I have generalised anxiety disorder. It s a condition that falls under “anxiety disorders”, which also includes OCD, despite more often being categorised under depression . It sort of fits with both. It s an obsessive condition that causes someone to be unable to control their fear, to become entangled in irrational and debilitating worry, and at its extreme, to be afflicted by horrible intrusive thoughts.>

I ve had AD since I was in my early 20s, undiagnosed until my late 20s. Those were some fairly horrendous times, not being able to understand why I couldn t cope with basic situations, and utterly terrified that the awful thoughts I was having might be real. Too scared to tell anyone, and too fearful that if I did I d be feared, I suffered badly. As it turned out, it was telling someone, anyone, that was the first step to getting a great deal better.

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Writing about Train Simulator’s pretty Japanese countryside DLC yesterday reminded me: I forgot to post Endless Express last year. It’s a free game about a convoluted train journey through a magical world to get home, consulting timetables and planning changes to catch the right trains. Routes run to a schedule in real time so you will end up waiting a bit, which is grand as it’s time to poke around each station and see the weird scenery and locals. Here, I made a video to show you.

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Having hidden a package delivered by a stranger, shot someone I never got to talk to, snuck into a hotel room and listened to lovely renditions of Chopin’s wonderful music, I can safely say that you will not get bored with Providence.

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Fighty multiplayer vampire title Nosgoth (official site) has gone even more free to play than it already was. I.e. anyone is now free to play it, as it’s just moved into open beta. I hadn’t really been paying attention to this, because the words ‘Legacy of Kain universe’ cause me to question the purpose of human consciousness, but now I’ve finally had a look at some footage it looks kind of fun. There’s a lot going on – grappling hooks, crossbows, flying dudes…. Don’t know how it hangs together, but it’s a spectacle. … [visit site to read more]

I am rapt watching John Romero play and talk about Doom. Over a two-and-a-half-hour Let’s Play series, the hallowed former id Software level designer has gone into fascinating detail on his level design philosophy, technical tricks, the game’s development, and his other work, but it’s equally splendid to hear about stuff that never happened. Here’s an old idea for deathmatch co-op: played on regular levels with monsters around, the only way to score points is to hit the end-level button first, so players swing between cooperating and making a violent break for the finish. Lovely.

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When our Adam asked “Have You Played… State of Decay?” he noted that the open-world zombie survive ‘em up had become a lot better in the year since its release, thanks largely to its ‘Breakdown’ DLC. What we here at RPS have apparently neglected to mention so far is that developers Undead Labs are revamping State of Decay for a prettied-up rerelease with its DLC bundled in as the Year One Survival Edition. Oh! Well, they are. And now they’ve announced a release date. Unfortunately, it won’t come as an upgrade, only sold separately.

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Microsoft have announced the HoloLens, an augmented reality headset for games and general computing. Which is maybe not what we were expecting when we were invited to Redmond to hear about the company’s future gaming plans this evening. While our correspondent is trying the thing on as I type, you can whet your appetite for impressions with the video Microsoft used to introduce the device. It’s not clear what parts of it are hypothetical and which are already functional – depicting augmented reality glasses from a third-person perspective is hard, after all, so it’s all mock-ups – but the gaming application depicted is, predictably, some form of Minecraft.

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Our roving reporter at the big Windows 10 event in Redmond is currently playing with Microsoft’s newly-announced holo-goggles, more on which soon, but she has been able to send back to useful bonus info about Win 10 and games in the meantime – including whether DirectX 12 is exclusive to the new OS, how this ‘upgrade to Win 10 free for a year’ offer works and whether there’ll be keyboard/mouse support for streamed Xbox One games. … [visit site to read more]

I said a little while back that I wanted to open up Dote Night to include interesting things across the MOBA spectrum so this is the first foray into that. It doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten Dota 2 in any way, shape or form, nor does it mean there won’t be Dote Nights about Dota, but I’d like to try out a few things and see how they go. This piece is about how item builds work in Smite. It’s an aspect of MOBAs which has never come naturally to me but after speaking with Smite expert and analyst James ‘Krett’ Horgan it started making a lot more sense and I don’t just mean for Smite. After transcribing this I went to play a few games of Dota and was able to approach my hero builds far more confidently and effectively. So yes, this is about a different MOBA but it exists as part of a broader scene.>

If you’re looking for a quick and dirty version of what’s here you should head to the build guide cheat sheet we’ve done as a pared down companion, otherwise… read on!

“The core of every build in every game that has a build even an MMO like World of Warcraft is the methodology,” explains Krett. “What are you doing and how does your build help you do it?”

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Fun fact: we have a monstrously large article coming up which goes into a lot of detail about Smite builds thanks to expert and analyst James ‘Krett’ Horgan. BUT because you might also want build info to hand in a quick and easy-to-digest format we’ve made this a separate Smite build cheat sheet with the bare bones information.

The idea here is not to be exhaustive but to give new players a basic structures for item builds on each character class so you don’t feel lost. Then you can start to play around with your own ideas, fill in the blanks, or tweak some of the items to fit specific situations. For a more in-depth look and to see how items work together check out the monsterpiece which will be going up as Dote Night’s first real foray into the world of other MOBAs.

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