Creative Assembly has announced Total War Battles: Kingdom; a veritable hodge-podge of words that, when placed together, describe an upcoming free-to-play strategy for PC and tablets.

It's being developed by the team responsible for Total War Battles: Shogun—a sort of tower-defence-style strategy that was primarily designed for a mobile interface. This new game is set at the turn of the 10th Century, and will be more familiar in structure to Total War fans—with both realm building and tactical battles.

"Players will find themselves managing the needs of their own fiefdom as they marshal formidable armies with which to duel against neighbouring kingdoms," explains Sega's press release. "Ultimately, players will be able to join in massed multiplayer wars against other lords in a fight for the throne. Deception, spying and outright betrayal against enemies and friends alike will see the devious player rewarded."

A PC closed beta will happen early next year. Head here if you'd like to register for that.

Edit: Oh yeah, there's a trailer too:

Dying Light's combination of zombie killing and parkour sounds like it would be ideal for a VR experience, and so it's nice to hear that the game will support the Oculus Rift when the long-awaited VR headset is finally released to the public. There's still work to be done, but lead designer Maciej Binkowski says it's already playable, and it's actually pretty good.

That's what you'd expect him to say, of course, but in this case he's referring to the progress made on overcoming the technical challenges of getting the game to work well on the Rift. "There's still stuff we need to adapt, like how the camera works and the UI, stuff like that," Binkowski told PCGamesN. But the effort is being well-supported by Oculus, and he expects it will ultimately be a big part of the Dying Light experience.

The big question, then, is when will the Oculus Rift be released to the public? Oculus VR CEO Brendan Iribe hasn't offered much to go on, saying in October that it will be "more than a few months, less than a few years," and Binkowski unfortunately doesn't have any insight into the matter. "We don t really know how long it s going to take to release Oculus, and we release in January," he said. "But if they re ready, we re going to be ready."

Technland announced earlier today that a season pass for Dying Light, including three DLC packs, is now available. Dying Light comes out on January 27.

This article contains story spoilers for Spec Ops: The Line.

Spec Ops: The Line is clearly a smart game written by smart people. While as an adaptation of Heart of Darkness it s never as successfully weird or iconic as Apocalypse Now (despite making similar creative decisions), it s daring and ambitious in the way it portrays US military intervention in the midst of escalating chaos. I ve thought about the story a lot since I completed it recently. But what I interpret as its central conceit—that the player is the one making the decision to push forward and cause every conflict, and is thus the villain of the story—isn t really supported by the game itself. This is especially highlighted by the notorious white phosphorus scene halfway through, where protagonist Captain Walker and his two squadmates accidentally wipe out civilians with a real life weapon that burns flesh to the bone.

Spec Ops wants to make a BioShocklike message about human behaviour and choice, but in this key moment, there is no choice to be made. I m at the top of a building looking down into an enclosed bowl where an army of enemies is about to be ambushed by one of the worst weapons on this planet. I man the artillery, which triggers a bird s-eye targeting camera, and bring fire down upon scores of enemy troops. I figure out where the civilians are cowering, in a trench near the back of the field of conflict, and aim around them—but it doesn t matter. The radius of the white phosphorus impact automatically extends to scorch the group of innocents, and while this is a story beat that s technically interactive, it needs to happen no matter what. I tried not to hit them, but I was always going to.

The cutscene that follows shows the full extent of the carnage: charred corpses everywhere and the distressing image of a dead mother hugging her child, both burnt alive. If Call of Duty did this, there d be uproar. It s to the credit of Yager, the developer, that the context justifies the horror in this case.

But the fact remains that I didn t kill those civilians—Yager forced that outcome. While the aftermath still makes me uncomfortable, the fact that I was aiming around the civilians absolves me of guilt as a player—and I m not sure that was the intent. There s a strong narrative emphasis on the escalating madness in Dubai being of Walker s making, but lacking choice, I start to grow apart from that character.

The only choice I get to make comes in the aftermath, as I slowly tread through the blackened corpses and stick a bullet in anyone unfortunate enough to have survived. That s power put back into my hands as a player—I choose to kill those civilians to make up for Walker s poor choice with the white phosphorus. But again: that was his decision, not mine. It was Spec Ops most important narrative moment and they took it out of my hands. The impact is extraordinary, but had they genuinely hoodwinked me into killing civilians, it could ve lived with me forever.

And unlike BioShock, where the entire game is built to support a killer twist for the ages, in Spec Ops it becomes increasingly obvious that these are not my choices. Consequently, inspiring an equal reaction is impossible—Captain Walker is not me. I am grateful that Yager tried to do something so different with a military shooter, exploring an angle that makes every modern FPS seem gaudy to me in the way they present war, even with that clash between player and character in mind. I only hold this story to a higher standard than I usually would because I feel the developers have earned it.

I love patch notes. I especially love dry and flavourless patch notes. Games are neither dry nor flavourless, and that means these words contain secrets. For instance take a look at the new mechanics introduced in DayZ's latest stable patch:

• Vehicles
• Vehicles refueling
• Prion Disease
• New crafting recipes
• Updated heat transfer
• Watering plants

Ooh, nice, vehicles are in. And we've got some new crafting recipes. And... what's this? Neurodegenerative diseases? What's that all about?

For explanation, we can turn to the update's added items:

• V3S
• Ghillie Suite (Hood, Bushrag, Top)
• Ghillie Weapon Wrap
• Jerry can
• Military Tent
• Human Flesh
• Netting
• Steyr Aug
• MP133 with pistol grip
• Burlap strips

Yup, you read that right: burlap strips. Also: human flesh.

Essentially, you can now chomp down on a man steak. The functionality was originally introduced last month through an experimental update. Now it's in the game proper, along with the associated chance of catching Kuru if consumed raw.

Which means, while you may have to suffer the indignity of being eaten by your killer, at least there's a chance you'll give him a degenerative disease—thus claiming revenge from beyond the game. Stay safe out there, folks.

Patch 0.51.125720 is now live. You can see the full patch notes over at the DayZ forums.

I spent a day and a half at Turtle Rock Studios last month playing  Evolve's now-revealed other multiplayer modes: Nest, Rescue, Defend, and Evacuation, a kind of multiplayer campaign that bundles all of Evolve's formats into a five-round match. Watch the video above for my thoughts on playing, and on Evolve's potential as a competitive FPS.

If you want to judge the new modes for yourself, look below to two uncut, 60fps gameplay videos, one as a hunter, one as a monster. Don't mind the Xbox controller button UI—it's just a menu setting that wasn't changed.

What are the chances of Turtle Rock making another Left 4 Dead? Slim, but not impossible, says the FPS studio s design director.

Last month I went to Turtle Rock to get a crack at Evolve s other multiplayer modes (which I praise and criticize here). During that visit I spoke with Chris Ashton, one of the studio s founders. Turtle Rock is busy finishing Evolve for its February launch, but I wanted to get a sense of what might be next for the studio. Is there any possibility of Turtle Rock returning to the game that put it on the map? 

It would only be possible if Valve wanted it to be that way. It s their IP now, so they re in charge of where that goes, Ashton told me, recorded in the video embedded above. Left 4 Dead was very much like Evolve in that it s a game we wanted to make, it s a game that we sort of invented. It s where we cut our teeth on co-op. And so it s always going to be close to our hearts.

A lot of people would jump at the chance to work on Left 4 Dead again in the future but… it s probably... I would say it s unlikely but not impossible.

Left 4 Dead 3 may already be in development. Watch the video above (Left 4 Dead comes up as the last question at 4:34) for more about where Turtle Rock would like to see FPSes go in the future, and how Evolve's multiplayer matchmaking will work.

Alongside the new story episode and sprawling Silverwastes jumping puzzle, last night's Guild Wars 2 update also brought an overhauled PvP mode.

"Player vs. Player infrastructure is seeing massive changes this month," explains the Guild Wars 2 release page. They've merged the Team and Solo arenas into a single "Ranked" mode—allowing parties of any size to participate in the most competitive mode. An "Unranked" arena has also been added.

In addition, matchmaking has been improved to search via a number of criteria, and leaderboards, map voting and disconnection penalties have all been changed. There's a full overview available on the release notes page.

This, seemingly, marks a shift in strategy for ArenaNet's updates. Over the last year, feature tweaks have been held off for large "Feature Pack" releases, with the Living World updates focusing primarily on content and story. Here, they've again been merged—although there's no word on whether this is a one-off for this release.

I love Assassin s Creed. Yeah, I know. To some of you that ll be like admitting I'm a serial killer. But I do, even though I ll be the first to admit that it s in dire need of a refresh. By committing to a sequel every year, as well as regular spin-offs, Ubisoft have stretched their flagship series way too thin and the strain is beginning to show.

So while I ve played and enjoyed every game so far—except AC3, which was the abyss—I can t help but feel that its potential is being wasted. Yearly sequels have bled many a great series dry, and Assassin s Creed deserves better. So here s how I would change it. You know those present day bits everyone hates? I actually don t mind them, which should prove that this is all coming from a place of love.

A smaller teamTen studios worked on Assassin s Creed Unity. Ten! This is the very definition of too many cooks. The best manager in the world couldn t get that many people, from all those different time zones, to work efficiently together.

The result is a general feeling of inconsistency. Sidequests like AC3 s homestead and Revelations godawful tower defence feel like the were made by a team working alone and then shoehorned into the game—which they probably were.

Assassin s Creed would benefit from a smaller, more focused team. And I don t mean small in the indie sense—because you do need huge amounts of people to make blockbuster games like this—but I mean smaller than ten studios.

The series also feels designed by committee, and I think it needs the leadership of a strong auteur. A Ken Levine or a Hideo Kojima who will doggedly pursue their personal creative vision. Just thinking about how many Ubisoft suits the lead on an Assassin s Creed game has to keep happy is making me feel dizzy.

Longer developmentThe reason so many studios work on these sequels is because they re massive, and they have to do a new one every year. Ubisoft is a business, and businesses exist to make money. They have shareholders to appease, and making games on this scale costs a fortune. But this is having a negative impact on their quality.

Unity was a mess of bugs and frantic patching. The mission design gets noticeably sloppy towards the end of almost every entry in the series, presumably as deadlines begin to loom. And assets are frequently recycled between games.

Ubisoft should adopt the Rockstar model. They release a new Grand Theft Auto every 3-5 years, taking as long as they think they need. In comparison, Assassin s Creed games feel increasingly mass produced, like they re rolling off a conveyor belt.

Look at what Ubisoft achieved with Unity in a couple of years. Now imagine what they could have done if they had another two. I can understand Call of Duty sequels being released every year. They re dumb, flashy, six-hour action movies. But historical epics like Assassin s Creed deserve more time to be crafted and polished.

A new templateIt s fine for sequels to share the DNA of other games in a series, but Assassin s Creed has taken this to an extreme. It s utterly formulaic, recycling the same missions over and over—even the ones no one likes, like tailing and eavesdropping. Those ones have even started showing up in Far Cry, which is just baffling to me.

New features may be added, like AC3 and Black Flag s brilliant ship combat, but the games still largely stick to the set menu: arbitrary collectables, hay carts, sync points, hiring 'dancers', sneaking through bushes, disabling alarm bells. I think it s time to create a new standard. Sticking to this formula makes churning out yearly sequels easier for the developers, but as I said, that needs to stop too.

Worryingly, the Assassin's Creed Victory shots (well, I say shots, but they're obviously just concept mock-ups) already suggest the new game is recycling some old ideas. We see the new hero atop a sync point and the rope-swinging is straight out of Black Flag. But it's too early to say. Hopefully Ubisoft Qu bec are using this framework to do something different. It's heartening to hear that they've already been working on it, in Ubi's words, "for the past few years."

Think biggerThere s a running meta-commentary in recent Assassin s Creed games about sinister Templar corporation Abstergo using DNA memories to create mainstream entertainment products. The databases are filled with humorous notes about dumbing things down to broaden the appeal.

Assassin s Creed is mainstream entertainment, but I wish Ubisoft had loftier goals for it. They treat their games like products, which cheapens them. Whether it s overpriced special editions or the microtransactions in Unity, the company makes it clear, constantly, that they want your money. They do, naturally, and that s fine—but do they have to be so damn shameless about it?

Ubisoft makes Assassin s Creed games like Michael Bay makes movies. They create blockbusters designed to sell millions, and that s their primary goal. But imagine they made an Assassin s Creed like Stanley Kubrick made a film. As a piece of art. Something culturally important. The series has that potential, buried deep somewhere, but it ll never manifest as long as they re using it as a gaudy shopfront.

A different perspectiveThe endless, generation-spanning war between the Assassins and the Templars is the backbone of Assassin's Creed's mythology. But the idea that the Assassins are the good guys and the Templars are the villains is becoming increasingly blurred. Both groups are equally fanatical about their beliefs, to the point where I kind of hate both of them now. So I think it's time to introduce a third party.

In Metal Gear Solid 2, Hideo Kojima famously replaced longtime protagonist Solid Snake with a floppy-haired newcomer, Raiden. This was met, understandably, with a lot of criticism—but it was actually a stroke of genius. Koj's idea was to make players see Snake from a new perspective: as a mythical hero, rather than the character we were comfortable with. This is an interesting way of refreshing an established mythology without completely changing it, and it could work in Assassin's Creed.

I'd love to play as a character who has some other interest in the Animus, and who doesn't give a damn about the Pieces of Eden, the Templars or the Assassins. There are countless other reasons why someone would want to delve into the memories of their ancestors. Ubisoft are so duty-bound to their progressively bloated mythology that they're not taking full advantage of a really powerful storytelling tool.

I must admit, the Victorian London setting of Victory has intrigued me, but I'm remaining cautiously optimistic. I honestly don't think Ubisoft will break away from their established template any time soon, which is a shame. But that's the cold, hard reality of making blockbuster games. Maybe one solution is giving smaller studios with big ideas access to the license, then letting them make interesting spin-offs.

Even if Assassin s Creed sticks to the same old routine, the sad truth is, I ll probably still play them. They re enjoyable fantasy romps set in stunningly realised locations, and I m fairly invested in the story. But I ll always have a niggling feeling as I play that the series has the potential to be so much more.

But hey, at least Desmond s dead!

Humble's Sega Bundle has updated with a couple of extra games. The already eclectic selection has been bolstered by Sonic Generations and Viking: Battle for Asgard. It continues to be a weird bundle.

Sonic Generations was a seemingly celebratory attempt to reconcile Sonic's troubled 3D incarnations with the 2D glory days of the Mega Drive era. It didn't entirely work, but, for better or worse, it's probably one of the best Sonic platformers of recent years.

Viking: Battle for Asgard is an entertaining third-person brawler. It's a bit naff, and has atrocious stealth sections, but also lets you thwack hundreds of enemies with axes and stuff. Sometimes that's all you need from a game, and that's okay.

Both bonus games are available for those who pay more than the average. It's a strange, eclectic bundle, but there's some good stuff in there. For $3.80 or above, you can get a collection of Dreamcast Games, a Sonic kart racer, Total War: Rome 2 DLC, Football Manager 2015 DLC, Empire: Total War, standalone Company of Heroes 2 multiplayer DLC, a Sonic platformer and a Viking brawler. There's also Shogun 2's standalone expansion available for those who part with $12 or above.

The first thing I watched with Steam's new livestreaming service was Dragon Ball Z. Then I shot over to another instance of Media Player Classic to watch some other anime I couldn't identify. When the stream cut out, the chat filled with one viewer's cries of "FUCK THE MODS WE RUN THIS SHIT."

Just like Steam's tagging functionality, which initially had undesirable results, it's going to take some time for Valve to get Steam Broadcasting right, which may include protecting itself from legal repercussions (and I can't imagine the complexity involved in doing so). For that reason and more, cries of "Twitch is dead" are massively premature. I'm not even sure Valve is gunning for the current leader in livestreaming, and after playing with the beta release today, I don't think it's any competition yet. I do like it, but it offers something different—an easy way to share with friends.

And Valve does have advantages. When I want to Stream on Twitch, I set up OBS, test it, then tell everyone on Twitter that it's happening and hope for some viewers. On Steam, which already houses most of the games I play, I just set it up once and play any game in my library. The streams are a good quality (mostly), and I haven't had performance problems while playing. My biggest fear is that I'll forget I've set my streams public, because it works so smoothly.

If I do decide to let anyone watch, any game I'm playing on Steam will be posted as a broadcast in the game's community hub. A couple minutes after I started streaming Metro: Last Light—not exactly a brand new game—three viewers showed up, and all I was doing was sitting at the menu. Steam offers a massive audience, so I expect popular games and streams to draw a lot of attention. It could be huge.

But Twitch has a huge audience, too. There are over 69,000 people watching League of Legends as I write, with one stream alone drawing over 24,000 of them. Over on Steam, the biggest Dota 2 stream at the time of writing has 179 viewers. Most have none. So, this isn't a magic bullet, and it's going to take time for Steam Broadcasting to grow. Additionally, Steam doesn't offer what Twitch does, and may never. Here are a few of the reasons Twitch streamers aren't going to abandon their posts:

• Streaming on Steam means streaming with the Steam client. Twitch streamers can use Open Broadcaster Software, Xsplit, and others to customize their video.
• Viewing Steam streams is only currently supported in Safari, Chrome, and the Steam client. Twitch already has popular mobile apps.
• Steam currently cannot archive broadcasts. Twitch no longer saves archived streams forever, but it can export them to YouTube.
• You currently need to be logged into Steam to view broadcasts, and they can't be embedded on other websites.
• Popular Twitch streamers can make money from their broadcasts, and that's not the case on Steam, so they have no incentive to jump ship. (That does mean that Steam's broadcasts are nicely ad-free, but of course they are—Steam is already a store where products are promoted.)

Some of this may change in later releases, and it's possible that big Dota 2 and CS:GO tourneys will feel cozier on Steam (where Valve could potentially sell access), but we'll just have to see where that goes. For the moment, I don't see Steam as a competitor to Twitch, which isn't to say Twitch is the best possible service; it's just different. Steam Broadcasting is a service for Steam's community, while Twitch is a business opportunity and e-sports hub. If I were running a tournament, I'd use Twitch, but if I want to share a game with friends, I'll probably use Steam starting now.

I could notice Evan playing CS:GO, and decide I want to absorb some of his skill. He could notice me playing some new Early Access game, and find out what I think of it. It's easy, too. With the latest beta client installed (you can set that up in Steam's preferences), all you have to do is right click a friend's name and hit "Watch game." Depending on their settings, it'll either send you to the stream, or let them choose whether or not to share (it can also be set to invite-only, so that you don't have to opt out of requests). I'm going to prefer privacy most of the time, but I'd happily run around Far Cry 4 with an audience of friends. It would feel like a hassle to start a Twitch stream just to show Evan how much C4 I stuck to an elephant (and I wouldn't have bothered), but if he's already in Steam all he has to do is ask.

That's the real value of Steam Broadcasting for me. If Valve gets aggressive next year, we could see certain tournaments and big streamers switch over, but right now, I don't think Valve is taking on Twitch. (In fact, I've seen many users suggest adding Twitch support.) And anyway, I hear that League of Legends, Hearthstone, World of Warcraft, StarCraft II, and Minecraft are pretty big despite their non-inclusion in Steam. It's apparently possible to use Steam to broadcast non-Steam games, but why would you?