Another space-based game with a crowdfunding page has been pulled days before it reached completion. This time it’s ship-bridge-perspective RTS game Flagship, being developed by twin developers Brad Jeffery and Matt J.

The Kickstarter for the project had 5 days to go and had reached just over half of the £95,000 goal which is the one of the reasons the decision was made to pull it now rather than wait until the end of the process.

“It’s looking like the campaign isn’t going to turn around, so rather than drag this out for another 5 days we’re going to end it now. I know this will disappoint many of you, and for that we are very sorry. This has been a heartbreaking process for us.” Brad announced in an update to the Kickstarter page.

He went on to thank everyone who had already backed, all who had covered the game or promoted it in any way and everyone who had in any way supported them with the process of trying to get the game funded. However, this doesn’t spell the end of Flagship entirely as the two are not willing to give up on it fully.

“Flagship is still our dream game, and we’re not giving up on it. One day you’ll get your ship.”

Kickstarters do usually see an enormous pick up in the amount donated to a project during the last few days of the time limit set, so if the project hadn’t been pulled there is a chance Flagship could have been funded. However it wouldn’t have been a guarantee, and I wish them luck in trying to make Flagship a reality through some other method.

After having it talked about before, Zenimax have finally revealed what they plan to do for the justice system for The Elder Scrolls Online. It doesn’t seem to have altered from what they planned before, just a few names have been added.

Players can now become Outlaws, doing such criminal things as stealing from and murdering NPCs – something that so far has been missing from the MMO and something that a lot of players complained about there not being. They can only enter towns of their same faction to commit these crimes, and they’ll need to travel to Outlaw’s Refuges to sell their ill-gotten goods. They also give shelter against the other player team in the system.

Enforcers are the other side of the system and are players who seek to enforce justice against the Outlaws. If they spot a player doing something they shouldn’t be they can engage the culprit in PvP to retrieve the Outlaw’s bounty, but have to do it before they reach the Outlaw’s Refuge. If they manage to take back anything stolen they must seek shelter at an Enforcer Tower before the Outlaw can take the stuff back.

Critical quest NPCs will still be unkillable to save trolls giving players a headache and Stealth will get a rework to help Outlaws hide from the Enforcers. Zenimax are saying that at the moment it’s all in an early stage of development, but it does seem that it could interest those who dismissed the game at first due to the lack of mischief available as a player.

The Bark and the Bite patch brought a lot of rebalancing to the table for two gods. A core god to the eSports meta was hit with the shiniest of nerf bats and some more obscure or unused gods were given minor buffs and some just generally weird things were patched out of the game too (apparently Artemis’ traps were counted as wards by the system, who knew?). All in all there were not a huge amount of changes to gods in this patch, most if it was fixing animation bugs and little UI treats like a passive meter for Sobek (about time) but there was one very, very notable change that initial caused a collective sigh of relief: the bat had come for Mercury at last…

•  Mercury

• Made You Look

• Radius increase per rank reduced from 7.5/10/12.5/15/17.5 to 7.5/9/10.5/12/13.5.
• Range reduced from 55 to 48.

Now for those of you who follow Smite’s meta this seemed like it would cause a shift in the way Mercury was being played, maybe even push him OUT of the meta. But you would in fact be far from correct, this nerf (if you want to call it that) has not changed how potent Mercury is in the ADC, Solo and Jungle roles. Frankly this change has done absolutely nothing to affect him in the long term as he is still a hugely potent hyper carry entering the mid to late game. Granted this change has made him harder to take into a laning role but unfortunately it has barely reduced his effectiveness, he can still out box almost anybody in the game and he still brings a phenomenal amount of damage to the table. Nothing short of a huge buff to a certain controversial celestial plate helm will really balance Mercury properly.

Another less meaningless change in the long run was to a god who was not being played at all, Cabrakan. For his short life span in the game Cabrakan was plagued by annoying bugs and issues that made his very aggressive, short range and frankly warrior-esque kit feel underwhelming. As a result,  he was not being used. Of course Hi-Rez spotted this and decided it was time to rub him up with the buffing cloth;

•  Cabrakan

• Seismic Crush

• Cabrakan now increases his attack speed by 70% for his next basic attack during this ability.

• Refraction Shield

• Increased stun duration from 1 to 1.1/1.2/1.3/1.4/1.5s.
• Reduced recovery time from 0.8s to 0.2s.

• Tectonic Shift

• Reduced recovery time from 0.5s to 0.2s.

In combination with each other these changes have done a LOT to make him playable. Divios of Cognitive Red has taken it upon himself to educate his peers in the strength of Cabrakan solo but it does not feel like people wish to play him in top tier tournament play which is a shame but it is a step in the right direction.

What do you think of these changes? What do you think could be done to Mercury to make him balanced if anything?

The sequel game to popular game Hotline Miami will be delayed for some more ‘tweaks and polish’ before it’s released the official Twitter account tweeted yesterday.

Already there are some changes confirmed to the full game that make it different from the 2013 demo that was given to journalists to try out. One of those was a rape scene, and Dennaton had already assured fans that they were trying to fix the game to make sure you’d never have known it had been in the game in the first place. Sounds like a sound decision.

Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number is still getting some final tweaks and polish, expected to be ready for late 2014 or early 2015.

— Hotline Miami (@HotlineMiami) October 9, 2014

As the above tweet says, don’t expect to see Hotline Miami 2 before sometime late this year or even early in the next. Hope you can wait that long for your fix of masked chaos. If not, try the Payday 2 DLC that Dennaton helped make with Overkill Games.

Turtle Rock and 2K have confirmed that the previously ‘Xbox-exclusive’ alpha of their new Evolve will indeed by exclusive to Microsoft’s console. For a day.

There will be a PC alpha and what’s more, it’ll start on October 31st – a day after the Xbox alpha starts. Both alphas can be accessed if you’ve pre-ordered the game and will last through until November 2nd. A full weekend to practice your teamwork and trapping skills or your bloodlust when it comes to competing against your friends and goring them to death. Whatever takes your fancy.

There will be a further Beta for pre-order gamers in January 2015 which we’ve been told by Turtle Rock will also be an Xbox-exclusive. No guarantee that this exclusivity won’t be stretched as the Alpha is being, but all PC-playing fans of this game might as well keep an eye on the news, just in case. The full release of the 4 vs 1 monster hunting co-op game will come sometime in February 2015.