Following a serious revamp with the Test of Time update, Civ 7 devs Firaxis are ready to deploy the next raft of additions and tweaks to the strategy game. With the ability play as one society through an entire game now in place, this latest update delivers another classic Civ staple - the option to take on your mates on one PC via hotseat local multiplayer games.
We've all done it. One moment, you're playing The Elder Scrolls 3. Then, boom, you pass the thrust and everything implodes. Thankfully, the latest update to OpenMW - the open source engine reimplementation that's one of the the best ways to play Morrowind on modern hardware - includes measures to stop this thrusting from accidentally breaking the game.
As AI continues to be shoehorned into game development with more regularity, Michał Nowakowski - joint CEO of Witcher 4 developers CD Projekt - has said he "knows for a fact" games built purely with generative AI are on the way. Mercifully, he's got "doubts" about whether this method's the ideal way forward, meaning there's no need to worry at this juncture that Ciri'll soon be battling hordes of ChatGPThouls.
Sundays are for sitting by a window in your pants eating cold pasta, as a game of football meanders through its grassy paces on a screen not too far away. Light curtains drawn in an attempt to eliminate any chance for people in the street below to catch a glimpse of your boxers, time slows to a crawl. You're never not moving, but at least in this moment you're being afforded that chance to move slowly. Life never stops, but it does at least occasionally allow the odd evening in cruise control. You're snapped out of your trance by a flurry of activity on the screen. A decision has been made. One team flap around voicing their unhappiness. The referee ushers them away so the ball can be placed and the spot kick taken. The taker steps up. On the back of his shirt, instead of a name, you see a question.
Many of you young'uns might hear the term Y2K and think of a vague, all encompassing descriptor of 2000s aesthetics, but us older folk think of it as this apocalyptic event that never came to be at the turn of the new millennium. Because the world didn't end, many thought that it was just a load of hogwash. In reality, there was a genuine computer bug that could have ruined important infrastructure worldwide if it hadn't been fixed leading up to the year 2000. All this to say, here's MonCraft 199X, a Pokemon-esque survival game where Y2K really did happen.
It's been a while since there's been a new Ultima! Just about eight years, in fact, and it wasn't even called Ultima (it was Underworld Ascendant, which we didn't review back in the day). Such is the case with many series' that are over 40 years old, they just don't have quite the same steam as they used to. But then earlier this week, it appeared that EA (who have long owned the rights to the series) filed a couple of new trademarks for Ultima this week. And following this, it appears series' creator Richard "Lord British" Garriot is trying to get the copyright back.
I think despite the mess that was the launch of Cyberpunk 2077, it wouldn't be right to say that CD Projekt Red's reputation was completely tarnished. It is still a game with a lot of cultural relevancy, and nobody can shut up about The Witcher 3 to such a degree that it's even getting a brand new expansion more than 10 years after the last one came out. Even still, it doesn't sound like joint CEO Michał Nowakowski is entirely convinced that the studio has managed to complete its redemption arc.
