SKYBLIVION developers re-commit to 2025 release

The developers of fan mega-mod Skyblivion, which seeks to update venerable fantasy RPG The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (2006) to modern-ish standards, have re-committed to releasing the game in 2025, as they originally promised two years ago. The project is almost feature-complete, with developers and testers now able to run through entire quests, as they have demonstrated in a new video.

The original idea behind the project was to remake Oblivion in the upgraded Creation Engine of its successor, Skyrim (2011). However, the project stalled after several years and was relaunched before the pandemic under new management. The title is somewhat misleading, as the game now features improvements from later versions of the engine and features from other modders, including better 4K textures and enhanced lighting. The mod is also not a straightforward remake, as it redesigns and enhances some areas of the games, for example replacing the identikit caves with different designs based on their descriptions (i.e. mines and random caverns no longer look identical) and making the infamously tiny forts larger and more imposing. The city of Leyawiin, which was massively scaled back in development, has been returned to its original, imposing design straddling a major river with a drawbridge to allow ships to pass.

The creators have kept in touch with Bethesda during development to confirm what they can and can't do: they've kept the original soundtrack and even added to it with new material, but have had to re-record all dialogue for legal reasons (presumably the need not to pay Sean Bean and Patrick Stewart lots of money again). This will probably be a boon, as Oblivion infamously had a tiny voice cast, and it wasn't uncommon to stumble across three people with the exact same voice talking to one another, which was weird.

Playing the mod will require the player owns copies of both Oblivion and Skyrim. As noted before, the plan is to release the mod before the end of 2025 via Steam, GoG and Nexus Mods. A console version is currently impossible due to the massive size of the new files (which outsizes the limits Bethesda put in place for console modding).

In 2023 it was rumoured that Bethesda were considering their own remaster of Oblivion, which sounds like an exercise in futility compared to the scale of Skyblivion. It'll be interesting to see if that project is actually something that's happening.

ELDER SCROLLS IV: OBLIVION remake targets a 2025 release date at the latest

Whilst The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim has been remastered for more platforms than you can shake a stick at, its 2006 forebear has gotten much less official love. However, Oblivion has been getting a major makeover thanks to a large collection of modders and fans who took it upon themselves to remake the entire game in Skyrim's engine, whilst also upgrading that engine considerably.

The result, the slightly-painfully-named Skyblivion (I would give Bethesda serious money if they give them permission to just call it "Oblivion Remade" or something), has been making serious progress for the last couple of years, with increasingly impressive dev diaries and YouTube videos exploring the rebuilt version of Tamriel's Imperial Province of Cyrodiil.

The team have now confirmed a 2025 release date. If that seems a bit far off given how much progress they've made recently, the team agrees and notes this is a worst-case scenario date and they don't get any more resources to help bring the game across the finish line. However, if they are able to recruit more people to help out, they might be able to shave some months off that and bring the game out in 2024 instead.

Skyblivion has ported the entirety of Oblivion into the upgraded engine, but the team have gone back and recreated almost all of the textures, models and effects in the game. Some of the geographic areas have been reworked and resized to make a bit more sense, and the city of Leyawiin has been almost completely redesigned in line with its original, more ambitious, concept art. The biggest change will be with the dungeons. Oblivion used very repetitive and simple dungeon designs, with even some dungeons being simple copy+pastes of others. Every dungeon in Skyblivion has been redesigned and many are now larger and more sprawling. The game will also use Skyrim's more balanced level-scaling system rather than Oblivion's deranged version, but will retain the original game's spellcrafting mechanics.

Skyblivion will launch by 2025 at the latest, and will require the player to have purchased copies of both Skyrim and Oblivion. Bethesda themselves are working on their brand new, space-based roleplaying game, Starfield, which should be out later this year. Bethesda are also in pre-production on The Elder Scrolls VI, but that is many years away.

TIE FIGHTER gets a stunning fan-made remake

The iconic 1994 video game TIE Fighter has gotten a comprehensive remake from fans.

TIE Fighter: Total Conversion is a mod for X-Wing Alliance, the 1999 semi-sequel to TIE Fighter featuring a much better engine. The mod is a spinoff of the X-Wing Alliance Upgrade mod, which replaces all of the game's models and textures with much more modern equivalents whilst retaining the classic gameplay.

The game revamps all 13 campaigns from the original game and its two expansions, for a total of 104 missions. The game also features 41 "reimagined" missions, with many more ships (including the Super Star Destroyer Executor in some cases) added to the original missions to dramatically increase the size and scope of the battles. The mod also, impressively, supports VR.

To play the game, you'll need a copy of X-Wing: Alliance from GoG, a download and install of the X-Wing Alliance Upgrade mod, and a download and install of the TIE Fighter: Total Conversion mod, all of which are fairly self-explanatory.

Modding MechWarrior

I am currently several dozen hours into playing MechWarrior 5. It's a fun, hugely enjoyable action game where you sit in a giant robot and blow up other giant robots, buildings, vehicles and sometimes just the scenery for the hell of it. It's also a game which is, putting it as charitably as possible, not out-of-the-box, fit-for-mass-consumption due to a combination of bugs and questionable game design choices. Fortunately, it's also a game that's hugely moddable and a large number of the problems have been fixed by the fans. So here's the roster of mods that I'm currently running to make the game more palatable.

Unless otherwise noted, these mods can be natively installed via the Epic Game Store's mod page and hopefully will be available via the Steam Workshop when the game launches on Steam in May.

3D HUD

The heads-up-display in MechWarrior 5 is functional but that's about the most that can be said for it, with information presented dryly as lines of text and bars in the corner of the screen. This mod re-imposes the HUD on your pilot's visor, giving you a nice 3D feeling to the display. It also dynamically puts your weapon information (ammo, temperature, range) on a circular view corresponding to the location of your weapon hardpoints, giving you much more intuitive information on what's happening to your mech at any given time. This dramatically improves information flow mid-battle. 

Better Performance - FPS Drop Fix

MechWarrior 5 has an odd thing where it generates the sound of your weapon firing from the animation rather than just playing the relevant audio files when you hit the fire button. This means the frames-per-second drops noticeably whenever you fire your weapon, and this drop gets worse over the course of a mission. This mod fixes the problem by removing the direct link between the weapon fire animation and sound effect, keeping performance steady.

Enemy Mech Availability Date Fix

One of the cooler things about MechWarior 5 is how the timeline advances as your play the game. The game starts in 3015 and the months and years advance - sometimes quite quickly - as you fly between star systems and engage in lengthy campaign missions. Political borders change in accordance with in-game history, and sometimes missions are generated based on timeline events. These stop in 3049; although you can continue to play, major events are no longer reflected. Long-term BattleTech and MechWarrior fans know that in 3050, a huge event takes place that the game can't take into account, though will likely form the basis of any future expansion or sequel. One problem with this is that the AI sometimes spawns mechs that are not correctly available until much later on. This mod fixes that and keeps everything era-appropriate, hopefully resulting in a more smoothly escalating difficulty level rather than huge spikes caused by the early appearance of an Atlas X (or something).

MW5 Mod Compatibility Pack

Pretty essential, this mod smooths out some minor problems in the base game and makes mods play nicely without one another.

Prime8's Distinct Weapon FX and Weather Improvement Mod

An aesthetic improvement that makes lasers, missiles and autocannon shots all "pop" better, greatly improving visual feedback and information, as well increasing the variety of weather conditions you'll encounter. Plus, they looks really cool.

Remove JumpShip Animation

Like it's near-neighbour BattleTech, MechWarrior 5 likes to play a lengthy, unskippable animation of your dropship docking with a jumpship and making an FTL jump to the next star system. Which is fine, but you only ever need to see it once. This mod disables the animation, greatly improving in-game speed. The dropship animation remains, since the game loads data on the new star system in the background, but that's much shorter and much less of an issue.

Max Tonnage

Found on the Nexus. The game has a variable maximum tonnage allowance on missions, so missions will force you to bring smaller, lighter mechs on low-difficulty missions and only allow you to field a full lance of Assault mechs on late-game, tough missions. Although understandable from a game balance POV, it's pretty nonsensical from a story and lore perspective. This mod resets the max tonnage for all missions to 400 tons, allowing you to deploy four of the heaviest mechs in the game (the King Crab and Atlas) with no issue. Just don't be surprised if low-difficulty missions now become a bit too easy.

TTRulez Enemy AI Mod

This essential mod fixes the enemy AI, making enemy mechs more likely to use long-range missiles, improved swarming tactics and enemy mechs with jump jets will actually now use them.

TTRulez Lancemate AI Mod

This essential mod fixes friendly AI, making allied mechs much less likely to trash the base you're supposed to be defending and more flexible in how they choose targets. Allied AI will also now use jump jets and other ancillary abilities.

Better Spawns

Found at Nexus. The most essential of all mods, this completely rewrites MechWarrior 5's dunderhead spawning system, which sometimes has enemy mechs and vehicles materialising 200 metres away behind a rock (or, in extreme cases, out of thin air). All enemy mechs and ground vehicles now have to be either on the map at the start of the game or be brought on via dropship, giving players more time to notice and react to their arrival. Enemy aircraft are prevented from spawning right on top of you. Vehicles arrive in lance-style groups rather than piecemeal, so present a greater challenge rather than rushing in one-by-one to be cut to pieces by focused fire from your forces. This mod increases the challenge by making enemies arrive more smartly and (in coordination with the Better AI mod) use better tactics, but also evens things out by giving you and your lance mates more time and ability to manage the battlefield.

With these mods installed, the quality of MechWarrior 5 abruptly increases from "okay" to "very good indeed," and I would not recommend playing the game without them.

OBLIVION remaster inching towards completion

A fan-made remaster of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion has released a major update on progress, for the first time making positive noises about completion in the not-too-distant future.

The remaster is called Skyblivion, although that's become a bit of a misnomer. The starting point was remaking Oblivion in the somewhat updated engine of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, but in the years since then they have also redone the lighting and rendering engine, so it's even better than Skyrim and looks a lot more modern.

At the moment the exterior worldspace is almost complete and the team are working on the dozens of dungeons and shops in the game. For the dungeons they are going beyond just recreating locations but also redesigning dungeons to be larger and more interesting (Oblivion's dungeons were infamously tiny, often not being more than very modest caves). They are also creating new art assets for the entre project and have integrated every quest from the original into the game, although there are lots of issues and bugs they are tracking down and resolving.

No timeframe for completion is given, but from the look of it and bearing in mind this is a small team working in their own time, this may now be down to a couple of years away. Impressive given the mod's long, long-gestating status.

Bethesda themselves have been supportive of mods, especially mods that update and upgrade their older games. Despite re-releasing Skyrim on multiple platforms with updated graphics, Bethesda have indicated a reluctance to go back and update Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas, noting that the technical compromises they made to get those games out were severe and they'd feel the need to completely remake them, which would be a huge amount of work they'd rather divert to working on their new games.

Bethesda are currently working on a new game in a new franchise, Starfield, and Oblivion's successor, The Elder Scrolls VI. Neither project has a timeframe for release at the moment.

The best space combat game of all time has a new modding portal

Freespace 2, originally released in 1999, remains the finest space combat game of all time, with impeccable pacing, story, combat and, for the time, visuals. Thanks to the developers, Volition, releasing the source code, modders have run riot for twenty years, constantly developing new mods doing everything from updating the graphics to adding entire new campaigns, some based on properties such as Babylon 5 and Battlestar Galactica.

A new portal, named Knossos (appropriately, after the giant space portal in the game) has been launched to make modding for Freespace 2 easier than ever.

To use Knossos you need an install of Freespace 2. The game is available free, because the source code was released, but for convenience you can get a copy from GoG very easily.

Probably the best place to start is with the FreeSpace Port MediaVps mod, which upgrades all the graphics, models and lighting to the latest standards, and then FreeSpace Port, which updates the original Conflict Freespace: The Great War and its expansion, The Silent Threat to modern standards. Then dive into Freespace 2 itself before checking out the other material.

Revisiting the Wasteland: Modding FALLOUT 3

Since 2002 Bethesda Softworks have been making 3D roleplaying games set in large, open worlds which encourage exploration. Despite vast improvements in graphics technology, these games are notable for using the same basic game engine, GameBryo, throughout. In 2011 Bethesda renamed this engine "Creation" in an attempt to make it appear they were using newer technology, but it was in fact the same engine with different rendering and lighting modules. In one form or another, this engine has now powered seven games: Morrowind (2002), Oblivion (2006), Fallout 3 (2008), Fallout: New Vegas (2010), Skyrim (2011), Fallout 4 (2015) and Fallout 76 (2018), and will apparently still be powering their next two games, Starfield and The Elder Scrolls VI.

Despite the weaknesses of using the same basic codebase for twenty years (to the point where code referencing Morrowind can still be found in the files for Fallout 4 and 76), it does provide a very stable platform for modders, fans who use the engine's open nature to tinker with the makeup of the game. By adjusting files, modders can add new quests, weapons and locations, adjust the world map, fix bugs (especially useful for Bethesda games, where Bethesda are notorious for fixing just a few game-breaking bugs in an early patch and then leaving myriad minor problems unfixed, sometimes ones that recur from game to game) and - most importantly - improve the graphics of the games to keep them relevant later on.

My recent and ongoing playthrough of Fallout 3 - a game more than a decade old which frankly already looked a bit dated on release - would not have been as pleasant an experience without the presence of mods to help fix up the game. These mods do everything from dramatically improving the game's textures to reworking blades of grass so they feel more realistic and making the characters look more like people and less disconcertingly like drunk mannequins. There are limits on what can be done - no amount of modding can totally remove the slightly stodgy movement, clumsy jumping or imprecise shooting outside of VATS mode, or alleviate the vast number of identikit ruined buildings in DC - but it is the difference between the game being a cluster of microfrustrations and something that is much more enjoyable to play by 2018 standards.

Modding Fallout 3 is, fortunately, not a ruinously complicated procedure. Most of the modding process is automated these days and it's relatively simple to do or abandon and revert to the base game if you feel like playing the game in its old-skool incarnation.

In order to mod Fallout 3 you need to do the following:

1. Have a PC (modding to this scale is not available for the PS3 or X-Box 360 versions of the game).

2. Secure a copy of Fallout 3 Game of the Year edition from GoG.com. You can mod an original 2008 boxed version of the game or a Steam version of the game, but it's far, far more work and it will be constantly challenged by the original version of the game's use of Games for Windows Live and the Steam version's flakiness when played on Windows 8 or 10, and will probably crash a lot more. The GoG version of the game also comes pre-modded to remove the GFWL launcher and also adds the LAA (Large Address Aware) Patch, which allows the game to make use of more of your PC's RAM (the 2008 version was hardcoded to use 2GB of RAM only for the game, which was ridiculous). Fortunately Fallout 3 is ten years old and quite cheap (especially if you wait for the next GoG sale around Christmas). It's probably a good idea to grab a copy of New Vegas as well from them for the same reason.

3. Bookmark the Fallout 3 page on the Nexus Mods web page. You're going to be spending a lot of time here.

4. Download the Nexus Mod Manager. This will make the process of downloading and installing mods far easier than it will be otherwise.

5. Watch this video (the same as embedded above). There are many, many videos on modding Fallout 3 out there, but this one is notable for being concise and focused solely on stabilising and improving Fallout 3, not adding loads of fan content or doing whacky stuff with the graphics that move the game away from Bethesda's original intentions.

Once you've done that your're set to go. The video (by "Some Kind of Elephant") is pretty good and will take you through the basis of modding the game. The Nexus Mod page contains most of the mods you need to use. It should be noted that some of the links in the YouTube video have expired, so to find the mods just type the name into the search function on the Nexus Mod page. I'd also advise not using the DLC retexture pack addresses in the main description, as they lead to sites which triggered my antivirus software. Instead get those files from here:

http://www.mediafire.com/file/d1c1vp8g1jbgb8y/Operation+Anchorage.7z http://www.mediafire.com/file/boi3u7tgqan5htt/ThePitt.7z http://www.mediafire.com/file/fwksyu0v6auw32u/BrokenSteel.7z http://www.mediafire.com/file/ql238cvbl494re3/PointLookout.7z

One mod not mentioned in the video but which - frankly - is essential is SpeedMod v2. This mod can be used to improve your character's base walking and running speed by one of several presets, which is essential because the base speed in Fallout 3 is insanely slow. Adding this mod will prevent you from hurling something through the screen in horror at how slowly you (and everyone else) moves. The game does increase everyone's movement speed, so monsters and other characters in the game will also get a speed boost (so it won't let you "cheat" by running much faster than anyone else).

It's worth noting that the UI mod (which makes the on-screen information like health and ammunition) is only desirable if you are playing the game on a monitor which you're sitting right next to. If you're outputting the game to a TV and you're playing from the couch, you may want to leave the UI as it is for clarity.

Once that's all done, launch the game via the Nexus Mod Manager programme using the "Launch FOSE" option and you should be all set to go.


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XCOM 2: LONG WAR 2 released

In a surprise move, the Long War 2 mod for XCOM 2 has been released on PC. During discussions earlier in the week no release date was given and it was assumed that it was still months away. But instead it's out now.

Long War 2 radically enhances the strategy game, adds a new soldier class (three if you count those incorporated from other mods) and gives the player many more options for fighting the alien menace, although the aliens also have more abilities to counter-attack. The early reception for the mod sounds highly positive.

The mod is available via Steam completely free of charge.

XCOM 2 to get revamped strategic layer

Firaxis have announced that their strategy game XCOM 2 is to get a revamped strategic layer courtesy of modders. The officially-sanctioned and authorised Long War 2 mod will allow players to take direct command of all the rebel cells on Earth, organising military strikes and recruiting new personnel directly.

This will make for a much more strategically involving game and makes contacting new rebel cells far more important than it was previously. It also means that everyone is involved in the fight against alien occupation rather than just your single group on board the Avenger. The mod will also introduce the Technical, a new soldier class who specialises in rocket launchers and flamethrowers, and Coilguns, a new weapons class that fits between the Mag Weapon and Beam Weapon layers. The mod will be released in the next few months on PC.

Based on the cliffhanger ending to XCOM 2, it is likely that we will see an XCOM 3 around 2019. Meanwhile, the original creator of the X-COM franchise, Julian Gollop, is developing a similar strategy game called Phoenix Point for release in 2018.

Fallout 4: Far Harbor

A routine case turns up at Valentine's Detective Agency: a young girl has run away from her family, and they want to track her down. The Sole Survivor and Nick Valentine soon discover that the girl has fled to Far Habor, an island located to the north-east of the Commonwealth. Following in her tracks, they find a community fiercely distrustful of outsiders and divided into three camps: the town of Far Harbour itself, the nuke-worshipping cult known as the Children of the Atom and a band of runaway synths dwelling in the scientific outpost of Arcadia. Tensions are rising between the three groups, which is dangerous when one controls a band of powerful robots that can look human and another has access to nuclear weapons. You have to choose which faction to support, or if there is a way to continue the peace and allow the three sides to exist in harmony.

Bethesda RPGs are such gargantuam, time-destroying games (each easily allowing for over 100 hours of gameplay) that the notion of making them even bigger has always seemed a bit redundant. This is especially the case if you've already completed the base game and are entering the expansions as an all-powerful, high-level demigod of destruction. Bethesda's response in the past has been to go completely nuts in originality and experimentation, with their expansions usually being wilder, better-written and more thoughtful than their base games. The Shivering Isles was a huge improvement over the blander Oblivion, Fallout 3's five mini-expansions were much better than the original game (and fixed its truly appalling original ending) and Dragonborn was an excellent mash-up of Skyrim's arctic stylings with the weirdness of Morrowind (arguably, still Bethesda's finest hour). But the highlight of the Bethesda expansion track record (maybe somewhat embarrassingly, as Obsidian actually made them) is easily New Vegas: not only was the base game the most thoughtful, interesting and well-judged of their big RPGs, but its four expansions together made for a fascinating thematic exploration of the philosophy of RPGs whilst also being extremely funny and wildly varying in tone and atmosphere.

Far Harbor isn't competing remotely on the same level as Obsidian's material, but it's more surprising that it also fails to live up to Bethesda's own past achievements. Bethesda have boasted that it's their biggest expansion to date, and that the world map (based on the real island of Bar Harbor, Maine) is the largest they've created for an expansion (if so, it's not by much). However, in terms of locations to visit on that map and the amount of stuff to do it feels slight compared to Dragonborn or Shivering Isles. In terms of the time I spent playing it, it evened out at around 15 hours, which is less than even Old World Blues or Point Lookout, supposed mini-expansions for Fallout: New Vegas and Fallout 3 respectively. 15 hours of gameplay is nothing to be sneezed at, but considering that some people have put literally hundreds of hours into Fallout 4 itself it's also not going to be presenting players with a huge challenge.

The game is designed around its three factions and their bases: the human settlement of Far Harbor, the synth base of Arcadia (built in an old observatory) and the Children of the Atom's stronghold of Nucleus, an old nuclear submarine base. In each location you have multiple characters to meet and befriend and a lot of quests to do to build up your reputation with each faction. Ultimately you have to decide on the fate of each faction and the entire island: it is possible to wipe out the entire population of the island if you really want and it's also possible to forge a new peace between the three sides. You can also, laudably, create a messier halfway-house stopgap solution which leaves one or more factions destroyed and the rest angry with you for messing everything up.

That's all fine, but surprisingly short and unchallenging. A lot of the quests for each faction fall back on Fallout 4's biggest weakness, its frustrating and dull overreliance on combat. The Fallout series was, once upon a time, the most roleplaying-intensive of all game series, giving you amazing freedom to complete quests through dialogue, wits, cunning, stealth or combat. Fallout 4 has very little truck with allowing you to solve problems through anything other than bloodletting. Far Harbor does allow you some leeway in how to solve the over-arcing storyling peacefully, but most of the individual quests you do along the way involve having to blast your way to a solution. It's an annoying tendency which is often at odds with the expansion's thematic musings on diplomacy, consequences and regrets for past actions (hint: make sure you take Nick Valentine as your companion, as the game expands a lot on his backstory). If you're coming into this expansion having completed the main game and in the Level 40s or 50s, you'll also find it a complete and total cakewalk (a couple of the tougher robots below Arcadia possibly excepted).

On the plus side, the shorter game length and smaller geographic size of the game allows for a tighter focus on the characters, and there seemed to be more memorable characters with better dialogue than the base game. This comes to life in the game's highlight, a dramatic showdown between the leaders of Arcadia and Far Harbor where your past actions in helping or hindering both sides come dramatically into play (slightly frustratingly, this scene only plays if you've already given up on the "best possible" ending, but then there is a consequence for such things).


Another initial highlight is a side-quest called "Brain Dead", which takes you into a vault populated entirely by robots. A murder has taken place, which quickly turns into a Agatha Christie-style mystery. With robots. This was actually original, zany, well-written and funny, the sort of thing Bethesda used to be really good at. Unfortunately, this quest was quite blatantly "borrowed" from a New Vegas fan mod called Autumn Leaves, which Bethesda apparently have not credited to the original creator, which is definitely not a cool thing.

Overall, Far Harbor (***½) isn't terrible. It's fun, it passes away a few hours and it has some strengths in character and moral decision making that are better than the original game. But it's also lacking in original content and is much slighter than Bethesda made out it as going to be. As possibly the only major, story-focused expansion for Fallout 4 we'll get (the rest have all been cosmetic twinges to the settlement system and allowing you to build new robots), it's severely underwhelming. I would only recommend this at full price to hardcore Fallout 4 fans, and would advise that everyone else wait for the complete Ultimate Edition or for the expansion to be heavily discounted.

Battlestar Galactica: Diaspora - Shattered Armistice

Forty years have passed since the First Cylon War, but the Colonial Fleet maintains a strong defence against the potential return of the enemy. Their newest weapon is the Command Navigation Program, an advanced computer system that massively improves warship and fighter response times and efficiency. The fighter wing of the Battlestar Theseus is tasked with testing the program. Thanks to bad - or good - luck and timing, the CNP is not working on the ship and its fighters when the Cylons attack the Twelve Colonies and the battlestar has a fighting chance for survival...

Diaspora: Shattered Armistice is a fan-made space combat game based on the rebooted Battlestar Galactica franchise. It uses the Freespace 2 engine, but you don't need a copy of that game for this to work. In fact, Diaspora is completely free of charge and can be downloaded here.

Fan-made games used to mean "amateurish". Not so with this game. Made over a period of four years, the game features professional-quality audio and voice work, an original musical score and often jaw-dropping visuals (the background skyboxes in particular are fantastic). This game may have the best explosions I've ever seen in a video game. The game also doesn't play as fast and loose with canon as I was expecting. The game casts you as a pilot on the Battlestar Theseus during the Cylon attack on the Twelve Colonies and has you providing cover as the ship attempts to rescue civilian ships from Aerilon whilst the planet burns below (several of these ships end up in the Galactica fleet) and tries to rejoin the main Colonial forces at Virgon for a doomed counter-attack (as mentioned in the mini-series). The Theseus is a new design - borrowing elements from both the Valkyrie and the Pegasus - and a most convincing one. If this had showed up in the series itself, it would have fitted right in.

As space games go, Freespace 2 is, even seventeen years after release, simply the greatest one ever made and it provides an excellent framework for a BSG game. Like the TV show itself, the game does not use Newtonian physics but a sort-of combination of physics and an "aeroplanes in space" model which is actually quite effective. This allows you to do the kind of "turn and burn" moves seen in the TV show and to deactivate your engines and strafe targets by flying on one direction but facing and shooting in another. Combat is both satisfying and dangerous: even the Viper Mk. VII is a relatively fragile craft and the Cylon Raiders are difficult-to-hit targets. You also get to pilot a Raptor on one mission equipped with missile pods and dual miniguns, which is even more fun.

Issues? Well, it's a short game at only six missions (some of them are quite long though), but there is a multiplayer mode which stretches things out. Also, some of the game's damage readings seem buggy. On a mission to disable a Cylon basestar's heavy missile batteries I found my cannons did more damage than heavy bombs, and both other fighters and the Theseus seemed to take down the batteries in seconds whilst my weapons barely scratched it. There's also some occasional stiff movement and animation that betrays the lack of budget and the relatively small team behind it.

But these are pretty minor things (just switch to engaging fighters in the basestar mission), easily made up for by the fact that the game is free and a lot of fun to play. Battlestar Galactica: Diaspora - Shattered Armistice (****) whiles away a few hours very nicely indeed.

The same team are now working on a follow-up, Worthy of Survival, hopefully for release in the near future.

Conquering Westeros in CRUSADER KINGS II

The Game of Thrones mod for Crusader Kings II is a free 'reskinning' of the original game which allows you play in Westeros instead of medieval Europe. The mod also features original artwork and music, and some comprehensive engine changes to account for how life works in the Seven Kingdoms.

PC Gamer is running a diary of a campaign in this game. Even if you're not interested in the game, it's worth a read as the player tries to play as a 'more sensible' version of Ned Stark and immeditely runs into unforseen events that cause total chaos. An entertaining read. Part 1 of the diary is here, Part 2 here and Part 3 here. Further updates to the diary will follow every Sunday until it is completed (or Ned dies, which is an occupational hazard).

You can now play Mario in SKYRIM

So, Skyrim is now a Super Mario Brothers title.

Any further comment at this time seems redundant.

BATTLESTAR GALACTICA: DIASPORA released

Following quickly after the news of Black Mesa getting a release date (14 September), another long-in-development fan game has also been unleashed into the wild.

Battlestar Galactica: Diaspora is based on the reimagined version of the SF TV series. The game has been in development for four years, spinning off the never-released Beyond the Red Line title. Whilst using the classic Freespace 2 engine, Diaspora is not a 'mod' requiring the player to already own a game. Instead, it is available for free download and is a self-contained game in its own right.

The game is a space combat simulator pitting the player as a Colonial pilot against the Cylon forces. The storyline has been kept under wraps, but it appears to feature a small Colonial military taskforce that escaped the Cylon ambush in the pilot mini-series, with a story that proceeds in parallel to the TV series (this seems to be the major difference from Beyond the Red Line, which was more of an attempt to directly replicate the TV series and its battles in the game). The Galactica and its fleet do appear, however.

The game is available on Windows, Mac and Linux.

BLACK MESA gets a release date

The long, long-awaited game Black Mesa has finally gotten a release date: 14 September, or just twelve days from now.

Relive the classic dialogue: "Forget about Freeman!" "They're waiting for you, in the test chamber." "ARGH!"

Black Mesa is a fan-made mod for Half-Life. It recreates the entire game of Half-Life in the latest version of the Source Engine, with vastly superior graphics. Made with the approval of Valve, Black Mesa has been in development since shortly after Half-Life 2 was released in 2004. It's actually been in the making for longer than Half-Life 3 and both of the episode expansions for HL2.

The Black Mesa team have added a caveat however: the game will only go up as far as the Lambda Core level (at the end of which you teleport to the planet Xen). The team is still working on the controversial Xen levels (most fans' least favourite part of the original game) and looking for a way of making them more compelling. Still, even shorn of the game's climax (the highlight of which is the confrontation with a giant mobile bollock spider monster), this is a pretty large game (about 10 hours).

You will require a copy of Half-Life 2 and the original Half-Life to enjoy Black Mesa, with no further payment required.

UPDATE: Black Mesa does not require a copy of HL1 or 2. It just needs the Source SDK, which is included with all downloads of Steam, which is available for free.

ASoIaF/GoT mod for CRUSADER KINGS II released

A modding team have released their Song of Ice and Fire-based mod for Crusader Kings II, Paradox Interactive's acclaimed medieval dynasty simulator. Crusader Kings II: A Game of Thrones is available right now for free, but you need a copy of Crusader Kings II to play it.

The mod not only alters the existing game setting and factions, it also introduces new features not present in the base game and allows for some amusing changes to the way things fell out in the books, as this report on a campaign indicates:

"An interesting development in my campaign if anyone's interested. Managed to squash Robert's Rebellion after ol' King Aerys met an "unfortunate" end and Rhaegar ascended to the throne. Spared Robert's life which eventually led to him choosing trial by combat. He killed Rhaegar so now I'm playing as Aegon with Varys as my regent. Gotta say, this mod is leaps and bounds ahead of vanilla CK2 and the official ASOIAF games as well."

WING COMMANDER SAGA released

A band of talented mod-makers have finally released Wing Commander Saga, a continuation of the venerable space combat series. Made with the (unofficial) nod of approval of the original game designers, Wing Commander Saga is an open-source game using the Freespace 2 engine. It requires nothing else to play (a joystick or gamepad is recommended, however) and can be played on most PCs, including those using Linux. The mod has been in development for over ten years.

As well as robust space combat (featuring 50 single-player missions), the game features cut-scenes, animated mission briefings and full voice-overs throughout.

The mod is available, free of charge, from the WC Saga website here. Rock Paper Shotgun have their take on the game here (one reviewer in the comments suggesting it has the best space combat of any Wing Commander game, official or otherwise, released to date).

Sadly, the game does not feature Mark Hamill. Fortunately, it also doesn't feature Freddie Prinze, Jr.

Westeros in MINECRAFT

A bunch of gamers are on a mission to recreate all of Westeros in the Lego-like computer game Minecraft. They've already completed work on King's Landing and the Wall and hope to do the rest of the continent over the next few months (which seems very ambitious).


Follow the link for a whole load more screenshots.

New SKYRIM update adds PORTAL 2 space core to the game

Whilst playing Skyrim, it has often occurred to me that what the game really lacked was that space core from the end of Portal 2 floating around like ten feet behind you occasionally bellowing, "SPAAAACE!" in its unique style.

"I'm in space. And by 'space' I mean 'Tamriel'."

Of course, Valve and Bethesda have recognised this glaring deficiency in the game, and created a mod that allows the space core from the end of Portal 2 to float around behind you and etc.

The same update also adds high-resolution texture packs to make the PC version of the game look totally awesome(r) and activates the Creation Kit, which allows you to adjust and tweak all aspects of the game, but frankly this is just small fry compared to the space core thing.


So, does this mean that it is now canon that the Half-Life/Portal and Elder Scrolls franchises take place in the same universe? Will we see headcrabs and Combine invade Tamriel in The Elder Scrolls VI? Will Dragonborn and Mammoths show up in Half-Life 3? No. Don't even go there.

Third Age: Total War 3.0 released

The long-awaited third version of Third Age: Total War has been released. This fan-made (but professional-quality) mod allows owners of Medieval II: Total War and its Kingdoms expansion to conquer Middle-earth with one of several factions.

The new third version of the game features a host of changes, most notably the long-awaited introduction of custom battle maps and settlements, putting iconic locations such as Minas Tirith and Edoras on the battlefield to be fought over. These replace the generic Medieval II towns that had stood in for the settlements in previous versions of the game. More information on the game, including download links and installation information can be found on TWCenter.