Underwater survival game Subnautica—just given away for free on Epic's Store—is next on our list of GOTY awards. If you'd like to see the complete line-up of awards so far, head here.
Andy K: I don’t get on with a lot of survival games because, outside of staying alive, there isn’t much to do. But Subnautica’s beautiful, mysterious alien ocean is absolutely heaving with interesting, hand-crafted details to discover. When you find a strange island or a wrecked ship, you know there’ll be an interesting story attached to it, and maybe something that can be scavenged to help you out. And while many survival sims force you to endure hours of tedious busywork, the material requirements for building things in Subnautica are refreshingly generous, letting you actually get on with enjoying the game.
Pip: Subnautica is my most-played game of 2018. It’s actually the only survival game I’ve ever loved. The underwater setting is absolutely gorgeous, and does a fantastic job of making you want to explore. I wanted to see what was in every cave, and round every corner. Each new biome was a source of utter delight as well as tension especially when I was in the depths of the ocean, battling oxygen limitations and deep sea pressure (as well as terrifying creatures) in my quest for resources.
As well as the intriguing story, where you tease out what happened to the Aurora—your massive ship—there is plenty of scope for setting your own tasks. Mine included setting up a multi-storey base on the lip of a thermal vent for maximum Bond villainy, and immediately undermining that aesthetic by curating a lovely underwater garden just outside it.
Steven: I'm with Andy on this one: Survival games bore me to tears. But Subnautica succeeds on the sheer splendor (and terror) of its open sea. I've never felt such a palpable sense of dread as when I would venture into some uncharted part of the ocean where any number of aquatic horrors could get me. My first encounter with a Leviathan left me so shaken I put down the game for days, but the thing that kept me coming back was the story.
Subnautica displays a rare feat of storytelling in the way pivotal plot moments happen completely independent of your involvement in them. The three of us each had a wildly different perspective on an early plot beat, and that wouldn't have happened if Subnautica was the kind of game that had to wrest control away from the player to make sure they noticed every detail. Like many of its ocean creatures, Subnautica is a game that feels like it's indifferent of me as the player, and that makes me all the more interested in puzzling its story out.
Fraser : Subnautica is really a horror game. Sure, it’s a very fetching horror game that’s serene and lovely for long stretches, but that’s how it gets you! And before you know it, you’ve boldly floated out into an interminable abyss where titanic, mountain-sized aliens dwell... and you’re running out of oxygen. There are horrible things living in the depths, hungry leviathans, but even seemingly friendly fish are actually bastards. I followed one scaley trickster to my doom when I chased it into a labyrinthine network of caves. I enjoyed spelunking at first, but then it dawned on me that I was utterly lost and the caves were going to be my tomb. Instead of big monsters jumping out from behind rocks, Subnautica terrifies with the awe-inspiring scale of the ocean and its largest beasties, and it constantly reinforces the fact that you don’t belong there.
Droves of long-awaited, retro-styled indies released in 2018: Timespinner, Death’s Gambit, Chasm and Iconoclasts were arguably the most anticipated, and all were subject to years of close scrutiny by fans. These titles stick to a genre format that has existed for over 30 years—the Metroidvania—and none do much to challenge or surprise players, motivated as they are by nostalgia and reverence for the classics.
Nostalgia feels like a real impediment in the modern evolution of 2D adventure games—there’s no reason why the genre can’t continue to evolve. For people who only play 2D platformers (I’m sure there are plenty, and I respect them), Steam probably has several lifetimes' worth of entertainment in its inventory just for them. This year really felt like a turning point for the indie platformer, though: after Hollow Knight and Celeste, things have changed. It's harder than ever to just tread water when it comes to platformers. You have to make something special.
But if there’s a game I’ve played this year, nay this decade, which immaculately re-constructs not so much the visual style but the spirit of the '90s, then it’s probably Iconoclasts. This isn’t a radical game, it’s a formally conservative one. But it’s goddamned beautiful, and the fact that it was created by a single person—Joakim Sandberg—lends it an intimacy and urgency that’s lacking from so many other titles that just dutifully tick the boxes.
I, uh, don’t really know what the game’s about. The story is intensely convoluted and that’s because it’s written by one person. I love that it’s intensely convoluted, even while I couldn’t be bothered to parse it. I know that Robin is the protagonist: she’s a mechanic, and one of her main problem-solving tools is a wrench. This plays into the game’s light physics-based puzzle play: her wrench can be used as a grappling hook, a weapon, and—wait for it—a tool for turning bolts. For whatever reason, Robin comes to blows with the powerful ruling organisation “One Concern”, and the game mostly follows her efforts to escape or thwart it.
Many have pointed out that the Iconoclasts has an absurdly convoluted plot, but if you’re like me and play 2D platformers for the pleasure of inhabiting their worlds and jumping between platforms, a moment spent gazing at Sandberg’s lushly detailed pixel-art will make any other concern redundant. This is, without a doubt, the most lavish 2D sidescroller I’ve ever seen, and every effort has been made to imbue it with charm and personality. The opening world—blue skies, green fields, comforting tunes—is strewn with cubes and triangles representing stone, foliage and grass. But just over there lay the remains of a brick wall, and further afield are metallic-looking pillars supporting hieroglyph-ed piping. What kind of world have we entered here? Why do all these disparate elements look so coherent, so painterly?
Later, Sandberg creates familiar-feeling hi-tech factory settings, but does so with water and foliage and a slightly jarring purple-themed aesthetic. What’s interesting about the world of Iconoclasts is that from moment-to-moment the environments feel familiar, but upon close observation they’re quite weird, slightly askew, bizarrely unwilling to settle on either “fantasy” or “sci-fi” (games must, you know!).
It’s a fun game, too, albeit with glaring imperfections—it was made by one guy, after all. There’s one particular boss battle against an invisible character that will probably go down as one of my least favourite gaming moments in 2018. I know it sounds like I’m making excuses for this game that I dearly love, but even this big pain in the arse boss is charming. Overall, Iconoclasts feels like a huge unwieldy work of passion by an artist just kinda figuring it out as they go. In an age when shortcomings in games are often interpreted as conspiratorial, "lazy", possibly sinister, I like that Iconoclasts very occasionally just sucks in an old-fashioned game sort of way: sometimes its ideas just aren't fun.
Iconoclasts came out in the same week as Celeste, and the latter game was definitely both a critical darling and a fan favourite. But it also felt too honed, its themes felt too didactic. Iconoclasts is the kind of game I want to play most: big, personal, hubristic, ambitious, inscrutable, and with lots of heart. It was eight years in development, and that shows in both its strengths and weaknesses.
Rainbow Six Siege players will find a generous stocking stuffer waiting for them next time they login. Ubisoft is giving away a free Holiday Pack that contains a random DLC operator that you haven't already unlocked or, if you have all the operators, 25,000 Renown.
All you have to do is login before January 1 to claim your present. Some players that already own all DLC operators are reporting they're unable to claim their Renown—Ubisoft is currently investigating.
Twenty-five thousand Renown is the usual cost of a DLC operator, so it's an ideal amount to bank away for the future. Or, you could just splurge on the best Siege skins.
Of all the ambitious mods recreating areas of Tamriel, Beyond Skyrim is the one I'm most excited about. It's essentially made up of seven separate projects aimed at remaking parts of the Elder Scrolls world—including Cyrodiil and Morrowind—in the Fourth Era, when Skyrim is set. Yesterday, the developers released their first ever development diary, showing just how much progress they've made in each region, and you'll find footage from Roscrea, the lost continent of Atmora and Elsweyr.
The video, above, runs through each region's progress in turn, starting with Roscrea, an island located in the Sea of Ghosts north of Solitude, Skyrim. The first landscaping of the island is nearly complete, quests and characters are largely written, and most of the major towns and villages are designed. The team is even making progress on creating a unique Roscrean language for the island's inhabitants—both alive and undead.
In Cyrodiil, the team has numerous cities, including Chorrol and Skingrad, at the level design stage, while others are still in art development, including the iconic Imperial City. The region of Colovia has nearly reached first-pass level design completion, and the team has begun shortlisting fully-fledged companion characters that will travel alongside you. It's worth noting that the Bruma portion of Cyrodiil is already complete, and was released last year. Chris was impressed by it, and the fact that Beyond Skyrim has already produced something polished is the main reason I'm hopeful about its future.
In Atmora, the lost continent to the north of Tamriel, the team have completed design of the fjord and Staglands regions, and are working on a custom weather system. They've also made progress on the local quests: the finished version will have five main quest chapters as well as numerous side quests.
In the video, you'll also find details about Iliac Bay, Elsweyr and Black Marsh, which look to be earlier in development. The team wrapped up the diary by teasing a "very special announcement" for the Morrowind project in the new year. They've been working hard writing characters for the region's numerous dungeons and towns—could the announcement be that a portion of the map will be playable soon, similar to Bruma in Cyrodiil? I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
For more information on Beyond Skyrim, visit its official website.
Sega's Yakuza 0 claims our next GOTY award for its vibrant, quirky and beautiful settings. Find the complete list of awards and personal picks in our 2018 GOTY hub.
Phil: Yakuza 0 is a hard game to summarise. There's the serious story about a young gangster framed for murder. There's the absurd sidequests that parody everything from toilet graffiti to Michael Jackson. There's the teeming neon streets, the arcade cabinets, the pocket racing, the karaoke, the chicken who can manage your real estate business, and the endless supply of thugs desperate to meet your fists. There's a lot going on, and all of it is designed to evoke a specific time and place: the over-the-top excess of '80s Japan.
The setting doesn't just come through the architecture, the furniture or the clothes that NPCs wear, but is also an integral part of every system. Money is earned and spent easily. It bursts out of enemies when you defeat them, and, when you need to upgrade your fighting styles, you do so by literally investing money in yourself. There's a satirical edge to its humour, to the point that—in one of its substories—you drunkenly suggest the tax policy that would go on cause Japan's bubble to collapse, leading to a 'Lost Decade' of economic stagnation. From the story about what it means to be a gangster in a world of greed and excess, to the aesthetic, the design and even the absurdly over-the-top humour, every element of Yakuza 0 feeds back into its setting.
Andy K: This is my first serious foray into the Yakuza series, and those two chunks of city are an absolute joy to explore. I’ve visited enough Western cities in PC games, so it’s nice to experience somewhere on the other side of the planet, and rendered with such a keen eye for detail. They might not have the fidelity of somewhere like Los Santos, but Kamurocho and Sotenbori are just as immersive, and totally transporting. You can almost feel the grime as you walk the streets in your preposterous, shiny '80s suit.
Samuel: I've never felt more broadly attacked by minigames than I have playing Yakuza 0. It doesn't ask me to spend more time in its world so much as insist on it. And that's how I lost two hours in the batting cage, and another hour playing Space Harrier in the arcade, a game I only ever play inside other Sega games (Shenmue 2 being the other). This game is weird and wonderful. I'm delighted it's on PC, and that when you beat people up, money falls out of them. Computer games.
Tom: I didn’t think I’d end up saying this, but I like the story a lot. Gangland dramas can sometimes be sadistic tales about heartless people killing each other pointlessly, but actually want to see Kiryu and Majima land on their feet. I also love the game’s tendency to shift instantly from slapstick comedy to intense melodrama without pause. One moment I’m helping a living statue get to the toilet without pissing himself, the next I’m punching my way through an entire country estate full of gangsters. Majima and Kiryu take it all in their stride with earnest goodwill, and I can’t help but get swept up in it all.
Yakuza 0 shows that size and scenery don’t make a setting great. Personality and detail are just as important, and amid all the bluster and jokes, the game is making an effort to comment on a historical moment in big-city Japan.
The Outer Worlds is a new RPG from Obsidian Entertainment, the studio behind Fallout: New Vegas and Pillars of Eternity. It's a first person space romp with stats to assign, dialogue to blunder through, and companion characters to help along the way. Lead developers Leonard Boyarsky and Tim Cain created the original Fallout together in the 90s, along with other famous PC RPGs like Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines. The Outer Worlds is their first game together in many years, and has been one of our most anticipated new games of 2019.
In our review, we found The Outer Worlds to be exactly what it set out to be (but no more) with colorful environments, well-written quests, and plenty of guns. It's a shorter game than other big RPGs of the year but is still a fun romp with a personality that's distinctly Obsidian's.
Here’s everything you need to know about The Outer Worlds:
What are the fast facts on The Outer Worlds?
Length: Expect about 30-40 hours of play time.
Open world? Not quite. You can choose your destination and pace but areas are split up by loading screens.
Combat: It's in first-person.
Who can I kill? Everyone, if you want. Nothing is sacred. There are no "essential" NPCs.
Platform: Exclusive to Epic Games Store for one year.
The Outer Worlds review
If you're jumping into The Outer Worlds soon, our review is a great place to start. Tom enjoyed the game a lot, citing its writing and humor as particular strong points. "There's a category of games I think of as Saturday morning cartoon games. They lack depth, but they are fluffy and easy to enjoy. As I look back on some screenshots as Pippin laser blasts a poor marauder into a pile of dust, I realise that's what The Outer Worlds is to me. If you meet it on those terms, I think you'll enjoy it."
Here's The Outer Worlds' launch day trailer
To highlight the idea that you'll be able to play as any kind of character you want, the trailer poses the question: will you be a hero, a villain, brawler, assassin or...Moon Man?
Here's an hour of gameplay including side-quests, combat, and dialogue
Chris and Phil both got hands-on time with The Outer Worlds in July, and above you can see edited footage of their experiences. They both completed a few side-quests, including tracking down a missing person, investigating a murder, and helping out (and then stealing from) a drug distributor.
If you enjoy stealth, The Outer Worlds has disguises
During some hands-on time with The Outer Worlds, Chris took on a quest to kill the owner of a factory. To get inside the factory, he wore a disguise: a holographic shroud that let him look like a common factory worker. You can watch that mission above (or here on YouTube).
It's not as simple as wearing some clothes and a false mustache, though—as you move the hologram's power drains, and when it fizzles out you'll be confronted with speech checks from other NPCs. You can read more about disguises here.
Will The Outer Worlds be sold on Steam?
Not at launch. Back in March, Epic Games announced that The Outer Worlds would be an Epic Games Store exclusive for the standard period of one year. It will also be playable through the Microsoft Store on PC, however.
What's the story premise of The Outer Worlds? The setting?
Your character was on a ship transporting humans to the newly-formed Halcyon colony, a duo of planets on the edge of the galaxy. The ship got lost on the way, which means you’ve been in cryosleep for 70 years. That should be too long for you to survive but somehow, a scientist has managed to awaken you, and he wants your help saving your fellow frozen travelers.
You can choose to help him or immediately turn him into the corporate authorities (the whole colony and everything in it is run and owned by various corporations) for a cash reward. You can even play both sides against each other. Or, you can just venture off and explore the world from the get-go. The main story is branching and will have multiple endings—the one you see will depend on the choices you make.
Most of the time, you’ll be on the two main planets. One has been better terraformed and is therefore more populated. The other is wilder, and home to more aggressive alien life. Both are vibrant and colourful, and Wes likened the aesthetic to No Man’s Sky after seeing the game in action. As well as the two planets, you’ll visit space stations and moons.
Do your choices matter?
You'll definitely have one big choice, as mentioned above, on whether to side with Phineas Wells, the scientist who rescues you from 70 years of cryo-sleep, or The Board. That main choice will dictate which ending of The Outer Worlds you see, similar to Fallout: New Vegas's big decision at the battle for Hoover Dam.
Other quest choices, co-director Leonard Boyarsky said in an interview with VGC, will be reflected in a series of slides showing how your choices and approach to various quests impacted the future of the colony.
It sounds like your choices will matter, but more on a minute-to-minute and quest-by-quest basis rather than as part of a grand web of permuted endings. Obsidian is known for its complex quests with various solutions and entry-points, which each have ways for the game to acknowledge your ingenuity (or lack of it), as Obsidian comically highlights in its announcement trailer from 2018.
How long is The Outer Worlds?
With any big RPG, fans want to know how much time they'll be able to spend before they've seen and done everything. Obsidian wants to set expectations for The Outer Worlds closer to an RPG like KOTOR 2 than, say, a Fallout or Skyrim.
Expect The Outer Worlds to be about 30-40 hours long. "We've decided to put our effort into the reactivity and replayability—because of our size and budget, those necessitate a smaller, more tightly-controlled game than a giant sandbox open world where you can run everywhere," said co-director Leonard Boyarsky.
The new "Come to Halcyon" recruitment video is still better than my first job
This clever trailer shows off a lot of The Outer Worlds' environments and opportunities in the form of a Halcyon recruitment video. If the game wasn't already incredibly Fallout-y, the blissful old world bluntness of the narrator and its cynical message surely fulfill the Fallout quota.
Is it an open world?
The Outer Worlds is not really a giant sandbox. You can’t freely roam around the planets—you’ll be exploring a section of each one at any time, but you’ll be able to go around them at your own pace, and they’ll all have plenty of sidequests to stumble across. You can travel directly between some areas without returning to your home base, a spaceship, but they’ll be split up by a loading screen.
You’ll return to the same areas throughout the game, and they may have changed depending on your previous actions.
To compare it to a past Obsidian game, the developer told Kotaku that "a good bit of context for the approach is to think of what we did in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II, with potentially more ground to cover and explore in each area."
You’ll be able to visit a lot of the world from the very start, but to progress the story you’ll have visit specific locations, and there are also "points of no return," Boyarsky and Cain told Wes. Some areas will have much tougher enemies, and better loot, than others.
You can complete quests in multiple ways
In typical Obsidian fashion, you’ll be able to solve every quest in lots of different ways. In most, you’ll be able to fight, sneak or talk your way to the end. Main quests have multiple steps to them, allowing you to switch your approach on the fly.
If you want to be a smooth talker, it won’t just be as easy as picking the right stats and perks: you’ll often have to find a particular item in the world, or gather some intelligence about the person you’re trying to talk your way around.
Boyarsky and Cain told Wes that they "don’t know" yet whether you’ll be able to complete a purely pacifist run.
You customise your character with skills, perks and "flaws"
You have six main skills—strength, intelligence, etc—that you can dump points into, and each one goes up to 100. Those skills will directly affect what happens in the game. For example, melee weapons will have a damage range, and the higher your melee skill, the more damage you’ll deal. You’ll be able to distribute your points to create different character archetypes, such as one that is good at sneaking, or a firearms expert.
Your skills will also impact what dialogue options you’ll get to choose and, just like the creator’s previous games, you can choose a "dumb" dialogue option if you have the right stats, which should provide some comic relief.
For every 20 points you put into a skill, you get to pick a perk. Obsidian hasn’t yet detailed what any of the perks will do, but it should be a chance to further customise your character to fit your playstyle.
One of the more unique things about The Outer Worlds is that you can pick up optional negative traits, called "flaws," as you move about the world. These relate to specific events: if you’re burned in a fire, for example, you might be given the option of becoming afraid of flames. You’ll be limited in how many flaws you can pick up, but every time you choose one, you also get to pick a perk to balance it out.
You can customise your character’s appearance, too, though the game is played first-person (you'll see yourself in the menu and if you let the game idle).
Your character isn’t voiced, but dialogue is hugely important
The main character won’t have a voice, but in each conversation they’ll have multiple options to choose from. Some of those options will be locked behind particular skills. You’ll still see them as an option if you don’t have the required stats, but they’ll be greyed out, which might encourage you to change your build, or just to take some drugs to temporarily buff your character.
You can kill any NPC in the game
Unlike some RPGs, there aren't any 'essential' NPCs in The Outer Worlds. If you see someone, you can kill them, even if they're a quest-giver. There still be ways to acquire thier quest, even if the quest-giver is dead—maybe you can loot their body, or search their residence, or pick the lock of their safe.
How does combat work?
Combat is first-person, and weapons will include pistols, laser rifles and sci-fi scythes as well as other melee weapons. You’ll be able to modify your weapons, upgrading them and picking different ammo types, such as bullets that deal elemental damage. You’ll be able to find special "science weapons" with cool effects, such as a shrink ray.
The Outer Worlds will also have a VATS-style "tactical time dilation" mechanic that lets you slow time, and when you use it you’ll be able to see more information about an enemy, such as their remaining health. It’ll let you target individual body parts—although unlike VATS, you’ll always be aiming manually. Targeting individual body parts will trigger different effects on enemies. A headshot might trigger blindness and leg shots might slow them down.
Lastly, you’ll have companions to help you out in combat. They’ll each have different abilities, and you can issue them with basic instructions during firefights (think Mass Effect).
Your companions have unique missions—and can abandon you
You pick up companions on your travels, and they’ll all live on a spaceship that serves as your home base between missions. You can pick two to accompany you when you leave the ship. If you aren't into the whole companion thing, there will be perks to help you play solo.
They will all have different motivations, which you’ll be able to dig into during Mass Effect-style companion missions. If you do something they don’t like, they might abandon your cause entirely.
Each has a special ability and different expertise. As well as providing support during combat, they’ll interject in dialogue, and you can call on their skills when you’re backed into a corner. You might ask a companion that has a quick tongue to handle a tricky negotiation, for example.
If you want to make best use of your companions then instead of specialising your main character in stealth, combat or speech you can choose to be a "leader," which is essentially a jack-of-all-trades. Playing as a leader, you'll choose perks that enhance the abilities of your companions.
Here's more gameplay from Tokyo Game Show 2019
More folks were able to get hands-on with The Outer Worlds at Tokyo Game Show 2019. Here's another 20 minutes of gameplay with English dialogue.
Can you romance companions?
Nope. The developers considered it, but decided against it.
Will The Outer World have mods?
Possibly. Obsidian are open to the idea, but it partly depends on Epic Games, because The Outer Worlds uses Unreal Engine 4. The team is set to have "further discussions" with Epic in the future, they told Wes. They aren't planning to release a modkit at launch.
The Outer Worlds system requirements
Minimum:
OS: Windows 7 (SP1) 64bit
CPU: Intel Core i3-3225 or AMD Phenom II X6 1100T
RAM: 4GB
GPU: Nvidia GTX 650 Ti or AMD HD 7850
HDD Space: 40GB
Recommended:
OS: Windows 10 64bit
CPU: Intel Core i7-7700K or Ryzen 5 1600
RAM: 8GB
GPU: GeForce GTX 1060 6GB or Radeon RX 470
HDD Space: 40GB
Notably, 40GB is on the small side of a big RPG in 2019 (meaty AAA games regularly leap over 100GB nowadays). The Outer Worlds is pushing beautiful sights, but its medium size also reflects its medium hardware demands. A reasonably updated PC should be able to run the game just fine.
BattleTech's battlemechs don't have one hitpoint bar, they have 19. Armor values for the center torso, left torso, right torso, right arm, left arm, head, left leg, right leg, and rear torso segments are all individually tracked. When you eat through one of these layers of metal padding, it exposes yet another body segment-specific HP bar for that component's internal structure. When these bones are depleted, the corresponding body part cripples, ejects, or explodes.
I love the way that BattleTech's damage system makes it feel like a series of turn-based boxing matches where you're targeting your opponent's bruises while worrying about your own. You'll lob long-range missiles at your opponent, spreading pain evenly across three or four body segments; they'll reply with a PPC lightning bolt, walloping your left arm, which holds a valuable Large Laser. In response, you'll turn your right shoulder to face that opponent, shielding your body with a new stance like Fraser or Ali. It's the durability of mechs as videogame objects that creates time and space for these exchanges, and the way that Harebrained Schemes riffed on this 30-year-old combat system helped made it one of my favorite experiences of 2018.
The XCOM-style metagame that sits on top of BattleTech's combat is mostly about collecting guns and mechs. In order to build a 90-ton Highlander mech in your garage, you have to collect a handful of 'Highlander pieces' by defeating them on missions they happen to be present in. If you kill a Highlander or any other enemy mech 'too much' by annihilating its center torso, which holds the volatile reactor of your mech, you'll be awarded fewer mech pieces because the resulting explosion blew most of them up.
In summary: when you're hunting for a valuable mech, you have to figure out how to kill softly. You have to flank, think about turn order, and use your whole squad in order to set up a low-percentage headshot with an autocannon or other single-target weapon. It takes finesse and luck, but if you're too cautious in your execution you could incur expensive damage or lose a mechwarrior, defeating the purpose altogether. This risk-reward choice layers nicely with BattleTech's contract reward system, which forces you to pick between a balance of money, salvage parts, or faction reputation before the mission begins.
Individual components, too, have special value as BattleTech's procedural campaign ticks on. Rarer 'plus' variants of SRMs, lasers, or other guns are simply more efficient than their stock counterparts, contributing more damage, crit chance, or some other bonus, so you always want to equip them to maximize your mech builds. But these weapons are pretty easy to lose, and sometimes impossible to replace, a reflection of BattleTech's lore, where some technological knowledge has been lost after centuries of conflict.
Across 70 hours, the moments that stick in my mind most aren't acing all my objectives or my biggest kills, but missions where victory meant sacrificing an irreplaceable component. The first portion of story missions awards you a Highlander, outfitted with an ancient but powerful Gauss rifle and, perhaps more importantly, dual heatsinks. Dual heatsinks allow you to run hotter weapons, or more weapons total, on a mech, and they can't be purchased or found anywhere in the game outside of this moment. Part of the story of my ironman campaign became the gradual decline of my Highlander from all-star sniper to an average assault mech as it shed this legendary equipment piece by piece. Other, less legendary mechs experienced a similar path. If a mech accrued too much damage to be worth the repair cost, the best choice was often selling its ruined chassis for lunch money, or stripping it of whatever weapons and ammo remained and mothballing it in storage, where mechs don't take up valuable garage slots.
It's rare that a game does anything but make us feel more powerful as it progresses. I came to appreciate the way that failure and success mix in messy, uncomfortable ways in BattleTech, something that's only been matched by Darkest Dungeon and XCOM, among what I've played.
I'm interested to see how Harebrained Schemes' planned Urban Warfare and third, unannounced expansions change BattleTech in 2019. Some players felt that the first add-on, Flashpoint, was light on new stuff for its $20 price tag, but it did provide a richer endgame, three new mechs, a career mode that's fun as a second playthrough, and 'short story' missions where you sometimes have to deploy back-to-back without an opportunity to repair. At the top of my wishlist is something that grants more personality to your mechwarriors themselves, who are lightly customizable but rely heavily on your own imagination to instill with identity. Given their history making games like Stellaris, Paradox, which acquired Harebrained and became BattleTech's publisher in June, should be a good parent for this model.
A Roomba is an autonomous robotic vacuum cleaner that, guided by various sensors, will slowly prowl your room of choice, keeping your carpet clean without knocking everything over. Thanks to the efforts of coder Rich Whitehouse, it is also now an automated Doom map-making machine: The DOOMBA.
Doomba is actually a script for Whitehouse's Noesis software, a tool for "previewing and converting between hundreds of model, image, and animation formats". The script tracks and stores your Roomba's movement data via the Clean Map reporting system, which can be imported into Noesis and then into a randomized Doom map.
"I discovered that the newer Roombas are making use of a pretty respectable SLAM [simultaneous localization and mapping] implementation, which led to wondering about what kind of data I could get out of it and what I could do with that data," Whitehouse explained on his website.
"I soon realized that there was a clear opportunity to serve the Dark Lord by conceiving a plethora of unholy algorithms in service to one of the finest works ever created in his name. Simultaneously, I would be able to unleash a truly terrible pun to plague humankind. Now, the fruit of my labor is born."
Doomba has only been tested with a Roomba 980 so there's no guarantee that it will work with other models, and some assembly is required: You'll need to install the latest Noesis software, copy over the Doomba script, and then manually set up the Roomba's IP and credentials. After creating the .noeroomba file—the raw movement data—you'll have to pull it all together in the Noesis application, and then tweak it up as you see fit.
That's the part where things can go really wrong, as Whitehouse warned that he hasn't tested it extensively and "didn't really bother sanity-checking values on the engine side". Doomba won't stop you from trying to do things that Doom itself can't handle, in other words, so it's easy to cause errors like the Visplane overflow if you start fiddling with things you don't understand.
But like a lot of DIY PC gaming exotica, practicality isn't really the point. "I hope you get some fun out of this feature. I definitely have!" Whitehouse wrote. "Some will say that it's pointless, but I have faith in my heart that the Dark Lord will wipe these people from the face of the earth and trap them in a dimension of eternal hellfire. Their suffering will be legendary."
Excellent sandbox-y survival game Subnautica, which you can still grab for free on the Epic Store, is now playable in multiplayer thanks to a new mod called Nitrox.
Its creator Sunrunner says it's still in "very early stages of development", but the foundation for a full co-op playthrough is there: it has synced player movement, basic animations, base building and item dropping, as well as a rudimentary chat system.
Because it's so early, Sunrunner isn't recommended for "casual play", but if you don't want to wait for extra polish you can download the installer from its Nexus page (you'll have to login to your Nexus account first).
Clearly, players aren't too bothered that it still has a long way to go, and it's been downloaded more than 35,000 times since it was added to Nexus Mods last week.
It's open-source, so the hope is that other modders will be able to iterate on it in future. The Unknown Worlds Entertainment dev team even commented on the mod last year, saying they "fully support" the project but that it would be "very hard" to get a multiplayer Subnautica mod looking as polished as the singleplayer game.
Update: I originally wrote that you have to manually install the mod via instructions on its wiki page—you can actually grab an installer file from the mod's Nexus page (it's in the top-right).
Wintry, free-to-play battle royale Ring of Elysium has a new survival-themed game mode in which you compete with other players for food and fuel, and you have to cower indoors when the storm, called Ymir, surges.
In the new mode, called From Dusk Till Dawn, you win by surviving until first light, which will take around 20 in-game minutes. You'll battle other players to get your hands on equipment, weapons and fuel. When Ymir surges, you have to craft an indoor campfire to maintain your body temperature, and you'll need fuel to keep it running. You can also eat food to boost your health.
All resources will be displayed on the map, and at certain times the location of all players will be shown, too, which means firefights will be hard to avoid.
It sounds like fun and, as a big fan of Ring of Elysium (it's my battle royale of choice at the moment), I might check it out. For now, it's only available at certain times of day so that developer Tencent can ensure it remains stable—you can play it between 4 and 6am PST, 12 and 2pm PST, and 8 and 10pm PST. They're well spread out, so at least one should suit your time zone.
