Up to this point, The Legend of Khiimori is a game I've primarily known as that pretty chill-looking Mongolian mail delivery game heavy on horses. Sure it's clearly got some survival elements to it, but the main draw has always - and from what Edwin's told me based on his time with it - been in galloping across pleasant plains.
However, with Khiimori's latest update, those plains have become infected by a supernatural scourge.
Is that a blowpipe on your back or are you just happy to see me. Ah, it isn't a blowpipe, because you've used the latest in an ongoing flow of Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced updates to hide your blowpipe so it doesn't ruin your outfit. No, I don't want you to throw me some money to make up for that joke not working, now that you've actually been through the tutorial for that mechanic and aren't saving up for an overpriced ship wheel.
Microsoft, they of the recent mass layoffs and reported Israeli military links, are reportedly set to offer devs a chance to bring their Xbox 360 games to PC as part of an ongoing backwards compatibility push.
Sometimes I have to remind myself that I’m a cliché, a person first compelled to write about games because I slew Dark Souls’ Gwynn, Lord Of Cinder and sat quietly for a moment before thinking to myself, “Hit me, come on, hit me!”. No, I was not okay. But my understanding of games shifted in that tiny university room: they could be overcome, not just completed. FromSoftware’s dark fantasy lands, with their puzzle-box intricacy and dribbly residents, ushered in the "Soulslike" as other developers sought to cash in on masochists like me.
Here I am, still a masochist, still someone who adores a Souls and/or ‘like, but who stares at the offerings nowadays and thinks, "Please, someone hit me". These games have stagnated, to the point where it feels like we’re all waiting for FromSoftware to emerge from the fog and beat our asses in a way we’ve not quite seen before.
I'm not saying you've got to be making a vaguely Mass Effecty RPG starting with Ex to be considered as a successor to Larian on the Baldur's Gate series, but it certainly doesn't seem to hurt. Exodus devs Archetype Entertainment were offered such a chance according to former studio head James Ohlen, and while The Expanse: Osiris Reborn devs Owlcat might not have been yet, their co-founder has said it would be a "great honour" if they were.
Fresh off a trip to Illinois back in May, American Truck Simulator devs SCS Software have revealed another expansion they've got in the works. North Dakota's on the way as the big rig roadtrip continues to gradually make its way eastwards.
Sundays are for looking back at the week and honestly just thinking, yeesh, what are you doing, working in an industry that’s succumbed so deeply and so wilfully to moral decay. The publishers sold to executioners. The naked attempts at thought manipulation. The constant, miserable hum of distrust and paranoia produced by a technology that even bedroom modders, once the poster children of earnest DIY enthusiasm, are now using to cut corners and mislead players. God, it's awful.
Thus, in honour of my dire need to spend this weekend thinking about something else – hopefully that being enough time to reset and rediscover some of the medium’s lingering pleasures – here are some quality reads from the past week, absolutely none of which concern games.
