By Hayden Dingman, Games Reporter, PCWorld | PT

This week in games: Kerbal Space Podracer, World of Warcraft expansion talk, Mafia III, and more

This is gaming news for July 27-31

This is it—the last day of July. Tomorrow we officially (sort of) enter the fall reviews season. Though everyone knows we won’t really enter fall reviews season until Garfield Kart releases on August 11. (Seriously. It’s a real game.)

Lots of new game announcements this week, plus Grand Theft Auto V turns into an RPG, someone built a podracer in Kerbal, and Fallout 4 teams up with Loot Crate to presumably sell you piles of enriched uranium. This is gaming news for July 27-31.

Make me an offer

Gamescom is shaping up to be surprisingly important this year, and leading the pack is the now-hotly-anticipated Mafia III. 2K announced the game’s existence this week, although you’ll have to wait until 8AM Eastern/5AM Pacific on August 5 for the full reveal. Have a teaser image in the meantime:

Billions

Also announced this week: Endless Space 2, from Amplitude. I didn’t play the original Endless Space, but I did play Endless Legend last year and it was amazing—easily a contender for the best modern 4X game. So count me excited for the prospect of that, except in space.

Round two

Maybe one day people will speak of Firaxicon with the same reverence as BlizzCon and QuakeCon. That’s probably a few years off still, but nevertheless Firaxis is making a go of it and hosting Firaxicon for the second year in a row.

The second annual Firaxicon will take place October 3 in Baltimore, and you’re invited—provided you have $40 to spare and want to go to Baltimore. Your reward? Playing XCOM 2 a month early. Also maybe meeting Sid Meier. And then throwing up on him because you’re so nervous.

Tickets are available through Eventbrite.

ZomPC

Since it is incredibly unlikely you bought a WiiU, chances are also pretty damn good you never played ZombiU—and that’s a shame, because apart from the terrible name it’s actually a great horror/zombie title!

Apparently Ubisoft has finally gotten around to porting the game to other platforms, and it’s coming to PC on August 18—although it’s now called simply Zombi instead of ZombiU or ZombiPC or even better ZomPC. I’m curious to see how the game translates to other platforms, considering much of the appeal came from creative use of the WiiU controller’s second-screen.

And more walking dead

Speaking of zombies, Dying Light revealed an expansion this week titled “The Following”—and it’s apparently as large as all of the previous Dying Light maps combined.

Don’t want to ~~walk~~ parkour that far? The expansion also adds in working vehicles, apparently with the ability for a second player to hang out and shoot encroaching zombies.

So many worlds

World of Warcraft is also expanding. Again. Now that previous expansion Warlords of Draenor is coming up on one year old, it’s time for Blizzard to start beating the expansion drum again. And it will, starting next week. We’ll apparently hear the first details for the new World of Warcraft expansion during Blizzard’s Gamescom briefing, which kicks off at 12PM Eastern/9AM Pacific on August 6.

The huggable hedgehog

Oculus is making a movie about a hedgehog named Henry who hugs things and they don’t hug back. Question: How bad an idea is it to cry while the Rift is strapped to my face?

Lockpick: 100

Upset that you missed out on the Fallout 4 Pip-Boy Edition? Now you can try and pay Bethesda for even more limited-edition trinkets, thanks to Loot Crate. What’s in the box? Nobody knows. That’s…kind of Loot Crate’s whole thing.

But if you’re willing to pay $15-20 for what might be literally a box full of used bottle caps from someone’s alcohol and/or root beer problem, you can sign up here to be notified when the promo kicks off.

Grander Theft

The Grand Theft Auto V mod community is in full swing now. This week, JulioNIB showed off work on Iron Man:

And LogicSpawn turned the game into an RPG, complete with skill trees:

Jeb-Jeb Kerbal

Somebody built a Star Wars Ep. 1 podracer in Kerbal Space Program, which I’m pretty sure means we could build podracers in real life. It also means it’s high time for Disney to fund a sequel to Star Wars Episode I: Racer. I bet the Need for Speed team could do it.