September 2023

Hello! Welcome back to the last entry in Captain's Log, a mini-series on the things we love about space - and how video games so brilliantly engage with it. You can read all of our pieces in the series in one place as they go live, here at the Captain's Log archive. Enjoy!

I didn't know what a Metroidvania game was when I played Exile in the eighties - probably because the term didn't exist yet. I also didn't appreciate how pioneering this BBC Micro game was. Realistic gravity and inertia; a procedurally-generated map; non-linear gameplay; advanced AI, and a coherent world to explore - this game had the lot, and bags of atmosphere, too. "We knew and intended to create something novel," says one-half of the creative team behind the Superior Software game, Peter Irvin. "But didn't know how much anyone else would like it. We wanted to play it ourselves, and it was always fun play-testing - a good sign." While the story of Exile ended in tragedy in 1992, it remains one of the eighties' greatest and most innovative games.

By 1988, the 8-bit market was beginning to shrink. Arcade conversions and budget games dominated, and original products were becoming rare. "It was still a reasonably strong market," says Superior Software boss Richard Hanson, "but it was starting to show some signs that it may have passed its peak." This failed to deter Irvin and his colleague, Jeremy Smith.

Read more

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 will release in late 2024 on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X.

The game - which tells "a vampire story set in modern Seattle reimagined for World of Darkness" - is now in development at celebrated indie studio The Chinese Room, of Dear Esther and Everybody's Gone to the Rapture fame.

First announced back in 2019, the project has had a tumultuous journey to date, with publisher Paradox Interactive previously ditching developer Hardsuit Labs following a number of controversies and almost cancelling the game, before settling on a - then-unannounced - new studio to take on the title instead.

Read more

Sundays are for being in awe of backpacks that pack into themselves. Before you scrunch it into a ball, let's read this week's best writing about games (and game related things).

Read more

Finally, we got to know more about the Honkai: Star Rail destination Penacony. It’s a place we were supposed to head to, before the “Windswept Wanderlust” Trailblaze Missions swept us off course. While “Obsequies Performed, A Long Road Ahead” was quite a brief interlude, it did set up things to come. Also, I honestly feel like it set an ominous tone for our future trip to Penacony.

Editor’s Note: There will be Honkai: Star Rail spoilers concerning Penacony below.

[gallery columns="1" size="full" ids="982076" link="file"]
First of all, I think it is interesting how close the name of the Honkai: Star Rail planet “Penacony” is to “penal colony.” It might be a bit on the nose. Still, it does make sense and it definitely gets across the idea of the planet’s origin without outright saying it was a prison.

Second, we only have a basic understanding of what to expect from Penacony. We were supposed to head there instead of the Xianzhou Luofu, after all. However, the Stellaron crisis there and Kafka sidetracked that. The Astral Express was sent an invitation to the former penal colony turned alleged “utopia” by a group called the Family. So we know going in that this is a planet that went from a prison to a paradise after a Stellaron burst, and that the Astral Express crew is allegedly “welcome” there.

One area where AMD is simply untouchable is in its APU business. Having dominated the console space with custom x86/Radeon processors for consoles, the firm is doing it again in the PC handheld space. Steam Deck made the impossible real by allowing triple-A titles to run on a totally viable handheld system, and while Valve is facing a number of competitors in this space now, the bottom line is that it's inevitably an AMD processor at the heart of each and every one of these systems. AyaNeo has established itself as a manufacturer of quality PC handhelds and its latest generation of devices - AyaNeo Air 1S and AyaNeo 2S - are excellent, overall.

The AyaNeo 2S is very easy to describe. It's essentially identical to the AyaNeo 2 and AyaNeo Geek we've already reviewed, with the older generation Ryzen 7 6800U swapped out for the new 7840U. We're looking at a large, high-quality handheld here with a top-tier seven-inch LCD screen, Hall Effect sticks, responsive buttons and excellent I/O - you can't really argue with three USB-C ports (two top, one bottom). The AyaNeo Air 1S is based on the same processor, but it's an altogether different device, with a 5.5-inch AMOLED screen, a tiny form factor (think of it as a thicker Switch Lite) and twin USB-Cs - one top, one bottom. The screen is simply beautiful, with phenomenal contrast.

Development of Final Fantasy 16's PC version is finally underway.

That's according to producer/director Naoki Yoshida, who also confirmed at PAX West earlier today that as well as a new free update and quality-of-life improvements - including new control schemes - Final Fantasy 16 will also receive two paid DLC instalments, including one focusing on Valisthea.

"We are aware that many of you have been asking for a PC version", Yoshida said in a televised statement. "So allow me to take this opportunity to officially announce that development on a PC version is currently underway.

Read more

Naughty Dog's Neil Druckmann has teased that he's "working on another game" but says he "can't say anything" about it because Naughty Dog's communications director "will slaughter" him.

Talking to Entertainment Weekly, Druckmann talked about how his "job is really strange" – "I'm given feedback on this theme park thing, I'm working on the TV show, and I'm working on another game, so I'm just kind of jumping around on different projects" – and, after confirming that the second season of HBO's blockbuster The Last of Us series is "outlined and ready to go as soon as the strike ends", was then asked about the highly-anticipated third The Last of Us game.

"As far as the next game at Naughty Dog, I can't say anything," he said. "My comms director over there will slaughter me."

Read more

A Starfield player has credited the sci-fi game with saving their life after they stayed up late to play it and was awake when their apartment complex caught fire.

u/Tidyckilla took to Starfield's subreddit over the weekend to report their amazing escape, saying that if they hadn't been awake "bingeing" the game when the fire broke out, the player and their wife would likely have "died to smoke inhalation".

"Starfield literally saved mine and my family’s life on 1st September," the player explained, appending a photograph of an apartment fire to his post.

Read more

Mortal Kombat 1 will be playable five days early for players who buy the fighting game's Premium Edition.

That's according to modder and reverse engineer Thethiny, who noticed that Steam has updated its Mortal Kombat 1 store listing to confirm that for those prepared to pay for the fancy edition, they'll get playable character Shang Tsung and five days early access, starting from 14th September.

Interestingly, the listing also reveals a little more about Mortal Kombat 1's microtransactions, too.

Read more

I remember back in the day standing in front of a wall in the city of Balmora in The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind mashing the same fire spell over and over to raise my Destruction skill. This idea of grinding certain gameplay elements carries over to Bethesda’s latest game with the Starfield skills rank up challenges. However, it is one of the worst parts of the experience.

How skills work in Starfield is you gain a skill point every time you level up. You can then use that skill point to learn a brand new skill or rank up an existing one you have. While the former is an instant and easy procedure, the latter is quite frustrating.

It isn’t as easy as using a skill point to raise your Security skill to rank two and be able to pick higher-level locks. No, you have to also pick a certain number of locks and complete the skill rank up challenge for it before you can level it up.

In a way, this mixes the idea of using your skills to level them up, which was prevalent in The Elder Scrolls series, but also applying skill points on top of that. This makes the system more confusing and convoluted than it needs to be. It would be fine if I needed to, for instance, take so much fall damage to increase my Wellness skill and gain more health in the game. But to make me waste an entire skill point on it on top of that? It becomes quite annoying.

Leakers believe Pokémon Scarlet and Violet's Teal Mask DLC's final lineup will include new Pokémon, a Bloodmoon Ursaulana and Sinistcha.

According to Centro Leaks, "the biggest source of Pokémon leaks, rumours, and news", the two new arrivals will join Munkidori, Okidogi, Fezandipiti, Ogerpon, Dipplin, and Poltchageist when the DLC launches on 13th September.

The Sinistcha "pretends to be tea, trying to fool people into drinking it so it can drain their life-force" – although the ruse is "generally unsuccessful" – and is thought to be from the same line as Poltchageist, as it looks like a Poltchageist, albeit with a different container.

Read more

Valve has banned 90,000 Dota 2 smurf accounts, and will wipe out their associated main accounts, too, if they continue to spawn smurfs to bypass Valve's matchmaking system.

In a candid post, Valve said that any main account found to be associated with a smurf – that is, an alternative account created by an experienced player just to farm XP and/or destroy lower-levelled players – could face "a wide range of publishments", including permanent bans.

"Today, we permanently banned 90,000 smurf accounts that have been active over the last few months," the team explained (thanks, PC Gamer). "Smurf accounts are alternate accounts used by players to avoid playing at the correct MMR, to abandon games, to cheat, to grief, or to otherwise be toxic without consequence.

Read more

Although they were catapulted into the spotlight with juggernaut games such as Dark Souls and Elden Ring, FromSoftware was first put on the map with Armored Core in 1997. The third-person shooter mecha franchise now spans multiple decades and is packed with many great titles. With the recent release of Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon in 2023, we wanted to discuss which Armored Core we each feel is the best in the series.

Armored Core 6 is my first foray into this side of FromSoftware, so it is by default the one I like best in the series. I’ve always loved the mecha genre, but few games have ever handled mech gameplay right. Fortunately, AC6 handles it so smoothly, allowing for incredible variation and tight combat. I like that tweaking my AC for a faster build truly feels different than a slower and more powerful one. -- Cody

I have to say I'm a bit biased, given Armored Core 6 is the first game in the series I've played. I've been well aware of the franchise for years and have an immense love of giant robots, especially ones with cool guns and swords. It just never dawned on me to ever pick up an Armored Core game. Now that I am playing through AC6 and slowly turning my AC into Big O, I'm really grateful I took the plunge on this one. -- Arielle

After much umming and erring which I'm sure has nothing to do with any Sony exclusivity agreements, Square Enix have confirmed that Final Fantasy 16 is, indeed, coming to PC. "We are aware that many of you have been asking for a PC version", producer Naoki Yoshida said in a statement on the platform formerly known as Twitter. "So allow me to take this opportunity to officially announce that development on a PC version is currently underway." There's no Final Fantasy 16 PC release date as yet. Yoshida hopes to be able to share more - together with some insights on the first wodge of Final Fantasy 16 DLC - "before the end of the year".

Final Fantasy 16, hmm. Wait a minute, I reviewed that on console! That's the one I got all the death threats about! Let me give you a summary.

Read more

Samsung's 870 Qvo SATA SSD is one of our favourite drives for gaming, offering a huge amount of storage for a very reasonable price. Today that goes double, as the 4TB 870 Qvo has dropped to £161 on Amazon UK, considerably less than the £300 it cost back in February. This is a great way to add more game or media storage to your system on the cheap, especially if you've already filled up your available NVMe M.2 slots.

Read more

Is a 24-inch 1080p 75Hz monitor count as a gaming monitor? If so, this is the cheapest gaming monitor I've seen for some time, with a 15% discount on Ebay producing an extremely affordable monitor with a higher-than-average 75Hz refresh rate and FreeSync compatibility. The Iiyama G-Master G2450HS is available for just £68 with code TAKE15 until 6th September.

Read more

Soulslikes are everywhere these days and everybody wants a slice of the Souls pie, though nobody yet has quite beaten FromSoftware at their own deliciously difficult game.

At this year's Gamescom I was able to play three new Soulslike games due out soon, all with their own ingredients and take on the FromSoftware formula: Lords of the Fallen, Lies of P, and Black Myth: Wukong. Naturally, I had to compare them.

Which game's challenge will give you a soggy bottom? Which will prove to raise the bun as the real Gamescom showstopper? Above all, which will most match your taste?

Read more

According to Bethesda, a lot is going to happen between now and 2330, when Starfield is set. Most obviously, if we follow the timeline setout by the developer, humans will be able to gallivant around in space and planet hop as casually as popping across The Channel for a quick visit to France. In fact, possibly even more casually than that.

But, one thing that also apparently changes between now and 2330, is that dogs seem to go extinct. Or at least, labrador retrievers certainly do.

As shared by the prolific Can You Pet The Dog? social media account, it appears that man's best friend is a thing of the past for those members of Constellation.

Read more

Super Mario Bros. Wonder includes chatty flowers which share jokes and useful hints as you pass by - though Nintendo has now confirmed you can put them on mute if you'd prefer.

However, even if you'd prefer to work the game's secrets entirely for yourself, you can't get rid of these flowers' hints completely.

Last week, fans spotted a note on Nintendo's Japanese website which stated that you could pick between different options for the flowers' voice and speech bubbles, raising the possibility you could ignore them completely.

Read more

If you found the companions in Baldur's Gate 3 to be a little too horny, well, it turns out that was due to a bug.

Relationships are a big part of the game's appeal, but there's no denying that companions come on a little too strong right from the off.

Speaking to TheGamer, game director Swen Vincke admitted that romances were bugged at the game's launch and have since been tweaked.

Read more

Starfield is still only out for early adopters, but already players are experimenting with the character creator.

As with most Bethesda games, your journey into the stars begins with creating a custom character.

Many players have had fun creating some familiar faces from TV and film... and also Starfield creator Todd Howard.

Read more

“It’s incredibly weird for anybody who knows me that I’ve become the romance guy,” David Gaider tells me. “I’m the least romantic guy. Especially when I get to the characters saying ‘I love you’ to each other…” Gaider mimes the sickliness of the scene and his own horrified response. “Apparently I did it so well on Baldur’s Gate II that James Ohlen kept handing me this stuff. And, god, I hated it so much.”

It’s weird, in fact, that Gaider wound up working on Baldur’s Gate II at all - let alone that he became synonymous with Dragon Age and romanceable companions afterwards. At 27 years old, he ran a hotel in Edmonton, Alberta - the same city where, unbeknownst to him, Bioware was busy making its name. Once it came time to make a sequel to Baldur’s Gate, Bioware cast around for local writers, and a friend recommended Gaider, who had played D&D in the ‘80s before it fell out of fashion.

Read more

Every weekend, indie devs show off current work on Twitter's #screenshotsaturday tag. And every Monday, I bring you a selection of these snaps and clips. This week, my eye has been caught by car combat, some pretty walks, a physics-defying cat, a squishy mech, and so much more. Come admire these attractive and interesting indie games!

Read more

Baldur's Gate 3 is a relentlessly horny videogame, Alice B wrote back in August, and that certainly describes the shock I felt when noted Githyanki grouch Lae'zel abruptly informed me that she was down to clown, a whole three hours in. "Ms Lae'zel, I happen to be a graduate of BioWare Sex University," I told her sternly, adjusting my robe. "If I'm going to have a torrid liaison in an RPG it'll be 60 hours from now, just before the final battle, and let's face it, I'm more likely to get scared of alienating party members and end up friendzoning everybody."

Lae'zel proved persuasive, however - "I like the way you stink," was how I think she phrased it - and one risque fade-to-black later, we were triumphantly entwined in post-coital bliss. Well, at the risk of empirically demonstrating that romance is dead, it turns out all that might have been down to a technical problem. According to Larian CEO Sven Vincke, Baldur's Gate 3 characters were accidentally encoded to have very low standards at launch. Haha, I certainly can't relate!

Read more

One of the bigger Discourse torpedoes aimed at Starfield's glittering hull over the past month has been its strict division between planetary surfaces and outer space. Space sim fanatics were dismayed to learn that you can't actually fly down to the surface of the planets you're orbiting - instead, you hit a button to initiate a loading break and a landing cutscene, which makes outer space feel more like a glorified airlock chamber than, well, outer space. This segmented approach has prompted many unflattering comparisons with No Man's Sky, in which you can manually pilot through the atmosphere.

Players and critics were similarly disappointed by the apparent inability to manually fly between planets in different orbits - instead, the game invites you to pick a destination from your star map or while using your spaceship's scanner HUD, with the journey condensed to a cutscene, again. Well, I bring news on this front. You can actually fly "to" and perhaps even "between" planets in Starfield. But there are some buts. Buts of astronomical dimensions. Onward!

Read more

We all know that playing video games makes you cooler, stronger, and more attractive, but for Reddit user Tidyckilla, it made him and his wife remain far more alive. Staying up late to binge Starfield is the reason credited for how the couple escaped a deadly fire in their apartment.

Read more...

We’ve seen a lot of different special events happen in NIKKE: Goddess of Victory. New characters appear. There was a Chainsaw Man event. Now, we can get and use 2B, A2, and Pascal from NieR: Automata in the game. To learn more about the planning and preparations for this NIKKE NieR: Automata event, we spoke with Director Yoo Hyung-seok and Head of Scenario Plot Jeung Jae Sung about the crossover.

Jenni Lada: When did planning for the NIKKE x NieR: Automata event begin?

Yoo Hyung-seok: I’d wanted to collaborate with NieR: Automata since the planning stage. In fact, I've been a long-time fan, so I would have jumped at any collaboration opportunities even before the development of NIKKE. (Laughs) I started seriously considering a crossover with NieR: Automata after we launched pre-registration in 2022. This was when I heard about a collaboration opportunity from the business team.

[caption id="attachment_981993" align="alignnone" width="1200"] Image via Level Infinite[/caption]

What kind of work goes into planning a crossover like this?

Platform: Xbox Series X/S, PC
Publisher: Curve Games
Developer: Microbird Games

Players have been making the most of Starfield's ship creator to build homages to spaceships from Star Wars, Mass Effect, Firefly, and more.

Along with the game's thorough character creator, which has already birthed the likes of Walter White from Breaking Bad and Tony Soprano, people have also been flexing their creative muscles on the ship front.

Starting with perhaps one of the most famous sci-fi properties, here we have a selection of Star Wars-inspired ships. Of course, Han Solo's Millennium Falcon has popped up several times since Starfield's early access release.

Read more

Sorry, it turns out it wasn’t that there was just something irresistible about you. Instead it seems that Baldur’s Gate 3 shipped with a bug that meant all the companions were way hornier than intended.

Read more...

Imagine a world in which someone took Ken Sugimori’s original Pokémon art and brought it to life with animation. And then, in this wonderful idyll, someone took inspiration from this fanart, and developed a 3D Pokémon game based on it. And just to be sure, this developer would have already built an engine for creating …

Read more...