I've just spent the last half hour messing about with the Cadence demo. It's a musical puzzler in which you draw lines to connect points that, through what becomes a fairly convoluted process, creates a loop of unbroken music. For instance, it'd be difficult to explain why exactly the above diagram works—except to say the squares reflect beats, the right-hand circle stores them, and that, over the course of the levels up to that point, I'd managed to learn enough of the game's rules to sort of intuit the answer.

It's an entertaining time-passer, and one that's currently seeking Kickstarter funds. The campaign is asking for 25,000, although with 8 days left it's a long way off that total.

The Elder Scrolls Online's toughest monster has just now been vanquished: its subscription fee. Its now relaunched as The Elder Scrolls Online: Tamriel Unlimited, the clunky name chosen to signify that players no longer need to pay down a monthly stipend to access its world.

Rather than go fully free-to-play, TESO has opted to take The Secret World route—slipping into a Guild Wars-style model of paying for the game itself, sans a monthly fee. If you're an existing player interested in how the new version works, or what the ESO Plus membership is all about, head over to this FAQ.

Chris wasn't a big fan of TESO when it launched—his experiences with the game coloured by the fact that it wasn't very good. It's since had some work put into it, and it's these updates that are the focus of a new trailer released for the Tamriel Unlimited launch.

Can this new payment model tempt you into The Elder Scrolls Online?

This TIGSource DevLog thread caught my eye. It's for a game set in the '80s-'90s—a time period universally understood to be mostly about punching. Called VHS Story, it's a management tycoon game, in which you train and upgrade your fighter to be the best punching man on the streets.

"You have to manage your time and money to improve your fighter skills on one side and your training equipment on the other," write the developers. "You will start as an unknown fighter in the underground club and must work your way to the top and solve the mystery from your past."

The feature list boasts a non-linear story, progression, perks, nostalgia and irony. It's a nice idea—taking queues from games like Streets of Rage, but in a management-style game where your job is to instead train and prepare your character.

VHS Story is due out later this year. For more, head over to the Greenlight page.

Absurdist zombie action game Dead Rising 2 (and the alt-reality special edition Dead Rising 2: Off The Record) will today switch over to Steamworks. Formerly attached to Games for Windows Live—or 'the wailing harbinger of misery and disappointment'—the Steamworks versions will offer achievements, cloud saving and all the other Steam stuff.

Owners with either a Steam copy of the game or a boxed retail copy will be able to upgrade, but those who purchased through the Games for Windows Marketplace will not. That said, both games will still function with GfWL—at least, as much as any game can "function" with GfWL.

Perhaps the biggest blow is that Marketplace DLC won't be transferred. "DLC content purchased directly from Microsoft s GFWL Marketplace store will not carry over to Steam due to the lack of CD/activation key," writes Capcom's blog post. "Those who wish to play the game with their DLC can continue to do so with the GFWL version of the game installation and under the GFWL service."

Head over to the Capcom announcement post to learn the exact minutiae, and for details on transferring saves between versions.

Pillars of Eternity comes out next week. I couldn't be happier; partly because I spent my childhood immersed in the Infinity Engine games, and partly because it means that we'll finally have some new bloody screenshots to use.

In an Obsidian Q&A on Reddit, the Pillars team reveal what they have planned after the game has shipped. "We are looking at doing an expansion that's about the same size (area wise) of Tales of the Sword Coast," writes lead programmer Adam Brennecke.

"I won't reveal much about it since it's early in development, but we've already have a small team working on areas and environments while the rest of the team focus on shipping the game. We will announcing more things about it over the next few months."

Tales of the Sword Coast was an expansion for the first Baldur's Gate. It was pretty good—challenging, and with new dungeons, areas and a standalone story that had something to do with werewolves. If the Pillars expansion is aiming at a similar size, it should be a good chunk of new game.

You can see all of Obsidian's answers through this Reddit thread.

Thanks, VG247.

Spoiler warning: We discuss the content of these episodes pretty freely so that those already playing can discuss—if you re not already playing, you may want to wait until we review the whole season at the end, or read our comparable less spoiler-ey review of episode one.

The pilot episode is usually one of the worst episodes of any given sitcom (Cheers excluded), but Tales from the Borderlands started really, really well. Telltale s good at those first impressions. It also seems to falter in the second episode—The Wolf Among Us did, and Tales from the Borderlands does too.

Telltale has a baseline level of good that it rarely dips below, and that s true here. There are some very good things in this episode: being chased by moon shots; Vaughn talking while peeing; Fiona and Rhys continuing to be unreliable narrators. And there s a good decision at the end that I want to go back and try again, though I don t think I ll find out what it means until the next episode. Cliffhangers, eh?

Episode two is not bad, but I was expecting better after the excellent first episodes. A lot of the lines fall flat for me as the humor regresses into jokes about sporks ( it s a spoon and a fork! ) and bros—the stuff of primetime TV. The umpteenth aggressively absurd character description doesn t have the effect it did last time, and a bit involving an eyeball is more gross than funny.

There are some good quips, and some good character interaction, especially when the plot isn't moving. I like seeing these characters chat about life and poke fun at each other. But that good stuff, such as Fiona and Sasha struggling with Felix s betrayal, is sandwiched between seemingly trivial events. There s a decision in the middle I just didn t get, for instance. As Rhys breaks the fourth wall to ramble about important choices, I can decide to meet up with Fiona and Sasha at their present location, or meet up with them at the destination we were all headed for before splitting up. Even the characters don t seem to know why this is an important decision, with Rhys limply justifying it to his captor. Meanwhile, Fiona and Sasha are negotiating repairs for their caravan—oh boy?

Another weird thing: August comes back, and has this whole scene with Fiona where we re led to believe he still has stupid feelings for Sasha, who had just been using him to sell the fake vault key to Vasquez in episode one. I'd thought he was far less important than he apparently is, and I suppose we re now meant to consider his motivations and whether or not he can still be manipulated. Nothing comes of it, but maybe it ll be important in a later episode.

Episode two is also technically inferior. Long, weird pauses in dialogue make it feel like an old JRPG that's pulling audio from a disc. Sometimes the characters do a good job of chattering while waiting for your input, but other times Vasquez especially seems to trail off like he's forgotten who he's talking to.

The walking segments are still awkward as ever, and this one includes an especially bad one. As Rhys, you have to scan the ground from a first-person perspective to find power conduits, then reconnect wires to power up some old Atlas tech. Getting the camera to point at the place you want to look is a struggle. You can nudge it around, but if you can t see what you re trying to find, you have to back out to third-person and clumsily steer Rhys somewhere else. And finding the circuits is busywork I thought Telltale was expunging from the adventure genre. It s the most puzzle-like thing it has done in a while, but not a puzzle—just annoying.

And, of course, mashing Q is still a vital part of the game. Maybe it wouldn t bother me on a controller, but I don t like jamming my keys to death so that a character can hold onto something.

The good news is that I fully expect Tales from the Borderlands to get better, and there s lots of interesting stuff to resolve: Rhys is dealing with a hallucinatory Handsome Jack, who is the funniest part of this episode, and Fiona and Sasha still have to deal with Felix s betrayal. Vaughn, meanwhile, is still just sort of... there. I feel like I'm supposed to distrust him, but I'm just not worried about him. He seems like he'd be a pretty ineffectual traitor, and as a friend, he's largely just Rhys' punchline. As I said, I enjoy the banter, but he's still the least interesting character.

Mostly, I hope we don't have to wait another four months to see what happens. It's too long! I am impatient. And forgetful. 

Below are my impressions of Battlefield Hardline's multiplayer, and my thoughts on the campaign are on the next page. We'll publish our final review of Hardline by Friday. More on how we're reviewing it here.

If you ve played Battlefield 1942 or Battlefield Vietnam, you probably remember how damn hard it was to be a good pilot. You might also remember spawning and dashing toward vehicles, sometimes taking a dip to swim ashore when all the boats left without you. I remember picking a control point and setting out on a mini-adventure, often not taking a shot for minutes at a time. Today, the bullet points are the same—big maps, vehicles, classes, and lots of players—but the experience has entirely changed.

There s a great jumble of things to do and points to earn in Battlefield Hardline, all happening fast. The speed at which vehicles respawn, and the ability to spawn on squadmates or into any open vehicle seat, has created a raging twister where players are constantly colliding. And if you can t hit anything but the side of a truck, you still get points for that. And if you can keep your mouse steady, you can fly a helicopter (and probably be shot down before you do any good, to be fair).

My favorite Hardline mode is Hotwire, and it is the epitome of this shift. It s still about capturing and controlling points, but those points are now cars which must be driven around the map. This makes sense, because driving cars in circles is how you uphold the law, and also break it.

If you re driving a control point, you have to keep the car moving while the other team tries to blow you up. If you re not in a control point car, you either need to be screaming across the map in the direction of one, or blowing something up. There are three basic activities—finding RPGs and blowing up cars, providing air support and blowing up cars, and driving or riding in cars—along with little shootouts when you cross paths with the enemy on the way to do those things.

The wisest thing Visceral did was put RPGs around the map instead of in loadouts. If they were part of a loadout, everyone would have one, and it d just be a rocket duel. A foreseeable issue, however, is that it s possible to unlock a car upgrade that puts an RPG in the trunk, and once everyone has that, the maps might become a bit too inhospitable. For now, it s stupid fun.

Always be shooting

Heist, in which the criminals must steal two packages and deliver them to drop off points, also works pretty well, though I prefer vehicle-centric modes. I especially enjoy Blood Money on maps with vehicles. It s as nonsensical as Hotwire: both teams must retrieve cash from a central repository and deliver it to their vaults, but can also steal from each other s vaults. Driving an armored truck into a vault and clearing it out is fantastic, or pulling up to the main money pile so your crew of thieves can load in and then busting ass back home.

But all of these modes somewhat suffer from that glitchy speed Battlefield has acquired. I don t mean that cars going fast is bad—cars gotta go fast—but even a speedy game like Tribes has a rhythm that rises and falls, with moments of planning and moments of action. In Hardline, I spawn into a helicopter and blow up ten seconds later, or spawn on my squadmate near the packages in Heist and instantly trade lives (somehow) with a guy right in front of me. In Heist and Blood Money, objectives are pelted with high explosives from the engineer s default M320 launcher, and there's always someone with a shotgun around the corner (or crouching in the corner). One time I was run over by a car directly after spawning three times in a row. A few stupid, crappy lives like that and I am flipping off the screen.

The cars are mostly nice to control on a keyboard (a light tap on the brakes really zips you around corners), but they sometimes want to go faster than the server, stuttering and rubberbanding against each other as the physics sorts itself out. One time I collided with a motorcycle and flew into the ocean—and I was in a sedan. The only time I have to slow down is when my car gets stuck. This has happened to me several times, and usually I just seem to be lightly touching whatever I m stuck against.

Shootouts happen so fast that I don't feel I've become comfortable with any of the weapons yet. It's also a bit annoying how often the killing blow comes from off on a hill somewhere—the most popular assault rifles have pretty good range, and there are a lot of players circling the outskirts of objectives, hard to spot in Hardline's murky maps. Fast can be good, but in this case, it's often more about the speed at which I die than the intensity of the experience. I know that has something to do with my skill level, but I can't imagine that the best players want to blow up 5 seconds after spawning, either.

I haven t spend much time in the other two new modes, Rescue and Crosshair, because not many seem to be playing them. Which makes sense, because they re 5v5 modes, and that isn't very Battlefield. I managed to get into a 2v2 Rescue match, and it s Counter-Strike s hostage rescue on a big, open map, where anyone who s played longer has better gear. I think Hardline is going to have a hard time making that stick.

Conquest and Team Deathmatch are back, of course, but they don t really concern me. I played a bit of Conquest, and yep, it s Conquest! The different weapons, vehicles, and gadgets make a difference (I think the grappling hook and zipline are more whimsical than great tactical devices), but it s got the same feeling as BF4, even with police sirens.

I am enjoying the themed modes, despite how often I find them frustrating, but I can t say they ve grabbed me. I ve taken to playing Hotwire while listening to a hockey game, half paying attention to where I m driving, half thinking about how much better 3-on-3 regular-season overtime would be. I ll keep playing, and I ll add more thoughts on the shooting (pro tip: be very good at it), guns, maps, unlocks, and servers to the final review. I do have one very positive thing to report now: the quality of the launch has been great for me. It took forever to download the game, and there are issues like the dopey car physics, but overall it s a huge improvement over BF3 and BF4 at launch.

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These are my impressions of Hardline's single-player campaign so far. More on how we re reviewing Hardline here.

The Battlefield Hardline campaign takes after Max Payne in a few ways. For one thing, it s an aggressively silly bloodbath. The bad guys are gun-toting lunatics, and though you can arrest them instead of using force, it isn t always easy: there s going to be violence. And then we all have to pretend that the room of bodies we just left behind is like, pretty much normal police work. Hilariously, after one early shootout, you get reprimanded for excessive force because your partner punched a guy. After littering a hotel with bodies.

It s like Law & Order, if you took out the law and the order and Lennie Briscoe just shot everyone. Max Payne had the benefit of casting you as Mr. Grumpy Noir, an ex-cop who has nothing to do with anything that has ever happened in real life. Hardline is going for the TV cop drama thing, which doesn t feel right, because cop dramas usually make a big deal out of discharging a firearm. Here, you re a two-person SWAT team. It wants to be the Shield, but it's far too silly.

You play as a young Cuban detective with a rough past who s just been through a bust that went bad. Your partner is a real loose cannon, and despite your unease with her unconventional style, you're a pretty damn loose cannon, too. Cannon balls everywhere.

Your job is to deal with long loading times (and a spinning loading thing that never seems to go away) in pursuit of some dumb drug operation.Most importantly, there are lots of bad guys to clear out along the way.

On the hardest mode, Hardline is properly difficult. If you want to shoot it out, and sometimes you have to, it can take several tries to find the right way to move through the level. It reminds me, again, of Max Payne—namely its puzzle-like room-to-room progression. Each set of bad guys has to be approached differently, and carefully, ammo must be conserved (or new weapons picked up), and careful aim is not optional. It helps to scout the place before going in, tagging enemies so you can track them. I'm not pushed forward like in CoD, and there s lots of room to move around the maps making quick decisions. I like that a lot.

Freeze! (Or don't)

I ve also cleared some areas the more police-like way, by arresting everyone. A lot of disbelief needs to be suspended to make this system work. First of all, you re arresting armed gangsters who are within shouting distance of their armed gangster buddies, yet when you flash your badge they drop their guns and quietly give up. Once they re cuffed, they go to sleep. Seriously, there are little Z s above their heads. Being arrested is very tiring.

The catch is that you can t arrest more than a few bad guys at once. If someone else sees you arresting his pals, he ll open fire. Then it s a fight. When enemies are grouped up, you can make it work by tossing shells to alert one guy and draw him away from the group toward your secluded arrestin' spot. It's a very simple stealth system and not especially hard (their vision isn't great), but I've only gone through one section non-lethally so far. I like that the option is there (although it makes the option to shoot everyone feel even weirder), but I haven't found slow crouch walking and shell throwing especially fun. So far, it feels like a mediocre stealth game, and a challenging shooter (I think I prefer being John Wick to being Solid Snake).

When it does come to shooting, if you re feeling extra generous, you can engage with a non-lethal taser. You are sort of encouraged to, as you get points for arrests and takedowns, but you're sort of not: there s a hell of an arsenal at hand for a couple of detectives. I really am Max Payne at times, blowing apart rooms with shotguns, spraying bullets, leaving so many internal affairs investigations behind me it's shocking I'm kept on duty. Which is fun. Of course, after that I'm at the station acting like none of that happened.

When I'm not arresting or shooting (or in a driving segment), I spend my time poking around for evidence and chatting with my partner. I like the little expository chats—the banter is just pleasant to listen to, and the voice acting is very good—but finding evidence is tedious. You have to peer through this scanner (which is also used in a much better way to mark enemies), find highlighted objects of interest, and then click on 'em. It s about wandering the environment, following a distance tracker to the objective, and looking at it. The evidence does unlock information about the case, so I'll have to look into how interesting all that is as I keep playing. Mostly, though, it just feels like Visceral considered that detectives do more than arrest people and shoot people (I imagine that's the least of what they do), so it threw in some detective busywork.

And that's where I'm leaving it for now. It's weird, but I like the first few 'episodes' of Hardline's 11 episode campaign (which, by the way, takes the TV thing so seriously, the screen after each episode looks just like Netflix). We'll be publishing the full review on Friday.

Here's good news if you're still playing Civilization III: following the closure of GameSpy last year, the game now has Steamworks multiplayer support. Publisher 2K Games promised the transition in April last year, but now it's finally happened.

The update can be downloaded now on Steam, with multiplayer functioning exactly as it used to, except you won't have the option to connect with a 'Direct IP' anymore. Meanwhile, save game data will not be affected, but if you happen to own a disc copy of Civilization III (read: not a Steam version) then you'll need to contact 2K support for info on how to make the jump.

It's good timing: creator Sid Meier was the star of last week's PC Gamer show, where he discussed the history of 'Sid Meier' games, in particular the Civilization series. 

Are you an expert PC builder who can handle a motherboard like Freeman handles a crowbar? Are you new rig-builder who's learned some lessons the hard way? Either way, it's Build Week, and we want to hear the best tips and tricks you've got for assembling a collection of parts into a working PC.

If there's something you wish you knew when you first started out, or a mistake you see even experienced builders make, we want to hear about it in the comments below. Any advice that would help your fellow PC builders is welcome. Upvote the best tips you see from other commenters, and we'll pick out our favorites and feature them in an article later this week. 

Keep on eye on the site all week for build guides, hardware advice, and lots more.

You may think Goat Simulator is a lighthearted game about goats doing un-goatlike things, but it's actually a vehicle for a much more sinister ploy. Soon goats will takeover the virtual world. Instead of Minecraft Creepers there will be Minecraft goats. Instead of Final Fantasy Chocobos there will be Final Fantasy goats. Instead of Kevin Spacey there will be a goat. 

With the help of Goat Simulator devs Coffee Stain Studios, goats may soon feature in Dota 2 in the form of a courier. The twist is that users have to vote the goat in. If you want to be complicit in the goat takeover, you can vote here. 

If you need convincing (and you do), then here's a video. Just think this through carefully before casting your vote, okay?