Ghost Recon WildlandsNovember 13 will mark the 25^th anniversary of Ubisoft's Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon, but Ubisoft is getting the celebration ball rolling a little early with a major update to Ghost Recon Wildlands featuring major visual and gameplay enhancements, and an all-new mission "set in a darker, more oppressive Bolivia."

Bolivia, you may recall, is where Ghost Recon Wildlands takes place, in a fictional future where the country has been taken over by a powerful drug cartel. That leads the US to send in the Ghosts, and then it's peace through superior firepower time, baby! This didn't go over very well with the actual Bolivian government, which filed a format complaint about the whole thing with the French government.

The game itself is pretty good though, if also pretty ridiculous. I put probably a couple hundred hours into it with a pair of gamer pals, and even though we never liberated Bolivia we did have a good time, mainly because Wildlands is above all else a five-alarm chaos simulator. Yes, we're an elite squad of deadly operators, but we're also launching ourselves off of dirt bikes and over cliffs at roughly 300 MPH because we forgot which button the brake is.

Speaking of forgetting, never forget the incomparable skills of PC Gamer's own tier one strike squad:

Anyway, with the 25^th anniversary more or less upon us, Wildlands is being updated on both PC and current-gen consoles for "smoother combat, improved distance rendering, enhanced lighting and shadows, and a sharper image targeting 4K resolution."

The new standalone missions, dubbed Last Rites, see the gang hunt down La Llorona, the leader of a fanatical, violent cult called Los Pentitentes, who's hiding in a region filled with "dangerous swamps and dense forests where visibility is low and danger is lurking."

Notably, the followup to Wildlands, Ghost Recon Breakpoint, is not getting a similar facelift. It's a bit newer, although probably not enough newer to make that much of a difference, but it also came out in pretty rough shape and was quite poorly received. It's been improved dramatically since then, but maybe Ubisoft had to pick one and decided to go with the winner. Breakpoint players will get a new 25th anniversary bundle for free in September, though.

In any event, this isn't the only Ghost Recon freebie in the pipe. Wildlands and Breakpoint are both free to play for the weekend on Ubisoft Connect, and on sale for 95% off on Steam—that's $2.49 for Wildlands and $3 for Breakpoint, which are both really good deals. You can also snag the classic Ghost Recon: Future Soldier for free until August 13.

And finally, Ubisoft also rolled out the new Ghost Recon Insiders Program today, giving fans "a chance to help build the next Ghost Recon." You can sign up for that at ghostrecon.com/insider.

Solo developer YuWave makes a simple pitch with Demon Lord: Just a Block, an action-strategy roguelike about navigating a blocky world filled with enemies that only move when you do. "One developer. One computer. One game. One year," they say on Steam. Behind the game's cute, pared-down world is a classical fantasy story that makes smart use of hands-off narrative to steer players through seven chapters and three endings, and with nearly 2,000 Steam reviews averaging 96% positive, this approach has been a hit so far.

"If FromSoftware released the full Dark Souls design document, no one would be debating the lore anymore," YuWave tells me. I agree with their assessment that Demon Lord: Just a Block is a "gameplay-first experience," but in my experience that's often where you'll find some of the most interesting video game narratives – stories designed more as scaffolding, something to be prodded by players rather than carefully conveyed.

"It creates story-driven goals," YuWave says of this approach. "Just like Hades, players aren't just pushing through levels in each run, they are also progressing the game to meet more NPCs and discover more advanced storylines."

I'd call Hades an interesting point of comparison, as a heavier narrative throughline was a major point of praise for Supergiant's own critically acclaimed roguelike – that, and the way that narrative weaves the mechanical tropes of the genre into a lush interpretation of mythology. Demon Lord: Just a Block, then, wants to have a similar effect on players, but through markedly lighter exposition.

"It eliminates lengthy, tedious dialogue," YuWave says of "fragmented, anecdotal" writing. "I firmly believe players are here to have fun, not read a boring novel. Short, punchy text is the key to keeping players immersed in the gameplay without constant interruptions." As someone who loves reading and gaming, but will still instantly skip a huge text log in a game if my brain is in exploration mode, I find myself nodding along.

YuWave stuck to a rule with text for this game: no more than 10 exchanges per scene, and no more than 50 characters per line. Their thinking is that, while this limits how much detail or exposition you can fit into each moment, "it actually makes players remember the characters’ personalities much more vividly," perhaps because they're more attentive to storytelling that doesn't stall gameplay.

This approach also aids exploration, YuWave reckons, as story fragments found and collected by players may reveal a hidden path or "a whole new way to beat the game."

"The entrance to the true ending has always been there, you just lacked that narrative knowledge to activate it," they tease.

The success of Demon Lord: Just a Block has given YuWave a platform for sustainable work as a solo indie dev after a few years grinding away in the mobile games sector.

"It's way beyond my wildest expectations," they say of their Steam debut.

"Receiving players’ recognitions and appreciations, I realized the game has turned into a collaborative work between the creator and players. First and foremost, I will definitely keep releasing regular, ongoing updates for this game - both major content drops and minor updates (new biomes, weapons, mechanisms), plus quality-of-life patches. I want to work with the community to make this game the best it can be."

After earning $1 million on Steam from a game that took 4 months to make, stunned devs end up in Valve's coveted "chocolate tier."