PC Gamer

Saturday Crapshoot: Georgian Police

Every week, Richard Cobbett rolls the dice to bring you an obscure slice of gaming history, from lost gems to weapons grade atrocities. This week, is it possible to follow the letter of the law when you don’t even recognise the letters? Luckily, turns out everyone speaks ‘gun’.

Sadly, this is not the Georgian I was hoping for. I really wanted this to be a Police Quest set in the Regency, full of cries of “Cease and desist, you bounder, lest you also become a cad!” But no. We’re talking the country of Georgia, whose Ministry of the Interior – if the story is accurate – thought it would be a great idea to have a game promoting the fine work of the police in a “virtual hunt down of criminals and Russian spies.” It’s free. And there are two parts – neither of which I understand a word of.

I’m almost positive this will not prove to be a problem.

Chivalry: Medieval Warfare low-grav combat is loud, hilarious

When assaulting a keep in Chivalry: Medieval Warfare, a throaty battle cry is appropriate—it keeps the adrenaline pumping as you cut down your foes. When flailing at plated footmen sailing through the air because of a low-gravity server modification, yelling takes on a whole different, comedic purpose. See (and hear) for yourself in this video.

What to Watch: The Week in eSports (February 15-21, 2013)

This week in eSports: which StarCraft II tournaments are making the switch to Heart of the Swarm, and which will hang onto Wings of Liberty a little longer? We’ve got the answers. Also, could World of Tanks break into the eSports scene? With an announced $2.5 million prize pool, it might be on the right track.

StarCraft II pre-Heart of the Swarm patch coming early next week

Blizzard is preparing to deploy the 2.0.4 patch for StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, the last major patch before Heart of the Swarm, which will implement many of the changes teased for the expansion. A new interface, the new training modes, and the new replay features will all become available. Basically, everything except the new campaign, the new xp system, and the actual HotS multiplayer units will be included. Read on for specifics.

Natural Selection 2 dev “filled with sadness” over Aliens: Colonial Marines

Unknown World’s Natural Selection 2 has kept its horned head low throughout Aliens: Colonial Marines’ pasting from critics, but in a forum post, Unknown’s PR head Hugh Jeremy now says the NS2 team feels only sadness in place of its initial awe and even fear of the bigger-budget competitor.

PlanetSide 2 video shows first recordings of battle music, complicated-looking soundboards

Whenever something big happens in PlanetSide 2, you’ll probably hear a dramatic score swelling beneath the bullets, bombs, and aaarghs of combat. That’s thanks to SOE’s audio team and its efforts to pack an aural punch into the super-scaled battles of Auraxis, as shown in this brief behind-the-scenes look at the game’s soundtrack.

Interview: StarCraft II casters Axslav and Axeltoss

Maybe even more so than the players, casters are the public faces of eSports. Their engagement with the audience and the community has been a big part of growing and shaping the scene—even someone who couldn’t name a single StarCraft II pro might recognize icons like Day[9] and TotalBiscuit.

We recently had the chance to pose some questions to two of the veteran StarCraft II casters who will be bringing you the play-by-plays at MLG’s Winter Championship next month: Alex “Axeltoss” Rodriguez and Nick “Axslav” Ranish. Read on to learn how they got into the scene, which players are the hardest to cast, and where they’d like to see eSports in the not-so-distant future.

Arma 2 Complete Collection gathers all post-release content into one pack

It speaks volumes of the staying power of DayZ when it gets top billing in Bohemia’s new $40 Complete Collection pack for Arma 2. It’s a more extensive (and slightly more expensive) way of nabbing the required content for the zombie survival mod beyond the $25 Combined Operations, but it’s also the definitive accumulation of Bohemia’s best.

What we want to see from the Creative Assembly Warhammer game

We learned recently that the creators of Total War, The Creative Assembly, have scooped Games Workshop’s Warhammer fantasy license. This is tip-top news. Warhammer is all about massive battles, Creative Assembly are really, really good at massive battles. It’s a great match.

CA have set up a new develop team to produce games for the “multi-title” deal, but what would such a series look like? We’re rather fond of Games Workshop’s game of little fantasy men doing dice-war on tabletops, so we’ve rounded up a few features we’d love to see from an proper, epic Warhammer fantasy videogame.

Black Mesa: Insecurity bringing Blue Shift to Source

Now Black Mesa has fallen through a Source engine resonance cascade and out into the world, modders are piggy-backing off its upgraded assets to fill in the extended family of Gordon Freeman’s original adventure. Black Mesa: Insecurity hopes to remake Gearbox’s second expansion, Half-Life: Blue Shift, starring everybody’s favourite beer-owing security guard Barney Rubble Calhoun.