MechWarrior Tactics developer Roadhouse Interactive has released an extensive new video detailing its upcoming BattleTech-inspired turn-based strategy game. Currently in the closed-beta phase of development, the footage offers insight into mech loadouts, gameplay, as well as the free-to-play title's economy.

As one-half of Infinite Game Publishing's assault on the realm of online multiplayer gaming, the other being MechWarrior Online, MechWarrior Tactics shares a similar heritage. But from the new footage it's clear that Roadhouse Interactive is definitely looking to express a distinct vision of what a battle between giant armored BattleMechs should look like. With its own art style, customization options, and user interface, Tactics could offer BattleTech fans an experience very reminiscent of the BattleTech board game.

Gameplay balance within MW Online, often times in relation to the board game or the universe created in the BattleTech novels, is currently a hot topic inside the player community as that title moves through its open beta. I look forward to comparing the experience in MW Tactics as soon as its beta opens to the public.

The video below is hosted by noted MechWarrior enthusiast and No Guts No Galaxy podcaster Phil Langenberg and IGP community manager Niko Snow. The MW Tactics closed beta began in January but you can get immediate access by joining the free-to-play game's Founder program.

One of our favorite digital distributors is running the "Adventures with Activision" promo this weekend, bringing to mind heartwarming tales of friendship, ponies, and heavy discounts on classic games. It's like my childhood all over again!

Some of Sierra's best point-and-clicks are discounted by 50% over at GOG.com—you can never go astray with some Gabriel Knight, or the later episodes of King's Quest. (A tip to get you through the sometimes-brutal puzzles of the latter: despite everything you may have learnt in life, pies are not for eating.) Fans of town ownership can join the fun too, with some Egyptian- and Roman-flavored city-builders available in the form of Pharaoh and Caesar 3.

There's three days left on the offer. All up, there's 32 games discounted—the entire lot comes to about $122 of savings, if you're crazy enough to think you'll have time for all those games. When picking and choosing, prices range from $3 to $5. My personal suggestion? Try the Phantasmagoria series for the very best of FMV horror; there's no better way to have a terrible time this weekend.

The Oculus Rift may give us heart-stopping renders of truly believable environments, but aren't our other senses being underserved by the expensive peripherals industry? As Real As It Gets thinks so: their gently undulating bodysuit aims to let gamers feel the rumble of a passing vehicle, or the pummel of an assault rifle's bullet-spray into one's chest.

ARAIG have just started a Kickstarter campaign for the sense-replicating suit, and they're hoping to raise some $900,000 to put it into mass production. Of course, there's no way to tell how well this will work without strapping on a suit ourselves, so let's hope that is at least a little more subtle than the unpleasant vibrations on some handheld controllers. Hey—even if this doesn't quite put you in the gaming zone, at least the guy looks like a badass with his exoskeleton on, right?

Such body-poking armor does not come cheap—you'll need to pledge at least $299 to receive your own ARAIG suit, assuming the campaign succeeds. Lesser tiers allow various other benefits, like having a say on the look of the suit, or being able to access the ARAIG store two weeks before the rest of the general public. Now what I want to know is when a taste-module will be added. Is it truly immersion if we can't wrap our tongues around GLaDOS' virtual cake?

What makes one MMO succeed and another struggle? Take-Two Interactive chairman Strauss Zelnick says that at least one important factor at play in this equation is whether or not the MMO title is published in the United States (via Polygon).

"We're actively investing in online and MMOs, we're just not doing it in the U.S," Zelnick reportedly said at the Cowen and Company Technology, Media and Telecom Conference Thursday. "MMOs don't work here. A couple of our competitors have found out that through very, very expensive lessons. One of our competitors just recently announced they're restarting an MMO project."

For Zelnick, the list of MMO titles that have found some solid footing in the USA was short. "How many MMOs have been successful in the U.S.?," he said. "Two. World of Warcraft and EverQuest. Kind of a bad slugging percentage."

Take-Two is instead looking east in search of the most friendly geography for MMO success, in that "at any given time 10 to 20 are successful in China and generating revenue," according to Zelnick.

But with the recent news that Blizzard is overhauling its Titan MMO project, it appears that Zelnick is pointing to a sales reality for the US games market that other developers and publishers are confronting as well. While it's not fair to only define the success or failure of a title strictly in the jargon of business, it's not just the World of Warcraft developer that has seen its plans change. Both Rift and Star Wars: The Old Republic, for example, plan to or have already made the shift from a subscription service to a free-to-play model. Somehow it seems entirely appropriate that games, if we are to see them as extensions of the human experience, must adapt in order to survive.

Image via us.battle.net

It's been awhile since we last heard from the Wasteland 2 team and their 17-minute gameplay video. What've they been working on in the months since? Succinctness, apparently, as well as their inventory system, which we're getting a glimpse of today.

Inventory design is one of those things that you don't realize the importance of till you come across a completely unusable interface, so it's cool that inXile are pondering these things. They tinkered with grid-based Tetris-style inventory as well as list-style, and what you see here is what they've settled on for now. Two soon-to-be-implemented features are on their way as well—key bindings for commonly used items, and mouseover information panels.

I'm pleased to see that inXile appear to be Team Skeuomorphic, with those fun electricity-seeping wires running haphazardly all over the place, though I'm also skeptical at the grid-list hybrid approach they've adopted. I prefer a more visual approach to inventory, myself, and wouldn't have minded Tetrising various guns and stuff into my backpack. What do you think?

We're coming up on the biggest weekend for StarCraft II eSports in 2013 so far, with both the Korean and American WCS Season 1 finals concluding the first round of Blizzard's new, worldwide tournament format. The Korean finals between INnoVation and Soulkey will have already started by the time you read this, but you should be able to check out the WCS archives shortly after the broadcast. The American finals, beginning with the Round of 8, will run throughout the weekend.

Remaining players in the American premier league are South Koreans HerO, Alicia, Ryung, CranK, aLive, and Revival, as well as Australia's mOOnGLaDe, and Norway's Snute. You'll be able to tune in on the WCS Twitch channel for the live stream from MLG's studio in New York starting tomorrow, June 1, at 10:00 a.m. PDT. The finals broadcast is the same time Sunday. The champions of both the American and Korean Premier Leagues will take home $20,000, and 1500 WCS points—the most that can be earned in any one tournament.

Blizzard has provided an official bracket for you to fill out, and score yourself against your friends. You can read more about the event on the StarCraft II eSports hub.

If you've ever tried to count cards (I can count to...32), you'll know that Las Vegas is a place you're unlikely to ever escape from – so I've no idea why the four heroes of ASDF: Escape to Las Vegas are attempting to, well, find their way in. In addition to multi-character platforming, this week also brings you the experiences of exploring a forbidden forest, rolling around as a big ball of slime, and clicking coloured spheres together like some kind of kaleidoscopic circular god. Enjoy!

Welcome To The Forest by Nuprahtor Play it online here.

The game doesn't tell you, so here's a helpful hint: right click advances the text.

I kind of wish this short tale of reading and walking had some of Silent Hill's ambiguity, but at least it shares that series' weird, vaguely sinister atmosphere. It's a story about love, guilt, a guy in a top hat, and (of course) an ominous scratchy black-and-white forest. (Via Indie Statik)

Slime Laboratory 2 by Neutronized Play it online here.

Surely slime can just reform, if dissected by a deadly laser?

You're a slimeball. Not in real life (well, as far as I know), but in Neutronized's slick and slippery platformer sequel. Being a big ball of slime, you have the ability to squish under low ceilings, and grow in size by absorbing stray bits of blob. You also have a thick pink tongue that can grab onto things and kill wasps. You know, as you do. You've almost certainly played something like this before (literally, if you played the original), but there's a lot to be said for a near-perfectly engineered platformer – getting the 'feel' right is harder than you might think. (Via Indie Statik)

Four by Ali Shakiba Play it online here.

No relation to Google's stupid Circles thing.

Four is a turn-based Tetris, essentially, only with coloured spheres in place of blocky shapes, and with less catchy music – well, no music, unless creator Ali Shakiba has licensed John Cage's 4'33". Despite that, it's a beautiful piece of work: iconic and timeless, if a bit less immediate than Tetris, Columns and the like. You build nodes of spheres by connecting them with lines; connect four different colours to make the node disappear. (Via IndieGames)

ASDF: Escape to Las Vegas by dtclaw Play it online here.

A, S, D and F can stand on each other's shoulders to reach greater heights.

It's a bit incredibly rough, but there's enough puzzley goodness shining through Escape to Las Vegas (why would anyone escape to Las Vegas?) to make it worth any platformy puzzle fan's time. As with Lost Vikings or, more recently, Trine, you're controlling multiple characters at once, collaborating to clear obstacles and to move from room to room. The twist here is the control scheme, which has you holding A, S, D or F to move heroes A, S, D and F – or Alan, Steve, Dave and Frank as they're presumably known to their mums. The other thing to note is that it's rather difficult – I was defeated by the very second level. (Via Free Indie Games)

One of our most hotly anticipated games of this year, Arma 3, will be showing off in a big way this weekend with a livestreaming event straight from Prague. Though the newest version of everyone’s favorite military sim franchise is still in alpha, the beta build of the game will be on full display on Saturday, June 1, and again next Saturday, June 8.
Gearing up for E3, Bohemia Interactive will stream two sessions through the Arma 3 channel on Twitch. The first session will feature mission designer Thomas Ryan giving a basic tutorial in scenario editing. The second stream will show a playthrough of the new Combined Arms missions that will also be released in the beta update.

Both streams should last around an hour and begin at 17:00 UTC (or 12:00 EDT). Check out the world time server for a further breakdown of time zones. During the stream, you’ll be able to ask the team questions via the Twitch chat interface or Arma 3’s Twitter account.

If you’re a green recruit to this Arma business, check out Craig’s hands-on account or Arma veteran Evan’s rundown on how super-duper serious Arma is (hint: really serious).

From PlanetSide to Quake to Team Fortress, the current issue of PC Gamer US is locked and loaded for a countdown of the 25 Greatest Shooters of All Time. Plus, we bring you our review of a brand new Eastern European dystopian shooter with mutants—Metro: Last Light—and invite you to Reinstall a classic Eastern European dystopian shooter with mutants—S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl.
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Subscribers should have this issue in hand, unless your mail carrier suffered some unfortunate fate similar to the player character in Fallout: New Vegas, and is now wandering around with amnesia collecting canned food and scrap metal. Alternatively, you can snag the issue on a physical newsstand, or the digital ones listed above. Subscriptions and single issues are available, so in the words of Olmec from Legends of the Hidden Temple: "The choice is yours, and yours alone!"

Also inside:


Double Fine Adventure now has a name: Broken Age. We have new details!
Competitive Minesweeper? Yep. It exists.
Our first glimpses of Battlefield 4
Five hours hands-on with Company of Heroes 2's campaign
Reviews of six gaming headsets
Reviews for Defiance, Monaco, and Resident Evil 6
A mod to make Legend of Grimrock even grimmer
Your letters, the PC Gamer Rig, and everything else you expect to see

"Look folks," the latest Company of Heroes 2 trailer may well be saying, "we really love tanks." "Sure," it continues, "our game does have units that aren't tanks, but they're just there to make it even more special when you do finally see a tank." Basically, if you're a huge fan of planes, there are really only a few seconds here designed to appeal to you.

If you do enjoy the sight of a massive, armoured, gun-mounted, metal mammoths, there's plenty here to appreciate. Relic's RTS sequel is promising new and more varied tank on tank action come the game's release on June 25th.

And yes, I'm sure there will be other vehicle types too.

For more on CoH2, check out our impressions from the mulitplayer beta.