Last week, Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus dropped a modest patch that re-enabled Steam overlay and sorted distribution issues in a number of regions. Today, the alternate timeline shooter has launched its first major update—that comes with a new DLC episode, ten new combat simulations, and a number of stability fixes, among other things.
Live now, the patch activates the Vault option which was previously locked in the game's menu. Within, players will now find ten new so-called "combat simulations" that can be accessed following Chapter 2. "You can replay these missions anytime from the menu option," reads this Steam community update, "or in a room on Evas Hammer in the game."
Furthermore, The Freedom Chronicles DLC prequel chapter—named Episode Zero—is now available for those players who pre-ordered, as well as Season Pass holders who redeemed codes.
As for PC-exclusive fixes, the new update hits stability across Windows 10 and Nvidia GPUs, as well as a handful of tweaks and adjustments as outlined here:
Improved stability on NVIDIA 10-series GPUs.
Async compute temporarily disabled until driver fix available.
Forced driver update on driver detect warning message can now be manually bypassed.
Improved Win 10 stability on supported NVIDIA GPUs when launching at any resolution other than 4K when DPI scaling is set to 175 percent 4K monitor.
Improved Win 10 stability on supported NVIDIA GPUs when resolution is changed to 4K while DPI scaling is set to 125 percent or 150 percent.
Fixed “zoomed in brightness menu” issue on 4K monitors (when DPI scaling was set to greater than 100 percent).
Some things you should take into account before you buy Team Ninja's Souls-inspired samurai vs. demons brawler, Nioh.
If you don't have a controller, don't buy Nioh. It doesn't recognise the mouse and the keyboard controls are unworkable.
Nioh has in-game graphics options but the resolution and rendering settings are filed away in a separate launcher, which for me defaulted to a much lower resolution than my 1920x1080 display. The launcher ignored what I told it to change to for a few times, and seemed to randomly launch in windowed mode. It now seems to get the point. It crashed on startup the first time I tried to launch it this morning.
The game sometimes runs as well as I'd expect on my GTX 970, Intel i5-4670K 4x3.4GHz CPU, 8GB RAM machine, and sometimes does not. Last night the opening level suffered from slowdown all over the place, and I couldn't figure out why. Today , however, on the second level it runs at a perfectly steady 60 frames per second. Your framerate choices are 30 or 60, you can't go beyond that yet.
This is all for a game that, by modern standards, doesn't look amazing. I find myself happy to put up with the oddly aged visuals because Nioh does interesting things with its combat, but the gloomy unflashy visuals only increase my expectation for a solid framerate.
It may run perfectly on your rig, of course, as some early Steam reviewers attest. If it does you will find an interesting combat game that owes a debt to Dark Souls while doing enough differently to warrant attention. You play a warrior called William, sort-of based on 'Western samurai' William Adams, who in this case learns samurai arts from a book he finds on a boat. He heads to Japan to battle demons and save the world.
Combat is a lock-on slash and dodge affair in the Souls mould, but with a greater emphasis on quick combos and stance selection. Each of the varied weapons has a strong, medium and light stance. Strong stances give you big ponderous blows that sever limbs and sap stamina (or Ki, in Nioh's terminology). Medium stances allow you to defend more effectively and strike with wider attacks that can keep mobs busy. Light stance lets you blitz enemies down and dodge away immediately.
You can replenish lost Ki after a combo by hitting the right bumper when William glows blue. If you hit it just so you instantly replenish and can continue your combo. It's like Gears of War's active reload, but for your arms. Weapon skills even encourage you to hit this marker and switch stance simultaneously for even more effective Ki recovery.
This adds a strong skill element that also dictate's Nioh's swift combat rhythm. Strikes feel immediate, in an arcade way. Souls combat is full of heft and timing, while Nioh is about dodging, then battering an enemy senseless, knocking them over and then executing them with a finishing blow.
Combat is really carrying the game at the moment. The game is broken out into levels rather than knitted together into one contiguous world, and they have been dark and uninspiring corridor arrangements so far. Like Souls, when you die you resurrect at the last shrine you prayed at, and you can recover your lost spiritual currency if you make it back to your corpse. Don't expect any Soulsy lore intrigue and storytelling though., Right know my William has a big red valve on his helmet to celebrate the Steam release.
I'm going to keep playing it, because I am a sucker for being able to draw samurai swords in a way that slices through enemies, and I'm looking forward to seeing how challenging combat really gets. If you're picking it up, keep an eye on the time so you can refund if it doesn't run well on your PC. We've reached out to Tecmo Koei to see if there's a patch planned.
Nioh is out tomorrow for PC, but I'll never be able to play it because I'll never be able to get beyond the brightness slider prompt it opens with after booting it up. I get enough anxiety from gamma sliders that want me to make their symbol of choice 'barely visible,' but matching the intensity of a magic eye puzzle with an ambiguous blotch of grey will ruin me.
See for yourself below.
As I scroll up and down this very page, the rightmost silhouette appears to flicker between brighter and dimmer shades of grey, as if to mock me. I'm reminded of that blue-black internet dress scenario, and just as tortured.
Zoom in on the rightmost guy and this is what you see:
The other guy is just grey, so I suppose you're meant to squint and hope that the blurred grey you see through dry, tired eyes matches.
OK, so they're not the same shade of grey, which I only found out using a photo editor. But I'm looking to match intensity, and I would describe the process as a whole quite intense. "Intense" is defined as an extreme force, degree, or strength, which could mean I'm looking for anything here.
After tinkering with All Walls Must Fall earlier this year, Tom billed the moody, futuristic Cold War shooter as "one to watch". To mark the 28th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, developer Inbetweengames has now launched a new trailer and has halved the game's Early Access price tag, should you wish to get eyes on it yourself.
Comprised of three ex-Yager devs—whose back catalogue boasts the likes of Spec Ops: The Line and Dead Island 2—Inbetweengames' All Walls Must Fall is a musically-driven tech-noir tactics game that echoes both Crypt of the Necrodancer and XCOM. Set in a futuristic Berlin, players are tasked with utlising "time travel, social stealth and combat" in their bid to prevent nuclear war.
Trailer time:
And here's a little excerpt from Tom's thoughts:
When the flirting goes bad, the bouncers get mad. The game goes into combat mode when guns are drawn. In this state enemies only move when you take an action—by moving to an adjacent square, shooting or reloading. At this point the game starts to feel like a very pacey solo XCOM. To avoid taking a bullet you can park yourself behind medium or heavy cover, represented by XCOM-esque shield icons. You shoot back with a snap shot (left-click) that stuns, or an aimed shot (right-click) that does extra damage. Mercifully, the game tells you when Kai is about to take a hit, which gives you a chance to sidestep or use one of Kai's time travel skills to rewind, or teleport back to an earlier location.
Having dipped my tapping toes into All Walls Must Fall earlier this year, I'd say its well worth a punt even at this stage. All going to plan, it'll launch in full at the beginning of next year—however it's on sale this week for £5.49/$7.49, with a 50 percent discount.
Bethesda and Tango Gamesworks' The Evil Within 2 has been with us for almost a month. I liked it, and while its Steam review score at the time of writing sits at 'Very Positive', there does exist some complaints about key bindings and crashes tied to Intel Core 2 processors and AMD GPUs, among other things.
The game's latest update v1.03 targets a number of fixes—a few number of which are exclusive to PC. First, here's those:
Life gauge is now fully visible in all resolutions when aiming Sniper Rifle.
Corrected tutorials for Predator and Ambush skills to show correct key if Action key has been reassigned.
Num Lock key can now be used to bind to an action.
Sebastian can now correctly use upgrade chair if Q key has been reassigned.
Fixed control issue that could prevent Sebastian from standing up from the slide projector if Q key had been reassigned.
Sadist battle now displays and uses player’s reassigned action key instead of default setting of E.
Reversed direction of movement through weapon options with mouse wheel to feel more intuitive.
Fix a crash that could occur when using Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4GHz.
Fixed a crash that could occur when quitting the game while using an AMD Phenom II X4 945.
Fixed performance drop when using "Display Based" or "Display Based (Half)" VSync setting with a 144Hz monitor.
Patch 1.03 also hits a number of issues across all platforms, such as problems with UI, disappearing NPCs and unsuccessful sneak kills.
The sum of the update's nips and tucks can be found over here—the most noteworthy of which, I reckon, apply to the game's Harbinger battle. If you were faced with any of these you have my sympathies. That bastard killed me more times than I care to admit and I was lucky enough to sidestep any additional problems, besides some bad shooting and bullet sponge-induced rage.
It's November, which means it's time for the annual tradition of slowly rubbing your forehead while muttering "How is it November already?" When you're done with that, why not grow a moustache? 'Movember', as it is called, is a month-long event where moustaches are grown (on faces, not on farms or in gardens or something) to raise awareness of men's health issues like prostate cancer. The idea, according to the Movember Foundation, is to "change the face of men's health."
In addition to pitching in by darkening your lower lip with what is most likely a really shitty looking moustache, you can also participate virtually in Fallout 4 with the Movember Mod. Made by modder Elianora (who also created a 'Save the Boobies Mod' for breast cancer awareness, and lots of other mods), the Movember Mod adds wearable moustaches, moustache-related clothing, and some accessories:
"Two fancy outfits and one Vault Jumpsuit with t-shirt on top of it, a plastic fake moustache, a realistic fake moustache, a monocle, and a top hat."
Craft them under MOVEMBER at the CHEMISTRY BENCH
The "Movember Mo" can be worn by humans, Dogmeat, and Strong
They bring luck and charisma
The outfits can be modded to have lining, ballistic weave and they can have armour pieces on top of them
The Vault Jumpsuit + T-Shirt works like a normal Vault Suit, people will comment on you wearing it
"GO BE FANCY AF!" Elianora adds. I second that: being fancy af is about the best advice I've heard in a long time. You'll find the Movember Mod over at Nexus Mods.
Our boss, Tim Clark, is killed innumerable times by Mozû the Blight, a fearsome and relentless orc while playing Middle-earth: Shadow of War.
"He's immune to arrows, fire, ice, quickly adapts to being vaulted over, and regularly emits disorientating howls,"wrote Tim. "I am being bullied, and it feels bad."
Humiliated, Tim asks for help from orc-slaying members of the PC Gamer community, and even developers of Shadow of War itself.
In death, Mozû finds unlikely supporters among the PC Gamer staff, becoming an honorary member of the team, as well as the default avatar for PC Gamer commenters.
Mozû the Blight may be dead, but he can live on as a symbol. That's where you come in.
2) Make original art OR memes/propaganda posters using our existing art (above) featuring Mozû the Blight.
3) Submit your stuff to evan@pcgamer.com with the subject line "RIP Mozû." Please enter by November 20, 2017 at 11:59 PM PT.We'll select some winners to receive one of the prizes listed above.
Here's an example of the sort of thing we're looking for:
A sample piece of propaganda, created by Moz sympathizer and PCG features editor Wes Fenlon.
To give you a head start, I commissioned two artists, Federica Litrico and Tida Kietsungden to create portraits of Mozû. You can find full .PSD and high-res JPEG versions of these assets in the Mozû Art Pack (ZIP). You can use these great illustrations as the backdrop for your propaganda.
This is the face of a man that's about to have some fun.
Over the launch weekend, Call of Duty: WWII's meta took a hard turn. Players are now using excellent custom emblems to claim victory over their opponents no matter the score, because what does losing matter if you look good doing it?
WWII's emblem creator apparently has more going on than someone as boring as me could imagine. Using the decals, resizing tools, and tons of layers, players are coming up with some ridiculous stuff, from their favorite food brands to accurate recreations of their grandfather's military emblems. Here's a glimpse at the best we've found so far, but if we're missing something special, go ahead and share it with us in the comments.
[Note: The emblem maker isn't available on PC yet, so consider this selection as inspiration for what I'm sure will be far nicer tiny square pictures.]
8th Air Force homage
Reddit user ZombieLenBias made this emblem as an homage to his grandfather, who served in the 479th Fighter Group in the 8th Air Force. Nearly perfect.
Pigeon perfect
In remembrance of all the hard working birbs out there, flying high in the sky and hanging out on telephone wires and such, Reddit user box77 made this colorful honorary.
Football?
Is Chelsea the monster on the emblem? Why are they part of a football club? I sent the link to our UK team for translation. Until then, this lovely looking symbol remains a mystery.
Raccoon City. Why is it called that? Is there a place in the US named after squirrels? Oh well, here's a nice interpretation of a police department's logo from the fictional town that got nuked to hell. I'm pretty sure it got nuked. But I'm glad Leon got out. He looks cool in his tactical gear, and without his over-the-shoulder spin kicks, third person games would have been forgotten.
5th Marine Division
Alright, let's get another real world shoulder patch up in here. Reddit user eag424 made this recreation of the 5th Marine Division's patch from WWII, and it looks quite cool. Is that a spear and the letter V? Tip of the spear? Vanguard? That said, the spear makes it look like a W too, which I'll just say stands for 'Wow' because this is a nice looking emblem.
Teacup man
It's Cuphead's head! Reddit user xTheFatJesus nailed the look of the cartoon cup person, but I'm concerned about where his body went off to. Thinking about the emblem at all has me imagining Cuphead's anatomy, like does he bleed? Does he have guts? Can you just peek at his brain over the lip there? Best not to linger on such thoughts. They'll drive a man to the brink.
ERROR [EMBLEM] NOT FOUND
Heh, fooled you, didn't I? That wasn't a real error message at all. It was actually a heading I wrote to imitate a real error message. So it goes for Reddit user joshshoewah's playful jab at the server troubles some players have reported over the weekend. He's channeled his frustrations into an emblem that looks like an error message, but is actually just an emblem he made to look like an error message.
The blue guy from the old man and kid cartoon
Reddit user IamMclovin made this cute portrait of Mr. Meeseeks, a character from Rick and Morty that is summoned into existence for an explicit purpose, then snaps out of existence once they complete their goal. They almost mirror the lives of my digital avatars in Call of Duty games: born to die.
This has been nice
As the sun sets on this emblem showcase, it also sets in this emblem where the sun is setting. And also in our hearts, because we had a lot of fun here today.
The Molea Cemetery, surrounded by thousands of "graves."
Deep in EVE Online, in the backwater system of Molea, you'll find something unlike anything else in all of its virtual galaxy. Orbiting the first moon of Molea II is a player-owned starbase, and floating around that starbase are over a thousand graves. Some hold the corpse of a player’s character who died, and many others hold no corpse at all, tributes to real people who passed away.
“Here Lies Jelica Zajc, 1929-2017, Loved Grandmother - RIP,” reads one of the markers.
This is EVE Online’s first and only cemetery. It might not be stunning to look at, but it’s the product of nine years of effort by just one pilot. Their name is Azia Burgi, and they’re the only gravekeeper in EVE Online.
Keeper for the dead
For almost a decade, Azia has been working with a small group of players to maintain and protect the site. Originally, the EVE Cemetery was a place where Azia would bury the corpses left behind when EVE players die in combat, but more recently it has become a place for players to leave some small marker for those they’ve lost in real life. “It still stuns me,” Azia tells me on Steam. They never expected their little hobby would become a celebrated and revered landmark in EVE. “It was just something that nobody else seemed to be doing so I thought I'd have a go and see what happened.”
I press a little harder, and Azia admits they don’t really know why they started the site. Back in EVE’s earlier years, there was a cathedral-like object that CCP placed in the system of Kor Azor. Azia decided that, like all good churches, it should have its own gravesite. And so they set about scooping up random corpses left behind by pirates and EVE’s other ruffians. “Kor Azor was a couple of jumps from [low security space], and few of us would go jump into there for mining and we'd scoop the remains from player pirate fights,” they write.
Later, due to changes CCP made to how long objects can be stored in space, Azia decided to move the cemetery to Molea. A few friends from major player alliances decided to donate some of the corpses they had stored up, and then word spread of Azia’s mission. “Suddenly I was the person who collected corpses.”
There is no such thing as a proper grave in EVE Online, so Azia makes due. Each corpse is placed into a cargo container named after the deceased clone and jettisoned into space surrounding the cemetery’s starbase. The sight of a thousand corpses floating in tin cans around a blue forcefield is as beautiful as it is strange.
One the earlier screenshots of the cemetery circa 2009.
In a sandbox MMO, where players can be anything from propagandists to scammers, Azia’s career choice is unique. For one, there’s no material reward. Azia isn’t making money from the countless hours they’ve dedicated to maintaining the site. And, what’s more perplexing, is that death in EVE Online isn’t permanent. Characters leave behind a corpse, sure, but their consciousness is instantly transferred into an identical clone. Dying can still be devastating, as the ship you’re flying, the cargo you’re carrying, and the implants hardwired into your clone are often big investments that vanish in a heartbeat. But a corpse? Few characters care about these.
But for some reason Azia does. As more corpses were donated to the cemetery, Azia’s workload became more and more daunting. In true EVE Online fashion, they even set up a website and spreadsheet to track all of the burials. To date, there are about 1,746 graves, though some have been destroyed or disappeared. But that’s only the tip of the iceberg: 25,000 corpses remain in storage that they have yet to bury. Azia says that, several years ago when they were most active, interning bodies would eat up hours of every night.
When Azia decided to advertise their project on the EVE forums almost a decade ago, players began to take interest and started pilgrimages from all over New Eden to see it. And before long, the cemetery became one of the top tourist destinations in EVE.
But EVE being EVE, not everyone has come with pure intentions.
Desecration
Few things are permanent in EVE Online. Massive player alliances can crumble to dust in hours and longstanding starbases are eventually razed by enemies. To manage server lag, CCP Games created rules where most objects will despawn after a certain number of days unless they’re within proximity of a player-owned starbase. The celestial bodies of New Eden are the only permanent, static objects in the universe. Azia’s cemetery remaining where it has for a decade is almost a miracle—but that’s not for a lack of anyone trying to dismantle it.
In 2008, the infamous Goonswarm Alliance launched their 'Jihadswarm,' an all-out assault where Goonswarm pilots will attack helpless miners or swarm EVE’s trade hub systems and destroy anyone who tries to enter. But during the 2008 crusade, they had a new target: The Molea Cemetery.
“It was heartbreaking,” Azia writes.
In order to prevent the cargo canisters from disappearing automatically, they must be jettisoned near the starbase that Azia built and continues to fuel. If the base is destroyed, the canisters will disappear after a number of days. “I'd gone to university and had to wait a week or two for my internet to be installed,” Azia says. “They took that chance to attack. I got an email friend a friend saying that Goonswarm had declared war on us. There was not much I could do.”
It was heartbreaking.
Azia Burgi
That day, hundreds of Goonswarm pilots arrived to desecrate the cemetery and destroy the tower. Its automated defenses were powerless to stop the horde. In a public statement, their leader said the desecration was done in the name of religious freedom. “I doubt any of the ‘tenants’ had the opportunity to state their [religious] beliefs before they were dragged into this prison. It is my duty as leader of JihadSwarm to enforce the moral standards of the one true god.”
But in reality, it was merely a bit of rhetoric used to justify cruelly destroying one person’s hard work.
“JihadSwarm pilots [managed] to steal dozens of corpses and desecrate several of the empty caskets with such phrases as ‘xiut was here’ and ‘can’t stop the fofo,’” reads a report published by CPP at the time. “Of the 700 caskets originally anchored, only a hundred or so still remain.”
“There was a period of about three days after the destruction of the starbase where some friends worked in shifts to re-intern about 500 graves,” Azia says.
When Jihadswarm came back a second time, Azia was ready. They rounded up a small squadron of friends and attempted to defend the cemetery against the hundreds of invading Goons. The starbase was destroyed again, but Azia and their gravekeepers managed to save most of the graves from being desecrated.
Peace and quiet
In the years since, things have been relatively quiet around the cemetery. Azia no longer plays EVE as often, so the responsibility of keeping the starbase fueled and online has largely fallen on the shoulders of Linara Faerin, who has been assisting Azia for years now. Since Linara’s time, word of the Molea Cemetery has spread, and, more recently, it has become a place where pilots leave their own canisters as markers for loved ones who have passed away in the real world. “I guess someone heard about the cemetery and thought, well, why not do the real world memorials there?” Linara tells me over Skype. “They’re more than welcome to continue doing that as long as there’s no fighting go on and people are decent about it.”
I spent the last week in EVE Online waiting at the cemetery in hopes of running into someone leaving a memorial, but these days it’s pretty quiet. I ran into one pirate who I was worried might try and destroy some of the graves as a sick joke, but instead we chatted about the cemetery. He likes to visit it as a place to cool down between acts of skullduggery.
But it’s possible that this site will soon cease to exist and this lonewolf pilot will need to find a new place to hang out. Last year, CCP Games launched the Citadels expansion, introducing a new class of starbase that will, eventually, replace the current model like the Molea Cemetery. The game systems governing these new Citadels are entirely different, however, and both Azia and Linara are worried that this will mean the mausoleum will disappear forever.
The community created the cemetery, so we ll be reaching out to the groundskeepers to make sure that we do what s best for the site, its history and its meaning to our players.
Paul Elsy, EVE Online community manager
I spoke with community manager Paul Elsy to see if CCP had any plans to help preserve the cemetery. “With changes coming to infrastructure in EVE, including the retirement of [player-owned starbases], we’re obviously going to have to consider the future of the cemetery and what we can continue to do to support it and preserve the legacy of the site going forward,” Elsy said in an email. “Player history and permanence is a huge part of the narrative of EVE Online, and we want to make sure that we preserve and protect the history and legacy of our players. We’ll be looking to engage with the community and figure out how best to tackle the situation. The community created the cemetery, so we’ll be reaching out to the groundskeepers to make sure that we do what’s best for the site, its history and its meaning to our players.”
Elsy’s statement gives me hope that the cemetery will continue to exist. Staring at the thousands of canisters as they float in space, I realize that this cemetery isn’t just unique to EVE Online but MMOs as a whole. In a galaxy bloodied by murder and betrayal, it’s comforting to know at least a few players are concerned about what comes after.
Torchlight and Hob developer Runic Games is sadly no more after its publisher Perfect World shut it down last week. Following the news, one of the studio's founders, Travis Baldree, has spoken to Kotaku about the early days of the company, and there's a couple of noteworthy insights. The most interesting for me is that before Perfect World decided to publish Torchlight (which is a brilliant action-RPG, by the way), Microsoft came very close to snapping the title up.
Runic had "extensive meetings" with Microsoft and even went through company vetting to gear up for the arrival of the game. But Microsoft changed its mind at the last minute, instead asking Baldree and co to work on a game in the Fable series.
"We pitched Torchlight to Microsoft and had extensive meetings, a company vetting, and it all seemed to be going so well. To our shock, at the end of the arduous process, they decided they’d rather have us make a Fable game for them. We declined. Right before Torchlight shipped, a Microsoft rep came up to me at our first PAX and cried 'Why didn’t you come to us to publish this?'"
Baldree also revealed that Runic almost became a part of Turbine, the developer of Lord of the Rings Online, where it would have made a "hobbit-themed title". And it also nearly became a part of Plants vs Zombies developer PopCap, "to the extent that we had a get-to-know-you party with PopCap folks".
"This was in 2008, and then the economy cratered, and on the day we thought we were heading to PopCap’s offices to handshake the deal with [co-founder] John Vechey and [former CEO] Dave Roberts, it died instead. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little moist-eyed that afternoon."
If you liked Torchlight then check in on Andy's review of Hob, Runic Games' last hurrah.
