I first saw Hyperbolic Magnetism's Beat Saber on Twitter. Someone retweeted the 30-second video of the VR rhythm game above and I was hooked immediately. 

The idea is that you wield two lightsabers and slash at colored cubes as they zoom toward you. You can't just flail wildly at them, though. Each cube is tied to a particular beat and has an arrow indicating the direction you should strike it from. It's Stars Wars meets Guitar Hero. 

Ján Ilavský, the lead developer on Beat Saber, initially came up with the idea after he bought an HTC Vive and was dissatisfied with the rhythm games on offer. He felt many of them failed to satisfyingly tie the action to the beat, and started to think about how he would go about making one instead.

"I bought the HTC Vive more than a year ago, and I was really looking forward to play some rhythm games, particularly Audioshield," Ilavský elaborates. "I started to play it […] and I didn’t feel the rhythm as much as I was expecting.

"It was fun, but I was looking for something more precise. Where I could feel each note. So I started to think about how to make something similar but to make it feel much more [rhythmic]. The cutting was [the solution we came up with]. So, I made a quick prototype cutting some cubes and we realized it worked really well."

It wasn't always about lightsabers. In an early build, it used standard swords instead. Ilávský changed this, however, after playtests revealed that people were too focused on the angle of their blades and weren't having fun with the rhythm. 

"[The decision] doesn’t actually have anything to do with Star Wars," Ilavský says, perhaps with an eye toward Disney's lawyers. "The first thing we actually had wasn't even a lightsaber. We computed the angle of how high you're holding the saber, but it wasn't good. The obvious choice was to use lightsabers instead, because there's no angle, so you can cut in any direction."

Ilavský is working alongside two other talented individuals: Vladimír Hrinčár, who is responsible for the programming and game design, and the musician Jaroslav Beck. Beck is composing the soundtrack and has worked on a bunch of high-profile projects in the past, scoring music for the Overwatch short films, World of Warcraft, and coincidentally enough the TV spots for Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

The team also aims to incorporate community contributions, with players able to create and share their own levels, and integrate music streaming services like YouTube and Spotify.

Beat Saber looks extremely promising. That initial tweet I saw has blown up significantly, being retweeted over 8,500 times.

"It was a big surprise," Ilavský says, clearly taken aback by how much publicity the short video created for the game. "This was just like, 'Yeah, let's make a small video to remind people we are doing something.' It took me like five minutes to make it. To record the gameplay, to edit it in Final Cut, and to finally release it. And it just happened. [What's funny] is that we were planning to make a huge trailer with actors and stuff." 

Ilavský believes the teaser went viral because of the simplicity of Beat Saber's premise combined with Beck's soundtrack and its escalation. You can immediately tell what you're supposed to do simply by looking at it, but as the clip goes on and music drops it shows that there's a steepening difficulty curve.

The support they’ve received since they released the video has meant a lot to the team. "In March last year, we stopped working on Beat Saber, because we didn’t know how to move forward. We thought like, 'Maybe, this is not the right game to do now.' Then some people asked us to show them the game at some small event. So, we brought the HTC Vive there and like 30 people played the game and they really pushed us to continue working on it.

"It’s really good to hear [the response to the demo]. Usually, when you show a game and it's mediocre or just normal, all your friends tell you, 'Yeah, it's good,' and you're like, 'OK. Maybe.'  But when people say they are going to buy a VR headset just because of your game, then it's different story."

Beat Saber doesn’t have an official release date yet, but both Oculus and HTC Vive support is planned. You can keep track of the development on Twitter and on its website. 

The good news: Chrono Trigger, the much-loved Square RPG released for the SNES in 1995, is now available on Steam. The "definitive version" of the game features updated controls, graphics and audio, and the Dimensional Vortex and Lost Sanctum dungeons that were added in 2008 for the Nintendo DS release. Steam-specific features including achievements, trading cards, and Steam Cloud saving are also supported.

The bad news: It does not look good.   

There are a few issues with the Steam release that have inspired complaints. It's a port (and apparently not a very good one) of the mobile game, which saddles it with wonky, tile-based controls—remnants of the touchscreen interface—and a font that doesn't quite inspire nostalgic fervor. Perhaps most offensive of all, there appears to be a pixel smoothing filter piled on top of it, making everything look disconcertingly slushy—and there's no option to turn it off.   

And despite Square Enix offering a "free upgrade" to the Limited Edition of the game (with six wallpapers, a medley of five songs from the soundtrack, and "digital liner notes" from composer Yasunori Mitsuda) for everyone who purchases prior to April 2, Steam users are not happy with it. Currently, 23 out of 30 user reviews are (very firmly) negative. 

There are other small issues plaguing the game—controls can't be remapped, for instance, and while Square Enix said that it supports 800x600, 1024x768, 1280x960, 1280x720, 1360x768, 1600x900, or 1920x1080, it's actually locked to the resolution of your display. Even if this is your first foray into Chrono Trigger and you're not coming into it with any "Good Old Days" expectations, that kind of thing is just cheap.

And in case you were wondering, no, you didn't miss anything: Chrono Trigger arrived on Steam without any prior announcement. I wonder why.

We snagged a couple screens of our own so you can see for yourself what the complaints are all about. More information about the game can be had in this FAQ. 

Intro the Breach, FTL developer Subset Games' latest, is finally out, and it's fantastic. The tiny little tactics game scored our first 90 of the year, and for good reason: Alex called it an exacting, agonizing, ever-changing challenge in his review. It's singing a different tune than FTL, but the same level of care has gone into it. 

If you're interested in playing both of Subset's greats, you can get FTL's Advanced Edition for free if you purchase Into the Breach from GOG on or before Tuesday, March 6. It's $15, and if you already own FTL, you can also get a gift code for a friend.

For more on Into the Breach, check out composer Ben Prunty's deep dive on how he scored the game. 

Some online stores give us a small cut if you buy something through one of our links. Read our affiliate policy for more info. 

The Witcher series of books are getting a Netflix adaptation, and back in December we learned that producer and writer Lauren Hissrich will be Geralt's showrunner. Hissrich has previously executive produced Daredevil and The Defenders for Netflix, written episodes for both shows (and for The West Wing, in the early 2000s). Thanks to her Twitter feed, we can put together a few new tidbits about the show, how it's shaping up, and which familiar characters we can expect to see. And yes, we'll get the most important out of the way first: Roach is in.

Hissrich wrote brief descriptions of The Witcher's major characters. Geralt is "stoic" but also "soft-and-squishy-in-a-tiny-place-in-his-heart-that-he'll-never-reveal-until-maybe-the-end-and-even-then-it-will-just-be-a-hint." Yennefer is fiery and proud; Triss Merigold is spunky and idealistic; Ciri resilient and relentless. We can also expect to see Jaskier (who we know as Dandelion in the English adaptations), Geralt's vampire buddy Regis, Emperor Emhyr var Emreis, and some characters who aren't in the games.

Those include Cahir, Vilgefortz, Milva, and witcher-killing bounty hunter Leo Bonhart. That's a pretty full cast.

Hissrich pitched the main storylines of the first season to Netflix on December 13th, and posted an example of just how many revisions it took to get from outline to completed pilot. "On Feb 23rd, I finished the first draft of the pilot," Hissrich tweeted. "It's 78 pages, which is a little too long, but I'm not ready to cut anything else yet!" This is what that writing process looked like:

The Witcher series is obviously still some time away from filming, but it's moving forward. Now we wonder: who's going to play Geralt?

Grand Theft Auto's Pfister Comet has been one of my favourite rides since its Vice City intro—second only to the Banshee. The Porsche 911/996 GT2-styled brief now welcomes its SR edition to GTA Online, alongside a pretty impressive aircraft sale, and double GTA$ and RP bonuses on Special Vehicle, Gunrunning, Air Quota and Rockstar-created Transform race missions. 

At $1,145,000 of in-game dough, the Comet SR boasts top tier speed, which compliments its maxed out traction stats. Its pre-tuning acceleration sits a nose hair below the highest mark, but its brake power is well below average. Again, I'm a fan of its rear-wheel-driving standard GTA 5/Online edition, but, on stats alone, the SR sounds like good bang for your buck nevertheless.

I might check it out in motion, given my San Andreas State Tax Refund has come through. But then again, I might wax my cash on GTA Online's latest aircraft and facility discounts. They're detailed here:

Aircraft Discounts:

• Mammoth Avenger—25% off.
• P-996 Lazer—25% off.
• Volatol—25% off (Buy it Now & Trade Price).
• Western Company Seabreeze—25% off (Buy it Now & Trade Price).

Facility Upgrades:

• Facility Style—25% off.
• Facility Graphics—25% off.
• Security Room—25% off.

Vehicle Discounts:

• Mobile Operations Center Cabs—30% off.
• HVY Insurgent Pick-Up (Off-Road)—30% off Buy it Now & Trade Prices.
• HVY Nightshark (Off-Road)—30% off.
• Declasse Yosemite (Muscle)—25% off.
• Vapid Riata (Off-Road)—25% off.

As mentioned above, Special Vehicle, Gunrunning, Air Quota and Rockstar-created Transform race missions are also subject to double GTA$ and double RP this week. More information on that and all of the above can be found this-a-way. 

This article was originally published in February 2018.

With a population of 30,000, the free city of Novigrad is the cosmopolitan heart of the Northern Kingdoms. Geralt of Rivia’s search for his adoptive daughter Ciri brings him here during the events of The Witcher 3, and he finds a city plagued by organised crime, religious zealotry, and bitter class division.

The city sits on the northern shore of the Pontar, at the point where the river empties into the Great Sea. While monster attacks are a problem for most settlements in the region, Novigrad is protected by impenetrable stone walls designed by architects from the Oxenfurt Academy. The city has no stationed army, but is watched over by the Temple Guard: a militant arm of the Eternal Fire with a reputation for abusing its power. Those great walls may keep monsters out of Novigrad, but it has plenty of its own.

Like any bustling metropolis, Novigrad is divided into distinct districts. And as you wander its streets, from the slums of Harborside to the mansions of Gildorf, you see a wonderful variety of faces; faces that reflect their surroundings and give the city its character. I recently walked the entire length and breadth of Novigrad, and the following portraits are of the people I met along the way, offering an intimate glimpse of life in the free city.

Located in the eastern part of the city, The Bits is an overcrowded district in the grips of extreme poverty. Ramshackle stacks of dilapidated houses lean over narrow, muddy side-streets, and it’s not uncommon to find yourself being attacked by desperate criminals. You’ll find thugs, beggars, and assorted ne'er-do-wells hiding from the Temple Guard here, but there are also flickers of humanity, including a school for orphaned children.

Putrid Grove is similarly impoverished, but has become a haven for non-humans and magic users, who live under the protection of Francis Bedlam, the King of Beggars. In his sanctuary you’ll see elves, dwarves, and humans living together, and mages plying their forbidden trade. This is the only place in the city where people on the fringes of society can live in peace without being hounded by the Eternal Fire's witch hunters. “They call this place the Putrid Grove,” the King of Beggars tells Geralt. “But it’s the rest of Novigrad that’s putrefied. This here’s the last bastion of normality, sanity, reason.”

Outcasts can also be found in Farcorners, a patch of farmland just outside the city walls. Although not completely safe from the prying eyes of the Eternal Fire, magic users and non-humans can find some safety here. Geralt meets a fugitive mage called Remi Villeroy, who fled with his family after the witch hunts broke out. Novigrad may seem like a shining beacon in war-ravaged Velen, but for some folk, life there is just as tough as anywhere else.

Of course, for others, life in Novigrad is sweet. Gildorf is the city’s most affluent district, elevated above the grimy slums below—both literally and figuratively. Here the wealthiest citizens live in opulent villas, relax in Sigismund’s Bathhouse, and engage in all manner of hedonism at the Passiflora, Novigrad’s finest brothel. There are no beggars or cutthroats here; just strolling nobles clad in fine, colourful clothes and a huge contingent of Temple Guards to keep the riff-raff at bay. Compared to The Bits, it’s like a different city.

Gildorf is also notable for its connection to Temple Isle via St. Gregory’s Bridge. This is the religious heart of the city, home to the Great Temple of the Eternal Fire. At the base of the tower, whose flame can be seen burning for miles around, you’ll find crowds of worshippers praying and priests giving passionate sermons. And, of course, the Temple Guard is out in force, making sure order is kept in this most holy of sites. But that hasn’t stopped Whoreson Junior, one of the city’s crime lords, buying a townhouse on the island.

Not every upper class citizen hides away in prestige districts like Gildorf, however. You’ll find the well-to-do mingling with the mucky rabble in the city centre—particularly around Hierarch Square. This busy marketplace throbs with life, with merchants, craftsmen, conmen, beggars, bankers, thieves, and nobles merrily rubbing shoulders. Just off the square is the famous Kingfisher Inn, a cosy tavern whose resident bard, the beautiful Callonetta, frequently brings patrons to tears with her songs of romance and adventure.

Industry is also an important part of city life, and some areas of Novigrad are devoted to commerce. Harborside is where ships come in from the Great Sea, bringing goods from faraway lands for merchants to sell in town. You can also find captains here who will, providing they have the coin, take travellers to places like the Skellige archipelago. The Golden Sturgeon is a rowdy dockside tavern popular with sailors looking to drink their shore leave away, including fist-fighting champion Georgius ‘The Piledriver’ Georg.

A network of canals runs through Novigrad, where locals will often be found fishing. And they sell their catch in the Fish Market district, a hub of merchants trading in fish and other goods. Traders are also present in Glory Lane, a district where Geralt can meet the master blacksmith Éibhear Hattori. Districts like these keep Novigrad’s economy alive, and provide a wealth of jobs for the common folk, even if the working conditions are often grim.

And all that money has to go somewhere, which is where Novigrad’s many banks come in. The Novigrad branch of the dwarf-owned Vivaldi Bank is on Hierarch Square, where Florens and Orens can be exchanged for Crowns, and loans can be taken out. Vimme Vivaldi runs the branch, who also happens to be one of the city’s most talented gwent players. While many dwarves are outcasts in the city, Vivaldi’s status and wealth protects him: an example of the injustice and hypocrisy that is sadly commonplace in Novigrad.

Novigrad is a remarkable place, with a rich culture and history that videogame cities often struggle to convey. Before I took this tour through its streets, I’d been in the city dozens of times before while playing The Witcher 3, but never really stopped to admire just how much thought and craft has gone into its construction. It’s evident in its design, and the design of its citizens, that CD Projekt RED’s artists and writers thought about the city as a real place, rather than just a cardboard set for the player to run around in.

I’m also impressed by how much personality the people have, even though you only catch a distant glimpse of most of them when playing the game normally. It was only when I made use of NVIDIA’s Ansel screenshot tool to take a closer look that I discovered this hidden world of detail. These faces say as much about the city as the streets and buildings, and I feel like you could write entire stories about every random NPC featured in these portraits.

So the next time you’re in Novigrad, get off your horse, switch off the HUD, and go for a long walk. You’ll be amazed by how much detail you miss when you’re busy questing and fighting, and how real the place feels when you really think about its layout and the people you see around you in each district. It's amazing to think that this hyper-detailed city is just one small corner of The Witcher 3's vast world, and it explains why the game took three and a half years to make. I can't wait to see the futuristic cities CDPR builds for Cyberpunk 2077.

I played over one hundred hours of Final Fantasy 15 on PS4, and I'm pleased it's coming to PC in what should be its best iteration yet. With a first-person mode, visual effects upgrades and modding support, its release feels like a real event, even if the wait has been longer than we'd have liked. 

You probably know what the game is at this point—a moving and often thrilling roadtrip adventure between Prince Noctis and his three friends. It's much more of an action game than Final Fantasy entries of the past, with noticeably lighter RPG elements, and its structure will feel familiar to anyone who has played an open world game from the last ten years. It's finally out on Steam next week, having originally arrived on consoles back in December 2016.

"In previous Final Fantasy titles, we always completed work on the console versions and then started thinking about a PC port," says Takeshi Aramaki, technical director & lead programmer, when I ask how the process for bringing FFXV to PC compares to past entries (some of which took years to make the leap). "In Final Fantasy 15, we actually started development with a Windows edition in mind, and did everything in parallel." 

"We really wanted to be able to get this game out globally to as many countries as possible, and we understood that a number of different regions and countries are very much PC markets."

"One of the things we really want to push about this game is that it's really not just a port of the console version," adds Kenichi Shida, game design and development manager. "It was reworked and redesigned from the ground up, pretty much, to appeal to a PC market and give them what they want."

Given the recent explosion of Japanese console games coming to PC—including recent, excellent ports of Final Fantasy 10/10-2 and Final Fantasy 12—I ask if the developers think the PC market has changed in the past decade. "I think certainly from Square Enix's point of view, we've had some PC titles that have done quite well in the past ten years—online games like Final Fantasy XIV [for example]," Shida says. "But for our department which has only focused on console games before, having this environment now where a lot of people do port to PC is a big change, it's a big challenge for us to see this new status quo."

Supporting modders

At the PC Gamer Weekender earlier this month, I was surprised when they revealed the above first look at how mods can work in the Windows Edition, a moment that made many members of the packed crowd reach for their phones. Making mods a part of the way they publicise the game is an interesting approach. "It's very much to do with our overall roadmap for the game," Shida says. "Certainly, our director Mr Tabata, feels at this point in the game's evolution, it's finished doing everything he wanted to do initially for the game. Releasing the Windows Edition and the Royal Edition—that's everything we wanted to do from the start. And then obviously, because of that, we're at a turning point in where we see the evolution of the game.

"From here, we want to give more freedom to the players to do what they want to do in the game, and evolve it in new ways we hadn't thought of. So that's where mods come in. When it comes to how we decided we were doing it, it wasn't that difficult a decision—the reason being that mod support is something that PC gamers look to and want so much, and so many other games do it, but it wasn't actually that difficult. We know they wanted it, and that we had to give it to them, basically." The potential clearly excites them. "In a more general sense, we want people to be as free as possible and make they want to make. We don't want to limit people in what they make for this game at all."

Mods aside, a lot of Final Fantasy 15 Windows Edition's marketing has focused on how nice it'll look on the highest-end hardware. That side of things is exciting for people with super-expensive graphics cards, but I'm curious to know how much they considered lower-range players in optimising the game. "We very much wanted to cover a broad range of different users with different specs available, from people playing on their laptop who can't run any of the high-end stuff up to people who want 4K and to use all the Nvidia [settings] at once," says Aramaki. "It was important to make the game scale so it could work at any of those levels, really, and we've put a lot of effort into that. We did think of every kind of user when we designed it."

The PC version's first-person mode is an intriguing addition, too. Considering how much Noctis moves around in combat, my immediate concern was feeling a bit woozy after two minutes of playing it in first-person. Aramaki explains how they addressed that. "We've been working on the first-person mode for quite a long time on the development team, and we really did understand the idea of not making the player disoriented and dizzy from all the movement, so we've done a lot of subtle changes to the camera and tweaking the angles and positioning of the camera when you're in the mode—not making it move around so much. One other example, of course, is when you're hit and take damage, reducing the camera shake there so it doesn't always feel like you're wobbling. All those little changes add in to reduce that feeling of disorientation." 

Neverending story 

When Square Enix announced the PC version of FF15, I assumed that it'd mark the end of the game's journey on all formats, which has seen four expansions added to the console version after release, among multiple updates (all of which will be included in the PC edition). But that's not the case. "We very do think of 15 as an active game, as it were, and we were thinking of lots of different things to expand and keep people playing," Shida says. "It's still going to go on." It's been confirmed that Final Fantasy 15 will get four more DLC episodes through to 2019, at which point the game will be over two years old. According to Shida, the game's active audience is still growing—and an influx of PC players can only help. 

"When we released the Episode Ignis DLC and the Comrades DLC, that active userbase was still growing even then. With the recent Windows Edition, it's just going to push it further. So we have a massive audience now, and we want to keep giving those people new stuff." I can't say I was terribly fond of the extra episodes when they were released on consoles, as they focused on the core cast in stories that felt a little inconsequential, but it's pleasing that Final Fantasy 15's journey isn't over yet after it comes to PC. Other past updates to the game have focused on filling in parts of the story, or adding fun, free limited time events. These just give players reasons to keep coming back. 

At the end of the interview, Shida asks me what I think will keep people playing on PC, and I tell him that anything Square Enix can do to support and encourage modders is a positive thing to me. An official mod tool is in the works. If a community can grow for years and years around FF15, and we can constantly write about the cool stuff people are making like we do with Fallout and Skyrim, that'd be so exciting. Turning civilians into cactuars is a good start, though. 

The group stages of CS:GO's portion of the Intel Extreme Masters at Katowice 2018 are underway.  

Running today in Poland's Spodek Arena, the first of Group A's matches—SK Gaming vs Avangar, and Renegades vs Astralis, the latter of which, at the time of writing, can be viewed here—are set to wrap up after 1pm GMT, with Group B's ties to follow. I don't know enough about the CS:GO esports scene to pass judgement/back a potential winner, but Ninjas in Pyjamas is some top tier team naming. I'm rooting for them. 

Group stages run through March 1, with playoffs on March 2, playoff semi finals on March, and the competition's grand final on Sunday, March 4 at 4pm GMT/8am PT. Here's a look at the prize pool:

A full streaming schedule for all of that can be found here, as can more information on the event's format. 

Elsewhere at Katowice 2018, PUBG and Dota 2 held their respective run-ins last weekend—marking Dota 2's first Polish major—whereas Starcraft 2 started its initial rounds of 76 yesterday. More details on those can be found here and here and here.   

Rocket League has announced a partnership with World Wrestling Entertainment. The deal includes both in-game crossovers and real life sponsorship.    

Having sided with everything from Back to the Future, to Casper the Friendly Ghost and DC Comics in the past, the WWE is in Badd good company.   

"Throughout 2018, you can expect to see Rocket League all over the WWE universe," says Psyonix on the game's official site. "From regular appearances on UpUpDownDown, WWE’s YouTube gaming channel with Austin Creed a.k.a. WWE Superstar Xavier Woods to sponsorships at live WWE events—you may have even seen us on Elimination Chamber just last night. 

"We’re also very excited to be a partner of WrestleMania 34, where we’ll have Rocket League playable for attendees at one of the biggest sports and entertainment events in the world in New Orleans the weekend of April 8."

For now, Psyonix remains tight-lipped about how the WWE will feature in-game, however does earmark April for its inclusion. By nature, Rocket League already echoes Hell in a Cell—I wonder if the ball-cage-car 'em up could use some TLC?  

In the grand tradition of modders remaking old Bethesda RPGs in newer Bethesda RPGs, modding crew Road to Liberty is recreating Fallout 3 in Fallout 4. The video above, which the team released late last week, shows how (part of) the underground Metro network looks when redone with Fallout 4's prettier tools.

Perusing the Capital Wasteland website, it's clear the group is making steady progress – there are plenty of screenshots showing some of the most memorable areas in Fallout 3's vanquished Washington. Still, the group is still eager to have 3D and 2D artists volunteer their time in order to fast track the mod's progress.

If you'd prefer to see New Vegas remade in Fallout 4, there's an in-development mod for that, as well.