Update: A representative from Bethesda commented on the Fallout: New California mod. Here's the full statement:

"The great thing about modding is that people can build mods about whatever they want. We don’t foresee an issue with this team’s work, and we wish them well in their development."

Original story: 

Fallout: New California is a Fallout: New Vegas mega-mod that introduces a totally new storyline complete with 12 possible endings and some 16,000 lines of voiced dialogue. It's been in development for over five years, and last month the mod team behind it announced it'll officially release later this year on October 23. However, as the mod team explained in a recent Facebook post, New California's production is shifting into overdrive now that Fantasy Flight Games has announced an expansion to Fallout: The Board Game, also called New California, the existence of which could threaten the mod's release. 

"They have every legal right to [send a cease and desist order] without hesitation," the Facebook post reads. "It would be effortless on their part to wipe us out with a single email, erasing 7 years of work. We have a Wikipedia page, we have the first 19 pages on Google search results, the top results are about us, there are news interviews and lets plays and single videos WITH MORE VIEWS THAN THEIR ENTIRE COMPANY YOUTUBE CHANNEL -- and they still named their board game Fallout: New California. So they either never googled the words New California or they knew and just didn't care, because they have the bought and paid for license and we don't." 

In a comment, the group conceded that it wouldn't be unfair of Bethesda to shut down the mod. "If I were them, I would," the comment reads. "Because if I had a for-profit board game that was running on a very slim profit margin, and then there was the gigantic UN-licensed mod out there that dwarfs my publicity at the same time, I would C&D them." 

The post also elaborated on the work the mod still needs under the new "accelerated plans." The bulk of it is audio work: scenario-specific dialogue, as well as dialogue and miscellaneous audio for several new characters, and some in-game videos to flesh out some of the mod's alternative endings. "I HAD planned on all this being spread out between now and October, but I'm going to slam it all into the next couple weeks," the Facebook post reads, adding that those next couple of weeks are "gonna hurt." 

"I may go a little quiet on Facebook and ModDB for the month of July. We have some good people playtesting right now finding bugs, but it's still JUST Rick and I fixing them, and I'll be useless making these last videos and voices. So bare with me."

The new plan is to finish up those last "few" additions and "release early since we needed a BETA test group that was more open anyway." From there, the mod will officially release in October as planned, then ideally exit beta in December. 

Of course, those plans may be altered further if Bethesda or Fantasy Flight Games does go after the mod. And historically, Bethesda has been fiercely protective of its copyrights. In 2017, for instance, the studio went after Prey for the Gods developer No Matter Studios on the grounds that the game's name infringed on Bethesda's Prey. To avoid a prolonged legal battle, No Matter Studios promptly changed the name of its game to Praey for the Gods. 

Similarly, in 2011, Bethesda took Scrolls developer Mojang to court arguing that the card game's name infringed on its Elder Scrolls trademark. It took a while, but Mojang also changed the name of its game: Scrolls was re-released as a free-to-play, player-run game under the name Caller's Bane last month. 

Granted, this situation is a bit different since we're talking about a mod, and because it's Fantasy Flight Games, not Bethesda, that's making the New California board game expansion. Even so, it's possible the Fallout: New California mod will have to change its name as well. The thing is, it already did: The mod used to go by Fallout: Project Brazil. 

In another Facebook comment, one of the modders explained that going back to the name Project Brazil is a "fallback option," adding that the team still has the art assets to do so, meaning "it wouldn't be impossible, just a HUGE waste of time." 

I've reached out to Bethesda and Fantasy Flight Games for more information and will update this story if I receive a reply. 

Zachtronics, the maker of Spacechem, Ironclad Tactics, Shenzhen I/O, and most recently the outstanding Opus Magnum, is working on a new game called Exapunks. The year is 1997, and you're a former hacker with a bad case of the phage. There's only one thing to do: Read the zine—write a virus—get a dose. 

Your Exapunk hacking skills come to you by way of Trash World News, an underground computer mag that carries tips, tutorials, secret information, and "searing commentary." Based on the knowledge they contain, you'll create EXAs (Execution Agents) and turn them loose in networks belonging to banks, universities, television stations, traffic signs, game consoles, or anything else that might prove useful—including your own body. 

Hacking servers or region locks will open up access to other in-game content, and you can even create your own homebrew games on the in-game TEC Redshift console—if you hack the devkit first. Multiplayer will be supported in head-to-head hacker battles, and you'll also be able to create your own puzzles—that is, networks—and share them through the Steam Workshop.

The game will include two printable issues of Trash World News, which Zachtronics said will be "essential to playing the game." They'll basically serve as Exapunk's instruction manual, in other words, much like the faux circuit-building guide that came with the studio's 2016 game Shenzhen I/O. And if that game (and others) are anything to go by, you'll need it: Exapunk sounds like a willfully dense and difficult game, which would also be in line with previous Zachtronics experiences.

Exapunks is set to go live on Steam Early Access on August 21, and will sell for $20. A limited edition release, with printed copies of Trash World News, 3D glasses for the TEC Redshift in-game programmable console, and an envelope with secret stuff inside, can be preordered directly from Zachtronics for $35 in the US, or $45 everywhere else. 

PC gamers, especially us old-timers, often raise the question, ‘Why don’t game developers make X anymore?’ The common answer is, ‘You only think you want X because you don’t remember how bad X was.’ While I’m all for modern games appealing to more people, I do remember how bad X was, when it comes to the quirks of old adventure games, and I still want it, anyway. Have you seen Stair Quest? It’s literally only treacherous staircases, Sierra-style sudden death, and a text parser for interacting with stairs. It’s great. 

Sierra released King's Quest in 1983, and in 2018, game developers are still innovating on the text parser. Like Stair Quest, Snail Trek boldly takes a step further back in time than most games would dare, but it's not one big joke about the terrible instant deaths in old adventure games. Snail Trek is an authentic, Sierra-inspired adventure with thoughtfully crafted puzzles and a hilarious story. While he was revisiting an old project, designer/artist Phil Fortier realized there "might be an underserved niche market" for games with text parsers.

He was right: I am that audience, and Snail Trek is a delightfully clever throwback full of smart touches like autosuggest and autocorrect.

I initially observed ‘snial’ being autocorrected in the first of Snail Trek’s four chapters. I was typing fast. The opening is tense: On reaching the lettuce planet, the crew finds that their captain has disappeared, under highly suspicious circumstances, and there’s no way to send the ‘all green’ signal to their dying homeworld.

“I noticed, during playtesting, that a good third of ‘I don’t understand’ responses were caused by simple typos,” Fortier says. With the fate of all snailkind in my trembling hands, autocorrect is actually pretty great.  

The parser also suggests words as you’re typing. Fortier says, “It works like a typical search engine or, more accurately, like a terminal command prompt.” Typing ‘look at let...’ might generate suggestions like ‘lettuce, letter, latch and leak.

“I was worried this could spoil puzzles, but the games' vocabulary is large enough that that’s not the case,” Fortier says. Certainly, I found suggestions included elusive synonyms for objects I already knew existed, but knowing extra words didn’t spoil anything for me.

When I typed ‘look’, expecting a description of the wider location, I realized the parser was reacting to my proximity to objects. Fortier explains, “The game understands where the player character is standing, which informs autosuggest results, or lets you omit a noun completely, so you can type ‘look’, ‘get’ or ‘open’ and the game knows you’re talking about the object in front of you.” As well as streamlining input significantly, I found this especially useful for when objects weren’t immediately recognisable against their backdrop, like a ladle or loose panel.

Many adventure games, past and present, expect the player to hunt for what they need in incidental clutter. I recall standing next to objects in Sierra games and typing, “What is that?” to no useful response. Without a point-and-click interface, and no way to reveal hotspots, this parser’s proximal responsiveness alleviates that old frustration well. This also allows for Fortier to make his art and interface feel authentic to 80s games while still making them more playable.

“Early Sierra games used the basic 16 colour EGA palette, then dithered any two together to give the appearance of more colours. Snail Trek’s palette is those 16 colours, plus all the combinations, but in pure form rather than being dithered," he says. "As with the text parser, it’s an attempt to stand out within a crowded market. It may turn people off, but the bright, limited palette catches the eye of anyone who played early adventure games.”

All the deaths, none of the dead ends

Like many early adventurers, I ate the pie in King’s Quest 5, rendering the game unfinishable. That was punishing. I loved it. Many didn’t. In Snail Trek, curiosity can result in sudden death, but there are no unforgiving dead ends like in Sierra's old games. I laughed when I died in Snail Trek, before remembering that I hadn’t saved. Luckily, the game had autosaved, just before I died.

Fortier says, “I'm a fan of death in adventure games, though I know some designers aren't. I've seen recent adventures go to ridiculous lengths to avoid killing the player. Having said this, I didn’t enjoy walking a fine path along a cliff/stairs in old games, although Stair Quest nicely parodies this. It temporarily changes the game from requiring thought to requiring dexterity. It’s also unrealistic, because a person wouldn’t generally fall off stairs. You can still die in my games, but it’s not quite so accidental.” 

Fortier is thoughtful about many aspects of the adventure genre. Snail Trek's puzzles are better than the ones I remember from the 80s. He referenced Ron Gilbert’s puzzle dependency charts as a way to visualise choke points and player agency, and always wanted to have multiple, clear goals to occupy the player at any one time. “I put clues into the environment, descriptions of items, or in the game's responses to doing the ‘wrong’ things,” he says.

I particularly liked how the scope for location and story evolved over Snail Trek's four episodes. Although you’re initially limited to the ship, the game grows incrementally, with all areas remaining involved. Towards the end of Chapter 3, I realized I knew the solution to a puzzle because it was a variation on something I’d solved in Chapter 2. I also recalled a sudden death I’d experienced in one chapter, knowing how to use it to my advantage later.

After talking about the design of Snail Trek, I had to ask: Why snails?

“Some people think anthropomorphized snails are cute," Fortier says. "Also, a walk cycle (glide cycle) is very easy to animate.” Although Fortier speaks modestly about his storytelling, I found the narrative well-structured, funny, evocative, and occasionally dark, despite being all about snails.

“Originally, the game was going to take place in a garden, with the snails trying to eat yummy plants. The gardener is trying to grow food and wants to keep the snails out. Who is the real bad guy? Then I thought, everything is better in space!”

It’s hard to explain why, without spoilers, but this proves to be true: Snail Trek, like most things, is better in space. Fortier is now working on a larger adventure with the working title Cascade Quest.

Although currently planning for a similar text parser, Fortier says, “I'm experimenting with offering a point-and-click interface for Cascade Quest, too. It mostly takes place in the wilderness and you’re a non-hero who gets caught up in something bigger than yourself. I'm trying to figure out how much point-and-click would expand my audience and make it easier to localize to other languages, as well as if it takes anything away from the text parser experience.” 

Either way, Snail Trek proves that at least some of us do want more genuinely nostalgic games, especially with a smart-parser, autosave and a distinct lack of stairs, to smooth over those bits of design that haven't aged well after 30 years. The Snail Trek Collection is a steal at $3. I loved Princess Rosella, of King’s Quest, when I was a kid. I think I love the hopeful child snail in Snail Trek and her hysterical parents even more. Don’t delay: her survival depends on your ability to type words (at least semi-accurately).

Para Bellum’s big mid-season patch is on its way to Rainbow Six Siege, and with it a big balancing pass on nine operators. Many of these changes were previewed on last week’s test sever, but there’s plenty of new changes on the way.

The largest changes are coming to Finka and IQ. In response to new statistics showing the win rate and pick rates of all operators, Finka specifically is in an awkward spot. She has an extremely high win ratio, but is also underplayed. “We want her to be more popular, but also make her weaker. This is somewhat counter intuitive, and thus presents us with a unique opportunity to make some tweaks and adjustments,” Ubisoft noted in the post.

In hopes of remedying this, Finka’s Adrenal Surge ability is being nerfed. Each use will now last only 10 seconds (down from 20), aiming down sights will only be 25 percent faster (down from 50 percent), and Smoke’s gas canister won’t do as much extra damage to those using the surge. She is also stealing IQ’s frag grenades, to the disappointment of many IQ mains.

In addition to losing her frags in favor of a claymore, IQ’s electronics scanner is also getting a slight nerf. Its maximum range will now be 15 meters instead of 20. These changes are targeted at IQ’s high pick rate in Pro League. Ubi wants IQ to primarily play a  supportive role and limit her fragging utility. “In the past, we gave her a Frag Grenade in a time when her gadget was less useful. The increase in detectable gadgets has buffed IQ each time, so we need to balance her a bit.” With the increased number of cameras introduced in Para Bellum, Ubi believes she’s never been stronger. Interestingly, the post also mentions plans for more “drastic” changes to IQ in the future, but gave no other details.

Blackbeard is also seeing some significant shakeup that will affect his play style. His two bullet shields will now have 50 health (down from 60), meaning in most circumstances they’ll be able to withstand one or two fewer hits. To compensate, his movement speed penalty when a shield is attached has been reduced to only 30 percent. His MK17 assault rifle is also getting a slight damage buff from 42 to 49, and his SR-25 DMR is seeing a big damage nerf of 72 to 61. The MK17 has historically been one of the weakest weapons in the game, so these changes will make his kit choices more attractive.

To round out a few other nerfs, Glaz’s rifle damage is going down to 71 from 85 while Twitch’s FAMAS is going down to 37 from 40. This makes a lot of sense for Glaz, who has become extremely strong since a surprise buff to his rifle fire rate in Para Bellum. A damage of 71 brings the weapon to the stronger side of other DMR’s with the added benefit of a smoke-vision scope, of course. With Twitch’s nerf, Ubi is hoping to encourage more operator diversity by making her gun less of a powerhouse.

A few more buffs were also touched on. The range at which Jackal can track footprints is going up from 5 meters to 8. With this change, Ubi wants to “improve player comfort while playing Jackal, and reduce a bit of the risk involved with scanning enemy footsteps.” Both of Frost’s primary weapons are also seeing a buff. Her 9mm C1 SMG damage is going up from 43 to 45, and her Super 90 shotgun damage is up from 32 to 35. These are small tweaks, but Ubi admits that they “probably need more extensive work done to make her as viable as some other Operators, but that is something that we will have to look at doing in the distant future.”

To make room for IQ’s new claymore, Dokkaebi will be losing hers in favor of flash grenades. This likely won’t change the play style of most who main her, as smoke grenades are often seen as the more useful piece of kit to bring along. Barbed wire is also seeing a change in speed reduction. It will now slow down attackers by 50 percent instead of 45, but still require two hits to destroy.

Ubisoft closed with some thoughts on several operators that they’re currently working on. They’re happy with how Maestro is performing, but think he might be too strong in the Pro League. Alibi is performing a little too strong in Ranked, but is underused in the Pro League. They’ll be keeping a close eye on how to improve her. Win rates for both Kapkan and Frost have also suspiciously dropped, so that is also being examined closely.

A rework of Castle is also in the works, but has been put on the backburner for the time being. “We are looking to make more drastic changes to Castle, but do not have an ETA. We have an idea for what we would like to do, but it is currently in the back log, with no time frame for when work on it will begin,” Ubi said.

The release of The Culling 2 did not go well. The all-time player count, as recorded by Steam Charts, was 249, but it almost immediately plummeted to single digits, and currently holds an average concurrent player count of just 6. (Chris won his first round after the only other player in the match went AFK.) Faced with that, and a powerful backlash from the existing Culling fan base, developer Xaviant has announced a dramatic change of direction: The game will be shuttered and removed from sale, and refunds will be issued to everyone. 

"One thing that has emerged very clearly for us is that The Culling 2 was not a game that you asked for, and it's not the game that you expect as a worthy successor to The Culling," director of operations Josh Van Veld said. "So with that in mind, we've decided that the best course of action is to take that game down off of store shelves." 

What's even more interesting is that instead of trying to fix it, Xaviant is restarting work on the original game as The Culling: Day One, a reboot coming later this week that will make it exactly as it was when it debuted on Steam Early Access in 2016.

"That means all the perks are coming back, all the airdrops are coming back, combat goes back to its day one form. Literally every aspect of the gameplay will be what you remember," Van Veld said. "That's going to be our platform moving forward." 

To help bolster the player base, The Culling will also be made free to play when the Day One update goes live. Van Veld didn't get into exactly now that will work, but said that more information will be released later this week. 

It's a bold move, as they say, and unexpected, and the response in the comments on YouTube are almost entirely positive. Whether that translates into a viable game is another matter entirely, but full credit to Xaviant for going all-in on the course correction. It's also interesting to note that, while the numbers are tiny for both games, The Culling remains far more popular than its sequel: There are at this moment 35 people playing The Culling, while The Culling 2 hit its peak today with two. 

The best Fallout: New Vegas mods fill its casinos with NPCs, its thoroughfares with traffic, and its streets with new weapons. With the latter in mind, let me vouch for Cloud Grenades—a new project from Hopper31 that inserts the toxic gas clouds from New Vegas' Dead Money DLC into grenades. The results, as the header image above suggests, are predictably gruesome.   

Designed for those moments "when you want to kill someone as painfully as possible" (we've all been there, right?), Cloud Grenades turn the blood red noxious mist into a throwable bomb. 

"There are four separate tiers, ranging from just throwing a bottle of cloud residue which deals 25 damage, up to Lethal Cloud Kiss which deals 169 damage," explains its creator, before noting Ghost People and those wearing the hazmat suit from Old World Blues are immune to the Grenades' attack, true to the base game's lore.  

Everyone else, however, is less likely to survive. "Everything is fair game," adds Hopper31, "and anything killed [can] be reduced to a pile of cloud residue". Naturally, said ashes can be harvested and turned back into more grenades. War never changes, etc. 

Hopper31 continues: "These can be obtained either from converting an existing cloud residue/cloud kiss poison into the weapon version at a workbench, or cooking the throwable version directly at a campfire. They can then be converted back to their base game counterparts at a workbench if needed for anything else."

More information on Hopper31's Cloud Grenades, including installation instructions, can be found on its Nexus Mods page. Here's a handful of screens:

Last week, I tossed a comment about my pinky into the PC Gamer Slack channel, and it was like I'd just walked into a room and mispronounced the word bagel. I'd said something so immediately, obviously wrong to everyone but me that the five dudes and one woman up in orbit right now probably felt the shockwave of wrong reverberate through the International Space Station. Somehow there were no casualties, except my innocence. 

Until 5:34 pm, I'd assumed I play PC games like a Totally Normal Person.

I do not.

Okay, so, look. Here's the thing. Like most kids who grew up in the '90s, I mainly learned to type on PCs and Macs in keyboarding class, and to this day I'm a home row typist. Around the same time I was learning to type,  most games still defaulted to the arrow keys for movement. I definitely played Wolfenstein 3D with the arrow keys, and rarely played other PC shooters until years later. I was too busy with Command & Conquer and Warcraft.

So whenever I got back around to games with WASD controls—it might've been Halo: Combat Evolved around 2004—I did what my brain considered natural. I kept my fingers on the home row, and moved my ring finger from S up to W to walk forward and backward. This seemed perfectly normal. But, um.

Here's how I play PC games, which was quickly coined The Wes Maneuver:

• A: Pinky
• W/S: Ring finger
• D: Middle finger
• R/F/C/etc.: Index finger

I hope this revelation hasn't caused you physical or mental pain. Honestly, I'm still reeling. Not at the thought of doing it wrong, because the great thing about PC gaming is we can customize our games however we want. If you prefer to move with ESDF, that's perfectly fine! But it did not even occur to me, until last Wednesday at 5:34 pm, that anyone else would press the WASD keys differently. Then everyone started typing at once.

My pinky goes where?

If you'd asked me to guess how most people positioned their fingers on WASD, I'd have be totally stumped. What else would even feel natural? My way is so obvious. As the rest of the team reacted to my heretical fingering, I had to Google around for what I was missing and found tons of photos like this. The pinky lives on Shift???

I tried to contort my hand into this position. At first it felt freakish. I was tenting my fingers to stand on A, W, and D, but my brain still insisted the pinky belonged on A, too. I had to shove it to the side like a dead limb. After a few tries, I realized the natural orientation was simply shifting over to the left, and resting on A/S/D. The middle finger moves up to press W when needed. That still feels like madness to my 15 years of muscle memory, but I'll admit resting my pinky on Shift does feel pretty great. It's like a vacation: my pinky gets to sprawl out on a spacious, less-used key, and isn't responsible for strafing at pivotal moments. It's a lot of pressure, moving left.

No one on staff could remember how they learned to position their fingers for WASD, but the general consensus seemed to be that the pinky is weak and unfit for the responsibility of an important movement key. Better to trust it with lower-frequency actions like sprinting and crouching, they said. Also, I finally understand why most people find Ctrl to crouch much more convenient than I do.

But this is the part that just boggles my mind: how did this position make its way into the collective unconscious of PC gaming?

Evan conjured up the best theory: the typical WASD positioning actually carries over from using the arrow keys from back in the Wolf 3D days. If you used your right hand on the arrow keys, you almost certainly had your index finger on Left, middle on Down, and ring on Right. No pinky. And if you used your left hand, the pinky could reach out and press right Ctrl. This makes a whole lot of sense. And in original Wolfenstein 3D and Doom, Ctrl was the default Fire key.

I'm going to say "I didn't play enough Doom" is as good an explanation as I'm ever going to get. It's true: I didn't play Doom back when it came out. Then again, plenty of people who did play Doom went on to play tons of Quake and other first-person games like System Shock, which often had radically varying control schemes, and they mostly still migrated to the "proper" WASD. To make myself feel better about my apparently weird way of WASDing, I turned to someone I knew would have my back: former PC Gamer managing editor Chris Comiskey.

If I'm a mere heretic, Chris is the Archangel of Chaotic  PC Control Schemes. Here's what he had to say: 

"WASD? Vanilla, boring, and conformist. Behold my ultimate control scheme, picked up in Duke Nukem 3D, the best game ever made with the word Nukem in it: right mouse button to go forward (naturally), pinky on Left Ctrl, thumb on Left Alt and Spacebar, ring finger on Shift, middle finger on A and W, index finger working W, Z, S, X, and occasionally, the almighty C. And you better believe that my mouse is inverted. This is how I rock my PC games, and I always have. Your way is wrong and stupid. Mine is the best."

Honestly? Ctrl/Shift/A/S is pretty comfortable. I don't think I could ever get used to walking forward with a mouse button, but I dig the rest of it. As Chris says, PC gaming is all about bending the platform to your preferences. "Choice in graphics, choice in mods, choice in hardware. It’s no different with controls. If I have the sudden urge to use Scroll Lock as jump and F8 as strafe left, well, that’s my business, dammit."

Embrace your strange control schemes, PC gamers. If you're young, try not to totally mangle your hand using the default keybindings for Fortnite. It's okay to rebind. And if you see someone out there using their pinky on A, ease them into the wider world of WASDing gently.

Poor Trevor. He's the country's most unwell man—having recently overcome Lightheadedness, and having now caught a bad dose of Cubism. Check out the trailer above to see Two Point Hospital's, ahem, unorthodox treatment of this most unusual ailment. Know also that Two Point Hospital now has a launch date: August 30, 2018.

"In this trailer, we catch up with Two Point County’s sickest resident, Trevor, to see what he’s been up to since we last saw him suffering from Lightheadedness," says publisher Sega in the video's description. "It’s not good news for Trevor, as this time he’s taken a full whack in the chops from Cubism."  

Due next month, Two Point Hospital is hilarious until the corpses start piling up. That's according to Rachel Weber, who, after some recent hands-on time had this to say:

The more I see of Two Point Hospital, the more I want to run wild through the medical establishments of Two Point County, throwing down vending machines and staffing wards with tiny nurses. Just like Theme Hospital it finds the perfect balance between daft humor and that dopamine hit that comes with the best simulations, the satisfaction of fine tuning every corridor and doctor's office for maximum efficiency. 

Where things have changed it's for the better. You can see the evolution everywhere, in the way you can summon different visualisation modes to spot problem areas, in the challenges the varying regions of Two Point County present, and in surprises like those furry little monobrows that can lift the spirits after a visit from the health inspector. It's a strong medicine that—despite a few desperate trawls of Steam after my demo—nothing else comes quite close to matching. 

Head this way for the rest of our Two Point Hospital coverage.   

Deadly diseases haven't been this much fun since that cute little monkey in the movie Outbreak. The more you see of Theme Hospital's spiritual successor Two Point Hospital, the more you crave its particular mix of the comically absurd and the fiendishly satisfying. My latest hands-on featured the first four levels of the game's campaign, and gave me a sense of how the difficulty can ramp up from 'maybe I should have been the United States Secretary of Health' to 'where's the option to buy a morgue'? 

The first level of the medical simulation, set in the town of Hogsport, eases you in. Not too many weird diseases, plenty of cash and time to worry about the feng shui of your reception desk. Sure, some people might die, but it’s nothing that hiring yourself a janitor with a ghostbusting skill—because in Two Point Hospital the dead tend to linger, scaring other patients—can’t keep under control. 

To pass each level and progress on to the next hospital you only need one star, but perfectionists can push for the big three. In an act of generosity, once you’ve left a level you can always go back, so you don’t have to go to your grave stressing about how you didn’t quite manage a full score for Lower Bullocks. There’s also regular award ceremonies, rewarding you with cash for being the ‘Rising Star’ or not killing anyone. 

Each of the four levels peels back another layer of Two Point’s onion of complexity, so the next stop, Lower Bullocks, is a village afflicted with a delusional disorder that leads people to think they’re rock stars. Now, while you're dealing with diseases like Lightheadedness or patients with saucepans for heads (requiring treatment in a Pan’s Lab), you need to build up a robust team of psychiatrists. Not all doctors have that qualification, so there are soon queues, angry patients, and you’re stretching finances to buy more buildings for your growing disaster hospital. It’s a tough lesson in human resources, albeit one featuring people people with light bulbs for heads.

As well as the standard in-game currency for hiring staff, buying buildings and getting paid, there’s a second called kudosh that you can earn for completing different challenges. This is basically fun money that you can spend on things like fancy paintings and cosmetic items (like a skeleton model) and useful furnishings like a Sega arcade machine to keep patients entertained or a salty snack machine to keep them fed. Unlocking each new item is satisfying, and I was watching my kudosh more closely than my actual hospital finances. Which probably explains all the deaths.

A bullet a day keeps the monobrows away

The next stop on my medical odyssey was Flottering, which was a learning experience for me and my cabal of odd little doctors. Here staffing is an issue, so after hitting certain staff happiness targets to get a training license, I had to invest in people instead of amusing posters for the toilet walls. That’s when it all started to go a bit wrong. 

Training staff takes time, and when doctors and nurses are busy book learning they’re not healing patients or—this is based on the US healthcare system after all—making money. It’s a balancing act that’s a bit harder to manage than making sure your toilets are perfectly aligned. I soon ended up with a classroom of staff, enraged Freudian Lips patients wandering the halls, a bottleneck of people trapped by the newsagent stand and—god help us all—a monobrow infestation. These little critters roam the hospital, hiding under vending machines and benches, and have to be found and eliminated. Pleasingly, when you find one the cursor turns into crosshairs, allowing you to take pot shots. 

By the final level, the University Hospital of Mitton, my cockiness was in the bedpan. This hospital was focused on research and gave me tough targets to hit, but it was also in one of the colder regions of Two Point County, so I was more concerned with affording enough radiators to keep everyone happy. Unfortunately, telling everyone to just put on an extra sweater, dad-style, is not an option. Luckily, taking out a series of dubious loans is. 

The more I see of Two Point Hospital, the more I want to run wild through the medical establishments of Two Point County, throwing down vending machines and staffing wards with tiny nurses. Just like Theme Hospital it finds the perfect balance between daft humor and that dopamine hit that comes with the best simulations, the satisfaction of fine tuning every corridor and doctor's office for maximum efficiency. Where things have changed it's for the better. You can see the evolution everywhere, in the way you can summon different visualisation modes to spot problem areas, in the challenges the varying regions of Two Point County present, and in surprises like those furry little monobrows that can lift the spirits after a visit from the health inspector. It's a strong medicine that—despite a few desperate trawls of Steam after my demo—nothing else comes quite close to matching. 

Despite rumblings from some corners of the interwebs, GTA Online's incoming nightclub update did not land yesterday. Instead, Rockstar has extended last week's Smuggler Sell Missions double RP/GTA$ bonus, its 25 percent discount on Special Cargo Crates, and its extra 25 percent earnings on Biker Business Sales. Likewise, Guest List signees can claim another $100,000 of free in-game cash, and a Blue Wireframe Bodysuit. 

All of which marks another pretty underwhelming week for GTA Online. Property discounts from now through July 23 range from Executive Offices and Bike Clubhouses at half price, to Bunkers and Hangars at 40 percent off, and Facilities with 30 percent reductions. 

A range of vehicle upgrades are on sale—with engine upgrades, handling upgrades, brakes, transmission, turbo, suspension, and spoilers all 30 percent less their regular cost. Phil and Samuel both called my souped-up Deluxo "gauche", with its light strips and add-ons and pearlescent paintwork. But what do they know?

Check out this week's vehicle discounts this way, the most appealing of which, I reckon, is the Nagasaki Shotaro. Admittedly, the Tron-inspired bike isn't the most efficient way to scoot around in free-play, but you're required to play a round of Deadline in order to unlock it. That's great fun. At 30 percent off, the Shotaro drops from $2,225,000 to $1,557,500. If you can't afford that, here's how to make money in GTA Online.   

Moreover, a host of aircraft and attack vehicles—and their respective weapon upgrades—are going cheap this week. The list of discounts in full can be found here. 

"Stay tuned for more nightlife scene details coming soon," reads the intro of this Rockstar Newswire post. The promotional material for GTA Online's incoming nightclub update promises a July launch and, given it tends to roll out its updates on Tuesdays, means it'll likely arrive on July 24 or July 31. 

If rumblings from other corners of the interwebs are to be believed, we'll know more sooner rather than later. In any event, expect nightclub news in the coming weeks.