One of the silly hidden features of Hacknet was the ability to open your own CD tray with a typed command. The creator said this was a hangover from an unfinished multiplayer mode, whereby players could freak each other out by opening their opponents CD trays. That vision of multiplayer digital trespass sadly did not come to pass, but perhaps this can scratch that cyperpunk itch. Hackmud [official site] is a massively-multiplayer hacking sim and it has just been released. Go put on your best hacker sunglasses and come back to watch the trailer.

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Stardock today released Sorcerer King: Rivals [official site], a standalone expansion to 2015’s fantasy turn-based strategy game Sorcerer King. While that was about stopping a dark overlord from ascending to godhood and killing all the fluffy kittens, or whatever it is dark gods get up to, Rivals lets players be y’know rivals. Players get to seek godhood too this time, and I’m sure you have a lot of ideas about what you can do to fix up the world. Maybe magically fix all vending machine so no one ever again ends up on an icy train platform at 2am weeping and shouting at a wonky wire spiral which has cruelly imprisoned their Twix. For starters, anyway.

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In 2001, Band of Brothers was still airing on HBO and Canadian developer Relic Entertainment was finishing up development of Impossible Creatures, its freaky animal RTS. Space and sci-fi had been its muse for years, but it found, in the increased cultural interest in World War 2, another setting and the impetus for Company of Heroes.

Relic celebrated the game’s tenth anniversary this month. It remains one of the most acclaimed RTS games of all time, lavished in 2006 with glowing reviews and heaps of awards. I ll mostly remember it as the reason I got chewed out by a lecturer for dozing in class, after a long night of liberating Europe.

We ve talked four of the original developers into taking a trip down a potholed, tank-lined memory lane with us.

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Whilst I was playing Cossacks 3 [official site], a console-focused journalist of some reknown (TV’s famous Simon Parkin, since you ask) popped his head into the rotting cupboard above a coffee shop that I attempt to call an office. He didn’t say anything when he glaced at my screen; didn’t have to, for his face said it all. This, these tiny men, those cod-historical serif fonts and that expanse of terrain> – this was what PC gamers played all the time. Our interests and stereotypes had not changed since 1997.

I sought, somewhat in vain, to defend myself, because in truth it has been many years since I played a historical RTS. Cossacks 3 is not PC gaming’s norm in 2016 any more than Mario or Sonic are consoles’, but I must admit that I found it to be something of a balm. A return to a more innocent age.

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Here’s a twofer: 1) A new update for awfully nice and nicely awful adventure Sunless Sea [official site] has added text and UI scaling to finally improve how the game renders its many words; 2) Developers Failbetter will announce their next game on Saturday. The UI improvement means no more squinting, and the announcement will mean… oh dang, a new Failbetter game!

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If Pip were around, she’d focus on how the latest Subnautica [official site] update added a lovely big undersea tree and new glowing Ghost Rays to swim around it. She’s a peaceful one, our Pip, probably hoping to build another wonderful seabase near that tree. However, Pip is at EGX today, so Pip can’t write this. Instead, you get me telling you about the awful new hostile sealife in the aquatic explore-o-build-a-surviver’s ‘Dangerous Creatures’ update. How do you fancy meeting a humanoid cuttlefish with knives for hands? Or what appears to be an aquatic Tyranid Hive Tyrant?

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Somewhere there exists a line that marks the point where FMV releases switch between clicking on a film to make it keep playing, and being a meaningful game. The Bunker [official site] is way, way over to the left of that line – it can barely be bothered to ask you to click. Here’s wot I think:>

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Paladins is a first-person shooter in which you customise your characters by building a deck of cards between matches. It’s made by Hi-Res, developers of Smite, and also draws on elements of MOBAs and MMOs. It entered open beta last week and at the time we gave away 10,000 codes to unlock the ‘Black Ice’ skin for one of its champions, a frost/ice witch named Evie. Those keys were gone with 24 hours, so here’s a second batch of 10,000. Have at it.

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Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.>

In the dozen or so years I reviewed flight games for the British version of PC Gamer magazine I never gave out a 100% score. If I’d been sim scrutinising in December 1990 things might have been different. … [visit site to read more]

There’s always a lighthouse, there’s always a man, there’s always a GOOOOAAAALLLL!

Perhaps misunderstanding the phrase “back of the net”, Rocket League [official site] developers Psyonix have announced an oceanic haul for their bumper-to-ball sports ’em up. Next month will bring a free carfootie pitch set in a BioShock-ish undersea sportworld, named AquaDome. I always thought Andrew Ryan was more into golf (or golf was in him) but here we go. Two submersible-ish cars are coming as paid DLC too.

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