Before the disaster that was Stadia, Google demoed its game streaming tech via a free version of Assassin's Creed: Odyssey you could play in your browser. My fiancée has fond memories of whiling away slow nights at work playing this massive triple-A game on a crummy library OptiPlex.

Whatever came after with Stadia and game streaming in general, that demo felt like black magic. If a genuinely impressive tech demo can lead to a notorious industry flop, what about a distinctly unimpressive one?

What are the ethics of expending massive amounts of capital, energy, and man hours on not even a worse version of a game from 30 years ago, but a vague impression of it? These are the questions I pondered after having gotten motion sickness playing a game for the second time in my life with Microsoft's Copilot AI research demo of Quake 2.

"This bite-sized demo pulls you into an interactive space inspired by Quake II, where AI crafts immersive visuals and responsive action on the fly," reads Microsoft's Q&A page about the demo. "It’s a groundbreaking glimpse at a brand new way of interacting with games, turning cutting-edge research into a quick and compelling playable demo."

This demo is powered by a "World and Human Action Model" (WHAM), a generative AI model "that can dynamically create gameplay visuals and simulate player behavior in real time." Perusing Microsoft's Nature article on the tech, it appears to operate on similar principles to large language models and image generators, using recorded gameplay and inputs for training instead of static text and imagery.

This demo is not running in the original game's id Tech 2 engine. However Microsoft produces this demo, it's some kind of bespoke engine with an output that resembles Quake 2 because the AI model behind it was trained on Quake 2.

I'm reminded of those demakes of Doom for Texas Instruments calculators, but instead of marshalling limited resources to create an inferior impression of a pre-existing game, the Copilot Gaming Experience is the result of Microsoft's (and the entire tech industry's) herculean push for generative AI.

I don't know what the discrete Copilot Gaming project costs, but Microsoft has invested billions of dollars into compute, research, and lobbying for this technology. On Bluesky, developer Sos Sosowski pointed out that Microsoft's Nature paper lists 22 authors, as opposed to the 13 developers behind Quake 2.

Based on the paper, Sosowski also estimated that Microsoft's new model required more than three megawatts of power to begin producing consistent results⁠. That's assuming use of an RTX 5090, which Microsoft likely did not have access to given the timing of the paper's publication, but it's still helpful to get an idea of the scope of this project's power draw. According to battery manufacturer Pkenergy, a single megawatt requires 3,000-4,000 solar panels to produce.

Despite all of that investment, the demo is not good. The Copilot Gaming experience runs like a slideshow in a tiny window at the center of the browser, its jerkiness and muddled, goopy visuals⁠—familiar to anyone who's seen an AI-generated video⁠—gave me a rough case of motion sickness after bare minutes of play. The only other game to ever have set my belly a rumblin', EvilVEvil, did so closer to the hour mark.

And while chatbots will tell you to eat rocks and drink piss, the Copilot Gaming Experience has its own fun "hallucinations"—the surreal, unnervingly confident errors produced by generative AI models that massive amounts of money, compute power, and uninhibited access to copyrighted material can't seem to address.

Looking at the floor or ceiling at any time in the Copilot Gaming Experience has about an 80% chance of completely transforming the room in front of you, almost like you teleported somewhere else in the level.

Of course, there is no "level," goal, or victory condition: The Copilot Gaming Experience is just constantly generating a new Quake 2-like bit of environment in front of you whenever you turn the corner, with what came before seemingly disappearing as you go.

One such warp moment sent me to the Shadow Realm, a pitch black void out of nowhere which took some finagling to get out of. There are "enemies," but when I killed one it just deformed into some kind of blob. Then I walked past it, turned around, and the hallway had completely changed, taking the blob with it.

Like so much of generative AI or the blockchain boom before it, I can imagine the "Well, it's just a WIP, first step type of thing" defense of what I was subjected to, but I'm just not convinced. Whatever specific compelling use cases may exist for generative AI tools, that's not what we've been aggressively sold and marketed for the past two years and counting, this insistence on cramming it into everything. Google Gemini is now constantly asking if I want its help writing, like some kind of horrible, latter-day Clippy.

Forced mass-adoption of this stuff by consumers is here, now, demanding our approval, attention, and precious time. A public tech demo exists to impress, and the Copilot Gaming Experience does not. Doom on a calculator, but we had to boil a lake or two to get it and are being told it's the future of games. I reject this future. Not only do I find it philosophically and ethically repugnant, it also made my tummy hurt.

Ambitious modding projects are a bit like baby fish, in that millions of them spawn, but relatively few survive to adulthood. Hence, it's always worth celebrating when one makes it through to full release. Such is the case with the Middle-earth Extended Edition, which launches into 1.0 today after 13 years of development.

Middle-earth: Extended Edition first arose in the east way back in 2012, aiming to give Danger Close's beloved RTS The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth the same embiggening treatment Peter Jackson applied to his film trilogy. Over the course of the last decade plus change, it has added new maps to the game like Moria and Lothlorien, added new playable factions such as the Elves and the Haradrim, expanded existing factions like Rohan and Isengard with new units, and much more.

This most recent update, the first in four years, is somewhat less dramatic, with no major new additions to the game. But it is nonetheless extensive, tweaking and adjusting game parameters for just about every facet of the RTS so it better reflects the source material. Numerous maps have been adjusted so they have enemy lairs more authentic to their locations. AI has been tweaked to construct buildings and deploy tactics truer to their factions' nature. Campaign missions have been altered to more accurately reflect blow-by-blow events in the books and films. And just about every faction has been given a statistical once-over too.

Ultimately though, the main event here is that the mod is now, for all intents and purposes, complete. The mod's creator, Rohirim91, has been consistently involved with the project throughout its long gestation. Indeed, it's fascinating to read back through the game's updates. In 2017, for example, Rohirim was working on the mod while studying for university entrance exams. "During the spring of this year I have made a significant progress on the mod and was close to releasing it," he wrote at the time. "However, due to a mistake on my part and the upgrading of the PC I use, the mod files were lost." Haven't we all been there?

Rohirim91 doesn't specify whether the 1.0 release represents the end of work on the mod. Indeed, the update is rather matter-of-fact given the milestone. Rohirim opens the update with a succinct summary of the mod's features before diving straight into the changelog "Middle-earth Extended Edition returns with an expanded set of playable maps, new features, polished campaigns and AI, balance changes and bugfixes."

However, right at the bottom of the update, Rohirim writes "Feel free to post your suggestions and report any bugs you encounter via comments or private messages on this site", which seems to leave the door open for potential future updates.

Either way, you can download Middle-earth Extended Edition here. Rohirim notes that the mod requires patch 1.6 of the Battle for Middle-earth, and of course a copy of the game itself. This latter requirement may be tricky as Danger Close's game isn't for sale digitally anywhere, although you might be able to find it on a certain site for abandoned wares. There is currently a vote in progress on GoG to bring the game onto the platform, so perhaps add your support to that if you want to see this lost RTS treasure more easily purchasable.

I finally got around to watching Severance a couple of weeks ago and absolutely devoured both seasons. So I'm not sure whether I've just got Lumon on the brain, but the first thing that I thought of while playing the demo for Repose was how it gave off the same eerie vibes as my new favourite TV show.

Repose is a 2D horror game in which you traverse a facility as an underappreciated worker, whose only task is to collect oxygen tanks from dead bodies. Oh, and you're trying not to die to the mysterious tentacle monsters waiting for you. While your objective may seem straightforward, there's something weird about the company you work for, and I didn't just get that from the fact that they have a whole underground facility full of dead bodies and monsters with shotguns. That's small change compared to the horrors of customer service.

During the demo, I met a fellow company worker, Cynthia. We were in a cafe where she explained a little bit about my role, but she also hinted at a couple of odd goings on. Apparently, I'm replacing a guy called Aaron who went missing in the facility, and she warns that the nearest town to the company is 34km away, giving off serious 'no one can hear you scream' vibes.

But what Cynthia doesn't know is that Aaron isn't actually missing. I may have no idea what this company is doing, but it seems like Aaron does, and he's going to help me find out. During one pit stop between exploring levels one and two in the facility, Aaron came to me in my dreams and told me that I had to find the data tunnels. He also warned me about the company I work for: "Who knows what they're doing to you while you're not paying attention. I had no idea either." Ominous.

But other than working for what will almost definitely turn out to be an evil megacorporation, Repose has some pretty appealing features as well as a great basis for a horror game.

I'm usually not a massive fan of 2D games, I find navigating them to be slightly confusing, at times. But I got used to Repose pretty quickly. There's a compass at the bottom of the screen to help you remember which way you're heading, as well as a step counter at the top of your screen, which helps keep track of how much stamina you have left. Before your step metre runs out, you need to get to a bed and replenish your stamina—beds also act as a checkpoint, just like in real life.

There are also occasional fights, which are almost as stressful as working for a company that casually disappears its employees. Every so often, you'll stumble across some monster, but because you can't see more than two to three steps in front of you, you need to act fast. The one time I hesitated, I got a shotgun pellet to the face.

I'm really excited to see where this story goes. Even before watching Severance, I've always loved watching thrillers where the little guy ends up taking on a big corporation despite being horrifically outmatched. Add in a mystery, weird monsters, and strange apparitions, and I think Repose will be a horrifically confusing and exciting—everything I love about horror games.

Steel Hunters takes the the spark-filled clashes between Megatron and Optimus Prime and slows them down to create a methodic, tactical experience with familiar hero shooter and extraction elements. The mech battler from World of Tanks developer Wargaming releases in early access on Steam this week, on April 2.

I played a demo of Steel Hunters at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco a couple weeks ago, where I was shown seven mechs with fascinating designs—ranging from your standard humanoid Gundam-like models to mechs based off of dogs and bears—as well as slow, tactical gameplay that felt gripping while facing off against mechs, but mundane in the moments in between.

One of Steel Hunters' primary modes sees six teams of two drop into a large map filled with a variety of drones, supply drops, and other points of interest to explore. Each team spawns at one of eight predetermined spawn points across the map, far enough from each other to discourage early game combat between player-controlled mechs.

Steel Hunters' combat follows a MOBA-like match progression system where players kill drones and bots in order to collect energy and save up enough for special abilities and ultimates that are later used in battle. As a result, the opening moments of the few matches I played were slow and unvaried.

I kicked drones with my Ursus bear mech, shot others down with whatever gun I had equipped, and then walked to pick up the energy they dropped. Gear loadouts were decided before dropping into matches, so there was no specialized looting found in battle royales to add excitement and variety to the first portion of a match.

While those early moments moved like molasses, the actual fights against other players—bots during the demo, but still—were far more exciting. Individual abilities for mechs went on display immediately as coordination with my AI-controlled teammate was essential. My Weaver spider mech had a Reinhardt-like shield that provided cover for my teammate and I as we emptied clips into the enemy.

Slow, tactical coordination was almost forced. Maneuverability—especially for the four legged mechs—while smooth, was extremely limited. Jumping and dashing were restricted to two uses at a time, two small energy bars needed to recharge before they could be used again. I understand the interest in wanting to move meticulously and in synergy with your partner, but I don't think that means that you have to do so as slowly as Steel Hunters wanted me to.

Fights were lengthy, even though I didn't feel completely comfortable controlling the mechanical beasts in front of me after so little time with the game. It helped that combat situations shared a large amount of DNA with similar situations found in hero shooters or battle royales. Fighting over an extraction point often led to a flurry of explosion effects, debris from the destructible small houses and cars, and shield graphics that popped up.

Despite being limited to teams of two, this is a tactical game. Every second of a match should ideally be planned out, from early rotation direction choices to which bots you engage to what sort of terrain you meet enemy players on. All the choices I made mattered, but the actions I took while making those choices didn't feel all that exciting. Lighting up two enemy players teased out more enthusiasm from me, but were barely worth the time I spent lollygagging around the map looking for droids to bop and boxes to open.

It's hard not to compare Steel Hunters to Mecha Break, another mech-based shooter with an extraction mode and other similar ideas releasing this spring. Mecha Break is all about recreating action scenes from Gundam and Pacific Rim while moving at breakneck speed. Steel Hunters couldn't have felt more different in that regard.

There is no twitch-based gameplay or fast maneuverability in Wargaming's mech battler. There is a jump and dash, but they are subdued compared to arcadier mech action games and the stamina system limits them greatly. Every ability—even my bear's melee attack—had a cooldown that made me panic in some fights when it wouldn't let me simply melee my opponent multiple times in succession when they were feet away from me.

Steel Hunters did inspire more of a feeling of 'real' mech combat for me, though. Slowly clashing against other teams while buildings crumble and cars flip on the ground around us created a sense of scale that Mecha Break didn't, but if I had to choose, I'd pick Mecha Break's Gundam-style action over Steel Hunters' more subdued battles, which lean further in the direction of MechWarrior.

Overall, Steel Hunters has fascinating mech choices and combat designed with balance and tactical gameplay in mind. But it's slow. Even when running around on all fours with the bear, I felt sluggish and I had to plan each paw swing carefully.

Wargaming is keeping things simple for now: There are only seven mechs and game modes are limited to six teams of two—and there will be no trios and squads for the beta launch. The developers will ramp things up over time, adding more complexity with new mechs and modes over time.

While Mecha Break offers my preferred flavor of mech warfare, Steel Hunters had a promising closed beta in December—it attracted over 200,000 players and the studio gathered over 700 pages of feedback. Wargaming was so confident in the game that it moved the early access release up—it's out on April 2 on Steam.

Balatro developer LocalThunk is notoriously private. It's not some kind of put-on: Wout van Halderen, communications director of Balatro publisher Playstack, told us at GDC that LocalThunk isn't "trying to pull a Banksy," he's just "a person who doesn't really like the spotlight," and choosing to stay anonymous helps him manage the pressures of his newfound success.

But like a king wandering incognito amongst his subjects, that anonymity also enables LocalThunk to get away with things that other, more recognizable developers never could. As an example, LocalThunk was actually at GDC, and took the opportunity to school the crowd with some slick Balatro moves, before fading away into the crowd like a half-heard whisper.

"One of my fav moments from GDC—they had a booth set up to play Balatro since it was an award nominee," LocalThunk revealed on Bluesky. "I watched for a bit then I gave it a go myself. Crushed a white stake run. Someone approached me as I was about to leave. 'Wow you must have played this before!' 'I guess you could say that'

"Also this was actually the first and only time I have seen strangers play my game in real life. Have yet to see Balatro in the wild. So as far as I'm concerned y'all are just Truman Show-ing me."

LocalThunk's tale of ghosting through GDC inspired some fun responses:

A few people said LocalThunk's extremely public yet virtually invisible spin with Balatro at GDC reminded them not so much of Banksy, but another famous celebrity who goes places and does stuff almost entirely unnoticed by the world at large:

One person recounted some advice they were given ahead of GDC: "[Don't] read the badges until AFTER you have talked to someone for at least a couple of minutes, so you don’t get star struck." LocalThunk's tale, they added, gave them another reason to stick to that policy.

In this case, though, I don't think reading the badge would've helped. Most people don't know LocalThunk's real name or what he looks like, and even if he'd been walking around with one of those "Hi! I'm LocalThunk" stickers on his shirt we probably wouldn't believe it anyway, unless he wore it while accepting top honors at the GDC Awards. In that case, well, maybe. But I hope he doesn't: Anonymity seems good for him, and it turns out it's kind of entertaining for all of us, too.