Slapstick strategy series Worms has got something planned for ya this year. So grab your bats and explosive sheep. You’ll probably need them. Team 17 have released a teaser video announcing that Worms is properly back since the first time since 2016. “Things are getting real in 2020,” they say, though things still look pretty cartoon-y to me.
As American Truck Simulator continues to expand across the USA with new state expansions, it looks like Colorado will follow the upcoming Idaho. So far, developers SCS Software have only been talking about future states after finishing one but now they’re teasing a new one before Idaho even have a release date. Does this indicate they might be speeding up the pace of releases? I’d certainly be glad if so! But even if this is just a shift in marketing plans, it’ll be nice to know more about what’s coming.
Seemingly to mark International Women’s Day yesterday, CD Projekt Red unveiled a new default look for Cyberpunk 2077‘s female protagonist option. The two Vs will be yours to pick from with reversible box art too, they also confirmed. This V has flipped her parting, pinked her hair up, gained some piercings, and lost some makeup – an easier look for rolling straight out of bed into cybernetic ultraviolence. While Cyberpunk 2077 will have character customisation options to change many aspects of V’s appearance, I know many folks like the play as the ‘canon’ version of RPG characters from trailers and the box so hey, here she is.
Legend Of Grimrock is a very special game to me. Hell, it’s a very special game, full stop. It’s splendidly well made, brilliantly designed, and absolutely captivating with a minimal number of tools. Look at the unsightly joy it inspired in me. But personally, it’s also a game that feels like a direct line to my late father. Not least because he wrote about the game for this very website.
So forgive me as I fluctuate between reasoned discourse on why this is such a great game, and sentimental waffle about how I miss my dad.
If you’ve ever made cautious forays into the online communities for Stardew Valley, you will know they are intimidating and inspiring in equal measure. Players post screenshots of their megafarms: “Autumn farm, year 6,” they’ll say, alongside a photo of vast fields of pumpkins, the space usage finely tuned to produce maximum yield for minimum effort. “Summer Year 4,” another will announce, showing a holding with actual dozens of beehives (when I don’t even have one) – and that’s just one small part of their whole farm.
Buying, planting and harvesting that amount of stuff seems an impossible mountain for me, with my small patch of green beans and potatoes, to climb. But the communities are also very quick to offer advice and help, as one might expect, so perhaps one day I will be able to do my own megafarm post. In the meantime, I am awed by both the size of one r/stardewvalley user’s farm, and the beauty of their solution to a recurring problem.
What did you get on your seventh birthday? I might be misremembering, but think five of my mates got me the same Bionicle kit after a heated afternoon at Lazer Quest. Pretty good day, honestly. This week saw Warframe celebrate its seventh anniversary. Rather than waiting for the community to gift them a load of old socks, Digital Extremes are giving all Tenno a free armour set until the end of the month.
A Warframe is just a big Bionicle anyway, right?
Screenshot Saturday Sundays! Our weekly fishing trip through an ocean of game jams, prototypes and passion projects. After noticing a particular palette in my screenshot tenure thus far, I’ve decided to veto the colour orange this week. Had to be done, I’m afraid. Instead, we’ve got snowboarding simians, time-hopping detectives and a real blast from the past.
Slowly, but surely, we’ve been drip-fed more deets on Command & Conquer Remastered – EA’s upcoming HD re-release of Tiberian Sun and Red Alert. Last year we got a brief look at C&C Remastered’s scaled up assets. They’re very nice, too, sharpening decades-old art to bring it up to a modern standard without going overboard on fancy effects. But what about Command & Conquer’s (in)famous FMV cutscenes?
Worry not, commanders. EA have brought C&C’s B-movie acting chops into high-definition, showing off a brief clip earlier this week. But scaling up decades-old footage didn’t come without tactical challenges of its own.
The red fox. Crafty ol’ Vulpes Vulpes. For city slickers like me, a bin-raking scoundrel. A chicken-chewing menace for farmers across the land. Poor things. Rev, a short free game from developers Faxdocc and Nostalgiatree puts you in the tiny red paws of hungry leash of foxes as they hunt down the day’s meal. No people, no trash, no poultry – just you and your mates and a forest full of prey.
This week, the Halo remake launched on PC out of nowhere, Riot Games revealed their new FPS as Valorant, more events were cancelled due to coronavirus concerns, and a new Amnesia game was announced. Read on for more of the week’s PC gaming goings-on in our News Digest, and do also check out the Weekly Updates Update for the week’s big patches.
Minecraft‘s return to convention floors will have to wait another year. Concerns over the new coronavirus have convinced Mojang to call it quits on this year’s Minecraft Festival – a planned three-day Florida block party for all things Minecraft this September. Rather than risk the outbreak ending later rather than sooner, organisers are sticking to the online-only format that’s served them well the last two years as they prepare to try this live show lark again next year.
This week, Black Mesa finally left early access, Wolcen fixed a load of bits, Warframe got some quality-of-life upgrades, and Rust let players make an automated honking trumpet. Read on for more of the week’s PC gaming patches in The Weekly Updates Update.
GeForce Now’s streaming catalogue is once again downsizing. Following Activision Blizzard and Bethesda Softworks’ lead, 2K Games has requested that their games be removed from Nvidia’s fancy new cloud gaming platform. Bye-bye, Bioshock and Borderlands. Seeya later, Sid Meier’s Civilisation. It’s the third time in less than a month a major publisher has pulled out of the service, leaving Nvidia’s streaming offerings thinner by the week.
Sometimes, when I’m bored, I panic over the fact we’re all basically meat tubes waiting to expire. Whether through harm or decay, our organic bodies will all fail eventually. Phoenix Point‘s new villains must’ve gotten the fear over all that because, gosh dang it, they’ve replaced their bodies with iron parts and are violently insisting everyone join them in a new cyborg future. Launching earlier this week, Phoenix Point’s Blood And Titanium DLC asks you to take on these tech zealots by giving them a taste of their own steely medicine.
It’s been just over a week since GDC announced that it would postpone its annual conference until “summer” of this year due to Coronavirus fears. I live in Los Angeles, where city officials have just declared a “health emergency,” and work at a university full of grubby-handed students. I understand the global reach of the pandemic panic. Many developers were caught off guard by GDC’s cancellation, even with the mounting number of big names pulling out of the conference. These studios and developers will be feeling the fallout of the postponement well into its summer reprise. Independent developers who operate without the security net of a big publisher, however, have been disproportionately affected.
Many relief funds have cropped up in an attempt to mitigate the sunk-costs of nonrefundable flights, hotel rooms, and ticket costs. Flights, hotels, and tickets aren’t the only costs lost, however. Exposure doesn’t pay the bills, but it sure does some good work for getting there. In an effort to help lift up some independent devs, here’s a small handful of games from those who have been affected by GDC’s cancellation.
How many of you out there actually use Steam’s News feed? Tucked away up there in the top bar, a static churn through anything and everything happening on Steam, stretching back into infinity. Surely there’s a better way to keep tabs on what’s hot – besides, of course, checking up on your favourite bespoke PC gaming website? It seems Steam agrees. The latest experiment out of Steam Labs is the Steam News Hub, a customisable feed that aims to keep you posted on the game updates and events you actually care about.
It is hard to believe spring begins in thirteen days. It’s not even really stopped snowing. But by god, I’m ready for spring. Seeing crocuses blooming has been a real treat.
What are you playing this weekend? Here’s what we’re clicking on!
Macho cops in tactical gear are out and what’s in instead? Wizards in riot gear and traffic-cop neon. Yup. Flashlights and lighning bolts are better for taking out crime syndicates than flashbangs. Tactical Breach Wizards is a small-scale strategy game about breaking into rooms full of armed and mohawked baddies and incapacitating them with strategic spell work. Suspicious Developments are about to roll out keys to their first beta test, which you can sign up for now.
We’re less one neon-splashed tech dystopia this April but it looks like another is pulling in to fill its space. Cyberpunk 2077‘s original April date got pushed back but Cloudpunk will be raising the cyberpunk flag this spring instead. This story-led adventure puts you behind the wheel as new delivery driver Rania learning the ropes in the giant, vertical city of Nivalis. As a driver for the “semi-legal” delivery company Cloudpunk, Rania will meet all sorts of local future people. Ion Lands have released a new trailer today with a launch date side dish.
Long in the works Black Mesa—the fan-made Half-Life remake—is out. For real. It’s been in development longer than some folks who might play it today have been alive. Black Mesa 1.0 is now live and officially a graduate from Steam Early Access. From the sounds of it, Crowbar Collective’s 15-year project is coming out Cum Laude.
There’s a short list of things that I really must know about every game—or so I thought. Popular Twitter account “CanYouPetTheDog” cleverly identified one. Apparently we all really wanted to know if we could pet digital dogs in games that have friendly fluffs. In one of those moves that makes you go “why didn’t I think of that?” the creator has now spun off a second account that lets you know if there’s a secret to be found behind a waterfall. Seriously, how did I not think of this?
It’s been 28 years since 1992’s Dune II, and like many people out there, I’d long ago stopped seriously hoping for another videogame to do justice to Frank Herbert’s legendary science fiction series. So it’s with surprise and delight, then, that I can tell you the best Dune game in three decades is here… and it’s a procedurally generated sitcom, played through a colony management game. Because while RimWorld: Royalty, the first DLC for Ludeon Studios’ space settlement hit, isn’t jaw-dropping in terms of the raw bulk of features it adds to the game, what it does for the game’s atmosphere – for me at least – is properly magic.
Eververse, the premiere Destiny 2 fashion house, last night revealed its spring collection of street wear for Season Of The Worthy. Reactions from fashionistas have been loud and charged. I adore this collection, welcoming the option for some more casual duds, even if the Warlock outfit in the middle is so ludicrously, wonderfully, decadently uncasual (a look I think works for the class). The big shock is the outfits for the agile, tricksy, gunslinging Hunter and the beefy, punchy, hammerhurling Titan. You thought it was the Hunter on the left, right? Naw mate, that’s a Titan. The lad with the big plated arms is the Hunter. It’s catwalk chaos.
After nearly a decade of development, it looks like Mount & Blade 2: Bannerlord might be finally upon us. This prequel to the much-beloved, much-modded open-world RPG Mount & Blade looks to expand greatly upon almost every aspect of the original. Below we’ve outlined everything you need to know about the game, from Bannerlord release date details to gameplay previews, combat details, multiplayer and modding tools, and much more.
Folks still like freebies ’round these parts, right? Hope so, because there’s a pretty kickin’ lineup of games to snatch on the Epic Games Store over the next week. Offworld Trading Company and Gonner are both free right now. That’s one capitalism strategy simulator and one procedurally generated platformer for your library. Both are free until March 12th, at which point Epic roll out three more free games: A Short Hike, Mutazione, and Anodyne 2: Return To Dust.
Another day, another scarily-intelligent animal in a four-legged mech with an uncomfortably deep AI voice translating its thoughts. That’s right, I’m obviously talking about Wrecking Ball Mekko, the final character revealed for Ninja Theory’s upcoming team-based brawler, Bleeding Edge.
I know this game is constantly compared to Overwatch, but come on, they’ve literally put in a character that sounds like a water Hammond. While both heroes seem to play pretty differently, they are both mammals in balls and therefore must have a comparison done. I don’t make the rules.
At long last, the sun has risen from its wintery slumber and it’s finally starting to feel a bit like spring. This pleases your deal herald, as it means there’s a fresh crop of PC gaming deals blossoming across the internet that will soon bear delicious fruit before all the big games come out. In fact, many have bloomed and flowered already, such as the fresh, sweet scent of Humble’s huge Paradox and RPG sales, and Fanatical’s tantalising 2K offers, where you’ll find Borderlands 3 for 53% off plus many more. So grab a basket and get deals picking, because this fresh bouquet of all the best PC gaming deals of the week won’t last forever.
EGX Rezzed, the game show run by our corporate siblings (with our help!), is now mere weeks away and today they confirmed the lineup of Rezzed Sessions. All sorts of games industry people will take the stage in London on March 26-28 to discuss topics including level design, game music, game fashion, getting jobs, and Jason Statham, with the odd podcast or two thrown in too. Our own Alice Bee, Nate, and Imogen will all be joining some sessions, and Nate’s even managed to summon his old mate, Ghoastus. Read on for more details and the full schedule of 2020’s Rezzed Sessions.
After a stretch of teasing and ARG puzzling, Soma developers Frictional Games today announced their next game, Amnesia: Rebirth. This autumn they’ll return to the first-person horror series that made their name with a new protagonist, a new setting, and new awfulness. Have a peek in the announcement trailer below.
The 127-cell honeycomb below is a fancy form of wordsearch in which every cell is used, and words can curl and zigzag but never overlap. Each hive foxer has a theme (some previous ones: sheep, mazes, earthquakes, and The 39 Steps). Identifying this theme is a vital part of the defoxing process. Today’s puzzle is made up of 22 answers, two of which are acronyms. (more…)
You don’t need to be Sherlock Holmes or my favourite Sherlock Holmes substitute John Thorndyke to work out which games I’ve been playing this week. A quick browse of my pocket diary will tell you all you need to know. Feb 28: Refurbished Afghan petrol station. Feb 29: Stood in chilly field waiting for Flying Scotsman. March 1: Lost the Battle of the Denmark Strait six times. March 2: Completed walk to South Pole. March 3: Perfected my watercress pesto recipe. March 4: Put atheism to one side and built rather impressive Bronze Age theocracy. March 5: Almost ran over a badger. March 6: Descaled toilet. Read on for thoughts on Loco Hunter 2020, Trattoria Tycoon, Responsible Rally Sim, and Lavatory Attendant Simulator. (more…)
If you’re in need of a new gaming monitor, then make sure you get the best price for it with our regularly updated best gaming monitor deals of the week round-up. Below, you’ll find all the best prices on today’s [cms-block]s, along with a short description of what kind of features they have and how their respective prices have changed since the week before. After all, no one likes paying over the odds for their gaming monitor, so why pay more when you can get yourself one of the best gaming monitor deals around. Updated every Friday with all the best deals from the last seven days, you’ll find everything here from the best G-Sync monitor deals to the best ultrawide deals and more. Let’s go!
If your PC is constantly running out of space, it’s never been easier to get a cheap SSD. So why pay more when you can find all the best prices for today’s [cms-block]s in our regularly updated best SSD deals of the week article? Prices have remained largely stable since last week, too, making now a great time to pick up a great SSD deal on the cheap. Whether you’re after a deal on the best SATA SSDs or mega discounts on super fast NVMe SSDs and portable SSDs, you’ll find all the best SSD deals right here.
Ghost Recon Breakpoint had a difficult start to life. It was received so awfully by the community that Ubisoft wrote an open letter to address it. Now to try and fix everything, they’re overhauling loads of the game’s systems.
When you load up Breakpoint from March 24th, you’ll get the option to choose between three game modes: one to play the it as it originally was, one that gets rid of that rubbish tiered loot and gear levels, and one that lets you customise a bunch of settings to personalise your game.
Everyone loves a good space game, but sometimes it can feel like there are more space games to play than there are stars in the sky. Fortunately, we’re here to help with our list of all the best space games you can play on PC. Whether you’re a budding space cruiser captain, a wannabe space conqueror or an intrepid space-faring explorer, there’s a space game here for you.
We don’t get enough simultaneous turn-based games.
Frozen Cortex takes teams of somehow sleek-yet-chunky robots and makes them compete in a wisely stripped down derivative of Americaball. It’s not as cruel as it may sound, and its amusing, gently satirical near future setting wisely keeps out of the way of the tactical sport fun.
If you’re looking to buy a new graphics card, the good news is that prices are relatively stable right now, which means there are lots of great graphics card deals going on to help you get one on the cheap. To help you bag the best graphics card deal, I’ve rounded up all the best prices on today’s [cms-block]s from AMD and Nvidia below. I’ll tell you how they’ve changed since last week and whether they’re actually a good buy in the current climate. For instance, it’s a bad time to buy an RTX 2080 or an RX 5700 as prices are too close to their respective rivals to make them worth bothering with. So let me help you get the best graphics card deal on your new GPU. Whether you’re upgrading your PC or building a new PC from scratch, there’s a best graphics card deal for you below.
If it’s not baroque, don’t fix it. Little architecture joke for you there, just to kick off a dry topic with a giggle. You see, appreciating architecture is for people in beige cardigans. Folks who subscribe to magazines printed on paper so thick you can still calculate the tree’s age. You know the type I mean. Spectacled couples with non-Ikea coffee tables. Thirty-year-olds. People like you! Here are 11 examples of very satisfying architecture in PC games.
Teamfight Tactics is preparing to blast off into its next set, Galaxies, later this month. But while Riot are bringing some extraterrestrial changes to the League Of Legends auto-battler, there are some more fundamental changes to make before heading into orbit – reworking Teamfight’s in-game economy and making significant changes to its cosmetic pass.
