Starbound has just received a whopping update that adds Ancient Vaults, which, as you may have guessed, are chock-full of Ancient Loot, Ancient Bosses, and Ancient Stuff You Can Use To Terraform Planets To Your Liking. To access the crafting-sandbox game's procedurally assembled dungeons, you first have to finish the main storyline, and then chat with a "mysterious" trader at the Outpost, who will send you on a quest to activate the Ancient Gateways "found floating in some systems". You can see one above, and while it's definitely not a stargate, it totally is a stargate, and that's pretty cool.
Wait, what was that about terraforming? Well, after you've explored the aforementioned vaults and defeated the equally procedural vault guardians, you'll probably have acquired one or more of the ancient devices contained therein—devices that will allow you to "transform regions or whole planets into entirely different biomes".
Terraformers "can be used to expand a region across a planet’s surface, replacing natural blocks, objects and plant life, and eventually changing the type of the planet itself", while Microformers are "consumable single-use terraformers which provide even more region types to add to your worlds".
Exciting stuff. Bug fixes, festive items and other tweaks round out the enormo-patch, and if you want the nitty gritty you'll find the full patch notes here.
The sprawling space sim X Rebirth, in spite of its fine heritage, was not good. It was so bad, in fact, that developer Egosoft apologized for the whole thing, and to its credit has put in considerable effort trying to improve matters. A major step in that direction will be taken with the launch of the X Rebirth VR Edition, slated for an Early Access release in the first half of 2017. But likely even better for fans of the series is word that a new game, X4, is also in the works.
"X Rebirth VR Edition is a super-exciting development for us," Egosoft managing director Bernd Lehahn wrote in the latest X-Universe newsletter. "Playing this with a VR Headset feels like finally playing space games the way they were meant to be played all along,"
The VR version will be significantly changed from the original, with a new graphics engine, redesigned economy, and updates to the UI, pace, and balancing. Unfortunately, all those modifications mean that existing saves won't be compatible with the new release: If you want to play in the VR space, you'll have to start a new game.
As for X4 (which is what I'm really more excited about), Lehahn said it's too early to talk about details, and the game doesn't even have a proper name yet. But Egosoft is "making good progress," and he wanted to clarify what's been happening, and what fans of the series can look forward to.
"When we worked on X Rebirth we needed to make a lot of simplifications. We removed some features in order to be able to concentrate on others. But when X Rebirth was released, many fans expected it to be an 'X4,' a game with most of the key features of the X3 games and then some," he wrote.
But it's just not possible to create a game of that scale that within the limitations of X: Rebirth, and so those features, "along with the foundations laid by all the work and feedback that went into X Rebirth, have been the basis for the big project that we have been working on for the last few years: a real X4," he wrote. "While I cannot say much about its features yet, what I can tell you about it so far is that it will allow you to fly many different ships, it will give you an all-new interface to manage large fleets, and it will give you full freedom when building stations from individual modules."
Lehahn said Egosoft will have some "really cool things" to reveal in 2017, but even without the albatross of X Rebirth hanging from its neck, it has a big task ahead. The earlier X games were quite good, but they also existed in a time before Elite: Dangerous and Star Citizen. Is there room in such a niche genre for another wide-open space sim—especially once that doesn't have the benefit of being filled with real people?
After completing the Large Pixel Collider last month, we made a shortlist of games that would help us show off its power. Obviously we weren't going to miss a chance to turn our holy gaming rig loose on 2016's unholy, breakneck-fast FPS, Doom.
See Doom with everything cranked up in the Vimeo embed above—we're using Vimeo for this series of videos because we think it offers better compression than YouTube, and we wouldn't want you missing out on any of the 8.3 million pixels we're throwing at you.
Want to know what hardware we're running? Read more at pcgamer.com/LPC.
Riot Games has announced a major new partnership with MLB Advanced Media subsidiary BAMTech (and yes, that's MLB as in Major League Baseball) that will "push the boundaries of the esports viewing experience." The studio said in a blog post that, beginning next year, it will work with BAMTech to "grow revenue in our sport through various means, including sponsorship and advertising," and to "create additional possibilities and opportunities for fans to access, and connect with, League of Legends."
BAMTech is a streaming technology provider jointly owned by MLB, Disney, and the NHL, whose clients include the two sports leagues as well as HBO and WWE. "As we’ve said in the past, true economic sustainability is a critical means to ensuring a sport that lasts, and this represents a major step towards that goal," Riot said. "As an innovator in digital sponsorship and media sales, BAMTech will help us unlock long-lasting and meaningful value for our digital sport as it matures."
Specifics of the deal weren't revealed, but according to a Yahoo! Esports report, it will run to the 2023 season and is worth an average of $50 million per year. That's a huge amount of money, but BAMTech expects even more to come out of it. "I hope we’re going to do a lot more than that. That’s the minimum guarantee, and I hope we’re going to exceed that by a large margin. And I expect that we will," BAMTech president of business and media Bob Bowman said.
His optimism arises primarily from the fact that LoL is a "digital first" product, while traditional sports are dependent first and foremost on television, and that audience has been showing alarming dips this year on both sides of the Atlantic.
"The amount of time that [Riot Games] has over the top for live events far eclipses any other sport in the world—not just esport, any other sport in the world,” Bowman said. “So the monetization for that effort and those kind of events is going to be really exciting. But we think the world is ready for esports. The sponsors, the advertisers are ready for it. They’re dying for it. It’s a great audience and they spend a great deal of time with this content.”
That doesn't mean that League events are going to be paywalled, at least not completely, and not right away. "We first and foremost believe in making sure that the content is in places where the fans want to watch it, so that will continue to be the case," Riot's co-head of esports and head of merchandising Jarred Kennedy said. "We believe in making content freely available, and it will continue to be freely available into the future. We have no plans to change that."
However, his fellow co-head of esports Whalen Rozelle added, "That’s not to say that we won’t innovate down the road. Maybe there is something super cool that we create that has to be behind a premium experience so that fans want to buy into it."
Riot doesn't expect that player and team streams will be included in the deal, but Kennedy said the increased revenues "will find its way to players in the form of salaries and to teams in the form of a share of that revenue directly once we get into that next phase of our growth." That's not going to happen for awhile, though: Riot doesn't expect the "economic value" of the deal to start having an impact until 2018, which suggests that's when any substantial changes to the landscape of LCS broadcasting may really kick in.
The Boston Major wrapped up last weekend with an exciting final that saw OG defeating Ad Finem to take home the $1 million first prize. But the action didn’t stop there as the final major CS:GO tournament of 2016 saw Astralis outgun OpTic at the Esports Championship Series. The world of digital sports will be fairly quiet now until next year, but we do have a few events to look forward to. All the details on this weekend’s action can be found below. Have a great weekend!
StarCraft II: Intel Extreme Masters
The top WCS Korea players based on their placement in the 2016 WCS Global Finals will be battling it out at the Intel Extreme Masters. Only those with the best macro game will be crowned the victor and win the prize pool of $35,000. The semifinals start today at 21:55 PST and Saturday 06:55 CET, while the finals begin Saturday at 21:10 PST and Sunday 05:10 CET. The event can be watched live over on Twitch.
League of Legends: Intel Extreme Masters
The Intel Extreme Masters returns to South Korea where it’s holding its first ever Asian stadium event in Gyeonggi. It's been eight years since the IEM tournament last visited South Korea and Season 11 continues with its second event. International League of Legends teams will battle it out for their chance to win the $100,000 prize pool. The semifinals start today at 18:30 PST and Saturday 03:30 CET, while the finals start Saturday at 11:40 PST / 20:40 CET. You can check out the official stream over on lolesports.
CSGO: ELEAGUE Major 2017 offline qualifier
The Major Qualifier will be held from the ELEAGUE Arena in Atlanta today and presented live over on Twitch. It will include the eight teams eliminated in the group stage from the prior major, as well as the top eight teams identified through Regional Minor Championships. The full schedule can be found here, while the event can be watched on Twitch.
Overwatch: Intel Extreme Masters
Six teams from Europe and Asia will come together to deliver a show full of rivalries. Korean team Afreeca Freecs Blue were finalists in the Intel Overwatch APEX League, but failed to claim success after losing to EnVyUs in a 4-0 sweep. The IEM Gyeonggi Invitational will be their second chance to defend Korea's title as they battle on home soil. Meanwhile, Misfits will have a chance to test out their new lineup after a major roster swap. The quarterfinals start today at 08:55 PST / 17:55 CET, while the semifinals begin at 23:40 PST and Saturday at 08:40 CET. The full schedule can be found here, while the stream can be found over on Twitch.
Last Christmas, multiplayer WW1 FPS Verdun reimagined the 1914 Christmas Truce—a famous period of ceasefire during the first World War where soldiers are said to have downed tools, sang carols and played football—in-game. This year, it's doing the same, however the net profits of the three-tiered donation system will this time go to UK charity War Child.
War Child is a UK-founded charity that offers assistance to children in the aftermath of conflict. Its latest fundraising campaign, Armistice, has already teamed up with World of Tanks, Democracy 3 and 1979 Revolution: Black Friday—each of which has created bespoke peaceful playthrough options or has donated portions of their sales to the charity.
Verdun's Christmas Truce DLC costs either £1.99/$2.99, £5.59/$7.99 or £9.99/$12.99 (depending on which tier you vouch for), and is available to buy from now until January 2, 2017. Doing so grants you access to a "dedicated Christmas Truce winter map" within which you'll be able to have snowball fights, play football matches, sing Christmas carols, and send in-game cards to in-game loved ones. Players will also receive a special 'Christmas Truce medal' and apparently Scottish highlanders play the bagpipes.
"War Child aims to build on this peaceful movement so it becomes an annual event where more and more gaming studios and players around the world raise of awareness and money for children living with the brutality of war," says the charity in a statement.
After three years orbiting Steam's Early Access initiative, Keen Software's Space Engineers has entered its beta phase.
Following on from a pretty hefty update last week, the ever-expanding space-set sandbox game sees new features such as a total block redesign, new multiplayer netcode, and a tutorial campaign installed as part of its stable launch.
"This update also marks the transition of Space Engineers moving to Beta phase," says the developer's head honcho Marek Rosa in a blog post. "The most important thing to remember with this announcement is that there is still more content, improvements and many optimizations to come. As an example, we can confirm that one of the things being worked on currently is a new HUD which should significantly increase your immersion in the game. Beta simply means that we feel the game now has a solid foundation."
We've got two trailers for you now in light of all that. First, one which explores the new features the Space Engineers beta brings with it:
And second, a dedicated beta trailer which shows off some flashy first-person gunplay and interstellar battling:
The Space Engineers beta's full list of new features—which includes the likes of Magnetic Boots, voice chat, and customisable fonts, among a host of other things—can be found over here.
XCOM 2 is our strategy game of the year, chosen by PC Gamer staff through voting and debate. We'll be posting an award a day leading into Christmas, along with personal picks from the PCG team.
Tom Senior: Rarely does turn-based strategy mingle with survival horror, but for your squadmates, that's what XCOM 2 is. It's a cruel and beautiful strategy game that builds on everything that was great about Firaxis' 2012 XCOM reinvention. The guns and gadgets are more interesting, the classes can be specced in more interesting ways and the enemies have a hundred clever new ways to destroy you. Procedurally generated levels provide some of the terrain variety that Enemy Unknown lacked, and expanded squad customisation lets you personalise your little band of superheroes. I can think of few strategy games that offer XCOM 2's suite of finely balanced risk/reward choices, and fewer games in any genre that so elegantly builds player failure into the design. Your power trends gradually upwards in tandem with your enemies, but squad wipes and disastrous objective failures are almost guaranteed. That means your finest heroes can be wiped out in moments, but they leave behind great war stories, and that's what XCOM 2 is all about. You're overthrowing an incumbent alien world government—it was never going to be easy.
I love that the aliens XCOM 2 throws at you are so much weirder. The Andromedon is Advent's answer to BioShock's Big Daddy: durable, angry, and exploding on death.
Evan Lahti: XCOM 2 is all your favorite action figures on the living room floor on a Saturday morning. I led Furiosa, Geralt, Trinity, and a collection of modded X-Men into alien bases, watched them sever sexy cobras, vaporize floating android Egyptian torsos, and blow up big-ass generators, and that shit was canon.
Okay, sure, the sequel improved practically every aspect of XCOM Uno, from map generation to character detail to equipment progression. Mostly I love that the aliens XCOM 2 throws at you are so much weirder. The Andromedon is Advent's answer to BioShock's Big Daddy: durable, angry, and exploding on death. Stun Lancers lunge forward suicidally, neutralizing your heroes. Sectopods tower over the battlefield, crushing terrain and zapping the shit out of your dudes. And personally, I loved the greater focus on mission timers: XCOM isn't a game you should play comfortably.
Tom Marks: There was one member of my squad that I flat out hated. Something about his face, I’m not sure what, drove me up a wall. But I was forced to take him out on a couple of missions, and damn it all if he didn’t get a few kills. Before I knew it, this jerk was my highest decorated Grenadier and essential to my squad. Sure, I could have just customized his face to look less rage-inducing, but that felt like the easy way out. It also goes against one of my favorite parts of XCOM 2: its incredible ability to create compelling narratives out of pretty much nothing. These characters aren’t really any different under the skin of it all, but I still had my favorites. Heroes and villains on my squad that all had stories I could tell. I rewarded commendable missions with flashy new outfits and added scars to those who were badly wounded in combat. Each one meant something to me, and that made the fear of losing them all the more real. It would be a blow to my strategies to lose my best Grenadier, but also the HQ just wouldn’t be the same without that stupid face walking around.
Tim Clark: I wonder if XCOM 2 might have snatched our overall GOTY award if it had released later in the year and felt fresher in the mind. As a complete experience, I don’t think I enjoyed anything more in 2016. I went in as an ingenue when it comes to turn-based strategy on PC, and came out in love. Having previously obsessed over Final Fantasy Tactics and Advance Wars, XCOM 2 scratched much the same itch for me. By the time the last mission rolled around, I had become ultra protective of my team (all named after mid-tier celebs) and obsessed with their painstakingly manicured loadouts. I still miss Jessica Chastain, my most trusted Sharpshooter, who managed to roll Run and Gun as a bonus skill from the Ranger tree. Sleep well, my flame-haired angel of death.
Star Wars. Now that I've got your attention, you can get 14 Star Wars games on Steam right now for as little as $29.99. That's a 77 percent discount: normally the Star Wars Collection, which compiles a list of retro and not-so-retro videogame adaptations of the series, costs a whopping $100.
I haven't played all of the many Star Wars games out there, but there are some really good titles in that bunch. Dark Forces is a solid '90s FPS, as is its sequel, and Knights of the Old Republic endures as one of BioWare's best RPGs.
If you're looking for older stuff, the Star Wars Classics Collection is available for $16, down from its usual $40 going price. That one includes Tie Fighter and X-Wing, both of which are worth a play, even now.
If you still need convincing, we put together a list of the best Star Wars games on PC – most of which are available in these bundles.
Facepunch Studios boss Garry Newman has some advice for Rust players who have grown bored with the game: Stop playing it. He acknowledged that the sentiment may come across as dismissive, but said in a message on Reddit that it's necessary to break the "ping-pong loop" that's holding the game back from full release.
"I'm noticing a pattern, and we need to address it. It's something we need to get past as a community, not only because it's getting boring but because it has wider implications," he wrote. "We're stuck in ping pong loop. We release an update, you love it for a month, you get bored, blame the system, bitch for a few months, then we release another update—and the same thing happens."
His concern is that the pattern will persist indefinitely, because the real problem isn't that the new systems are better than the old ones, but simply that they're "fresher." But Facepunch obviously can't keep overhauling the game forever, and thus Newman suggests a clean break for those unhappy with Rust. But he also asked that people who do end up quitting, or who think his attitude is unfair, give thought to "whether we have given you enough entertainment over the last three years to justify pocketing your $20" before getting angry.
"If you're interested in the game, if you play regularly and still get enjoyment when you play—we're definitely interested to hear what you think. We especially love hearing your stories, watching your videos, seeing your screenshots and paintings—all things that this subreddit has been very low on," Newman wrote. "If we want to leave Early Access then breaking this loop has to be part of that plan. We have a pretty good idea on how to push forward with Rust, but none of it is going to make the game more appealing to people that have spent their last 1,000 hours hating it."
As silly as it sounds, it's actually very easy to find players with more than 1000 hours in Rust giving it negative reviews on Steam. Two of them are on the front page, along with a few 100-plus-hour negative reviews; one of them, with more than 1200 hours on record, came about at least in part in response to Newman's statement. It's an unfortunate reaction, but probably inevitable, too: Sooner or later, every game developer has to settle on what exactly they're trying to make, and no matter how good that final concept may be, somebody, somewhere, is going to be mad about it.
