Humankind, the latest and most ambitious 4X strategy game from Endless Legend creators Amplitude Studios, looks to revitalise the historical 4X genre and nab the crown from the titanic and venerable Civilization series. And look damn pretty while it does so, too.

But it’s not just looks that Amplitude are hoping to win out on with Humankind. We’ll go over everything we know about Humankind below, from release date information to our first glimpses of gameplay in trailers and screenshots, and what we can glean about how everything will work when it’s released.

(more…)

Command & Conquer: Red Alert asks one question: what would happen if Hitler never existed? As a sort of side project/pseudo-sequel to the original Command & Conquer, Red Alert begins with Soviet scientists going back in time to assassinate the uber-fascist. The consequences are felt throughout the series but in the original, war breaks out anyway, and you can either side with the Allies (who are admittedly a little dull) or with the Soviets and Stalin himself.

(more…)

Letting you be an animal is something more games could do. Not a cartoon cat, or a twee fox, but a real non-human brute, forced to live in a realistic natural world, and sup water from stagnant pools because the nice stream has been conquered by snakes. Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey takes up that challenge with some ambition and a lot of admiration for the story of human evolution. But it is spoiled by a whole troop of annoyances, a cascade of irritating visual effects, poor AI, and a clunky set of contextual controls that even a fully evolved human with all the right thumbs would throw in a river for being needlessly elaborate.

(more…)

Control wasn’t what I was expecting. The developers of this third-person psy-shooter have been nattering about weird fiction and belabouring the game’s literary inspirations. After telekinetically yeeting myself through it, however, I ve found little insightful storytelling, just a trad conspiracy/mystery story, and lots of colourful excuses as to how someone can suddenly develop superpowers. But when it feels this satisfying to lift an office chair with your brain and hoof it at a row of monster guards, I don t care that it s the videogame equivalent of Warehouse 13. Control is also surprisingly funny. Those looking for a Lynchian labyrinth of hidden meaning might find it here if they squint, but what I found was a solid comedy pastiche of the X-Files, right down to a mysterious smoking man. I wouldn t want it to be anything else.

(more…)

Why, what’s this? Oh I say, a Steam Charts you say? How intriguing>.

(more…)

We ve already done Tony Hawk s Pro Skater 3 for this regular feature. So let s talk about its predecessor, the first Hawk ’em up to hit the PC. It was all about skatey combos. Pulling 180 bumflips and 360 trumpbokes, while admiring level gimmicks like a helicopter taking off, or power lines crashing down, or cars rumbling through the streets beeping their horns at you, you young punk. There was a bull running around in one level, and you could skate through its poo.

(more…)

I didn t understand the appeal of driving around for the fun of it until the exact moment that I laid eyes on Drive Me To The Moon, a game which is all about cruising the open road with your girlfriend in the passenger seat. Suddenly, yes, I would quite like to just hop in a car and explore around here. And maybe get out to test some of the scenery, because it sort of looks like it s made of pick-n-mix sweets, an art style any game could stand to achieve.

(more…)

Screenshot Saturday! A lovely little weekend look into what game developers are working on at the moment. This week: making a devilish trap room, relaxing on a curious world, and an ominous warning about something called the watchers.

(more…)

Dota 2 s mega esports event The International has wrapped up, with OG lifting the aegis for the second year running. The team will take home a cool $15 million ( 12.2m), as well as the honour of being the first team to win the event twice, let alone twice in a row.

(more…)

Overwatch s latest test region patch brings a clutch of changes to its Workshop, the experimental mode that allows players to create their own games. The biggest is the ability to add dummy bots; characters that have no human or AI driving their actions. Crafty players, then, can use the scripting tools to make them do just about whatever they like. Having seen what people have done with the Workshop already, that s exciting.

(more…)