Developer Kan Gao released the first free *shudder* 'minisode' for To The Moon at around this time last year, and now another has been released, completely free. While it's the same sort of length as the first (around 20 minutes), Gao suggests that this one is "a tad more...important, plot-wise". Once again, you're stuck in a hospital playing as the two main scientist characters of To The Moon, as protestors do protesty things outside.

If you own To The Moon on Steam, you should find that the DLC has already been registered to your account. Otherwise, you can download it here. You don't need to own TTM, but it will probably make more sense if you've played that first.

With Sigmund Minisode 2 out of the way, Gao will be resuming work on To The Moon's full-fledged sequel, Finding Paradise. Meanwhile, one of Freebird's pixel artists, Jordan, is still in hospital undergoing chemotherapy; if you'd like to help out with either kind words or donations, there are details of how you can do so here.

Sunset is a first-person game where you play as the housekeeper of a bloody great penthouse apartment, in the fictional South American city of San Bav n. It's set in the 1970s, which might be why it looks so stylish, and Journey composer Austin Wintory is doing the music, which might be why it sounds so nice. Chris Livingston previewed it a few days ago, and if that whet your appetite for Tale of Tales' intriguing, combatless war game, I have a new trailer for you to watch.

Actually, it's at the top of this post, so you probably already watched it. Oh well. Still: Sunset's looking pretty good, isn't it? I particularly like the ginormous, '90s-FPS-size rooms of the luxury apartment you're sent to look after, which are going to be a right nightmare to clean.

Tale of Tales' previous credits include The Path and the incredibly French Bient t l' t , so you probably know by now if this is the sort of thing you'll enjoy.

This week is brought to you by loveable Hollywood hackers, who leak code from every fingertip, who never, ever use a mouse, and who sometimes look a lot like Angelina Jolie. A hacker by the name of 'The girl from Jurassic Park' is indirectly responsible for one of this week's highlights, but if you can't fake-code to save your life, perhaps you'll enjoy crafting yourself a new body, taking a run in the woods, bleeding out or escaping from a creepy subway. Enjoy!

Perfect Glowing Bodies by Strangethink

Strangethink's latest Strangethinky thing is a program that will let you build a perfect new body. They all look a bit like space wizards or power rangers, but who among us would rather be a dangly fleshy meatbag given the choice? All that remains is for Strangethink to implement large-scale 3D printing and/or consciousness uploading, and then we can all look like magic space power rangers for ever.

Way to Go by Vincent Morisset, Philippe Lambert, Edouard Lanctot-Benoit, Caroline Robert

Take a walk on the wild side (you know, like that song...Spaceballs) with the splendid Way to Go, a game that uses loads of lovely video footage and music to plonk you right in one of the best places in the world: a wood. It's one of those 'experience' type games, as opposed to games where you glumly fill up XP bars or get better at manhandling digital wizards. Do you like free 'experience' type games? You'll almost certainly like this, then—er, unless you use Firefox or Internet Explorer, as Chrome is the only supported browser. (Via RPS)

I Know This by Two's Complement

Jurassic Park had a really interesting mockup security program thing, which used basic 3D modelling to display protected files and folders. It was a great way to visualise a lot of boring data—and now that program has been recreated as a game. With further inspiration from the ace hackertyper.net, along with Microsoft's asshole Office Assistant paperclip, I Know This is a fun way to feel like a coder without having any talent for coding whatsoever. Explore, type, and avoid the attention of security spotlights, while enjoying the interjections of an annoying pointy arrow.

Bleeding by Arielle Grimes

Bleeding out, after what I imagine must have been another death in some grey first-person shooter, you decide to use your last few seconds on Earth to apologise to everyone you've killed. Sorry! Sorry! Really sorry about that! Oops, that looks painful! My bad! Well, you get the idea. Because game, apologies equal points—and what do points make? Nothing, you're dead. Sorry!

Minor Steps by Evgiz

A small, robust puzzle game that's pretty much a top-down take on room escape. Prod rubbish piles, experiment, use items gruesomely on other things, all in a bid to escape from the predicament you're in. I find it interesting that this predicament isn't explained in any way—I was left wondering how on Earth your little character got into such a mess. (Via Warp Door)

Frozen Cortex is the kind of game I find a bit intimidating. It's strategy, which is only my genre in fairly specific forms, and a robotic spin on American Football. Being British, I know really very little about the ins and outs of that subject's many complexities. Or for that matter, American Football.

I've only played a few rounds, so I'm not going to comment on the action of it too much. I can say that the Knockout mode is well named. I played it and got instantly knocked out. But what I do like, at least so far, and seems worth a look, is how Frozen Cortex sells its fictional sport. It slips in story in several ways, and all of them entirely to its advantage when it comes to making it feel legitimate, like something people are actually watching, and part of a wider world with more going on than robot games.

It's not unique in that, of course. Commentators are fairly common in this kind of game, and there's always some lore about how a particular fake-sport has managed to take the world by storm. One of my favourite examples was Super Monday Night Combat, a MOBA/FPS hybrid whose commentators made the game what it was. Others include (rolls dice) Blood Bowl, which offered its fake-sport in a fantasy flavour. The catch of most of them is that after a while you've heard everything they have to say, and there's little less funny than hearing the same joke a hundred times. Being stabbed in the eye with a fork, yes. Forced hot-sauce enemas. Very little else.

In Frozen Cortex, it helps that it's text based. That's probably more down to budget than anything else, and some roaring dialogue is always fun. Long-term though, it allows for it to be as passive as needed, yet still reinforce the basic effect of commenters chatting away from a distant booth. There's three of them, a conventional sports commentator type, an analyst, and a guy I think of as Mr. Pumpkinhead, with their lines split between quick references, random bursts, quick dialogues, and quiet reminders of mechanics like trying to sweep up bonus points before going for the touchdown. You also get the opposing team's coach chipping in at regular intervals with their own contributions, including straight-forward "That wasn't very good" type jeers and sighs, and the occasional bit of random nonsense like "My trousers are aflame with glorious triumph!" So, uh, yeah. The result is a diverting but not distracting flow of tips, reinforcements of each team's style and background, and outright gags like "This turn break is sponsored by the Grand Holy Church of the Incomparable Boz. You are weak, worthless and loved by Boz..."

A lot of the time, it's the smallest details that can make the most difference. Frozen Cortex is simultaneous turn-based strategy, and it's nice that the game acknowledges player speed - noting when you're ludicrously quick to plan your move, and the commentators tapping their toes in boredom while the opposing player figures out what to do. Between rounds, when it would have been so easy to just worry about the mechanics, you get little news stories popping up about corruption in the league, other coaches pulling crap like leaving lanes wide open for easy passes, and things that the commentators will bring up in their exchanges. I don't know how complex the story actually is, but there's a good hint that there's a fair amount going on behind the scenes. While the focus is on short seasons, the main single-player modes both make a point of saying that it continues between games rather than just pulling from a big sack of words. It'll take a good deal more play to figure that out. For now though, it's a pleasant extra layer to explore while learning the ropes of the core action.

Cortex's predecessor, Frozen Synapse, also did a better job with its script than it tends to get credit for, its story and single-player campaign unsurprisingly being a relatively small part of its sell. When you're competing against someone, you don't really care what bullshit lore reason there is behind it - it's all about the tactics and satisfaction of a shotgun. This time though, the two sides fit together well. It makes absolute sense that a sport would have these elements, and just being able to buy into a larger fiction really does make a big difference. There's a reason that games like FIFA are always going to get more attention than just any random sports game - the players, the atmosphere, the prestige are all part of the fantasy. Outright fantasy sports meanwhile have to not only present a game worth playing, but a reason to get good. The illusion of spectators, and even relatively simple simulated interest, are surprisingly effective.

While I can't so far say that the AI has the same raw personality as the Alpha Centauri crew, or the depth of some GalCiv messages, it's been doing a lot to keep me company during my variably-protracted failures at climbing the leaderboards in single-player mode. And those are high watermarks for any game to hit...

Uppity bloody AI opponents. But at least they're still friendlier than most Dota players.

[Update: A Blizzard rep sent the following statement in response to our inquiries. "There are a lot of different factors that go into decisions like this, including various regional or local market considerations. We know that some of these features would be ones that players in several regions might enjoy, but we don't currently have plans to support these in North America, and we don't have any other region-specific details to share at this time."]

Original story:

The Diablo 3 2.2.0 patch that's soon to hit the Public Test Realm will add new Legendary armor sets, a new kind of Adventure Mode bounty, new Goblins to chase around, and a bunch of other good stuff. But some parts of the world will see other additions, including a new in-game currency, timed experience boosts, and new cosmetic items.

"Some new features may start to show up in data mined information for patch 2.2.0 that will not apply to all regions," Blizzard revealed on Battle.net. It cited five specifically that won't apply to the Americas:

• A new currency called "Platinum"
• Timed experience boosts
• New cosmetic items including wings, non-combat pets, and character portraits
• References to stash space and character slot expansions
• A new UI element that references the above information

The obvious implication is that microtransactions are coming to the game, something Blizzard confirmed in the conclusion of the post. "We recognize that many players have expressed an interest in microtransactions being added to Diablo III," it says. "While we may explore this model in some regions, we have no immediate plans to implement such purchases anytime soon for the Americas region."

That final statement is a hedge on all sides: When someone says they have no immediate plans to do something anytime soon, what they're really saying is that sooner or later, it's probably going to happen. What makes the prospect particularly interesting is that it's coming so late in the day—Diablo 3 has been around for almost three years—and also, of course, Blizzard's well-documented past troubles with the controversial Auction House, which was shut down in March of last year.

We've reached out to Blizzard for more information, and will update if and when we receive a reply. In the meantime, what do you think: Are swanky duds and paid experience boosts a step in the right direction, or is it more likely to put you off playing altogether?

This week's PC Gamer Show is a boardgamestravaganza! We like board games, which is why we recently published our list of the best board games for PC gamers. On the show, we pick out and talk about some of our favorites, including Risk: Legacy, XCOM: The Board Game, and the X-Wing Miniatures Game.

And, as usual, we answer your questions about PC gaming. Is DDR4 RAM worth the money? Should you try out the Windows 10 Preview? What RPGs are we excited about in 2015?

The PC Gamer Show appears every Friday. Hit us with PC gaming questions in the comments, and we might answer them in next week's episode! Or tweet @pcgamer with a question using the hashtag #AskPCGamer.

THE HIGHS

Tom Senior: Doom selfies"Imagine if the Doom guy had a selfie stick!" is an instantly amusing idea, but ordinarily you'd enjoy the observation and move on with your life. This week one modder said "NO", realising that the only thing funnier than imagining the Doom guy taking selfies on demon-infested Mars is to put a command in the gamethat actually does that. Oh, and imagine it had a bunch of instagram filters too lol! FEATURE IMPLEMENTED. Make a famously brown game even browner with instagram's artistically weathered sepia overlays. Linguica has gone the extra mile bringing this joke to life. Well played.

Samuel Roberts: Bundle is HumbleFollowing on from the ace Star Wars Humble Bundle, this Square Enix one is so absurdly generous that paying over the average bags you Thief, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, SupCom 2 and Hitman Absolution. Oh, and Murdered Soul Suspect, which I remember Chris comparing to the pilot of a terrible supernatural cop show last year and almost nothing else about it. Chances are, you ve bought most of these games—I ve grabbed Thief from this bundle, but I get as much pleasure from giving keys away in these bundles as I do taking them myself. Being the person to introduce someone to Deus Ex: Human Revolution means they owe me a life debt in return. It s a titanic gesture that must be repaid in full, or else. 

Chris Livingston: Pixel NationAs someone who used to love to draw, but completely and utterly sucked at it, I have a natural admiration for (and envy of) artists of all kinds. This goes double for people who excel at creating and animating pixel art. How someone can take a handful of teeny tiny colored cubes and shape them into something instantly recognizable, I have no idea. Even more amazing is the animation that breathes life, character, and humor into these itty bitty works of art.

I played the prototype of Orion Trail this week, and I recommend you check it out. You can play it for free right in your browser, and along with lots of amusing sci-fi jokes you can enjoy some top-notch animated pixel art. Make sure you win at least once: the crew does an adorable little dance at the end. There are more enjoyable examples of Evan Brown's pixel art on Orion Trail's Kickstarter page.

Phil Savage: Distraction by HeadcrabToday, PC Gamer's UK arm played Rock, Paper, Shotgun at Dota 2 for an upcoming magazine feature. By complete coincidence, I am in need of cheering up right now.

This is the thing that cheered me up this week:

Tyler Wilde: Early Access can be pretty alrightThe second video in Andy s Besiege machine compilation. That s my high, by far. Thank you, Andy. And you know what? For all the problems Steam s Early Access section has brought about, you can t say nothing good has come out of it. That video has come out of it. I think the trend of releasing unfinished games has been a net positive, because for every Stomping Land, there are five Early Access games worth playing—let s say, Ratz Instagib, Darkest Dungeon, Space Engineers, Kerbal Space Program, and SpeedRunners. And one more time for effect: for every Godus, there s Nuclear Throne, The Long Dark, Wasteland 2, Broforce, and Sunless Sea.

Problems happen when games are sold unfinished, but A) they also happen when finished games are sold, B) when is a game ever finished these days anyway? and C) is that the fault of Early Access as an entire concept, or the fault of specific individuals?

Wes Fenlon: USB Type-C for meReversible USB. IT'S ALMOST HERE. ASRock is preparing to ship the very first motherboards with the new USB Type-C connector, which you can plug in rightside-up or upside-down. Such distinctions are meaningless in our new Type-C world order. As an added bonus, ASRock's new boards will have USB 3.1 ports, which offer a big speed boost over 3.0 and can carry more power. It's still going to be awhile before we have USB devices to take advantage of 3.1 and the Type-C plug. But the time is near. All hail the reversible USB.

THE LOWS

Tom Senior: Paradox of ThronesIt's a typical problem, when license holders who normally operate in other mediums wade into the gaming world in search of a studio to turn their hot thing into interactive entertainment. The results can be devastating, as fans ofHouse andGrey's Anatomy will know. HBO have been unusually savvy in approaching Telltale to try and make a choice-driven adventure game out of Westeros (having seemingly learned from the deeply mediocreGame of Thrones RPG), but there's an open goal right there, and it's Paradox. The amazingGame of Thrones mod proves that the Song of Ice and Fire series meshes beautifully with the Paradox real-time-with-pause grand strategy format. Paradoxare understandably wary about the control they might be required to cede to HBO, but everyone knows that world and that studio could make beautiful things together.

Wes Fenlon: Bad move, LenovoThe entire tech industry was in a justified rage on Thursday over the news that Lenovo has been pre-installing adware software on its laptops for months. The adware, called Superfish, would already be nasty and disappointing if it was just adware. But the way it works potentially leaves Lenovo computers vulnerable to attack, as web security experts proved with just a little dig. It compromises the security of Https connections without users realizing it. Lenovo says it stopped shipping computers with Superfish pre-installed in January, but that still leaves thousands and thousands of computers out in the wild infected. At least Superfish is relatively easy to get rid of. Here's how.

Chris Livingston: Stomping LameDinosaurs are cool. People who can make dinosaurs are cool. Why would you squander both of these cool things at the same time? As we reported on Monday, multiplayer dinosaur survival game The Stomping Land took another ankle-snapping step toward extinction. Dino modeler Vlad Konstantinov decided to leave the project after developer Alex Fundora stopped communicating with him. Konstantinov also says he's owed money. It feels like every week there's more bad crowdfunding news, and it feels like that because every week there's more bad crowdfunding news. It also feels like every other week, the weekly bad crowdfunding news is about The Stomping Land. Boo!

On the plus side, Konstantinov has signed on to another dinosaur game, Beasts of Prey. Life finds a way.

Phil Savage: Dead by DotaToday, PC Gamer's UK arm played Rock, Paper, Shotgun at Dota 2 for an upcoming magazine feature.

Samuel Roberts: Dota? No-taI echo Phil s grief at being beaten by RPS. I threw as much ice at them as I could as Lich. Now I am cold on the INSIDE. 

Tyler Wilde: The internet is weirdThis week in e-sports drama, a Hearthstone player was accused of misrepresenting her identity. She split with her team, though at this point, we haven t seen any proof of wrongdoing. Without getting into the details—because they include personal information and allegations we can t verify—it s all just generally weird and sad. I m concerned by how swiftly someone s life can be upended by fiery accusations and internet sleuthing, and also overwhelmed by this strange virtual world, where it seems plausible enough that people are inventions that we feel we have to investigate it. 

I don t know what the case is here, but either way, it s frightening that our identities have become a series of logs—user accounts, IP addresses, everything we ve ever favorited on Twitter—and now we re struggling to align that data with something that seems less and less real: an actual human being. At the risk of sounding like an aging cyberpunk novel: are we prepared for the day when our physical identities stop mattering?

Crick Para Baixar Steam JOGOS Online no seu computador (1.5MB)