The latest update for Introversion's Prison Architect is all about contraband. Prisoners - already notorious for their love of the illicit - will attempt to steal things from rooms that contain any one of a number of different categories, including alcohol, drugs, weapons and, for some reason, toilet brushes. It's a good thing prisons are better stocked than our office: all they'd be able to pinch would be discarded coffee cups, chocolate snacks and copies of The Sims 3: Showtime.

Contraband will be either carried or hidden by prisoners, with a successfully executed search revealing the concealed item and showing its route through the prison - allowing you to take steps to secure problematic areas. If it gets too much, players can order a shakedown, searching the entire prison at the cost of making your convicts a lot angrier.

Also introduced in this update is a status effect for prisoners suppressed by solitary confinement, which will make them temporarily more compliant. Introversion's Chris Delay reveals that this is the first step towards allowing the player to create tougher, more brutal prisons.

For more on Prison Architect, be sure to pick up the latest issue of the UK magazine. It's on the cover and everything.

I can't imagine many of the players who glided, swooped and pounced through the previous Arkham games stopped to imagine what it would be like to control one of the many anonymous, psychotic thugs. But, as this new trailer reveals, Batman: Arkham Origins plans to deliver on the experience anyway - with an asymmetrical "3v3v2" multiplayer, developed by Splash Damage. Players will fill the rosters of the Joker and Bane's gangs, hunting down a third two-man team comprised of Batman and Robin.

Check back later to read Evan's impressions of this newly announced multiplayer mode.

Tripwire Interactive have executed the final phase of an almost half-year long rescue mission. After identifying the winning maps of a $35,000 mapping contest, they managed to smuggle the first batch into Red Orchestra 2 back in April. Now, they've returned, and those that were left behind have become the brave survivors of Operation: Counterattack Map Pack 2.



Here's what the second community bundle contains:


Bridges of Druzhina, by Kieran Tobin: "features asymmetrical gameplay with the Soviets attacking across open country supported by a single tank, through a destroyed city and on to the final bridge."
Cold Steel, by Johan van Pelt: "a lethal warren of huge factory buildings, creating both longer-range fire-fights and sudden, brutal close-quarters battles."
Gumrak Station, by Maik Dokter: "a re-imagining of an old favorite from the original Red Orchestra, as the Germans assault through trenches and a small village to the railway station of the title."


The maps are now available in Red Orchestra 2 and Rising Storm multiplayer. And if you're not impressed by the official addition of maps that have been available on the Steam Workshop for months, a currently running Rising Storm mapping contest should ensure new warzones are due soon.

If you don't own Red Orchestra 2 or its Pacific brother Rising Storm, a current Steam sale has them both reduced until Thursday.

In the eight years it has taken Battlefield 2 mod Project Reality to hit its 1.0 milestone, DICE have released seven additional Battlefield games. Then again, they've got more money, people, and one of those games was Battlefield Play4Free, so there's probably something to be said for taking your time to nurse something towards completion. Project Reality will finally hit that mark this Friday, August 2nd, and its creators have released a trailer to round up its now complete feature list.



If the mod's big features are the two new factions, additional maps and new game modes, it's the thousands of smaller tweaks that ultimately have a more dramatic effect. Project Reality - as the name might suggest - aims to create a more realistic Battlefield 2 experience, not only by rebalancing guns and equipment, but by upgrading and even removing parts of the base game. You can get an overview of what the mod offers from the latest changelog.

The 1.0 release is currently available for pre-loading, which will allow you to download the mod files, ready for when the team release the installer password at launch. To download the mod, head to the Project Reality 1.0 announcement page.

Train Simulator is an unstoppable juggernaut, and it's not going to let something as trivial as annual iteration slow down its high-speed journey through the world of digital sim distribution. What started as Railworks 2: Train Simulator, morphed into Train Simulator 2012, then further upgraded to 2013. It's now set to become Train Simulator 2014, after a brief stop at the Steam update station this September.

On the surface, it seems like the most generous sequel release plan imaginable. But it's a decision that makes sense, given that the existing game offers a full £1623.03 worth of DLC purchases. Also that the promised upgrades, while helpful, arguably don't justify a separate game. Planned to arrive with the 2014 edition are an improved UI, better graphics, and enhanced career mode, letting players earn points towards medals, rewards and achievements.

Players will also get to try the new Hamburg to Hanover route. Additionally, Train Simulator already features Steam Workshop support, letting players build their own routes, and download those made by others. If you were at all in doubt about the size of the game's community, know that this is a thing that many people have done.

Train Simulator 2014 is scheduled for arrival on September 26th, 2013.

MechWarrior Online's new Terra Therma map looks like it will melt the armor plating right off your giant battle robot. Full of craggy peaks and open lava flows, the new environment went live today, making it the (doubly) hottest game world in developer Piranha Games's free-to-play, still-in-beta shooter.

A planet-sized moon orbiting a gas giant, Terra Therma is constantly being ripped apart by the gravitational forces of its parent planet. This has led to the hellish landscape that greets mech pilots who are engaged in a struggle over the moon's stockpiles of natural resources. Because of the high temperatures and relatively open level design, managing heat on this map will be more critical than in almost any other MWO environment, except perhaps Tourmaline Desert, which has a comparable heat index.



One of our favorite shooters, MWO also got a new patch today, with some gameplay tweaks sure to have players keeping a closer eye on their mechs' heat levels. The update has linked the heat penalties of some weapons fired in groups to the largest version present in an individual strike. So if you fire standard Large Lasers along with Extended Range Large Lasers, the strike will apply the stats for ER LLs to your total heat penalty. For more on how heat functions in MWO, be sure to check out the game's official heat scale. The patch also reduced the range of the Seismic Sensor module, an item that has become a must for all loadouts due to its rather powerful ability to boost battlefield awareness.

MechWarrior Online officially releases September 17.

With the release of Saints Row IV just around the corner, it seems that publisher Deep Silver wants to set a charitable tone with a Humble Bundle consisting of its more delinquent titles. After all, crime’s perfectly legal if it’s done in the name of sick children.

The Humble Deep Silver Bundle base package consists of Saints Row: The Third, Saints Row 2, Risen 2: Dark Waters, and the Gold Edition of Sacred 2, along with the soundtrack for each game. Chipping in at least $4.70 will get you Dead Island GOTY edition, along with a DLC-laden version of Saints Row: The Third. And finally, if you chip in a whopping $25, you’ll nab yourself a copy of Dead Island: Riptide, though you might want to hold off on that one.

We should also mention that the PC version of Saints Row 2 was a poorly-optimized mess when it first came out, so keep that in mind if you’re nabbing the bundle for that title alone. There’s a chance things have gotten a bit better since we last visited the city of Stilwater, but we still recommend you proceed with caution.

Shadow of the Eternals has had a bit of a rough time getting started. The spiritual successor to Eternal Darkness had a rocky debut on Kickstarter earlier this year, being withdrawn from crowdfunding in June after reaching only 10 percent of its goal with 15 days remaining.

But Precursor Games has re-emerged with a new Kickstarter for Eternals, asking for a lower funding goal and promising the gruff baritone of David Hayter a place in the game. We had the opportunity to speak with Precursor’s Denis Dyack for a brief overview on why Precursor pulled the plug on the original funding effort and what plans the studio has for Eternals on the PC.

According to Dyack, cancelling the first Kickstarter and moving away from their original episodic format to a single-game experience was in part due to feedback from the community and how much attention the original push had garnered.

“There was a lot of hesitation out there because we were guaranteeing a two-hour experience and people wanted more, so we’re gonna give an eight-to-ten-hour experience that’s complete in itself from just the first goal in the Kickstarter.”

Dyack emphasizes how how important the community that emerged during that first Kickstarter became as they contributed development ideas in the private, backers-only “Order of the Unseen” forums.

“It’s that type of thing that, to us, was overwhelmingly positive. Take the sanity events. Probably 60 or so in the original Eternal Darkness. We have well over 300 now and the game hasn’t even started. It has a lot of potential.”

And the sanity effects aren’t the only thing the community has been helping with. The Eternal Gods, an integral part of Eternals mythos, are being designed with the help of those in the Order of the Unseen as well.



“We said, ‘Here are nine . Come up with things that you think best fit in with these.’ Knowing that some of them were within the sphere of magic, some of them were within the sphere of sanity, some of them were within the sphere of matter, and some of them overlap. People piled on there like crazy.”

On whether this kind of community engagement means Steam Workshop support in the future, well, Dyack said it’s too early to make a call on that now. While the gameplay Precursor showed off is the same CryEngine 3 demo that’s been out for a while, it does look awfully nice. Although the character’s head in the demo glitched out a couple times during my demo, watching the hallway surrounding him get sucked away into a scorched, Oblivion-style hallucination remained impressive enough for a pre-Alpha build.

Dyack is planning on making Eternals one of the best-looking games of this generation, saying, “We really want to knock this out of the park as far as, if you want to show off your PC, this is going to be the game to do it.”

With 24 days remaining in its campaign, Eternals' Kickstarter is about one-quarter of the way to its $750,000 goal.

Kerbal Space Program is an open-world universe simulator that specializes in modeling orbits, atmosphere, gravity and rocket physics. With nothing but your wits and an array of space vehicle parts, your task is to explore. In this chronicle, I will be recording the first missions of the PCGSA, PC Gamer's ambitious new space program.

If you want to get caught up, here are Part One and Part Two.

Last time, Wildo Kerman earned a spot in the history books by becoming the first Kerbal to survive the rigors of spaceflight. Now, our attention wanders deeper into space to our nearest neighbor, the Mün.

To break completely free of Kerbin’s orbit, though, requires a lot of fuel. My rocket scientists tell me that there are two ways to go about this. I can make an incredibly huge rocket to get all the way to the Mün in one shot, or I can just get a regular rocket into orbit and refuel it from an orbiting station.

Designing colossal rockets has never been my strong suit, and I watched way too much Deep Space Nine, so it’s decided: we’ll be setting up Coconut Monkey Space Station, a permanent orbital station that will serve as a fueling stop for our eventual mission to the Mün. It will be the system’s first 7-11 stocked with premium rocket fuel and lottery scratch-off tickets, a vital stop for future flights in space.



We head down to the Vehicle Assembly Bay and hey, woah! This place looks amazing! Apparently the ground support team found time to redecorate and, well, rebuild the entire complex since last week. Nice job, guys. Love what you’ve done with the walls.

The rocket design nerds already have a prototype done up, and it’s nice and simple. A pair of solar arrays, a full complement of batteries, a spacious living module and a docking hub: everything a permanent space station could need.



I’ve been attending a lot of conferences with other rocket designers, and my favorite new trick is a simple one: I attach spare fuel tanks to the support clamps and hose them in. Now I can ignite the engines and bring them to full burn without wasting any on-board fuel. Does it help get into orbit? No one’s sure, but it definitely looks cool.

What once felt like a major achievement has now become routine: I launch the base module for Coconut Monkey Space Station into orbit. Remember when that was a huge deal? Life was simpler back then.



In a solid, circular orbit, I extend the solar panels and turn on the scientific instruments. Kerbin now has a resident living permanently off-world. He tells me over the radio that he ran up a bunch of credit card debt before he left because bill collectors will never find him now. He cries when I tell him I’ll be rotating the crew every few months, poor guy.





I head back to the Vehicle Assembly Bay. The construction teams tear off the space station portion of the CMSS plans and reattach a giant fuel tank in its place. They throw on some solar panels, a remote control hub and a docking port, then leave early for the pub. It may be a crucial piece of our plan for a Mün landing, but a complicated design it is not. It’s a metal can full of rocket fuel.

Now comes the part of the mission I’ve been dreading: docking. Orbital rendezvous and docking are incredibly tense procedures, and the margin for error is minimal. Go a little too fast, a little too high, and fuel gets wasted, objects get lots in orbit and, sometimes, everything explodes.

Someone has written on a chalkboard, Objects in higher orbits will circle a planet slower than objects in lower orbits. Got it. In order to make my station and my fuel tank meet, I need them at different orbits. Bringing them to the same orbit would make them stay the same distance from each other, circling forever.



I launch the unmanned fuel tank to an orbit about 20% lower than CMSS, then watch as the two ships circle Kerbin and gradually get closer to each other. When they’re pretty close, I open a maneuver node and start fiddling with dials.

The maneuver nodes are programs in the flight computer that let me plan changes to orbit speed, inclination and attitude. When I’ve got it lined up just right and the computer thinks we’ll have a pretty close intersection, I approve the node and line up. When the node arrives, I just point at the target and burn engines until the computer tells me to stop.



Success! I’m now on track for a nice, close intercept of 3.9 kilometers. As mission control watches the two craft orbit the planet, the intersection gets closer and closer. When they’re as close as they’ll ever get, I point the engines against orbit and burn until our relative velocities match perfectly, giving the illusion of motionlessness. Both ships are still tearing around Kerbin at thousands of meters per second, of course, but compared to each other, they’re standing still. It’s in this relative-velocity neighborhood that orbital maneuvers can take place.





At this point, I decouple the lifting engine from the spare fuel tank. Without the extra mass, the fuel tank alone will be much more maneuverable and easier to dock. Pointing at the station, now a little over three kilometers away, I use the on-board thrusters to close the distance.



When the distance closes to just a few dozen meters, the real horror begins. Switching between control of the tank and CMSS, I line up the docking ports and lock the orientation controls. Then I carefully, carefully close the distance. If I mess up, there will be a huge explosion and I’ll have to start again. Plus, HR will be all over me like never before.



I come in slightly off-center and the docking rings kiss at an angle and just hang there for a moment. I don’t breathe.



The sections snap together and suddenly I have a refueling station. Phew.



Deep breath. Now... I have to do it all again. The second time is even worse because the stakes have just gotten that much higher. If I mess up now, it’s three missions I have to fly over again. I’m incredibly stressed. Lazy Kerbals should do their own flying, see how they like it.



The second tank comes in a little crooked as well, but I back up, adjust and try again. Everything snaps together without incident, and just like that: Coconut Monkey Space Station is ready for business. CMSS will now help refuel flights on their way to the Mün and, possibly, even further.



Next week: the first manned flight to the Mün blasts off, and I try desperately to keep everyone alive.

Emptying the vault of high-security bank can be somewhat tricky. There are guards, cameras and that one bank employee who tries to be a hero and pushes the shiny red button under their desk when they aren’t supposed to. It’s why we bank robbers have specific roles to play, which Payday 2’s game director explains in this video.

The “Mastermind” archetype is the brains of the operation and tasked with keeping all the poor, innocent bank-goers from dialing a certain set of three numbers into their smartphones while the Technician hauls around bombs and sentry guns to convert the bank into a deadly fortress.

Those who play as the Enforcer are basically a tank who soaks up bullets for the team while providing additional ammo to anyone who runs dry. All that leaves is the Ghost, who specializes in picking locks, disabling alarms and tries to keep unnecessary noise to a minimum.

All the classes come with a skill tree for you to browse and customize your robber of choice. For example, the Technician can eventually deploy trip mines more quickly an d increase the number of bombs his bag can carry once he has a few successful robberies under his belt. Payday 2 looked pretty good when we got our hands on it not too long ago, but we’ll have a more definitive opinion of its quality when it comes out on August 13.