Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Occasionally I have these moments where I can’t stop thinking about Dishonored 2. They come in fits and spurts, when I’m playing a game or I’m ordering a takeaway or I’m reading a book. I think to myself, “this just isn’t A Crack In The Slab though, is it?”

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Sundays are for tucking yourself up in some freshly washed bed linen and feeling really good about it. Let’s get comfortable together and read the week’s best writing about videogames.

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Mech Mechanic Simulator is a PlayWay joint, and it shows. PlayWay publish games like House Flipper and Car Mechanic Simulator, and if you’ve played or seen them, you know what to expect with this upcoming, scifi variant. The same as the others – but with mechs! That is to say, the same as the others, but better. There’s a trailer below, and a demo on Steam that I’ve had a play with.

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Half-Life: Alyx

‘s gravity gloves ruined a lot of other virtual reality games for me, because being able to point and flip objects into my hands solved a lot of awkward manoeuvring problems common in other games. It’s hard, after the elegance of Half-Life’s system, to go back to bending, sidestepping, and grasping at the air to pick up items – or worse, having your hands lack any and all collision with the world around you.

Enter the modders. Specifically, enter modder FlyingParticle, who has released HIGGS VR for Skyrim VR. It’s a mod that adds gravity glove-style interaction to Skyrim, and it looks like it works beautifully.

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I’ve exhausted Spelunky 2 of everything it can give me (because I’ve no interest in pursuing its remaining secret endings). I’ve therefore turned to mods to help extend the experience. There’s not much available so far, but there is Overlunky, a mod framework that lets you teleport to any level, spawn items including explosions, and zoom the camera out way far. It’s cool to play around with, and hopefully a platform for more to come.

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I’ve been driven over the Forth Road Bridge more times than I count, sat in the back of my dad’s car as we went to visit family. I’ve peered down upon the Deep Sea World, and watched the railway bridge be painted and re-painted and painted again. It’s unreasonably exciting to me, then, to see it in Microsoft Flight Simulator above. It’s one of many UK and Ireland landmarks being added to the game, alongside five new photogrammetry cities including London, in World Update 3.

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It’s Amplitude Studios’ 10th anniversary, and they’re celebrating by making a bunch of their games free for the weekend. That includes fantasy 4X Endless Legend, space 4X Endless Space 2, and dungeon crawler Dungeon Of The Endless. All of their games are also deeply discounted on Steam.

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The start of the year is always a quiet one, with devs just getting back to work after the holiday, but stuff is beginning to happen again. That’s good. I say as if, y’know, I didn’t already have more games I want to play than I do time to play them.

What are you playing this weekend? Here’s what we’re clicking on!

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CD Projekt Red have released patch 1.1 for Cyberpunk 2077, the first of several updates and fixes that they have planned throughout 2021. Patch 1.1 is largely focused on stability, CDPR say, which they will continue to improve in the following planned patch 1.2.

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World Of Darkness ’em up Werewolf: The Apocalypse – Earthblood is just around the corner, so the developers over at Cyanide Studio have begun releasing some videos to show off a closer look at how it plays. Today’s developer diary gets into your werewolf’s rage resource but I’ve gotta say that what really caught my eye was the wolf stealth bits.

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It feels like Genshin Impact‘s 1.2 update just came out last month (because it did) but Mihoyo are already dishing out details on the next update 1.3. The new update will ring in the yearly Lantern Rite festival, a new playable character, and multiple festival activities.

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Vicarious Visions, the studio responsible for the recent Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2 and earlier Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy, is being gobbled up by Blizzard Entertainment. The studio was already owned by Activision Blizzard but, according to the publisher, the 200 person team will now become Blizzard employees and will be “fully dedicated to existing Blizzard games and initiatives”.

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I’m on holiday (‘holiday’) next week, and I’ll be unwinding in part by staring at and spinning the cute wee 3D dioramas of Tiny Lands. Released today, it’s a digital version of that classic activity sheet puzzle: spotting the differences between two near-identical scenes. With your screen split down the middle, the two versions will zoom and spin and rotate in harmony while you check patterns on fish, scrutinise crowds of people, and count rocks. It’s cheap and it’s nice, and that’s enough for me.

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Klei Entertainment, developers of indie hits Don’t Starve and Oxygen Not Included have announced today that they’ve agreed for Tencent, the media conglomerate that’s been doing quite a lot of buying, to purchase a majority stake in the company. Klei founders say that they will keep “full autonomy of creative and operations across all aspects of the studio”.

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A long, long time ago in video game years, before BioWare were known primarily as the Dragon Age and Mass Effect studio, they were working on a sequel to their action RPG Jade Empire. After multiple internal reboots from Jade Empire 2 to Jade Empire Modern, to spiritual successor Revolver, the project was eventually cancelled internally without ever being announced. BioWare art director Matt Rhodes has now pulled out some old artwork to share a look at what it could have been.

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The Asus ROG Gladius II Core is probably one of the oddest gaming mice I’ve tested in a while. Its modest DPI range of just 200-6200 puts it firmly at the lower end of the gaming mouse spectrum, but its comparatively high price of £50 / $46 suggests otherwise. Indeed, its DPI range might not be as high as other mice in this kind of price range, but the ROG Gladius Core II has all the hallmarks of a great mid-range gaming mouse. It’s comfortable, well-built, comes with a braided cable instead of a plastic one, and its unique switch socket design means you can even change the type of Omron switch it has under the main right and left click buttons.

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Hitman 3

has now been out for just a couple days, so naturally speedrunners have already managed to beat its levels in under a minute. I really like puzzle-y stealth games but I approach them as I do a game of chess: thoughtfully, slowly, and badly. That makes me the exact opposite of the folks who are already making their way through Hitman 3 levels quickly, skillfully, and mercilessly. They’re doing it in under a minute too. Jeez.

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In Nuts, you are a recent graduate who has been sent out into the woods to research squirrels. But the squirrels, needless to say, are not as they seem. Getting to the root of this forestry mystery involves putting down remote cameras during the day, and then reviewing the footage in your caravan by night, to see what the little fellows get up to after dark. It is a superb, simple premise, and with each set of scamperings you track, a little more of the game’s story is doled out to you.

Hades

does many things right, but it really excels when it comes to the characters of the underworld, and the relationships you can strike up with them. The idea that you can pursue a romance in a roguelite sounds ridiculous, but in Hades this is very much an option. If you’re interested in plumbing the depths of particular relationships, then our Hades romance guide will walk you through which characters you can attempt to start a romance with, and how to go about doing so for each one.

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When Respawn said last week that the Apex Legends’ map Kings Canyon would be “obliterated” in Season 8, I thought perhaps this meant they were going to whack a giant crater somewhere and call it a day. After seeing the new Season 8 launch trailer, I think I wildly underestimated their resolve. Kings Canyon looks like a wasteland.

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In the Dubai mission in Hitman 3, you might need to go into the server room in order to rearrange the meetings of your targets and get them alone in a room. However, a bit of the mission I got stuck on is the part where you have to acquire admin privileges in the server room. Here’s how to acquire admin privileges during the How The Mighty Fall mission.

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