This Week In PC gaming is a showcase of all the important events that happened this week, both indie and AAA

This Week In PC Gaming is an easy way to catch up with all of the news that you might have missed this week, organized in such a way that you can get a brief overview on all of the stories and from there you can jump to the ones you're interested in. And if you are interested you can also find out what happened the previous week by going here.

This roundup brings with it the conclusion to the Konami & Kojima saga, a lot of new game announcements, some massive patches to fan favorites like Dota 2 and a whole lot more. Here's what happened this week in PC gaming:

Super Mario Bros 3 1990 PC demo

I figured I would start with a blast from the past. During Commander Keen's 25th anniversary John Romero released a video showcasing ID Software's pitch for a PC version of Super Mario Bros 3. It never did get green-lit by Nintendo but the hard work that went in to it wasn't scrapped, it formed the foundation for the very first Commander Keen game, a series very dear to me.

The reason this demo is so significant, besides being a part of early PC history, is that its one of the first times smooth scrolling was employed in a PC game. As with a lot of PC graphical wonders of the day it was the brainchild of John Carmack who singlehandedly figured out how to do smooth scrolling in all directions, quite the feat back then.

Kojima has officially left Konami & Konami is now recruiting for a "New Metal Gear"

After many months of rumors about mistreatment at the hands of Konami, Hideo Kojima - father of the Metal Gear series - has officially left Konami along with a couple of other team members. Rather than than taking some time off to cool down Kojima instead gathered the remnants of his previous team and entered talks with Sony in order to start up a new studio.

A day later it was announced that Kojima's new studio would be partnered with Sony and that their, as of yet unannounced game, will release on both PC and Playstation platforms.

On the other side of the story Konami has seemingly quickly gotten over the loss of one of their most famous developers and are now looking towards making a new Metal Gear spin-off game. A premise that would've sounded ridiculous a while ago but given the success and popularity of Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance I'll remain cautiously optimistic about this one.

Four lengthy gameplay videos of Ubisoft's The Division were leaked 

The footage comes from a recent alpha test where players were forbidden to do any recording but, as it goes, someone decided to do so anyway. The videos are already being slowly taken down by Ubisoft so if you were planning to give them a look I'd suggest you do so as quickly as possible.

But keep in mind that this is a closed alpha test, in other words The Division is is neither feature complete nor anywhere near finished, so reserve your judgement for when the game is finally ready to launch.

Quite a few games were announced this week and some finally got their release dates confirmed so I'll just briefly go over them

- System Shock 3 has been officially announced

After a lot of teasing System Shock 3 has finally been confirmed as in development. The team working on it has some of the people that worked on the old Thief and System Shock games so if there's anyone that'll do the game justice its these guys.

- Crytek has announced their VR game "The Climb"

With the climb you will be able to step in to the eyes, and hands, of a rock climber with some very lax safety practices as you leap across gaps and risk near death, all through the wonder of a VR headset. While I can't see myself paying full price for a game like this I am still fairly interested in it. Who wouldn't want to try rock climbing without any of the pesky exercise or danger involved?

- Funcom is working on 3 new Conan the Barbarian games

This announcement came out of nowhere, especially since all recent Conan works have been lackluster. As of right now there is no actual information on what the games will entail but I hope at least one of them will allow us to explore the wonderful world of Hyboria that Conan inhabits.

- Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak is coming to Steam early next year

Deserts of Kharak is a sequel to the old, but extremely well done series of RTS games that combined compelling storytelling with fast paced RTS action. I for one am looking forward to the new Homeworld.

- Dragon's Dogma PC system requirements and release date announced

As far as the system requirements go it seems like you will be able to get by with just about any even mediocre machine, which makes sense given that its a port from the now old series of consoles. Dragon's Dogma is set to release on January 15th and from everything I've seen so far it seems like a damn good PC port.

- Unravel now has a release date and trailer

Unravel was the star of the recent E3 show and since then has been picked up by EA. It will be released on February 9th and given how good the trailer looks I'd suggest you keep an eye on this puzzle-platformer.

Besides just new games a couple of "old" ones received significant updates

- Dota 2 patch 8.86 was released

This Dota 2 patch is so massive I couldn't even cover it in an overly long article so its hopeless to even try in this brief description. The short version is that the patch added a new hero, reworked many other significantly, added four new items, changed the standard map around a bit, brought so many balance changes it takes you a full minute to scroll through and a whole bunch more. 

- Team Fortress 2 Tough Break update

Valve has been on a roll recently as you can see. The Tough Break update adds Contracts to TF2, a mission system similar to the one you might see in CS:GO. There are also four new maps spanning all of the various game modes as well as a whole bunch of cosmetics and other nifty things. Much like Dota 2 I am hopelessly outnumbered by all of the changes to give you any adequate summary so I'd suggest you follow the link if you want to learn more.

- CS:GO Winter Update balance changes have been rolled back

The Winter Update brought with it heavy nerfs to pistol and rifle accuracy, something decade old fans of the game were rightly upset about. After short deliberations Valve decided to pull the nerf back for the time being while they consider what to do next.

- Prison Architect adds female inmates

Rather than just doing a pallet swap the folks behind Prison Architect made sure that their new update will offer a new and unique way of playing the game as taking care of an all-female prison is somewhat different than an all-male one.

Awesome Games Done Quick has announced their schedule for AGDQ 2016

AGDQ is a week long event where speed-runners from all over the world gather to raise money for charity by completely breaking games and being really fast while doing so. Seeing your favorite games broken and beaten within 20 minutes while also supporting charity, what's not to like about it?

The event will begin on January 3rd and you can find the full schedule above. I would suggest you tune in to their twitch stream once it finally launches because AGDQ has never failed to entertain.

Overwatch developer talks about the progression system 

In the most recent episode of the Overwatch developer diary Jeff Kaplan, game director for Overwatch, detailed what Blizzard's thoughts on the progression system are and what can you expect in the future. Check it out if you have even a remote interest in Overwatch, there is some great news in there.

Indie Showcase - a couple of announcement and releases from promising indie games

- Firewatch has a new 17 minute gameplay demo

In the video you will be able to see two developers play through day 2 of Firewatch explaining what exactly the game is about and showcasing the rather pretty visuals they've crafted as well as how your choices can affect the game's path. 

- UnderRail & Aviary Attorney have been released

Aviary Attorney is probably best described as a detective game similar to Phoenix Wright, starring Victorian birds while UnderRail is an oldschool Fallout-inspired isometric RPG that has been in the making for years. You can find a quick showcase of both games above but if you want more information I've started my review of UnderRail and you can find my first impressions here.

- Mordhau, a medieval first-person fighting game has a gameplay showcase video

The focus is on precise swings and block with the whole combat system relying purely on player skill. According to the developer video enclosed within, a skilled player could easily take out multiple opponents at once simply by predicting their moves and countering them. Check out the video for more information.

 

And that is it for This Week In PC Gaming, if you are interested in any of the events I'd suggest you follow their links to get the full story. With that said, I'll see you next week with the next installation of the series, it should be an exciting week given that Christmas season is when most games tend to launch.