PETA launching its own "animal utopia" Minecraft server

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, better known as PETA, are a game-savvy bunch. Over the years they've protested whaling in Assassin's Creed IV and asked gamers to be kind to Zerglings, and they've also made a few games of their own, like Cooking Mama: Mama Kills Animals and Pokemon: Black and Blue, in which players help Pikachu and his pals fight their cruel oppressors. And now the group is headed to Minecraft.

It's not to protest the game's treatment of sheep, however, but to create a digital world in PETA's own image. "True to PETA’s mission—and unlike on other Minecraft servers—no animals, not even digital ones, can be harmed on our dedicated Minecraft server!" the group said in a statement. "Visitors to PETA’s custom-made digital island will explore vast expanses of landscapes where the animals of Minecraft roam free. They can also visit extensive vegetable and flower gardens, walk through a fantastic re-creation of PETA’s HQ, and discover an abandoned and decaying slaughterhouse."

Well, you knew there had to be some kind of abattoir action going on in there. There will also be an abandoned circus with a sign welcoming attendees to "the saddest show on Earth"; hopefully neither of them will spring any surprise graphic photos or videos on us. PETA will mark the November 15 launch of its Minecraft server with "build-off" competitions and a pro-animal rally. In the meantime, enjoy the preview, and debate: Are Creepers animals—and if so, is it okay if they blow themselves up?

Half-Life 2 8K screenshot gallery

Tales From the Borderlands trailer takes us back to Pandora

Gearbox's Borderlands isn't the kind of series I'd envision as the foundation for a smart, funny adventure game. And maybe it won't be, but going by this 'world premiere' trailer, I'd say that Tales From the Borderlands looks set to be a a very interesting twist on the hit shooter franchise.

Tales From the Borderlands is an adventure based on the shooter series being developed by Telltale, the studio behind popular episodic adventures like The Walking Dead and the upcoming Game of Thrones. Instead of playing as a vault hunter, players will alternate between Rhys, a Hyperion "suit" who aspires to be the next Handsome Jack, and Fiona, a Pandoran con artist looking to hit her biggest score ever.

As is the way with Telltale, Tales From the Borderlands will unfold over five episodes released on Steam, the Telltale Online Store, and other digital distribution platforms. No launch date has been set but the first chapter, "Zero Sum," is expected to be out before the end of the year, and the whole package will go for $25 (and presumably £19 in the UK, as The Wolf Among Us is priced).

Well-behaved League of Legends players to get Influence Point boost

Riot has taken a number of steps this year to combat toxic player behaviour in League of Legends, ranging from blocking offenders from joining ranked queues through to outright bans. While the measures have been well-received, those in the habit of behaving themselves are about to get a substantial reward in the form of a 4-win IP (Influence Point) boost. The reward, which will be granted to each player with a clean record, will roll out over the next week.

All the recent headlines about League of Legends disciplinary measures paint a bleak picture, but stats provided by Riot indicate otherwise: as of this week, 95 per cent of players have never received any punishment, while fewer than 1 per cent of players have been on the receiving end of a ban.

Still, Riot promises it is still "focused on addressing extreme cases of verbal toxicity, and will soon be testing additional systems that address gameplay toxicity like leavers, AFKs, and intentional feeders."

Ubisoft examines review policy following Assassin's Creed: Unity mess

The launch of Assassin's Creed: Unity has not gone particularly smoothly. There have been an awful lot of bugs, performance issues, and sub-80 scores, which are bad news for a triple-A game in the era of Metacritic. Ubisoft has acknowledged the problems and appears to be pushing hard to correct them, and also says that it's looking at ways to change its reviews policies to better serve its customers in the future.

The Assassin's Creed: Unity bugs are bad enough in their own right, but Ubisoft made the situation look even worse with a bizarre review embargo that didn't lift until nearly a full day after the game went on sale. (Our review was delayed because of late-arriving review code, but should be up tomorrow.) The reasons for the embargo remain a mystery, but the combination of a buggy game and held-back reviews means the optics aren't good; Ubisoft, however, insists that there was nothing untoward going on.

"The nature of games themselves and the way they are being reviewed is changing, as evidenced by games like Assassin's Creed: Unity, Destiny and The Crew—games that have significant online components," a Ubisoft rep told the BBC. "Having the online elements available and having populated worlds is essential to creating a representative and complete experience for reviewers. Achieving this prior to launch is incredibly complex, which is why some games are being reviewed much closer—or as was the case with Destiny, even after—the game launches."

"We are working to adapt our services and communications with consumers accordingly, both by changing the way we work with reviewers and by offering customers open betas or other early access to some games, all so that they have the information they need and want," the rep added.

More open processes are certainly welcome, but it fails to address the question of how the Unity embargo served any purpose other than to keep a lid on reviews during the first several hours of the game's release. That's got nothing to do with the difficulty of reviewing a connection-dependent game, which is admittedly a tricky business, it's just a dodgy policy—and hopefully one that won't be repeated.

Never Alone launch trailer teases an icy journey through Alaskan folklore

Announced earlier this year, Never Alone (Kisima Ingitchuna) is a puzzle platformer based on the folklore of the Iñupiat people of Alaska. It was originally scheduled to come out earlier this month but was pushed back to November 18, and with that date fast approaching, a launch trailer has now been turned loose on YouTube.

Never Alone sets players on a quest to seek out the source of a devastating, eternal blizzard, as both Nuna, a young Iñupiat girl, and an arctic fox known simply as Fox. It will support both single-player with character switching, as well as a two-player co-op mode, and will be interspersed with "stories and wisdom" from nearly 40 Alaska Native elders, storytellers, and community members who contributed to the development of the game.

It's tough to get an exact sense of the gameplay from the footage alone, but it's got atmosphere by the ice truckful, so I'm hopeful Never Alone can live up to the promise of what developer Upper One Games describes as "an exciting new genre of 'World Games' that draw fully upon the richness of unique cultures to create complex and fascinating game worlds." Find out more on Steam.

World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor expansion experiencing launch problems

Blizzard has a near impeccable record when it comes to smooth World of Warcraft expansion launches, so it's a surprise that Warlords of Draenor has encountered numerous problems since its launch overnight. In addition to a DDoS attack, the servers are currently unable to withstand the sheer amount of players attempting to access the expansion from the same location.

"Europe was our first region to launch, and we encountered a few issues due to the sheer number of players attempting to enter Draenor from a single location," Blizzard wrote in an initial statement. "We worked to add multiple new ways to access Draenor, and this helped ease some of the initial rush into the new expansion as players were able to access it from their capital cities, as well as from the shrines in Pandaria."

In addition to these, users are reporting servers timing out, which is affecting both performance and players' ability to access the game at all. In its most recent update, In its most recent statement, Blizzard says it's tackling the problem by lowering the realm population cap in problem areas. 

"We’re continuing to work toward greater realm stability and address the service issues impacting latency. Our current biggest hurdle is the concentration of players in specific areas and zones, and an unexpected effect of that concentration on the realm stability," the studio wrote.

"We’re continuing to maintain a lowered realm population cap to help with the stability, which is resulting in increased queue times. We’re seeing some increase in individual zones drop which are causing localized player disconnections as we get into primetime in the Americas, and if someone is disconnected they will quite likely run into a queue to log back in. Work is progressing on improving realm stability through fixes targeting individual in-game issues, as well as on the backend game and network services."

Look out for our Warlords of Draenor review-in-progress coverage tomorrow.

Geometry Wars 3 trailer is anything but square

If you think about it, geometry is mankind's greatest enemy. It's the study of shapes and stuff, and, when you really get down to it, everything is made up of shapes and stuff—including the things that kill us. Maybe we should go to war with geometry. We'll chip off the acutest of angles, and exterminate the most threatening fractals. It will be hard, laborious work, but eventually we'll have victory within reach. Until one day... one terrible day, when we realise the truth. WE were geometry all along.

It'll be a Euclidean nightmare, and no mistake.

Probably best to keep our geometric rage focused into videogames—and the upcoming Geometry Wars 3 could be the perfect outlet. It's got a trailer. I probably should have mentioned that in the first paragraph.

It looks pretty sharp, but I do have some concerns. The biggest: Bizarre Creations is sadly no more. This sequel is being handled by Sierra—the resurrected studio now tasked with handling Activision's indie concerns. There's always a danger in these cases that the new studio won't be able to capture the same magic—and Geometry Wars is a game that needs the magic.

As for the new 3D level layouts, it'll be interesting to see how they play. Either way, the game retains a 2D "Classic" mode.

Geometry Wars 3: Dimensions is out, on Steam, on 25 November.

Far Cry 4's map editor won't support competitive multiplayer

The only thing I need from a map editor is the ability to stack thousands of explosive barrels, so I can then explode them to the chagrin of my graphics card. But others treat map editors as a tool for editing maps, and its this group that seems disappointed with the news that Far Cry 4's editor won't support competitive multiplayer.

The limitation was noticed during a recent Twitch stream. Viewers spotted that only challenge maps had editing options—leading to a now 129 page forum thread about the omission.

That restriction was then confirmed over Twitter by Alex Hutchinson, creative director of the game.

"I direct the game but I don't set budgets or timelines," he said. "We always squeeze in as much as we can, but we're always prioritizing.

"We're going to keep supporting the game so hopefully we can get it done post release. No promises but we will try."

I'm almost surprised at the ferocity of the fan reaction. But the forum thread suggests a sizeable competitive community exists—one that sees custom-made maps as an important part of the experience. Hopefully, Far Cry 4 will one day be able to serve them.

Ta, Eurogamer.

Why our Far Cry 4 review is delayed

Right now, Far Cry 4 reviews are popping up all over the internet. It is, by all reports, a great game. Unfortunately, we can neither confirm or deny that assessment. More troubling, given the launch state of Assassin's Creed: Unity, is that we can't tell you how it performs on PC. The reason is simple: we haven't yet received code.

If you're getting a sense of deja vu, it's because exactly the same thing happened with Unity. For Far Cry 4, Ubisoft held a console review event; giving multi-platform outlets the chance to have their reviews in place for today's embargo. We, naturally, need to play the game on PC. Last night, we were informed that code wouldn't arrive until Tuesday, the date of the game's launch.

Ubisoft are, of course, free to restrict pre-release access to their game in whatever way they see fit. We aren't entitled to review code, and could still offer a judgement—albeit a less timely one—without. However, it's a disappointing development when it comes in the same week as Assassin's Creed: Unity's launch. That game has since caused Ubisoft's share price to drop as much as 12.8%, and yesterday its more spectacular bugs caught the attention of the BBC.

In that news post, a Ubisoft spokesperson clarified the way the company was approaching reviews. "The nature of games themselves and the way they are being reviewed is changing, as evidenced by games like Assassin's Creed Unity, Destiny and The Crew—games that have significant online components," she said.

"Having the online elements available and having populated worlds is essential to creating a representative and complete experience for reviewers. Achieving this prior to launch is incredibly complex, which is why some games are being reviewed much closer—or as was the case with Destiny, even after—the game launches."

The difference, to my mind, is that Destiny is an MMO. Assassin's Creed: Unity is not. Far Cry 4 is not. They have online elements, yes, but they are not predominantly online games. As the gap between high and mid-range PC specs widens, as system requirements become increasingly more demanding, and as pre-order bonuses are marketed more aggressively; to also restrict reviews to being conceivably days after a game's launch is a worrying trend for consumers.

We asked Ubisoft for an official statement, which you will find below:

"The reason why we did not provide review code until now is that there is a title update which won’t be available before Monday prior to launch. However, we will officially communicate on the title update prior the release of the game so consumers are aware."