A UK employment tribunal have ordered Star Citizen developer Cloud Imperium to pay around £27,748 - approximately $35,230 - in compensation for discriminating against former senior programmer Paul Ah-Thion, who was dismissed in 2022 after his requests to work from home following an office move were denied.
The tabletop equivalent of “buying books and reading them are two different hobbies” is surely the difference between buying sexy tabletop RPG manuals and actually dragging your mates on to Discord for a few hours to stumble your way through a module. It’s the dogeared Fighting Fantasy from a carboot sale kid in me, I think. Something about reading worldbuilding snippets organised into numbered tables just hits in a way a novel doesn’t. Such tantalising ephemera is the name of the game in Microprose-published CrossOver: Roll For Initiative. It’s a wave defense where you play match-3 to collect dice, then spend them on fireballs and mace swings to stop tiny bastards from marauding all over your actual character sheet and attacking your stats.
Capcom spat a little squirt of news bile on us yesterday, like a hideous zombie vomiting up demos and release dates. One of the smaller chunks was a brief comment by Resident Evil 7 director Koshi Nakanishi, who confirmed that a new Resident Evil game is in the works. That's not too much of a surprise - big franchise gonna franchise - but still, it's nice to hear. "It was really difficult to figure out what to do after [Resident Evil] 7," he said, "but I found it. And to be honest it feels substantial."
The Fear & Hunger games are pitch-black horror RPGs quite unlike anything else I’ve ever played, taking aspects of JRPG, survival horror and adventure games and distilling them into something I’d be tempted to call bleakly nihilistic if they didn’t display so much evident love for their craft. They also both start with a content warning listing “extreme violence, gore, sexual violence, and drug usage”. You’ll want to take this seriously, and just to be clear: the third item on this list does manifest in some tasteless, albeit brief, ways in the first game. It’s a frustrating blemish on what is otherwise an incredibly evocative and creative series, though you can download a mod to censor the more egregious bits. You will miss the full effect of critically severing an ogre’s massive schlong, however.
When Edwin disappeared into the hot mists of Summer Games Fest we couldn't know he would return with a crazed look in his eye, raving about "phantasmagorical mulch" and insisting: "As of this week, I am seriously excited by tower defence." That's because he played Kunitsu-Gami: Path Of The Goddess, the upcoming action strategy game about defending a maiden from colourful monsters and recruiting villagers to cleanse demonic defilement. Developer Capcom released a demo for the game yesterday, ahead of its July 19th release date. So now the rest of us can join Edwin in becoming entranced by the swirling colours of this sword-swinger.
Last week, those teases at Capcom dangled a remastered version of 2006 zombie action gem Dead Rising before the darting, entranced eyes of me specifically. The Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster, presumably named so to differentiate it from the 2016 HD Remaster, now looks to be shambling ever closer to full remake territory if the new footage Capcom shared as part of yesterday’s NEXT showcase is anything to go by. Also, it’s coming to Steam! I’ve checked with the rest of the treehouse, and this means it’s also confirmed for PC. Get in!
The developers of speedy first-person shooter Selaco have dropped a big patch for the retro blaster, adding new weapon upgrades and mutators that can change the game's difficulty in piecemeal ways, like making enemies stronger for an added challenge. There's a heap of other fixes and changes but among them lies the admission that something has been missing. "We fully understand people want a dedicated kick button for all weapons," the developers say. But wait, isn't there a slide kick in the game already?
You may or may not have seen Black Myth: Wukong impressions floating around as of late. Some claim it's not a Soulslike, or is merely Soulslike-adjacent. Some say it's a "boss rush" with a world that lets it down. Having spent 90 minutes with it myself, I'd like to add my ferocious take to the pile: you play monke = is good. But no seriously, I think no matter if it's a bit Soulsy or not, my key takeaway is one of relief. There's a lot more substance to back up the style than I thought there would be, alongside it feeling a lot more compact than the behemoth I envisioned in my head. All good signs for the complete package, which strikes me as living up to the crushing pressure of its number one Steam Wishlist spot.
Happy this week, everybody! Not going to lie, it's a dry one. Drier than a doldrum dunked in silica gel packets, dustier than Death's doorstep. There are precious few eyebrow-raising new PC games on the cards, but I have swaddled my head in wet blankets, braved the desert and returned with a small handful of dreams.
