Normální zobrazení

Received before yesterday

Ubisoft cut staff at Splinter Cell devs Ubisoft Toronto, as part of their push to save €200 million

Ubisoft are laying off around 40 people at Ubisoft Toronto, the studio behind the forthcoming remake of the original Splinter Cell. That’s approximately eight percent of the studio headcount. It’s all in the service of Ubisoft’s drive to cut costs after restructuring their operations around a big dollop of Tencent funding, which has elsewhere seen Ubisoft propose to lay off up to 200 people in Paris, and chop fixed costs by €200 million over the next two years.

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Star Trek: Voyager - Across the Unknown's survival RPG retelling inspires many emotions, but mostly makes me feel old

Back when Star Trek: Voyager – Across the Unknown was announced, we knocked it for offering zappy muzak in place of the TV show’s official theme. Gamexcite and Daedalic have added the theme, now, and I sort of wish they hadn’t. “Help!” I screeched to my bedroom walls, as the rousingly sorrowful opening bars wafted from the speakers like nitrous oxide. “A videogame is making me feel something! It is making me feel like 31 years have passed, and I can still remember Neelix getting drunk on water. I still remember the Doctor’s first words. I still remember blowing up the Caretaker Array rather than using it to insta-warp home.”

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Untitled John Wick Game is a gun fu Baba Yaga brawler, and a weird cousin to Untitled Goose Game until proven otherwise

A goose with your skillset must be able to honk freely, unconstricted. They must be versatile, capable, adaptable. They must be grounded, stable, constant. I believe you are ready, goose. Honk.

That isn't quite what Keanu Reeves' talkative tailor says in the reveal trailer for Space Marine 2 devs Saber's Untitled John Wick Game, but it's what I heard. The stubbled and suited hitman's latest journey into videogamedom is touted as an uber-faithful putting of Wick's cinematic martial arts brawling and gunfighting into your hands, but until Saber prove otherwise, I'm treating it as a spiritual twin to House House's Untitled Goose Game.

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Cyberpunk platformer Replaced has a demo out, and it's wonderfully atmospheric when you're not plummeting a short distance

Warren! Warren! Warren!

ARRGGHHH! WHAAAA! HUHHHH! Replaced, the long-in-development dystopian platformer from Sad Cat Studios, keeps shouting my last name at me. It might because the game's main character, a jacketed gap jumper and baddie shooter, is called Warren. It might also because I did plenty of falling and accidentally got shot by a robo-sniper in Replaced's demo, which is now live ahead of the full thing's release next month.

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Come shout down dystopia in the demo for Amanita's fancy cardboard mind control puzzler Phonopolis

Czech indie developers Amanita Design – creators of Samorost, Creaks and Machinarium, among other marvels – have released a demo for Phonopolis, their 3D cardboard adventure about a young man called Felix who is trying to save a city brainwashed by massive loudspeakers. Protected by his headphones, Felix is on a mission to stop the authoritarian Leader from issuing the Absolute Tone, which will “strip every citizen of their humanity forever”. Seems like a thing to avoid!

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Pretty platformer sequel Planet of Lana II gets a pretty good Steam demo tomorrow, ahead of its surprise March release

Planet of Lana II, Wishfully’s followup to their tremendous puzzle-platformer original, punched our news mouths with a double hit of announcements last week. First, it’s got a release date of March 5th 2026, a mere three weeks from now, and second, there’s a Steam demo coming even sooner, on February 11th. An embargo lift means I’m now at liberty to share my thoughts on said demo, and can report that it’s exactly the same as the demo given to press last year, and as such, you can already read what I said about it here and here. Still, eh? Release date, eh?

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The Dark Rites of Arkham review - pure Lovecraftian point and click fan service

Cthulhu games are a dime a dozen these days, with everything from JRPG parodies to well-meaning but flawed efforts that bear the official Call of Cthulhu license. But there aren't many point and click adventures showcasing H.P. Lovecraft's sanity-twisting mythos. Two very dated Infogrames efforts in the early 90s come to mind, but if you haven't played 1993's Shadow of the Comet and 1995's Prisoner of Ice, you're not missing much.

The Dark Rites of Arkham, by indie developer Postmodern Adventures, rectifies this with a well-rounded effort filled with odes to all of Lovecraft's best stories. It has the quality of a Call of Cthulhu tabletop campaign assembled by a well-read fan.

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Riot reportedly lay off around 80 devs on League Of Legends spin-off fighter 2XKO less than a month after launch

2XKO, Riot's League of Legends fighting spin-off, is having its development team significantly cut back not long after release. Game Developer report a Riot spokesperson as stating the publishers have put plans in motion to lay off around 80 developers on the game, about half of the global team who've been working on it, with the potential for some of the affected workers to land in new posts at Riot.

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Nier Automata future developments teased as it passes 10m worldwide sales

The message "Nier Automata will continue" was the stinger concluding today's celebratory showcase for the game, which covered the game's many cameo appearances, spin-offs, and its passing of 10m worldwide sales.

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