There are lots of ways you could observe this special day—with crowbars primarily—but you also might want to watch the first Xen footage from the Half-Life remake, Black Mesa. 20 years has clearly done Xen the world of good. Unlike the rest of Black Mesa, Xen is almost entirely original work, though obviously Half-Life is still the cornerstone. This re-imagining of the alien world will take players around six hours to complete, judging by playtests, and more if you plan on investigating every no

How big can a Half-Life level be, how many colours and shapes can it have, what can it look like? Half-Life’s guts influence what Half-Life can show you and what Half-Life can do. Back in 1998, game developers counted every megabyte: each map file in Half-Life was limited to two megabytes of texture memory. In the middle of this dimly-lit ‘water level’ is a shark cage sequence ripped out of a monster movie. Bubble funGiven the superb drownability of water in Half-Life, every second spent beneath

Faison joins artists like Chance the Rapper and 2 Milly in being less than impressed with Epic’s use of their dance moves as emotes. 2 Milly is considering legal action over Epic’s appropriation of his dance, the Milly Rock, which it has renamed Swipe It. Among kids, for whom Fortnite is undoubtedly a bigger deal than a show that ended eight years ago, the dance is a Fortnite dance. Dance moves aren’t copyrighted, and series creator Bill Lawrence chimed in, explaining that Epic did get in touch

On an average day, about a dozen new games are released on Steam. Potentially exciting gems are sure to be lost in the deluge of new things to play unless you sort through every single game that is released on Steam. Windlands 2Steam pageRelease: November 16Developer: Psytec Games TldPrice: $29.99Windlands 2 is all about soaring through a serene virtual reality world with the help of a grappling hook. In addition to micro-managing various aspects of a software company, you’ll also be witnessing

Prolific Fallout modder registrator2000—who this week released the first must-have Fallout 76 mod—is working on a fully-fledged photo mode for Fallout 4. You can see more images on the mod’s Nexus page, but you’ll need to sign in to your Nexus account first. Fallout 4 never had a photo mode, but you can fudge one by using various console commands—this will make it much easier. Modder registrator2000 does great work, and has 24 Fallout 4 mods, so I have high hopes for this. Here’s a video of an o

Rainbow Six Siege’s Operation Wind Bastion has finally been properly revealed, giving us a much better look at new operators Nomad and Kaid as well as Siege’s newest map: Fortress. Earlier this week, I spent a few hours with Wind Bastion and came away both excited and a little nervous. KaidFor Siege veterans, Kaid will definitely raise a few eyebrows. Walking away from my demo, I was much more excited about Wind Bastion than I was with Grim Sky. Call me a softy, but I’m tired of the dreary darkn

Battlefield 5 players have discovered a bug that can freeze your game if you click the ‘Assignments’ section of the in-game pause menu. Players are reporting that the error either causes the game to blur or to fade to black, and the only way to fix it is to Alt+F4 out. Some players are also reporting the same error when they click the ‘Server Info’ button. You can check your assignments when you’re in the main menu instead. It hasn’t yet been added to DICE’s list of known issues with Battlefield

A month after launching its own game store, Discord’s version of Early Access has gone live with an impressive five-game lineup. The “first wave” of Discord Early Access games includes whimsical RPG Kynseed, cute dino management game Parkasaurus and downhill biking game Descenders, which could well be the heir to Skate’s throne. The other two games are Mad Machines, which is basically Rocket League with robots, and PT-inspired horror game Visage. The others are already part of Steam Early Access

Artifact’s open beta launches tomorrow, but many would-be players have lost their appetite for Valve’s digital card game because of its monetisation model. A Reddit post from yesterday that encourages players to cancel their pre-orders is now the top post of all-time on the Artifact subreddit, while numerous other popular threads are slamming the payment model, described as “pay for everything you do”. Here’s the deal: you have to pay $20 for the Artifact base game, which gets you some starter c

This week we learned what happens when you launch one of Fallout 76’s nukes at a fissure site: you spawn a really big, high level Scorchbeast Queen and a bunch of end-game loot. Well, the players who launched that nuke decided to triple their efforts by launching three nukes, one from each of the missile silos, all at the same time. They fired their nukes and aimed them at the same spot on the map. It’s possible the disconnection may not have been related to three nukes detonating at once—I’ve h

Rapper 2 Milly hopes to sue Epic Games over Fortnite’s ‘Swipe It’ emote, which is based on his Milly Rock dance. Swipe It was one of the emotes available to unlock as part of the paid-for Battle Pass in Fortnite Season 5, which ended in September. The emote is one of many based on real-life dance moves by hip hop artists, as Vikki outlined here. As to whether legal action from 2 Milly would be successful, it’s hard to say. But regarding choreographic works, that does not exist,”In July, Chance t

Quake Champions’ latest update has nerfed every single damage dealing ability in the game as well as every heavy champion. Heavy champions have had their maximum armour points knocked from 150 to 125, and their ovemax from 225 to 200. Light champions have been handed a boost: their max armour has gone from 50 to 75, and their overmax from 125 to 150. Eisen, who you can see in the video at the top of this post, was announced earlier this year. You can read about more minor changes in the update,

Crucially, Artifact isn’t a collectible card game at all—it’s a trading card game. After my playtest we were treated to a tournament between some well known card game pros who I’m forbidden to name. Of course, any mention of esports and card games will have some readers eye-rolling in aisles. At the outset Newell said Valve wants Artifact to do for card games what Half-Life 2 did for singleplayer action games. Unless you’re Valve and you actually did make Half-Life 2 and now you’re making a digi

It’s easy to ignore the codex section when you start playing a Mass Effect game. One of the things that makes the Mass Effect games special is how much detail is there waiting for you, and how much context it adds to the action. 580 BCEThe asari, the first post-prothean race to encounter the mass effect relays and develop faster-than-light travel, discover Citadel Station. A month later, Mass Effect 2 begins with the destruction of the Normandy and the loss of Shepard. 2185 CE – Main events of M

You’ll be able to play both variants on four different maps, and their layout will determine how you can grow your city. The Frostlands—the name for area in the zoomed out map—will still be explorable, and every so often a huge snow storm will cover it, blocking off old locations and opening up new, randomised sites to visit. Sometimes, you’ll find “mementos” at those sites, and you’ll be able to store them in an Archives building, which is one of a few new building types the endless mode adds.

Star Citizen has just zoomed past the $200 million crowdfunding mark. According to its funding page, more than 2 million backers have stuck money in at an average of around $94 per person. It will probably get another big funding injection next weekend, too, because it’s going to be free to play from November 23 to November 30. You’ll be able to explore Hurston, the game’s very first planet, which launches alongside the free trial period. Read more about the free week in Chris’s piece here.

The Waylanders, an RPG that counts former Dragon Age creative director Mike Laidlaw among its staff, has raised nearly $170,000 on Kickstarter, beating its funding goal. Its inspirations include Dragon Age: Origins, naturally, as well Neverwinter Nights 2 and Baldur’s Gate. It’s due in June 2020, and you can still fund it via Paypal to help it reach its stretch goals. The $200,000 stretch goal to add former Telltale Games narrative designer Emily Grace Buck to the team has been unlocked early, w

Eternal, one of the best card games on PC, left Early Access this week, and developer Dire Wolf Digital marked the occasion by revealing a 250-card expansion called Defiance, which is coming in December. The full release wasn’t accompanied by a big update, so it’s basically a symbolic move for the CCG, which has been in Early Access for nearly two years—a lot longer than initially intended. It sounds like a good blend of accessibility and complex systems, and it all feels “quicker and more satis

Black Friday is still a week away, but not in Monster Hunter: World. Both editions of Monster Hunter: World are 33 percent off, starting today at 4pm GMT and running until the same time on November 19. The first Monster Hunter to come to PC also happens to be one of the best. Take a gander at James’ Monster Hunter: World review. Like your character, Monster Hunter: World dresses its breathless combat in every assortment of the most arbitrarily complicated garb, all in the name of variety.

PUBG Corp’s ‘Fix PUBG’ campaign, which aimed to combat the worst bugs and performance problems in the battle royale game, is now officially over. Clearly, the end of the campaign doesn’t mean that PUBG is now bug-free, or that PUBG Corp is satisfied with where the game is. For 2019, the developer will therefore prioritise “build stability and quality” over new gameplay features or content. It also detailed some planned changes to matchmaking in PUBG, including a new UI that will better display e