Destiny: The Taken King

Available on: September 15 (Xbox One, PS4, Xbox 360, PS3)

With two expansions already in the bag, Bungie is looking to extend the weekly Destiny to-do list with an even larger expansion. The Taken King comes complete with a Raid, new areas to explore, additional Strikes, more multiplayer maps, and all kinds of exotic and legendary gear to collect. And all of these new activities, enemies, and competitive components are coming to invade the Destiny universe, thanks to one really pissed off father: Oryx, the Taken King.

In the first expansion, The Dark Below, the guardians went up to the moon and killed Oryx's son Crota. Now, the winged Hive monstrosity is coming to earth in a Death Star-sized tomb ship, ripping the souls from Fallen, Vex, and Cabal, and using those taken (get it?) life forms to create a massive army. Pricing issues aside, this looks like the proper, huge update Destiny has been waiting for.

Shin Megami Tensei X Fire Emblem

Available on: December (Wii U)

Virtually nothing has been said about this game in the many months since it was first revealed. We don’t know what Shin Megami Tensei X Fire Emblem looks like or how it plays, but we do know that Nintendo’s team at Intelligent Systems is hard at work on it. We just wish we knew more about one of the very few Wii U games planned for this year.

Based on the teaser trailer, we know this crossover brings together characters from both decades-old series, covering multiple titles from both SMT and Fire Emblem. Nintendo will be handling the development, and it’s occasionally been referred to as an RPG by the publisher, though how the disparate fantasy characters of FE will meet the post-apocalyptic demon killers of SMT is anyone’s guess. Our instincts tell us we won’t see anything new of this until E3.

Battleborn

Available on: TBA 2015 (PC, Xbox One, PS4)

We've technically already had Borderlands in space, but why stop at visiting a moon? There are all sorts of worlds out there filled with fascinating creatures for you to beat the tar out of and call mean names. If that's what you're looking for, Gearbox's upcoming co-op FPS Battleborne has you covered.

An epic space adventure where a group of misfits from across the universe battle for the fate of the last living star, Battleborn shoots for epic scale without forgetting the cheeky banter and silliness that has endeared players to Gearbox games before. There's plenty of that to be found, like an overzealous military bro-bot and a swordsman who knows that anything you want is yours as long as you lick it first. Playing to Gearbox's strengths in a whole new galaxy, this looks like one hell of a fun intergalactic beat-down.

ADR1FT

Available on: September (Xbox One, PS4, PC)

ADR1FT (or Adrift, if you like being able to pronounce things) is the sort of thing you'd get if you took Gravity and Gone Home and smooshed them together really hard, then had the result hang out at Alien: Isolation's house for a while. You play as an amnesiac astronaut and the apparent sole survivor of an event that left your space station in tatters. Oh, and you're running out of oxygen. Fun!

Your goal in ADR1FT is twofold: don't die, and get back home. The actual gameplay behind that looks to be fairly simple, as it primarily involves you floating around the remains of the station, solving puzzles and gathering clues and precious oxygen tanks alike. It'll also feature Oculus support, which sounds both awesome and unbelievably terrifying - seriously, the announcement trailer alone makes us nervous. That's all we really know about ADR1FT, so make sure to keep an ear out. In space, no one can hear you scream, so you'll have to listen 

Tearaway Unfolded

Available on: September 8 (PS4)

Tearaway exploits all of PS Vita's veritable Swiss Army knife of sensors and buttons to create an experience that truly puts You at the center (literally - it uses the front camera to put you in the sun). Brilliant as Tearaway is, it's still exclusive to Sony's quiet little handheld, and that means comparatively few people have been able to enjoy it. That's where Tearaway Unfolded comes in.

Tearaway Unfolded doesn't just translate the experience onto PS4 - and, more importantly, DualShock 4 - it adds to it. Sure, you can use the touchpad to make your in-game creations, but you can also load up the companion app for a bigger, more precise canvas. You can hold up your controller to catch items, then flick up on the touchpad to send them sailing back out, or even use motion controls to shine the light bar around the world. If you didn't catch the adventures of Iota and Atoi the first time around, don't miss your second chance.

Halo 5: Guardians

Available on: October 27 (Xbox One)

Cortana is (possibly) dead, Master Chief has gone AWOL, a new generation of Spartans have arrived in full force, the Forerunner have returned. Oh, and there's aim-down sights now; everything about Halo 5: Guardians seems to be deconstructing the sci-fi shooter series, giving us new twists and taking unexpected turns. These changes make us nervous, but also terribly excited.

After all, Halo - much-loved as it is - is a bit long in the cybernetically-enhanced tooth at this point. Developer 343 Industries has taken the reigns from former developer Bungie and made the games unmistakably their own, but this is the team’s first full effort on Xbox One. However, with gorgeous presentation, an intriguing storyline, new characters, new squad-based gameplay mechanics and a refined multiplayer experience, Halo 5 is shaping up very nice indeed.

Guitar Hero Live

Available on: October 20 (Xbox One, PS4, Xbox 360, PS3, Wii U)

Better start getting your fingers warmed up because the new Guitar Hero Livehas a redesigned controller that's going to put your riffing skills to the test. There are six buttons on two rows allowing you to string together notes and pull off chord patterns that weren't possible on the old controllers. That isn't everything that's changed to get you back to rocking out to pop classics in your living room. Guitar Hero Live is letting you live out your rock star dreams on stage, in first-person, and in front of a live-action audience.

The game's campaign brings you backstage with a live-action band and walks you out to booming crowds of thousands of screaming fans. If you perform well, the fans will continue to love you, but start flubbing those notes and you will face the wrath of the booing crowd and your disappointed band mates. Guitar Hero Live will also feature an online Guitar Hero TV service, which will present new songs and challenges to players looking for more music to master.

Rise of the Triad news is coming soon

Whole months worth of my teenagehood were lost to the original Rise of the Triad, and the 2013 reboot wasn't too shabby either. So it's exciting that something Rise of the Triad related is being teased. I'd speculate that it's a sequel, but that's just a guess.

The tease comes via the official Rise of the Triad Twitter account, which tweeted the above image, a link to a YouTube video, as well as the text "soon" and "please stand by... your bazookas". The video is embedded below, and features the above image soundtracked by what I'm guessing is music from the forthcoming game. 

It's a good time for a new Rise of the Triad: fast-paced, twitch-oriented shooters are definitely making a comeback, especially with a new Doom looming on the horizon. The more of these games the better, if you ask me. Running and gunning for life.

Skyrim almost had haunting system, modder adds it back in

My big hope for The Elder Scrolls VI: Elsweyr (I also hope that it's called that, and it's set in cat-people land Elsweyr) is that it's more systemic, more reactive and even more sandboxy than previous games in the series. Bethesda could start by re-introducing hauntings and NPC mourning, two features that, as it turns out, were cut from Skyrim. Modder vagonumero12 has dug through the game files, discovered the relevant code, and modded them back into the game.

Here's how haunting and mourning were supposed to work, according to the modder, before Bethesda scrapped the embryonic features.

"Haunting: when a unique NPC with family dies, there will be a random chance that it will—after some time—"resurrect" as a ghost that will follow a relative for the rest of the game. Only NPCs with generic voice files (don't expect to see Ulfric as a ghost), and only a single NPC in the whole save. You won't be able to fill Skyrim with ghosts (it was left like that by Bethesda).

Mourning: when a unique NPC with family or friends dies, their relatives/friends will do some comment about their loss to you on their hello dialogues."

The features don't appear to have been developed very much before they were cut, but Bethesda did get their voice actors to record some of that "my relative died, I'm well sad" dialogue. All of the 'random NPC' voice actors appear to have been asked to record these lines, including, weirdly, the ones that supplied the voices for Skyrim's children. Hear some kids lament the loss of their husbands and daughters

Fallout 4 will have a dozen companions for you to romance

During the Fallout 4 presentation at Quakecon, Todd Howard revealed that, in addition to Dogmeat, players will have their choice of about a dozen different companions to accompany them through the game (only one at a time, however). In some new gameplay footage, we saw more of Preston Garvey (pictured above), leader of a faction called The Commonwealth of Minutemen," one of your potential companions. We were also introduced to another companion, a woman named Piper, who runs a local newspaper from the ruins of Boston's Fenway Park, now called Diamond City.

Howard also announced that players will be able to romance their companions, regardless of gender. Specific details of how romance will work in Fallout 4 were not revealed, but considering Skyrim allowed players to get married and move in together, it's not hard to imagine Fallout 4 including nuptials and domestic bliss. Howard also said there will be a special perk for those who want to play without companions, stalking the ruins of Boston as a lone wolf, but did not elaborate on what that perk might be.

A clip reel of Mr. Handy saying player names aloud was also shown. While Bethesda recorded over a thousand common names for use in the game, Mr. Handy can also say joke names such as "McFly," "Boobies," and "Fart Face," which will no doubt lead to players experimenting to uncover any other rude names that may have been recorded.

We also got a bit of news about Fallout 4's Perks, which are tied to S.P.E.C.I.A.L. stats. Each time you level you get to pick a perk, and there are new perks for each level of S.P.E.C.I.A.L. you gain. There are 70 base perks, and each Perk has multiple ranks, which should give players a lot of options to build their characters.

I wouldn't expect the the video footage associated with this news to be released soon, so you'll have to use your imagination about Fallout 4's companions and perks for now. But we'll have more stories about everything happening at Quakecon today and through this weekend.

Victor Vran launch trailer features a very familiar voice

he monster-hunting action-RPG Victor Vran is out today, and so is the Victor Vran launch trailer, which features a little bit of story and a little bit of gameplay. But listen to that narration and tell me: Does any of it strike you as a little familiar?

"I hunt demons for a living. It's a lonely trade," the titular Mr. Vran says. "At first, you're the hero. The savior. But when the job is done, things quickly change. People realize you're as much a monster as the ones you hunt."

Feeling confused? Like maybe you're in the wrong game, or perhaps the wrong space-time continuum, one in which The Witcher actually became a top-down action-RPG? There's a good reason for that. "Yes, it is Doug [Cockle], AKA Geralt," a rep for publisher EuroVideo Medien confirmed in an email.

As for the gameplay, there's not a whole lot to see, but it's certainly very colorful. Victor Vran was developed by Haemimont Games, and while it's a departure from the studio's usual stuff—it's best known for strategy games, particularly the Tropico series—the user reviews on Steam seems quite positive so far.

After drug scandal, ESL says "esports needs to mature"

When a member of North American CS:GO team Cloud9 unapologetically admitted that he and his teammates used adderall during a tournament in March, esports league ESL reacted swiftly, announcing that it would enforce  drug testing at its next event before it pursues a larger policy in partnership with two organizations dedicated to anti-doping practices.

An incident with performance-enhancing drugs was inevitable for esports, which are growing more than ever alongside the popularity of competitive games and livestreaming. ESL’s stopgap measure of implementing random tests for ESL Cologne in August is welcome, but how will drug testing be handled going forward? How will a league like ESL react during a tournament weekend when one of its players tests positive for a banned substance?

To get further clarity on the ESL’s perspective on this issue I spoke with Michal Blicharz, Managing Director Pro Gaming at ESL.

PCG: Why is the implementation of player drug testing necessary to the ESL?

Michal Blicharz: We are a company with the word sports in the name. The integrity of our competitions is paramount to what we do. We have already invested enormous amounts of resources to combat online cheating with our ESL Wire Anti Cheat software and the time has come for us to do something about performance enhancing drugs. In the past 18 months the salaries of the best esports players have risen about ten fold and the prize money aggregates per game have gone into high millions. The temptation is there for players more so than ever and it’s on us to educate gamers, preserve the integrity of our competitions and, if necessary, punish those who break the rules.

Has the ESL spoken directly with Cloud9 about the admission that its players used adderall during ESL Katowice?

Blicharz: When we first heard about this issue, we focused our energy on what we can do moving forward. This is not to say that we are indifferent to what may or may not have happened in that specific case, but it was clear that a more urgent need was to find real ways to prevent those situations from happening in the future.

As for the player himself, or his team, we are unable to retrospectively test the team for PEDs, therefore any investigation would likely prove to be inconclusive.

How has the new policy been received by teams?

Blicharz: The reaction from the video games and esports industry has been overwhelmingly positive. At the core of it, teams are interested in being provided a fair playing field.

It's also on the teams to make sure gaming is clean and I hope they will actively play their role as well.

If a player is prescribed adderall, or another drug, by a doctor, would they be permitted to use it during an ESL competition?

Blicharz: We are currently consulting with NADA on how to handle it and to learn what the best practices are that we can apply to what we do. We certainly do not want to disqualify players who have legitimate medical conditions.

Section 2.13.3 of the current ESL rulebook reads, "If a participant gets disqualified from the ESL One during an ongoing stage, all it's members get banned until the end of main event." If a player tests positive for a banned substance at an ESL event, what will happen?

Blicharz: Our league operations and legal teams are working on updating the rules, and the exact terms of all sanctions are yet to be determined. We want to treat doping like any other form of cheating. This is something our Director of League Operations should speak to, but we will very likely punish illegal doping the same way we would punish cheating in a match. In essence, those things are not different from each other as far as the integrity of the competition is concerned.

Along with incidents like the betting scandal in Counter-Strike earlier this year, do you believe there's a need for the CS scene, or esports in general, to become more mature?

Blicharz: Of course esports has to mature. It's not even 20 years old! At the same time, in many ways it's outgrown some sports that have been around almost a century. It takes time but we will get there.

AWP (Counter-Strike) FOR PC

Counter-Strike doesn’t have a story, but it does have a villain. The AWP is the grim reaper of Valve’s shooter series, the only gun in the game that can eliminate you with a single body shot. No weapon has maintained the social stigma that the AWP has, but it isn’t just its reputation that brings the AWP onto this list (if it were, the damned G3 SG/1 autosniper would be too). Aurally the AWP stands out among all other sounds in Counter-Strike, a nail-in-the-coffin thud that echoes for a second and a half. Arguably no other weapon alters player behavior as significantly as the AWP does based on it sound; it’s a reminder of what an achievement it is to create something that feels powerful every time you pick it up but without unbalancing a multiplayer game.

The AWP has long been a lightning rod for “camper!” accusations, but it’s by no means an easy gun to operate. Because its accuracy gets inconsistent as soon as you start to move, being a great AWPer demands reflexes, discipline, and intuition. Learning to snap-fire with the AWP and use it outside areas that suit sniping are two of Counter-Strike’s toughest skills.

The Best Guns in PC Gaming

Whenever a new first-person shooter releases, we pick up our conversation around PC Gamer HQ about what video game guns we love most. How did Far Cry 3’s bow compare to Crysis 3’s? Which game has the best Magnum-style revolver in a game? We’re continually interested in the design of the ballistic and energy weapons we bring into shooters—the mechanics they’re imbued with and the particle effects and animations that express their personalities.

As celebration of the inventive designs and as a representation of our collective tastes, we’ve assembled a list of the best video game guns. See the criteria list below to get a sense of how we judged; if your favorite rifle or SMG isn’t here, lobby for it in the comments. We’ll update this list over time as we encounter guns we like in new FPSes, or as we revisit old games that spark new opinions.

Dirt Rally

Some of us missed the days of realistic rally games, bemoaning the current state of 'x-treme' off-road racers and wishing for a return to simpler, purer rally-times. Dirt Rally quietly snuck onto Steam and gave us just that. Challenging, realistic, surprisingly pretty and delightfully grounded, it's the return of pure rally gaming.

Resident Evil HD Remastered

A 13-year-old remake of a 19-year-old game, remade for 2015 and released on PC for the first time. You really wouldn't expect Resident Evil to be as good as it is, but... it is. Pure survival horror requiring caution and planning, a great new control scheme and Barry Burton - what more could you ask for?

Arma 3: Marksmen

There are elements you wouldn't want to tinker with too much in a realistic war game like Arma 3—ballistics, weapons handling, sound—so obviously that's what Bohemia Interactive went and did with its Marksmen DLC. Fortunately, it's pretty much brilliant across the board, bringing much-requested changes and new tactical considerations that breathe life into the game.

Project Cars

t's not often you see such uncompromising approaches from developers, but that's exactly what we got with Project Cars. It's a racing sim that casts a wide net and covers a range of disciplines, but it always sticks with what it knows best: catering to the hardcore. Also

Pillars of Eternity

Kickstarter has essentially broken game history, giving fans the world over the chance to resuscitate comatose genres and give developers the chance to reclaim their history. Pillars of Eternity is a new Infinity Engine-style RPG in the space year 2015, and that will never stop being a wondrous thing to type. Moreover, it's an Infinity Engine-style RPG made on a healthy budget, and with many of the talent from the cRPG golden era involved. We reckon it “lives up to the towering legacy of the games that inspired it”, and really, what else needs to be said?

Rory McIlroy PGA Tour Review

Rory McIlroy PGA Tour is a shallow, lifeless golf game--rich in technical failings but bankrupt of interesting content. The game types are limited, the number of players and courses is laughably small, and the textures awkwardly pop in and out of view as the camera scrolls across a course. Actually swinging a club and mapping out shots feels right, but whatever goodwill is earned on the course evaporates as you pull away to discover the unimpressive Pro Career mode and the restrictive nature of even the basic Play Now feature. The fresh face on the cover and fancy new game engine can't mask the fact that Rory McIlroy PGA Tour is an undercooked debut that feels like half of a game.

It starts strong, at least, with a detailed tutorial on the various swing styles that provide you with more freedom than ever before. There are three set swing types: a basic analog stick setup where power is determined by the backswing, a more complex version where the follow-through is also taken into account, and the classic three-button press system. If none of the above suits your style, a custom swing option allows you to combine elements of each approach into a personalized pairing of preferences. You can determine if you'd like to be able to hit power shots, zoom in on the trajectory of your ball, see how the wind shapes its flight, and even closely control its spin. Whether you'd like to play Rory McIlroy PGA Tour as a sports simulation or an over-the-top arcade game, the options are there.

No matter what style you choose, taking a smooth backswing and making solid contact with the ball feels authentic, and the putting is challenging without feeling punishing. A dashed line represents the path of your ball from its place on the green to the hole, which takes into account the putt's speed and break. It takes time to correctly read greens with steep hills or sharp ridges, but watching a 20-foot putt bend from right to left and clink at the bottom of the cup is very satisfying.

Other than the lack of load screens between holes and an improved putting system, the swing selection is the only area where Rory McIlroy PGA Tour is bigger and better than what's come before it. The number of real-life courses has been more than halved, with only eight locations that golfers will actually recognize. There are four additional make-believe locations, but none of them make up for the fact that you can't experience the Masters at one of the most famous courses of all time, Augusta National. If that’s not disappointing enough, there are just 12 playable golfers--about a quarter of what previous games have trained us to expect.

Fewer golfers wouldn't be all that damning if the character creator was even passable, but what's available is one of the worst customization tools ever stuffed into a sports game. There are so few options when creating your custom golfer that it's nearly impossible to make a character that you can even pretend looks like you, unless yours happens to match one of the 11 pre-set heads or three body types provided. Instead of feeling like you're starting your own unique career on the PGA Tour, the barebones tools force you to role-play as some anonymous young golfer straight out of a stock photo.

You take this indistinct, cookie-cutter avatar through a single lower-level Web.com event, and from there, you're off to the races. There's no grand buildup, no scenes of your collegiate career, and no narrative to push you forward. You go from tournament to tournament, either competing in quick rounds where you play five or six of the most important holes per day or going through all 72 holes with the hope of becoming the world's number one golfer. But without any sort of subsidiary content to complement the tournaments--such as a story, drills, or even a schedule to outline your goals--the Pro Career can quickly devolve into an unexciting slog devoid of drama.

The only saving grace is the fact that your character raises levels, earns new clubs, and unlocks additional outfits just about every time you complete a round of 18. This sense of progression makes the gauntlet of tournaments much more palatable, as you're able to see your power, accuracy, and spin vastly improve and lead to pretty shots and even prettier scorecards worth hanging on the fridge. You don't manually add points to specific aspects of your game, but you can choose from different packages that might focus on power, accuracy, or more balanced play.