SEGA announces the release of the Sonic Lost World for Windows on Steam, offering PC gamers the chance to play this platformer originally released for Wii U. Here's the deal:

Sonic Lost World™ is out now for PC, via digital download. Originally released for Wii U in 2013, the PC port of Sonic Lost World will feature full controller support, Steam Achievements, Cloud Save, leaderboard functionality and interchangeable keyboard prompts depending on whether you play with controller or mouse. It also features the Nightmare DLC and the whole package will cost just £19.99/$29.99/€27.99.

Sonic Lost World sees Dr. Eggman harnessing the power of six menacing creatures known as the Deadly Six, but when the Deadly Six rise up against their master, Sonic has to unite with his arch nemesis in order to take on the new enemies head-to-head. Using his dynamic new moves and improved Colour Powers, Sonic must run, jump and race through a variety of ever changing terrains in order to defeat the Deadly Six!

UmiharaKawase is now available on Steam, offering a 10% on this puzzle-platformer that was originally released over 20 years ago for consoles, making it just the second game in the popular Japanese series to make its way onto the PC platform. Details and media (like this Steam trailer) can be found on the Agatsuma Entertainment website, and here's a bit:

In 1994, a small bit of video game history was created when UmiharaKawase was launched. The game rapidly became a cult classic and a franchise was born. Now, for the first time ever, PC gamers can experience the first UmiharaKawase game in all its original glory.

It was the elasticity of Umihara's rubber fishing line that set the game apart from every other game that came before it. The game allowed players to experience a revolutionary style of gameplay. Much copied since, the game still stands apart to this day.

Play as `Umihara Kawase` - a backpacking Japanese sushi chef armed with a fishing rod, a rubber fishing line and a fishing hook. Avoid fish-like enemies, conveyer belts, spikes, watery pits and much, much more. The deeper in to this dream-like game players venture, the more challenging the solutions and the greater the time pressure becomes. Along the way, look out for shortcuts and secret exits and unlock bonus levels.

Continue here to read the full story.

• Crookz - The Big Heist on Steam. Save 33%.
• League of Legends Champion and skin sale- 11.03 - 11.06.
• Magic 2014 — Duels of the Planeswalkers on Steam. Save 75%.

• Zombasite version 0.904. Here are the patch notes.

• N4G Mod Discusses Policies, Corruption And Guidelines - One Angry Gamer.

• The ten best moments from the 2015 LoL Worlds grand finals.
• Poll: The World of Warcraft Arena World Championship Finals at BlizzCon.

• Analysis: Sony continues to widen its console sales lead over Microsoft.
• Buying Halo 5 at a military base nets you this collector's coin.

• T-Mobile’s network extender lets anyone use your Internet bandwidth.
• Outcast Odyssey on Google Play and the App Store.

• Fall 2015 Solid State Drive Technology Update.
• After three years without a product, is VR over before it even started? Not sure they make a point.

• Hacking tool swipes encrypted credentials from password manager.
• New Types of Reflection DDoS Attacks Spotted. Thanks j.c.f.
• Anonymous Begins Publishing Ku Klux Klan Member Details Online. Thanks Acleacius.

• Blizzard and Innovis settle Overwatch suit.
• Bill introduced to criminalize warrantless cell phone surveillance.
• UK police make third arrest over TalkTalk cyber attack. Thanks HARDOCP.

• Quick Slick Deadly on Steam is a 2D arcade shooter for Windows. With its launch discount the game is $0.29 for the next week…
• StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void Brings New And Updated Tilesets…
• New League of Legends free champion rotation: Draven, Gangplank, Katarina and more…

Link of the Day: Star Trek will return to TV in January 2017.

R.I.P.: Fred Thompson, former U.S. senator and actor, dies.

A blog post from Treyarch reveals plans to release mod and map tools in 2016 for the Windows edition of Call of Duty Black Ops III, their futuristic military shooter sequel. Word is they hope for an alpha release in March:

Over the years, the Call of Duty® community has proven itself to be among the most passionate in the world – and we count ourselves fortunate to make games for you.
We’ve been listening to one of your top requests and are excited to announce that modding and mapping are coming to Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 PC!
We’ve still got a lot of work left to do, but here’s our current plan:

• You will be able to create Maps & Game Modes and more!
• We will include Unranked Dedicated Server Files with the tools so you can run servers with modded content anywhere you choose.
• We will provide an Unranked Server Browser so you can easily find and join servers with modded content.
• Closed Alpha target date: March 2016

Please remember that this is software development, so things don’t always work out exactly as planned. Sometimes features slip or drop off altogether, sometimes they get replaced with other, more awesome features as we hit into limitations of our original plans.

There is much more news to come including updates on Open Beta timing. In order to keep you informed, we’ll periodically publish developer blog posts to share our progress with our fans. Stay tuned to the Treyarch blog for more information.

And yes, this is for real.

Sincerely,
Cesar Stastny
Director of Development

Harebrained Schemes announces their BATTLETECH fundraiser has hit its final stretch goal of $2.5 million, which adds PvP multiplayer to the upcoming mech combat game. The tally on their Kickstarter page is a little lower than that, but this update explains their PayPal donations puts this over the top. This new video recaps their whole Kickstarter experience, while this recent video shows off early game-engine experiments. Here's more on the matter, including word on a livestream to celebrate:

Harebrained Schemes has hit the final co-funding goal of its breakthrough campaign unlocking the fan-favorite PVP Multiplayer component of the game. Links to new art assets released by the company are included below along with a few campaign highlights and metrics that demonstrate the success of the campaign.

Metrics:

• The Kickstarter campaign hit its initial goal in less than an hour and raised more than $1 Million in the first 24 hours
• More than 36,000 people have backed the project so far
• The average pledge per backer is over $65 (compared to Shadowrun Returns' average pledge of $48)

Backer Missions have been incredibly successful at further engaging the Global BattleTech Community:

• Hundreds of people are talking about their favorite ‘Mech using #favBTmech
• An alcohol-fueled live stream with co-directors Jordan Weisman, Mitch Gitelman and Mike McCain will take place today at 11am PST/6pm GMT. Join us for what is sure to be an entertaining Q&A session live on Twitch.

Continue here to read the full story.

A Kickstarter update from inXile entertainment explains that the release of Torment: Tides of Numenera is now expected in 2016, one of a couple of ledes buried in the post, which also announces the departure of community manager Kevin Saunders as his replacement Chris Keenan introduces himself (thanks Eurogamer). Kevin's post thanks everyone and expresses confidence in the project, while Chris explains he was previously project lead on Wasteland 2 before going on to discuss when the game will be released. Here's word on that:

As a fresh set of eyes on the project I can tell you it's shaping up to be the awesome experience you all expect and deserve. However, to maintain the quality standard we've set for ourselves, we can't rush through these final stages to get it out the door. Instead, we're going to take the time we need on Torment: Tides of Numenera, which means we are planning a 2016 release.

An important part of our process is getting the game in your hands and iterating based on your feedback. Releasing the Crisis Alpha Systems Tests was a big step for the team. We've been happy to receive detailed feedback on what can be improved, and very gratified to see our backers respond that we're heading in the right direction.

Now, it's on to working towards the beta release. The level art is largely done, and we're making good progress on the general game systems, level design and UI elements . We'll keep you posted on the progress of the beta release in the upcoming updates, as we have full intentions on releasing the beta this year. I look forward to leading this incredibly talented team and working with all of you to bring Torment to completion!

Eurogamer.net points the way to some leaked Fallout 4 gameplay videos on Pastebin, saying they appear to be from the Xbox One edition of the upcoming RPG sequel. We did not view these, as we're not interested in possible spoilers, but those curious to check these out should be aware that visiting the link triggered a malware warning from our antivirus software, so you might want to proceed with caution. For those of us waiting for the full game, the wait won't be too bad, as the release is expected a week from tomorrow.

The Steam Game and Player Statistics page already shows another new record for concurrent users, saying 13,480,916 users were simultaneously logged in, a bump of over a half-million over the new record noted just yesterday. Just two weeks ago this record was set at 10,761,566, but this has been increasing by leaps and bounds since then. We know of no specific reason for these upticks, but they certainly are striking.

GameInformer has word on layoffs at Mad Max developer Avalanche Studios as development wraps up on Just Cause 3, their open-world action sequel. After similar cuts in Sweden as Mad Max development ended, these cuts come at the New York office working on Just Cause 3. Here is the official statement on the matter:

"The transition between major projects is always challenging, especially for independent developers," a representative told us via email. "We have just completed one project and are currently wrapping up another. In starting up our new projects, we were not able to perfectly match the team sizes and skill sets of the previous ones, and we unfortunately had to let some talented developers go. 12 developers were given notice in New York. There was a similar number of notices given this summer in Stockholm, but right now we are in the process of rehiring some of those who left. We expect to keep hiring in the new year. This unfortunate event does not affect any of our current projects, and we're taking measures to avoid situations like this in the future."

AMD announces they are renaming the driver suite for their graphics cards to Radeon Software Crimson, from Catalyst, and that the new software should roll out by the end of this year. They say this will use a new framework under the hood, and that they plan on supporting users with more frequent driver updates. Ars Technica has some presentation slides covering the news, and here is part of their write-up:

For now, AMD is only talking about the UI changes in Crimson, which is dramatically different from the old CCC. (More will be revealed about underlying driver changes at a later date, but AMD was vague about when that might be.) The new flat design features five tabs at the top for Gaming, Video, Display, Eyefinity, and System, while the buttons at the bottom cover Updates, Preferences, and Notifications. In the middle, taking up the lion's share of the window, there's a carousel that displays announcements and promotions about games when not being used to display settings.

Crimson offers up much of the same settings as CCC, but it makes them easier to find. Under the Gaming tab you will find the new Game Manager, which allows you to tweak graphics settings globally or on a per-game basis. This includes anti-aliasing modes, tessellation modes, and frame rate target control (which sets a frame rate cap at the hardware level). There's also the new option to enable Overdrive settings (overclocking) on a per-game basis. The Overdrive UI has been given a tweak, making it much easier to understand and use.

The Sims 4 remains number one on the GFK Chart-Track chart for the top-selling PC games in the U.K. for the week ending October 31st. The top new(ish) entry is Farming Simulator 15: Gold Edition, which plows its way into the number three spot. Halo 5: Guardians is the new top entry on the all platforms chart, where WWE 2K16 grapples the way to number four, while Minecraft: Story Mode digs in at number five. Here's how they describe the new results:

After Ubisoft’s ‘Assassin’s Creed’ franchise update last week comes Microsoft’s first full Halo release for Xbox One: ‘Halo 5: Guardians’ takes the top spot and outsells the week 1 for ‘AC: Syndicate’ by 50%.

This is also how much more Halo 5 sold in week 1 compared to last year’s ‘Halo: Master Chief Collection’ - up until now the only other Halo game available via retail for Xbox One owners. Ubisoft only drop to No2 with ‘Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate’ (-39%) and EA drop 1 place to No3 with ‘FIFA 16’ (+25%). There are 2 more big new releases this week within the Top 5: debuting at No4 is 2K/Take 2’s ‘WWE 2K16’, outselling this-week-last-year’s week 1 on ‘WWE 2K15’ by 3 to 1 and coming in one place higher.

Debuting at No5 is Telltale’s ‘Minecraft: Story Mode’ with the disc release including the first of 5 episodes. Activision’s ‘Guitar Hero Live’ drops 8 places to No11 (-39%) and the only other new release within the Top 40 are the next gen console versions of last year’s PC hit ‘Divinity: Original Sin’ – PS4/Xbox One versions from Focus/Koch Media are entitled ‘Divinity Original Sin: Enhanced Edition’ and debuts at No37.

SEC moves to allow startup investing via crowdfunding.

• Steam Greenlight -- The TakeOver. "The Takeover is and old school beat 'em up inspired by games like Final Fight and Streets of Rage. The game will be playable in either single player or two player local co-op and will contain 4 playable characters, 7 stages and 2 game modes, arcade and survival." Playable demo offered. Thanks One Angry Gamer.

• Counter-Strike: Global Offensive » EnVyUs – CS-GO Major Champions.

• Armored Warfare PC Video interview on GameWatcher.

• Is Smartphone Addiction Real? We Ask the Experts. Thanks HARDOCP.
• Windows Hello facial logins on the new Surfaces are rather impressive.
• Mad Genius Coaxes Android Wear Into Running Nintendo 64 And PlayStation Portable Game Emulators. Thanks Slashdot via Ant.
• Yeti Pie on the App Store.

Thanks Ant.

• How GoDaddy's Quest For Respect Led To An Improbable Partnership With MIT. Thanks Slashdot.
• Google makes 'CODEGIRL' film free on YouTube for a limited time -- watch it here.
• Skype comes to Office Online and Office comes to Chrome.
• English Wikipedia surpasses five million articles. None of them about this site. Thanks HARDOCP.

• Testing DirectX 11 vs. DirectX 12 performance with Stardock's Ashes of the Singularity.
• HP is now two companies. How did it get here? Thanks Slashdot via Ant.

Thanks Ant.

• Online threats for October 2015, botnets and encryption malware still prevalent.
• Apple blocks Chaos Computer Club content on its platform.

• Google is the latest tech company to be sued by its own delivery workers.
• Feds explain (sort of) why they really want data on seized iPhone 5S.
• Kim Dotcom Finally Launches Extradition Defense. Thanks HARDOCP.

• Albino Lullaby: Episode 1 on Just Adventure.

• Apple iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus on AnandTech.
• ASRock H170 Combo Intel LGA 1151 Motherboard on Overclocked Inside.
• ASUS Transformer Book T100HA on Vortez.
• Audiofly AF56m In-Ear Headphones on ThinkComputers.org.
• Cooler Master Storm Quick Fire XTi on APH Networks.
• EVGA Z170 Classified Motherboard on Hardware Asylum.
• Func HS-260 Headset on pcGameware.
• Sandberg Powerbank 20000 For Laptop on Nikk Tech.
• SteelSeries Siberia 200 on Vortez.

Thanks nin.

• 14 Voices You Didn't Know Troy Baker Could Do. Includes spoilers for Arkham Knight and Last of Us…
• Assassin's Creed Syndicate Time-Lapse: London 1868…

Congrats to the Royals on their World Series victory. They played terrific, aggressive baseball, worked to their strengths and minimized their weaknesses, and clearly deserved to win. I wish Terry Collins had handled the Mets' relief pitching better, but they were definitely out-managed as well as outplayed along the way, and that's part of the game too. The Mets do look like they have a bright future with their young pitching staff, so here's hoping they can make like the Royals and follow losing the series with a successful run next year, but in the meantime I don't want to lose track of what a great campaign they had as it was, as when the season began no one was predicting anything like a championship run for this team.

Anyway, it doesn't matter that the Mets and Giants both fell over the weekend, we're still celebrating today in the BlueTower, since it is the Gunnar-man's birthday. Our awesome little poodle turns 11 today, though you'd never believe it from his vim and vigor. I will do my best to make it a special occasion for him, but that can be a tough trick when dealing with a dog naturally blessed with so much unbridled joie de vivre that every moment seems special to him. It will still be fun trying, though.

Birthday Links:	Thanks Ant and Acleacius.
Play:	CDrone Survival. Airport Tycoon.
Science:	Climate change could have a significant impact on our economy.
Media:	GOLDENEYE 007 (N64) (Teens React- Retro Gaming). Japanese snowboard Rube Goldberg machine. Hanging out with a skydiver and a plane on Vimeo.
The Funnies:	CSI: Candy Corn Edition « EXTRALIFE. Dilbert. Brevity.