Lots of people love the original GTA and GTA2, myself included and Geneshift has a major overhaul (again) that tweaks the Battle Royale gameplay along with a huge new map to give classic GTA2 vibes.

Geneshift is a mix of many things. It's a top-down shooter with a campaign that can be played solo or in co-op, it has a big online feature with a Battle Royale mode, FFA and much more. A lot of the work currently going into the Battle Royale mode.

In the latest update the developer added in a new map called Subvein City, a bit of a throwback to an older name it went by of Subvein: Mutant Factions. This map is "5x larger than before", allowing for a more GTA2 style gameplay with much more space for vehicles. The Battle Royale system is also on a much bigger scale now with more players, and longer rounds.

Pictured - the new Battle Royale map layout in Subvein City.

Even more came with this update to include a graphics overhaul adding in "a new day/night cycle, fog effects, lens flares, rain and thunder, and more". Enemies also have health bars now, letting you prioritise targets and showing you actually doing some damage, you show up on the minimap if you fire a weapon now - helps you find the action, dead players can now resurrect any time in Battle Royale as long as they kill five other players as a Zombie and much more .

If you buy it now, you get the Supporter Edition DLC which includes the full campaign and all features, as it seems their plan is for the online to eventually be free to play still. Geneshift is something of a hidden gem because it fully deserves to have more players - with other actual people (there's bots too) it's a ridiculous amount of fun.

You can buy Geneshift on Steam .

Here's something to keep you busy over the holiday season! Stardew Valley, the awesome and relaxing farming life sim from ConcernedApe has the biggest update yet.

There's so much that's new it's going to take some time to find it all, and I don't want to spoil too much of what to expect from it. Safe to say though they've really been busy expanding what you can do. It now has local co-op support, a brand new Beach farm, new game options to customize things a bit more, there's a significant amount of "late-game" content added, new character events, tons of new items, fish tanks and you can even sit on chairs now.

Click above for big image of the Beach farm

Quick tip: the full-screen farm screenshot tool saves pictures on Linux into your "/.local/share/StardewValley/" folder.

Plenty more new apart from what's already mentioned like home renovations, the ducks actually swim now, new people to meet and so on. It is an absolute whopper of a patch to drop just before the holidays! Awesome. Think I will have to dive in and spend another bunch of hours exploring all the little new bits. Will you be doing the same?

If you want the full spoiler filled list of what's new it can be found here .

Pick up a copy on Humble Store , GOG or Steam .

As the last update of the year (and one we missed from last week), getting in one more turn in Civilization VI might be a little less annoying with the AI tweaks in the December patch.

With the tweaks aiming to make the AI a bit smarter, other civilizations should no longer constantly ask for demands when they're at a clear disadvantage. There's also new options like "Stop asking me" for friendship, peace and trade agreements. Even better though, is a don't ask again option for items requested by the AI - so we can finally shut them up. Firaxis noted some other additional AI logic improvements so games should feel better overall.

The other major addition with this free update is the City-State Picker, allowing you to further customize your games and select what you want to appear. Plus there's now a way to search for units in the World Tracker panel so you never lose anything again.

Watch video on YouTube.com

Sadly, it seems cross-play with Linux, macOS and Windows has once again hit some road bumps. Firaxis mentioned that they discovered a desync issue "around the mid-game point" so it's once again turned off while Aspyr Media (who did the port) investigate a fix for it. Once we hear more on that, we will aim to let you know. All platforms have the update and Linux / macOS can play together but Windows is again by itself until they sort it. At least this time they've noted it in the announcement clearly instead of us all finding out after it's live.

You can buy Civilization VI with Linux support from Humble Store and Steam .

Proton Experimental is the new testing area where Valve and their partner CodeWeavers continue rolling out extra fixes and improvements to the Proton translation layer for Steam Play .

This work follows on from what was done to get Cyberpunk 2077 working and in a better state on Linux, and they're clearly not done yet. In the latest updates to Proton Experimental they added "better support for Red Dead Online, Kingdoms Reborn, and Anno 1404 - History Edition" and also newly improved video support with "infrastructure work for supporting video playback from Media Foundation".

Here's a quick look at Red Dead Online running on Linux with Proton Experimental:

Watch video on YouTube.com

Video - Red Dead Online running on EndeavourOS with an Intel i7 5960x and NVIDIA 1080.

I should note that I've seen some issues with it. Valve do note "better" support and so don't expect a perfect experience just yet, especially with it being an online only game it could easily break on the next update - but progress is clear and it works. Still, I've seen some crashes and black screens but when it works it seems to run quite well overall.

As always you can find Proton info on GitHub and on our dedicated page .

Are you ready for another major update to the Dagor Engine 6.0 used in War Thunder? As the Hot Tracks update is rolling out across the battlefields.

Gajin have continued upgrading their game engine to bring it more in line with other modern games, especially as War Thunder is a top earner for them it makes sense to keep it looking pretty. Hot Tracks brings in updated gunfire for naval and ground vehicles, 3 new helicopters for Italy and 30 new war machines for other countries on top of some new visual effects coming:

• Visual effects of all ground and naval vehicle gunfire have been updated.
• Physically accurate vehicle tracks.
• Spark effects have been added for the new ground vehicles tracks
• Game locations have received their own set of GPU objects

Watch video on YouTube.com

Some of the changes they mentioned like the new tank tracks will roll out sometime after the update is live, so not right away they said. It's also gotten a bit festive with a snowy hanger.

The Linux version has been running beautifully for me since the last major update that put Vulkan as the default. A few kinks they had to work out but now it's smooth, stable and it looks pretty good too. I've spent a good 30 or so hours in it recently and I have to say it might be my current favourite Linux game. War Thunder is just too easy to spend time in!

Play for free from the official site and Steam .

A little repair and reconstruction while doing a space walk? That's now a thing in the latest free expansion to the spaceship building simulation game Kerbal Space Program.

With lots of other smaller features that were added in this update, the EVA Construction Mode and new textures are the biggest highlights. EVA Construction Mode especially, because it can change how you play the game entirely when mixed with the new inventory system that allows your kerbals to store and carry around objects of their own. Some Reassembly Required also boosts the customization possible with a bunch of new lights to stick on your craft, plus some deployable lights too.

Watch video on YouTube.com

When it comes to the texture overhaul they mentioned it's ongoing work with the Joolian satellite system of Bop, Vall and Tylo seeing major texture upgrades which make quite a big difference. The full changelog, as expected of a major upgrade, is pretty long and interesting full of smaller new details and quite a lot of bug fixes too.

Buy a copy of Kerbal Space Program from Humble Store , GOG and Steam .

Do we have any regular players here? Let us know what you think of all the changes in the comments.

art of rally is an astonishingly good racing game from the creator of Absolute Drift, and it just recently had a first major content upgrade that's available now. See also : my previous thoughts .

The heritage update is a juicy one adding in eight new cars spread across the different groups, ghost cars to race against your own personal best time, the menu will now show off your own photos in the little polaroids, plus some tweaks to vehicles to make them a little less bouncy when jump landing. Check out the trailer:

Watch video on YouTube.com

Seems the release went well overall for developer Funselektor Labs with over 1.5K user reviews on Steam meaning they've had quite a few sales. Not only that, the overall user review score is looking really good too. Nice to see another indie doing well and it's totally deserved.

After this update they've confirmed more is on the way mentioning to look forward to "more cars, songs, features and a new location" for next year. Goodie! More art of rally is needed because it really is damn good.

You can buy art of rally for Linux from GOG and Steam .

Ready to face the horde? WWII fantasy tactics battler Broken Lines has a big free update out now focusing on the rising dead giving you an all-new way to play.

If you missed this one, it released along with native Linux support back in February 2020 and it was surprisingly great. On their two month launch anniversary, they noted how "macOS and Linux gamers really appreciated having native versions of the game to play". As for the gameplay it uses a WeGo style of both sides planning at the same time, and then executing and it works well here.

In the brand new 'The Dead and the Drunk' free expansion, it adds in a "bizarre new challenge awaits the surviving squad members. The mysterious fog released by the masked enemies is causing the dead to rise once again" that sees you face off against various undead enemies.

Check out the new campaign teaser:

Watch video on YouTube.com

Overall it did turn out to be a reasonably decent strategy game. Lots of good banter, plenty of action and at times quite challenging too with various different tactics being needed. Nice to see more games go for a different approach rather than just simple turn-based mechanics.

You can buy it on GOG.com and Steam with both stores having a 30% discount right now until December 22.

Don't Starve Together from Klei Entertainment has a huge new update out now, completely overhauling the way survivors deal with farming and crops.

Continuing to be one of the best and most unique survival games around, Don't Starve Together can be a huge amount of fun played with friends. It's as beautiful with the almost Tim Burton like gothic style as it is brutal to play through but now at least you might not actually starve with a new crop system.

They also added a slick new trailer with an animated short:

Watch video on YouTube.com

Like a lot of new features that come to DST, it has its own little progression path you need to go through. First you need to have Farm Soil ready to till but to get that you need a Garden Rigamajig built from the science machine, and after that it all needs plenty of care and attention. A really sweet addition to a great game.

Here's the key points of what's changed:

• Survivors can now plow fields and sow seeds to grow the crops of their dreams
• Each vegetable has their own unique plant with preferred growing seasons and type of nutrients
• Stay close and tend to your crops and you will be rewarded.
• Neglecting crops won't be the death of them, but you might regret it.
• Be sure to cull weeds before they become a problem
• Use the Gardeneer Hat to research plants and track your progress via the Plant Registry
• Farm like the Ancients with the Premier Gardeneer Hat and learn your plants’ every desire
• Added the Seed Pack-It to help organize all your seeds.

Klei Ent also confirmed another big update is due to arrive with the Year of the Beefalo update, which will go live after they have a holiday break so there's no set date on it.

Need some extra spool, the in-game currency to unlock some other cool stuff? Right now Klei is giving away 900 if you follow this link and login. It's valid until around January 15, 2021. With the Winter's Feast event going right now too, if you open up the game you will get a few extra items as presents too.

You can buy Don't Starve Together on Steam .