Last month, I met the GTA 5 modder bringing The Avengers to Los Santos. JulioNIB's esteemed Grand Theft Auto projects include Ghost Rider, The Flash, Iron Man, Dragon Ball Z and The Incredible Hulk—the latter of which he's now upgraded to devastating effect. Following the super villain's recent foray into Fortnite, Julio has also brought Thanos to San Andreas.
By virtue of the Infinity Gauntlet's reality stones, here's the purple juggernaut turning things into water, transforming objects and humans into animals—such as whales, monkeys and pigs—and causing general chaos on the streets of Los Santos:
Likewise, here's Thanos calling meteors from above to combat his five-star wanted level:
Check out Thanos in other equally compromising situations via this playlist.
Chris first wrote about JulioNIB's GTA 5 Hulk mod back in 2015. It's now been upgraded to v2 with new powers, animations, sounds, and effects. More on this work-in-progress venture can be read here, however here's the Hulk 2.0 in typically peace-shattering form:
SEGA Mega Drive & Genesis Classics has received a new update, ushering in a bunch of new features well worth checking out. The first of these is VR support: you can now play Phantasy Star in VR, though the experience is about inhabiting a retro-themed bedroom where a ye olde CRT monitor displays the game, rather than inhabiting the game itself. Still, it's pretty cool.
Two-player online multiplayer is now supported across all titles that have previously supported local multiplayer, so you'll be able to team up for the likes of Streets of Rage and Virtua Fighter 2. Elsewhere, there are new leaderboards, challenge modes, new graphics filters and border options, and a fast-forward and rewind feature.
My favourite addition is the ability to play ROMs from other regions. If there were notable differences between the PAL and NTSC versions of any given game, you'll be able to check out both. And if a game proves too familiar for you, you can trigger Mirror mode and play it backwards.
Check out the full notes for the (free) update here. There's a new trailer below:
Re-Legion, the cyberpunk RTS about recruiting people into a religious cult and convincing them to fight and die to support your messianic ambitions, will be out this fall, publisher 1C announced today. A new "announcement teaser" has also been turned loose, which is a little bit strange since the game was actually announced back in January. I believe this is the first Re-Legion gameplay video, though, or at least the first one we've seen around here, so we'll give that a pass.
Set in humanity's grim, grey future (is there any other kind?) Re-Legion follows the journey of Elion from lone prophet to powerful shepherd, delivering peace and comfort to his followers. But as his power grows, his grip on reality loosens, and his benevolence warps into a quest to strike down the infidels.
Unlike most RTS games that require resources to build new units, in Re-Legion players can convert ordinary citizens into followers, which can then be upgraded in various ways. Praying increases faith, required to gain and use special abilities, while buildings and billboards can be hacked to expand territorial control and convert even more citizens. The ultimate goal of the cult will be based on its dogma, chosen from among dozens promised for the final release: Some cults will strive for a peaceful existence, while others will embrace a more apocalyptic fate.
We took a closer look at Re-Legion in January, shortly after it was announced, and despite being in a very early pre-alpha state at that point, it sounds like it might be one to watch: "I was intrigued by the mixture of classic cyberpunk with religious body horror. Using actual humans as a limiting third resource is a fun concept, and the ability to convert enemy forces directly on the battlefield gave me fond memories of Sacrifice, or Age of Empires' priests."
The announcement confirmed that a single-player campaign will be present in the full game, featuring a "mature storyline with profound background and moral choices to be made." Find out more at re-legion.icecodegames.com, or check out the listing on Steam.
The original Door Kickers was a lovely little tactical puzzle game released in 2014. Door Kickers 2: Task Force North was announced two years later later and said to be coming in 2016, but it's still nowhere to be seen. However, developer KillHouse Games actually has another game out to scratch that door kicking itch. It's Door Kickers: Action Squad, and it's out now on Steam Early Access.
Where Door Kickers was all about carefully executing SWAT maneuvers and rescuing hostages, Door Kickers: Action Squad is a 2D side-scroller that feels more like Broforce. It's a cartoonishly high-octane game about shooting first, asking questions never, and maybe rescuing some hostages in the process. It could hardly be more different from the original game, but Action Squad is still a heck of a lot of fun.
I recently had the opportunity to play it for myself, and even in Early Access, Action Squad looks, sounds and feels good, especially in co-op. You play as one of four SWAT operatives decked out in customizable weapons, gear and abilities, from riot shields and bulletproof vests to tear gas grenades and sniper support. Your goal is to clear out all the bad guys in each level and save as many hostages as possible. The better you do, the more stars you earn, which means more upgrades for your favorite equipment.
As you kill bad guys, you earn energy which can be used to refill your gear, spawn armor or med kits, or activate screen-clearing abilities. The energy system gives levels a good sense of flow—if I take these two guys out first, I'll have enough energy to take out this group of three easily—and it works great in multiplayer because you can strategize around each other's abilities and resources.
I had fun playing on my own, but Action Squad really benefits from the inclusion of local and online co-op. It's fun to experiment with different combinations of operatives. You can play as Shield and hold the line, for example, while your friend rips through dudes as the Assaulter. It feels a lot like Rainbow Six Siege in these moments, in no small part because, like the original Door Kickers, Action Squad is hard as hell. You can kill most enemies with a few shots, but if you get caught out in the open, you'll torn apart nearly as quickly.
KillHouse Games reckons Action Squad will stay in Early Access until later this July, with more enemies, bosses, operatives, and levels to be added in the interim. It's currently $12 on Steam, but its price will jump to around $15 when it leaves Early Access.
A big box of Arma is now up for grabs at Humble Bundle, and it's a little bit different than the Humble Arma Bundle that turned up in 2017. For one thing, the title is slightly expanded: This is the Humble Arma 2018 Bundle. And for another, there's a little bit more to it.
For $1, you'll get Arma: Cold War Assault, Arma: Gold Edition, and Arma Tactics. For paying more than the average (which is well over $14 already, by the way), you'll also claim Arma 2, the British Armed Forces, Army of the Czech Republic, and Private Military Company add-ons, and the standalone expansion Arma 2: Operation Arrowhead.
Spend $15 and you'll add on Arma 3, plus the Karts, Helicopters, and Marksmen add-ons. And for $20 or more you can top it all off with Arma 3: Apex, the 2016 expansion that adds a new island, faction, co-op campaign, and other features.
Funds raised by the Humble Arma 2018 Bundle will go to support the American Red Cross, a charity that developer Bohmemia Interactive has previously supported through the Arma 3: Laws of War DLC. It will be available for purchase until June 12.
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It's time to return to Lordran. I've been playing through the early areas of Dark Souls: Remastered on a mission: not to ring the bells of awakening, but to take screenshots of the fancy new PC version without a HUD obscuring the sights. Remastered finally brings a quality port to the PC. Summons signs are plentiful and the game runs at 60 fps, but aside from a few graphical touches here and there, this is mostly the same Dark Souls we know well—but with much better performance, as we break down in our technical analysis.
Above you'll find a collection of 4K screenshots of Dark Souls: Remastered, to give you a chance to scrutinize the small changes. There are some new textures in Remastered, and visual post-processing that subtly changes the overall look of the game. A lot of surfaces have specular highlights applied that didn't before. But these changes are minor enough that if you aren't comparing the Remastered version directly against the original, you likely wouldn't notice the difference.
Memories of Mars is an open-world first-person survival game set on the titular red planet. Its multiplayer is similar to games like DayZ in that people play on shared servers and the players you come across are just as likely to kill you as help you. As Sam said, there's also a bit of ARK: Survival Evolved to it, especially in the base building. It first popped up on Steam back in January, and today developer Limbic Entertainment announced it will enter Early Access next week on Tuesday, June 5.
Early Access, er, access will cost you $30. The Early Access build will be "fully functional" on release, Limbic says, with more areas, items, events and other features on the way. Immediately, the studio is looking to implement changes requested in Memories of Mar's recent beta, like additional spawn points, vehicles and improved competitive seasons.
"Each new season will be bringing new opportunities, elements and mechanics, making the map feel like a fresh new canvas," Limbic said in a Steam blog post. "You will be able to carry over some of your experience across seasons thanks to a memory bank and you have the possibility of burying some of your most precious possessions in an emergency capsule for your future self to retrieve."
Limbic expects Memories of Mars to stay in Early Access for a few months and fully release later this year. The studio is "undecided" on whether it will raise the price of the game throughout or after Early Access.
When I played Moonlighter earlier this year, I was so enamored that I wagered I'd have to play a game vaguely similar to it just to tide me over until its release. Turns out, I was right: I recently played Epic Tavern, a management sim about running a medieval tavern and coordinating parties of adventurers. It's good fun, but it didn't quite scratch my Moonlighter itch. Luckily, I don't have to wait any longer, because Moonlighter is out today on Steam, GOG and Humble for $20.
For those who missed the boat: Moonlighter is part top-down action RPG and part shopkeeping sim. It's kind of like Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale, but with better combat and streamlined shopkeeping. You play as Will, owner of the Moonlighter item shop in Rynoka village, which is just a stone's throw from five mysterious dungeons. As Will, you explore the dungeons, loot everything you can, and sell the excess loot back at your shop while keeping the best stuff for yourself.
As a general rule, you manage your shop during the day and go exploring at night, but as you you upgrade your shop and help expand Rynoka, your options open up. You can hire a part-time worker to sell things at night, for example, or dump your junk in the bargain bin to auto-sell while you explore during the day. The dungeons and your shop connect in cool ways, and I got surprisingly invested in Will's secret desire to be a hero. It's a lovely, compelling mix, and I can't wait to play more. It's also darn pretty, as evidenced by these screenshots:
Great moments in PC gaming are short, bite-sized celebrations of some of our favorite gaming memories.
Blood was always the odd-cousin of the Build engine games, in that everyone agreed it was good (unlike, say, TekWar and PowerSlave), but rarely did it get much of a look-in next to Shadow Warrior and Duke Nukem 3D. A shame, because while it was a deliberately ugly game, it did some extremely cool things, especially in terms of your destructive power. Not many games start off by letting you chuck entire sticks of dynamite around, quoting old horror movies as you go.
As with many shooters of the era though, the best levels were in the shareware version, first released a few months before the full game—and top of them all was Dark Carnival.
It wasn’t just a shooting gallery, but a whole collection of fun little distractions like kicking heads into targets, tightrope walking across a snake pit, and even access to a bonus level set in an evil haunted house. Encountering it was a balloon-popping journey into charnel house whimsy that, like Duke Nukem 3D, really helped sell what we could look forward to in the next generation of shooters. The one after the crap early 3D ones, of course.
Best of all, you could kill mimes. So many mimes. In many horrible ways. While the rest is obviously pretty simple by modern standards, some pleasures just don’t get old. Unlike every mime act ever. Burn!
This article was originally published inPC Gamer issue 318. For more quality articles about all things PC gaming, you can subscribe now in theUKand theUS.
Arguably the best city builder available right now, Cities: Skylines is a regular fixture in PC Gamer’s annual Top 100. It’s been further bolstered by DLC, updates and a huge Steam Workshop library of mods. Wanting to take a look at the breadth and variety now available, the PC Gamer team is embarking on a shared project to build a utopia.
The AI civilians of a Cities: Skylines city aren’t capable of democracy, so we’re going to utilise the next best method: taking it in turns, regardless of experience. Each team member gets two years to craft their utopia. To make things interesting, we get unlimited money and all buildings are unlocked. But we also have to aim to make our city profitable, ensuring its viability should the infinite money bubble ever burst.
Phase one: Phil Savage
UK mag editor Phil goes on a mod hunt.
Opening the Steam Workshop, I spend a while playing with various district styles. My plan is to give each district a theme. I want vibrant, contrasting communities—pockets of cyberpunk technoliving next to medieval townships and fantasy wonderlands. But then I change my mind. After all, isn’t PC gaming one big melting pot—a confluence of community and individuality? I hope so, because using district mods is complicated, and keeps making the game crash.
Instead, I just download pages and pages of buildings that will automatically construct on any residential, commercial or industrial zones I lay. We’ve got neon skyscrapers, we’ve got classical architecture, we’ve even got a KFC. When I’m done, we’re subscribed to 528 items on the Steam Workshop. I open up Cities: Skylines and wait for a new map to load. It takes a long time.
I christen this land ‘XxxxxxXxx’ in the hope that something clever will come to me once the city starts to take shape. I hit pause to stop the clock, giving me time to lay some bones. Roads are built, zones are designated, power and water is sourced. I build fire stations and schools and hospitals. I create suburbs in tidy rows. It’s efficient, but I soon get bored of forming grids. I’m British, and that means I’m used to cities that sort of fall together by accident. I start putting in curves and odd angles. 102 degrees! 84 degrees! I’m tearing the rulebook apart.
I know from experience that I’m terrible at creating intersections that link the state highway to the sprawl of the town proper. Inevitably, I end up with an unworkable mess that causes massive traffic problems years down the line. To this end, I download Timboh’s Marvelous Interchange Emporium, the most popular mod collection on Cities: Skylines’ Steam Workshop page. I look through Timboh’s creations, but they’re all massive—far too big to fit into the space I have remaining. Instead I botch something together, once again ensuring massive traffic problems. I name this junction Please Fix This, in the hope that the next mayor will try to do better.
I create a district for agricultural industry, named ‘Farming Simulator 2018’, and a district for nightlife and tourism, named ‘Just Dance 2018’. Then I set up a transport network consisting entirely of blimps. Finally ready, I unpause and wait for the magic to happen. It does, but slowly. Six months in, and most of my land is empty. I panic-build more roads and designate more residential land—I’d vastly underestimated how much you need to support even a small amount of industry and commerce. I drop taxes to 1%, tanking profits, but boosting growth.
My tenure flies by, and I’m largely happy with what I’ve created. I need to put the city in profit before handing it over—it’s not a utopia if you’re in debt, even if you’ve got an unlimited cashflow. I crank up tax, and turn down funding on all the public services. Good luck with that, Andy. I email him the save file, only remembering at the last second that I forgot to name the place.
Phase two: Andy Kelly
Section editor Andy tackles disaster.
I take over from Phil and find a small, pleasant city buzzing with blimps, and I’m appalled. There isn’t enough sin in this town. I build a long four-lane road, which I name the ‘Alley of Sin’, and line it with clubs, commercial zones, and an enormous, garish casino. That’s more like it. People in this as-yet-unnamed city have somewhere to take a load off and indulge in some good old-fashioned hedonism. But to ensure the crime rate doesn’t get out of control, I build the police tower from Blade Runner—a reminder for all the crooks in the Alley of Sin that the future-police are watching, always.
I notice that pretty much the entire city is blinking with the ‘abandoned building’ icon, and I realise that it’s because I don’t have enough citizens to staff all these new casinos and commercial zones. So I build a large high-density residential zone just off the Alley of Sin, which simply refuses to develop. Not a problem: I simply lower the taxes for residents to 1% and suddenly the tenants and homeowners come flooding in. But, as a result, I’m starting to absolutely haemorrhage money. It’s a good thing it’s unlimited, otherwise I don’t think this place would make it through another year without collapsing.
Suddenly, disaster. A meteor rains down from the sky, smashing into the industrial zone that Phil so carefully constructed, destroying buildings, starting fires, and leaving a bloody great crater behind. I actually like how the crater stays there. It’s become a landmark, and I’m annoyed the game isn’t sufficiently complex to allow me to charge people to come and see it. I repair the damage and get back to trying to make money. I build a stadium and a giant, gaudy shopping mall, which is making the city incredibly noisy. The roads are starting to get jammed up with traffic too, and the city is starting to look rather dystopian.
Phil’s blimp system is cool and all, but I need a way for outsiders to come to the city and indulge in all that lovely entertainment I’ve so graciously supplied. So I build an international airport on the edge of town, which brings with it all manner of pollution, noise and skyrocketing operating costs, but surely the influx of tourists will counteract that? I don’t know the game well enough to know if any of these strategies make sense, but I go with it. Pip can always clean up any mess I make. My tenure is almost over. Planes start taking off and landing in the airport, which is a good sign, but elsewhere in the city there are more job shortages and abandoned buildings sprouting up.
I survey what I’ve created so far, and this is a very ugly city. I’ve been quite scattershot with my building and road creation, and the place is a damn mess. But I prefer these sprawling, messy cityscapes to the rigid, grid-like streets of the United States. There’s a problem, though. Many, in fact. I’ve neglected to build more sewage outlets and water pumps, and the city is both suffering a major water crisis and is backed up with tonnes of stinking sewage. I don’t have time to fix it, so I’ll leave it to my successor. Also, there seem to be dead bodies everywhere, lining the streets. I forgot to build a cemetery. Sorry, Pip.
Phase three: Philippa Warr
Deputy editor Pip adds whales.
I don’t really remember how to play Cities: Skylines, much less how to make a functional city with a vaguely healthy economy. But I did just install a whale from the Steam Workshop so there will be at least one element I understand. (I do not understand where the whale will live yet.)
Figuring all of that out can wait though, because Andy’s version of leaving the city in profit involves a $34,000 deficit. My initial inspection of the city also reveals that at least one building is on fire and several buildings appear to be accumulating dead folk.
I plonk an emergency cemetery into the first chunk of available space I see and throw down a few fire stations to bring the fire hazard rating for swathes of the city back into a safe range.
I find myself doing similar crisis-management for all the city’s rating systems. It’s pretty straightforward for the first few but noise pollution seems to be a huge problem. I blanket-upgrade every single road in the main town hub to ones lined with trees to dampen the noise of traffic. The impact is nowhere near what I’d hoped, though. I’ve also destroyed whatever one-way systems Andy and Phil might have set up.
Speaking of problems inherited from the last two governments, neither of my predecessors seem to have gotten round to naming the city. I christen the metropolis ‘Pipville’. This also doesn’t solve the noise pollution problem, so I try creating tunnels for the most congested routes; underground no one can hear you beep. I end up with one tunnel and one entirely missing segment of road which I accidentally upgraded into not existing.
It’s at this point I lose my temper. You know what’s noisy? Living people. You know what’s really quiet? A necropolis.
It s a glorious diorama a mysterious necropolis next to an equally mysterious whale-spewing crater.
I find a cul-de-sac and install multiple cemeteries. It is blissfully quiet. I can feel the stresses of the city ebbing away as I pick out new trees and bushes from the Steam Workshop to decorate Pipville’s necropolis. Soon, lovely hibiscus bushes and cherry blossom trees are hugging the graveyards.
Then I remember the whale. I mod the game to allow props and put a whale at the entrance of the necropolis. While adding additional whales (for company, of course) I notice their bodies hug the terrain. That means when I place them on the lip of a nearby crater they bend around the slope and look like they’re crawling out of the ground.
It’s a glorious diorama—a mysterious necropolis next to an equally mysterious whale-spewing crater. In case the next player somehow misses ‘Necropowhale Zone’, I also leave a trail of whales going from the crater to the edge of the city.
With my remaining months in power I build a canal in an attempt to fill the bottom of the whale crater with water. Ignoring the multiple instances of massive flooding across the city, this is a resounding success. I end my rule in profit by making taxes 10% across the board and hit save. Good luck making sense of any of this, Samuel!
Phase four: Samuel Roberts
UK editor in chief Samuel ushers the city to its final form.
I want to extend the city in my time as mayor, and put my mark on this place. I’m going to build a new district that has high-end shopping and nice houses. I lay down some road to a quiet area of the map and build a pentagonal region that links to the Just Dance 2018 district. The site of my new utopia for bastards.
How do you connect pipes again? I’ve forgotten. Everyone needs electricity and water and I’m not ready! I should’ve put the utilities down first. I’ve barely built my new area of the city and we’re over $30,000 in debt. I start to panic that my city is doomed to never break even, and I’ve only been mayor for two months.
I don’t know how you demolish buildings in this game, but I bet doing that will balance the books a bit. Hey, what about this natural disasters panel? How about I just call in a meteor and pretend this never happened? I didn’t realise it takes a while to call in these events, so I might have clicked too many times. Now seven meteors have hit the city, as well as two fires and a hurricane, entirely wiping out the district. It’s pretty grim, but on the bright side we’re soon back in profit!
The road is now cut off from the rest of the city. Everyone is dead. I name the district ‘Failed Experiment V1’ and pledge never to think about it again.
It’s time for a fresh start: Pipville has been through some dark times (of which I’ll take some responsibility), so I rename it ‘Robtropolis’. I name the industrial district ‘Chemical Plant Zone’ and the populated area ‘Bathtub Geralt’. I build a space shuttle, which is never ready in my two years as mayor and therefore never takes off, meaning that I’ve failed my space manifesto. On the plus side, however, I think some of the fun buildings I pop around the city do some good for happiness, which is generally positive during my time—stuff like botanical gardens, a sci-fi skyscraper and a casino/hotel.
I try again with my gentrified area idea, buying a new patch of land off to the south east and creating another pentagonal set of roads. What I call ‘New Haven’ goes loads better than Failed Experiment V1—indeed, it’s a thriving district that just has a bit of noise pollution. I give it an expo centre (next to a crematorium—a bold choice by the mayor), a festival venue and some other niceties. It’s a neat blend of dense commercial and residential living areas. I bet it costs a honking fortune to live there. Just like every major city in the UK. Success!
Dropping the industrial tax to 1% seems to do some good for the money side of things—I thought this might bring the abandoned industrial area back to life, but it doesn’t. That area is done for, and never recovers. While I tax everyone to hell in an effort to make the city break a profit before 1 May 2025, I end up $700 down on the day, thereby failing the task that Phil set us. I got so close, though.
Show me another mayor who would murder loads of their own people with asteroids just to balance the budget.
Debriefing
Phil: I was worried this would be a broadly pleasant feature in which we had a nice time building a picturesque city. So congratulations on all of the murders, everybody. Other than the enforced disaster, how did you all get on?
Samuel: I tried to build a new part of the city but instead felt I had no choice but to murder lots of my own people with natural disasters. That was during the era of Pipville, though. Nothing like that happened after the city was renamed Robtropolis. Coincidence?
Pip: I want to make it clear that when Pipville was under the leadership of the great and benevolent Pip there was an influx of whales, which are a great indicator of, uh, environmental responsibility. They were clearly attracted by the robust economy or the affordable rent or the thriving nightlife. Maybe all three. If you inherited problems they must have come from Andy.
Andy: Going second, I had it fairly easy. Phil didn’t leave many problems for me to deal with, and left me with a blank canvas to make a mess. A mess that resulted in a lot of dead bodies and backed-up sewage. A parting gift from me to Pip.
