Praey for the Gods, a chilly action adventure with more than a hint of Shadow of the Colossus, launches on Steam Early Access tomorrow, following a successful Kickstarter in 2016. Take a gander at the striking launch trailer above. 

It’s an open world romp populated by massive bosses that you can clamber up on your journey to discover why the heck the world is so cold. Perpetual winter might be all right if you’re a giant and covered in fur, but it’s less of a hoot if you’re a scrawny human kid. 

Like its inspiration, it's got an air of mystery, with only cryptic paintings hinting at what's going on, though I confess I'm far more interested in finding something to climb. Shadow of the Colossus’ quiet, melancholy story gets a lot of love, but honestly you could strip all that out and just leave the big beasties and it would still be great. The excellent Dragon’s Dogma proved that you don’t need good writing to make a game about climbing monsters wonderful. 

While Praey for the Gods looks promising, the name is like a knife to my eyes. It’s a shame, really. It was originally called Prey for the Gods, but Bethesda decided to throw its weight around and get litigious. The publisher claimed that the name infringed on the Prey trademark, and while it seems like a big stretch, developer No Matter Studios wasn’t in a position to challenge it. The game was funded by Kickstarter backers, and the team didn’t want to spend that money on a legal battle. 

No Matter Studios says that the core game is “solid” after two years of closed alpha and beta testing, and the list of features promised to backers has been implemented. The developer wants to do more, however, adding “additional content” as well as polish and optimisation. It’s expected to remain in Early Access between six months and a year. 

Final Fantasy 7's pre-rendered backgrounds looked pretty pixelated on the PC, upscaled from their original tiny resolution. But now you can make them look remarkably better with the FF7 Remako HD graphics mod, which is available to download as a beta today. "Using state of the art AI neural networks, this upscaling tries to emulate the detail the original renders would have had," writes the mod's author. "This helps the new visuals to come as close to a higher resolution re-rendering of the original as possible with current technology."

If you're wondering how that works: Last week I wrote about how modders are using neural networks to more intelligently upscale images, to great effect with the low-res backgrounds featured in old PS1 games. The upscaled images aren't magically perfect—there's naturally some lost detail and some bluriness when you quadruple the size of an image, but this technique does a remarkable job of preserving the style of the original work while getting rid of the pixelation. Check out the video above for some comparisons.

According to the Remako Mod's author, all the backgrounds in FF7 have been converted, but it hasn't been fully checked over. Some graphical oddities will likely crop up here and there, hence the beta release.

A similar mod for Final Fantasy 9, Moguri Memoria, is likewise a work-in-progress. Its latest release, v5, is available here.

Rainbow Six Siege’s new limited time “Road to Six Invitational” mode is winning the hearts of its players. In just a few days since the event kicked off, Siege’s subreddit has seen a nonstop barrage of positive feedback for the new pick/ban system usually reserved only for professional play, essentially operating as an informal test before the mode potentially rolls out sometime this year.

It might be hard to see how a few rule tweaks can change the game so drastically, but the star here is the pick/ban system, which was first introduced to the pros last year. At the beginning of the match, each team gets to ban one attacker and one defender. If you’re prepping a match on Coastline, nixing Blackbeard or Mira eliminates two operators who usually dominate. As a side effect, banning forces teams to adapt and try new team comps and not just roll with what’s popular or considered top of the meta. It’s a phase that allows teams to tamper with the existing power balance of any map.

Right now the most common bans seem to follow the same blueprint as the pros: target key information ops like Mira and Echo or breachers like Hibana and Thermite. I've also seen lots of Lion or Blitz removals—the former being an op permanently banned in Pro League for his overly-useful gadget and the latter a common companion of the “crouch/lean spam” exploit that Ubisoft is working to fix. But as players feel it out, I hope to see more diverse bans meant to compliment different styles of play.

The other big shakeup in the Road to S.I. mode is round rotation. Instead of rotating between attack and defense every round, the teams play three consecutive rounds before switching sides. If the game goes into overtime, rotation goes back to normal. This means by the time you play your first round on attack, you could already find yourself on match point. I have some mixed feelings about this one.

Playing consecutive rounds in the same role helps stay in the mindset of attack/defense better than constantly switching between the two. On defense, I can focus on minimizing unnecessary movement and holding angles. After the transition to attack, I can shift my focus to keeping a good attacking pace and listening for flanks. It’s a small thing, but I can already feel the benefits.

On the other hand, the new rotation has some disadvantages. If you lose all three of your attacks and go into defense one round away from defeat, you have less of a chance to prove your defense skills. Some map sites are widely considered better balanced for one role over another, so the random assignment of who plays what first can matter in a small way. The reason this rotation was first added to Pro League was more about viewership than the experience of players—Ubi rightly figured viewers can keep track of the players better when they aren’t constantly switching roles. Overall it’s worth having, but it might need some tweaks.

The S.I. playlist includes a few other parameters that mirror the Pro League model like a trimmed down map pool of seven, bomb mode only, and longer arming times for the defuser. These are a good fit for pro-level play, but I can take or leave them. I’m an advocate for almost every map being playable in Ranked despite some imbalance (not you, Favela and Plane), so dicing the map choice down even more just exacerbates existing map burnout.

Much of the community, myself included, are hopeful that Ubi is taking the positive feedback seriously and are planning to implement similar rules into the base Ranked mode. Comments from developers last year indicate that they’ve considered it before, but hopefully this event gives them the proof they need that these features make for a more interesting and competitive Siege. Since the playlist is only available during the four weekends leading up to the Six Invitational, I’m stuck playing vanilla Siege for now. It’s tough living in a post-pick/ban world, but I think I’ll survive. 

Mr X has turned out to be the breakout star of Resident Evil 2's remake, and how could he not? He's gigantic, he wears a silly hat, and he's got a ludicrously long coat—plus, of course, he spends a not-insignificant portion of Resident Evil 2 implacably stalking the player, never missing an opportunity to punch Leon or Claire really hard.

Twitter's reaction to Mr X has been... really something. Not surprisingly, there are a fair few variants on 'X Gon' Give It To Ya', and I have reluctantly laughed at every single one of them. All of them tap into the fright the player feels whenever he turns up, or make fun of his silly coat. 

Here's what Andy said about his encounters with Mr X in his review. "The way he walks slowly towards you, unflinching and emotionless, is genuinely unsettling—especially when he suddenly appears at the end of a long corridor. And he's always lurking near items you need to progress, which is brilliantly cruel." 

Special thanks to GamesRadar's Rachel Weber, who originally uncovered a number of these.

Capcom's Resident Evil 2 Remake stats have been updated with a bunch of data from the first few days of the game's release. This doesn't capture everyone's experience with the game—just those who enabled sharing their play data with RE NET at the start—but it offers a pretty decent snapshot of the player base. The headline stat: 79 percent of players chose Leon S Kennedy for their first playthrough, while the other 21 percent opted for Claire Redfield. In Claire's defence, she is listed second on the menu when you start the game. 

In total, 1.985 million have so far played as Leon, while 1.05 million have played as Claire. 584,004 players have cleared the game as Leon, while 336,408 have done so as Claire. Some of the other starts are arbitrary, but fun nonetheless: 132 million zombies have been killed at the time of writing, which, as Capcom notes, is over twice the population of the UK, and more than the population of Japan. 

Handguns have been used 861 million times in the game, which says a lot about how tough those zombies are to take down with bullets (or the average player's accuracy). Capcom also lists which items have been discarded the most throughout the game: subweapons like grenades and knives make up 33 percent of the almost 17 million items that players have tossed away, while herbs follow at 26 percent. Maybe I'm just overly cautious, but I'd never throw away either of those items in a game where you're always challenged with limited resources. 

The Tyrant, meanwhile, subject of many jokes on Twitter for his size, ludicrous hat and absurd coat, has stalked players across 7.6 million kilometres. Somehow Capcom has measured that players have spent over 53 years in total trying to solve puzzles. 

You can log in and check your own stats, too, by clicking the Overview tab on the stats page and connecting your Steam account. 

In PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, and most multiplayer games, there are few things as unpleasant as being murdered by a streamer. Maybe you’ve just helped someone get their fifth subscriber, or perhaps your embarrassing death has just been transmitted to thousands of people who now think you’re rubbish. Conversely, it’s great when the tables are turned and you get the drop on them in front of an audience. But unless their name’s a giveaway, how can you tell you’ve taken out a streamer? That’s where PUBG Report helps.

PUBG Report uses the game’s API to track kills and other data from the last 14 days and then shows users if they’ve killed or been killed by a streamer. Click on the entry and you’ll be taken to their stream, specifically the part where you show off your skills, or your complete absence of them.

Unfortunately, it’s been longer than a fortnight since I last played PUBG, so I wasn’t able to find any clips of my embarrassing defeats or the many great victories I’ve definitely had. It’s probably for the best—being killed is painful enough without hearing the commentary.

I suspect it might come in handy for other streamers or players who take PUBG a lot more seriously than I do. Being able to see victories and defeats from the other side seems pretty invaluable, clarifying you where you went wrong or why your tactics worked. Or it might just be fun to watch someone freaking out when you snipe them. 

Cheers, Eurogamer.

Free DLC is coming to Resident Evil 2 Remake starting in February, Capcom has confirmed. The Ghost Survivors is a trio of ‘what if’ stories following three other survivors of the Raccoon City outbreak. Leon and Claire aren’t the only people doing exciting things amid the zombie apocalypse. 

No Time to Mourn, Runaway and Forgotten Soldier explore the survivor stories of the gunshop owner, the mayor’s daughter and the soldier, respectively. The first, No Time to Mourn, is due out on February 15. 

Capcom has a mixed reputation when it comes to DLC. The Street Fighter series is particularly bad for it, but Monster Hunter: World, on the other hand, has enjoyed a whole year on PS4 and six months on PC of free updates and events, full new outfits, weapons and challenges. Hopefully, Resident Evil 2 will be more like the latter. 

I don’t have any illusions that I’ll be finished with Leon and Claire’s stories before the DLC starts appearing. Resident Evil 2 isn’t a long game, unless you play it in 30 minute slices because that’s all your timid heart can handle. As I confessed in last week’s highs and lows, I’m much better at being zombie chow than a zombie slayer. 

If you’re already hungry for another remake, Capcom hasn’t announced plans for Resident Evil 3, but the publisher is apparently open to it. Speaking to Game Watch (via Dualshockers), producer Yoshiaki Hirabayashi said Capcom remade Resident Evil 2 after years of fans asking for it, so they’ll need to ask for its successor just as emphatically. 

The MMO hack-and-slasher Guardians of Ember was removed from Steam in February 2018 after Valve determined that publisher Insel Games had been manipulating review scores—specifically by compelling its employees to purchase the game and write positive reviews for it. (Or explain to the studio CEO why they don't want to.)   

But it's coming back: Gameforge recently announced that it acquired the publishing rights to Guardians of Ember from Insel last year and plans to launch it as a free-to-play game. The updated game will feature improvements to gameplay, mission design, character customization, and the interface, with "expanded regional localization support across North and South America, Europe, and select Asian territories." 

Closed beta signups are open now at gameforge.com, and everyone who had the previous version of the game will be granted access automatically. It's not clear whether Guardians of Ember will actually return to Steam: There's no new listing for it and the closed beta client is a standalone download, but the Steam Database shows quite a bit of activity on the account since December 2018. A full release date hasn't been set. 

Massive ARPG Path of Exile will end support for Windows XP and Vista as of its next update, Grinding Gear Games has reported.

In an announcement on the game's website, Grinding Gear stated that "March's 3.6.0 update will not work with the Windows XP or Windows Vista operating systems.”

According to the developer, the number of active XP and Vista users amounts to a mere 0.1% of the game’s total user-base, which makes sense considering that Windows XP is now old enough to drive. Windows Vista, meanwhile, is verging on becoming a teenager, which would at least explain why it was so sluggish and unlikely to do as it was told.

“Microsoft, Steam and most other game companies have already ended support for these operating systems, and we plan to do the same,” Grinding Gear continued. “This will also free up technical resources for other more impactful tasks.”

At the same time, Grinding Gear is scrapping its DirectX 9 version of the game. DX9 was required to ensure that Vista and XP users were fully supported. But most players who were using the DirectX 9 version were doing so simply because it allowed them to disable shadows, rather than because their system was unable to support DX11.

“Path of Exile's game environments are designed around their shadows. Over time, we have relied more and more on shadows as a critical part of the environment, and so the game without shadows has become very different than the experience we intend. Because of this, we made sure that our new renderer had fast shadows. The DirectX 11 version (with shadows) performs much better than the DirectX 9 one did without shadows enabled.”

So, basically, if you’re a big Path of Exile fan playing on either XP or Vista, you’ve got between now and March to upgrade to at least Windows 7. Meanwhile, the remaining 99.9% of Path of Exile players will benefit from a faster overall game, as Grinding Gear claim they can “simplify a lot of code”.

Fans of Looking Glass Studios' classic stealth game Thief are still making new missions for it (I'm playing one called The Sound of a Burrick in a Room from 2018, and it's pretty good!) as well as missions for Thief 2 and the free standalone Dark Mod. But the other classic 1990s immersive sim Looking Glass worked on, System Shock 2, has received less love from modders, despite being one of the most beloved PC games of all time. Only a handful of fan missions exist for System Shock 2, but a few in particular made by modder Christine Schneider are worth playing. Schneider's four-part series makes the bold choice to continue the story of System Shock 2 beyond its ending.

A direct continuation of the story is an interesting decision because the ending of System Shock 2 is legendary: Legendarily bad. After the villainous AI Shodan delivers her "join me and together we can rule" speech, our silent protagonist in goggle-eye sunglasses dramatically pauses and utters the only word he says in the entire game: "Nah." Then he slow-mo shoots Shodan, who wigs out like she's going through a bunch of YouTube reaction faces before exploding. For a game this clever, twisty, and atmospheric it's weirdly 'extreme' in the most '90s sense of the word.

Then there's the post-credits stinger. Tommy and Rebecca, two characters only glimpsed through glass or heard via audiologs until this point, have escaped on a lifepod. In this final scene it's revealed that Rebecca has somehow been possessed by Shodan, which is demonstrated by her hair turning into wild electrical cables. It's a real THE END… OR IS IT? kind of finale.

Christine Schneider's mods take this ending and run with it. The first of them, Ponterbee Station, opens with a cutscene that repeats the stinger (one of the things that marks her work out is the cutscenes, sometimes incorporating FMV). The reborn Shodan is then picked up by a research station called the Ponterbee, because the universe of System Shock is full of well-meaning scientists just waiting for a chance to accidentally let loose a variety of menaces.

Which is, of course, what happens. As in System Shock 2 you play a cybernetically enhanced soldier in sunglasses with the misfortune of being assigned to this doomed station. But as Soldier XT269T2 you don't begin the mission on Ponterbee Station. You're on Earth, hanging out in a high-rise apartment with a guitar on display in the corner that lets everyone know you're cool.

The tutorial of System Shock 2 also let you walk around a street-level slice of Earth to contrast with the tight confines of the rest of the game, but Schneider's living city block full of traffic and high-rises is an early sign of the ambition her mods would display. While most of Ponterbee is corridors and backtracking for keycards, this early section shows she knows how to do more with the ShockEd mod tools than recycle pieces of the original game. That becomes even more apparent when the saurians show up—reptilian creatures of an entirely new design.

While the new models and textures are impressive, the voice acting is a bit rough. The traditional audiologs are everywhere, but a few of them are read by people with impenetrable accents, and Shodan doesn't sound nearly as creepy as she does in the actual games. Still, that's the way it is with mods and it would be ridiculous to expect volunteers sourced from a fan forum to be able to compete with Terri Brosius.

Schneider's second mission, UNN Nightwalker, is more traditional, with another spaceship infested by mutants to explore. But in the third part of the series, Polaris, things get really wild. Suddenly you're on the surface of a planet rather than orbiting it, walking across an ice world where the air is plump with snow and transparent ice beasts are a constant danger. Being outdoors, surrounded by trees and open sky after hours mostly spent in dark metal hallways is exhilarating. 

In any other game 'the ice level' would be a mundane gimmick, but to see something like this recreated in an engine mostly used for the kind of tight corners you can hide jumpscares around feels like a dramatic change. And the ice beasts themselves, horned weirdos who charge at you and shatter into a damaging spray when killed, are totally different from the clanking robots and droning mutants that make up System Shock's typical enemies.

The back half of Polaris takes place in another scientific facility, but one with its own feel, much more open and lived-in. There's an area like a shopping mall, with pizza, a bar, and an ice cream parlor that begins a side story about experiments performed on the customers that may have resulted in the creation of the ice beasts.

Schneider's missions contain occasional strange touches like this. The tuneless singing that sounds like a monster turns out to be a drunk janitor named Peggy. As well as ice monsters, Polaris is home to harmless Christmas snowmen. Then there are the recurring rubber ducks—there's an entire room full of them in Ponterbee Station.  

The fourth and final mission in this series, Urlaub, is the strangest of them all. Urlaub is the German word for vacation, and in this mission Soldier XT269T2 finally gets some time off, and is sent to the Caribbean to relax. Released on April Fool's Day, Urlaub initially seems like it's just a joke mod. You wander between beaches watching NPCs dance the macarena while monkeys throw coconuts at you.

But the pistol you've stashed in your room and the broom that can be wielded like a wrench aren't just there for killing monkeys so you can take their bananas. After bumming around on the island for a while you take a boat trip and stumble across a heavily guarded mansion, which turns out to have a secret lab inside it. Underprepared for violence, it's easiest to sneak past the goons at first, though eventually you get an uzi to take them on with. Finding a completely new weapon not seen in the original game is another surprise, unexpected in a throwaway gag mission. Urlaub starts to feel more like one of the goofier James Bond movies at this point, complete with a mad scientist with plans to create an army of clones, and nothing to do with Shodan at all. Finally, it turns out the genetic source material for these clone soldiers is the survivor of the disasters on Ponterbee Station, the UNN Nightwalker, and Polaris—you.

Obviously you can't let that stand. For once there's no keycards to collect and instead it's all about discovering evidence, trashing the place, and cruising off into the sunset. Schneider's series of fan missions turn outrageously silly with this ending, but I still much prefer it to the actual finale of System Shock 2. For one thing, as you sail off directly into the sunset, you finally find a reasonable use for the goofy sunglasses you've been wearing all this time.

System Shock 2's fan missions can be found here, and you'll need to download and install SS2Tool before you can run them. And don't be afraid to try the cheat codes, because sometimes all that weapon maintenance is a hassle worth skipping.