The comments are back! The comments are back! Guys! Guys! The comments are back!
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Samstag, 30. November 2024
Freitag, 29. November 2024
Black Friday is here, and so is the best Steam Deck SSD at up to 50% off
Happy Black Friday, I definitely don’t say with a gun pressed into my spine. These days, of course, Black Friday sort of just starts whenever retailers feel like it, which is why we’ve already seen the kind of Steam Deck microSD deals that I’d have normally spent this morning writing up. Instead, here’s an alternate for the more eager screwdriverists among you: up to 50% off the Crucial P310, currently our top pick of the recent breed of Steam Deck replacement SSDs.
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Donnerstag, 28. November 2024
Trombone Champ: Unflattened is out now, letting you toot your own trombone in VR
I greatly enjoyed tooting with my mouse in Trombone Champ on a flat monitor, but in retrospect it's the perfect candidate for conversion to virtual reality. It's small in scope, for one, but also VR would let you see through the eyes of the tooter and slide your trombone note up and down by holding the motion controllers up to your face.
So it is in Trombone Champ: Unflattened, a VR spin-off that's out now.
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RPS Asks: Are Steam sales still as exciting as they used to be?
It's almost the end of November, which means it is technically but not spiritually still autumn. It is spiritually winter, the season of wearing gloves and using my phone's flashlight to look for my dog's poos in the long grass. Yet it's not the Steam winter sale that started yesterday, but the Steam autumn sale.
Discounts are definitely never a bad thing, but Steam sales used to feel like big events on the PC gaming calendar. They don't anymore, to me. Friends, are Steam sales still exciting to you?
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Baldur's Gate 3 is expanding yet again with 12 new subclasses, including drunk monks, teleporting beekeepers and shadow sorcerors
Way back in June, treacherous, fickle Larian declared that Baldur's Gate 3 patch 7 would be their final handover to players of the well-good D&D RPG, with the focus then shifting internally to Larian's two currently untitled new game projects. CEO Swen Vincke did, however, caveat that while the overall level of post-release support would be "diminished", there would be a few more updates. We interpreted that to mean bug fixes and the like. Certainly, I wasn't expecting brand new subclasses for every class in the game, which is what you'll get with the just-announced Baldur's Gate 3 patch 8, together with new crossplay functionality and a full-figured photo mode.
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Mittwoch, 27. November 2024
Devolver have delayed Baby Steps, Skate Story, Stick It To The Stickman into 2025
Let's face it, nothing important happens in December. I'm scheduling 24 advent calendar posts this week and then spending the rest of the year eating boxes of Cadbury Mini Yule Logs Triple Chocolate. So it's no surprise that Devolver have announced their remaining slate of games aiming for release in 2024 are actually coming out in 2025.
The games that slipped are Baby Steps, Skate Story, and Stick It To The Stickman. Devolver released the news with typical style, via the 15th annual Devolver Delayed awards, which you can watch below.
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Exo Rally Championship's demo is out now, offering a 10-stage race across alien terrain
Announced last year, Exo Rally Championship does what the name suggests: takes the rugged, weather-battered terrain of Exo One's interplanetary journey and replaces the ponderous plot and gravitational rise-and-fall spaceship movement with a six-wheel, space buggy rally competition. Or put another way, if Exo One was Christopher Nolan's Tiny Wings, then this is Colin McRae's Interstellar.
Now there's a demo, and it's substantial with a tutorial, a 10 stage rally, and three "ever-changing Daily Stages with online Steam leaderboards."
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Should you bother with... gaming earbuds?
In hindsight, it’s surprising that it took so long for hardware manufacturers to start making "gaming" earbuds. If the likes of chairs, glasses, and chewing gum can be painted stealth-bomber black and prefixed with the G word, why not something that can actually get off its harshly angled bum and help pipe the games themselves into your head?
Then again, maybe gaming earbuds were just waiting for their moment. Obviously the Nintendo Switch is the Nintendo Switch, but the rise of handhelds like the Steam Deck and Asus ROG Ally has driven desires for more portable (yet games-friendly) noise-deliverers 'round these PC parts as well. Thus, for another edition of Should You Bother With – the RPS column where a diaphragm of testing vibrates advice directly into the cochlea of understanding – let’s have a listen of these wireless buds and find out whether they’re a worthy replacement for your current go-to headphones.
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Valve added an invisible wall to this sewer pipe in Half-Life 2 in their anniversary update - but it only annoyed speedrunners
Half-Life 2 just got a small update, mostly to fix a long-running music bug. But hiding in the patch notes is an apology of sorts, a nod to that most tenacious of bunnyhopper: the Half-Life 2 speedrunner. It seems the recent 20th anniversary update for the classic first-person shooter messed with some beginner speedrun strategies by introducing an invisible wall to a big sewer pipe. Valve have now corrected that, removing the offending blocker and restoring order to the universe. Well, almost.
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Silent Hill 2 remake's narrative designer thinks one of the advantages to horror is that it's cheaper
As anyone who’s ever glanced at some of the better entries at r/twosentencehorror will tell you, the genre thrives on restrictions. Here's a creepy good 'un: "'Please, God, don't let it look in the closet,’ I silently prayed. 'Please, God, don't let it look in the closet,' it parroted back from the next room." You can't do that with baby shoes, you anonymous hack!
Silent Hill 2 remake’s senior narrative designer Barbara Kciuk reckons this principle extends to much bigger productions. "It is a bit niche, but actually, the interesting part about horror is that it is one of the best ratios when it comes to the cost of production and the earnings," she recently told TheGamer’s Rhiannon Bevan.
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Stylish sniper puzzler Children Of The Sun just got a horde mode update and a hefty Steam discount
I just played the neon bathroom graffiti on magic mushrooms stylings of puzzle game Children Of The Sun for the first time last night, and it is very much my thing. It’s glowy! It’s violent! It’s thinky! You can be a bullet, and then you can be another bullet! Mental! (It’s technically the same bullet, but still!)
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Dienstag, 26. November 2024
In Bladesong you are both the real hero and villain of any fantasy RPG - the person who makes all the swords
Video games in general have a surplus of weapons. It's gotten to the point that if I had any freelance budget, I'd commission somebody to count them up. Just give me an approximate running total for the industry at large, so that whenever next a shiny-eyed producer regales me with the prospect of enchanted lazurite rapiers at a preview event, I can quietly ask how many enchanted lazurite rapiers we're talking about, then open my laptop and generate a scrolling image akin to those comparison pages for stars and planets - a cosmic mountain of points and pommels, with the new game's armoury forming a pixel-wide foothill in the bottom left corner. "Are there not enough enchanted lazurite rapiers," I will kindly enquire, as the producer sobs brokenly into my shoulder.
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What does it mean to recreate your old home in a video game?
Sometimes a home only becomes a home when you leave. I recently moved out from a London flat I'd rented for over a decade, for instance, and this has properly done a number on me. Being given my notice transformed the place from a transient pile of cadaverous lino and spasmodic plumbing into something mythical and unnerving – a whole chapter of my life completed and reduced to a piece of masonry in the rearview mirror, a relic I had been living in for years without quite realising.
A few video game developers have investigated emotions like these by recreating their current and prior homes as virtual environments: places of mingled memory and invention, expressive of both nostalgia and surprise. At this year's Game Developer Conference in San Francisco, I interviewed a couple of teams who are coming at this premise with very different objectives, and somehow, meeting in the middle. One of the games in question is a work of daydreaming fondness, the other of comical anger. Both find a focus in the figure of a matriarch who is kindly in one game, abusive in the other.
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Former Mass Effect director cancels his next sci-fi game as his studio closes before it is fully revealed
A studio led by former Mass Effect director Casey Hudson have shut down before being able to show the sci-fi narrative adventure they were working on. Humanoid Origin posted the announcement of the studio's closure on LinkedIn yesterday, saying that a "shortfall of funding" was responsible for the decision. They had been making a "multi-platform AAA game, focusing on character-driven narrative in an all-new science-fiction universe", according to the studio's website.
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Montag, 25. November 2024
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2’s first patch is coming next week, though my favourite parts are still the imperfections
Stalker 2: Heart Of Chornobyl has been in the wild for almost a week now, and it’s a great, if predictably somewhat shonky time, is the word on the street. Literally, that’s what the streets are saying. “It’s good! A bit shonky, though!” opined my postman this morning, enunciating each syllable by yanking the package further from my grasp. “Don’t worry!” I said. “A patch for the FPS is coming next week”. “That’s cheered me right up, that has! Thank god for games journalists!” he replied. Then the whole street started cheering and bringing me various baked goods. It was a delicious time, and here’s the notes from the delicious patch:
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Recent changes to our comments system
You may have noticed some recent changes to our commenting system. I want to explain what has been happening.
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The Maw: what's new in PC games this week?
The Maw doesn't hibernate, but it does... decelerate. As the year fades, its seismic pulse slows from Gatling-gun prestissimo to howitzer larghissimo. Its compound eyes contract or dim or vanish entirely. Its limbs lengthen, forming contrails from the Arctic to Antarctica (what, did you think those were from planes? Haha. Hahahaha.) Accordingly, news writing becomes a kind of lullaby. Softly now - which promising new PC games are out this week?
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Sonntag, 24. November 2024
What's on your bookshelf?: Deus Ex, Looking Glass Studios, and Otherside’s Warren Spector
Hello reader who is also a reader, and welcome back to Booked For The Week - our regular Sunday chat with a selection of cool industry folks about books! This week, it’s Looking Glass Studios’ legend, Deus Ex director, and Otherside’s Warren Spector - who I suspect might have realised the very secret goal of this column. Cheers Warren! Mind if we have a nose at your bookshelf?
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The best Steam Deck microSD card just got a huge Black Friday discount
If you want to bump up the storage for your Switch or Steam Deck, then Black Friday is going to be a fantastic time to do just that.
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The Sunday Papers
Sundays are for sitting in a chair, I hope. Beyond that I dare not to dream.
Folks continue to sing the praises of Arco, this year's selected overlooked gem of overlooked gems. The latest is Matt Patches over at Polygon:
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Samstag, 23. November 2024
What are we all playing this weekend?
Here in the UK, the weekend window views are getting progressively more glacial. I'm a bit glad not to have any particular reason to go outside this weekend. It's been a hell of a week wading through anomalies for me, and I'm looking forward to some relaxation. What about you? Give me a rating out of 100 for how relaxed your weekend looks to be. Decimals allowed. Let's really get specific here.
Meanwhile, here's what we'll be clicking on this weekend!
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Freitag, 22. November 2024
You'll never guess what you do in Kill The Man In The House
Kill The Man In The House is a video game title I can get behind. It tells me exactly what I need to do before I even boot up the game, which is otherwise powerfully weird-looking. The cover art is reminiscent of a children's book, if it were for adults. Or a lost episode of Ed Edd and Eddy, where a fourth older sibling (Eddie) acts on his murderous intent and engages in some slick FPSing. Either way, there's a demo out on Steam and despite being very short and limited, I am excited for its future.
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Turn Medieval II: Total War into Redwall with this Mossflower TW mod
If the surprising number of you brought scurrying out of the woodwork by the announcement of Redwall-style survival game Hawthorn is anything to go by, the medieval rodent fanatic to RPS reader pipeline is a sturdy one, despite being constantly nibbled at. Here’s some more delicious bait for you, then. Mossflower TW is a campaign mod for Medieval II: Total War expansion Kingdoms that lets ranks of mace-wielding mice, helmeted hedgehogs, and ornery otters skitter wildly all over the venerable strategy game. It’s been about since Summer, and the team have been working on patching since. It seems very playable, if the footage of people playing it is anything to go by. Here’s a video by YouTuber Tharshey so you can see it in action:
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Donnerstag, 21. November 2024
Avowed's rickety combat feels like the undoing of its lush fungal world
I have significant reservations about Avowed, Obsidian's first-person Pillars Of Eternity spin-off RPG, but those reservations are significantly offset by the fact that I can be an undersea mushroom woman called Mystic Meg. In Avowed, you are the god-touched envoy of a distant emperor, sent to an island realm known as the Living Lands to investigate a mysterious blight. "God-touched", in this case, means "fungal and a bit mermaidy". It means that you can make rainbow toadstools sprout from your eyesocket in the character creator. It means that you can accessorise your cheekbones with what look like bracket polypores, or deck your ears with staghorn coral.
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Steam tighten up rules for games with season pass DLC: "you have to commit to completing that content on time"
Valve have unveiled a new policy about season passes on Steam, which aims to ensure that developers release all the individual DLC involved on time and share adequate details about each DLC pack in advance. It specifies that developers can delay release of a season pass DLC just once, and by no longer than three months. In the event that a developer postpones DLC release by longer than three months, Valve may take such corrective actions as removing the season pass from sale or refunding players.
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Mittwoch, 20. November 2024
Valve might be moving closer to a Steam Controller 2 and new VR controllers, rumours say
Valve said that they want to make a new Steam Controller back in 2022, but such a thing might be getting closer to production, according to dataminer Brad Lynch.
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S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart Of Chornobyl review: a captivating survival shooter, even with bits falling off
We’re probably all past "And in the game" jokes by now, but it is fitting that S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart Of Chornobyl is about venturing into a shattered world and enduring the worst of its logic-defying hardships to find the treasures within. This is a bold, uncompromising survival FPS that can easily capture you for days on end – but I can’t invite you back into the Zone without hammering in a few hundred warning signs reading "DANGER: BUGS". In Ukrainian, obviously.
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There's a playable Disco Elysium 2 prototype in the wilds, according to a report on clashes between the "spiritual successors"
On 11th October 2024, three video game studios announced themselves near-simultaneously as the creators of “spiritual successors” to ZA/UM’s mournful Marxist RPG Disco Elysium. First came Longdue, a conspicuously corporate operator who are making an untitled “psychogeographic RPG”. Dark Math Games followed around lunchtime - they’re making a sexy Antarctic ski resort mystery called XXX Nightshift. Finally, there was Summer Eternal, the mouthiest and Marxiest of the lot, who have set themselves up as a workers co-operative and have yet to announce a specific project.
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Layoffs hit workers at Reflector Entertainment, makers of Unknown 9: Awakening
Workers at Reflector Entertainment, the Montreal studio that recently released third-person action adventure Unknown 9: Awakening, have been hit by layoffs, according to a number of employees who made the cuts public on social media. The studio is owned by Bandai Namco and released the game about a month ago. The exact number of people out of work isn't known, as Reflector haven't made a public statement about it. But among those affected are folks working in art, design, UI, lighting, and narrative.
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Dienstag, 19. November 2024
How Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 uses machine learning AI, and how much of your data it might need
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 launches on Steam and the Microsoft Store today. Developed once again by Asobo - otherwise celebrated for their stinking rat hordes - it builds upon the 2020 game by "[taking] advantage of the latest technologies in simulation, cloud, machine learning, graphics and gaming", in the words of the launch announcement release
We've got a review in the works, but code has landed late, so our write-up might take a while. In the shorter term, I thought you might like to know how, exactly, MFS 2024 makes use of "machine learning" technologies, taking into account the energy cost of such wacky gadgetry and the creeping relationship between increased reliance on automated tools and laying people off. More immediately, you might like to know how much of your internet package it'll devour as you play.
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Bloodshed is Vampire Survivors meets Doom and it's a surprisingly moreish bloodbath
A long while ago I wrote about Vampire Survivors-likes needing to stop overwhelming you with visual clutter. I've since played a few games of a similar ilk that don't hammer you with a chaos that's impossible to dissect with your eyeballs. One of these is Bloodshed, an old school FPS take on the VS formula that actually works pretty well and did have me thinking the treacherous phrase "just one more run".
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Metal Slug Tactics review: the crunchy arcade run 'n' gun pauses to have a tactical think
I am a very casual enjoyer of Metal Slug games. I've never actually paid for one of these side-scrolling shoot 'em ups, except for all the countless coins I happily pumped into arcade machines as a child. To this day, if I see a rare glittering cabinet running one of these crunchy shmups, I will go ham for twenty or thirty minutes, and walk away satisfied that I have seen a lot of very good pixels. These games, I am convinced, were never really designed to be completed, but to be played exactly like this, as a coin-gobbling invitation to become a bandana-wearing sisyphus, a tiny Rambo pushing a bouncy, juddering tank up a hill occupied by cartoon nazis. You die a bunch and say: "ah, that was good."
So what happens when you rearrange the molecules of this run and/or gun 'em up into an isometric turn-based strategy game? You get Metal Slug Tactics, an off-kilter nod to Into The Breach and other grid-based turn-takers, but secretly housing the aggressive notions of an unhinged pyromaniac. You still die a lot. And you still walk away feeling fairly happy about it.
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Sony is in talks to buy Dark Souls and Elden Ring parent company Kadokawa
Good morning, how about a nice big bowl of your favourite breakfast cereal: Corporate Consolidation? Sony are in talks to buy Kadokawa, the parent company of Elden Ring developer From Software. Sony is eyeing up the company as a hefty snack because they want the various manga and anime owned by Kadokawa, according to a report by Reuters. But also because they want all the tasty games owned by them too, such as the Danganronpa series, the Octopath Traveler games, and the biggest corn flake of them all, the Dark Souls series.
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Montag, 18. November 2024
Valve must address swastikas and other hate on Steam, writes US senator in a letter to Gabe Newell
A senator for the US government has urged Valve to answer complaints about the amount of racist, sexist and otherwise hateful posts and imagery shared by users on Steam. The digital store was the subject of a report by the Anti-Defamation League last week, which claimed to find millions of examples of "hateful or extremist" language and images hosted on Steam's community. These include things like Nazi symbols in profile pictures, white supremacist slogans in group names, and yet more discriminatory spew in user posts. The senator has noticed this report, and now writes directly to Gabe Newell, demanding that Valve "bring its content moderation practices in line with industry standards" or risk "intense scrutiny" from the government.
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This year's Game Awards will accept DLC, new game seasons, expansions, and presumably Kojima’s MS Paint doodles
As per a recent update to their FAQ page, The Game Awards have confirmed that DLCs, new game seasons for live service games, and other such releases are eligible for their game of the year award.
The FAQ itself - which appears to have been accessible over the weekend but now links to a ‘coming soon’ page - says the following. Thanks Neowin for quoting it in its entirety:
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The Maw: what's new in PC games this week?
Happy this week, you people! The sky is a washed eggshell blue, the air smells of circus straw, and all the fallen leaves have eyes that glitter mischievously and mouths that screech underfoot like dial-up modems. The Maw must be feeling festive. Let's see if there any new PC games we can feed it.
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Sonntag, 17. November 2024
What's on your bookshelf?: Game Maker's Toolkit and Mind Over Magnet's Mark Brown
Hello reader who is also a reader, and welcome back to Booked For The Week - our regular Sunday chat with a selection of cool industry folks about books! This week, it’s Game Maker’s Toolkit and Mind Over Magnet mechanics knower, explainer, and designer, Mark Brown! Cheers Mark! Mind if we have a nose at your bookshelf?
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The Sunday Papers
I will spend this Sunday nursing a chest infection, probably by wrapping blankets around myself and watching YouTube videos until sleep comes. Let's first round up some good links with writing and videos about videogames.
This is surely the best link this week: an hour-long video on how to beat "every possible game of Pokemon Platinum at the same time". That is, coming up with a set of game inputs that can win billions of possible permutations of the game, as determined by its RNG, when played simultaneously. It's an impressive feat, but the video itself is great too, patiently breaking down the process with motion graphics and video editing flair. Delightful.
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Samstag, 16. November 2024
Half-Life 2 is 20 years old and has been updated with Steam Workshop support and developer commentary
Half-Life 2 just turned 20 years old, and to celebrate Valve have released an update for their classic first-person shooter. In brief: they've recorded developer commentary; they've added Steam Workshop support; Episodes One and Two are now part of the package; and there are some bug fixes and new graphics options.
Grab it before the end of the weekend (November 18th at 6pm GMT) and it's also free to keep on Steam.
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What are we all playing this weekend?
It's a strange new world we find ourselves in. Previously, we'd only feared for those of you playing games with names like "The Addresses Of All Notable Public Figures in Terra Gaia VI" and "Xtreme Bomb Maker: Easily Obtainable Household Objects Edition". Alas, the automod decided that what a healthy comment system really needs is a blanket ban on the entirety of language. Typical robot. Anyway, that should be sorted now, so please welcome this most hallowed of RPS traditions back with aplomb. No. Aplomb. Christ. It's coming for us now. Here's what we're clicking on:
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Freitag, 15. November 2024
The Rally Point: Field of Glory: Kingdoms is an elaborate building game in a grand strategy jacket
Four thousand words of notes. Hoboy. Field of Glory Colon Kingdoms is definitely thought-provoking.
It was also complaint-provoking in the fairly long period where I didn't understand what it's trying to do. Reaching that point, luckily for you, means we can cut out a lot of the "confused whingeing" subsection of those notes. Though it still has its shortcomings, I've come to appreciate that I was reading Kingdoms all wrong. Although it talks big about characters, politics, and religion, they're not what it's about. It's about building.
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SteamWorld makers announce 100 layoffs, cancel projects, and say they'll publish more games by other studios - but fewer of their own
Thunderful Games, the developers and publishers that make the colourful SteamWorld series of games, have announced a hefty number of layoffs at the company, with anywhere between 80-100 people losing their jobs. It's part of a "restructuring" that'll also see an unspecified number of game projects cancelled, said the company in a press release yesterday. As if this is not dispiriting enough, they also say it's an intentional move that'll see them making fewer games of their own and instead publishing more work by other developers.
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Brilliant autobattler Mechabellum has a new unit in stealth aircraft Phantom Ray
Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in. This is a lie, of course. I haven’t been 'out' of strategy autobattler Mechabellum since I started playing around the 1.0 launch back in September. There I was, just starting to get to grips with the card-house-careful balance between each of its units when, bam, makers Game River dropped a Jenga block on top of it. It’s a stealth block, too. Didn’t even see it coming.
Update 1.1’s new unit is the Phantom Ray, which Game River describe as "a medium-sized aircraft with high HP that excels at striking enemies at close range with high-damage missiles". It’s a mid-tier flier, costing 50 to unlock and 200 to field, and for that you get three of them per unit. As for default tech, you’ve got some range and fire rate unlocks, alongside an oil drop. The headliner here is the stealth buff, which cloaks the Phantom Ray by default until it attacks. When it does, it all gets a nice 40% bonus to damage.
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Donnerstag, 14. November 2024
Fiddly parkour is the secret sauce that makes every moment of Deadlock compelling
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: running away is the best feeling in videogames. More specifically, being chased is the best feeling in videogames, a sentiment I’d happen to share with my golden retriever if you replaced the word “videogames” with “the universe”. He is a purer being, but he’ll also never know the joy of executing a rail-dismount into a dashing corner-jump escape in Deadlock, and for this he deserves our pity.
It’s easy to miss if you haven’t played for at least a few hours, but Deadlock packs one of the most engaging movement systems this side of Tribes Ascend.
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Inside Snap Tap, the new hotness keyboard feature outlawed by Valve
The gaming keyboard market is currently tripping over itself, trying to equip everything with the technology most commonly known as Snap Tap: a feature that promises hyperfast inputs of two alternating keypresses, making you an unkillable side-strafing blur in your FPS of choice. Introduced on Razer’s Huntsman V3 Pro series and quickly followed by Wooting’s (functionally distinct but effectively identical) Rappy Snappy, Snap Tap is now wearing multiple names as it takes over the world of RGB peripherals, from SteelSeries’ Rapid Tap to Corsair’s FlashTap and Keychron’s... Last Keystroke Prioritisation. Which doesn’t sound as sexy, but still.
However, Snap Tap is also drawing a level of ire that exceeds the usual baseline scepticism of hardware marketing. Because it enables a form of input automation – where you can quickly move in two directions by rapidly tapping one key, while holding down another – it’s considered by some as tantamount to cheating, allowing players to cross the line that divides unfair play from the accepted comforts that come with simply using a responsive Hall Effect keyboard or high-refresh-rate monitor. It’s even become a bannable offence in certain games, most notably in Counter-Strike 2.
Neither side is backing down; in an astonishingly worded tweet, Wooting went as far as to concede Snap Tap "should be considered cheating. But if it’s allowed, you need it." But do you?
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Classic shooters Unreal and Unreal Tournament are now free and preserved on the Internet Archive
Epic Games has given the OK for their 1998 shooter Unreal to be hosted on the Internet Archive, essentially making the classic sci-fi alien blaster free, and preserving it for the future. They've also given the same permission for Unreal Tournament to be hosted there too, making free the multiplayer muckabout that spawned speedier and speedier sequels throughout the early 2000s (not to mention the origin of one of the most memorable multiplayer FPS maps of all time, Facing Worlds).
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Blizzard just quietly released Warcraft 1 and 2 remasters, and they look like Zynga games made by a blind duck
Well, that was quick. After artwork leaked last week for what looked very much like a remaster of classic real-time strategy Warcraft II: Tides Of Darkness, Blizzard sneakily dropped both that and a remaster of Warcraft: Orcs & Humans last night. They’re bundled together with Warcraft III: Reforged - itself with a new patch - in a 'Warcraft Remastered Battle Chest', which also includes the older versions of the first two games. The chest is available on Battle.net, where it’ll set you back £34.99 / $39.99. If you’re just after the older titles, they’re £9 / $10 and £12.59 / $15 respectively.
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Mittwoch, 13. November 2024
Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake review: a world in the palm of your hand
Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake's premise is bluntly, delightfully simple. The Archfiend Baramos, as evil as he is mysterious, is up and about. He’s got ill designs on the world. Your Dad tried to stop him, and he died. He fell into a volcano. We absolutely can’t be having that.
This is, more than anything else, a game about Going On An Adventure. Well walked ground, of course, but it’s rare to see it embarked upon with such barefaced delight, or such a wholehearted commitment to going the distance. It is a very big and a very simple RPG that is as wide as an ocean and as deep as a pond; a game to curl up with and play lazily and—with some sour caveats—enjoyably, for an entire winter.
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Sultan’s Game is a dark, fascinating, and irrepressibly horny oddity
I predict I likely won’t have fully gotten to grips with the strategy of Sultan’s Game for several more hours, but since I’m considering investing that time - after a morning spent card shuffling and deciding whomst to bone and whomst to murder in its Steam demo - I’m compelled to spotlight it. It’s deeply imperfect and willfully obtuse, but also absolutely fascinating. I’ll ground you with a slightly wonky and dull allusion to Cultist Simulator, then guide you through in more or less the order I experienced it. As we progress, you may feel steadily more disorientated. It’ll be like a brewery tour I’ve somehow inherited control of by murder-boning the previous owners. Onward!
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Tequila Works, the studio behind Rime and The Sexy Brutale, has filed for insolvency
The studio behind sunny third-person adventure Rime and time loop murder mystery The Sexy Brutale has filed for insolvency, with the heads of the studio quitting their roles. Tequila Works had their funding from Tencent pulled at some point, according to Eurogamer Spain, leaving the company without an important flow of cash. Which may explain why they cancelled a game last month and laid off some of their workers. It now looks like that was just the first sign of a more serious problem which has sadly resulted in the dissolution of the studio.
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