The first licensed rides have arrived in theme park-builder Planet Coaster [official site], and they’re certainly not what I’d expected. The Munsters, Back to the Future, and Knight Rider have arrived with packs offering themed scenery pieces, special effects, and go-karts for £2 apiece. Heck yes I want people racing in ＤＲＡＧ－Ｕ－ＬＡ, a hot rod Dracula built around a coffin.

New stuff has arrived for free too. Alongside the DLC launches last week, Frontier Developments whopped out a patch whacking in a new ride and coasters for everyone. Read the rest of this entry »

Apparently it’s summer — it’s always hard to tell up here in Scotland — which means that it’s time for Planet Coaster’s [official site] third free seasonal expansion. It’s a big one, fattening up the the game with new rides, customisable panels, terrain options and scenery. It’s available now, and you can watch the trailer below.

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The pilots of Elite Dangerous: Horizons [official site] have become space sleuths in the past year, attempting to uncover more information about the mysterious aliens known as the Thargoids. Their latest discovery is the most momentous yet: a sprawling base on a world hundreds of lightyears from Earth. You can watch the first humans explore its cavernous interior below.

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After yonks of warning signs, hints, puzzles, and tense first encounters in Elite Dangerous: Horizons [official site], the alien Thargoids are almost ready to start preparing to properly arrive in a bit. Frontier Developments have announced that the space ’em up’s Update 2.4, codenamed The Return, will kick off story events that will finally see Thargoids return to Elite as a proper part of the game. Yup, the wait continues but the end is in sight. When the Thargoids arrive, Frontier say, they’ll shake the galaxy up. Read the rest of this entry »

Space trucking sim Elite Dangerous [official site] recently held one of its public events for players. This time a special NPC would be racing back to the “bubble” (the populated core worlds of the galactic frisbee) from a mysterious place known as the Formidine Rift. Her name was Salomé and she had “vital information.” I am using the past tense to describe her because – surprise surprise – she never reached her destination. She was murdered by a player called Harry Potter, a prolific troll who had somehow infiltrated the huge coalition of players who swore to protect her.
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A bunch of maps and tools for space sim Elite: Dangerous [official site] were shut down today by their creators as part of a protest over what they called a “lack of consistency from Frontier in effectively fostering third-party development”. The picket line of third-party tools was set to last until Sunday and included some very useful stuff for pilots like maps, trading databases and ship designers. The main complaint these folks had is that Frontier was not communicating with them well when it comes to updates (when a patch comes out the tools are often thrown into disarray without much warning, introducing new bugs and problems for the toolfolk). But spacetalks have already been held and most of the sites will be back up tonight, leaving me in the lurch with absolutely no drama. Disgraceful.
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Elitists can now fly ships with their chums and create their own spaceface, thanks to the big Elite Dangerous: Horizons [official site] update today launched. The headline feature of Horizons version 2.3, nicknamed ‘The Commanders’, is multicrew spaceshipping, letting several players take stations on the bridge. The auxiliary roles don’t sound super exciting in themselves as Elite wasn’t built with them in mind but hanging with your friends is surely a lark.

Non-Horizons Elitists aren’t left out. The whole game benefits today from an update adding sights like asteroid bases and roaming ‘megaships’. Have a look at it all: Read the rest of this entry »

When I played Theme Park with my brother, he’d ask me to hire dozens of mascots so he could watch thugs roll in to beat up the pogoing teddy bears. It’s the small things in life, y’know. Planet Coaster [official site] today celebrates the joys of crimes with the addition of pickpockets and vandals, and security guards to thwart them. Also arriving in today’s Spring Update are Go-Karts and other new rides and coasters, along with exciting options for ‘Duelling’ coasters which launch in sync. Here, have a peek in this trailer marking the update’s launch: Read the rest of this entry »

Right now, the worst thing that can happen to the population of Planet Coaster [official site] is an upset tummy, or a lack of cash on-hand to pay for overpriced pop and burgers. Of course, combine the upset tummy and the overpriced food, and you end up with puddles of vomit, so perhaps the worst thing that can happen to the population of Planet Coaster is the involuntary, forceful expulsion of undigested, overpriced nosh through their noses and mouths.

That’ll all change on April 11th, when a free update brings pickpockets and vandals to your parks, along with a stack of new rides.

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Elite Dangerous [official site] has excellent hands. See how the fingers twitch, watch how they waggle a flightstick – just hanging around in a cockpit is oddly mesmerising. And by God I’m worried about how much inadvertent innuendo crept into those last couple of lines. Anyway: Frontier’s spaceship demi-MMO is gearing up to progress far beyond hands and into bodies and faces. They’ve just shown off their seemingly highly configurable ‘Commander’ creation tool. Whole lotta faces going on here. Read the rest of this entry »

Elite Dangerous: Arena [official site], the £5 standalone release of Elite Dangerous’s competitive combat arena mode, has been pulled from sale less than a year after launching. Folks who bought Arena can still play it but Arena as a separate product isn’t popular to be worth the effort. Most Arena players access it through the main Elite Dangerous client, see. This isn’t the most exciting news but if, months from now, you find yourself thinking “What ever happened to…?” you’ll know. Read the rest of this entry »

Goodness me, this new Death Star ride someone has made in Planet Coaster [official site] is jolly impressive. Or, as Star Warriors would say, “Oie boie! Disa dowopee isa bombad, all-n youse!” We’ve looked at Star Wars rides before, amongst other neat-o constructions, but this is certainly the fanciest I’ve seen. It hits warp factor 10, weaves through a battle, dives inside the starguts, and jogs down that infamous gutter. Watch a video below and hey, you can download the coaster to ride it round in own park too. Read the rest of this entry »

Thargoid alien spacemen have arrived in Elite Dangerous [official site], following a string of hints and discoveries, and they look pretty flipping cool. Players can now encounter a whopping great Thargoid ship in a scripted sequence with all the mystery and threat I’d want from first contact (well, in this game) with an alien civilisation who consider me so far beneath them. Here, come watch a meeting with the spacemen. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas in Planet Coaster [official site], thanks to a big update launched last night. The Winter Update has added a snowy new biome, Christmassy new decor like gingerbread buildings, new shops, and new rides including a sleigh ride, bumper cars, and something that does a lot of spinning. Yes, you can now create Elfland and take guests through the seven layers of the candy cane forest, through the sea of twirly, swirly gumdrops, then through the Lincoln Tunnel. On a more practical level, the patch has introduced a few handy new management features too. Read the rest of this entry »

New blueprints and a harder challenge mode are just a few of the ingredients in rollercoaster park-builder Planet Coaster‘s [official site] first patch. Update 1.0.1 also contains traditional fare like bug fixes and optimisations but I’m enjoying the patch notes for phrases like “Tacos icons now appear in Guest Inventories correctly” and “Guests re-equip balloons when leaving rides”. Read the rest of this entry »

Two pilots in Elite: Dangerous [official site] travelled to the ceiling of the galaxy after a mistake by the developers accidentally gave players a huge boost to their jump drives. Frontier recently added plumes of white energy irradiating from the game’s rare white dwarves and neutron stars which, when entered by pilots, would cause some “turbulence” and a small boost to their jump drives. They had intended to set this boost at 25% but thanks to a “number mix up” it was accidentally set to 300%. Two curious explorers noticed the massive boost and began to chart a dangerous course into the highest layers of the Milky Way.

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[Update: This issue is perhaps less imminent that I’d thought – Frontier dropped us a line to stress that it may be a fair bit longer than six months, though Braben did say “the change will need to come at some point” so it seems this will happen eventually.]

Like in real life, obsolescence in PC gaming is usually a slow process. An achy knee after running becomes an achy knee after hiking then all too soon you’re waking up achy, and your framerates dip lower and lower starting to stutter before you realise you simply can’t play shiny new games. But sometimes there are hard cut-offs, and two are coming soon to Elite Dangerous [official site]. Developers Frontier today announced that they plan to stop supporting 32-bit systems and DirectX 10 graphics hardware. They say it’ll help them make the game look prettier and run better.

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