Surrealist indie game Glitchhikers, originally published in 2014, is getting expanded and re-released later this month. Glitchhikers: The Spaces Between is described as a "reborn and reimagined" version of the original, taking players on a trip through all the liminal hits: a late night drive, a deserted airport, an empty park, and an overnight train.
Co-op divorce simulator It Takes Two and (Playstation exclusive) roguelike shooter Returnal have claimed the most nominations for the upcoming BAFTA Game Awards. Each of them was nominated in eight categories, including Best Game, where they were joined by Deathloop, Forza Horizon 5, Inscryption, and Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart.
Full disclosure: this episode of the Electronic Wireless Show podcast was initialy going to be called the best menial jobs in games special, but half way through we decided we didn't like the term, and also that it was limiting the scope of the episode, so we changed it to regular jobs. Basically we're talking about when you do normal work in games that isn't hero-slaying-monster type stuff, you know?
A really bumper number of digressions this week, though. The train really gets derailed early as we start talking about Elden Ring, and thus, naturally, what bit of Matthew a king would steal for said king's own body? (The answer is Matthew's nice soft hair). We hear more about Nate's orc/goblin dolls house too, of course, and at certain points in the podcast do manage to drag things back round to talking about the actual topic of the podcast. Plus, Nate has a Cavern Of Lies this week which is themed about, er, Nate.
The Ziggurat is an imposing presence in the lakeside hub town of Babylon’s Fall, its broad, horizon-spanning arches giving away nothing about the kind of fantastical beasts and secrets you’ll find inside. Based on the Tower Of Babel, the mythological birthplace of all the world’s languages, it’s perhaps ironic that Square Enix and PlatinumGames’ latest hack and slash started life with its own kind of miscommunication. When it was first unveiled at E3 2018, it looked like PlatinumGames were doubling down on all the good stuff they’d delivered just a year earlier with Nier: Automata, giving us another high-octane, single player action game with a dizzying array of weapons and over the top soundtrack, all wrapped up in an enticing layer of gothic high fantasy as players fight their way skyward.
A long silence then followed, release dates slipped again and again, and its single follow-up trailer during one of Sony's 2019 State Of Play broadcasts remained as inscrutable as its iconic Ziggurat. It wasn’t until E3 2021 that the game’s true nature was finally revealed. Rather than being a solo adventure, Platinum and Square declared that not only would Babylon’s Fall be a primarily online multiplayer game, but that it was also going to be a live service game in the vein of Destiny and The Division. It was surprising, to say the least, but when I put the question to the PlatinumGames and Square Enix’s joint development team, Square Enix producer Junichi Ehara tells me that this was far from a sudden change of heart on their part: “From the very start of the project, it was decided that Babylon’s Fall would include the elements of high fantasy, hack-and-slash, and live service.”
Music platform Bandcamp have announced that they are being bought by Epic Games. Most things will remain the same, they say, but they're looking to expand internationally, improve their platform, and extend their reach into vinyl and live streaming.
EA have announced that the Russian national football team and all Russian clubs will be removed from FIFA 22.
A few days before Steam Deck preorders began shipping out, I called up Valve engineer Pierre-Loup Griffais and designer Jake Rodkin for a chat about the handheld PC. At this point I’d already been testing it for a while, and as you can now tell from my Steam Deck review, was already sold on both the promise and (mostly) the execution of this plastic go-anywhere gaming machine. Now, it was time to find out more about how it came to be, what new tricks we can expect in the future, and what work is already going to on ensure compatibility with as many Steam games as possible.
