System Shock was a genre-defining game for Ken Levine, long before Bioshock was on the scene. However, like many older games it will no longer run on newer hardware without some serious faffing around. However, like its sequel Nightdive Studios wants to have an updated version made that will, and it seems that their efforts will ultimately be successful – two weeks before the end of the crowdfunding campaign for said-project they’ve already hit their target.

Nightdive was founded back in 2012 for the purposes of acquiring the digital rights to System Shock 2 to get a working version made for those who hadn’t managed to play it when it was first released. They’re now hoping to get the same treatment for the original game which was released back in 1994, updating the game with the Unity engine. Stretch goals for the game now include a full orchestral score at $1.5m, more locations and narrative at £1.3m and extra mechanics and updates to the core design of the game including vending machines, crafting and upgrading for just $1.4m. There are even more above $2m, but as of yet the details about those have not been revealed to the public. If funding keeps going strongly though, they’ll be revealed sooner rather than later most likely.

Older games are very much something popular with gamers now, especially for the young adult and adult generations who were a part of the gaming scenes of the 80s and 90s during their childhoods and teens. As we’ve seen before with Yooka-Laylee and other crowd funding campaigns, nostalgia is a very strong draw.

In a statement celebrating the success of his Kickstarter for System Shock, the CEO of Nightdive Stephen Kick wrote: “The journey started with System Shock 2 and the reception/support I received allowed me to seek out other like minded individuals who would help locate and revive more lost classics. There’s no possible way I could convey how grateful the Nightdive team is to the 14,000+ backers who put their trust in us – we’re having a lot of fun remaking System Shock and we owe it all to you!”

Summer Games Done Quick has come to an end now, having shown off some great speedrunning from some of the best in the speedrunning community. Now we wait another six months for the Winter event, but until then it’s worth talking about the event and its tally.

It’s likely that you didn’t manage to catch all of the event but all of the speedruns have been backed up onto the event’s Youtube channel so you’ll be able to catch up on the games that interest you at your own leisure. Of course, one part that everyone seems to have watched is when Bl00d_Thunder’s Bioshock run seemed to be taken over by an inopportune Windows 10 update; really a fairly clever little prank that allowed the livestream to not suffer consequences from the game’s cutscenes later causing copyright issues when uploaded onto Youtube.

The main point of any Games Done Quick event though is that these speedrunners are gaming quickly for the sake of charity and fundraising and this event saw them raising for Doctors Without Borders, and their current amount as of time of writing is almost $1.3 million – $1,298,479.44 if you want to be precise about it. The average donation was about $42.10 with the single largest donation being more than $59.5k.

As always it’s great to see people gaming for charity and giving something to those organisations that deserve the help and support.

In celebration of its publisher’s 30th anniversary, Ubisoft have announced that they will be giving away the original Splinter Cell game for free from Wednesday, July 13th for a short period of time – 30 days. Download it and its yours to keep.

The game released back in 2002 and was a hit, featuring elements taken from the stealth game genre it was a part of but making good use of shadow and light as its mechanic. A hit it spawned sequels, including many that made us of co-operative play. I distinctly remember one such sequel resulting in my watching a friend drop onto the head of a patrolling guard when he meant to move stealthily across the ceiling. It was an effective if hilarious tactic. Of course, over the years the formula has changed so for fans of the series it will be nice to have a chance to revisit where it all began.

The game will be available through UbisoftClub from the 13th, replacing the current free game which is Prince of Persia, if the offer is tempting to you.

Evolve was a good game. The asymmetrical 4 hunters vs 1 monster romp was good fun, provided you had a good team to play with. Shame really that it quickly died out as the player base expected just didn’t come to the game, partially down to Turtle Rock’s DLC program.

However a few days ago the game hit “Stage 2” of it’s ‘evolution’, going free-to-play. The result? A big upsurge in player numbers and seemingly some renewed interest in the game. Going from 157 before the re-launch to 32,000 in a 24-hour peak seems promising for the game.

The re-launch also came with an overhaul to the gameplay, and changes to both the balance and a microtransaction model to fund the game. A further patch is to come as well, as Turtle Rock attempt to maintain the player numbers this time.

Community co-ordinator Cory Lanier wrote in a Reddit thread “We’ve done a lot of gameplay related changes for Stage 2 and that is a big focus for us going forward.” We’ve got a lot of feedback on just general balance stuff that myself and the rest of the balance team are starting to work on for our first update that’ll be hitting next week.

“We’ve got a lot more work to do but it’s great to see so many people coming back and giving things a shot. Hopefully we can keep people around and happy.”

The roster of playable heroes within Blizzard’s Heroes of the Storm is due to grow by another two in the coming weeks according to the developer of the game.

Entering the Nexus now are Diablo III’s archangel of hope, Auriel, and World of Warcraft’s Gul’dan. We don’t have a specific date, but you can see the models now in Blizzard’s latest developer diary if you just can’t wait to see what they’ll look like. Each will come with palette swapped skins, as well as the Master skin you can gain once you’ve gotten well good with them in-game and proven it.

Also coming along with the two new characters are some new skins for existing heroes. King Arthas (from WoW), Johanna (from Diablo) and Li Ming (also Diablo) are going to get new skins as well.