Multiplayer swordfighting game Blade Symphony has gone free-to-play. 

The move was announced in 2017 and follows the massive Harmonious Prelude update, which upgraded the game engine and added new modes on top of the standard 1v1 arena duels. Developer Puny Human said in a Steam post on Friday that the change was not a money grab, and that only four items would be for sale through an in-game store—all it wanted was to make the game "more accessible, and have a longer life", it said.

Unfortunately, the game has been flooded with negative reviews since the change. The user reviews from the last 30 days are "mostly negative", and just 30% of users posted a positive review compared with 70% in the game's five-year life span. 

Clicking through the reviews, it's a mixture of existing players who feel angry about the move to free-to-play—"it's a slap in the face for the people that paid money"—and new players criticizing the performance and clunky controls.

Going free-to-play has given the player count a boost, and a couple hundred players are now online compared to virtually zero in the preceding month, according to Steam Charts. But Puny Human has its work cut out to please its new players and fix bugs. I can imagine it's an intimidating game to get into, especially when you're fighting players that already have 50 hours under their belt.

The free-to-play update also added 48 new items and rebuilt the popular Castle map, Puny Human said in the Steam post. Anyone that owned the premium version of the game will get a total of 10 exclusive items, and "we hope we won't have to stop there", it said.

I still reckon it's worth a look. Our 85/100 review talked about how its 1v1 duels were "thoroughly, distinctively, and consistently exhilarating", and Chris enjoyed trying to climb the ladders in this excellent two-part feature.

You can download it here.

Blade Symphony's huge Harmonious Prelude update, which will act as a "precursor" to the multiplayer swordfighting game going free-to-play, will be out later this month, developer Puny Human has announced.

Harmonious Prelude will, among other things, update the game's engine, add new game modes (including Arcade), introduce a level progression system and a new fighting style, and allow for multiple duels in a single arena. You can check out its first trailer above, and the update will go live on September 26.

It's considered to be one of the purest melee combat games on PC. As Will said in his review, its 1v1 battles are fast, intimate and complex, and it has a friendly community to boot. If you're interested, Chris wrote a brilliant two-part series on trying to become one of its top players. 

Harmonious Prelude was due earlier this year, but was delayed in April. Puny Human announced that the game was going free-to-play last year, and that Harmonious Prelude was the "precursor" to that change, so expect the transition to happen soon.

It's a game I've always been curious about—and enjoyed reading about—but never actually played, mainly because I'm afraid of getting my face bashed in over and over again while I'm trying to get to grips with its deep combat system. Hopefully, going free-to-play will pull in more players, including novices like myself, which would make it a less daunting prospect. 

Welcome to part two of our Mastering Blade Symphony diary. In case you missed it, here's part one.

This diary series was written for the UK magazine last summer: issues 268 and 269, to be precise. The game has been updated several times since then, so long-term Blade Symphony players may notice a few discrepancies.

Previously: Having crashed my Blade Symphony rating, I picked up my rapier and began my attempt to reach the Master rank—occupied by the top 1% of players. After a few initial defeats, I climbed out of Steel and gained a place in the Diamond league.

Two other Phalanx foilists are duelling in The Street, a rainy stretch of road in some unnamed Far East city. One is Diamond league, the other Steel—but the lower-ranked player is dominant. I duel him once, and lose both rounds. He simply makes far fewer mistakes than me. I overreach with each of my combos, trying to land one more hit than I need to and get punished for it with aggressive balanced lunges and sideways heavy sweeps.

Then I duel his previous opponent, the Diamond league foilist. I m 653rd in the world, he s 691st. It s as closely matched a fight as I ve ever had, and it ll determine whether or not I climb any higher.

I go aggressive, landing a few forward jabs before receiving the same in return. Then I overextend, leaving myself open for a heavy lunge that hits me right in the chest. He follows up with a full fast string and the first round is over.

I m cagier at the beginning of the second match. I evade his lunge but fail to connect with a sideways parry and run right into his washing machine —the twirling blade attack that can follow a balanced lunge. There s a window to counter so I take it, landing a full fast string of attacks.

He comes back with the lunge, and I walk into it again. Then he leaps into an aerial attack that I don t expect, right back into fast stance, and it s over. I ve been soundly beaten by somebody on my own level.

It s a huge blow to my confidence. I consider blaming the time of day, the amount of coffee and practice I ve had. I consider quitting the server and going to find another Diamond to fight. For whatever reason, I stay in the duel queue.

I find myself facing him again after he defeats the Steel-ranked foilist, who subsequently switches out for Judgement and a longsword.

Round one. He lands the second part of his fast string and I do the same. We re each playing sloppily: going only for the fast hits, taking as much damage as we deal. Spamming like this isn t exactly the hallmark of players in the top 6%, but we re each too wary of the other s heavier attacks to commit to anything else. Eventually the parries—and the round—go his way.

I think about this diary, and how it would be a pretty terrible story if I lost my Diamond rank as soon as I d gained it—if the moral of the story is actually, you belong in Steel after all . Losing this match, I think, would be enough to put me there.

My lunge connects at the beginning of round two. I roll sideways instead of immediately following up and then land a charged, jump-cancelled thrust. I follow up with fast strikes, then another lunge, and then a parry and more blows. He drops and I ve lost no health. OK, I think. I remember how to do this.

Another lunge connects with my sternum at the beginning of round three but I manage to land my entire combo—lunge into fast, parrying him to the side and jump-cancelling another fast strike. He hits me again but we re both low on health, and neither of us wants to overextend. I feint forward then roll back, charging up a lunge that he fails to anticipate this time. I take the game, and restore some of my rating.

A new Diamond joins the server while I m holding the duelling ground—a longsword-wielding Ryoku. I m able to keep my distance and needle him in the first round, evading his attempt to land a heavy reverse sweep that I d have a hard time blocking. He walks into a sideways heavy attack that opens him up for another combo, and it s enough for me to take the first round. I m feeling good.

I am wrong. He utterly destroys me in the second round, landing a grab that does a huge amount of damage and casts me to the ground. I roll sideways and come up into what should be a devastating lunge—the game shows my sword travelling entirely through his body—but no damage is registered, and I take his full heavy string of attacks after that, and again after that. It s over quickly.

He nimbly evades my initial attempt at an interrupt and lands his heavy string at the beginning of round three. My own heavy attacks are too slow to parry them, and the rapier doesn t have the block power that a longsword does. I m out of my depth. I try throwing a knife at him—something I usually don t like to do, as it feels cheap—but he parries it and closes the distance again. Another heavy combo and it s over. I m defeated by a Diamond again, and my rating drops. I m 840th.

I take a break for 20 minutes, and when I return the only Diamond player available is that same Ryoku. I decide to take the risk and duel him anyway.

I go in heavy at the start and manage to block that heavy string I hate so much. It gives me space to land some damage, and although he gets his backwards sweep off, I ve got the momentum. I land another fast string, and then deflect an attempted grab and nail him with the lunge. Round one goes my way.

Round two begins with a heavy sweep into a fast string, but he blocks the last attack and successfully grabs me. He dodges the counter attack and lands his heavy combo, taking the round.

Round three is a complete disaster. He lands his heavy string, then dodges as I try to counter and hits me from the side, then again with the string. I block two grab attempts but eat the reverse sweep, and then he grabs me again—I believe I see the beginning of the counter-grab animation, but for whatever reason it doesn t connect. The grab kills me, and I lose my second match against him. I nervously check my ranking. My heart sinks. I ve lost almost 9%. I m 1,721st in the world. I m back in Steel.

God damn it. I m not going down, not like this. This isn t how this diary ends. I quit the game, load Spotify, and create a new playlist called montage . Danger Zone by Kenny Loggins. The Touch by Stan Bush. Eye of the Tiger. Spandau Ballet s Gold. I am getting back into Diamond, and I m doing it right now.

I load onto a server using a simple duelling map. I defeat an Oak league Ryoku during the solo in Danger Zone and finish off another Phalanx during The Touch. Eye of the Tiger kicks in as I fight my first Steel of the session, a Phalanx armed with a longsword. I recognise his name from the chat channel—he s been trying to talk down a very vocal, very irritating player who won t stop accusing other players of being cheap. He is trying to restore order, and seems like a good guy. I want to destroy him.

A heavy right sweep interrupts his lunge. Fast forward hits, hits again. He lands his own heavy but he s too slow—fast parry, roll, foil meets flank. I intercept an attempted aerial attack with a jumpcancelled thrust and finish him off on the ground. Round one to me.

I charge him as round two begins. I hit him. So many times. It happens too fast. I m trading passion for glory. I ve kept my grip on the dreams of the past, and I m fighting to keep them aliiiive.

We exchange fast blows and then I land a lunge that I cancel into a sideways balanced parry. Rapiers recover faster from parries than longswords do, and he doesn t account for that. A few fast thrusts and I ve won. We re into Spandau Ballet territory by now, but I m not gold. I m Diamond. Rank 691. So we re back where we started.

I beat a Diamond league Judgement after that, then another Phalanx, then a Pure. The latter two are a few hundred places ahead of me and scrapping for Master. I drop the next two games, win one, and then drop the next. My rating hovers around 700, and the elation of reclaiming that place fades as I realise what a task climbing any higher is going to be. I either need to find and beat Diamonds that I m already comfortably better than—in which case, my time in Master is likely to be short-lived—or I need to improve dramatically.

I m worried that I m just not good enough to climb any higher. I read back on what I ve written about my fights and start to see the patterns: I win when my lunges land and lose when I don t. I feel like I ve graduated from the kind of cheesy play that defines beginner rapier players, but I ve not really replaced it with anything that matches what I ve seen top-level players do. Am I stuck in limbo? Am I too afraid of losing my rating again to ditch the rapier, even though that s what I need to do?

Competitive players can t afford to be choosy about how they win. I ve defended that argument in the past—particularly as it applies to Dota 2—and I worry that perhaps I ve let my imagination get in the way of my Blade Symphony play.

My next duelling session turns out to be providential. I log in the next day and the only Diamond players on the server are struggling to dislodge a talented Master, rank 60, who is defeating them with an untouchable Ryoku. I face him and he destroys me so quickly that it doesn t really bear describing.

Rapier sucks, by the way, he says. I know, I respond. I should probably ditch it, but I m stubborn.

"Here, I ll switch to Phalanx and show you, he says.

He shifts character and destroys me again. Then, on the second round, he pauses. Side parry after the first fast attacks. He demonstrates the move, and waits for me to replicate it. Okay, go.

I land a few more hits this time but he wins the game because he s landing moves I ve never seen—air-cancelled blade twirls, multi-hitting diving lunges that the rapier can t do. He s confirmed it: I need to switch my weapon. If I lose my rating, so be it. It s time to start learning properly. To hell with Rule 2.

I try longsword, and he destroys me with three different characters. Other Diamond players join, and he sees them off too. I change to scimitar and take one round off him, but he takes the second without breaking a sweat. The other players drift off. He s held the duelling ground for 44 consecutive wins.

Then it clicks. The scimitar charges faster and lands faster multi-hits than the other weapons, making it great for rushing somebody down. I charge him and land two fast hits followed by lateral swipes, as per his advice. He lands Judgement s balanced forward strikes but I block them, skidding backwards in a shower of sparks. I counter with air, then light, then an air-cancelled washing machine that ends the round in my favour. It s like the game has opened up: these strikes don t feel cheap or chancy. I sense how much more reactive my play has become in only an hour—and how much better it could be.

He blocks my fast assault but I grab him, which he doesn t expect. I land two fast hits as he rises then block and withdraw. He parries a lunge and lands a vertical blow but I parry to the side and needle him again. I start to charge up a fast forward and air-cancel it so it strikes him as he raises his blade. I hit him in the air and then keep hitting him as I fall. He s expecting the second hit to come as I land, so I jump instead and sweep my blade behind me. It catches his blind spot as I land on his far side, spinning to block his next move. None arrives. He s down.

WTF just happened? I type.

You just beat me 2-0.

This diary series was written for the UK magazine last summer: issues 268 and 269, to be precise. The game has been updated several times since then, so long-term Blade Symphony players may notice a few discrepancies.

Swords are cool. I d like to be more intellectual about it, but there you go. Blade Symphony is a game that takes that sentiment to heart. It is a lean, razorsharp successor to the Jedi Knight series, stripping out anything that isn t to do with swordfighting and closing in hard on the particular thrill of facing another person in a one-on-one online duel.

It s about the way duels express the personality of the duellist, and about the social structures that form when people have such a striking way of establishing primacy over one another. In Blade Symphony, you bow before you try to kill somebody. You accept advice from high-ranked people when it s offered. You seek out opponents who can teach you something, and you aim for the top. 

Blade Symphony uses the Elo rating system to determine each player s global rank. That means the game keeps track of who is expected to come out on top of a given fight based on their past performance, and when the results don t correlate with what the game expected, a player s rating is adjusted accordingly. These individual ratings are then compared across everybody playing the game, and players are sorted into leagues based on the percentage of the population that they fall into.

The lowest ranking players play in the Oak league. Above that is Iron, and then the top 25 per cent are Steel. Climb into the top six per cent and you can call yourself Diamond. The very best players, the ones who can hold a duelling pitch for an entire game, and command the most respect in free-for-all practice servers, are Masters. They re the top 1 per cent, and at that point you re talking about ranks in the double digits.

A few hours into my time with Blade Symphony, I started to win. I started to see how the game fitted together, how I fitted with it, how I could make it do what I wanted it to do. Then, I decided that I wanted to become a Master. I set myself at the bottom of the ladder and prepared to climb. This diary is the story of that attempt.

Players in Blade Symphony select a character which determines a moveset, and a sword that determines the parameters of how that moveset is used. I fenced in real life for a little under three years. I was never particularly good, but I was fairly quick, small and left-handed—and all of those things helped me confuse opponents enough to land a respectable number of hits. For that reason, I ve chosen to make the climb to Master as Phalanx, Blade Symphony s foilist. His attacks are quick, long-reaching and direct, but he relies on misdirection and staying out of reach to survive.

I like to end fights quickly whenever I can, and the devastating power of Phalanx s lunge can do that.

I m using a rapier for similar reasons. It does more damage on thrusting strikes and can nimbly redirect incoming blows. I like to end fights quickly whenever I can, and the devastating power of Phalanx s lunge can do that. The rapier is also underrated as a slashing weapon, I think: the damage might not be there, but nobody expects it, and doing the unexpected is a great way to gain the upper hand.

After 20 hours with the game I d hit the heights of Diamond twice. After the second time I crashed hard. I started to lose and didn t really know why. I saw strategies I couldn t deal with and my ranking plunged all the way back down to Oak. After hours of work, I ve pulled myself back up to Steel. I m 2,048th in the world as my climb begins.

In order to improve my Elo rating I need to duel other Steel league players on ranked servers. Fighting anybody else will be useful practice, but finding—and beating—those Steel players is the important thing. Waiting for an opponent gives me time to get my eye in. I hold the duelling ground for five games against other Phalanx players before losing to a Ryoku player, a nimble freeform swordsman whose radial attack patterns are hard to predict. I take one game off him by playing dirty, making to step back for a lunge before stepping in, grabbing him, and finishing him with a strike while he s down. He takes the next one: I m too used to deflecting direct strikes to cope with his flanking manoeuvres.

But that s practice. My first Steel opponent is another foilist. He has a Dota avatar and, from watching him fight other players, he relies heavily on a string of fast forward attacks to needle opponents to death. This is a hard strategy for new players to deal with, which I imagine is why he s in Steel league. He destroys a player using the Wushu swordswoman Pure before I face him. I m a little nervous: it s easy to mess up against Phalanxes, and I really don t want to go back to Iron.

As predicted he comes at me fast and direct, wanting to land that first fast strike. I step back and use the same combo, landing the first hit as he overextends. He takes the same damage he was planning to dish out to me. After four hits he rolls out of the way and comes in again, fast. I parry to the side and roll back, using the roll to mask my switch to balanced stance. I come up into a hard lunge that hits him in the chest. The third part of his fast combo connects, but I parry right then left and hit him fast and forward. He crumples. Round two.

He doesn t even wait to bow. He comes at me jumping: brave, considering that air is countered by fast attacks, but I m not expecting it and take the hit. Phalanx s third fast forward attack takes me into his personal space to land a solid hit, and I follow up with another jab before rolling and cancelling out of the combo chain to allow me to quickly transition into a balanced lunge, which misses. I switch straight from balanced to fast and hit him with a charged-up diving lunge that chains into an immediate leap backwards: he takes a chunk of damage and can t do anything about it. The rest of the duel takes place at close quarters: fast on fast, parry on parry. He lands two in a row, but I only need to hit him once. Step, parry, strike. It s over.

My rating goes up 7.59 per cent, which is enough to take me to 1,149th position. I m in Diamond league, for the third time.

I expect progression to be slower from here: if I drop a single game against a Diamond fighter I ll be back in Steel. I head to the Blade Rebellion German free-for-all server to practise. FFA servers like this are where the community hangs out. They can be a little awkward, at first like your first day at a martial arts club that doesn t think much of you. But it s a useful way to test yourself against high-ranking players without having to put your rank on the line.

Most of the Masters are committed to duelling each other, so I head for a grassy area where a few other players are sparring with one another. I beat another Phalanx fairly handily, but he was Iron league. Then, a Diamond league Judgement player takes me to school. Judgement is the game s heavy fighter. Playing Phalanx against him is like playing the Viper against the Mountain: it s dangerous to make even a small mistake, as I do in that first duel when a blocked forward thrust opens me to a lateral heavy swipe that finishes me in a single hit. I haven t beaten a Judgement for a while, and I m rusty.

To make matters worse, a bug with whatever Steam Workshop item he s using means that his entire upper body is concealed by massive letters spelling ERROR . I can still fight him, but it s confusing and I m off my game.

I break off for a while, but end up duelling him again ten minutes later. We re in an indoor area and, as the duel begins, there happens to be a pillar between us. I move towards it and he s obviously not sure how to respond. He doesn t move into his customary heavy attack for fear that it ll hit wood rather than flesh, giving me space to rush in while he pauses to think. I nip him with a flick of my blade, doing little damage but causing him to turn. Then I jump back, block one hit, and manage to land a forward lunge. He runs into the courtyard and comes around with a charged-up attack: I misjudge its reach and end up smacked to my knees, my healthbar in ruins. I come up into an opportunistic thrust but it flies wide; he swings and misses, I roll back. Then I get lucky and manage to catch him with a heavy sweep.

We rush each other. The first hit of his downward blow cuts me to almost nothing, but there s a hesitation I wonder, briefly, if he thinks he s won. I hammer a fast attack before he can end it, and the first hit makes it past his blade. Then the second, then the third; he drops.

 I can't imagine it s a particularly stylish way to play, but at this point I ll settle for not getting a longsword in my brain.

The duel was too close to do much for my confidence, but it helps me figure out how my fighting style needs to change to deal with heavy fighters like Judgement. I can t risk the close-range parries I normally prefer. It pays to be calmer, slower, to only engage in attacks that will land. I can t imagine it s a particularly stylish way to play, but at this point I ll settle for not getting a longsword in my brain.

But I don t face a Judgement, when it matters. When I load onto the next duelling server I m faced with a Diamond-ranked Pure. Pures move in whirling patterns that belie their power. I m out of my comfort zone, here I never know quite when to dodge and when to strike. I really, really do not want to go down to Steel. I might have said that already.

The Pure begins by charging a heavy series of direct swings. I get out of the way but her follow up is close and fast and right in my periphery. Half of my health is gone and I ve not landed a blow. I m going to lose. She disengages and begins to charge her heavy again. I gamble, go for the interrupt, and lose. The first strike knocks me on my back. I clench my fist.

She opens the same way in the second round. This time I step back and win the parry, doing a tiny amount of damage. I manage to parry a close attack with a fast sideways flick and then land a few forward jabs, but I m beaten away with an upwards thrust.

She rolls back and I begin to charge up a heavy lunge, then as she comes forward with a heavy blow I jump-cancel the move: hopping just as the animation begins so that the hitbox for the strike is slightly higher than it would normally be. It s enough to get my blade above hers. Foil meets sternum, and I take round two. I tell myself that I can do this.

Round three is different—she strafes rather than attacking, and so I press the advantage and land an early blow. Her response is to charge and execute combos that cover a lot of ground, but I m able to stay just inside her blind spot and take minimal damage. I land another air cancelled lunge and switch out into heavy stance. Once, somebody told me that my habit of using heavy sweeps with a rapier was pointless it gains no benefit from the rapier s bonus to thrusting attacks. Here, though, it catches Pure at the beginning of her charge, turning her away and opening up her flank. I land four hits and win. I bellow YES! out loud in the office, out of the blue, and punch the air.

The next time my scorecard comes up I m 617th in the world. This ladder I ve become obsessed with climbing is looking more climbable. Yet, as that rank number shrinks, every fight gets harder. These fights have been close and scrappy. If I m ever going to climb into Master league, I still need to prove that I belong there.

The quest to master Blade Symphony concludes next Sunday.

My pick of the year is Blade Symphony—Jedi Knight multiplayer brought into the modern era, with formalised rankings, deeper swordplay, and a slick lobby system. I love it, despite stalling in my long journey to be not-terrible at it. The one-on-one competitive format is less common on PC than it is on console—StarCraft being one notable exception—and getting some of that intimacy and depth here is very welcome. There's nothing like the feeling of anticipating an enemy play, parrying, and landing the blow that ends the match—all while others watch, waiting to face you. The fantasy being realised here is a very specific, very compelling one.

While not quite a perfect simulation of swordfighting—it's more like a simulation of cinematic swordplay—Blade Symphony's mechanics are deep enough to showcase real expertise (or its absence). It's a mixture of Street Fighter-style interactions between moves (hit windows, cancels, counters and so on) and a degree of fluidity provided by 3D freedom of movement. This creates a strange verisimilitude—you feel like you're really engaged with another person, even as you bash sci-fi swords together. Duels can be elegant or brutal, dexterous or messy. They have personality, and that's a big win for any competitive game.

I spent most of my time with Blade Symphony shortly after release, but it's still a viable prospect for players picking it up today. This is, perhaps thanks to the game's complexity, a small community, and that's one of the things I enjoy about it. It reminds me of the time I spent online in my teens, when you saw the same people regularly enough that making friends on a TF2 or Counter-Strike server (or, indeed, a Jedi Knight server) was possible, even likely. The personal feel of Blade Symphony's combat accentuates this: you get to know people by the way they fight. In my time on the ladder I gained friends, rivals, tutors and tutees. I'll always be grateful to the person who schooled me out of my dependency on foils, and the Master-rank player who stuck with me for 22 rounds until I finally beat him.

This is a difficult game, but one that rewards your investment of time and energy with a sense of being a real presence in the game's competitive environment. The built-in global ladder is a big part of that. Climbing into the double-digits of Blade Symphony's leaderboard was almost certainly my most gratifying gaming moment of this year. (I've long since slipped down, of course.) More importantly, the game understands just how to present this information. I defy anybody to watch the opening sequence of a duel, where the contestants face off against each other, their names and ranks broadcast on title-cards, and not want to get involved. I suppose there may be people who've never fantasised about climbing the ranks of a global swordfighting league. I really don't understand them, though.

It's Christmas. Would you like a free game? Of course you would! Thanks to our friends at Playfire, you can get a free Steam key right now. Follow the link for full details.

If for some reason you budget your video game spending by the weekend, then here's good news: you can spend that money on something else. May I suggest: nicer food. A new pair of shoes. A trip to the nearest theme park. 

The reason is, Steam is making ten games free this weekend as part of its aptly titled Free Weekend promotions. The games include Company of Heroes 2, XCOM: Enemy Unknown and Grid 2. You'll have over 48 hours to play them, as they unlock 10am Pacific time on Thursday, October 16. After that you'll need to pay for them, with the promise of substantial discounts.

Here's the list:

Awesomenauts Blade Symphony Company of Heroes 2 Don't Starve Grid 2 Injustice Killing Floor Payday 2 Trine 2 XCOM: Enemy Unknown

It's a good week for free games: GOG.com is giving away Alien versus Predator Classic this week as part of a GOG Galaxy test run.

Blade Symphony developer Puny Human plan to slice up their game, only to stitch it back together with a new mode attached. The "Control Point Update" is due out later this week, and will add a team-based capture mode to the duelling sword-'em-up. The update is detailed in a new video.

The new mode works much like Battlefield's ticket system. You'll lose tickets if the opposing team holds more points, or if someone on your team is killed. The first team to shed all their tickets will lose the match.

Three control point maps will be released, with one, Sequence, requiring points be captured sequentially. Players will also be able to create their own maps.

Puny Human says the mode is being treated like a new game unto itself, with different fighting balance than that found in the standard duel mode. Fights are designed to be faster, and all attacks will do 50% more damage.

It sounds like a fun aside to the main meat of duelling. I doubt control point will become the community's main mode, but as a free addition, it should nicely bolster the options of an already great game.

The Saxxy Awards, Valve's annual Source Filmmaker competition, is now in its fourth year, and to shake things up a bit they're encouraging players/directors to make films about something other than Team Fortress 2 - namely Portal. All of Portal 2's assets (minus, er, the portals and a few other things) can now be downloaded into SFM as free DLC, enabling that Spy vs Wheatley crossover animation that (probably) hasn't been able to exist until now. That isn't the only content pack headed to the program either: Puny Human are offering up select assets from Blade Symphony too.

The deadline for submissions this year is September 24th, giving you just under two months to create your masterpiece. You'll find the guidelines for the awards here.

If you need inspiration and/or films to compare your efforts to, be sure to check out the winners from last year. This one won best short:

Every Friday the PC Gamer team scan their memory banks to identify the incontrovertibly best and worst moments of the last week. Then, when confronted with the sum total of human ecstasy and misery, they write about PC gaming instead...

THE HIGHS

Tyler Wilde: Not crying wolf
Episode four of The Wolf Among Us came out on Tuesday, and not only is it good, it arrived just a month and a half after episode three released. I hope Telltale sticks to this newly speedy schedule. Four months passed between the first and second episodes, which is way too much time for those of us who like keeping up with the series as it happens (and are as forgetful as I am). Waiting for the whole season and binging is nice, but playing episodes at release gives me the opportunity to discuss them with people who also just played, and that s part of the fun for me.

Evan Lahti: Arma marks a million
Arma 3 quietly crossed the 1 million mark this week. Not to cheerlead for a franchise I love, but it s a signal of PC gaming s health that a game with a reputation for being impenetrable and graphically demanding has done this well in less than a year. When I say health, I don t mean simply in terms of the number of PC gamers on the planet, but how open-minded and curious many of us are about new experiences. It certainly makes me want to write about Arma more. And try its silly new kart racing DLC.



Chris Thursten: Rising through the ranks
I've been playing Blade Symphony since it came out, but I've been having a great time with it this week. After an initial run of success I managed to totally tank my global ranking - down from 600 to about 22,000. In the last couple of days I've crawled back up, and I'm now sitting at 742. To get there I've had to totally rebuild how I play, how I respond to opponents, and how I make sure I'm in the right mindset to win my duels. As a fencing dork and someone who used to be obsessed with Jedi Knight, I'm in heaven. Providing that the community stays active, it's shaping up to be one of my games of the year.

Cory Banks: A welcome delay
It s not often that I m happy about a delay, but Valve pushing back the Steam Controller until 2015 is, honestly, a good thing. We have not been all that impressed by Valve s controller prototypes I thought the first one was okay, but Evan really disliked the second one. It s good that Valve s hearing that feedback (and the feedback of other users, too), because getting this right might be the single most important part of the company s SteamOS initiative.

It does, unfortunately, mean that we likely won t see the full launch of SteamOS this year, either. But I d rather wait than have to suffer a crappy controller.



Andy Kelly: A new home for horror
I played two hours of The Evil Within this week, and it s everything I hoped it would be. It s no secret that I love Resident Evil 4, and as you can read in my hands-on preview, it feels like its spiritual successor. A lot of horror games on PC these days are little more than elaborate games of hide and seek, but Mikami s game has systems to exploit and opportunities for creative play. Rather than go for cheap scares, the team at Tango Gameworks seem to be focusing on tension-building. Like the Resident Evil games did so well (the good ones, anyway), you always feel like you re right on the edge of running out of ammo. If they can keep this up throughout the whole game, and it doesn t do that thing where you suddenly become so powerful and overloaded with supplies that it s no longer scary, it could be great.

Tom Senior: When hackers play hide and seek...
If you're going to nab ideas for your open world adventure game, Dark Souls is a good place to go. So I keep thinking as I experiment with Watch Dog's 1 vs 1, hacker vs. hacker multiplayer mode, which lets players invade other games for a round of hide and seek. You jump from manipulating predictable AI enemies to facing a living, thinking human being with hopes, dreams, and infuriatingly good hiding skills.

I found one opponent by wrecking up a crossroad. I dispersed the NPC crowds with some warning shots, hacked the traffic lights to create a traffic jam and then started scanning from car to car. I was 91% hacked when a sports car launched into reverse just metres ahead of me, and sped off into the distance. I tried to shoot out their tyres, but they successfully fled the scene. I got points for stopping the hack, my opponent got points for escaping. We both walked away with a story to tell great stuff. This sort of encounter bodes well for games like The Division, with its strong multiplayer focus.





THE LOWS

Tyler Wilde: Star Citizen stuck in the hanger
The Star Citizen dogfighting module has been delayed again, maybe briefly. The news isn t necessarily a sign of troubles at Cloud Imperium, but the missed deadlines are starting to tell a story I don t want to hear more of. It s the story of a famous game developer who accrued over $44 million dollars with one of the most ambitious game pitches ever...and way, way overpromised.

I don t think the Star Citizen story will be so tragic. They make me nervous, but delays are an established part of software development, and just because one piece is taking a while doesn t mean the complete package isn t coming together in the process. But if I had payed for Star Citizen, as much as I d want to encourage quality over deadlines, I d also kind of want something to play. The backers are owed it, and I hope they don t have much longer to wait.

Tom Senior: I m scared to go inside my own computer
My office graphics card keeps overheating, leading to sudden resets and strange glitches. Andy advised me to take it into the stairwell and give it a good seeing to with a vacuum cleaner. Could the GPU fan, choked by dust, be failing to cool my chips? Probably, but I haven t been inside this thing for months. As the Tutankhamun tomb discoverers were rumoured to have fallen to diseases trapped in the chamber s stagnant air, I fear a facefull of vile machine dust could be my end. An irrational fear, certainly, but I ve always been a tiny bit afraid of messing with machines since watching Superman 2 as a kid and having nightmares about that ending. Brrrr.



Chris Thursten: Struck by space envy
I'm pretty heartbroken by the closure of Mythic, but I believe Cory plans to go into more detail about this particular loss to the industry. The studio might not have had a good run lately, but Dark Age of Camelot will always be the game that defined my adolescence.

With that in mind, my low of the week is going to be that I'm not playing Elite Dangerous yet. Everytime I turn around I see Andy having some kind of spectacular space adventure and I think why isn't that me. I've started to regret the life decisions that have placed Andy and I on separate roads; him in a spaceship, me refreshing Twitter at my silly Earth-bound desk. I try to rationalise it, to argue to myself that I'd rather wait for the final game, but then Andy jumps into hyperspace and it's all like whoooooosh and I'm like fuck you, Andy, fuck you.

Cory Banks: Farewell to Mythic
I hate studio closures. I especially hate the closure of Mythic Entertainment, the developer of classic MMO Dark Age of Camelot. One of my most treasured memories in gaming involved the Realm vs. Realm combat that Camelot introduced, and I had plenty of nights spent defending the Albion relic from Hibernian invaders. It wasn t my first MMO, but it was one of my favorites, and an important stepping stone for the genre.

Unfortunately, Mythic s other game, Warhammer Online, didn t do as well. It shut down in December 2013, and the studio focused on free-to-play mobile games that honestly were far beneath what it deserved. My heart goes out to those affected by the studio s closure, and here s hoping they find new roles where they can get back to making great games.



Evan Lahti: No love for Uplay
Uplay, you goddamn monster. Ubisoft s cumbersome DRM layer has always felt as uncomfortable as the wool sweater grandma forces on you at Christmas, with its weird, proprietary achievements system and other features no one uses. This week, though, it got in the way of a lot of people playing Watch Dogs, seemingly cracking under the weight of many players verifying their legitimately-purchased copies of the game. Our buddy Will Smith had the worst experience I heard:

.@garywhitta after waiting on hold for 90 minutes, I was banned for attempting to log on too many times and they couldn't test fixes.— Will Smith (@willsmith) May 29, 2014

I can t imagine what it s like for gamers who have kids, or get home late, or anyone who has to carefully set aside time to game to have to deal with that. After Diablo III, after SimCity, it s unbelievable that big publishers aren t fully prepared for the scale of their own launchers. With pre-order stats as an indicator, they should be able to anticipate these issues. In cases like these it still feels like PC takes a backseat to multiplatform games launch on Xbox One and PlayStation 4.

Andy Kelly: An unwelcome delay
The delay of the Steam controller is a shame. I think it s time PC had its own bespoke official controller. Currently it s the Xbox 360 pad, which is fine, but I want something more suited to the format. I love the idea of using those weird trackpad things to both play twitchy shooters and strategy games, dragging the cursor around in lieu of a mouse. Civ on the sofa? Yes, please. But it s promising that Steam are delaying it, because it shows that they re not rushing the thing out and putting some serious thought into its design. After all, if you get hardware wrong, you can t just patch its problems away. I can t wait to get my hands on one in 2015.