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  • A base of machinery parts, drones and lasers in space factory builder Final Factory.

    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.

  • The logo and key art for RimWorld: Anomaly.

    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.

  • Adam Jensen prepares to punch someone in Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

    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.

  • A Thunderjaw walks past a Tallneck in Horizon Zero Dawn.

    Steam's spring sale is live

    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?

  • A Helldiver player firing an electrical gun

    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.

  • Ready Player One protagonist Wade Watts stands in his ramshackle home, playing VR. The RPS Electronic Wireless Show logo is added in the top-right corner.

    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.

  • Adventurers looking at a castle under constructions in concept art for Gameloft's D&D game.

    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 has been delayed indefinitely.

    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.

  • A wizard casting ice magic at a giant enemy in Dragon's Dogma 2

    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.

  • A horrible monster with long limbs chases a woman in Crow Country

    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.

  • Gunfighting in a tight corridor in Ascendant Infinity.

    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.

  • A man in a metal chest plate and orange jumper stands in an alien forest in Outcast: A New Beginning

    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.

  • Lieutenant Titus poses ready for violence in Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 artwork.

    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.

  • A dwarf looks down a bottomless series of steps leading downwards in The Lord Of The Rings: Return To Moria's sandbox mode update.

    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.

  • Nice good boy helper Rolan captured by the enemy in Granblue Fantasy: Relink

    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.

  • Shooting magic lightning at an enemy in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

    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?

  • A character slashes at an enemy during a battle in action-RPG Vindictus: Defying Fate

    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.

  • Two vampires prepare to do battle, armed with a sword, daggers and fire, in V Rising's 1.0 launch trailer

    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.

  • Estinien attempts to calm things down in the trailer for Final Fantasy 14 expansion Dawntrail

    Need to catch up with FF14 before Dawntrail? Best start now: there won’t be a free way to skip its story soon

    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.

  • Garl, Zale and Valere explore a cliffside staircase in Sea of Stars' co-op multiplayer mode

    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.

  • A Helldiver shooting at a big Terminid enemy in a jungle environment, with two more Helldivers in front also shooting.

    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.

  • Isabella, a patient in Vampire Therapist, snarls and tells Sam that she does not tolerate imperfection

    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.

  • A glowing golden cube in darkness

    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.

  • A team intro screen from the 5v5 Power Shift mode in The Finals season 2.

    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.

  • Playing Putt Party in Discord.

    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.

  • A woman in a red dress looks at the player while we sit in a 1930s-style hover car in Nobody Wants To Die

    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.

  • A female player character holds up a giant crying sheep as a shield in Palworld

    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.

  • A warrior looks out at the Nexus Of Embers from the Dark Souls 3 Archthrones mod release date trailer.

    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.

  • The main character of Ereban pouncing on a robot from behind with her blade out

    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.

  • A side-by-side comparison of Pokemon's Mega Mewtwo Y and Palworld's DarkMutant

    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.