Summer’s almost here, so Rainbow Six Siege is kicking in the door of a nice Italian villa ostensibly to stop terrorists or something but more likely to claim a place in the sun. Operation Para Bellum launches today, the latest free content update, with the new map, new operators (well, not for everyone just yet), bug fixes, tweaks, and balance changes. The reviled ‘dropshot’, which let players drop to prone without upsetting their aim, diving to the floor and murderising the poor opponent who’s left shooting at air above them, is banished for starters. (more…)

It’s been almost ten years since Alienware released their last headset, but now Dell’s gaming division are diving back into the heady world of RGB lights, chunky microphones and oversized audio drivers with their very first wireless gaming headset, the appropriately named Alienware Wireless Gaming Headset. Or the AW988 for short.

Oh, and they’ve also released a new mouse to go with it that has interchangeable side ;plates in case you want to switch up the number of buttons you have for FPS games and MMOs. Let’s take a look.

(more…)

Bad news: the launch of Total War: Three Kingdoms will come in spring 2019, pushed back from autumn 2018.

Good news: a new trailer has a selection of moving shapes, colours, and sounds that you might find comforting.

The Creative Assembly’s first foray into Chinese history for their strategy series needs a little more time to finish up properly, see. Better a better game later than a wonky one sooner, right? (more…)

How about a little something to unwind for the evening with? A charming looking free game tickle your fancy? Fortified has apparently been around on Steam early 2016, but it managed to fly entirely under my radar. A crying shame, because it looks like Orcs Must Die spliced with Mars Attacks. Developer Clapfoot (working on the currently-in-early-access Foxhole) have opted to just give it away for free today. If you nab it on Steam between now and 11am Pacific Time on June 8th, you get to keep it forever.

(more…)

Good news: Creators of raunchy visual novels and other such things on the fringes of Steam’s content rules can now probably> breathe easy, despite Valve’s worrying and unpredictable behaviour recently.

Less good news: In a lengthy and jaw-dropping Steam blog post, Valve’s Erik Johnson has effectively abdicated all responsibility for what is sold on Steam, stating that:

“-we’ve decided that the right approach is to allow everything onto the Steam Store, except for things that we decide are illegal, or straight up trolling”.

Alright, deep breath… Let’s take a look at this and try to pick apart some of the implications.

(more…)

This is The Mechanic, where Alex Wiltshire invites developers to discuss the difficult journeys they ve taken to make their games. This time, Destiny 2 [official site].

When you go down to Destiny 2 s European Dead Zone, you ll blast your way through crowds of the Fallen and run past other players. Perhaps you ll also have a friend by your side as you stumble across Public Events and start Adventures, the action naturally flowing as you freely explore. Of course you do! Destiny 2 is an online shooter, and online shooters do this kind of thing.

But the years of work that went into creating the technology that runs it proves that Destiny 2 is no ordinary shooter. It s product of Bungie s ambition to meld the rich social bustle and scale of the MMO with the twitch-precision of the FPS, and, frankly, it seems a miracle that it works at all. Destiny 2 s PvE multiplayer is a crazy and surprising melding of design and technology, and this is how it works. (more…)

As much fun as I’ve been getting out of the Total War: Warhammer games recently, I keep wishing that The Creative Assembly would branch out into other genres again. To this day, Alien: Isolation is one of the most mechanically and thematically exciting survival horror games ever made, and proof that they’re a flexible studio. Someone at CA agrees, as a slew of job postings on their careers site include repeated mention of a ‘brand-new and exciting First Person Tactical Shooter IP’ being produced at their primary studio in Horsham, UK.

(more…)

I like Star Wars: Battlefront 2. I enjoy its big dumb bombastic fights and completely unsubtle everything>. For me, it’s an ideal shooter for 15-30 minutes of Star Wars flavoured cooldown in-between more demanding games, especially now it’s escaped from loot-crate hell. As such, more of it is always good, and now that the new one-shot prequel movie is out, there’s some tie-in stuff coming to the game. This June 12th, players get to take a run on Kessel, and dress up as Alden Ehrenreich, a canonically separate character from Han Solo.

(more…)

New modes and vehicles are coming to The Crew 2 in free updates, Ubisoft said today. With the drive-o-fly-a-sail racer launching later this month, they’ve started gabbing more about their plans for what comes after. Beyond the obligatory paid season pass gubbins, at least a year of regular free content updates will bring goodies from hovercraft races to loads of new vehicles. Generally I’m up for anything that will let me race hovercrafts through traffic on snowy roads like some Appalachian ruffian. (more…)

This year s Computex will probably be remembered for both AMD and Intel s duelling Mine s got more cores than yours, pal processor announcements and the conspicuous absence of the new Nvidia Turing GPUs. But if there s one thing that nicely encapsulates the show as a whole, it would be the assortment of mad custom case designs on display.

They re the logical conclusion of where, judging by two days spent on the show floor, PC component design is heading: big, brash and almost definitely laden with RGB lighting. It s a testament to how ambitious some of these designs are that even among such flashy company, certain models still manage to stand out. Here are five of them!

(more…)