Latest Articles
-
Final Factory's blend of space station building and exploration will launch in April
'Factorio in space' blasts off April 9th
Final Factory has already impressed via a couple of demos. It's effectively 'Factorio in space': you construct space bases by chaining together machinery, protect by commanding ships and turrets to fight off alien invaders, then explore the galaxy to secure more resources.
It's now got an Early Access release date: April 9th.
-
RimWorld's Anomaly expansion adds scenarios inspired by The Thing and other horror classics
Fleshbeasts and free update 1.5
As if colony sim RimWorld doesn't already have enough ways for your sci-fi frontier adventurers to die, a new expansion titled Anomaly is goiong to add "all manner of monstrous, mysterious, and maddening threats". It's out in around a month, and will be paired with a free 1.5 update for the base game.
-
Epic's spring sale is underway, and Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is free to keep
That's a good deal
The Epic Games Store's spring sale is underway, from today until March 28th. That makes it twice as long as Steam's spring sale, which also started today. I'm not sure if that makes it twice as exciting, but here's what does: Deus Ex Mankind Divided is free to keep for the next week.
-
Running from March 14th until the 21st
It's hard for me to get a read on Steam sales, because my relationship and access to games is defined by my work. So I ask you, as the Steam spring sale starts: are Steam sales as big a deal as they used to be?
-
Helldivers 2 Cutting Edge warbond is out, sparking fresh debate about the Illuminate faction
All the lightning guns, laser rifles and fancy armour you can eat
Helldivers 2's Cutting Edge Premium warbond, aka DLC battle pass, is now available to buy in-game, and it is chock-full of oddball gadgetry such as lightning shotguns, burst-fire laser rifles and experimental armour. As with the Arc Thrower stratagem, the lightning shotgun fires arcs of electricity that conduct between players and enemies alike, but there's a fresh armour perk, Electrical Conduit, which reduces arc damage by 95%, allowing close-knit teams of Helldivers to roll around the battlefield frazzling themselves without much penalty.
Still, I think the real star pick here is surely the Localization Confusion booster, which extends the time between enemy spawns, allowing weirdo solo players such as myself to disentangle from a dragged-out gunfight a little more gracefully.
-
Plus, the games we weren't allowed to play as little'uns
You wouldn’t know because she hardly ever mentions it, but Alice Bee is not a Ready Player One fan. In fairness, the newly revealed Open (or Opthreen), an RPO-themed metaverse battle royale thing, does look, sound, feel, and smell horrible, so a solid chunk of this week’s Electronic Wireless Show podcast is just us despairing over it. But there’s also some honest-to-goodness games chat, as we field a question from EWS listener Pete (thanks Pete!) on the games our younger selves were parentally forbidden from playing – and how we feel about them as ostensible grownups.
-
Dungeons & Dragons survive-o-life sim coming from Disney Dreamlight Valley studio
Drizzt Dreamlight Valley
The studio behind unexpectedly decent Mickey Mouse life sim Disney Dreamlight Valley are venturing into another fantasy land where anthropomorphic animals adventure with human chums, the Forgotten Realms setting of Dungeons & Dungeons. Today Gameloft announced they're making a D&D game offering a "hybrid of survival, life simulation and action RPG". They don't have much more to share about the game, not even a name, so presumably it won't be out for some time. Whatever it might be, it's headed to PC and consoles.
-
Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic remake release left in limbo by Saber Interactive sale
"Previously announced AAA game based on a major license" needs "deep love and respect"
This week's announcement that Embracer are selling off Saber Interactive to new company Beacon Interactive has cast further doubt over the future of one of Embracer's bigger projects, the much-delayed Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic remake. While Embracer have yet to actually state this out loud, it sounds like the KOTOR remake will be a "joint project" between Saber and Embracer. It also probably won't be out in the next 12 months. Given the project's repeated disruptions and delays, I suspect many of us will settle for the game coming out at all.
-
How to be the worst wizard in Dragon's Dogma 2 - Third Impact
Our Dragon's Dogma 2 preview diary concludes with a prison break and an endless Golem brawl
Welcome to the third and final part of my Dragon's Dogma 2 hands-on diary, in which I heroically try to make headway in Capcom's outsized fantasy RPG with a party of pure magic-users. I am Dragonkin Skywalker - telekinetic Mystic Spearhand, oxcart patron and an extremely bad thief. Joining me on the adventure are three AI-controlled pawns - the diabolical fury that is Donald Duck, the levitating liability that is Galadriel, Queen of the Woods, and the class act that is celebrity stage magician David Blaine, all of whom I have given new and stupid names plucked from my vast knowledge of wizardry across different entertainment fields.
-
Tangle Tower devs' love letter to Resident Evil hits Steam in May
Play the demo for Crow Country while you wait
Crow Country and its spooky, mutant-stuffed theme park will be opening its gates on Steam on May 9th, developers SFB Games have announced. It's the first of two games from the Tangle Tower micro-studio coming to PC this year, the other one being The Mermaid's Tongue, which will be picking up the adventures of their Tangle Tower detective duo on a marginally less spooky-looking submarine later this year. Crow Country, however, is a very different kettle of fish, combining chunky, PS1-style Final Fantasy 7 character models with early Resident Evil tank controls and panicked monster shooting.
-
Ascendant Infinity’s lunkhead tone belies an intelligent team shooter
PlayFusion’s loudmouthed FPS lets you make the calls
I promise that I mean this as an actual compliment, but having played an early build of Ascendant Infinity – Cambridge-based PlayFusion’s debut FPS – the impression I keep coming back to is that it’s a lot smarter than it looks.
-
Review: Outcast: A New Beginning review: an open world dead end
Cutter down
Cast your eye over the original Outcast from 1999 today, and you'll find a world that's more abstract than alien. Hazy, almost block colour textures are stretched to breaking point over terrain that looks like it's been pulled and poked by a child sculpting in putty slime, while its cast of beige, three-fingered Talans are so rigid that they'd all be reigning champions at the local robot dance-off. Understandable, given the era in which is was made, but even so - what a difference 25 years make. Even after 2017's remake glow-up with Outcast: Second Contact, A New Beginning's version of Adelpha is a lush and verdant paradise, with treetops soaring over your head, and mountains requiring several triple or quadruple jetpack jumps to traverse. It's no Avatar: Frontiers Of Pandora, admittedly, but it leans in very much the same direction, punching your eyeballs with such bright, primary colours that you'll feel enticed to explore every inch of it.
A shame, then, that all its visual splendour amounts to is little more than an empty husk filled with open world busy work that already felt tired and done ten years ago. Its non-linear approach to storytelling remains intact, letting you tackle the quests and problems of its numerous village settlements in any order you wish, but even this has been boiled down to tedious checklists of fetch quests, escort missions and shooting up the same identikit facility one after another. Topping off this fatal combo is returning protagonist Cutter Slade, whose macho army dude dial is still set firmly to cringey wise-cracking and patronising stereotypes. A new beginning this ain't.
-
Saber Interactive splits from Embracer, taking 3D Realms, Slipgate, Metro devs and more with them
Embracer will also cease all operations in Russia
Saber Interactive have parted ways with Embracer Group, buying back the rights to both themselves and numerous other studios in a deal initially valued at $247 million. The deal includes 38 ongoing game development projects plus the rights to 3D Realms, Slipgate Ironworks, New World Interactive, Nimble Giant, Mad Head, Digic, Fractured Byte and PR agency Sandbox Strategies, as well as Metro developers 4A Games and Pinball FX maker Zen Studios via options.
-
Plus new weapons, armour, and building improvements
While we felt it wasn't an amazing game, we quite liked The Lord Of The Rings: Return To Moria's dwarven survival antics. It was a bit of cosy fun for a group of pals, and thankfully, open-ended co-op play looks to be the focus of the next big update, which adds a new sandbox mode that lets you pick rocks and sink pints free of storyline constraints. Not to mention new armour, weapons, and quality of life improvements like the ability to pause your single player sessions.
-
Anime RPG Granblue Fantasy: Relink gets its biggest update yet with free new quest
Plus fixes for progression blocks, multiplayer balancing and camera
Granblue Fantasy: Relink has received a sizeable game update, which adds a new, difficult quest, The Final Vision, some additional camera and aim sensitivity settings, and new Steam trophies. That's in addition to a brace of bug fixes, character-specific balancing tweaks for multiplayer, and assorted quality-of-life improvements, including visual and audio indicators to indicate when you've lost your buffs.
-
What's better: Highlighted interactive objects or retrievable reusable ammo?
Vote now as we continue deciding the single best thing in games
Last time, you decided that a little hand for a cursor is better than left-handed FPS options. I dearly hope that when you clicked on your vote, your Windows cursor was a little gauntlet or skeletal hand or such. Onwards! This week, I ask you about grabbing (and poking, pulling, burning, pressing, activating, and otherwise using) stuff. What's better, highlighted interactive objects or retrievable reusable ammo?
-
Set in the world of the 2010 MMO
I’m not personally familiar with Nexon’s 2010 MMO Vindictus, but its upcoming action-RPG spin-off Vindictus: Defying Fate is looking like a fairly flashy mix of Celtic mythology, dodge-and-slash swordplay and some sharp visuals. Luckily for me and you, we’ll be able to give it a go for free for the next week, as the game’s pre-alpha playtest is now live over on Steam.
-
Vampire survival game V Rising sinks its teeth into a full-blooded 1.0 release this May
Release date emerges into the light after two years in early access
After two years slumbering in the coffin of early access, vampire survival game V Rising is lifting off the lid and rising into a full 1.0 release. Having previously been announced with a somewhat vague Q2 launch window, we now know exactly when V Rising’s 1.0 release date will be: May 8th.
-
Yoshi-P wants to keep the story a ‘main focus’ of the lengthy MMO and avoid ‘diminishing its value’
Fallen behind on Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn’s story? Whether you’re still yet to finish Endwalker or are looking to pick up the MMO for the first time in anticipation of enjoying a lovely summer holiday with your fellow Scions of the Seventh Dawn, you’re going to have to work before your Warrior of Light can kick back in next expansion Dawntrail; there won’t be a free way to simply jump to the latest chapter of the story for free anytime soon.
-
Sea of Stars is adding co-op multiplayer to the dazzling Chrono Trigger-inspired RPG
One of 2023’s best single-player games looks set to become one of 2024’s top multiplayer offerings
Not content with being one of the best single-player experiences of 2023, Sea of Stars is readying the modern-classic RPG to become one of this year’s most delightful multiplayer games. Developers Sabotage Studio have revealed that three-player co-op is on the way, letting you adventure through the entire campaign with a party of pals.
-
Supporters only: The success of Helldivers 2 shouldn't come as a surprise
Live service games can be good
In some respects, Helldivers 2 did come as a bit of surprise. Not a huge amount of marketing, no betas, and review codes didn't go out until it basically launched. Before it landed on my PC, there was a small part of me that thought it was going to be a rocky ride with severe performance issues or the like. Nope! It's easily slid into one of my favourite games of the year without question, and presumably, for the hundreds of thousands of others who've also opted into preserving democracy.
But there seems to be this sentiment that Helldivers 2's roaring success has come as a shock, so much of a shock that top execs and investors are doing YouTube thumbnail faces in boardrooms with mini-nuke explosions erupting from their heads. Should its success come as that much of a surprise, though? No, probably not.
-
How Mel Brooks and Twilight inspired a vampire visual novel mixing funny with therapy
Little Bat Games' creative director talks through our feelings on Vampire Therapist
After writing about the upcoming visual novel-ish game Vampire Therapist (in which you are a vampire, acting as a therapist to other vampires) back in the middle of January, developer Cyrus Nemati reached out asking if I'd like to ask him more questions about it. This was surprising, because while I'd been broadly positive about the vibes of Vampire Therapist, I was reasonably concerned about the specifics of how it would all shake down. But it turned out that the critical perspective was something Nemati appreciated, and so we had a chat that dug down into the meat of it all. Although I was initially interested in how he'd come up with the idea of a vampire therapist, it turns out all roads lead back to Twilight's Edward Cullen.
-
Carbon Development Platform also going open source
CCP Games have shared a few more details about Project Awakening, a new game or at least, "survival experience" set in the Eve Online universe, which is getting a closed playtest from 21st May 2024. Project Awakening is a single-shard affair - that is, one in which all players inhabit the same world, rather than being split up across servers or instances. It's "built upon the principles of freedom, consequence, and mastery within a living universe", and "represents the next step in CCP Games' journey to create virtual worlds more meaningful than real life", which, you know, wind your neck in.
-
The Finals’ Season 2 is a happy hackathon that laughs in the face of physics
More outlandish gadgets make for a more exciting shooter, though the new 5v5 mode disappoints
I’ve spent many gleeful hours in The Finals (as has Graham), but I’ve always felt it could do more with the concept of its FPS gameshow deathmatches essentially taking place in hyper-realistic VR. Exploding into coins upon death notwithstanding, and to be clear, rad as hell. Happily, its Season 2 update is all about rewriting the rules of its glistening digital battlefields. I’ve played a few rounds and the new, hacking-themed gadgetry it introduces looks like just the thing to freshen The Finals up.
-
Discord aiming to make more games playable inside the client with new dev tools
Chat software hopes to develop a sort of social browser game portal
Discord is making a play to not simply be the software you use to talk while playing games with your pals, but the software you use to play them too. The ubiquitous chat client already lets you play a handful of approved games inside itself without dowloading or launching anything seperate, along with other 'Activities' like watching YouTube together, and next week it will open up to a whole lot more. Discord will let all developers make their own Activities, wanting to jam in more games and social hangout experiences and stuff. I'm broadly up for things removing faff from getting casual hangout games running with pals.
-
Check out the trailer for this cyberpunk-noir detective game with a hard-boiled private dick
Nobody Wants To Die is out some time this year
One of my favourite 'jokes'to do is parody Raymond Chandler, i.e. I shout "She had legs all the way up to her thighs!" and then laugh at myself. Chandlers's trademark "blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window" kind of zingers are very hard to do well, so it's better to say you're doing Philip Marlow badly on purpose. The trailer for Nobody Wants To Die seems like it's self-seriousness is actually self-awareness. I mean, I kind of refuse to believe that hard-boiled future crime detective James Karra saying "I'm in the business of secrets... But it's more of an addiction... And I like 'em straight... No chaser..." while sipping from a glass of amber liquor isn't indulging in some amount of winking and nudging.
-
Palworld devs want players to help test new content and find bugs
The Palworld Testing program is now open for sign-ups
Palworld developers Pocketpair have announced a new Palworld Testing program that asks players of the wildly popular monster-catching survival game to help test future updates and provide feedback on the game, ahead of new content drops being released to the general public. Players can sign-up via a Google Form now if they wish, though Pocketpair stress that "the testing branch is not intended for free play or experiencing new content early, so we hope that only those of you genuinely interested in bug hunting and testing will apply." And presumably, those genuinely interested in also not being paid for their free QA support.
-
Dark Souls 3 overhaul mod inspired by Demon Souls gets demo release date
Five new worlds to get stuck into
After almost four years in development, Dark Souls 3 mod Archthrones is set to release a demo on March 15th. If you were unaware of said mod, it's a Patron-funded expansion that puts Dark Souls 3 on an alternate storyline in a way akin to Demon Souls, with a hub area home to five gateways that'll transport you to five worlds. If there was ever a reason to return to Dark Souls 3, this is probably it.
-
Ereban: Shadow Legacy's blend of Splatoon and Assassin's Creed releases in April
Third-person stealth shenanigans ahoy
Stealth games in which you can become "one with the shadows" cover a wide range, though I guess spectrum is the more appropriate word here. You've got sober infiltration games like Thief, which metes out gradations of light and dark with the care of somebody calculating their tax expenses, and stylised affairs such as Mark Of The Ninja, in which stepping into shadow desaturates you and sort of makes your character far too fancy for enemies to notice.
There are games such as Splinter Cell, in which hiding in shadows rests on a gentleman's agreement with NPCs not to perceive the big green torches attached to Sam Fisher's head. And then you have games like Ereban: Shadow Legacy, which has just been given a release date - 10th April. In this mystical third-person stealth-platformer, your character can literally disintegrate and travel through shadows as a ripple of dark energy - a transformation that puts me in mind less of Thief than of squid-mode in Nintendo's Splatoon.
-
New Palworld mod adds three unreleased Pals, including that Pokemon Mewto rip-off
Breed your own DarkMutants, thanks to the power of dataminers
There are 137 Pals in Pocketpair's monster-catching simulator Palworld, which might sound like plenty, but the serial Palworld player is an insatiable creature, always clamouring for new beasties to capture, pet and exploit, even as the developers encourage fans to play other games while they wait for the next Palworld update. If you've already bagged all the available Pals and are hungry for more, you might be interested in Palworld mod Breed Unreleased Pals, created by ShameIHaveNoFriends, which grants access to three animals who exist in the game's files but are not, strictly speaking, available to players.