The Circles of Nerd Hell

So this just in from Green Man Gaming’s roaming reporters/poets Olly Alighieri and Nicky Vergilius Der Watt, after us nerds die there are nine circles of hell waiting for those of us who have committed the worst sins in Nerdom. After translating it from Latin into English for you, here are the circles of what they call the ‘Ludos Autem Inferno’ – Nerd Hell.

Limbo

This but forever.

The first circle of the Ludos Audem Inferno is for casual gamers, those who don’t partake in as much nerd culture as they ought to as transcribed in the Nerd Manual (coming soon). It is in a permanent state of limbo, that being, a permanent game loading screen. Icons turn on their axis eternally, mildly useful tips are given and perhaps several images of game artwork.

Lust

Live footage of this circle.

The second circle belongs to those who have coveted and harrassed members of the opposite sex within the realms of nerdom. Be it by calling them names in their Twitch chat, telling them to play support, or ‘please go out with me b****’, those people belong here. And here they must dwell for all time in a nightclub that is perpetually at 4am, and the lack of social skills is keenly noticeable, and the anonymity of the internet offers no shield.

Gluttony

Ughh.

The circle that belongs to those of a nerdy, gluttonous nature is filled with those who pretend that they have completed way more games to a much higher level than they have done, and are therefore more experienced and knowledgeable than you. Their punishment is to only ever play DLC and season pass content until Judgement Day, and that which is no more value than $5 each.

Greed

All with 3% completion.

This circle is divided into two groups: one is for those who pre-orders every game no matter what, and the other belongs to those who buy out consoles/hardware on launch to sell them again on ebay. The sin of this circle is therefore greed, and so they must have an ever growing pile-of-shame in their Steam library that is slowly added to but with no actual new titles.

Anger

‘LEARN TO PLAY SCRUB’.

The circle of hell in which the angry dwell is said to be bursting at the non-existent seams these days. Filled end-to-end with those who were so familiar with yelling down headset mics and breaking keyboards after requesting their support ‘just die’; now they must play Wii Tennis for all time, only against a cadre of daemons with the voice and temperaments of 12 year old boys who have many opinions about your mother. No offense to 12 year old boys but seriously, get off the mic you silly sods.

Heresy

King of ‘well actually’.

As we reach the lowest depths of Ludos Audem Inferno, we come into contact with some of the worst nerdism has to offer. The sixth is the place where those opinionated nerds that populate your Dungeon & Dungeons groups, or maybe your raid party. Their rallying cry is ‘WELL ACTUALLY’ and ‘I can’t believe you haven’t seen/played/heard of X!’ They belittle your corner of nerdiness and only their obscure corner is correct. Here they must watch Jim Sterling videos on repeat. With the comment section disabled. For eternity.

Violence

Jake Paul doing his thing.

Here lies those who instigated unjust violence onto their fellow nerd. Whether it be actual violence (I’m sure it’s happened somewhere), Jake Paul boxing against other YouTubers, or just button spammers in fighting games, this is not okay and breaking the social contract of nerds everywhere. And so their fate is to sit in a physical YouTube comment section surrounded by those who wish the utmost violence upon them and their opinions, who will toe-poke you until the end of days.

Fraud

The Pit of Despair.

The penultimate circle is reserved for those peddlers and purveyors of fake or stolen game keys. As well as those who give false advice to those who don’t know any better. If you want to see this in reality, go to a game shop in December and watch these sinners sell endless copies of Barbie’s High School Dream 3 and Cars 2: The Game. They dwell in ditches dug out of thousand of rotting plastic cases of E.T: The Extra-Terrestrial on Atari 2600.

Treachery

Bastards.

And here we reach the bottom, the lowest of the low, the pit, the dearth, the Last Stop. Here belongs those who have become treacherous to their own nerd kind, who have forsaken all games, board games, non-casino, non-family-Christmas dice and card-based activity, sci-fi TV and comic book adaptations. Those who shun miniatures and Reddit; pen and paper role-playing games; the ownership of film props of any kind; arguments on the internet and dressing up. All with the excuse of wanting to become ‘normal’, and ‘sociable’.

Their punishment is nothing but their continued existence in this state of denial and betrayal, in the frozen heart of Ludos Audem Inferno.

A thank you to another of our writers Nicky Van Der Watt for partaking in this perilous journey as well to bring us news of this terrifying fate. If you want to discuss where YOU are going to go after you die, and want to make some friends beforehand with similar fates, comment below!

10 Things You Didn’t Know About Dark Souls

Dark Souls Remastered is a game with swords. But it’s more than that, it’s about a deep and rewarding combat system that rewards persistence paying attention to details, and a story that rewards much the same. Basically, it’s Dark Souls. You know Dark Souls. Everyone knows Dark Souls, it’s the third person action RPG series that pretty much everything over the last decade has been compared to.

There’s a huge amount of secrets and facts hidden away in Dark Souls, and in books like You Died which give you a glimpse behind the scenes of the making of Dark Souls. So here’s ten facts that we guarantee you didn’t know about Dark Souls.

10. The original title for Dark Souls was ‘Miyazaki’s Fun Dungeon’.

After the success of Demon’s Souls, From Software was under a lot of pressure to release a sequel. Miyazaki was happy to oblige, but felt a change of tone was needed. Originally what became Dark Souls was a much lighter affair, with clowns, balloons, and a magic dragon called Henry who was your companion throughout the adventure. Alas it wasn’t to be, as the game got progressively darker throughout development, until it was felt ‘Miyazaki’s Fun Dungeon’ didn’t accurately sell the game anymore.

9. Havel’s Armour is inspired by the feeling you get when you really need a poop.

Have you ever needed a poop? Really really needed a poop? Needed a poop so bad you waddled about grasping your butt? Well that’s exactly the feeling that Havel’s Armour set is meant to remind you of when you wear it. It’s little details like this which really bring the world of Dark Souls to life. Here’s hoping the poop waddling animation makes it intact into Dark Souls: Remastered.

8. Great Grey Wolf Sif was originally a Pug called ‘Snif’.

A rare screenshot (above) has been uncovered of the original form of the Great Frey Wolf Sif. A giant pug called Snif was to be your foe, who would lick and slobber on your character until you drowned to death. Eventually it was thought that this was simply too scary for anyone to experience, so a much less terrifying monster was put in its stead.

7. If you shoot the tail off the Hellkite Dragon, it’ll cry. You monster.

The Hellkite Dragon is first introduced to you as you enter the Undead Burg, but later you can meet it as it guards a long bridge. By careful positioning and use of a bow you can shoot its tail off, which gives you a fairly powerful sword called the Drake Sword. However, doing so causes the Hellkite Dragon to well up with tears, and will spend the rest of the game licking at its tail and sobbing quietly, making this one of the truly emotional moments in Dark Souls.

6. Firelink Shrine is named after the time Miyazaki lost his job after working on The Legend of Zelda.

Before Miyazaki worked on Demon’s Souls, he worked on Legend of Zelda. His ideas, however, about permadeath and Link having to repeat levels over and over again to recover his lost trousers didn’t go over too well at Nintendo so eventually Miyazaki was let go. He never forgot those formative experiences at Nintendo though, and named the Firelink Shrine after the time he had his items thrown into the street outside Nintendo HQ by an uncaring bodyguard.

5. The Chosen Undead’s canon name is ‘Frank Deadlinger’.

During character creation it’s possible to name your character anything, but if you leave the slot unfilled it actually inserts a default name. From this we can tell that the Chosen Undead’s canon name is actually Frank Deadlinger, a 32 year old postman from Seward, Nebraska. On a side note, it appears the only prohibited name in Dark Souls is if you call your character an ‘Undead Chucklefuck’, the reasons why are as yet unknown.

4. Siegmeyer’s helmet is filled with a mystical potion that’s actually 99% sweat.

Eagle-eared players may be able to detect that Siegmeyer’s voice is muffled when he speaks to you, which many have speculated is due to his huge helmet. Recent investigations performed by a team who have access to the base game files have noticed that instead, Siegmeyer’s helmet is filled with a viscous liquid which is only described in-game as ‘sweat_soup.object’. Speculation is rife about what this might mean, with the leading theory being that it is a special potion that Siegmeyer uses to keep his strength up.

3. The game’s plot is actually lifted entirely from the film ‘Sleepless in Seattle’.

Many of you reading this may not remember the Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks romantic comedy Sleepless in Seattle, but to those who’ve played both Dark Souls and watched the film it’s no surprise that both film and game share their plots, almost point for point. Who can forget the scene where Gwyn wants to order ‘What the Chosen Undead is having’ or when Gravelord Nito says that you had him ‘at hello’. Once you’ve seen both, the parallels really do rack up.

2. If you wait for 15 minutes in your cell in the Undead Asylum, Pagan Min comes back and helps you lay your mother to rest.

At the start of the game you wake up in a cell, deep in the Undead Asylum. But did you know that if you waited for at least 15 minutes, Pagan Min would return from his errand and fill you in on his backstory – and a bit about your family history, then take you to lay your mothers’ ashes to rest. It’s a bit of a wait in that cell, but you can spend it looking at the amazingly rendered Crab Rangoon and enjoying the ambience.

1. If you complete the game in under an hour, the Chosen Undead says your name.

It took five years for this secret to be discovered, but in the end it was found that if you complete the game in under an hour, during the end credits the Chosen Undead will turn to camera and say your name. That’s not all they say, in fact they say the following: ‘Hello (name), well done for completing Dark Souls. But can you find the remaining seven Chaos Emeralds?’. The hunt is now on to find out what the Chaos Emeralds are and where they fit into the Dark Souls mythos.

There you have it, ten facts about Dark Souls that we bet you didn’t know. Do you have any other Dark Souls facts that we’ve missed? Hit us up in the comments.

Green Man Gaming’s 8th Birthday – What Was 2010 Like?

It’s Green Man Gaming’s eighth birthday and we’re celebrating it across the website with a sale and much more. Birthdays are a time to celebrate how far you’ve come, but you’ll never know how far that is until you look back at where you began. For us that’s way back in 2010.

So lets travel back in time to the distant past, to that long forgotten age. 2010, the time before time. See what the world was like when Green Man Gaming was birthed onto an unsuspecting internet.

Films

We all know that the Marvel Cinematic Universe began in 2008, ushering in the Age of Sequels, but what did 2010 look like? The biggest film of the year was Toy Story 3, the film about toys, stories, and sadness.

We saw Inception come out, paving the way for a billion Reddit comments about the ending, Harry Potter was beginning its wrap up its long long journey towards helping the kids learn how to act, and we got the next Iron Man which made everyone ask ‘why doesn’t Whiplash wear a mask?’

Also this was the year that Facebook died. You might think recent revelations have hurt it, but it was in 2010 that the end was sighted. Despicable Me came out, and as anyone on Facebook knows you simply cannot escape those banana coloured little fuckends who mostly appear with comments about ‘needing more wine’ or the suchlike. That’s right, Minions. Curse the day this film came out. Curse everyone who thought Minions were a good idea.

Games

2010 was a hell of a year for games, an absolute belter of a year. Not only did one of my personal favourites come out, Fallout: New Vegas, but we saw games like Bayonetta, Red Dead Redemption, and much more come out. I’m not going to go ahead and write too much about this year but seriously, look at some of these names:

  • Bayonetta
  • Darksiders
  • Mass Effect 2
  • Star Trek Online
  • S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat
  • BioShock 2
  • Deadly Premonition
  • Heavy Rain
  • Battlefield: Bad Company 2
  • Supreme Commander 2
  • Assassin’s Creed II
  • Final Fantasy XIII
  • Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II – Chaos Rising
  • God of War III
  • Metro 2033
  • Supreme Commander 2
  • Dragon Age: Origins – Awakening
  • Cave Story
  • Just Cause 2
  • Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Conviction
  • Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City
  • Skate 3
  • Bit.Trip Runner
  • Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands
  • Alan Wake
  • Red Dead Redemption
  • Super Mario Galaxy 2
  • Alpha Protocol
  • Transformers: War for Cybertron
  • Lego Harry Potter: Years 1-4
  • Limbo
  • StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty
  • Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days
  • Amnesia: The Dark Descent
  • Civilization V
  • Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light
  • Dead Rising 2
  • Final Fantasy XIV
  • Fallout: New Vegas
  • Super Meat Boy
  • Fable III
  • Rock Band 3
  • Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood
  • World of Warcraft: Cataclysm
  • Infinity Blade
  • Super Street Fighter IV
  • Halo: Reach

It doesn’t really matter what type of game you play, that is one heck of a year. I’m still playing through some of them (Alpha Protocol, one day I will finish you). What a year, honestly.

TV

David Tennant stopped being Doctor Who in 2010, and we instead got Matt Smith. Someone we doubted at the time, but soon managed to stamp his own brand onto the Doc. Again though like the games we got in 2010, we got some absolutely cracking TV starting. Justified, the angry vehicle for Timothy Olyphant began showing. We got Boardwalk Empire, the absolutely money-filled epic about life in 20s Atlanta. The Walking Dead started and for a while it was the brave new zombie hope…until we got four hundred seasons of doing shit all. Sherlock began over on the BBC, Holmes has never been so smug. Children’s TV was reinvented with the advent of Adventure Time, showing that kids could enjoy things that had heart and could enjoy things darker than people suspected.

We saw Scrubs end after a disastrous final season, Breaking Bad and Mad Men were in full swing, and the Best Sitcom Of All Time, Parks and Recreation, had just started its second season where it actually started putting jokes into the series.

Politics

It was a pretty different world in 2010. Barack Obama was president of the US, lending intelligence and class to a chair previously inhabited by a walking mushroom. Over here in the UK we had dull-but-solid Gordon Brown who was ousted due to calling a bigoted woman a bigoted woman, who was then followed up by David Cameron, a walking balloon.

Down under the bottom of the planet, Australia welcomed its first female Prime Minister in the form of Julia Gillard, who defeated opponent Paul Rudd [Editor’s Note: Kevin Rudd).

Events

Lots of events occurred in 2010, but the only one of real note happened online. A little gaming website called ‘Green Man Gaming’ was launched in 2010, which soon took over the planet with style, panache, and incredibly handsome blog writers.

Well, maybe not yet, but possibly this section will be accurate next year? Here’s hoping.

That’s 2010, it was a year of brilliant games, brilliant TV series, and some brilliant-to-average films. Does it match up with what you remember? Let us know in the comments.

Royal Wedding – The Best Weddings in Games

The excitement in the air is palpable, your mouth is dry, sweat runs down your back. That’s right, multiplayer is coming to No Man’s Sky.

Oh and also there’s a royal wedding or something happening on the 19th of May.

As our audience is obviously made up of many staunch monarchists we thought we’d use the union between Prince Harry (the ginger one) and Meghan Markle (the Suits one) to shine a spotlight on some of the best weddings that games have had to offer.

So dust off your best suit, put on a non-white dress, and get your bouquet-grabbing hands ready. It’s wedding time:

Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End

We spoke earlier in the week about how Uncharted 4 subverts tropes about being a hero, but it also features one of the best depictions of a marriage in videogames and well, most films and tv too. Nate and Elena love each other deeply, but it doesn’t mean their marriage is without issues. However due to learning the superpower of ‘communication’ they make it in the end.

Whilst the wedding doesn’t make it into the game directly, you can glimpse their wedding day in photo form, showing off the happy day.

Chrono Trigger

There’s only one way to a woman’s heart; go back in time and prevent her ancestors from being killed, and then go to prison for kidnapping her. Works every time (Incels, this is a joke, do not kidnap people).

Crono spends a lot of time with Marle over the course of Chrono Trigger, and there’s some cosy campsite scenes so it’s not a surprise that by the end of the game our protagonist and the leading lady have fallen for each other. In the editions of the game that come with cutscenes, you get to see the happy day in glorious animation-o-vision. Beautiful.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

The question in Skyrim about who will your spouse be, the question is who won’t be your spouse. You can marry almost anyone in this nordic utopia, and it’s never anything other than utterly slapstick and awkward. Marry your lizard-boyfriend and laugh nervously as your adopted children stand there awkwardly, staring at the wall, grumbling about not eating, and wanting to play hide and seek. Enjoy the scenes as during your moment of utter tenderness with your spouse, your Housecarl stands there, glaring at you with the power of a thousand tiny suns.

With all Elder Scrolls games, the joy comes from making the story your own but also enjoying the slightly bumpy ride you’ll take to get to your destination. So enjoy being married, and then never speak to them again because they’re in Markath and you’ve done all the quests there.

Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots

Oh Johnny Sasaki, you keyboard-wearing, IBS-having, un-modified Rat Patrol member. You tried your hardest and most of the time unfortunately that wasn’t good enough, but it was good enough for one Meryl who decided to make you an honest man at last.

After years of appearing in games as little more than comic relief and having his IBS being a recurring ‘gag’, it was quite nice at the end of MGS 4 to see Sasaki, aka Akiba, tie the not with his Rat Patrol superior, Meryl Silverburgh. Even Rat Patrol pals Ed and Jonathan turned up for the happy day. Lovely.

Final Fantasy IX

There’s no wedding better than a surprise and potentially non-legally-binding wedding, and the dwarves of Conde Petie know how to throw a wedding. In order to get access to the Iifa Tree, Zidane and Dagger (Garnet) must get married in a heartwarming ceremony, something that fuckboi Zidane is definitely up for. Alas Dagger isn’t quite up for it, and at least it’s only a valid marriage on the Outer Continent.

It does help Zidane conquer his fuckboi ways though, and eventually he learns to maybe not take marriages like this so seriously.

The marriage between Quina and Vivi though is legit canon and I will fight anyone who disagrees.

Rally-ho!

Want more weddings? Watch our video on the best weddings in games:

That’s all the weddings we’ve got time for. Have we missed your favourite in-game wedding? Hit us up in the comments below!

Paradox Games – What GMG Recommends

The Paradox sale is in full swing in support of PDXCON right now, but we wanted to recommend to you our favourite Paradox franchises. They all offer an excellent strategy experience, but carry a different flavour whether it be sci-fi, fantasy, cities or RPG. Read on to see what we think of each, and if you like the sound of it, have a look at the sales page.

Stellaris

If you ever want to build an empire in space, Stellaris is your game. Starting out with just one planet and a space station, truly eXplore, eXpand, eXterminate and eXploit across the stars, and then build a Dyson Sphere around one of them to harness bonkers amounts of energy. The high points of Stellaris are numerous: the building of epic space projects like the aforementioned Dyson Sphere or a whole ring-station around a planet, running into ancient, incredibly powerful alien empires that want to put you in a zoo, or customising your civilisation around your favourite sci-fi race. And yes, those races can be hive-mind alien insects that utilise and eat slaves. There’s really no idea too small.

Cities: Skylines

Do you want to build a city, right down to the placement of the districts, the infrastructure and the anti-sewage overflow systems? Cities: Skylines is the game for you. I’ll let one of our Green Team explain via video just how special it really is:

Age of Wonders III

If you’ve ever played a game like Civilisation and thought “this is nice, but I also really liked Heroes of Might and Magic”, then welcome to Age of Wonders III! Create a Hero that has a class like Rogue, Warlord or Archdruid, and then select a race to align yourself with. The standard fantasy humans, elves, dwarves, draconians are all here, but your hero will give them a distinct flavour apart from the norm, meaning no 2 playthroughs will be quite the same. Use your hero and units to fight turn-based battles and raid the map, which are usually packed with events, treasure and enemies. Honestly, this is as close as you can get to Heroes of Might and Magic without, you know, playing Heroes of Might and Magic.

Pillars of Eternity

We all really like Pillars of Eternity here. Writing about it in a different article, we said this about the grandfather of new cRPGs:

PoE has been largely credited for instigating this new enthusiasm for the world of cRPGs. Kickstarted way back in 2012, ‘Project Eternity’ harnessed one of the strongest natural forces known to man, nerd nostalgia, to fuel its development and eventual release. It took the text-based dialogue and story-telling, the painted scenery and levels, and the party-based adventuring of cRPGs of old and brought in into the 21st century.

Anyone who’d played Dragon Age would be perfectly happy here, albeit maybe underwhelmed by the endless text from those spirits you could find (which turned out to be backer rewards and completely unimportant to the main story – who knew?). This was a spiritual successor to Baldur’s Gate, almost painfully so.

Crusader Kings II

Otherwise known as the Cersei Lannister Simulator, plot, sabotage, and marry your way to ultimate rulership for your chosen dynasty. Probably the most non-lethal of all the games listed here, if you don’t count all the characters you’ll no doubt want to murder with a medieval turnip spoon in a tavern outhouse. Every campaign you play will generate some sort of strange narrative that will surprise each time, and you’ll be swapping sagas of your family history with your friends, telling them about how your king wanted to kill his wife but couldn’t so she killed him instead. Basically if you like that mobile game Reigns, this is that but way way more in depth. There’s also a Game of Thrones mod, just saying.

Can Videogames Help With Mental Health?

There’s a continuous discussion in the media about videogames and whether or not they’re a benefit or a hazard for people. Some would argue that videogames cause violence and exacerbate issues such as ADHD, however as continuous research has shown, these claims are often baseless.

However, one of the questions that hasn’t had much research put into it, is the question of whether or not videogames can be a net benefit for the player.

As it’s Mental Health Awareness week, we wanted to look into some cases where videogames have been used in ways to help people who experience issues with their mental health.

Note: This article is meant to highlight some of the positive experiences people who struggle with their mental health have had with videogames. Videogames are not a replacement for help from a trained medical professional.

Veterans and Videogames

One thing that is repeatedly highlighted is the alleged propensity for violent acts that videogames inspire, however, for those people who suffer after experiencing violence they have been found to be a boon. Veterans who experience issues adapting back to society have found in same cases that videogames can provide a stability to their lives whilst they work through issues. Videogames provide a safe world for some veterans, one where they understand the rules and where they can escape to when life itself is too much.

In addition to that, the structure and rules that games set in multiplayer environments mean that some veterans who find social interactions hard can use multiplayer to help them with social interactions. With objectives and set rules and match times, it means that these veterans who struggle so hard to deal with other people generally, can use this semi-rigid structure to provide talking points, to provide ways to communicate with each other, and to reach out to other human beings.

PTSD is an affliction that means you can end up stuck in the past, in a traumatic event. Your reactions can become fixed, your heart races, you sweat, you feel that fight-or-flight response to things that shouldn’t trigger that. Videogames have been shown to help treat PTSD for some sufferers, by providing a calming environment that is also engaging enough to draw attention away from the object or event.

Videogames, whilst not being a ‘cure’, can definitely help provide a stable place for PTSD sufferers or Veterans to explore whilst working on rejoining society.

Read more: How Video Games Are Helping Young Veterans Cope

Heart Rate Game That Helps You Take Control

Champions of the Shengha by BfB Labs is a game that mixes together a few different genres, but the most important thing is that it also monitors your heart rate. Through a biofeedback patch, the game actively tries to stress you out. It’s frenetic, involving drawing cards, playing them, and trying to keep your cool throughout. It doesn’t let up and it forces you to make snap judgements as your pulse skyrockets.

By monitoring your heart rate and by giving feedback about it, you’re encourage to keep your pulse and heart rate low. This has an effect on cognition as well, as by keeping yourself calm in body you’ll be calmer in mind as well. Panic and adrenaline sets in when your pulse is goes higher, and whilst the game provokes that it also has feedback loops that aim to try and help you control your breathing and your pulse.

The creators talk about how Champsion of the Shengha helps create a sense of staying calm under pressure, something that we all could usually use some help with, and especially if you struggle under pressure could be a way to train yourself in a safe environment.

Read more: Behind the tech of BfB Labs biofeedback card battler Champions of the Shengha

How Gaming Has Helped Me

This is more anecdotal rather than science led, but I would like to take a moment at the end of this article to talk about the times that gaming has helped me and my mental health.

I struggle with depression and self esteem issues, and I often find myself easily stressed and worried about things I can either not control, or things I’ve blown out of proportion.

Gaming for me is a refuge from both the world and from my own feelings. When I’m feeling hopeless or depressed, or if I’m stuck in a spiral of hating myself or worrying about life, games are always there and they always provide a space for me to escape into.

There’s a lot to be said for a distraction from your problems. Obviously problems still need to be dealt with, but you can’t spend every moment of every day worrying about your problems, especially when your problem is yourself. Videogames, like other forms of entertainment, give you an outlet, a taste of escapism. But more than that, they are actively engaging and can lead you into being more wholly subsumed by them whilst you’re playing. A film is engaging, a book is engaging, but nothing compares to a game for simply giving you something actively distracting.

It’s meant that, when I’ve been at my worst and I’ve struggled to do even basic tasks, videogames have got me through those periods. A lot of official advice is always ‘go for a walk’ and ‘do some exercise’ or ‘eat something healthy’, but frankly none of that has ever worked for me because when I’ve been feeling terrible, I’ve been unable to gather the energy to do any of those things. Videogames on the other hand require a low energy investment,  but have a high ceiling for pulling you in and distracting you.

I can’t say videogames have cured me or anything like that, therapy and medication have helped me put myself back together. But I can’t underestimate how much videogames have helped, and how much they’ve kept me together in my darkest periods.

Mental Health Awareness Week runs between the 14th-20th of May, and is hosted by the Mental Health Foundation.

Worlds Adrift Launches People Into the Sky

Worlds Adrift, the sandbox MMO from Bossa Studios, is firing people into the sky to celebrate the launch of the game into Early Access.

Well, ‘firing’ is a bit of a strong term. They’ll be hoisting people up 150ft into the air on a specially made skyship, all to play a bit of Worlds Adrift. Here’s a video where the Bossa team talk a little about about the real life skyship they’ve put together:

I don’t know about you, but that sounds absolutely terrifying. But I’m a person who struggles with standing on a chair, so maybe being hoisted into the sky isn’t the best idea for me. But fear not, we’ll have eyes on the ground (or an eye in the sky) in the form of Kayley, who’ll be attending the event on our behalf to brave the skies all for you. Our hero.

If you want to keep up with our sky adventures, check out our Instagram during the afternoon of the 17th of May. But if you miss it, hop along to our Youtube channel as we’ll be putting up some highlights there.

If you want a little look at what the skyship might look like, Bossa have released some concept art showing off the plan for the ship:

The clouds being under the ship don’t exactly fill me with confidence. Just as well I’m not going near it!

The Launch Event will be happening in London above the Chelsea College of Arts, and you’ll be able to watch it all on the Bossa Studios Twitch if you can’t make it down, between 12pm and 6pm BST on May the 17th:

Worlds Adrift is moving into Early Access on the 17th of May, and you can buy it from us for a launch discount of 10% right here. You can also watch the launch trailer for the sky-bound MMO here:

Green Man Gaming’s 8th Birthday – Best Games 2010-18

Green Man Gaming is 8 years old, and that means one thing (other than sales), it means looking back at the last eight years and remembering the absolute best of gaming since 2010.

So let us use the magic of memories to travel back in time to the distant days of 2010, and look at the 8 best games, one from each year.

2010: StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty

StarCraft II hit back onto the scene in 2010 with the first in the new StarCraft trilogy, Wings of Liberty explored the Terran side of events in the Koprulu Sector, years after the Zerg had invaded and Sarah Kerrigan had gone a bit wrong. StarCraft II shows just how much the team at Blizzard have learned about game design in the years inbetween StarCrafts, as it’s a finely crafted single player where each level is basically a minigame in itself, and the multiplayer is fast, frenetic, and as tactical as ever. It’s a masterpiece of RTS design; Blizzard is never better than when they’re RTSing.

2011: Batman: Arkham City

Batman: Arkham Asylum surprised everyone by being an amazing game, something rare for comic games (anyone remember Superman 64 or Spider-Man 2 on PC?). Arkham City is that even rarer thing, a sequel that improves on almost everything whilst also increasing the scope. Set in a section of Gotham which has been given over to be a giant open-air prison, it’s a game that directly puts you in the boots of Batman, and makes you feel more Batmanny than anything else. Swooping over the city, brooding on a gargoyle, beating up some thugs, investigating a murder, it’s all there and it’s all Batman to the max. It’s an astounding achievement, and a game that holds up perfectly even now, seven years on.

2012: Mass Effect 3

Let’s ignore the ending, because frankly it has some issues. The rest of the game though is an absolute riot, being at the same time a roaring rampage of revenge against those damnable reapers, and also being heavy on some of the most emotional and wonderful moments seen in videogames. Anyone who’s a fan of Thane, Garrus, Legion, Tali, Grunt, or Mordin, will have perfect endings to all their stories. Even if those endings are utterly heart-wrenching and terribly sad at times. Whilst there’s some annoyances to be had with some story moments, the game as a whole is a great sendoff to one of the best scifi series of all time. Mass Effect 3 even has great multiplayer, and no-one expected that.

2013: The Last of Us

We all knew Naughty Dog had it in them to mix action and adventure, but could they mix action, stealth, and emotions? Turns out in The Last of Us, they more than ‘can’, they absolutely excel in it. From the explosive and heartbreaking intro to the controversial end, The Last of Us never lets up on taking your feelings and playing with them. Set over the course of a year, Joel begins his journey resenting Ellie, accepting Ellie, and eventually protecting and loving Ellie, and it’s bittersweet and sad and beautiful throughout. The Last of Us is that rare thing, a cinematic game that does cinema better, and we’re blessed to have got to play it.

2014: Bayonetta 2

Platinum know how to do many things, but the thing they’re absolutely best at is third person action combo games. Bayonetta was the game that never stopped escalating, and Bayonetta 2 is that but…more. With a lot of wit, a lot of humour, and some brilliantly controlled precision combo action, Bayonetta 2 is one of the best action games ever made. It’s just such a shame that it only ever came to the Wii U, but we hold out hope that one day it’ll be slapped onto PC and we can stuck into beating the crap out of some…everything.

2015: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

Honestly there’s nothing much more you can say about The Witcher 3 that hasn’t been already said, everyone’s talking about it still, even three years later. After two excellent but troubled games, CD Projekt Red finally hit it out of the park with The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. With a stunning open world and quests that always subvert your expectations, there’s so much to The Witcher 3 that it feels like the game that never stops giving. From the bustling city of Novigrad to the Skellige archipelago, it’s just a beautiful and wonderful place to spend your time in. Before you kill a load of monsters and then have a drink in the local tavern, of course.

2016: Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End

Probably the most affectionate send-off a character has ever had, Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End is a long goodbye to one of the last decade’s best characters; Nathan Drake. It’s not only a great action game filled with engaging combat, puzzles that actually require some thought, and the best set pieces since, well, Uncharted 3, it’s also a deconstruction of what it means to be a rogueish adventurer and what that means once the adventure stops. With a huge and great cast of voices and a plot that takes Drake on a journey to find out who he really wants to be, it’s again, something to make you have a little cry when the credits roll.

2017: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

After the Wii U, people were happy to call time for Nintendo. ‘They’ll never top their former success’ people said, ‘it’s all over for Nintendo’, but then the Switch came out and the games are astounding, and there’s none more astounding than The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Taking a cue from open world RPG design, it’s a true sandbox with huge breadth of possibilities in it. Everything is meticulously modelled from the terrain to the weather to the interactions of enemies, meaning it’s left up to the player to experiment and see what they can make work. The game is constantly surprising in what it lets you do and what interactions work, giving you true freedom in a way that few games attempt, let along accomplish.

2018: God of War (So far)

OK so the year’s only five months old, but a strong contender for the game of 2018 is God of War. Again, it’s a game that far exceeded expectations. Seeing some of it at E3 the common consensus that it was going to be little more than The Last of Us: Greece. It’s blown everyone out of the water with how its combat is impactful and feels utterly brutal,  the interactions with the world and how the combat fits into that, and the story itself being poignant and showing another side to Kratos. A side we didn’t expect. It’s hit the world with incredible reviews, and is looking like an absolute classic. Also you get to beat up a load of Norse Gods, which frankly is about time.

So those are what we think are the best games of the last eight years, let us know in the comments below if you agree or disagree with these picks. Also join in the party over on our 8th Birthday Sale and celebrate with us.

Everything You Need To Know About Jurassic World Evolution

Jurassic World Evolution is fast approaching and as the next game by rollercoaster and space wizards Frontier it aims to do for dinosaurs what Frontier did for rides. If you know anything about Frontier, you know that they do rollercoaster and theme park games very well, so it seems almost too good a fit to give them the holy grail of videogames: dinosaurs. Here’s what you need to know about the game before it comes out:

This information will be updated as more details are released.

Release Date

Jurassic World Evolution is coming to PS4, Xbox One, and PC on June 12.

System Requirements

Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
OS: Windows 7 (SP1+)/8.1/10 64bit
Processor: Intel i5-2300/AMD FX-4300
Memory: 8 GB RAM
Graphics: nVidia GTX 650 (2GB) /AMD Radeon 7850 (2GB)
DirectX: Version 11
Storage: 8 GB available space
Additional Notes: Minimum specifications may change during development.

Recommended Specifications have not been released at this time.

Build your Park

Jurassic World Evolution is a park building simulator where your goal is to build and maintain a successful Jurassic World park. Set across several islands, you’ll be building a huge park to entice, enrapture, entertain, and hopefully not engorge your dinosaurs on park visitors. The game features scenery alteration tools so it’s possible to make your park the way you want it. Previous islands can even be revisited and rebuilt, so it’s possible to change and evolve your park across the islands as you discover new dinosaurs, build new buildings, and further your dino-research.

More information about the game itself can be seen in the Develop Diaries released by Frontier, the first of which can be seen here:

Build a Dino

Building your park isn’t where the simulation ends, you have to create dinosaurs too. Much like the original Jurassic Park you don’t have the full DNA strands to be able to resurrect these titans, so you’re forced to splice in DNA from current creatures, like frogs or lions to fill the gaps. This has effects on the dinosaurs which you create, meaning some may be more docile, be more aggressive, or find ways to breed uncontrollably. You will also need to gather the initial DNA by exploring real world dig sites around the world to discover pre-historic amber for your laboratories.

Dinosaurs confirmed so far are:

  • Tyrannosaurus rex
  • Velociraptor antirrhopus / mongoliensis
  • Triceratops horridus
  • Stegosaurus stenops
  • Ankylosaurus magniventrus
  • Brachiosaurus altithorax
  • Camarasaurus supremus
  • Apatosaurus ajax
  • Dilophosaurus wetherilli
  • Ceratosaurus nasicornis
  • Deinonychus antirrhopus
  • Parasaurolophus walkeri
  • Edmontosaurus regalis
  • Chasmosaurus russeli
  • Gallimimus bullatus

You may also be pressured to create dinosaurs for military and security purposes, which leads us on to:

Missions

Three departments offer you missions throughout the game, Security, Science, and Entertainment. They are optional, but each department offers rewards that makes them enticing. They also change the way you play, for example the Security department may demand more violent dinosaurs, whereas the Science department may ask you to spend time and money on developing serums and vaccines.

Jeff Goldblum

Yes, Jeff Goldblum is back as Dr. Ian Malcolm, and he has a few wry things to say on the nature of tempting fate as you bioengineer your way to your own Jurassic World.

Jurassic World Evolution is currently scheduled for a June 12 release, and we’ll be updating this article with all the dinosaur information we can get right up to release.

Is Lost in Space just Lost, In Space?

The Robinsons are back and they’re just as lost as ever. Netflix has rebooted Lost in Space for the second time, throwing out the silver spandex and the shuffling robot for explosions, aliens, and slick drama.

The original Lost in Space was made at a time before humanity let slip the bonds of gravity and touched the face of God. The 60s were characterised by many political turmoils, but over it all hung the space race between America and Russia. It’s no surprise then that the original Lost in Space, before all the campy fun began, started off with a political bang. Much like Star Trek was, Lost in Space was a product of its time so it’s unsurprising that the Russo-phobia of the day made its way in via Doctor Smith, who in the original worked for a ‘rival nation’ and who sabotaged the Jupiter One as it made its way into space.

The new Lost in Space doesn’t have that context for itself, it’s a show about being well, Lost in Space, but that’s about it. It manages neither the depth of having a political context, nor the frivolity and fun of the original.

Spoilers below this point, so please if you haven’t watched the programme, close this page now.

Lost in Space 2018 suffers deeply from Netflix syndrome which you’ll be very familiar with if you’ve watched any of the recent Marvel shows. There’s nothing in the way of a compelling antagonist and the whole thing, despite being a truncated ten episodes, outstays its welcome by at least a couple of hours.

Doctor Smith in the reboot has moved from diabolical yet cowardly villain (with an eventual heart of gold) to a conflicted career criminal who pounces upon any weakness like a circling vulture. Played ably by Parker Posey this character is just too unbalanced to be a credible threat to the crew, and only by the family Robinson being incredibly dim does she wreak any particular antagonism.

The Robinson family is remarkable for being entire unlikeable and whose attitude to being on an alien planet is only matched by the crew of the Prometheus. Throughout the series the only peril that really occurs comes from their own actions or inactions, always at the wrong time. It’s almost a farce, laugh along as the Robinsons drive too fast down a hill into a tar pit, clutch your sides as they blast into space for…no reason, chuckle as they destroy everyone’s fuel to save The Worst Characters’ life.

Really the only danger in space is being anywhere near the family Robinson, if you see them coming, space-run for your life.

Overall the peril that they and the other colonists (another revision from the original series) face tends to be very low-grade, it’s only near the end of the series does actually leaving the planet become a priority; the rest of the series proceeds with the pace of treacle trickling down a spoon.

The robot’s had another reinvention, coming in the form of an alien many-legged creature which reforms itself into a much more humanoid looking android. This robot also suffers in the reboot, being utterly controlled by Will Robinson at the start, to being rebooted into an evil version by Dr Smith later on. Neither version is particularly compelling, looking more like the 90s live-action Guyver rather than an invention from an alien mind.

The aliens tie into the meta-story, because (as always seems to be the way now) the story you get in Lost in Space isn’t the one on the surface. There’s a government conspiracy! Aliens who are evil, but actually wronged! Stolen technology! And none of it really matters, it’s just window dressing on ten hours of watching idiots make idiot decisions on planet idiot.

With many colonists being stranded on this planet rather than just the family, multiple flashbacks to characters’ pasts that don’t illuminate anything of value, and an overarching plot that aims for mystery where there is none, Lost in Space feels much more like Lost at its worst, first half of season 3 Lost. If you know Lost, you’ll know that’s some bad Lost right there.

Lost in Space is something to be endured rather than enjoyed, with the only glimmer of light being in the last few seconds where it almost dares to morph into a more interesting tv programme, only to be truncated by end credits. It feels like a missed opportunity as the Lost in Space idea is something compelling, but one that here has no life and no energy to it. Lost in Space is a turgid mess, and although pretty and well acted, misses its potential considerably.

Lost in Space is available to watch on Netflix, right now.

7 Best Monsters in D&D

Dungeons and Dragons has been going for years and years, and so has the need for newer and more deadlier monsters. But, despite players memorising monster stats and no longer feeling that awe or disgust at the sight of the latest Gygaxian monstrosity, there are staples of the setting that have never gotten old. In fact they’ve been improved, built upon and entire lore written about in books like Volo’s Guide to Monsters. The world of monsters has never been more interesting.

Given that, here’s the 7 best monsters according to me, and why you should throw them at your players.

Goblins


Ohh the goblins, or Gerblins if you prefer. These guys have been a staple of the player character level 1-4 zones for decades. More powerful and organised than Kobolds, and with more variation in their ranks, no player gets sick of gerblins. And if they do, stick in a goblin shaman, a few armoured Hobgoblins and even a Bugbear to lead them, i.e. knock their heads together.

Gerblins love to hide in caves, abandoned temples, and launch raids against civilisation and their peoples travelling along roads, making them perfect for a first enemy. They can shoot shortbows and carry shields, scimitars or spears. This gives them melee 1d8 damage, optional ranged attacks of 1d8 damage, and an AC of 15. They’re no pushovers and may score some kills on an adventuring party, especially if they roll a critical hit, followed by you the DM apologising profusely.

Gnolls


Gnolls are just fascinating creatures. They come in warbands that ravage the land, so they can be introduced at any time during your campaign. They leave utter carnage behind them, and their victims are feasted upon by hyenas, before becoming so swollen that more Gnolls burst out of them. Each warband has a weird tick and shamanistic culture, which can add to the creepy, grim nature of these beasts. Drums, chattering teeth or just blood-curdling laughter spreads the fear of the Gnoll before you see them.

There are several types of Gnolls too. Starting at the lowly zombie gnolls, and going up to the more elite beserking types, they’ve also got magic casters and of course Giant Hyenas and other predatory creatures that follow in a warband’s wake. A Gnoll warband would be a great enemy to throw at a party around level 5 and above.

Swarm of Rats


They may not be the most scary, threatening or awe-inspiring. They may not be what the players want to test their prowess against in a game called Dungeons and Dragons, but trust me, the swarm is deadly.

Using their pack instincts ability, these rats get advantage to hit when near another one. Start surrounding the party and you can get 6 rats getting re-rolls, with a good chance to hit and a decent amount of damage. A couple of bites could fell a weaker character like a wizard, so it’ll make the party panic and realise they have to protect their weaker members and positioning is actually a thing.

Owlbear


This guy is one of my favourites. Why? Look at him! It’s a bear with an owl’s head!

If you want to laugh, cringe and feel sick all at the same time, check out the original monsters manual with all the early ‘combine 2 or more animals/things together to create monsters’ monsters from the 70s and mind of Gary Gygax. Not as majestic or epic as the griffin or the sphinx, but Gary gave it a go. And the Owlbear I think stands with those ancient, emblematic creatures.

Mechanically it’s a fairly straightforward beast, with 2 attacks at 2d8 and 1d10 damage, and not really that much HP. But damn it’s cool, and coming across one in the forest or having one wander into the party’s camp because they didn’t set watch is a good way to teach players the dangers and strangeness of the wilderness. Imagine that scene in The Revenant except the bear has a beak. Nightmare fuel.

Black Pudding


The Black Pudding belongs to the Ooze family. Sentient oozes are bizarre creatures that love to hide in awkward spots in nice dark dungeons, follow adventurers and then absorb them into their jelly-like bodies. Just wait for one of your players to try hitting it with a sword, and watch it split into two oozes! It slowly, relentlessly follows the party and some even do poison damage, or acid damage. If it doesn’t absorb your fighter’s sword on a roll of 5 or less, it’s slowly destroying your paladin’s shield until it’s useless. It even dissolves armour! Fighting an ooze is a ticking clock before the whole party is naked, and finally absorbed into the gelatinous flesh forever. It’s also a Roomba for dungeons!

Beholder


Now we’re getting to the really deadly stuff. Beholders are floating balls with one massive eye and a even more massive maw of gnashing teeth. They also have 10 eye stalks that mean they literally have eyes in the back of their heads, but they can also fire 10 different magical rays at their foes. They can stun, freeze, paralyse, fear, and do damage all at once to varying members of the party as it sees fit. And you don’t have to nerf your own strategy like you would if you were playing stupider races, a Beholder will know who to shoot at and when – they’re immensely clever. Time to let loose like a magical fleshy disco ball of pain.

Dragons


And of course, it wouldn’t be DnD without the second D. Most of the time, dragons are so powerful that they prove to be the most deadly social encounters the players will face, let alone combat encounters. Dragons come in 2 forms: metallic and chromatic. Metallic dragons like bronze, copper, silver, and gold are actually good guys who want to improve the world. The chromatic dragons like red, blue, green, are all nasty bastards who want to twist and destroy.

To give you an idea of what a dragon encounter is like, take the 5th edition starter adventure’s encounter with a Young Green Dragon. This is not even a fully grown dragon, and a party of 5 adventurers at level 4-5 would struggle to take it down. If you encounter it at an even lower level or with less party members, you’re dead. This young dragon won’t open fire though straightaway, green dragons love to manipulate and create slaves made up of lesser races, especially elves. If your players need to learn that they can’t take on every creature they meet, or that actually there are beings that can run rings around them socially, let them meet a dragon.

Conan Exiles: everything you need to know for launch

If you like your games epic, the chances are that you’re properly pumped about the imminent release of Conan Exiles. Funcom’s open-world survival game, set in the universe of the much-loved Conan the Barbarian, as defined by the books of Robert E Howard and once portrayed on celluloid by Arnold Schwarzenegger, is poised to exit its Early Access period (which has lasted more than a year) and seek fame and fortune in the real world. If ever a game promises to be epic, Conan Exiles is it. 

Story-wise, Conan Exiles’ watchword is definitely epic – it kicks off with your character nailed to a cross, exiled to a harsh world which takes in deserts, icy regions and every form of environment in between. Luckily, Conan himself is at hand to cut you down and rescue you, but from then on, you’re on your own, and it’s up to you to find a way to first survive and then prosper in an unforgiving and harsh world.

Conan Exiles is also epic in its sheer scope. It takes place in a vast and varied environment, replete with dungeons. It involves combat, farming, castle and city-building, sieges, dungeoneering, establishing a religion (and taking on other religions), enslaving bandits to learn new skills, boss-battles and full-on wars. It lets you take on other players in PvP, or forge alliances with them to prosper in PvE gameplay. Or you can choose to play out your own story in splendid isolation on your very own server.

Emerging triumphantly from Early Access

 

It’s fair to say that there aren’t many games which spend over a year in Early Access – but we’ll all be thankful that with Conan Exiles, developer Funcom chose to take such an unconventional approach. That’s because, during that period which stretched back to January 2017 on Steam and August 2017 on Xbox One, Conan Exiles has been altered and improved beyond all recognition. So let’s examine what, precisely, you can expect from the game as it prepares to ship on PC, Xbox One and PlayStation 4.

Combat system

 

Since Conan Exiles entered its Early Access period, Funcom has pretty much ripped out the combat system and started again from scratch (dedicating vast resources to the process). The result is deeply satisfying: each weapon (running from daggers up to hammers and greatswords) has its own attacks and animations, and those attacks include the likes of lunges, sweeps, cleaves, slashes and dashes. Plus there are light and heavy attacks that can be chained, to culminate in spectacular finishing moves. Combat-wise, Conan Exiles stands comparison with the highest-budget action-RPGs.

A huge game-world

 

In Conan Exiles, your journey begins in an inhospitable desert called the Exiled Lands. When the game entered Early Access, that was the only environment it boasted, but it was soon augmented by a wintry land entitled the Frozen North. Conan Exiles’ emergence from Early Access will add two new areas beyond The Frozen North: The Volcano and The Swamp.

The volcano is the first area you’re likely to encounter, as it sits quite conspicuously above the Frozen North, with rivers of lava running down its slopes. Inside the volcano, you will find ruins and the Well of Skelos, from which an ominous light emanates. There, you can use a forge to create obsidian weapons. The volcano’s dungeon is particularly challenging, having been balanced for max-level characters. 

To the east lies the swamp, replete with deep jungles, miasmic marshes and a sunny coastline which may look idyllic but is populated by pirates. The swamp offers a whole new set of monsters along with a raft of places to explore, including the Pagoda of Boundless Lusts and Jamilia’s Liberty, a beached ship which has become the home of the Black Hand pirates.

Elsewhere in the swamp, you’ll find the Forgotten City of Xel-ha – the ruins of an ancient Lemurian city – and the Palace of the Witch Queen dungeon. It’s even possible to build an entire city in the swamp’s giant trees, and the whole area has been designed for level 20 to 40 characters.

Beware the Purge

 

Another new feature Funcom has added to Conan Exiles, which greatly increases the scope of its gameplay, is the Purge. Once you start establishing an empire by building settlements and cities, the Purge will begin to kick in periodically. When the Purge occurs, you will find yourself under attack from the likes of frost giants, locusts, the undead, relic hunters, gorillas or countless other types of enemies: the type of Purge you get depends on where you have built your settlement.

Only the southernmost areas of The Exiled Lands – that is, the first areas you explore – are immune from the ravages of the Purge, so at least your first faltering attempts to create defensible settlements won’t have to contend with that. But the longer you play, the more you build and the more enemies you kill, the quicker your Purge meter will fill up. Luckily, you get plenty of warning of an incoming Purge, and successfully defending against a Purge can yield all manner of legendary weaponry and loot. 

The Purge also offers an illustration of how configurable Conan Exiles is: if you’re playing in single-player or on a private server, you can turn the Purge off, or can define the intensity of Purges by tweaking settings like strength, duration and the number of waves.

Perks, gear and warpaint

 

During the Early Access period, Funcom also revamped Conan Exiles’ attributes system, so that for every ten increases in each attribute, you get a perk that unlocks a special ability. For example, getting 50 points in the Agility attribute unlocks a double-jump, and amassing 40 points in Strength means your heavy attacks will do 25 per cent more damage.

Armour also plays into the attribute system – collecting exotic armour sets from the various cultures will increase your attributes and help you earn your perks quicker. And Funcom has introduced the concept of warpaint, which also adds to whatever attribute you have selected: you can only wear one warpaint at a time, but warpaint provides a handy means of getting that most-wanted perk more quickly.

Gear-wise, Funcom has added a huge amount to Conan Exiles during its Early Access period. Legendary weapons with unique bonuses abound, and the best way to get hold of those is via the game’s world boss system, which lets you take on massive bosses and reap the rewards in loot.

Healing and farming

 

Cementing its reputation as a no-compromise game, Funcom has tweaked Conan Exiles so that when you play it, you no longer heal over time, so eating food and drinking potions is very important. Funcom introduced farming to the game during Early Access, in order to make resource-gathering easier.

Other new additions for launch

 

Conan Exiles’ launch will see a new religion added to the game, centred on Derketo, who is the goddess of both fertility and death. Derketo’s giant avatar is definitely a sight to behold: she’s half beautiful woman and half rotting corpse. Funcom also added a fast-travel system to the game, in acknowledgement of the huge expansion of the map. For a general overview of what Funcom added for launch, you might want to peruse this blogpost. 

The server situation

 

Because of Conan Exiles’ sheer ambition – offering support for PvE and PvP, as well as the chance for players to create their own custom servers – its server situation is pretty complex. Luckily, Funcom has chosen to explain it in this blogpost.

The key pieces of server-related information are that the full launch servers will go live on 12.00pm UK time on May 8. There will be 225 servers at launch, across several regions. And three types of servers will be available to players, namely:

  • PvP servers: on those, building damage will be limited to prime-time, which is 5pm to 11pm local time depending on where the server is based.
  • PvE: Only creatures and NPCs can harm you if you’re playing on a PvE server: thralls won’t attack players, and players can’t attack thralls.
  • PvE Conflict: on a PvE Conflict server, you will only be able to damage other players during the 5pm to 11pm prime-time period, and building damage will be permanently turned off. Initially, PvE Conflict servers will only be available on PC, and Funcom says it will monitor their popularity before deciding whether to roll them out for PS4 and Xbox One.

Hopefully, that should help you to prepare for immersing yourself in the irresistible world of Conan Exiles. May your exile prove to be an epic and long-lasting adventure.

Steam Privacy Setting Changes: Linking Your Public Account

Recently, Steam changed all users’ default privacy settings to private. We think improved privacy standards are a good thing but this means that some features on your Green Man Gaming account will no longer work unless you change your settings.

If you would like to continue receiving all the great benefits of linked Steam and Green Man Gaming accounts, you must change your Steam profile’s privacy settings to public. Of course, if you haven’t linked your Steam account with Green Man Gaming already, you’ll need to do that too. All the links below.

-> Update my steam settings

-> Link my Steam account with Green Man Gaming

If you want to see what your status is now on Green Man Gaming, visit your profile.

Which cRPG Is Right For You?

Confession time: I haven’t actually completed a cRPG, let alone any on this list. However! Each cRPG carries with it a specific atmosphere and reputation within the gaming world. Names like Baldur’s Gate carry huge weight and represent the grandfather of the RPG genre, whereas games like Tyranny and the upcoming Disco Elysium mark a specific jolt into new mechanics that turn the cRPG formula on it’s head.

If you want to know which one is right for you, read on.

Pillars of Eternity

PoE has been largely credited for instigating this new enthusiasm for the world of cRPGs. Kickstarted way back in 2012, ‘Project Eternity’ harnessed one of the strongest natural forces known to man, nerd nostalgia, to fuel its development and eventual release. It took the text-based dialogue and story-telling, the painted scenery and levels, and the party-based adventuring of cRPGs of old and brought in into the 21st century.

Anyone who’d played Dragon Age would be perfectly happy here, albeit maybe underwhelmed by the endless text from those spirits you could find (which turned out to be backer rewards and completely unimportant to the main story – who knew?). This was a spiritual successor to Baldur’s Gate, almost painfully so. The cRPG genre wouldn’t see anything more than a replication of the past until….

Tyranny

In 2016 Tyranny burst into our lives with its amazing contrasting colours and even more amazing contrasting factions in it’s world. Instead of starting you as a level 1 fighter or rogue killing giant rats for Copper Pieces in the local tavern basement (every time), Tyranny gives you the role of mouthpiece to the most powerful being in the land. The big bad army has already swept across the world, and it’s two armies are too busy bickering to finish off the last resistance. Your job is to get them to fall in line, otherwise you’ll destroy them both. How’s that for a new way to start an RPG?

Tyranny is more streamlined than PoE, and introduces more dualistic features like having a fear or respect rating for each companion. It doesn’t matter if they like or hate you, they’ll get more powerful in different ways. You’re still ‘The Chosen One’, but for once you’re not a farm-boy.

Fallout 1

Fallout is obviously a massive IP right now, and there aren’t many gamers who don’t know of it, or haven’t played one of the newer games like Fallout 3, 4 or New Vegas. However I wonder if they’ve ever gone back to the origins of the series and tried Fallout 1? Here’s our own Alex Mchugh on why you should play it:

“This is it, the one that started it all (sit down, Wasteland). Described by one PC gaming magazine as ‘Doncaster on a night out’, Fallout laid down THE formula for post-apocalyptic role playing games, and we haven’t looked back as a species since. It’s sterner in tone to any of the later entries, but it does find time for some fun. It introduces much of what became staples of the Fallout series, the Vaults, Dogmeat, The Brotherhood of Steel, Mutants, Deathclaws.

It’s got a sense of sadness to it, when you visit locations like The Glow or see The Boneyard, you get the real sense that this was a world, and it’s no longer anywhere worth living.

Featuring the creepiest antagonist in anything, ever, and the most bittersweet ending known to videogames, Fallout’s ace, and you should play it.”

Torment: Tides of Numenera

If you’ve ever tried explaining the universe of Warhammer 40,000 and thought that was hard, try explaining the Numenera universe. In 40k you have about 38,000 years to fill in, with only 30,000AD and 40,000AD being that important. In Numenera, it’s ONE BILLION YEARS IN THE FUTURE. Many civilisations have risen to be all-powerful, and then turned to dust one after the other. In Numenera the world is built upon these layers of alien cultures and technologies that no-one understands, or will ever be able to again.

Torment takes the engine from Pillars of Eternity, but introduces strange tech and even stranger companions. It also introduces the option to talk your way out of situations and play a fairly combat-less game. This is the spiritual successor to Planescape: Torment in the same way PoE is to Baldur’s Gate. Play this to scratch that sci-fi itch.

Baldur’s Gate Enhanced Edition

We’ve talked a lot about Baldur’s Gate and the successors to Baldur’s Gate, and Baldur’s Gate’s mechanics and Baldur’s Gate’s perfect Sunday, so why don’t you just go ahead and play it? An enhanced edition was released so the game runs well on modern systems, and you can jump right in and see where it all began. That’s if you can navigate the UI.

Disco Elysium

Coming out sometime soon, Disco Elysium turns the cRPG on it’s head with brand new mechanics. Here’s our lovely Alex Mchugh once again on Disco Elysium (coming to think of it, he should’ve written this article):

“Disco Elysium (formerly No Truce with the Furies) is a semi-futuristic/fantasy alternate-world neo-noir RPG about ideas and about solving crimes. It’s a game where your character’s mind is as important as your character’s actions, it’s a game where your character’s perception of events is called into question throughout, and it’s a game that feels fresh and exciting in a way that RPGs haven’t for a while.

The way your character talks to people is up to you, your memory is one huge hole and how that plays out is your choice. Do you want to bluff your way through, rely on info from others to fill in the gaps, or are you going to be straight up and admit to everyone that there’s a gap where your past used to be?

This is definitely a game about conversation and exploration. One of the issues the developers have had with other RPGs is that they tend to be combat heavy, even the lauded Planescape: Torment has plenty of frankly-average combat padding out its hours. Disco Elysium instead aims to be a game about events, whilst people can die and you can be in danger, they’re tied to crescendos in the plot and in the narrative.”

Sounds good, thanks Alex!

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire

The sequel to the spiritual successor is coming soon – this month in fact! After kicking off the new generation of cRPGs, PoE is returning to take centre stage. This time it introduces new classes, races, the ability to multi-class and ship combat! The ship is really your castle, and will be customizable, upgradable, and you’ll recruit your crew to add unique benefits and skills to your floating fortress. You’ll be able to import your PoE 1 character to bring along all your choices and effects on the world, or you’ll pick a background story choice yourself. Sounds they like took the best of Tyranny and ran with it, which can only be a very good thing.

Which cRPGs do you like the best? Any that you’d recommend? Respond down there in the comments.

Most Likely Characters To Die in Avengers: Infinite War

Avengers: Infinite War is nearly here, and although we’re all super excited to see dozens of superheroes we’ve followed for over a decade all come together in one big superhero stew, we know we’re going to witness one of them die. Remember that really strong beat in Avengers: Assemble when Coulson died (but didn’t really)? It’s going to be like that but multiplied by ten. And they won’t get their own spin-off show this time. Because these are actors who are paid tens of millions of dollars.

Here’s our thoughts on who is most likely to kick the bucket when the film comes out on the 26th!

Plot Armoured

Black Widow –  One of the original Avengers, Black Widow normally plays the one who solves the problem by thinking through things rather than physically hitting stuff. Although she does that too. Whilst she regularly becomes in danger, there’s no real harm in her coming to any…harm.

Hulk/Bruce Banner – Besides the fact that there is no way to kill Hulk that’s been established yet in the MCU, even Bruce Banner appears indestructible after taking on Fenrir in Thor: Ragnorok. If he dies, it’d be a complete left fielder.

Dr Strange – Benedictine Cumbersome has only just started his career in the MCU, and as his role as Earth’s Protector. He’ll be instrumental in defeating Thanos, and they could hardly take away such an important person so quickly, with no real replacement.

Groot – No more Tiny Groot.

Drax – He’s mad, and always runs at danger, and for that reason, he won’t die.

Spiderman – Similar to Dr Strange, fans have waited for Spiderman to join the MCU for a long time, and he’s going to be pivotal in the 2nd generation of Avengers. He’s seen as a direct protege to Tony Stark, meaning he could be in line to take the slot of wise-cracking, tech-building, flying-around-in-a-suit human. He’ll also be the shining light of human morality and Lawful Goodness when Steve Rogers isn’t around.

Antman – I could cheat and say his sequel film is coming out this year so we know he will survive, but just like a few others here, he hasn’t really had a big enough arc yet in the MCU, and his tech and like-ability make him too much of a unique character to be cut out.

The Wasp – We haven’t even seen this character on screen properly yet, so if Marvel kill her off before that or just after, it would be a real eye-roll moment.

Iron Patriot – He already took the biggest hit that any Avenger has taken thus far in the series in Civil War. To finish him off for good would make us think Marvel had some real issue with Don Cheadle.

Black Panther – He’s a smash hit character, and vital to the next stage of the MCU. In a few film’s time maybe, but not now. Plus his suit is impenetrable. Just stay away from the orange plant thing, T’Challa.

 

Slim Chance

Thor – Thor’s another member of the original Avengers. He’s had 3 solo films already too, matching Ironman and Captain America. So why is he so low? Well Ragnarok proved that Thor’s storylines are fun, unique, and he’s only just become leader of Asgard and the people there. Thor went from a solid ‘meh’ character to a fan favourite, meaning the time to kill him off has passed.

Starlord – The leader of the Guardians of the Galaxy and half-god, if he goes then the Guardians become way less interesting. Peter Quill IS the Guardians, without him they’re just a group of misfits…without the talented Chris Pratt to bounce jokes off of.

Rocket – He’s not a major character but he is a major part of the Guardians. There’s a small chance they’d kill him off in some mad suicide attack, but still not a big enough character to make us care that much. Injured? Yes. Killed? No.

Hawkeye – Some people don’t even know if Hawkeye is in this film! Behind the scenes pictures have him in costume very similar to the character Ronin, a later variation of Clint Barton. Which makes sense that he’d finally decided to pick up some melee weapons.

Mantis – Introduced in Guardians Vol. 2, Mantis is technically not part of the Guardians but she is in the Infinite War trailers. Again, I can see Marvel killing off a female character for dramatic effect and to motivate the others to win. This may seem snide but female characters being killed off this way is a time-honoured tradition in films.

 

50/50

Vision – So this is where it gets interesting. Vision has the infinite stone in his damn head, and we know Thanos is after them. Vision is powerful enough to defeat someone like Ultron almost single-handedly, so my bet is that he’ll be taken out early on in the film to show how strong Thanos is. Killed though is another question, and whether or not he’ll truly ‘die’ or be transformed into something else.

Loki – Finally finally decided to fall in line and play for the right team at the end of Ragnarok, Loki may not be able to resist his nature and join Thanos. It seems way too predictable to once again be fighting Loki unless it’s a double cross, and he dies as he’s caught out by Thanos. It could really go either way. He’s a big enough name to cause a splash with his death, but he’s also the god of mischief, which means he tends to find a way to survive.

Scarlet Witch – She hasn’t been able to really show us what she’s capable of yet, and I mean REALLY capable of. In the comics, Scarlet Witch is responsible for turning millions of mutants into normal humans by uttering three words. So far in the MCU she’s flung some debris around and hypnotised some Avengers. Faced with Thanos she may really have to crack open some hot spells, especially if she gets to know Dr Strange. Still, all that awesome potential could be cut short tragically if she’s still too upset about her brother to live life without him.

 

Likely

Marvel’s Captain America: Civil War..Vision (Paul Bettany)..Photo Credit: Film Frame..© Marvel 2016

Gamora – Thanos’ favourite adopted daughter who betrayed him, she’s not going to be in a good place if he comes a-knocking. Maybe he won’t be able to harm his daughter but he’ll want to turn her back any way possible, maybe with the power of the infinite stones. As the only female character in the Guardians, she has a habit of being the damsel in distress and love interest for Starlord, so I can see her capture by Thanos as a dramatic beat likely to happen. Death couldn’t be far behind.

Falcon – Here’s a character who’s likeable but not essential. He’s close to Captain America, but doesn’t really have any powers of his own. Despite Marvel making him pretty cool in Civil War, there isn’t a lot more they can do with the character since his main power is flying about. If Marvel chicken out of killing off one of the main Avengers, Falcon would be a next-best-thing.

Winter Soldier – Bucky Barnes has been earmarked as the one to take over as Captain America when Steve Rogers hangs up the shield…or dies. There’s even short clips in the previous films of Bucky using Cap’s shield in the middle of fights. Brief moments, but they could be echos of what’s to come. On that basis, Marvel could want to do the unexpected and kill him off, leaving the fate of the Captain America identity wide open. Cap has already dumped his shield after all, so who knows to whom it’ll go?

Nebula – Thanos’ not favourite adopted daughter, who’s also turned against him. If Gamora would be too much to ask for, Nebula turning good and being killed by Thanos would be a good way for Thanos to establish himself without removing any favourite characters. On the whole, she’s not a highly likeable character either, but an interesting one. I could also see her and Loki joined the Black Order to work/betray Thanos.

 

Definitely One Of These

Captain America – Steve Rogers is the exact character who would die heroically and dramatically, to hit everyone in the feels. Not only does every Avenger have a relationship with Cap, but the whole world admires and respects him too. And what better way for Thanos to put them all on the back foot? In the case of Cap being taken out, there’s a lot of room for the MCU to move in different ways. Does Bucky become Captain America? Who is the new de-facto leader? Where’s the damn shield? Personally this is my pick because please God don’t take….

…Iron Man – I have an Iron Man poster framed in my flat; my online name is and has always been Stark; and I have a whole folder of Robert Downey Jr GIFs. I know people find him annoying and he’s been in and out of the Avengers, huffing and puffing as he gets older and more sick of having to protect the world from the galaxy at large, but he’s my favourite character ever since I watched Iron Man  all the way back in 2008 with my dad. In Avengers: Assemble he cracked all the best jokes and wasn’t scared of the superhuman hero and the Norse God. He’s best mates with Hulk and mentor to Peter Parker. Civil War annoyed me so much because Tony was beaten in the end by Steve and Bucky. And I know he’ll forgive them, again. For these reasons he is rivalling Cap in the Chance-To-Die O Meter, because I know it’ll get me in to watch Part 2 to see him avenged.

 

That’s our guesses, let us know what you think in the comments below. And if you want to do your own rankings, put 1 as Plot Armoured and 5 as Definitely One of These.

The Best Mech Games on PC

BattleTech is back, in the first new installment using the BattleTech licence since 1990’s BattleTech: The Crescent Hawk’s Revenge. We’ve had MechWarrior games, but the primary series has been sadly neglected until Harebrained Schemes and Paradox Interactive resurrected the BattleTech series.

It’s a curiosity of video games that mech games are sadly quite under-represented. You’d think slipping into a giant robot suit and smashing the place up would be a no brainer, but they’re few and far between.

So here’s some of the absolute best mech games available on the PC, in case you want to do a bit more giant-sized destruction in a beautiful metallic body.

Note: I’m not going to include games with mech sections, because that’d be pretty much every early 2000s FPS.

BattleTech

BattleTech isn’t just a retread of the older games, nor does it try to use some of the more well known series, MechWarrior, for inspiration. Instead this is hard scifi in an XCOM-inspired world, where you play as a group of mercenaries looking to pay the bills by undertaking missions. Having dense tactical combat alongside a strategic layer may feel on the surface very familiar to the XCOM series, but BattleTech is a much deeper simulation with every system, every mech, every vehicle being meticulously modelled, and success will depend on you becoming familiar with those systems. If you liked XCOM but want something a bit meatier to get your teeth into, BattleTech might be what you’re looking for.

MechWarrior 2: 31st Century Combat

Forget the other MechWarriors, this is the one that stands head and laser cannons above the rest. Despite showing its age quite considerably, there’s still few games that put you in the driving seat of a mech so completely. It’s a game about striding purposefully across wartorn battlefields, feeling the ping of hit laserfire on your carapace, and slowly turning about to level your full complement of weaponry on the distant target that dares to provoke you. There’s few feelings of power, and of panic when it all goes wrong, than those that MechWarrior 2 gives you.

Zone of the Enders 2

This game isn’t technically out yet, it’ll be appearing on a PC near you in September of 2018, but we already know what to expect from it because Zone of the Enders 2 has been out on consoles for a long time, and it’s the opposite end of the spectrum from MechWarrior. Instead of meticulous simulation, this game is all about action, about fast paced combat, and about destruction. It’s an immense and explosive game that’s been sorely missing on the PC, we’ve got simulations, how about blowing some shit up? Zone of the Enders 2, that’ll fill that need.

Shogo: Mobile Armor Division

Imagine being a mech, standing many stories high. You smash up your opponents, shooting tanks and other mechs into flaming rubble. Then you hop out and run about in the buildings you so recently towered over. Combining a mech game with a traditional FPS, Shogo is a silly and wonderful exploration of scale, from being a giant to being a normal sized human, it really puts into perspective how big those damn mechs are. It’s an anime-inspired romp, and one that’s worth checking out if you can.

One Must Fall: 2097

Imagine if Rise of the Robots was good, and made a few years earlier. That’s One Must Fall, it’s a mech 2D fighting game with multiplayer, single battle mode, and a pretty decent campaign mode where you storm up the ranks to become the greatest mech fighting pilot on the planet. With upgradable mechs and other mechs you can simply purchase, alongside an accessible combat system, OMF is the best fighting game about mechs on the PC. Probably.

MissionForce: CyberStorm

Hex-based tactics fans, this one’s for you. CyberStorm and the sequel, CyberStorm 2: Corporate Wars, are a pair of isometric tactical games about controlling a squad of mechs, or HERCs, on a variety of different missions. It’s standard stuff really, but it’s solid and frankly it’s just nice to play on a hex instead of a square for once. Also notable for your pilots being bioengineered creations designed solely to pilot these towering mechs, one of which is a hyperintelligent ape.

Earthsiege 2

Set in the same universe as CyberStorm, you control a pilot of a HERC on missions which on the face of it, are similar to those found in MechWarrior. What’s truly special about Earthsiege 2 is the ability to customise your mech, and the (for the time) advanced graphics for the missions. It also features a branching narrative structure to the game, where failing a mission does not necessarily mean that you’ll lose the game, rather you’ll go to a mission you wouldn’t have experienced if you had succeeded. Something that we wouldn’t see come into standard or semi-standard use for at least another decade.

Ironcast

A mech game of a different flavour, this takes place in a steampunk world where you engage your enemies in brutal combat…via a puzzle game. A steampunk mech stands on each side of the screen and your moves, taken turn by turn on a central Bejeweled-a-like field, determine what your mech does, and vice versa. It also takes from roguelikes, in that there’s permadeath and some randomness to the way the game evolves and the main campaign can go. This makes it a compelling game, one that you might need a bit of time to master and to truly get to grips with, but one that rewards being able to counter whatever your AI foes send your way.

Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri

Cards on the table; I don’t really know if this is truly considered a mech game, but you’re in a mech suit so I’m including it. Basically this is an FPS from a time when FPS’s didn’t really exist as we know them today, you embarked on missions with a squad of similar be-suited mech people to destroy the control of the totalitarian Earth-based Hegemony. It was a huge step forward for the time, featuring FMV cutscenes, tactical orders you could issue to your squad, multi-camera control via drone and your squadmates, and even non-standard mission types, such as missions where the only goal was to spy on an enemy base and take photos for example. It’s recently been given a lick of paint and re-released by Nightdive studios, so there’s no excuse not to check it out.

Titanfall 2

It’s hard to overstate what a huge improvement Titanfall 2 is over the original. The original unfortunately bifurcated its playerbase with DLC and map packs, meaning it really struggled to keep online multiplayer numbers up. It did have some of the best movement in any FPS though, and Titanfall 2 is the rare sequel that kept everything good from the original and dispensed with everything that needed to be dropped. It also features probably the best single-player FPS campaign since Half-Life 2, with an incredibly varied set of skills and new ideas thrown at you throughout. Basically, it’s an amazing game, and none of you played it. For shame.

So there you have some mech games which are all well worth trying, even if some of them have aged a bit. Have we missed off your favourite? Hit us up in the comments.

Old Meets New in Phoenix Point

Phoenix Point is the next game from Julian Gollop. Julian Gollop is a name that you might not have heard, especially if you’re younger, but his legacy is huge in the PC Gaming world. He is behind great games such as Chaos, Laser Squad, but most importantly: XCOM.

Hopefully you’ve heard of XCOM, or rather, X-Com as it originally was when Julian Gollop was designing and developing these landmark strategy games. Well he’s back with Phoenix Point and it looks like it’ll mix together the absolute best of old-school X-Com and new-school XCOM.

We got a chance to chat to Julian Gollop at Rezzed, held in London earlier this week. We sent X-Com Veteran Alex Mchugh who is old as time and has been playing X-Coms since they came out, and XCOM Youngster Oliver Paul who has only played the reboots, but absolutely loves them.

Here’s what these two different people had to say about it:

Golden Oldie – Alex Mchugh

What stuck out to me was that it feels like a return to some of the best ideas of the original X-Com series. The reboots are marvellous games, but for me they stripped out some of the complexity of the older titles, and I’m incredibly pleased to see Phoenix Point walk the tightrope between accessibility and depth.

Factions, similar to how they worked in X-Com Apocalypse are back, and you’ll be balancing these factions against each other, endorsing some and alienating others as you work to save the world from an alien threat, and from the threat of each other.

Action points are back too, meaning that your actions and movements throughout the game are more fluid and the possibility space that your squad operates in is much larger. You’re not going to be stuck doing two moves a turn, instead you can hunker down and fire off a few shots, or you can sprint like the wind, or mix it up however you choose. As long as you have the action points for it, you can do it.

With the theme of the aliens being a riff on aquatic mergings between alien and submarine life, at least at the start of the campaign, it feels in many ways an homage to X-Com Terror from the Deep, the absolute bastard-hard sequel to the original Enemy Unknown. Seeing these creatures, especially the crab ones, took me right back to the days of fleeing from awful Lobster Men back in the 90s. Except now they’ve been updated, they’re smarter, they’re tougher, and they have different evolutionary variations which means you might have to adapt your tactics suddenly at the start of a new battle.

Anyway, as an old, old man, it brings me great joy to see some of the ideas from great games I grew up with refined and used again today. I’m incredibly excited for Phoenix Point, plug it into my veins already.

Young Buck – Oliver Paul

So I’ve always heard that the new XCOM games were much more linear than the older ones. You get one base, normally just one squad that can go on one mission, on one planet, against one alien race. I’d heard stories about multiple squads doing things at different times, X-com bases stretching across the globe, and stuff going on IN SPAAACE and underwater too. Now with Pheonix Point, I feel like I’m finally going to get what every younger gamer wants: the chance to play an old gem, but with a usable UI and no CD-ROMs.

Something that Julian Gollop said got my attention in a big way. He said that the game was comparable to Stellaris. Stellaris?! The 4x game?! He talked about you just being one faction out of a handful, fighting over resources and against the alien menace encroaching across the land in a oppressive fog. Take the campaign map of a 4X game and the battles of XCOM and I’m sold. I like the idea that enemy factions change depending on what you do, so no two play-throughs are the same. Even with the XCOM expansions, I felt like it was just playing the campaign, and the same main missions, again. After day 3 everyone knows the best squad combo, the best build order for your base and the exploitable tactics. Opening up the game to more variables means not everyone plays the same game. And embarking on another play-through becomes like starting another game of Civ – something you do all the damn time.

On the battle side of things, you could almost mistake it for new XCOM, it’s incredibly similar. I don’t think myself or any other XCOM fans will have trouble adjusting to Phoenix Point, and there’s plenty of new mechanics to explore that don’t feel very new-XCOM at all. It feels more nitty-gritty because you can free aim, you can target specific parts of enemies and there are mid-game objectives like securing watch towers to help clear out a base. It feels like a military game rather than a team of sort-of super heroes like in XCOM. Recurring bosses will come back, genetically altered to be stronger based on how you took it down last time. Even the alien race will adapt to your favourite strategies. A team of 3 snipers may not stay effective for ever. These big boss units will actually feel like they deserve the name, having lots of health for different body parts, unlike in XCOM where a few rockets can take out anything.

Overall I’m looking forward to trying out Phoenix Point, probably more-so than an XCOM 3. It looks and feels different and gives you more tools to change the outcome of the game. Not to mention that because it’s more 4X, there are other ways to win, it deals with the issue of XCOMs negative feedback loop. At least, here’s hoping.

How to mark Earth Day with environmentally aware games

Earth Day 2018 falls on Sunday 22 April, and given recent revelations concerning widespread plastic pollution and accelerating climate change, it will surely be given more public attention – and trigger more environmental activism around the world – than ever before. So, if you’re concerned about what is happening to the environment (and who isn’t, beyond American right-wingers with big business interests?), can you square those concerns with being a gamer? Do videogames pull their weight when it comes to saving the planet?

The answer, superficially at least, would appear to be “No” – first and foremost, games are a form of popular entertainment, and most see their role as offering an escape from the everyday troubles and cares of the real world. However, there are games which at least manage to signal a concern for the state of the environment, in ways which encompass an entire spectrum of subtlety.

You could, for example, argue that pretty much any game set in a post-apocalyptic universe is effectively displaying concern for the current state of the Earth – although in many such cases, those concerns tend more towards the geopolitical than the environmental. But there are some which demonstrate an unequivocally environmentally aware vibe, and we thought it would be appropriate to bring them to your attention in the run-up to Earth Day.

Fate of the World: Tipping Point

This 2011 game developed by Red Redemption for PC and Mac is one of the very few efforts to build its gameplay around environmental concerns – indeed, it aims very overtly to provide a decent education about green issues facing the Earth. Essentially a turn-based, Civilization-style sim-game, it puts you in charge of a fictional global organisation with responsibility for social, technological and environmental policies (if only such a body existed in real life). 

It lets you take environmental decisions and see how they pan out, both in terms of reducing global warming and trying to avoid social unrest. As such, it does a fine job of examining the issues that real-world governments face when attempting to get to grips with climate change.

 Flower

This gorgeous-looking 2009 effort for the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4, developed by Thatgamecompany, is all about giving gamers a visceral connection to the environment. It’s pretty experimental, lacking any form of narrative and with gameplay that is minimal and defies convention. But it’s also incredibly Zen-like, and does a fine job of stirring both a surprising amount of emotion and generating deep thought into how we treat the environment.

In Flower, you control the wind using the Dual-Shock controller’s motion-sensing, blowing a petal around and thereby causing various effects in the game-world, such as bringing previously barren fields into bloom and activating windmills. Flower may be quite abstract, but it leaves one in no doubt about its desire to get us all thinking about the natural world. 

Flow

Flower is actually the spiritual successor to Flow, also made by Thatgamecompany, and released in 2007 as a launch PSN title for the PlayStation 3. It’s less overt about providing an environmental call-to-arms than Flower, but shares a similar calming ambience that mimics natural-world processes.

Flow puts you in control of a plankton-like organism, swimming around in a sort of primordial soup. As you eat other creatures, your creature evolves into more complex forms, and eventually, you have to deal with predators.

Monster Hunter World

You might imagine that a game which involves slaughtering giant monsters with huge weapons is unlikely to possess much by way of green credentials. However, Monster Hunter World is shot through with an undeniably environmentally-aware ambience. 

That’s because it isn’t just about hunting monsters. One of its key gameplay mechanics involves collecting flora, fauna and natural resources in each area of its game-world, for which you are royally rewarded, and pretty much everything you collect has some use — as ammunition, a crafting component or food.

With all sorts of rewards and perks available for researching specified types of flora, fauna and resources, Monster  Hunter World gently but insistently encourages you to form a deep affinity with its environments. And what amazing environments they are, taking in rainforests, deserts and the like, all of whose superbly constructed ecosystems operate in a highly visible manner. The nature in Monster Hunter World may derive from the imaginative realms of fantasy, but anyone who plays the game will feel utterly immersed in it.

Far Cry Primal

This 2016 offshoot of the much-loved open-world first-person action-adventure franchise was something of an aberration, but proved surprisingly compelling. It took Far Cry’s trademark free-roaming action way beyond its comfort zone, to a prehistoric world.

Although it isn’t a game which has an overtly environmentally friendly message, you can’t help thinking deeply about the modern world, with its growing cities and urbanisation, when you play it. Because it depicts a time when even the most rudimentary buildings had barely been invented, it puts you right in the thick of nature, at a time when mankind still struggled to dominate nature – indeed, that’s what the vast  majority of the gameplay is about (along with a healthy dose centred on mankind’s tribal nature, which also proves to be thought-provoking).

There’s nothing rose-tinted about Far Cry Primal – it’s in no way some sort of nostalgia-fest hymning a time when humans were at one with the environment. But its utterly plausible depiction of a pre-urban world offers vast amounts of food for thought for those who are concerned with what we are now doing to the environment. 

Beyond Good & Evil

This lovable 2003 action-adventure effort from Ubisoft’s resident genius Michel Ancel alludes to various themes, and concern for the environment is definitely one of those. It may even have inspired Monster Hunter World’s environmental investigation element.

That’s because protagonist Jade, painfully penniless at the beginning of the game, soon lands a job documenting the wildlife of Beyond Good & Evil’s game-world with her camera, and is rewarded for doing so with money, which is something you’ll need in order to complete the game.

Again, that mechanic puts you at one with the game’s environments – there are genuine thrills to be had every time you encounter a species you haven’t come across previously. Ancel is now hard at work on Beyond Good & Evil 2, and it will be interesting to see if he chooses to develop the original game’s element of environmental awareness in that. 

Horizon: Zero Dawn

Last year’s feted PlayStation 4 exclusive is another game which doesn’t ram an overtly green message down your throat, yet provokes deep thought about the environment, in a similar manner to Far Cry Primal. As with Far Cry Primal, that’s mainly due to its premise: protagonist Aloy occupies a post-apocalyptic world which has largely returned to a natural state, apart from the presence of predatory, often dinosaur-like robots. 

The game’s juxtaposition of unspoiled environments and dangerous yet useful technology (which provides a source of weapons and ammo for Aloy) functions as a great what-if scenario, providing a snapshot of  what might happen if global warming caused our civilisation to collapse. And as such, it provides a cautionary tale which will strike a chord among those who care about arresting environmental destruction.

Cultist Simulator – A Ragged Letter from a Failed Cultist

Recently the EGX Rezzed event took place in the Tobacco Docks venue in London. Members of the Green Man Gaming team attended, and during their time there they took some time to play Cultist Simulator, a game which will be fully released on the 31st of May, 2018.

Soon after our social media manager Alex McHugh went missing, and  this letter arrived at the Green Man Gaming offices. We are letting you see the contents of the letter for the first time. Those faint of heart, please close this page now.

Dear Green People,

By the time you read this I will have moved to a place beyond your ken, to a place unknowable by mortals, a place where the fractal nature of reality has been rent asunder.

I have gone to the eldritch technological palace known as ‘Cultist Simulator’.

It began simply, I sat at the mechanical thinking-box and looked about at the blue field ahead of me. Time itself trickled down and spat out a new item, a glyph on card that floated in front of me. I read the words emblazoned upon it and feel them shudder through my brain cavity and I delight in the rich new opportunities which unveil before me.

Each card shuddered and shook and new opportunities seeped out onto the board and into my mind. Alas through my inattention my avatar on this immaterial plane lost their job, their hateful job, and gained employment on the lowest rung in an office. Never mind, thought I, it would leave my mind free to contemplate the divine which I had begun to dream of, whispers touching my thoughts each night. The scrabble for funds to cover my investigations would never end but I would use my time carefully to prod deeper into the hidden corners of the universe.

A gift left to me from a mysterious benefactor exploded new opportunities in front of me. I began to dream of sickness, an old friend stepped back into my life and I used her ruthlessly as a sounding board for these new ideas which populated my swollen mind.

I began to spin out of control, a single clock counting down became two, then three, then ten, the rush to read the cards which guided my path causing me to forget that time itself was under my control. I could pause the progress of time, and take a moment to read, to absorb, to learn.

In the depths of my darkest dreams I discovered a nugget of truth. I could start a cult, I could become the leader of a new way of thought, a new way of living. I began my preparations, if we were to break open reality and revel in the dark dance of unholy truth, we would need funds, a place to meet, and bodies.

Alas, my health took a turn for the worse. All I could do was dream forever of the sickness which slowly took over me, my funds and ability to work slipping from my grasp and the truth I had so quickly glimpsed slid away like a distant memory.

In the end, my avatar succumbed to the dark poisons which had overrun their body, and life slipped away.

The story does not end there, my Green Friends, I live on and I can think only of the cultist, of the truth, and of how to succeed where that meat shell failed.

I will return, glorious and effulgent with knowledge, I just have to play again. To spin my life on the wheel that is Cultist Simulator, and to succeed where I have once failed.

Yours,

What Remains of Alex

We have not heard from Alex in the days following Rezzed, and any attempt to contact him has failed. We phoned him, and the only time the phone was picked up we heard a great wailing as if a thousand voices screamed into the headset, and then nothing. Since then the phone is disconnected, and GPS tracking puts him at a location Google Maps does not have adequate data for.

Cultist Simulator is coming out on the 31st of May, beware its seductive charm.