Martin Madrazo, aka GTA Online's most entertaining contact mission-giver, brings his eponymous 'Dispatch Services' to the open world crime sim this week. Likewise, two new cars enter the fold, as do a typical wave of vehicle and property discounts.
In short two to four-person bouts, Dispatch Services missions let players carry out hits for the cartel leader across the city. "Infiltrate LSPD holding cells or launch an assault on Merryweather HQ as you seek to silence a few names on Madrazo's hit list," says the latest Newswire post of the limited-time double experience and GTA$-boasting assignments.
I jumped in earlier with a random player, where we assassinated 30 or so baddies on a Vinewood Hills estate. We were in and out in five minutes and were rewarded $20,000 and 4050 RP each for our troubles.
Elsewhere, this week's update brings both the Lampadati Michelli GT classic sports car, and the RUNE Cheburek sedan. More information on those can be gleaned from their dedicated wiki pages, but know that they'll set you back $1,225,000 and $145,000 respectively.
For me, the pick of this week's vehicle discounts is the Pegassi Tezeract at 25 percent less its recommended value. Otherwise $2,825,000, it's on sale for $2,118,750 and is my own favourite ride at the moment. I'd consult Adam's fastest cars in GTA Online list for a more comprehensive overview, though, and I'd also check out his money making guide while you're at it. Bear the latter guide in mind when considering taking the plunge on a half-price Hangar—the highlight of this week's building discounts. Check out the full sale this-a-way.
Lastly, Smugglers and Gunrunning Sell Missions are subject to double RP and GTA$ this week (bunker research teams also have 2x speed boosts)—as are Motor Wars and Trap Door for another week. Despite its flaws, I've warmed to the latter.
Since We Happy Few was removed from Early Access earlier this year, it's undergone a major transformation from a survival game with touches of story to a linear, story-driven game with touches of survival game mechanics. After spending an hour with the latest version of We Happy Few, I worry the changes are still not enough. Its alt-history take on 1960s England is so stylish and well-realized, especially with all the new characters and quiet set pieces, that the remaining survival game systems feel like leftovers from their own alternate history.
Small town life
I wade through the tall grass of the slums, a community left to its own devices on the outskirts of the fictional English city of Wellington Wells, where a society lives on hallucinogenic drugs in an alt-history take on the outcome of World War 2. But out here, if I'm caught wearing a nice suit or taking Joy (the drugs), the locals will chase me down with sharp sticks and poke me to death. I actually have to tear my clothes up via a crafting menu to placate them. The ruling class isn't a kind one, I'm thinking.
One abandoned, dilapidating home—they all look this way out here—glows in the low evening light. Inside I find toys piled on rotting mattresses. Three floors of shrines, and no sign of life. The kids are gone, it seems, likely in a camp or school dozens of miles away. Another home, this one without light, is somewhat intact. I find letters to the editor on each floor expressing disgust with an increasing presence of authoritarianism, the state of affairs of this empty village clearly the product of a militarized force tightening their grip. On the third floor I find the authors hanging from the rafters.
We Happy Few is overflowing with these quiet (and grim) storytelling touches now, filling in the history of its world while characterizing the small people and big powers at play. The three playable characters are fully voiced, and regularly comment (a bit too often) on how they're feeling or what they see. Floating gold masks are hidden in some areas, and when you approach a small black and white vignette plays out from the lead character's perspective as a child near the end of World War 2. The Germans win in this timeline, but don't expect the usual Nazi bad guys.
Hungry man
Think of the new structure of We Happy Few like this: what was initially a roguelike set in procedurally generated survival game biomes is now a linear adventure game strung out along a series of connected, procedurally generated biomes.
The slums is one such area, a sprawling meadow with overgrown houses nearing collapse, and a few corners of the area populated by locals. The suit-haters didn't mind me much, but an outpost in the northwest corner carries far more threatening occupants. Surrounded by a spiked wooden fence, I need to infiltrate the outpost and steal some supplies in order to get help from a fellow among the suit-haters. If I find his old war medals, he's promised to help me get closer to Wellington Wells.
Survival systems like hunger, thirst, and sleep deprivation still exist, but they're not directly connected to your health.
I sneak around the back of the outpost only for a guard to take me by surprise. I wake up in the fighting pit, a crowd of bandits that look something like spiked-everything Mad Maxers with an insistence for nice haircuts and clean trousers. A gate separates me from Danny Defoe, who I recognize far too long after he recognizes me. Apparently, before things went to shit, he plagiarized something my character, a former reporter, had written and I told on the guy. He has some grievances to air, and I have some forgiveness to find.
I'm offered two tools to complete my task, and the same goes for Defoe: a club wrapped tightly with soft cloth or a very pointy stick. I grab the pillow club and Defoe grabs the spear. I must've been a real dick back when. I club him unconscious, which is an involuntary brand of forgiveness, I suppose. More attackers arrive to subdue me, but I beat them into tiny, crumpled piles of forgiveness too. Luckily, the combat is simple—maybe too simple. You can block, swing, charge up a heavy swing, and kick opponents to break their block.
The stamina meter governs how much swinging and blocking and sprinting you're capable of before needing to back off and recharge, which itself is governed by your character's well-being. If you're too hungry, tired, or injured, your max stamina will shrink. Combat is easy to pick up, but just as clumsy and shallow as it is in Skyrim—at least early on.
None of it's a problem until I finish off the remaining thugs and attempt an escape. I'm starting to get hungry and all I have is dozens of rotten carrots. What a wonder that the guards can't smell the fermenting garbage collecting in my pants. To get out I'll need to sneak by some guards in the dark, damp tunnels of the old bunker using basic stealth rules: don't be too loud, avoid light and vision cones, and throw objects to distract guards. The AI is pretty basic, so my escape is a breeze, up until I get too confident. Sneak up on a baddie and you can choke them out, though be careful or you'll generate too much noise. I perform this mistake once I get to the surface, and three guards attack me right away. I've managed to keep my pillow bludgeon intact and build my own pointy stick, so with enough patience and poking I murder them with ease. Weapons will break after enough use, so stealth will likely be the only option in cases where I'm strapped for supplies.
Now I'm back out in the open meadow of the village ruins again, but without food and no idea where to find any. I figure my character would forage in empty houses and near verdant collections of vegetation, and it pays off. Eventually I find old jerky (not rotten) near a dying fire, thankful my aimless fetch quest is over. Back to exploring, hopefully without hunger as a constant irritation.
Survival systems like hunger, thirst, and sleep deprivation still exist, but they're not directly connected to your health. Ignoring these systems for the entire game is possible, and none of them will kill you, but they'll significantly debuff your max stamina and stamina recovery.
Digging through drawers and corpses to find scraps of food and salvage were my least favorite parts of Bioshock, and it's no more exciting in We Happy Few. Finding crafting items and food act as small tethers to unexplored areas, but the bespoke environments and embedded stories should be incentive enough. I'd rather look up at the people hanging in the rafters (gruesome as it sounds) than give the desk below them priority, and I'd rather feel more directly threatened by the world and the people in it than through abstract hunger systems and item scarcity.
Thematically, We Happy Few's new incarnation approaches the character and quality of a Bioshock or Dishonored while playing like the inverse. In those games, you're a lithe, powerful hero. In We Happy Few, you play as a helpless nobody. I'm happy to be a nobody, I just wish there was a way to express your helplessness and struggle to survive that was as fun or complex as chaining plasmids is in Bioshock or combining abilities is in Dishonored.
As it stands, We Happy Few borrows simple, mundane crafting systems from full-on survival games to express your fragility and desperation in an oppressive world. At least most of the survival elements will be customizable, or totally eliminated by playing on easy. But with so many survival games leaving Early Access that frame hunger, thirst, sleep, and so on around the same chore-like checklisting, I'd rather see We Happy Few try something completely new that didn't distract from such an intriguing world.
Update: It looks like Bethesda is live on Twitch too, though all we're seeing at the moment is the same image teased on Twitter with a plastic Pip-Boy standing in the foreground. Whether the image will idle for minutes or days, we're not sure, but if you want something other than a crackling fireplace as visual ambiance, here you are.
Original story: The first day back at work following a long weekend is never easy, but the thought of something new from the Fallout universe might help you through the day.
What exactly that is, I couldn't say. But, as teased by the official Bethesda Game Studios Twitter feed, the studio responsible for Fallout 3, Fallout 4 and main series spin-off Fallout Shelter asked that we "Please Stand By"—illustrated by a gif of the post-apocalyptic action RPG's iconic test pattern screen, and an accompanying hash tag.
So, what could it mean? Another mobile venture? An HD remaster of an older game? Fallout 5? Share your thoughts and wildest guesses in the comments below.
And while we're talking speculation, Obsidian has since tweeted out the following.
Update: The final round of testing for PUBG's Sanhok map has been extended to Monday, June 4Thursday, June 7 Monday, June 11. Wow, it's tough keeping up with this one.
After uncovering some "interesting performance problems", writes PUBG Corp in this Steam Community update, testing for the battle royale's incoming Sanhok map has been extended for the second time.
"We’ve identified an issue where unnecessary packets are transferred from the client to the server, which causes excess load and dips in server performance," says the developer. "Currently, the distance in which players are rendered is up to a maximum radius of 1km from your current position. As Sanhok is 1/4th the size of Erangel and Miramar, the number of players within this 1km area is generally much higher.
"Some performance issues have arisen due to this, with the direct result being a reduced server frame speed, which leads to early-game server performance issues, including player teleporting or stuttering. According to our internal data, the kill rate at extremely long distances is very low and therefore we’ve decided to reduce the maximum player render distance specifically on Sanhok, which will increase performance."
PUBG Corp says it plans to implement these changes in an upcoming patch—and that it'll update once its patch schedule has been finalised.
As reported in our original story below, developer PUBG Corp plans to launch the Thailand-inspired arena on live servers "near the end of June." This round of testing—this map's fourth—kicked off last week, has been extended twice, and will now run till June 11 at 4am PST / 12 noon BST. Full patch notes can be found in this direction.
Here's a trailer to mark Sanhok's latest test period:
Original story:PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds' Sanhok map returns to its 'Experimental Server' this week. Once known as Codename Savage, the tropical 4x4km arena enters test servers on May 31 at 7pm PST / June 1 at 3am BST, and wraps up on June 4 at 4am PST/ 12 noon BST.
"As before, everyone who owns a copy of PUBG will be able to play simply by downloading the updated version of the 'PUBG: Experimental Server' found in your Steam library," explains this Steam Community update post. Developer PUBG Corp notes that this phase of testing will likely be the map's last. All going to plan, this means Sanhok will hit live servers "near the end of June".
The post adds: "Even after it launches, we’ll continue making changes based on the feedback we get from you guys"—which ties into PUBG Corp's planned performance improvements statement last week.
As reported by our Sam Horti, the developer underscored its commitment to "making literally every inch of Sanhok perfect for players, whether it’s the texture on a rock wall or little unique trimmings around each of the islands houses." It will also target player movement, animations and character models, in its bid to boost framerates across all platforms.
Alongside December's Doomsday Heist, GTA Online introduced Blonded Los Santos 97.8 FM—a Frank Ocean-hosted radio station, that marked the game's first new music in over two years. Now, it appears Rockstar is lining up some new beats by way of techno DJs Tale of Us, The Black Madonna, Solomun and Dixon.
As reported by Resident Advisor, The Black Madonna's official Twitter posted the following collaboration flyer which lists the above acts, Los Santos and "Summer 2018."
Italian duo Tale of Us published a similar post on Instagram, while Rockstar followed up last night with the following tweet.
I'd suggest there's a link between that second minimalist flyer design and the minimal techno genre of music, but perhaps I'm being overly romantic. Rumblings within the GTA Online community suggest a nightclub update is on the horizon, but whether this is true or not remains to be seen.
I last saw Tale of Us in Glasgow in August 2016. Captured by thecandleman, here's a snippet of their set and a taste of what we might expect in San Andreas:
One of the first things I did when I played The Sims was try to make the Addams family. Unfortunately, while my Gomez and Morticia fell rapturously in love and Wednesday and Pugsley happily played together all day, I didn't make anybody to keep Uncle Fester company. He eventually died of loneliness. At least he left a thematically appropriate gravestone in the front yard.
In MachiaVillain you're supposed to be making a spooky mansion full of kooks. You've got zombies, psychopaths, psychic killer tires, and other horror movie types living under your roof. By day they craft new rooms and traps, by night they wait for the locals to visit and murder them one by one. Then they collect the bodies, drag them to the kitchen, and one of the cartoon villains dons a chef's hat and starts carving them up for food.
It's a cheerfully grotesque game, with visuals that remind me of Don't Starve—though the interface is much messier. Like Don't Starve it's partially a crafting game, more than I expected it would be. One of the first things you need to do is chop down nearby trees to build the mansion's floors, walls, and doors. There's mining as well, and 'evil trees' that fight back but provide special, eeevil wood when defeated.
Separating people to kill them alone is good, saving the virgin for last is better, and killing the dog is right out.
There's a rhythm to MachiaVillain, where you assign jobs and manage stats like hunger and loyalty when the sun is up, building new rooms and making sure the regular leaflet campaign is finished before the post gets collected. (To keep victims coming you have lure them with mailouts claiming they've won fabulous prizes or perhaps advertising for room-mates or D&D players). Come dark, you get everyone into position and the murders begin.
It's best to have a mansion that's divided into entirely separate wings, one containing areas like the laboratory and factory where minions work, and the other front-facing rooms with friendly lamps and televisions to lure the innocent. As well as providing tasty brains to keep the zombies happy, killing victims provides an essential resource called Evilium, and you earn more of it for playing to the cliches of horror movies. Separating people to kill them alone is good, saving the virgin for last is better, and killing the dog is right out.
Scaring people too much can be a bad thing, as they'll call friends to warn them or try to escape, running past all your buzz saws and Draculas. That raises the suspicion score, and when it gets too high it brings the attention of monster hunters and cops, who are apparently much harder to kill. I've not had that problem yet, though I've faced plenty of random attacks by giant spiders, and I suspect there are other things lurking in the woods.
Sometimes victims don't actually make it to the front door. A pop-up telling me they're on the way appears and I get everyone to down tools and take up positions, but occasionally the victims start dying on the road before they even get to my creepy puzzle dungeon. I have to rush everyone out to mop up the survivors before they call for help. By the time I get there whatever's attacking them is gone, and only the blood remains. Is it the spiders? Evil trees? The angry ghost of Uncle Fester back for revenge? Or is something else sharing this map with us?
MachiaVillain has had a couple of patches since it launched two weeks ago to fix the most egregious bugs, so I'm hoping this isn't one of those. Because finding out there's something else out there even scarier than us would be a great twist. I wonder if they want to move in? We've got television and a tasty stockpile of smoked brains.
A modder who goes by the name Dropoff recently discovered something very interesting hidden in the data of Dark Souls Remastered—an early prototype of the Upper Cathedral Ward map from Bloodborne. Dark Souls was released in 2011, four years before Bloodborne, while Dark Souls Remastered debuted just this month—but another modder, Lance McDonald, said it's not new work.
The data was stored in the "m99_99_98_00" file, which is what attracted attention, according to Kotaku, since the "m99" designation typically indicates a file used for testing—and where unused or leftover stuff can sometimes be found lying around. The level design found in Dark Souls Remastered isn't an exact match to what ultimately appeared in Bloodborne, which McDonald believes indicates that the level was actually prototyped during Dark Souls development, years before Bloodborne.
What really makes the whole thing weird is the presence of notorious Grand Theft Auto 5 degenerate Trevor, who takes a tour through the map in the video above. Dropoff said he was able to extract and import the level data into unnamed "3D software," which enabled him to open it in GTA5. From there, it was a simple matter of taking a tour of the place and filming the results. It's obviously not the most compelling GTA map of all time, but as a historical curiosity with a double-twist of strangeness, it's tough to beat.
Agony, based on what we've seen of it so far, isn't so much a horror game as we've come to know them—dark corridors and jump scares—as it is straight-up horrific. Everything seems wet and sticky (and not in a good way), there are naked naughty bits all over the place (also not in a good way), and in case you missed it earlier this month, babies get eaten. Lovely stuff.
It's the sort of in-your-face visual content that sets a regulatory agent's teeth on edge, and sure enough, developer Madmind Studio said today that it has had to tone things down in order to get a rating from PEGI (Pan European Game Information) and other agencies—but only very slightly, as it turns out.
"The censorship now affects only several seconds from two endings (out of seven) and some scenes that may be unlocked only after the end of the game," Madmind wrote. "None of the scenes you have seen in the trailers and other promotional materials have been censored at all, and the game will feature those on all platforms."
The studio even posted a helpful list of features you can look forward to in the game:
Gore
Brutal Sex Scenes
Lesbian and Gay Sex Scenes
Genital Physics
Eye Gouging
Heart Plucking
Children Heads Exploding
Setting Fire to Martyrs and Demons
Intense Violence
Strong Language
Drugs
Those are definitely not the kinds of back-of-the-box bullet points you see every day.
Because of unspecified "legal issues," however, Madmind has dropped its plan to release a patch that would remove the censorship from the PC version of the game. Instead, it will publish a "comparison video" on May 30, "so you will not miss out [on] anything," a statement that, intentional or not, really highlights where much of the interest in Agony really lies.
"Please bear in mind that leaving this content uncensored would result in the game being banned and us, Madmind Studio, being sued," the message says. "That would simply lead to the studio being closed. Obviously, we don’t want this to happen and we hope that you understand it."
CCP Games promises that the Triglavian Collective will be "the most intelligent enemies seen yet in New Eden". Beat them and you can harvest "mutaplasmids", which you can use on your existing modules. The plasmids might boost performance and increase the value of your hardware, but they might also wreck your gear completely, so you'll always be taking a risk.
The free expansion also adds three new ships, which players on a subscription will be able to craft from blueprints. You can watch them flying around from 0:25 in the video. Those ships can also use a new weapon type, Entropic Disintegrators, which you can see at 0:36.
The idea is that you travel to Deadspace, avoid environmental obstacles such as caustic clouds, grab loot, and get out. It should be accessible to new and old players alike, but the deeper you travel, the better the rewards.
You can reach Abyssal Deadspace from almost anywhere in New Eden by activating an Abyssal Filament, which you'll be able to trade for with other players. When activated, it'll leave behind a beacon that you'll come back to when you leave Deadspace. That's dangerous, of course—other players might find your beacon and catch you on the way out, stealing your loot.
One you're done with the video, check out some exclusive screens below. That second image looks like one of the Abyssal Conduits that links pockets of Deadspace together.
The full trailer for Into the Abyss can be found beneath the screens.
If Deus Ex is one of those series that you've always said you'll play some day but you've never actually got round to buying the games, then today is as good a chance as any. The original and the follow-up, Invisible War, are both on sale for less than $1, while 2011's Deus Ex: Human Revolution is $3/2. That's a lot of game for not much money.
The most recent in the series, Mankind Divided—which split long-time fans—also gets a permanent 50% price cut, which makes it $29.99/£19.99. I wouldn't buy it at that price, though, because it's on sale for less than half of that fairly regularly.
So, where should you start? The obvious answer is 'at the beginning', but if you're new to the series, then Human Revolution is more accessible than the original, and almost as good. It's polished, cinematic, packed with detail and gives you plenty of choice about how to approach its missions. Tom's review (94%, no less) is here.
Of course, the original Deus Ex is a good bet if you can get past the dated visuals. As Andy wrote when he revisited the game last year, it still holds up, and its huge, dense levels are a joy to explore.
