The Sunday Papers

Assuming I haven't gotten torn apart by wild boars, Sundays are for navigating the wooded valleys around Cadair Idris. I'm on a hiking holiday in Eryri till Tuesday 14th April, tramping up slopes and wading through lakes of heather without a care for the depressing world of 'high' technology. I am Going Primitive, living as my Celtic ancestors did, with naught but a smartphone and a Crunchyroll subscription to ward me against Nature's ravages. Still, I have a few moments to scurry under yon dripping crag, eat a squashed flapjack, and tell you about some things I've read this week.

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Crimson Desert's latest update makes sure you can always look at Kliff's generic mug and makes running much less annoying

Crimson Desert appears to be changing quicker than a musical theatre actor that has 90 seconds to put on a new outfit before their next number is up. A new update arrived in the action RPG earlier today, bringing with it nothing particularly revolutionary, but several tweaks that'll probably make you say something to the effect of "oh nice, that'll be handy."

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Comedy games are alive and well in Horse Magnifier, a game where you do just that

I am not going to drudge up the half decomposed discourse around whether games are art or not. They most certainly offer up a huge range of experiences that other mediums do not. Experiences that wrench the heart, that cause tears of joy, that get you to rethink your very existence, that cover that period in time where developers started having kids and birthed the dad game. And then there is Horse Magnifier. A game where you magnify horses. A game that I like quite a lot!

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Grand Theft Auto 6 publisher Take-Two have seemingly laid off their head of AI and several of the department's staffers

Grand Theft Auto publisher Take-Two have seemingly held some layoffs this week. As spotted by Game Developer, the company's head of AI Luke Dicken shared a post on his personal LinkedIn page where he shared that both he and an unknown number of his team have been let go.

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As House Flipper Remastered Collection's playtest gets going, the original is free to pick up for the weekend

It isn't particularly difficult to find a simulation game of some kind that allows you to carry out the most mundane of tasks these days. Now you'll have no trouble finding domestic chore life sims like Lawn Mowing Simulator or Leaf Blower Co. But once upon a time, games like House Flipper were all in there lonesome, a niche of a niche. And if you fancy seeing what the game that made games like these catch on is like in action, good news! House Flipper is free for you to keep over the rest of this weekend.

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"I was chomping at the bit to crack the code": How procedural maps became XCOM 2's biggest ambition, after Firaxis couldn't manage it in Enemy Unknown

Garth DeAngelis remembers being in the room when Firaxis chose to ditch XCOM: Enemy Unknown's procedurally generated maps. Despite being a feature of the original 1994 game, when Firaxis tried to build the tech for their reboot of the turn-based tactical classic 15 years later, it was causing major headaches.

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Marathon isn't deathmatch gone wide, it's multiplayer Alien: Isolation and every other player is a xenomorph

The human colony on Tau Ceti IV has been abandoned for half a century, as far as anyone can tell. The only exports leaving the planet are those nabbed by Runners in mechanical bodies, like fruit pickers at the end of the universe. But there are imports, too, of a sort: elements pulled in from other extraction shooters, which reveal the kind of experience Bungie wanted to make.

Namely, a stealth game.

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