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After much to-and-fro, King's Quest tribute game The Silver Lining from Phoenix Online Studios has not only been granted a release by IP holders Activision, but the first episode is out now. A completely fan-made project, and completely free, it's been eight years in creation. I've finished the first chapter, so here's Wot I Think.

This is interesting. Or rather, promises as being interesting and I'd like to bring it to those who wish to make it interest-ing's attention. Julian Gollop has posted on his forums saying that he's considering making splendid play-by-e-mail game Laser Squad Nemesis free to play instead of the current subscription-styled model. This means he's looking around for cheaper server places - perhaps, I suspect, someone volunteering server space - and admins to run it. Gollop's one of the great unsung creators in the industry and I suspect at least one of the people who are upset about the XCOMisation of his X-COM may be able to offer him a very cheap solution indeed. You'll find his contact details on the site. While it's a game which is no longer being developed, this is a rock solid tactical skirmish game that I think would find a whole new audience in a straight free-to-play system. Of course, I'm also wondering what Julian's doing working at Ubisoft Sofia, but that's just because I'm nosy. Also, hoping he eventually respond to the mail asking what he makes of XCOM. Hi, Julian!

Despite some middling reviews, and a certain amount of internet grumbling, all is not lost for APB. It is set to be improved over the coming months, at least according to this post by the lead systems designer. Things that are to come under scrutiny include issues with camping, problems with cheaters, changes to rulesets, the improvement of vehicle handling, the look and feel of combat, the accuracy of match-making, and the strategic nature of missions. Which I am guessing encompasses most of what people have mentioned being concerned with. We'll look forward to seeing how this stuff is addressed in forthcoming patches.

PCG have gone and got DICE to confirm that the Onslaught co-op mode, in which four of the multiplayer maps are reworked for 4-player co-op, will be coming to PC. Although it's not clear what this means for the server model, which was the reason that was given for it not being released earlier. There are also no details on price or release date, but we're assuming it can't take too long... Can it? Hmm, given the back and forth over recent patches, we can see why DICE weren't forthcoming about this originally, and haven't provided any dates this time. We'll see it when we see it, I guess. And then we can start imagining there might be mod tools? No, you're right, I'm just being silly. I want the moon on a stick, I do. And the strength to wield said lunar lollipop. I'd used it to swat space monsters, or kraken. Probably. I'm all about saving the earth from gigantic horrors.

It's not really an RPS podcast. Sorry. It's just me on someone else's podcast. Sneaky little tyke that I am. My mouth-hole was recruited to accompany Eurogamer editor Tom 'Tom Bramwell' Bramwell, their writer Dan Pearson and Ignition producer Jamie Firth in a chat about topics including Dragon Age 2, Blizzard's real name silliness, War For Cybertron, whether that OnLive stuff is a threat to the PC and whether blockbuster games are allowed more than three As.

I make jokes, mutter and find myself frustratingly forbidden from discussing the preview build of CIv V I'm currently playing. I also make a probably unwise gag about the Iraq war at one point, though they may well have sensibly cut that.

Just as a follow-up to Jim's post earlier, it's worth pointing out a Bioware comment from last week in which they revealed that Dragon Age: Origins was their most successful game ever. Which makes it doubly weird that they're trying to make Dragon Age 2 more like the Mass Effects. The first one, at least, was a less successful project.

*As of last November. Mass Effect 2 probably did okay too.

There’s a sixty second set up time before you start a map. Sixty seconds for the defending team to hustle, slapping down sentries at key locations, setting up sniper nests and anxiously sweating as they wait for that timer to trickle down to zero. It’s tense stuff, and it makes the coming chaos so much more powerful and brilliant.

Clint Hocking's career started with sending his resume into Ubisoft Monreal "on a lark". Six week's later, he's working on the original Splinter Cell, ending up as a designer/scriptwriter. After its enormous success, he rose to the position of Creative Director on Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory and Far Cry 2 before leaving this year to chase new horizons. Away from his game design, he's a prolific essayist on his own blog. And in keeping in that, rather than a traditional interview, Clint has wrote us an essay...

At a certain point today I'm going to have to accept that I have other work to do than play Pixel Legions. It's a fantastic game by Pixelante, an arcade strategy in which you must control your armies of pixels in small battles against those of other colours. Wow, it suddenly seems so racist now I type it out. Hey, Pixelante, what have you got against the Magenta people? What did the Cyans ever do to you?

Why change a winning formula? That's what I was left wondering after discovering that, on the one hand, Dragon Age sold better than any Bioware game ever as of November, and on the other, that the formula is changing dramatically for Dragon Age 2. It's worth noting that the PC version isn't changing as much as the console versions of the game. We will apparently retain "strategic combat", which is a good news, while console chums will be "playing to their strengths" with more actiony combat mechanics. Conversation will also now be handled via Mass Effect's wheel system. The biggest change, however, is that Dragon Age 2 will be getting its own equivalent of Shepard, with player character options reduced to the male of female versions of "Hawke" (pictured? I think). Bioware confirmed on their forums that you will have to play a human.

Hell, I enjoyed Mass Effect 2, but you have to wonder why Dragon Age was so successful in the first place. Not because it was copying its less successful sibling, that's for sure. I enjoy almost all of Bioware's work, but I think boiling one game down to another just makes gaming a less interesting place. Diversity is important.

Wow. Just wow. Wake up with several people having contacted us about the wonder that is P0nd. DIY Gamer picked up on it first, making it their browser game of the week. Yeah, week and all the rest. This is a short artistic meditation on beauty and life via zen-like one-button breathing controls. In its five minutes, it'll show you exactly what's so wonderful about this medium of ours. If you play nothing else today, play this.

EDIT: WEBSITE CRUSHED UNDER THE MIGHT OF RPS (And/Or other places). Will update if mirrors emerge.

EDIT 2: Mirror 1! Mirror 2!

It's the 8th of October! There's not been much choice out there for rally folks who wanted something other than Codemaster's heavily coolified Dirt 2, so it'll be interesting to see how Black Bean get on with the old fashioned tea-in-a-Thermos rallying licence of the WRC. Limited details and a brief trailer (is that poking some fun at Dirt 2?) are available over on the official site.

Have you ever played a beat-em-up and thought, "What this needs is to be in much brighter colours, with a far larger mix of combat styles, and a billion other people on the screen at the same time? We all have. Which is why there's a Zone 4: Fight District. Watch the trailer below. If you can survive it without wanting to stare at a grey wall until you calm down.

Last month a puzzle game appeared from Jesper Rudberg (16th century bishop of Skara, Sweden) and Anders Pistol (Swedish latinist and medievalist), now working under the name Doctor Entertainment, and Jim told you this. It's called Puzzle Dimension. I was reminded of it by GameTrailers, as they sometimes do, peculiarly posting the "debut trailer" a month late. I'm glad they did, as it led me to play it, and it's rather good.

The second special edition complete re-mastering of the Monkey Island games came out last week, and I thought since we're not going to be Wot I Thinking it, it'd be worth having a quick look at and seeing how seaworthy this once-flagship of the genre is with its new lick of paint. Because... well, I'll go out on a limb here and say that, for a sub-section of our readership, it'll be their favourite adventure game of all time. Possibly the last great classic adventure they ever played. It's certainly mine.

I've been playing a bunch of Revenge Of The Titans, which is currently available in incomplete form via demo, and also via slightly more complete pre-order beta access at half price, I think? Yes, that seems to be the case. Anyway, there's something about it.

First thing: keep reading. Second thing: We've written about Toki Tori before, in passing, but with a demo released, it's now time for you to pay proper attention. Third thing: keep reading. Fourth Thing: despite its hyper-cute styling, this is a devilishly smart little puzzle game which recalls me of the intricate post-Lemmings stuff which appeared on the Amiga. You simply have a limited number of tools and have to collect all the eggs on the level. The level doesn't want you to. Who will win? It's just lovely pure game design. Fifth thing: It's also dirt cheap. The game's five dollars (aka Three-quid-fifty) from all your favourite digital download places (Steam! Impulse! Gamers Gate! And - er - Mac Game Store!). Sixth Thing: Demo's on the steam page (or the Mac Game Store page) and you can watch some actual little footage below.

That looks familiar, you may think. And you'll think right. It's UFO: The Two Sides which is a freeware fan-remake of X-COM/UFO which has just entered the open Beta stage. And having a few quick missions, it's an impressively complete thing. The big change is that when it's complete, you'll be able to play the aliens rather than the humans. At the moment, it's more conceptual - you select aliens, but there's no Human AI (Which you could take as a particularly sharp piece of commentary on humanity's nature, if you wished) though you can play the two-player with one person as aliens and one person as humans. Apart from the usual Beta issues (i.e. It's a Beta) the main problem is that there's no sound and some missing graphics... unless you run an extractor which takes them from your legitimate copy of X-COM and puts them in the game. In other words, promising stuff and totally playable even now. There's been a few small editions since the beta went up, so I'll direct you at the blog where you should download from the latest post. And here's some footage...

Just catching up with the Internet chitter-chatter suggests that a couple of announcements may be incoming. Perhaps most predictably is that following Popcap sending a Save The Date August 2nd 2010 with a zombie hand attached people are speculating that Plants Versus Zombies 2 is going to be announced. More unusual is the news that leaked out in advance of next week's San Diego Comic Con is that the EA's panel will feature “a brand new, Sci-Fi Action-RPG based on the DNA of Spore.” VG247 speculate this could be "Darkspore", which EA trademarked earlier in the year. This will have to go some to actually impress people, but you can see the logic in doing an action-RPG based on some of the still-brilliant character-creation technology. I'm at San Diego, so will try and bring you an update straight from the con floor, unless I'm lying, passed out on the con-floor. Which is far from unprecedented.

TechCrunch has some news about Google investing in Farmville developers Zynga. If TC's "multiple sources" are correct, then the secret deal is intended to furnish a new Google Games project:

Google has quietly (secretly, one might say) invested somewhere between $100 million and $200 million in social gaming behemoth Zynga, we’ve confirmed from multiple sources... Not only will Zynga’s games give Google Games a solid base of social games to build on, but it will also give Google the beginning of a true social graph as users log into Google to play the games. And I wouldn’t be surprised to see PayPal being replaced with Google Checkout as the primary payment option. Zynga is supposedly PayPal’s biggest single customer, and Google is always looking for ways to make Google Checkout relevant.

This is backed up with some project lead job ads for games from Google itself. Which is interesting.

Monday morning flashgame time, I think. Coma's been around for a little while now, but I've only just picked up on it from Alice Wonderland and it's actually a quite lovely little platforming adventure which goes heavy on the graphic style and atmosphere. Alice says it makes her want to replay Machinarium and warm-up for Limbo, and I can't disagree with that. Well, I could, but I'd be a churlish knave. It features the best player-propelling anus I've seen for a while. You can go play it here and - if you get stuck - you'll find a walkthrough video below.

A new version of Evochron, this time called Evochron Mercenary, has just been released announced for the autumn. It's another iteration of StarWraith's ongoing 3D freeform space sim project, this time with a reworked graphics engine, and some serious new options for multiplayer, including player-built (and destroyed) structures for multiplayer games. Seems interesting, and I'm going to take a closer look when we can get hold of a copy. Trailer showing a bunch of the new stuff is embedded below decks.

Is Max Payne back on drugs? It looks that way to us, after eye witnesses saw him stumbling out of London's popular club, ROAR. Close friends told RPS of how they'd seen Max arrive already out of it, before hitting on various waitresses as the evening went on. One friend of Payne's told us,

"He was out of control, throwing back pills every few minutes, and I thought his recovery was going so well. Right, hope all's well. I'll try to catch you later, as my battery's going."

Rumours that the pill-popping ex-cop will be checking back into rehab have yet to be confirmed.

Sundays are for drumming your fingers and wondering what on earth is making RPS unreadable to 90% of the people on the planet, but fine for all of us. Maybe it'll fix itself if I sacrifice a picnic basket to Horace the Endless Bear? I'll give it a show, after I compile a list of the (fine) mostly games related writing which I found across the web this week, while trying not to include some piece of pop-frippery.

• Jamie Madigan at Gamasutra writing about Hedonistic Adaptation in games - and specifically, in game reviews. In short: if you take small breaks when doing something, you'll find it more enjoyable, because your pleasure sensors basically recover. So if you have to review a game without breaks, you'll find it less enjoyable. Which is... well, interesting, but it's worth noting that the games which tend to get reviewed in the one-two-day crunches at the developers are normally the ones that get the 9-10/10s.
• We mentioned Jim's book "This Gaming Life" is now available to read for free online. Well now, I'm mentioning it again. Go read.

Gamespot have nabbed three game footage videos from The Witcher 2. I've embedded them all below. It's looking pretty impressive, despite some mild dialogue wonkiness and some apparently lightness of combat (it's a year off, mind, so lots to be done) and it's making us even more excited. We did a big old interview with CD Projekt a couple of weeks ago, too, and that contains many more reasons to be interested in this particular project.

Lewie, when marching into the purely-conceptual RPS office to deliver his beautiful Bargain Bucket also brings news that Introversion have made their source code for Darwinia and Multiwinia available. For thirty quid at the Introversion store you gain access to the full source code to nose at and mod to your heart's delight, the ability to add your own branches to share, access to the dev-forum. Also, there's going to be a meta-server for Multiwinia. I have no idea what that means. I hope it means there's a superpowered server. That'd be amazing. Anyway - good news, I think. Those interested can buy here.

If you've got a 50-ton M60A1 Patton tank parked on your drive, Ukrainian developers Graviteam  would like to talk to you. The team responsible for the best WW2 tank sim since Panzer Elite and finest WW2 tactical wargame since Combat Mission: Afrika Korps have just put out a request on the SimHQ forums for detailed interior pictures. It seems the lads and lasses from Kharkov are in the process of building us a post-Panzer, pre-Abrams armour sim.

Catching up with the last few day's Internet and I wonder how on earth I missed the wonderful dancing TF2 characters videos by Professional Animator James Benson which PC Gamer posted on Thursday. Because I'm drunk, 24-7, that's why. God knows what Walker's excuse is (Answer: He Is A Bad Healer). Anyway, better late than never, as Delightful Fiancée put it after the last pregnancy scare. I want you to all stand up while watching these, so you're ready to give a standing ovation. And...

The splendid chaps over at Multiplay - who do UK-based servers for all kinds of games - have been kind enough to provide us with an official RPS server for the purposes of The Engineer Update. The IP is 85.236.100.107:27315. And if I am right this will auto-launch from Steam: steam://connect/85.236.100.107:27315

Go shoot people.

Hmm. Not exactly an objective headline that, is it? Well, it's not like I was ever pretending I thought the mandatory use of real names on Blizzard's forums was anything other than a ridiculously stupid idea. After assorted debate and malice (which included people searching for and sharing personal details of various Activision/Blizzard staff - including Bobby Kotick), Blizzard have backed down. Well done and thanks for listening, chaps. It's good to know the distant god still listens to its tiny people's prayers.