to see the game's team deathmatch mode being played. No big deal, right? We've seen nu-UT deathmatch before. Only this time, the team say they've got all weapons working in the game.

If I had one wish... well, it would be to get my hands on the game to test its feel in comparison to previous UTs. If I had another, though, it would be for Epic to install Fraps or similar, so we could finally see some direct-capture footage.

Want more info? For an insight into this new Unreal Tournament's crowdsourced development plan, check out our Epic interview.

Here's something for every MMO player who likes to vacuum up quests without reading the mission text: a 40 minute video summarising the bulk of Warcraft's story. It covers the series' main timeline, from events depicted in the old RTS games, to the evolving lore of World of Warcraft. It's the perfect guide if you want to catch up ahead of Warlords of Draenor, or if you just want to know why you beat up a demon guy that one time.

The video was created by "Nobbel87", and is the latest in a full and lengthy series detailing Warcraft's lore.

The one thing it doesn't explain? Why Blizzard were showing off bra-wearing cow-people.

Minor Key Games, developers of Lovecraftian procedural stealth roguelike Eldritch, are making another game. In and of itself, that's not exactly news I've found that game developers will often make more than one but when that game is a "political thriller stealth" title featuring heavy use of the word 'neon', they have succeeded in grabbing my attention. Neon Struct formerly known by its much cooler, much less marketable title Die Augen der Welt ditches procedural generation for handmade levels, like what people used to make before they put their faith in the goddamned machines.

There aren't too many details floating around right now, but Minor Key AKA brothers David and J. Kyle Pittman are hoping for Neon Struct to be finished early next year. As for what the game entails, we can expect around 25 stealthy, hacky "handcrafted" levels. Here's a paragraph from the devlog that had me nodding more emphatically than usual:

"NEON STRUCT is an adventure story, set in an alternate history world with a deliberately 1980s sci-fi vibe. ( 2015 as envisioned in 1985 was how I described it at inception.) It has something to say, but it needs to be entertaining as well. It does not need to take itself too seriously, but it does need to depict the subject matter in an internally consistent way. And because it s a video game, it has to harmonize with the gamut of player behavior."

As Rock, Paper, Shotgun note Thanks RPS! a couple of levels, including a sewer one, were recently cut from the game, in part because it was "a grimy sewer level of the kind we ve seen in hundreds of games before". So that's encouraging. I've one handy rule when it comes to sewer levels: unless your game stars some manner of ninja turtle, cut it out.

Here's another image. I could really go for some noodles right about now.