There's lots of video this week: Some dumb (a guy electrocuting himself with a shock collar), some not-so-dumb (resurrecting the educational game Zoombinis). This is your gaming news for the week of February 16.
Hear the call
Activision/Steam are giving free access to Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare's multiplayer mode for the weekend, if you're into that sort of thing. Check your Steam library for the installer.
Up on blocks
Project CARS just keeps slipping, slipping, slipping into the future. The developers announced yet another delay this week, pushing the game back to an April 2 release date. Unfortunately the delay is once again in service of fine-tuning the game, and not so they can change their still-awful title.
Oceanhorn
This game looks pretty. That's all I have to say about that.
Okay, maybe one more thing: The game releases on Steam on March 17.
Seeing geckos
I don't actually know if Gex was any good. It's been probably fifteen years since I played any of those games, and I was a kid. There's a chance it was awful and I didn't know any better.
But it still hit some piece of nostalgia to hear Square Enix is soliciting developer pitches for a new Gex game. Maybe I'm just pining for some mascot-driven platformers.
Also potentially on the docket for Square Enix's Collective program: Anachronox and Fear Effect.
Little blue balls
And another fresh helping of nostalgia I didn't even know I wanted: TERC is resurrecting the educational Zoombinis series.
Crusader Kings king
Crusader Kings II turned three this year, and to celebrate Paradox put out an infographic noting, among other stats, that someone has played the grand strategy title for 10,500 hours since release. In other words, over a year of time.

(Click to expand)
While that stat obviously includes a lot of idle time (I hope), no less impressive is an average of 99 hours per player logged on Steam. That's a lot of people marrying and then assassinating their cousins.
Despite all my rage
Ah, YouTube, an endless reservoir of self-harm. If you want to see six minutes of a guy playing video games and getting electrocuted by a dog shock collar, say a silent word of thanks to the Internet:
Imagine those dial-up tones
The team over at YouTube channel rizenvisual traveled back in time and found this League of Legends commercial from the 90s. That's really the only explanation here.
More reading
- PCPartPicker overhauled its website this week, making it even easier to build your own PC.
- Cities: Skylines is shaping up to be the city builder I've been waiting for ever since SimCity was a disaster.
- Doom gets a selfie stick. Seriously.
- Nvidia's still expanding GRID. Maybe one day it'll gain traction?
- Ubisoft removed those stupid mobile apps from Assassin's Creed: Unity.
- Josh Sawyer and I had a long chat about Pillars of Eternity ahead of next month's release.
- Book of Unwritten Tales 2 is one of the most enjoyable point-and-clicks I've played in years.