If you're a long-term Football Manager player, you likely believe yourself to be a fully qualified managerial master. At the same time, a nagging part of your brain is probably reminding you that it's all fiction, that you haven't taken Accrington Stanley to League Cup success, and that, if given the chance in real life, everybody would point and laugh at you.

Maybe it's time to silence that pessimistic voice, because the game's extensive player database has been deemed accurate enough for real-world use. Sports Interactive have today announced a partnership with performance analysis provider Prozone Sports that will put the FM database at the disposal of real-world clubs and scouts.

I'd always half assumed that, when FM rated a player with a "Flair" of 9, it was at best an educated guess and at worst decided by a dartboard. Apparently there's more to it than that.

"For years we ve heard stories of real-life managers and scouts using our data to help with the recruitment process," says Miles Jacobson, SI's studio director. "From now on, it s official... real managers around the world will be finding and comparing players using data and a search system that will be very familiar to players of Football Manager.

"The information gathered by our network of more than 1,300 scouts around the world, combined with Prozone s amazing performance data, makes this an invaluable tool for any football club that takes player recruitment seriously."

None of which has any major impact on the game, but it's still a neat coup for the series. It means that, when you do find title success with Plymouth Argyle, you can be sure that you did so with an accurate reading of how good Curtis Nelson is at throw-ins.

SI have recently announced the inevitable Football Manager 2015. It will be out in November.

Sleeping Dogs is a game about an undercover Hong Kong cop, whose conflicted sense of loyalty causes him to grab random civilians and smash their faces repeatedly and psychotically into a pork bun stand. At least, that's how I played it. The combination of misplaced loyalty and random violence clearly resonated with others, too, as Square Enix have announced a "Definitive Edition", due out this October. It will not only package up all 24 bits of DLC, but also upgrade the graphics.

"We listened to the fans," sayeth senior producer Dan Sochan in a press release. "We tuned gameplay, we added to the ambience of Hong Kong, increased audio fidelity and pushed the visuals further than we could on the previous generation of consoles."

Yes, consoles. As seen with the Metros Redux, publishers are smitten with the idea of re-releasing upgraded versions of recent titles for current generation consoles. In an environment with no backwards compatibility, it sort of makes sense. On PC? Less so. Sleeping Dogs was released in 2012. It still looks pretty good on our platform.

While it will become the obvious choice for those who don't yet own the original, it's hard to imagine what price would tempt existing owners. In other words, exactly the same problem that 4A are currently facing with Metro Redux.

It's a strange situation. What bothers me is that, between pre-order bonuses and "Definitive"-style special editions, those who buy games on or around the actual release date are increasingly being punished for that decision. Bundled DLC was one thing, but an entire polish and upgrade of a game. That's quite a big improvement to miss out on. That said, maybe the chance to see increased fidelity pork bun crime will ultimately prove irresistible.

Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Edition is out 10 October, on PC, PS4 and Xbox.

Amidst a flock of startled doves I dive left, my dual pistols blazing, and take down one enemy as another evades me by back-flipping off a wall. As I empty both clips, my dive becomes a prolonged sideways slide which takes me right off the roof of the skyscraper. I'm not alone: another thug sails over the ledge and joins me on my long plummet to the ground. While falling, I reload both guns and we trade fire all the way down to the street. Did I mention this happens in slow-motion? It's as if Jon Woo directed The Matrix when you play Double Action Boogaloo, a multiplayer mod for Half-Life 2.

Whoah.

What I described isn't some rare occurrence in Double Action Boogaloo. It happens roughly every ten seconds or so, because the mod is built on the elements required for such exciting, cinematic shenanigans: jumping, diving, sliding, flipping, running and gunning, and of course, slow-motion. Throw in some of Jon Woo's flapping doves and a few trench coats from The Matrix, and you've got a frenetic multiplayer action game consisting of nothing of movie trailer moments.

Fight ain't over til someone hits the ground.

Choose a player model of the three provided: Diesel, a biker, Vice, a hard-boiled detective, and Eightball, a somewhat familiar-looking gambler. Then, choose your specialty. The Marksman has better aim, reduced recoil, and faster reloading. The Bouncer punches faster and does more damage with his fists. The Athlete runs faster, dives farther, and slides longer (three things you will be doing a lot of). You can also pick a class that carries more grenades, and one that increases your slow-motion powers.

Startled doves included.

It's not just about shooting people, of course, it's about shooting people while doing awesomely acrobatic things. Shooting someone while diving is cool. Shooting someone and killing them while diving is cooler. Shooting someone in the head, thus killing them, while diving, is cooler still. The game rewards you for your coolness with style points that allow you to boost the skills of whichever specialty you've chosen. Gain enough points and you can activate bullet-time powers.

One sliding, two diving: the guy standing doesn't stand a chance.

Slow-motion doesn't seem like it would work in multiplayer. I mean, say I slow down the action. Doesn't the action slow down for everyone else, too? Well, yeah. Doesn't that mean anyone can enjoy my slow-motion powers at the same time I'm enjoying them? Well, yeah. That's why it's so cool! You have a slight advantage in that you choose when to activate it, but otherwise, it's like a gift to the entire server as everyone enters bullet-time and enjoys a cinematic shootout at the same time.

The kill-cam captures your finest moments.

There are a few maps to play, and they all feel perfectly appropriate for awesome movie-style shootouts. There's a subway station, complete with rushing commuter trains, perfect for leaping out of the way just in time to avoid being splattered. Also perfect for not leaping out of the way in time and being splattered. There's a couple of industrial maps as well, and of course, the best one, the rooftop skyscraper map, allowing for extended leaps through the air and long slides off of ledges, plus the awesome plummeting gunfights down to street level. Nicely, if you happen to fall off a roof alone, you don't have to fall all the way to the bottom twiddling your thumbs: a simple keypress will let you respawn topside.

Dive + headshot = Dive Kill. That's my kinda equation.

There are some objectives, sometimes, among all the high-octane carnage. Players may be targeted if they're doing well, letting everyone know where they are on the map so they can be hunted down. One player may be carrying a briefcase of cash, and sometimes a race will begin, leading players through several checkpoints. Mostly, though, this is a game about diving and rolling and sliding and shooting, and even when objectives pop up, the action never really slows down or changes.

Dodge, Dip, Dive, Duck, and Dodge!

In case I haven't been clear, this mod is super fun, full of crazy stunts and non-stop action. There's a first-person mode, which works quite well, though you miss out on seeing all the crazy moves your character is doing. There's a handful of servers available, and at least a couple nearly-full games going on around the clock. Get in there, load your double-guns, and dive in.

Installation: There's a self-installer right here. You'll need Half-Life 2 on Steam, and it'll even check if you've got Source SDK Base 2013 Multiplayer installed, and if not, will download it for you. Once installed, just restart Steam and Double Action Boogaloo will appear in your library.

Wargaming.net has over 100 million players across their many games and platforms, the World of Tanks creator today announced. That is the end of the news portion of this news post. Now we get to celebrate the fact that Wargaming.net has rectified the crime of not having made a ridiculous World of Tanks CGI trailer for a while. In fact, the last one of note accompanied the game's 60 million player mark. This one might outdo even that.



Do you see what they did? It was all "yeah, tanks!" until the camera pulled back to reveal a conceptual realisation of a gaming device. But then that gaming device was itself revealed to be in a war-torn tank playground, and so it was all "yeah, tanks!" again. Subtext, innit?

Previously, on 'Wargaming makes a lavish CGI trailer for reasons': World of Warplanes, and World of Warships.

In the world of video games it's just one outrage after another until you just wish Flanders was dead. This time people are upset about the pricing for 4A Games' forthcoming Metro Redux package, which includes both Metro: 2033 and Metro: Last Light. The former is a huge overhaul of the 2010 original, while the latter doesn't differ greatly from the 2013 shooter, though all DLC is bundled.

Of course, people who already own both games aren't happy that they'll need to pay again, despite 4A Games offering a 50 per cent discount to those who have either game in their Steam library. The controversy got so heated in the Steam discussion forums that it prompted a "blindsided" 4A Games to release a (rather lengthy) statement justifying the price.

"Almost the entire team of around 80 people at 4A Games will have been working on the Metro Redux titles for almost a year by the time we release next month," the statement read. "It has been a substantial project for the studio, with three main elements."

The studio went on to list the substantial new features, including engine additions such as global illumination and terrain tessellation, among other tweaks. Metro: Last Light will get some "minor" new features like a Check Watch and Check Inventory, as well as a whole new game mode. Finally, transferring Metro 2033 to the new engine, along with the new content and assets, was no small feat.

"We think the 50% discount is more than fair for the amount of work that has gone into this title," the statement continued. "It is a complete remake of the original game in the latest engine, that will offer a significantly different experience from the original throughout with improved graphics, performance and gameplay."

The studio's full statement is over on the Steam forum. A before and after trailer released last week, showing how the new edition will size up next to the old games.

Planet Minecraft's 'Head Into The Clouds' contest was drawn late last week, and the winners are typically spectacular. We looked at some of the most visually appealing entries a couple of weeks ago, and - lo and behold - one of them has managed to take out the top prize.

The contest required Minecraft players (or engineers) to build something on the Planet Minecraft 'Floating Island' map, with only a few limitations: no tampering with the basic structure of the map, and no texture packs.

BlockWorks' 'Aeternium - The Symphony of Dreams' took out the top spot, voted the best by both community members and staff from Planet Minecraft. The competition was quite tight however, with barely any votes separating the upper echelons of the leaderboard. Check out the top three entries below. If any take your fancy, you can download them on the Planet Minecraft website, where you'll also find the complete top 50.

1. Aeternium - The Symphony of Dreams



2. Hearthveil - Lost in Thought



3. A Lunar Dream

DICE continues its efforts to salvage Battlefield 4 with a new series of fixes, due to go live in September. The substantial update is borne of feedback received from the game's Community Test Environment, which launched in May exclusively for Battlefield Premium members. Its focus was meant to be the game's netcode, but a lot more has been addressed according to notes published on the Battlefield blog.

Several unspecified "improvements and tweaks" have been made to five game modes including Rush, Obliteration, Obliteration Competitive, Capture the Flag and Carrier Assault, while soldier movement has been changed so that it "closely matches" the movement in Battlefield 3. According to the update notes this change to movement will make it "easier to get away from undesirable firefights".

Other notable changes include a customisable HUD, changes to the Revive mechanic, vehicle and weapon balancing, as well as a change to visual recoil. Once work has been completed on this update, the team at DICE LA will turn their attention to the 'Teamplay Initiative', which will focus on improving the collaborative and objective-based facets of the game.

If you're yet to jump onboard with Battlefield 4 then EA is offering the game free for a week to Origin users. Meanwhile, Battlefield Hardline is currently in development at Visceral and will release some time next year.

Every Sunday, Tyler publishes a classic PC Gamer review from the '90s or early 2000s, with his context and commentary followed by the full, original text from the archived issue. More classic reviews here.

I'd forgotten that NOLF was actually called The Operative: No One Lives Forever. There may have been legal reasons for the title, but Monolith also said it wanted to avoid James Bond comparisons altogether it heard a lot of them after NOLF was revealed in 1999. That's also why it changed the main character to Cate Archer. According to an archived interview from 2000, the original protagonist was male.

Sometimes, what's revealed at E3 isn't what we get. And sometimes, that's for the best. Also, no one will ever call it "The Operative."
No One Lives Forever review
Hardly anybody does it better than Monolith does with this smart, cocky first-person spy thriller.

At some point over the last couple of years, first-person shooters stopped having fun. I mean, they were still fun to play, but the developers seemed to shift away from the wide-eyed wonder of first-person action and delve instead into dark, somber, ultra-realist melodramas straight out of those awful gun-strapped paperbacks.

No One Lives Forever is a welcome change: a swiftly paced, engaging adventure that cleverly mixes up gameplay styles. The plot is just like a nutty early Bond flick, the atmosphere is one of over-the-top Austin Powers Sixties grandeur, and the action shifts constantly from mode to mode as if you were playing a different game with each new mission. It s a ton of fun like an old episode of Mission: Impossible as re-imagined by John Woo. Err

You play as Cate Archer, a predictably glamorous junior agent in the employ of UNITY, a secret international spy organization dedicated, hilariously, to stopping megalomaniacs. After UNITY s ranks are thinned by a vicious assassin, she s given access to Santa s Workshop, the tools- n -toys bureau of UNITY in which field agents are outfitted with the very latest in wild weapons and secret gadgets. A super-agent at last, it s time for Cate to roar.



The first mission takes you to Morocco, where you have to guard the life of an ambassador. Here we get the first of a wide variety of gameplay modes: it s essentially a sniper game in this first sequence, as you pick off assassins from a hotel window and thwart the ambushes waiting for the ambassador as he moves through the level.

This is where we first see how No One Lives Forever benefits from the realistic settings made possible by the LithTech 2.5 engine. The urban environment of Morocco its city streets, the hotel, and the alleys interconnecting the map are all rendered with exacting detail. The hotel lobby is filled with stuff soda machines, potted plants, lounge chairs, throw rugs all of which adds a weight of texture that s incredibly convincing. This same look and feel extends to the game s other locales, which include Berlin, the German Alps, and a tropical island hideaway.

Each mission wields some devilishly varied action. In the Morocco stage alone, you ll move from a sniper nest to a more traditional alley-crawl to a motorcycle ride out to the coast, and finally (after a sweet Great Escape style fence jump) on foot to storm a compound. Before the game is over, you ll have escaped a crashing plane (a brilliant sequence you jump and free-fall to catch up with an enemy, then steal his parachute just in time for a full-on firefight in descent), leaped from a bridge onto a passing barge, scuba-dived to search a sunken freight ship, taken photos of secret files with a sunglasses-camera, and eventually made your way off-planet as a stowaway aboard a shuttle bound for an evil genius space station. That s all in one game, folks!



The value of all this variety can t be overstated. My biggest knock against almost any PC game these days is that it suffers from monotony. Soldier of Fortune, for example, is a ton of fun for the first couple of hours but as soon as its novelty violence wore off, I got thoroughly bored with it, and fast.

No One Lives Forever is aggressively new and different, mission by mission. You get an unbelievable amount of hardware to play around with, with each mission introducing new spy toys. The real-life weapons include a .38 revolver, an AK-47, an M79 grenade launcher, and even a Sportsman EX crossbow. Cate can stock up on dum-dum ammunition for increased destructive power, or phosphorous rounds when she needs to blast her way through total darkness. Sniper scopes, silencers, and laser targeting sights add to your killing power and keep the shooter portion of the game from ever getting boring. And as far as gadgets go, there are some real doozies. Exploding lipstick grenades, anyone? Or how about a briefcase that conceals a built-in RPG? A perfume bottle that sprays acid? Let s just say the elves in Santa s Workshop produce lots of fun toys.

Another huge appeal of the game, which again rewards mission by mission, is the fact that you can use multiple approaches successfully to complete objectives. Perhaps even more so than in the wonderful Deus Ex, No One Lives Forever convincingly allows you to use stealth to solve a lot of missions. Rather than just letting you slip behind the backs of guards, you need to worry about security cameras, attack dogs, and other hurdles to quiet progress. Or, if you say bollocks to the whole sneaky approach, you can get there even faster by going in guns a -blazing.

You won t be let down by the combat. The enemy AI is great: guards duck and cover, hide behind pillars, and scramble for their lives when caught out in the open. They react with far more plausibility than the bots in Quake III or Unreal Tournament.



After you solve the single-player campaign (about 25 hours of gameplay), you can explore the multiplayer modes. They re mainly variations on standard deathmatch and team battle, but NOLF offers one very cool team mode in which one side plays as UNITY, the other as H.A.R.M. (the uproarious name for the insidious, well-financed anarchist group that emerges as the villain of the single-player game). In the team mode, maps from the single-player game are reconfigured for new, multi-team mission objectives, and the teams engage in a frenetic Spy vs. Spy scenario to win the day.

The highest compliment I can pay No One Lives Forever is that it feels like I sampled five different games before reaching the end. And in an age where completing just one game can seem like a bit of a chore, this wildly varied adventure kept me hooked.

If there s any real flaw, it s that the whole mood of the game is wacky enough to maybe turn some people off. Supposedly secret documents are lying out on park benches for the world to see. Goons wander the streets as if they were crossing guards. H.A.R.M. agents include a bloated Scotsman named Magnus Armstrong and a bloated German barmaid named Inge (both replete with absurd accents). An air of silliness is pervasive. It wasn t enough to bother me much, and at times I really appreciated the antics. But compare them to moments when trusted allies get killed, and Cate is crying, and suddenly the mood is supposed to be intensely real. It s a bit of a muddle, and for a game that devotes so much time to story-advancing cinematics, the whole feel should have been more consistent.

But there s just no denying the fun factor of NOLF s many action sequences. You ll find a lot of gaming goodness packed into this box. Daniel Morris

Medievil was one of the highlights of the Playstation era for me: a Tim Burton/Danny Elfmanesque comedy romp through a medieval...sorry, a medievil fantasy world. It's one of those games I'd rather preserve the memory of rather than attempt to play again, but I'm thrilled to see it reborn, after a fashion, in Skyrim. Modder KorinOo is remaking the first four levels in the Construction Set, along with its undead hero Sir Daniel Fortescue and the various skellies and pumpkins he encounters along the way.



KorinOo elaborates that their intention is "NOT make it a 1 to 1 conversion of the original game in to Skyrim engine. I want to make all the levels/areas recognizable and close to original, but at the same time i want to update some archaic mechanics (combat, interactions, etc.) to modern standards. The main goal is to have this creepy graveyard feeling and then add some specific details to make it more Tim Burton style."

Only the first four, particularly graveyardy levels are going to be recreated in the mod, but I'd love to see a sequel one day that tackles the game's field and town areas, my favourite sections I can remember from the game. While it's a shame that Medieval's whimsical art style and bandy-legged Fortescue running animation don't seem to be represented in the mod, I'd say the trailer (above) does a pretty good job at capturing its atmosphere. Hopefully there'll be a suitable soundtrack to accompany it: Jeremy Soule's soaring Skyrim music would feel a little out of place here.

Here's a trailer for the original game:



Ta, Reddit.

Tom's rules: 1. Play as an obelisk. 2. Destroy all other gods. Rule 3. No blood magic.

In parts one and two, Balboa, my obelisk god, leader of the Lanka, successfully fended off challenges from other pretender gods in the west of the kingdom, and plans to turn his attentions south once those enemies have been defeated.

Lizards. Lizards everywhere. The cold-blooded bastards have crossed the southern river to strike at my exposed heartlands. Far to the west, my armies continue to decimate the gods that challenged me last month, but it ll take them ages to double back and help my central cities. This could mean trouble. Big, scaly trouble.

My people have also stopped believing in Balboa. The white candle icons that symbolise my god s sway in each province have almost all been replaced by the black candles that signify enemy influence. I m not surprised. My obelisk-god is tough, but lacks charisma. It s hard to make inspiring speeches when you don t have a face.

That s another job for his beleaguered minions. I have a couple of mage batteries researching new magic in a couple of forts. I instruct them to preach the word of god to bring back those white candles. I ve formed my demonic ape wizards into a PR agency. It s not a great use of their talents, but their task is vital. If you run out of dominion candles, your god dies and the game ends.

But I need the wizards to kill the lizards. The scaly C tis have laid siege to a central fort in a province called The Land of Our Lord. It ll be The Land of All Lizards if I don t do something fast, but there s no army nearby to help. There are 14 mages based there, however, and mages can summon monsters.



So it happened that the lizards laying siege to the barely-defended castle in The Land of Our Lord woke one morning to find the battlements manned by 120 ghosts, and a whole load of tigers, because for some reason one of my mages can do that, and if you re presented with the chance to summon tigers that s what you do.

I hoped that the ghost (and tiger) army would deter the C tis, but actually it starts an absurd arms race. The C tis army reinforces next turn with horned serpents and some magic casters. I respond by summoning some more ghosts, and a herd of elephants, because the guy who can summon tigers can also do that. The C tis bring in chariots ridden by lizards and giant scorpions. I respond by summoning more ghosts, and raise four mound kings to lead them. This has to stop.

I decide to break the siege and march my 200 troops out to meet their 220 in the field. If I win, I ll break up their main force and buy enough time to redeploy my armies. If I fail, on the other hand, I could be in serious trouble.

The battle result pops up, and it s bad. I watch the battle replay. I see my vanguard of wild tigers charge the central block of lizard spearmen. They fight for a few seconds and then immediately turn around and run off the field forever. My 14 mages sling spells from the back, turning C tis horned serpents into harmless frogs, but enemy s core infantry prove too resilient, and their chariots too quick. They lose more than 70 troops, but they rout my army and raise green banners at the fort of The Land of our Lord.

It s a severe blow. In the next few turns they use the castle as a base to take the surrounding provinces, carving a big hole in my empire. Another army of C tis has crossed the river to attack my western provinces, giving my armies there another front to consider. My biggest problem is my dwindling dominion. Faith in the lizards is strong, their black candles multiply across my territory. My cache of mages in the northwest are preaching furiously to keep two white candles alive in a couple of provinces. I need to redeploy my forces to protect the last wink of faith my people have in my god.



Desperate action is needed. I feed my obelisk some death gems to level up his ability to cast death magic, giving him access to a powerful global death spell called The Utterdark. This throws the entire world into an unnaturally thick darkness. Living creatures can t see more than a few feet in front of them, and spirits relentlessly attack from the shadows. As a result, income in every province for all factions is reduced by 90% and armies are less effective.

The spell affects everything that isn t dead or a demon. Luckily I have dozens of demon mages that can animate dead things and make them fight for me. I can tell from the size of the lizard armies that my economy is much weaker than theirs. I can t afford to recruit and maintain armies as big as the ones they field. Utterdark should curtail that advantage by making every nation poor and miserable. In the dark, my ghost warriors will thrive. I don t care about conquest now, I m just trying to bring about the apocalypse.

I feel the affects of the Utterdark quickly. My workers can t work in total darkness, and I no longer have the upkeep to maintain my large western armies. Troops start to leave. In the centre of my territory, near the fallen fort in The Land of Our Lord, I gather together the scattered remnants of the fort s defensive force and raise another ghost army. Then I race them north to protect my preaching mages and hopefully preserve the remains of my dominion.

Meanwhile, there are weird goings-on in the province of Watronia, which is situated near my last couple of dominion candles at Giant s Rest. Phantasmal beasts and phantasmal warriors materialise there and overrun local law enforcement. Then a magical storm strikes and the province is invaded by air elementals. Then toads rain from the sky, causing further unrest. I gave my dominion an aura of bad luck at the start of the game a deliberate handicap that enabled me to cast more powerful magic but this string of strange occurrences goes way beyond bad luck. I suspect another god is casting summons from a great distance, softening my borders up for invasion.

My capital city is surrounded. I can t reinforce, and my cumbersome obelisk god can t flee on account of having no legs. He has some wight bodyguards and a small army of mages protecting him, and one other faithful companion: that small dog that Balboa befriended in the first part of the diary.



A cursory glance tells me that my capital is doomed, and I can t afford to sacrifice the valuable troops there. With sadness, I order the wights and mages to leave my capital city and flee north to rendezvous with the rest of my mage army. I leave the dog behind, hoping it ll bring Balboa comfort as the lizardmen charge the walls. Even if my god dies, he ll be able to reincarnate as long as I still have white dominion candles in a province somewhere.

My army of ghosts and mages are fighting their corner well. As the turns pass, enemy nations attack with smaller forces. The global financial depression caused by the Utterdark is sapping every faction. Independent ghost armies attack from the shadows and overturn local militia in a couple of provinces. People are starving everywhere. The only meaningful currency now is death gems, which I can use to summon the undead. The map doesn t look any different for my powerful sorcery, but there s a sense that a terrible entropy has taken hold.

I realise I ve become an archetypal fantasy RPG villain. Somewhere in this world a level-one hero is being given a flaming sword and a quest to slay Balboa, bringer of the Utterdark. Frankly, I m disappointed in the lack of subtlety to my evil. Eternal darkness? Hordes of undead? I might as well put a flaming eyeball on a big spire, craft some rings of power and sit quietly, waiting for Frodo.

That s not a bad backup plan, considering my prospects. I can t see the movements of C tis s armies, but I know they re coming. Every turn the dominion candles in my remaining provinces go out one by one as the lizard s lizardy influence grows ever stronger. I need to flee eastward, and I ve spotted a good place for a last stand.

I m fighting for control of a huge disk world. I ve only ever fought in its northern half, which I once controlled almost entirely, but to the northwest there s a separate floating island made up of three provinces. It s disconnected from the mainland, but can be hopped via a single magic bridge. I could retreat from the world and give my long-suffering people a life of happiness on their own little mountain world.



My exodus begins. My armies leave Giant s Rest and charge through the cursed province of Watronia, still full of frogs and elementals. My ghosts break through and soon I find myself closing on the eastern rim.

It s a wasteland. I d expect to find lots of flags representing the dominion of other gods, but I see only the grey banners of independent armies. What happened to these people? Has the Utterdark sapped control from weaker factions once based here? I ve done something pretty bad to this world, but this does mean a convenient lack of opposition. I hop over to the floating island and wrest control from a small army of barbarians. There s a fort in the northeastern corner of the island. I need it to access its lab. You can t summon ghosts without a lab.

Finally, my capital city in the distant west falls to the scaly C tis. My god s form is broken and he vanishes from the corporeal world. Even worse, his dog is eaten. I take the island fort a few turns later, which is some consolation.

All but one of my mages preach intensively to give me some white candles in the surrounding provinces. I have my spare mage call god , which will rematerialise Balboa presumably in the last vestiges of his dominion, now relocated to a grey mountain island on the other side of the world.

That s a bad assumption, it turns out. Balboa successfully reincarnates, but not on the island. Instead he materialises outside the gates of his old capital city, like a shit Tardis. I imagine Balboa and the C tis commanders regarding each other with angry surprise for a few moments before the attack order is given. An army of 139 C tis, made up of lizards, ogres, shades and great lions, rush out of the city to grind my god into dust once more. The obelisk zaps six ogres to death before he goes down, avenging his faithful mutt.



To get my god back I m going to have to go back where I came from with a huge army, and somehow repel the influence of the C tis at home. I m shooting the moon, but my god s death has dispelled the Utterdark, which means other provinces will soon be able to recruit armies again. I need an advantage, something that my hundred or so death gems won t give me.

I remember that I still have blood-slaves. I ve been unwillingly collecting them since the start, unable to destroy my empire s blood-slave dungeons. Now I have 325 blood-slaves locked up somewhere. I ve sort of made a rule about not using them under any circumstances because of ritual sacrifice being a bit immoral. However, I have plunged the entire world into a hellish darkness since then, which constitutes a significant moral slippage. What the hell. As Anakin Skywalker said after slaying Mace Windu, in for a penny, in for a pound.

I sacrifice every blood slave, and spend every death gem. I raise the biggest army I ve ever fielded. I have 404 troops, consisting of bane lords with swords that wither the flesh of living enemies, mound kings riding skeletal steeds, black winged shade beasts and hosts of ganas ghosts. They charge the mainland and encounter an army belonging to my old foe, Mictlan. The enemy is crushed completely, but it s too late. The march of C tis eastward has overwhelmed me with its influence. My last dominion candle in my mountain fortress flickers and dies, and Balboa s spirit vanishes into the maelstrom of unbeing. I am defeated.

It was all going so well, before the lizards. Now Balboa has been relegated to a scary story the C tis will use to frighten their children. In the tropical heat of the lizard kingdom, a guard will occasionally turn to a friend and say hey, remember that giant rock that raised the dead and obliterated the concept of daylight for a while? and the friend will turn and say yeah, what a jerk , and his friend will be right. It has been an inauspicious reign, but the tale of Balboa, Reluctant Confiner of Blood Slaves, Befriender of Stray Dogs and Bringer of the Utterdark, has come to an end, to the benefit of every living creature left in the world.