An expansion for Company of Heroes 2 released a few days ago, and it has a distinctly British flavour to it. At least, that’s the most obvious thing you can gather from its launch trailer.

Now on Steam, The British Forces adds a whole bunch of new units to the game; troops, vehicles, commanders; as well as some more multiplayer maps. It also boasts some improvements to the motion capture animations and the characters introduced are supposedly full of character, with voice actors from England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales and New Zealand(?) brought in to enable a range of accents. Special interest has also been given to regional differences, classes and rivalries among the regions apparently which is good to hear.

Check out the trailer below to see if the expansion takes your fancy.

At the moment Divinity: Original Sin 2 is in the midst of its Kickstarter campaign and it’s going well. The original funding goal was met in just 12 hours and with another 23 days to go it has hit a stretch goal to allow the inclusion of a new playable race: the Undead.

Undead come in three flavours of those who have resisted the call of the afterlife. Raised Ones are, as their name suggests, those who have been reanimated through the efforts of a necromancer and retain all their consciousness and will. There’s a bunch of civilised Undead who dress in high-class clothing called the Chosen Ones and finally the Faint Ones are those who have been resisting the afterlife so long that their memories and purposes have slowly been eroded away over time.

While there’s no unique lore for them, they do come with a bunch of unique skills. The can regenerate while frozen but won’t heal while burning, are immune to the Fear and Bleed effects and finally have a rather awesomely named skill called Hand/Foot Grenade. Yeah.

If you’re interested in finding out more the Kickstarter update with the information can be found here.

Doom is a fairly important game for many reasons. As well as being a well remembered shooter, Doom was the basis for a lot of the modding of games back when it was released and continues to be up until this day. There’ll soon be a new Doom released and unfortunately its been confirmed that modding will not be supported.

However, it does seem that Bethesda are trying to make up for the lack by overhauling their map-making option to allow for the creation of “completely custom game modes.”

The trailer is from E3 but there’s an interivew with id Software’s Marty Stratton and a few others over it, in which they talk about the ‘SnapMap’ feature and while it isn’t full modding support, it is at least something. There’s an accompanying blog post over on the Bethesda blog as well that goes into more detail.

Doom is due out sometime during the next Spring. Are you excited for the new Doom?

This August bank holiday weekend saw me away from my usual radio station and writing duties to attend and represent the Sanitarium.FM at the Insomnia gaming LAN event, the 55th one held since the event started years back.

Hosted by Multiplay, a company who also host game servers and have been acquired by GAME in the last year the event boasts massive halls for gamers to bring their computers and consoles to link up for a massive LAN party with friends and rivals alike; along with an expo hall filled with gaming and media related retailers, special guests, indie game demos and so much more. This is the fifth one I’ve been to. So how did I, an experienced attendee, find the event?

Well let’s get the niggles and annoyances out of the way first.

For context I attend Insomnia for the sake of going around the expo hall, seeing my friends in the flesh, checking out the new indie games and since taking this job also to make contacts and get some of the indie devs onto our Indie Game Show. Since I became press Insomnia have provided a press pass and a room designated for press to use, although the press pass was reduced from a weekend ticket to two day passes which would have seen me fork out more for the sake of being able to cover all 3 days and nothing in the evening. This time Insomnia had two camera crews on site, from the British Channels 4 and 5. They were given use of the usual press room for their filming of interviews with attendee volunteers but unfortunately this did come at the expense of the rest of the press no longer having a place to do their work in peace or leave coats and bags while they were patrolling the event talking to people for this event.

Another issue comes in the fact that some of the hosted content was placed in three large tents. This in itself was well done for the most part, just could have been signposted a tiny bit better. There’s also the fact that the indie game developers’ area was taken out of the expo area where it’d been for the last few events and placed at the end of one of the tents, beyond the rows of machines set up with bunches of retro games. This did lead to a few traffic jams in those aisles as people played the games, people built up behind those people to watch and then you had people going back and forth behind those people. There was an exit on that side of the tent but it led to the main stage of the main tent and the only time I tried to go through it I was told I wasn’t allowed to go that way. I did also hear there was a concern about the security of electronics being left in the tent overnight with at least two of the developers I know taking their demo desktops back to their hotel rooms with them each night because they were that uncertain.

However the event itself seemed to proceed without much of a hitch. The special guests weren’t too badly mobbed although I did once get caught up in the middle of a crowd of children travelling to one of the impromptu signings their heroes were doing and it was alarming to see how many people there were there for the signatures and the chance to catch a glimpse of their favourite video personalities. There were two main signing areas for the two big Youtuber groups attending and both seemed to be flowing quite quickly, even though I know that one of the groups were also taking time to have conversations with those fans and others that they recognised.

The LAN halls were packed at all hours, and the time I spent in one watching my friend play Hearthstone on the computer was a welcome break from my press work. Security on the doors there was tight as it should be with a room full of expensive custom build computers, with myself, with the ‘wrong’ wristband, only being allowed in with my friends who had the right wristband. It was also tight on both the north and south exits to the venue with wristbands being given upon registering your ticket for the event at the gate and being checked every time after to be sure you were allowed in. Stickers were given out for those bringing their own machines to stick to them to be sure that the right people were taking the right machines. The general security is always something that has impressed me about Insomnia and I’m glad to see that it was mostly up to the same high standard as always.

The expo hall was as showy and wonderful as always, despite the lack of the familiar little indie zone within it. The big computer customisers always show up and give out little freebies and leaflets. EBuyer was there this time and I got a nice big goody bag off them, along with several packets of mini Haribo bags which are always a bonus for me. This time the retailers were also set up in the corridor outside too, but it seemed that this wasn’t too big of an issue for anyone and no big crowds hindered the movement as people gathered at stalls to buy hats and bags. There was also a small stage at one end of the expo hall where panels such as indie game demos, Youtuber Q and As and other things were taking place throughout the day with a seating area set up.

All in all I did really enjoy Insomnia 55 and the events do get better each time, and if you’re going for a day or with your kids or to just hang out with your friends at a big LAN party – Insomnia is for you. Just this one was marred slightly for me by a number of small things that can all be explained by the fact that the venue is a football ground that the team has recently returned to. There were areas of the venue once open that Multiplay can no longer use and quite simply the event has now outgrown the venue.

Good thing from Insomnia 56 it’s moving to the NEC in Birmingham, England. I can’t wait to see how much better the change of venue could make this event.

Not too long ago, computer hardware manufacturer Asus had a slogan: “Inspiring Innovation, Persistent Perfection”. It was an excellent summary of the company’s core traits: As well as trying to make computers which utilised existing technology well, Asus also regularly tried to push the envelope and look for the next new thing.

It seems this spirit still remains with the company, as during this year’s IFA – which seemed to put a heavy focus on gaming – the company managed to unveil a gaming laptop that goes beyond anything shown off by its competitors.

Dubbed the Asus GX700, the newly-revealed gaming laptop is the first ever to use water cooling. Water cooling is something that has become common in gaming desktops, used often by the hardcore gamers both as an efficient enhancement to standard cooling solutions and to prove their salt as hardcore gamers; and as companies have started developing self-contained water-cooling kits that take a lot of the pain (and spills) out of the installation and the components in computers continue to get smaller, the practice has become a lot easier to achieve. Even so, to see the technology make it into a laptop for the first time is the kind of insanity we at Sanitarium.FM adore.

Asus are keen to state this is not the only first the laptop will bring: supposedly, it is also the world’s first 17-inch laptop to incorporate a 17-inch display. The actual water-cooling rig will take the form of a dock; with the premise of this laptop being that the device can be used in its own right as a mighty pixel-pushing machine in its own right, but once it’s docked, everything can be turned up that extra bit further. Going by this, we can assume the laptop will also enable overclocking while docked; and there’s also a suggestion there’ll be an Nvidia GeForce graphics card inside it.

Sadly, the rest of the Asus GX700’s specs remains very much a mystery at this point in time, with the company keeping quiet on the details for now. Also unrevealed at this point is the planned price point and launch details. We hope to report such information when it becomes available; but for now, lets just admire the almost ludicrous imagination of Asus’ product designers.