Bowling with soldiers in Warlords 2
If you took Plants vs. Zombies, replaced all the zombies with armed peasants, replaced back gardens with the fantasy world of Beneril and orbs of sunlight with sweet gold, then you’d have something similar to the horribly addictive, free to play browser game Warlords 2.
Valve to announce new game later today
There’s something afoot over at Valve headquarters. Last year, Valve hired IceFrog, the brain behind Defence of the Ancients Allstars. Yesterday IceFrog posted on the Defence of the Ancients forums to say that Valve will be announcing a new game later today. Combine this with the fact that a few months ago Valve filed a trademark for ‘DotA’, and shortly after that, Duke Nukem voice actor John St. John tweeted that he had a great time at Valve “recording for DotA” and we can’t help but conclude that Valve’s new game might have something to do with the classic Warcraft 3 mod, Defence of the Ancients. We’ll be bringing you more information as soon as we have it.
How to make a map in Civilization V
It’s surprisingly easy to play god in Civilization V. Creating a compelling and carefully balanced scenario can be almost as addictive as playing the game. The good news is, thanks to the slick world editor, making maps in Civilization V is surprisingly easy as well. You don’t need to know how to code, and you won’t need to sacrifice your firstborn to the cyber gods to create your first map. Follow these six easy steps and you could be playing Civilization on a planet of your own creation in no time at all.
PC Gamer UK Podcast 44: The Lost Podcat
Wet and shivering, the lost podcat scurries into the warm glow of your RSS feed. We know, it’s been two and a bit months. We are sorry. To make up for it, here’s the podcast we recorded at the same time as the Team Fortress 2 special but never got around to putting up. We’ll also have a new and shiny one for you within the week, when our regular podding will resume.
Rich explains what’s new in Dragon Age 2, and tries to excuse BioWare using the term ‘hotrodding the art style’. Tim’s seen Relic’s Warhammer 40K shooter, Space Marine, and has lots of good things to say about Company of Heroes Online. Craig actually talks about a strategy game for the first time ever, and it’s one in which ‘raise the GDP of China’ is a mission objective. Meanwhile Tom – hello – explains the brutal difficulty of trying to bake 300 loaves in Stronghold while stalking mounted archers with your slow but unstoppable terminator king.
Download the MP3, subscribe, or find our older podcasts here.
Call of Duty: Black Ops trailer denies existence of viewer
It’s the battle of the trailers! Earlier today Medal of Honor released their launch video, now it’s Treyarch’s turn with this single player trailer for Call of Duty: Black Ops, but which is better? Check out the video below to decide for yourself.
Flight sim machinima: Bill and John Adventures
This is an oldie, but how many other funny, stunningly directed pieces of flight simulator machinima about wacky French fighter pilots are you likely to watch today? For its first, short episode, The Adventures of Bill and John – or Une Aventure De Bill et John – was made using the ultro-realistic Lock On Modern Air Combat. The second episode is made in the same game, but with bespoke 3D animations to add more detail. They are both excellent, and years after first seeing them, I still occasionally re-watch them. Find them both embedded below.
Gorgeous fan-made Outcast sequel: shots and a demo
The sublime 1999 adventure game Outcast never got an official sequel, so now it’s getting an unofficial one. A group of its fans are making their own follow-up in the Crysis engine, which sounds unlikely until you see what they’d done so far. It’s already beautiful – and playable. The version they released last month is just a technology demo, but it’s free for anyone to play: it works with the Crysis Wars trial, which you can download here. Patch it, then grab the mod from Mod DB, and look at these pretty pictures while it downloads.
Eve Online video shows $15,000 space battle
Footage has hit Reddit of an extraordinary battle in the vast space MMO EVE Online. The attack destroyed three Titan class battleships as they were under construction, dealing damage to the tune of 300 billion Isk, or $15,000 in real world money. Even if you’ve never played Eve Online, the footage of the colossal space battle is incredible. Check out the video below.
Medal of Honor dev defends Taliban name change, new launch trailer
Medal of Honor developers, Danger Close recently caved in to growing pressure, and renamed the Taliban forces. Danger Close marketing director Craig Owens spoke out recently about the reasons behind the name change. Read on for his comments, and the explosive new launch trailer.
Strike the earth! The PC Gamer Minecraft server is open
Behold, PC Gamer Republic! PC Gamer’s Minecraft paradise, and your next forced labor destination. Gaze upon your new home: a rolling plain of petting zoos and unaccommodating mining camps, interrupted only by the pristine seas that we haven’t figured out how to exploit yet.
We’re opening PC Gamer Republic to the public today. Reach it at 207.210.252.12:25566. We’ve already been tinkering around in it for a few days, inviting our pals from Maximum PC and @Gamer to cobble up some initial stuff. But now that it’s public, here’s our pitch: build fantastic stuff on our server, send us a photo (or YouTube clip) to letters@pcgamer.com, and we’ll feature it on the website in our regular (weekly, maybe) updates.
Patchageddon: WoW gets massive overhaul in five gig 4.01 patch
The Cataclysm is close. You can just feel it. But between now and December 7th, World of Warcraft will be undergoing a radical overhaul – beginning with tomorrow’s (Wednesday in Europe) 4.01 patch. The notes are ludicrous. The changes giddying. The download a mere 5 gigabytes. Read on to discover exactly what’s happening.
Awesome new Batman: Arkham City screens show Dark Knight on a dark night
Rocksteady have released a slew of bat-gorgeous new bat-screens for Batman: Arkham City showing off the huge looking new bat-city environments, some new thugs, and some new ways in which Batman can bat-crush said thugs. Read on for the new bat-pics.
Guild Wars 2 to reward Guild Wars players with sweet loot
Arenanet have announced that players will be able to use the achievements of their Guild Wars 1 characters to unlock some tasty loot in Guild Wars 2. They’ve even put together a calculator so you can input the name of your character and get an advanced peek at your rewards. If you don’t have a Guild Wars character you can still check out the demo calculator and get a preview of the sort of loot you can expect to be picking up when the game’s released next year.
Blizzard bans Starcraft 2 single player cheaters
Recently Blizzard launched their first mass banning of Starcraft 2 players caught cheating in online games, but those hacking the single player portion of the game have also found themselves caught up in the action. Those found to be using single player hacks such as trainers in the the campaign and in skirmish games against the AI have found themselves suspended from their Battlenet accounts for a couple of weeks, or even frozen out completely.
Play X-Wing with upgraded graphics. Trust us: you should
Some games are just too good to die. Lucasart’s classic Star Wars space sim X-Wing is one of them. A recent post on Reddit gathered together a series of mods that will let you play the old X-Wing campaign in a more recent engine, in high resolution and widescreen. We knew right away that it was time to blow the dust off a joystick and get it up and running. Here’s a four step guide to getting the classic space sim working on a modern PC in full retextured glory. All you’ll need is a copy of X-Wing Alliance and these four steps and you’ll be locking onto Interceptors in no time.
