Less than a year after its launch, League of Legends–the explosively popular free-to-play online arena game inspired by DotA–is getting a complete graphical overhaul, and we’ve got the world’s first reveal of it in our latest issue! The game’s current cartoonish look is giving way for a sharper, more realistic style that makes the heroes look like hand-painted miniatures duking it out in a tabletop world.
Adventure game logic can be terrible, because the worst puzzles in adventure games aren’t logic. They can be traced back to whatever unchallenged assumptions were sloshing around in the designer’s head. The Gambit game lab knows this, and that’s why they’ve written a game that generates puzzles based on their study of bullshit dream logic and unchallenged assumptions. Each time you play Symon, you’re playing a new set of puzzles with a new cast of characters.
I’ve just been tinkering with Company of Heroes Online, the awesome World War 2 strategy game from Relic. And it’s unbelievable. Absolutely, mind blowing. I know we’ve been banging on about this for months now, but you really, honestly, absolutely have to try it out. If you sign up at the Company of Heroes site, you can download the full, original, Company of Heroes campaign, for free. There’s absolutely zero catch. It’s worth it just to play the Carentan mission – which I still think is the best RTS level ever created. We’ll have much more shortly, but just go and have a play, and report back what you think.
Those of us in the United States have a three-day weekend coming up, and this isn’t one of those “family” holidays like Christmas and Thanksgiving. This is boring ol’ Labor Day, which, for gamers, means that we’re looking at a solid 72 hours of prime gaming time. But what about the gamer whose gaming collection has run low? How will they possibly fill the long weekend without new games to play? Don’t worry, as always, PC Gamer’s got your back. Here’s our roundup of games with free-to-play weekends, open betas, or recently launched free-to-play games to keep you interested. And if that’s not enough, we’re giving away five retail games to keep you gaming all weekend long and beyond!
First person is a good perspective. Don’t believe me? Nine out of ten eyeballs prefer it. That’s obviously the explicit thought-chain that went through GTA modder C06alt’s head as he built this first person mod for Grand Theft Auto the Fourth. It works well! Here’s a video of it running:
Grow games are browser puzzle games with a unique set up: you’re looking at a cartoon scene, and there are some buttons along the edges. Each button can only be pressed once. Press one, and it’ll add that element to the world, and possibly cause it to react with whats already there, developing the scene based on what you picked. When all that is finished happening, you press another one. The trick is to work out the best order so that the world gets fully developed.
I type this with icy white fingers. It’s August – normally king of the summer months – and yet here I am, very seriously considering digging out some gloves. Serves me right for living in the north of England, I suspect. But all is well, for in these disappointingly chilly times I’ve managed to locate six more fabulous free games. Read on for the best of the bunch from August.
You are Superb Joe, some sort of pink jester with a grappling hook, tasked by Streemerz Command to do reach the top of a tower for reasons unknown. To be honest, I have no idea what this game is about, all I know is that I desperately want to reach the next screen.
No developer has a bigger stake in what “DotA” (the highly popular Warcraft III mod, Defense of the Ancients) means today than Riot Games, the budding developer of the free-to-play DotA-esque arena game League of Legends. League of Legends has quietly developed into an enormous community, and it’s a game all PC gamers should at least try. So when the suprising news came out last week that Valve had submitted an application to trademark “DotA”, we sat down with two of the top dogs at Riot Games who were major forces in the DotA community before they signed up at Riot–Steve “Guinsoo” Feak and Steve “Pendragon” Mescon. If anyone has a right to claim the name “DotA”, it seems like it would be these guys, so we asked them what they thought of the recent announcement and what they plan to do about it.
“Theme: You can’t stop pooping.” Is there any greater theme? Bird-dodgin’, super-poopin’ indie game Icarus Proudbottom in: The Curse of the Chocolate Fountain suggests not.
Details of the full BioShock Infinite demonstration are at: http://www.pcgamer.com/tag/bioshock-infinite/
