The Rainbow Six Siege community's frustration at the recent price increase for the game has made Ubisoft think again, and the developer has rolled back the price jump on the Standard Edition of the game. Ubisoft had planned to turn the $40 edition into a $60 Advanced Edition with bonus cosmetic items and extra in-game currency, but in a Reddit thread yesterday it said it will be "keeping the Standard Edition in the store at the current price".
The rest of the price increases will go ahead as planned, which means the Gold Edition of the game, which includes the most recent year of DLC operators, will cost $90, rather than its present $70, and the Complete Edition of Siege will run $130, up from $90.
Additionally, Ubisoft said it has been listening to concerns about the rate at which players that buy the $15 Starter Edition of the game unlock new operators (it's very slow, which makes the edition difficult to recommend). "We recognize that this has been a point of frustration for new players, as well as existing players bringing their friends into the game, and have been working on how to make this process more fluid," it said. "We will be sharing more information about our next steps during the Six Invitational [next month]."
The team is also giving every existing player an Ash Sidewinder Elite skin for free as an apology for the kerfuffle that the price rise caused.
The price reversal on the Standard Edition is very good news—it's currently the best version of the game to buy, and a $20 increase would have put some people off. Likewise, it's encouraging to hear that the Starter Edition may become a viable option for new players. But the price hike on the other editions will still be a source of annoyance.
Surviving Mars, the upcoming survival city builder from Paradox Interactive, will be making its presence known at the PC Gamer Weekender in a talk exploring the mechanics and thought process behind the game.
Gabriel Dobrev and Ivan-Assen Ivanov from developer Haemimont Games will be joined by Jakob Munthe, of publisher Paradox, to talk system-driven design and, in their words, ‘how to avoid the self-playing piano’.
With decades of experience between the three, this is sure to be a deep, knowledgeable and downright interesting talk on the thinking—and sheer effort—that goes into making a title like Surviving Mars.
In the game, the player is tasked with building mankind’s first home away from home: a permanent colony on Mars, with the talk covering the interactions between a human player and deep AI simulations—how do you create interesting player choices in a system driven game?
Find all our coverage of Surviving Mars here. You’ll be able to see many more speakers, games and booths all at the PC Gamer Weekender, which is being held February 17-18 at the Olympia, London, in the UK. For more details see the site, and follow us on Twitter for up-to-the-minute news. Tickets are available now from £12.99. Use the code PCG to save 20%.
Earlier this week, Motherboard reported on deepfakes, a redditor (now an entire subreddit, too) that specializes in using a machine learning algorithm to plaster celebrity faces over the actors' faces in porn videos. The result can be convincing, albeit horrifying both in the occasional slip of the algorithm that distorts the face just so and in the implications of the technology. All it takes is a PC, a couple high-quality videos of the subject, and some publicly available software to produce plausible face-swapped footage. That means anyone can be the victim of impersonation videos, or some unknown means of bullying and deception this horrible future has unlocked.But before the complete end of privacy and digital consent, the people must know whether they can put their favorite characters from The Witcher into porn, as we should have predicted.
In one example found on the deepfakes subreddit (I didn't ask for this beat, OK?), Triss Merigold's digital face pulled from footage from The Witcher 3 is grafted onto a porn actress dressed, I'm guessing, as Triss Merigold. You'd think the cosplayer's face would be a close enough approximation, given that looking like the character you're cosplaying as is the whole point.
The redditor behind the clips, FakingDeep (I'm noticing a theme here), thought their experiment went well, writing in the comments, "I think this one with Triss from Witcher 3 turned out pretty good, despite the training data not being ideal."
A still from FakingDeep's attempt at Triss.
If 'good' is being used as a metric to describe how close they got to depicting the 'unspeakable horrors' Lovecraft wrote about so long ago, then yes, we're on the verge of a breakthrough.
Yennefer gets the Twilight Zone treatment from FakeDeep, her digital face—and we must emphasize that videogame graphics still don't look or behave realistically, so this is a guaranteed layering of the uncanny, a result that can only be less than realistic—is transferred onto someone that is not cosplaying as The Witcher's sternest sorceress (but they may have just moved beyond the costumed part of the whole ordeal).
Yennefer, as depicted in The Witcher 3.
Again, the result works. The performer has a vague resemblance to Yennefer, a fictional character I broke up with on top of a mountain after kicking a genie's ass. I don't like it, but someone out there does I suppose.
A still from FakingDeep's attempt at Yennefer.
So far, the majority of those holding the reins to the 'deepfakes' subreddit appear to be straight men, otherwise we'd have several pages of Geralt porn by now. And if there's no avoiding this dark future, then bring on the nude Geralt abominations already. Still, I find the rapid proliferation of machine learning technology troubling. While it'll certainly solve some long-standing problems for fans of Sonic the very attractive hedgehog, AI-driven face-swapping done without consent from the subjects presents yet another way to deceive and abuse people.
It's common to see over 150,000 concurrent players in Rocket League with fewer than 1,000 of them searching for Snow Day, a mode that replaces Soccar's ball with a hockey puck. It's the least-played mode in Rocket League's entire roster of game types, just behind the newer Dropshot and Hoops modes. And that's a shame, because Snow Day is the best mode in Rocket League, at least if you ask the players who saved it from deletion back in 2015.
So why aren't more people playing my favorite mode? It's possible Snow Day is seen as a gimmick, which is how it was presented at first, reinforced by the lack of ranked play. But those who've tried it know that it's just as challenging as Soccar, if in different ways.
Playing on the wall is almost always the best way to get the puck to the front of the goal, a disorienting maneuver every time. Predicting the travel of the puck is also a challenge, with the ability to perform a "super shot" (aka ground pinch) by flipping onto the puck at just the right angle. These powerful shots can reach 200 kilometers per hour and the puck can easily travel around the entire arena without anyone touching it. It's fast, it's relentless, it's incredible.
The same aerial that would result in a 'nice little tip' in Soccar could painfully slide off the side of your car.
Rocket League's skill ceiling already seems limitless. Mastering the control of the ball in Soccar takes hundreds, if not thousands, of hours of practice, and most of those skills don't translate to Snow Day. The puck has a habit of flipping and bouncing around. But with enough experience, you can see a puck tumbling through the air and determine if it will land flat against the wall, making for an easy clear, or hit the wall on its edge and have a number of possible outcomes. Taking control and “settling down the puck” like real hockey players dealing with choppy ice is immensely satisfying and takes practice. Knowing how the ball bounces is one thing, but when the object you're playing with can also skip, flip and knuckle around from almost any contact, the amount of patience and observational acuity required increases.
Because of this, matches often come down to good wall play. A majority of the goals are scored by edging out your opponent on the wall to knock the puck in front of the goal for your teammate to tap in. That's not to say aerials aren't common in Snow Day, but because the puck is flat on two sides and often twirling about, the same aerial that would result in a 'nice little tip' in Soccar could painfully slide off the side of your car.
All of this makes Snow Day great, which is why its champions persist in their quest to make it just as popular as whacking a ball around.
The birth of the Rocket Hockey League
If you've given Snow Day a chance, you may have seen the 'RHL' tag in some player's names. They're part of a group called the Rocket Hockey League, the group that saved car hockey.
Snow Day was never intended to be a permanent mode for Rocket League, introduced instead as a sideshow in a holiday themed update in 2015. When Psyonix removed it, the community protested. Players, now members of the RHL, went to the Psyonix forums and Reddit to start a petition to demand its return. "We had no inkling that there would be this weirdly devoted sub-set of players that only play Snow Day," says game director Corey Davis in Noclip's Rocket League documentary. "It's a very hardcore couple thousand people. That's all they do."
I spoke to DankeyKyle, creator and head commissioner of the RHL, about how everything came together. “January 5th will forever be known as Hockey League Day, the day the people came together to save the hockey mode," he said. "In less than 24 hours after the uproar, Psyonix responded.” Snow Day was returned to Rocket League, but only in the form of private matches. One month later, Psyonix announced in a tweet that the mode was returning to playlists across all platforms. DankeyKyle pointed out at the time that the game mode read 'Hockey is Life.'
I think the competitive, ranked mode might be the key factor.
THE MUFFINMAN
In the time between the return of Snow Day as a private match mode and its return to the playlist, fans needed a way to get people together for matches, and so the Rocket Hockey League was born. The group started with a pre-season that eventually lead into a regular season of games. Other community members stepped in to help with the setup and figure out the rules. “The pre-season was a giant round robin”, says Petey B, another original member and commissioner. “Season two is a bit more free-form, where teams are more able to create their own schedules. We've been progressing our formats to create less headaches for the people who are sticking around and are willing to play.”
With a Discord server of over 1,000 members and Steam group of over 4,000, dedicated Twitch channels broadcasting tournaments and games with commentary, the RHL is still making a strong case for rocket hockey. Yet it still hasn't achieved its primary goal: ranked Snow Day.
I asked RHL commissioner THE MUFFINMAN why he thinks so few people play Snow Day to begin with, and the lack of ranked play is his main concern. “I think it’s similar to the other non-standard modes," he said. "I think the competitive, ranked mode might be the key factor.”
Adding competitive play to Snow Day could incentivize hardcore Rocket League players to give the mode a try, as well as up the stakes for its current fans. Though as THE MUFFINMAN suggests, if Snow Day gets a ranked mode, it's likely players of all the secondary modes will demand ranked play, too. But would that be so bad?
DankeyKyle is hopeful for a future even beyond ranked hockey. “Our final goal is to have the greater [Rocket League] community get as invested in Snow Day as they are in Soccar, with Psyonix backed RLCS Winter Games!”
I'm on board with DankeyKyle's dream—it's just up to Psyonix to decide how much time to put into its smaller Rocket League sub-communities, and whether they're worth growing. In the meantime, season two of the RHL is underway, and if you're interested in taking your ice skills to the next level, this is where you’ll find the dedicated players.
Third-person teen drama Life is Strange: Before the Storm has that challenge peculiar to prequels of having to provide the build-up to a story which managed fine without it. I’m playing and reviewing the three episodes of the Before the Storm miniseries having played and loved the original. That undoubtedly affects my thoughts about this game, so bear that in mind if you were thinking of playing them in timeline order rather than release order.
Before the Storm takes characters from Life is Strange and digs into their lives a few years prior. The main focus this time is Chloe Price; a gawky ball of unresolved grief, an exuder of teen rage and a serial player of hooky. We join her after the death of her father, William, just as class princess, Rachel Amber, crashes into her life.
To give a broad verdict for those who don’t want to risk spoilers, Before the Storm offers a more streamlined experience than its predecessor, prioritising conversation over puzzle-solving and fleshing out the relationship which is at the root of most of the action in Life is Strange. It leans harder into genre tropes and, as a result, its greatest strengths are intrinsically linked to its most pronounced weaknesses.
One of the things I loved about the original game was how it seemed to embrace the tropes of original teen fiction which used to rub along in subsections of fanfiction websites. That’s not a strand of fiction which usually gets space in gaming outside indie projects and I’ve seen it mocked and derided; lumped in with casual dismissals of everything on Tumblr.
That tranche of fiction can be overly dramatic, self-serving or steeped in wish fulfilment. Despite that (and because of that) you’ll also find spaces where people are figuring themselves out, writing their identities into being, having confrontations they can’t have in real life, conjuring up escapes from the frustration of adolescence, being their own heroes.
The first Life is Strange used that as the lens through which to unfurl its tale of gigantic storms and time jiggery-pokery. Before The Storm sees developer Deck Nine take up Dontnod’s tale. It offers a similar character-driven adventure with light puzzling but cranks the tropiness up and the game ends up better and worse than the original as a result.
I far prefer being Chloe to playing as Max. I like her anger and her action. I enjoyed hanging out with Rachel Amber and watching her relationship with Chloe erupt with the bewildering intensity I remember from being that age.
There are also some ace scenes—Chloe can have a foray into D&D which made me laugh out loud, there’s a people-watching improv segment which reminded me of doing the same thing with a friend I haven’t seen in years, and there are so many little moments of sincerity where the body language and the efforts of the characters to connect with each other feel just right.
There is also plenty of wish fulfilment. While Life is Strange wound its storytelling around a central mystery, Before the Storm hones in on Chloe and Rachel’s story. The first game (or at least my own canon playthrough) supported satisfying ambiguities with regard to relationships. This time I went headlong into romance. It was great. Dramatic and sincere and absolutely replete with moments designed to be screengrabbed, rendered as fan art or converted into gifs.
Girl aloud
Losing the storm story means the previous time rewind mechanic has been replaced with a backtalk challenge. In practice I found this to be a little hit and miss because you’re essentially arguing your way through a scene in a pretty artificial way. But it felt like a decent fit for Chloe’s character. Where Max is the exact sort of person who would want to painstakingly relive each and every moment to do the right thing and have the right answer, Chloe would definitely just shout at the problem until it stopped being a problem.
Then there are the segments where Before The Storm doesn’t exactly miss the mark, but I suspect playing it when I was 15 as opposed to in my 30s would have significantly altered my response.
Current Pip thinks that there’s definitely such a thing as too much pathetic fallacy. Current Pip is also burnt out on school plays as devices for teenagers to express their feelings, attractive people who don’t realise they’re attractive suddenly revealing an unlikely level of proficiency in some constructive or creative field, meaningful dream sequences, and conversations about starlight.
I do remember when those moments would have been just the right amount of over-the-top, but for me nowadays they tend towards heavy-handedness. (That said, I also stuffed my screenshot folder with moments from those sequences.)
That heavy-handedness also holds true when it comes to the more threatening moments in the game. They are in line with the rest of the drama but I found the relish in extreme expressions of bad situations uncomfortable.
I found my mind wandering during some scenes as conversations took on a stop-start quality
Partly that’s because Before the Storm sometimes wanders into simplistic melodrama with pantomime villains (as did its predecessor). But partly it’s because the game has played out against the backdrop of #MeToo. I’ve found it harder to watch violence and abuse in entertainment generally because of the relentless reminders of its presence in day-to-day life—they’re harder to separate. Life is Strange as a series also makes me let my guard down because I love those characters, so blows land that little bit harder.
On the overtly negative side, character movement—especially the running and walking animations—can be distractingly odd. In fact, characters generally have a very strange lack of physicality in the world. Sometimes that manifests as feet not seeming to interact with the ground, sometimes it’s a blow to an object which doesn’t make convincing contact. The body language itself manages to express some pretty subtle emotions, but it can struggle against this weirdly jerky movement in the characters.
Accompanying this is a stilted element of the dialogue—there are some unnaturally long pauses between lines and a propensity to tell not show. I found my mind wandering during some scenes as conversations took on a stop-start quality, maundered through exposition or were peppered with distracting animations.
Licensed content
There are also moments which took me out of the game. Licence plates are the main offender here. It’s hard to concentrate fully on the opening scene where Chloe is playing chicken on the train tracks if you’re busy rolling your eyes at the ‘1337’ plate plonked on the front of the engine. Same goes for the ‘BRK BD’ plate on your dealer’s RV and a set of jokey plates on bikes you encounter early on.
Nods to and teasers for the original game are variable. Some add context to story and characters, others seem more about enticing players into picking up the other game. There are also points where coherence or logic are pushed to one side in service of emotions or aesthetic.
One minor example involves the repurposing of a night light which I suspect will only annoy me. A more significant example is the character of Chloe’s mum’s boyfriend, David. His alternating rudeness and vulnerability have been given no depth or coherence, serving only to augment, excuse or trigger situations with other characters. How my playthrough ended also doesn’t dovetail with Life is Strange.
Whether you are bothered by that will depend on how much disbelief you’re willing to suspend to get a pleasing aesthetic or emotional payoff.
One key difference between Life Is Strange and Before The Storm is that Chloe is now voiced by Rhianna DeVries instead of Ashly Burch. The change is a result of the SAG-AFTRA strike, which saw union voice actors take action in support of changes to how the games industry employs and pays them. SAG-AFTRA was pushing for secondary compensation, transparency about the nature of the work when signing contracts, and measures to help guard against injury during vocally stressful performances as part of their list of proposals.
Burch still participated in Before The Storm but as a consultant, helping shape and refine Chloe’s character and dialogue. The result is a performance I couldn’t actually distinguish from Burch’s Chloe.
Strike that
In terms of the game experience, that’s great. In terms of labour politics, the substitution muddies how I feel about the studio and the game. It’s worth reading the various interviews and points of view online to make up your own mind whether you want to support the studio and this outing for the franchise.
With that caveat in place, Before the Storm benefits from being more focused and more of a character piece than Life Is Strange. It gets rid of most of the clunky puzzling, provides emotional payoffs for Chloe fans, and puts a gay teenage girl front and centre in a valuable way.
If you haven't got around to playing the new(ish) Doom yet, now would be a good time to trip over to Fanatical, which has kicked off a Bethesda Softworks sale that, for the next 48 hours, includes the 2016 reboot for just $10.
That, according to Is There Any Deal, is as low as it's ever gone—a match for the price in the Doom Bundle launched last year, shortly after Bundle Stars rebranded to Fanatical. Doom now includes all previously-released DLC—Unto the Evil, Hell Followed, and Bloodfall—and maps, modes, weapons, and feature updates, so it's the full package for a tenner. If you've got an urge to shoot some stuff this weekend, that's a good place to start.
But it's not just a Doom sale, it's a Bethesda sale, so there are a few other deals on tap as well.
Steamworld Dig 2 developer Image & Form is merging with Fe developer Zoink to form a new studio, Thunderful, the pair jointly announced.
Both indie studios are based in Gothenburg, Sweden and have been working together for some time, Image & Form CEO Brjann Sigurgeirsson explained in a statement. This merger is a formalization and natural extension of that relationship, Sigurgeirsson said, and will not hamper their individual operations going forward.
"They've collaborated for a long time and will continue to develop games with existing and new IPs under their respective labels," Thunderful's statement reads.
When we spoke to Sigurgeirsson on the making of the Steamworld universe last December, he hinted that there's more to do with the IP. "I'm sure there's at least one game in between Dig 2 and Heist, and there should be more to come after Heist as well," he said. It sounds like this merger will only have positive effects on the prospect.
Zoink has been making headlines with Fe lately, especially with its PC release confirmed for February, but the studio is responsible for several games—most topically, Flipping Death, a beautiful point-and-click platformer about solving your own murder in a storybook world.
In a world of Football Managers, GTA Onlines, Divinity: Original Sin 2s, and whichever time-pilfering games you pour your own hearts and souls into, it's nice to take a wee breather from time to time. Earlier today, I dialled things back with Yunus Ayyildiz and Ozan Çelik's Puzzlement—a neat, minimalistic puzzle game about shifting perspectives that's due next week.
Echoing everything from the aspect-altering works of Oscar Reutersvärd and MC Escher, to Monument Valley and the devs' previous game Hocus, Puzzlement has you steering a Pac-Man ghost-like character around a series of cubes—with progression hinged on gathering each level's collection of red squares.
As is the case with most puzzlers, the game's first few levels serve as a tutorial. Here, you'll learn how to pull yourself over blocks, how the game applies gravity, and that wandering off a level's blacked out walkways will spill you into a different side of the cube. Before long, levels comprise multiple cubes and coloured squares apply different conditions—such as flipping gravity and turning you on your head.
Check out how all this comes together in the trailer above. I spent longer than I care to admit cracking this early level:
With 50 levels all told—all against a lovely, soothing soundtrack—I look forward to scratching my head through Puzzlement's conundrums in the coming weeks. If you fancy it yourself, know that Puzzlement arrives on Steam on Thursday, February 1. When it does, it'll cost $1.99 with a 40 percent launch discount.
Throughout my life, I've faced many of my own end-of-the-world situations. Breakups, bereavements, moving to England and realising that for some ridiculous reason people south of the border go back to work on the second of January—and not the following week—following the Christmas break.
Luckily, I don't think Stellaris: Apocalypse features the latter—but it will contain convoys of existence-threatening space pirates, planet-destroying weapons, and gigantic Titan capital ships when it arrives next month.
The incoming expansion also caters to planetary pacifists, so says developer Paradox, who can make use of the DLC's new Ascension Perks, Civics, and new Unity Ambitions that "provide new ways to spend Unity and customise your development."
Here's an inspiring story trailer, no matter how you opt to tackle Doomsday.
And with that, I'm ready to save the universe. Let's just make sure we take two full weeks off at new year, though, yeah?
Stellaris: Apocalypse is due February 22. It'll cost $19.99/your regional equivalent when it lands.
Ark: Survival Evolved spinoff PixARK will come to Steam Early Access this March and officially release later this year.
PixARK is being developed by Snail Games, who describes it as an open-world sandbox survival game. Ark: Survival Evolved developer Studio Wildcard provided "design and technical input," Snail Games says.
The voxel-based spinoff builds on the base building, dinosaur taming formula of its predecessor with the addition of structured, RPG-like content. There are procedurally generated quests to go with its procedurally generated worlds, Snail Games says, as well as a focus on character progression and customization. Its announcement trailer also hints at more traditional fantasy elements like magic.
PixARK can be played in singleplayer or multiplayer survival modes, as well as a creative mode that allows players to build without limits. Outside of crafting and building, players will also be able to train and ride "over 100" dinosaurs, many of which will look familiar to Ark: Survival Evolved players.
Last November, Studio Wildcard creative director Jesse Rapczak said Ark: Survival Evolved "needs to have a sequel at some point." One wonders if this is what he had in mind.
PixARK comes on the heels of Ark: Survival Evolved's latest expansion, Aberration, which introduced new alien-like dinosaurs and subterranean biomes last month.
