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Dune Awakening will burst out of the early access sands in "early 2025"

Lo, a ripple in the release date sands. Stand still a moment while we study this phenomenon. Yes, yes, it is the unmistakable rumble of a large survival MMO pondering its release date. Dune: Awakening is having a think and has decided "early 2025" is a good non-specific time period to come out in early access. That could mean January or February. Or March, I guess. April? Now don't be silly, that's spring. Not April, surely. This beast seems hungry. It will eat before then. I have foreseen it. Mostly by watching the trailer that dropped at Gamescom.

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Arc Raiders, extraction shooter from The Finals' devs, is no longer free-to-play and coming 2025

Arc Raiders was announced back in 2021 as a free-to-play co-op third-person shooter, and has been delayed several times since. That's partly because Embark Studios' other in-development game, The Finals, progressed faster than planned and stole its momentum. It's also because it was re-tooled at some point as a PvPvE extraction shooter.

Now it's back again, aiming for release next year, and it's been re-tooled a little more: it's no longer free-to-play.

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Indiana Jones And The Great Circle releases December 9th, will hopefully contain gameplay by that point

Oh, and new Indiana Jones And The Great Circle trailer! Great. I’ve been looking forward to a nice, juicy chunk of extended gameplay. You know, something to really convey the flow of the game, rather than the admittedly impressive but nonetheless very fragmented snippets we’ve gotten so far. Now to sit back and…oh, wait. Hang on. It’s just actor Troy Baker telling me about all the great acting he’ll be doing. It is great, by the way. He’s doing a fantastic job. Maybe just, you know, a crumb of acknowledgement or elucidation over the whole ‘interactivity’ part?

Anyway, don’t mind me. I’m just an old fool who likes to press buttons. And, to be fair, it's not like Machinegames don't have a great track record. Anyway, here’s some good news: The game releases December 9th this year. Have a release date trailer.

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Little Nightmare studio’s Reanimal is a creepy co-op adventure inspired by Wind Waker and Silent Hill 2

Little Nightmares DNA runs strong in Tarsier Studios’ new game. So much so, in fact, that I’d assumed the trailer I watched during an online preview event last week was for a new entry in the horror cinematic-platformer series, right up until the name Reanimal appeared on the screen - shortly followed by a snippet of voiced dialogue.

It’s not just the horror setting, but the Grimm’s fairytale threat, the distorted adults-made-monsters through the trauma-tinged lens of a child’s imagination. A long-limbed man riding a bicycle in a threadbare suit chases children down an alley. A gangly, bowler-hatted pursuer scuttles down a long table like a spider. It's familiar enough territory, at least at first glance. But when Tarsier have a body of work subconsciously scarred by phantasms this vivid, recurring nightmares are just as potent.

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Herdling sees you guide some loveable beasts towards a mysterious summit

There are unexpected things in life, like when one of the recipes in my Gousto box (basically Hello Fresh) didn't come packed with a key ingredient: a single red pepper. Devastating, especially since it's only ever happened to me once. Anyway, this is a long but no less meaningful segue to a game from the Far: Changing Tides and Lone Sails devs Okomotive that's just been announced at this year's Geoffcom show. It's called Herdling and it's nothing to do with sailing across a decaying universe, but very much to do with alpine expeditions and friendly beasts. Very unexpected.

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Indiana Jones And The Great Circle is both a more "relaxed" Wolfenstein and Riddick plus Nazis

MachineGames have made a decent living as the creators of satirical alternate histories in which you messily murder Nazis using mighty double-handfuls of shotgun. There are Nazis to fight in Indiana Jones And The Great Circle - a globe-trotting, tomb-robbing adventure featuring a Lost Ark-era Harrison Ford - but as you'd expect from a Lucasfilm adaptation, there's rather less of the bloodshed.

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Peter Molyneux is back with new god sim Masters Of Albion, which looks like a stripped-down Black & White

Peter Molyneux is once again back from the beyond, and he's making a new god sim. The game in question is Masters Of Albion, which now has a page on Steam. In development at Molyneux's 2012-founded studio 22cans, it looks like a mix of Populous and Black & White with knocked-together, toylike visuals, and a loose tower-defence format whereby monsters attack your villages at night. Here's the first trailer.

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All five of you will get a free buggy when you next boot up Starfield

Fine, that was slightly mean of me. There’s clearly at least fifteen people still playing Starfield, and Bethesda are today rewarding their commitment with a free buggy named the Rev-8. Today! It actually looks pretty nifty. With it, you’ll be able to hop, jump, and skip the tedious ballache that was hoofing it across the RPG’s needlessly large planets. Here’s a looksie:

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Firaxis announce Civilization 7 release date alongside new trailer full of nukes, Wonders and period celebs

Firaxis and 2K Games have slapped a release date on Civilization 7, the latest in the obscenely venerable empire management series. It's out 11th February 2025. Find a new trailer with a quick-and-dirty montage of units, buildings and posturing historical celebs below. Don't worry, it still has hexagons.

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Path Of Exile 2 will release in early access November 15th

ARPG (not to be confused with action RPG, the comments inform me) Path Of Exile 2 will release in early access November 15th, 2024.

Grinding Gear Games have been set on a November window for a while now, but this is the first time they’ve nailed down a date, and possibly clicked on it a bunch of times to show how serious they are. Do a game related verb I can’t accurately name because I never played past that beach at the beginning of the first game, and do it in the general direction of the trailer below. Watch it. Just watch it.

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Supermassive's next Dark Pictures horror game Directive 2080 is out 2025, and looks like Alien meets The Thing

There's a new instalment of Supermassive's Dark Pictures anthology series on the way, and it's set in Outer Space, wherein you'll find the Darkest Pictures of all. Out in 2025, Directive 8020 is the story of the good ship Cassiopeia, a human colony vessel that is infiltrated by Something Icky. The Something Icky is capable of mimicking humans. So that'd be a bit like Alien and a bit like The Thing, then. Sorry, human colonists!

Directive 8020 was teased at the end of the last Dark Pictures instalment, 2022's The Devil in Me. A trailer also leaked back in November 2022. Now, we have an official announcement video.

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Dying Light: The Beast is a new standalone game from Techland

Update: Oh, I missed this. "To show appreciation for the community who patiently waited for the DLC, Techland will be offering Dying Light: The Beast at no extra cost to all owners of the Dying Light 2 Stay Human Ultimate Edition, delivering a full standalone adventure instead of just a DLC." That's nice!

This seems like an odd one. I’m only tangentially familiar with the Dying Light games, but I was under the impression that the model here was releasing a single game, then updating and expanding it for years. Whether standalone adventure Dying Light: The Beast represents an attempt to course correct after Dying Light 2’s mixed reception, then, I’m not entirely sure. But if nothing else, it does share something in common with all the other adverts at Gamescom tonight: it is a game that exists, and will presumably be playable at some point.

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Here's a full Call Of Duty: Black Ops 6 campaign level on sporadic fast-forward

Activision have just screened an abbreviated video of Call Of Duty: Black Ops 6 campaign level “Most Wanted”, in which you and a buddy infiltrate a US fundraiser to save returning character Adler from Bad Dudes. Good news, people who like Call Of Duty: this looks like Call Of Duty. It’s got a homing knife, an exploding remote-controlled car and a big chap in full face armour with an overcompensatory minigun. Catch the full video below.

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We now know that Borderlands 4 is a Borderlands game with 4 at the end, coming 2025

The trailers of Gamescom 2024 want to be here with you, explained Keighley in his opening monologue. They are not directed at you. They are with you. That's lovely. Thanks videogames. And if - as we surely must - we judge the eagerness of these adverts to spend time with us by how quickly they appear on our screens, then FPS sequel Borderlands 4 surely loves us the most.

Do we love it back? Who knows. But it does exist, and it isn’t using a subtitle. That’s got to count for something, right?

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RoadCraft is a heavy construction sim from the makers of MudRunner

Announced at this year's Geoffcom, RoadCraft is a new game courtesy of the vehicular bods behind MudRunner and SnowRunner. This means it's very much a simulation game where you're fighting terrain with tyres, except this time you aren't just driving about, but managing a fleet of machines to carry out heavy construction work. Think a mixture of logistics, cars, cranes, and paving some lovely new roads from a once dilapidated junk heap.

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You can’t fool me with your “poorly drawn” rhino barbarians, Heroes Of The Seven Islands - the classic RPG enthusiasm is palpable

As much as I’m a sucker for the grimmest and darkest of grimdark fantasy settings, the try-hardness of it all can get a bit grating at times. You could make the same argument at the opposite end of spectrum, of course. Cosy games seem locked in a perpetual arms-race to twee each other into the dirt, chopping their rival’s dog-petting hands off and taking a sparkly tinkle on their pastel corpses. But hand-drawn RPG Heroes Of The Seven Islands feels more authentic than all that. It’s bedroom antifolk by way of chill dungeon synth, by way of an antelope sorcerer named Jean-Pierre.

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Black Myth: Wukong's record-setting launch popularity soured by co-publisher request to avoid "feminist propaganda" in streams

Our Black Myth: Wukong review hails the game as "a generous Soulsy adventure hybrid that works within its limitations and delivers a beautiful challenge to be unpicked with a magical toolbox". Reviewer Edders went so far as to find the world more engaging than that of Elden Ring - proper defying-the-gods level rhetoric. Players seem to agree. The game launched last night, and has already accrued a concurrent player peak of 1.44 million - Steam's fourth highest ever, exceeded only by Counter-Strike, Palworld and PUBG. By that metric, it's the platform's most popular strictly single player game of all the time.

All that goodwill has been spoiled, however, by a Steam code handout message to streamers and other "content creators" before launch which includes some reactionary, non-binding requests - no mention of "trigger words" like "Covid-19", no talk of "politics" or "feminist propaganda", and no mention of "China's game industry policies, opinions, news, etc".

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Wasteland Waste Disposal is a cute clean 'em up set in a toxic world (not ours)

Our unlucky planet in Wasteland Waste Disposal has suffered not just one apocalypse but all of them. Turns out the "megapocalypse" was an unhealthy combination of "every worst-case apocalyptic scenario imaginable". Luckily, in this upcoming sandbox adventure, you have a giant metal fortress that walks above the pools of toxic sludge on huge spidery legs and chomps up all the trash you bring it. If you are not intrigued by that, perhaps the little janitor with a sci-fi vacuum cleaner (or the feel-good music reminiscent of Adventure Time songs) will convince you.

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Tactical Breach Wizards review: humour, heart, smarts and playfulness conjure up an instant genre classic

Tactical Breach Wizards is a tactics game for people that don’t like tactics games. Magically, it’s also a tactics game for people who love them like nothing else. It’s permissive and demanding; playful and tense. Its globe-spanning plot covers conspiracies, PMCs, and brutal theocratic dictatorships. It also features a traffic-summoning warlock named Steve wearing a hi-vis robe. It’s finding that one absolutely, perfectly ridiculous XCOM turn, every turn…and at the same time knowing it’s absolutely, perfectly fine if you don’t. In short: it’s one of the most enjoyable tactics games I’ve ever played, and the only tactics game with a pyromancer so rubbish he relies on making his enemies pass out from heatstroke.

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Final Fantasy faces no "existential risk" despite lower-than-hoped PS5 sales, says FF16 director

Please lock your Chocobos to attack position and set your Phoenix Downs to stun: Square Enix have released fresh details of Final Fantasy 16's PC port, which has now been dated for launch on 17th September. They've also shared a little about why it's taken so long to arrive - the (generally decent) action-RPG hit PS5 over a year ago, back when I was still some filthy console-playing freelancer.

According to director Hiroshi Takai, it was "impossible" to create the PC and PS5 versions at the same time, even if Square Enix hadn't been restrained by a timed exclusivity clause. He also thinks that the Final Fantasy series faces no "existential risk" right now, despite lower-than-hoped returns from both Final Fantasy 16 and, going by Square Enix's latest financial reports, the more recent and currently PS5-only Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth.

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After three hours of Bloober's Silent Hill 2, it's unclear who is remaking who

Silent Hill has a messy, up-is-down relationship with time and history, so let's go about this hands-on with the Silent Hill 2 Remake in a messy, up-is-down way. Developed well over two decades ago, the original Silent Hill 2 is the magnum opus of Polish horror stalwarts Bloober Team. Running on then-innovative "Unreal Engine 5" technology created by Jazz Jackrabbit publishers Epic MegaGames, it's a wonderful abyss of a game that remains perfectly playable today, given a certain amount of tolerance for the quirks of the era.

It begins with your character, James Sunderland, descending from the road towards the eponymous Midwestern nowhere-town. Like many games of the period, Silent Hill 2 uses a third-person, over-the-shoulder manual camera, which allows you to glance fearfully up at the monstrous pine trees that fringe the path - each rising from a bulging tide of fog that menaces with the suggestion of approaching figures. There is moisture everywhere, gushing from drain pipes and dribbling down concrete barriers. As you amble into the murk, deathly chords and groaning, unmechanical motifs reverberate from somewhere deep underground.

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A lovely, not-at-all culty seaside day out awaits in “Story generator” sim Marry a Deep One: Innsmouth Simulator

I’ve likely mentioned hitting Lovecraft fatigue so often that it’s now evolved into a second phase of Lovecraft-fatigue fatigue. This is not the same as Lovecraft refreshment, no matter how much I might want to return to the days before old one plushies and Cthulhu children’s books terrorised the internet en masse. There’s not quite enough information about “story generator” sim Marry a Deep One: Innsmouth Simulator for me to confidently say it’ll cut through my exhaustion with all things tentacular and horrifically be-gilled. But it is beguiling, isn’t it? There’s all sorts of little widgets and details shown off that remind me of everything from Sid Meier’s Pirates to classic adventure games, and maybe even a little Rimworld? It’s a heady soup, although one I’d recommend against quaffing, given where the water comes from.

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Dead Cells gets its final update after 8 years of development, bringing it to a cursed close

One of the best roguelikes on PC is getting a farewell of sorts this week. Twitchy slashfest Dead Cells received its final major update, introducing new enemies, fresh weapons, and a few mutations. Unfortunately, all this new stuff is very cursed. In other words, it all toys with the game's "curse" status effect, a hex that causes you to be killed if you take even a single hit. You'll probably die a few times as a result of this update, which in some ways is a fitting finalé for this fast-paced jar smasher of a game. You can see the new features in the trailer below.

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Activision shut down Modern Warfare multiplayer mod H2M to stop it "interfering" with Black Ops 6 sales, says mod maker

Last week, the Xitter account for H2M - a mod aiming to recreate the heyday of classic Modern Warfare 2 multiplayer inside Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered - announced that they had received a cease and desist from Activision Blizzard, and would shut down the project. The 2022 version of Modern Warfare 2 lacked the original’s multiplayer, and H2M was so highly-anticipated that Steam sales of the 2016 FPS balooned in the lead-up to the mod’s planned release date. It didn't hurt that Activision had it on sale, of course, but the timing lined up so well that some fans speculated the discount was a deliberate bait-and-switch on the publisher’s part to profit from excitement over a mod they were already planning to shut down.

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The Maw: what's new in PC games this week?

New week, same old terror of that cyclopean glutton known as the Maw emerging from its cosmic bolthole and swallowing the entirety of Devon. As ever, we have a way of thwarting the Maw's advance, and it's... pasta sauce? Graham, why is there pasta sauce in the Trello? Have Ziff Davis subfranchised us to Dolmio? Oh, I'm sorry! That's just my shopping list. What I meant to say was: new video games! Video games (PC games, specifically) are the only thing that can preoccupy the Maw, the only thing newsworthy enough to distract it from the tempting clifftop maisonettes of Torquay. Let's see what the week has in store for us, eh.

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Why didn't Silent Hill 2 Remake studio Bloober start by remaking Silent Hill 1? The devs explain

When Bloober and Konami announced that they were remaking Silent Hill 2 as part of a comprehensive series reboot, it made immediate if slightly deflating sense to me. Silent Hill 2 is the more feted of the Hills - if I were a calculating franchise custodian tasked with 'bringing back' one of the acclaimed original trilogy, that's probably the instalment I and my spreadsheets would fix upon. I mean, it's the game with Pyramid Head in it - the nearest thing Silent Hill has to a mascot, and it's not like there's an issue of cutting out plot material: each game in the Silent Hill series is, on some level, a distinct story with a distinct protagonist.

Still, the decision to 'skip' the first game in the series, whose world, narrative themes, music and art direction set the parameters for all the rest, made my brain itch a bit, and when I ran into Bloober's creative director Mateusz Lenart and lead producer Maciej Głomb at a Konami event, I had to ask about it.

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What's on your bookshelf?: Nightingale, Absolver, and Total War: Warhammer writer Dan Griliopoulos

Hello reader who is also a reader, and welcome back to Booked For The Week - our regular Sunday chat with a selection of cool industry folks about books! You know books, right? They’re like RPS articles, but slightly better for piling under a flock mat to make little hills for your plastic spacemen. Fitting, then, that this week it’s plastic spaceman enthusiast, writer on Absolver, Nightingale, Gladius, and Total War: Warhammer 3, and Ten Things Video Games Can Teach Us author, Dan Griliopoulos! Cheers Dan! Mind if we have a nose at your bookshelf?

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The Sunday Papers

Sundays are for cat. I’m currently in the process of acquiring a gorgeous white and ginger kitten for the local shelter. I have seen four seconds of footage and I’m already smitten, kitten. Before I spend the weekend getting very excited about big stretches, let’s read this week’s best writing about games (and game related things!)

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Trombone Champ: Unflattened brings the tooting simulator to virtual reality this autumn

I've got a real soft spot for Trombone Champ, a rhythm game about tooting along to music that works perfectly with the mouse. I'm also a huge fan of Beat Saber, a rhythm game in which you slice at blocks that whizz towards you in VR.

You can see where this is going. Trombone Champ: Unflattened transports that 2022 tooting into 2024 virtual reality.

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Minecraft's multiplayer Realms servers have been down since its last patch over three days ago

Minecraft's Realms servers have been down for most of the past four days. Mojang's official account for reporting service status updates noted that "intermittent failures or slowdowns" began on August 13th, and despite similarly intermittent reports of uptime in the days since, the servers remain inaccessible to most players today.

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What are we all playing this weekend?

Good job, everyone! The cat talk in the comments has never been stronger. I miss my cats back in England very much. Though I did visit a cat cafe recently, and I got to boop some sphinx kittens on the nose. Life pretty much peaked then, so I'm in a bit of a slump right now. So do me a favour and sound off even more than usual about what your fur babies have been up to lately! And also, if you feel like it, let us know what you're playing this weekend too. Here's what we're clicking on!

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Troubled fairytale sim Nightingale is getting a Realms Rebuilt update that trades procgen for "handcrafted" story worlds

Baroque wilderness-builder Nightingale has not been doing brilliantly since Ed Thorn described the launch early access version as "a numbers grind disguised as a gaslamp survival game". We had moderately high hopes for it before the early access release - I personally enjoy the fairytale setting, with its pop-up Pucks and magic umbrellas, but I also think I've raised enough hovels on procedurally generated maps for one lifetime. Still, I'd quite like it to come good, if only so I can justify op-eds about Lewis Carroll, and I'm somewhat encouraged by what I've heard of the game's forthcoming Realms Rebuilt update.

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From Baldur's Gate to Rogue Trader, the latest RPG-themed Humble Bundle is a horrifying assault on your time

There you are, rambling through the woods of Interactive Entertainment with an empty pack and a spring in your step. Here I am, lying in wait behind a tree. Wham! Bam! You reel back in consternation as I bounce into the path and clobber you with a sack containing no less than eight venerable RPGs, from Baldur's Gate to Warhammer 40,000: Rogue's Trader - well over a thousand hours worth of dungeons, dragons, dicerolls, dwarven shopkeepers and many other things I refuse to spend time alliterating, all of which will (currently) set you back just £32.07.

Were you planning to spend this weekend playing some cute two-hour artgame sideshow, without any levelling at all? Shut up, you DOLT. You will play what the nice journalist tells you to play! Best lay in extra caffeine tablets, because it's going to take you till Monday just to get through the character creators alone.

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Black Myth: Wukong review: a refreshing adventure after Elden Ring's knotty DLC

Black Myth: Wukong is an action RPG that leans a bit into the Souls camp and a bit into the adventure camp. And either way, it's a spectacular journey that works for mostly everyone: those after challenging fights against Chinese mythological creatures, and those after the same thing, but with a little less challenge than your typical Soulslikes. What separates Black Myth from the crowd, though, is its slick presentation and a sense of generosity. You're to witness the most lavish, cinematic worlds and its creatures. And you're to enjoy battering everything with your staff as a highly athletic monkey with copious spells at his furry follicles and fingertips. It's been a while since I've played anything quite as impressive as this.

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Let’s beat some usefulness out that Black Myth: Wukong benchmark tool

Unlike Ed, I wasn’t deemed important or youthfully handsome enough to get Black Myth: Wukong review code, leaving my only hopes of conducting some hardwarey performance investigation with the recently released benchmarking tool. The one that, by the admission of developers Game Science themselves, "may not fully represent the actual gaming experience and final performance at the time of the game's release". Monkey nuts.

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Hunt Showdown's 1896 relaunch is live and facing player derision over the new UI, bugs and performance

Crytek's sweaty and superlative survival boss-rush shooter Hunt: Showdown has been relaunched as Hunt: Showdown 1896, introducing a comprehensive technological update alongside a chronological leap forward to a new map in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. As is tradition for big 2.0-style updates, some players absolutely loathe it, with recent Steam user reviews dragging the consensus underwater.

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The next Total War: Warhammer 3 update will let your dwarves play tall by delving greedily and deep

Any gags I could make about an update that lets Total War: Warhammer 3’s dawi play tall are far too obvious for the discerning comedic palette that brought you such bangers as that time I just wrote “(penis)” a bunch so the Overkill’s Walking Dead page wouldn’t quote me out of context, so let’s just dive right in to the details. The strategy game’s 5.2 update is on the horizon, and tagging along with it are the first of the “extra bits” the team teased in June. I’m very excited about them. They sit somewhere between the usual patch fare of stat tweaks and errata, and the weightier faction facelifts that come alongside paid DLC. They’re also focused right where Immortal Empires needs them the most: depth, rather than width. In the dawi’s case, quite literally.

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Mellow mountain biker Lonely Mountains: Downhill is getting a wintry sequel about skiing

The mountain biking of Lonely Mountains: Downhill was sometimes a relaxing ride down gentle slopes, and at other times a hairy hurtle down declivitous cliffs. Alongside the likes of the Descenders and Riders Republic, it offered a more laid-back game, open to furious time trialling but always remembering to let you stop and appreciate the view. Both the stakes and the poly count were low. Happy news then, that it is getting a snowy sequel. In Lonely Mountains: Snow Riders you'll be swapping your bike for a pair of skis, and you'll be able to barrel down the mountainside with friends in co-op.

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Activision are finally cutting down Call Of Duty's horrendous install sizes for Black Ops 6's release

For years, our PC storage has wobbled and buckled beneath the tyranny of gigantic Call Of Duty installs. Like 13th century peasants straining to convey huge, teetering loads of freshly quarried LMGs, our SSDs cry out for justice. Perhaps scenting imminent rebellion and a mass audience desertion to low-poly shooters with more civilised file sizes, Activision have relented. Future installations of the much-padded FPS will be "smaller and more customised", though in a last cruel stroke of villainy, they want you to download a large update to prepare the ground.

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Inzoi begins its fight for The Sims' crown with a time-limited character creator trial on August 20th

Life sim contender Inzoi is hoping to knock The Sims from its perch when it launches (supposedly) later this year. There will soon be an opportunity to judge whether that feat is likely. Krafton have announced that they're releasing a time-limited trial of Inzoi's character creator next week on August 20th.

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Railroad Corporation 2 will begin laying track in front of its moving Early Access train on September 9th

I am forever looking for a game to replace Transport Tycoon (or OpenTTD) in my affections. I know there are several railway management sims kicking around Steam, but I haven't found the one that does it for me yet. Could it be Railroad Corporation 2? It's a train tycoon game in which you lay tracks through the early 20th century, and it's launching in Early Access on September 9th.

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Let's Build A Dungeon is a management game about running a dev studio and designing your own subscription MMO

The management game progression chart is supposed to go: zoo, then theme park, then hospital, then school. Apparently no one told Springloaded Software, who are following up their 2021 tycoon 'em up Let's Build A Zoo with a game about building an MMO.

Let's Build A Dungeon marries the business aspects of Game Dev Tycoon with a more hands-on approach to constructing your company's game, and there's a first trailer below.

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Stellaris turns Twister with new Cosmic Storms you can bend to your will

Space 4X strategy game Stellaris launched in 2016, but Paradox can't stop adding to the universe. Last time I checked in, it was school trips to other dimensions. Now, it's Cosmic Storms. Due for release alongside the Stellaris 3.13 Vela update on September 10th, these are a paid "mechanical expansion" (priced at a rather chunky £11, $13 or €13, and available as part of the current season pass) that builds upon the game's existing Space Storms, "providing a deeper experience with strategically meaningful gameplay and beautiful upgraded visuals". Wash that down with new civics, precursor narratives, anomalies, archaeology sites, techs, edicts, a new Ascension perk, and new galactic community resolutions.

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Defect is a very loud cyberpunk "immersive shooter" from ex-Call Of Duty, Doom and Naughty Dog devs

If you relished the splashier gunfights of Cyberpunk 2077, like the sound of Doom meets Blade Runner, or wish you could jam your nose right into the neon trenches of Ruiner, you will likely enjoy the announcement trailer for Defect. It's a new "cyberpunk, squad-based, Immersive Objective Shooter" from emptyvessel, a team of erstwhile id Software, Call Of Duty and Naughty Dog folks.

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Cosy building game Tiny Glade finally has a release date, plus ducks

Tiny Glade is a relaxing, wholly escapist building sim where you can kick back and summon villages, cottages and castles whilst listening to whimsical tunes without the worry of combat or busywork. This cosy game has received a lot of attention, becoming the fourth most-played demo during Steam Next Fest and earning a place within our own list of favourite demos. It now has a release date - 23rd September 2024.

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Space Marine 2’s co-op suggests it is in fact jetpacks that make the dream work

In the grim heatwave of the midsummer, everyone you know would love to come hunch over a table and roll dice for six hours, actually, but they’ve got that thing on. You remember that thing, right? Plus, no-one’s got a big enough table. Or the new errata. Also, Trevor’s been banging on about lady Custodes for five months straight and nobody wants to be around him right now. Thank the Omni-trevor, then, for the three-player co-op of Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2. “Warhammer with the boys?” said Horace as he stretchily dished out preview keys from an entirely different postcode. James, Edwin and Nic were initially all booked-up for the week, but Horace repeated himself, making it absolutely clear that it wasn’t a question.

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In retro gorefest The Lacerator there are as many solutions as you have limbs to lose

Earlier this week there was some minor Discourse about the removal of the Erotica photography tag from the Dead Rising remaster. Some readers characterised this as a familiar species of cultural hypocrisy regarding video games - emphasising violence is A-OK, but for the love of god, don't mention sex. Good news, those people: Dread XP's latest horror signing The Lacerator has both. It casts you as hirsute 1980s porn star Max - surname not given in press release, but presumably something like Jackin' or Girth - who has been abducted by a large scary individual called the Lacerator.

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Homeworld 3's latest free update and paid DLC probably won't fix its negative Steam reception

I was all set to plunge into Blackbird and Gearbox's Homeworld 3 this spring when I received a slightly underwhelmed intergalactic transmission from Nic, praising the game's atmosphere and story while ruminating over fussy controls and a want of tactical depth. Like a herd of frigates scenting a pride of destroyers lurking behind a nearby asteroid, I rerouted hastily and took up a holding position approximately one astronomical unit from the Buy button, hoping that the developers might iron out a few of the wrinkles.

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Shapez 2 early access review: splendid abstract factory-building with room for a few more surprises

Over 2000 hours spent in various factory games makes me a bit of a purist, I suppose. In theory, I should then be the ideal reviewer to enjoy Shapez 2. But I'm also the ideal reviewer to tear it apart over the most minor hiccups and defects. I'm the Anton Ego of factory games. I don't like food, I love it. If I don't love it, I don't swallow.

Ah, you needn't worry. This is by far the most fun I've had reviewing a game, and Shapez 2 has, in my mind at least, turned the holy trinity of factory games (Factorio, Satisfactory, Dyson Sphere Program) into a holy quartet. Its pared back, everything-is-free-forever approach is quite liberating, and I've never had so much fun placing conveyor belts in my life. But 40 hours into my save file, I've often found myself yearning for a bit more creativity in the challenges, a few more curveballs sent in my direction.

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I'll serve my Blood Bar Tycoon customers when I'm through dumping exsanguinated bodies down the sewer

It’s an oddly Halloweeny summer week for games, this one. Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s October 31st release date leaked earlier, Steam have put together a Summer Fright Night bundle featuring RPS fave Hauntii, and I’ve got a strange urge to gorge on Haribo and mini Double Deckers until blood comes out of my eyeballs. What a perfect time, then, to dive into the alpha demo for vampire management game Blood Bar Tycoon, especially since Two Point seem to be resting on their laurels a bit too comfortably for my liking.

The idea here is you build a swanky bar serving claret cosmopolitans, ichor-ish coffees and uh, viscera vampiros to your undead clientele. But (with the sorta exception of the crimson-sapped Dracaena cinnabari) blood doesn’t grow on trees, so you’ll also be moonlighting as a human-nabber. You’ll research a slew of “whacky contraptions” to extract their blood, which I greatly enjoy, because “zany exsanguination” is a real winner of a feature. You can’t frivolously phlebotomise with impunity, however - you’ll also want to be on the lookout for vampire hunters aka the fun police.

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Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 delays its medieval RPG hustling until early next year

Put your mortar and pestle down, my herb-smooshing friend. The peasant-quelling RPG antics of Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 won't be releasing this year after all, say developers Warhorse in a video message to fans. "We aimed for the end of the year, and almost made it," said PR man Tobi Stolz-Zwilling. "Almost is not good enough though, so unfortunately we slipped to 2025." Never mind, it's easy to slip in the medieval era. There was mud everywhere.

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Oops... the release date for Dragon Age: The Veilguard leaks a few hours early

The release date for Dragon Age: The Veilguard has been revealed in a last-minute leak thanks to a naughty video advertisement. Electronic Arts had planned to share the game's debut-day in about... *checks watchless wrist* ... 7 hours, as part of a special release date trailer. But the internet will ever internet, and thanks to some slip-up or other, we have the knowledge just a smidge early. Will I tell you what the actual release date is? Sure. I guess so.

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Steam’s latest update to user reviews doesn’t find your “jokes, memes, ascii art and other content” as funny as you do

Steam’s seeing a good few sweeping changes of late. They’ve recently added a ‘Trending Free’ tab to separate the no money down and no, money down playables. And, as of September, they’re cracking down on links to other websites in store pages. Now, horror of horrors, they’re coming for your ascii gigachads and “nobody is going to read this review so I’ll just say I’m gay” bangers. The changes are part of their ‘New Helpfulness System’, outlined here.

The new system, which will be enabled by default but can be toggled off, aims to “help potential players make informed decisions about the games they are considering purchasing by understanding the attributes of the game that other players like or don't like.” Ah, so a sort of ‘review’, if you will. I like it!

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Two Point Museum announced with trailer full of breakable dinosaurs and reheated cavemen

The Bullfroggy connected universe that is Two Point County continues to expand with the announcement of Two Point Museum, another irreverent management sim from developers Two Point Studios. This one’s about museums, would you believe, with exhibition themes including the world of prehistory. Find a trailer propped below this paragraph like a freshly brushed-down Tugowaurus skeleton.

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The 11 best racing games on PC

Vroom vroom. That is the sound of 11 rivals revving their engines as they blink the sweat out of their eyes and exhale years of self-doubt from their lungs. Today is their day. We have lined up these racing games on a starting grid and are interested to see how things shake out. Will the realism-obsessed driving sims take the lead with their sublime physics engines? Might the futuristic combat racers simply destroy the opposition with explosive rockets? Or perhaps a nippy arcade crowd-pleaser will soar to the finish line, propelled by the sound of roaring cheers. It's all to play for here at our incredibly messed-up grand prix with a worrying lack of rules or regulation. Start your engines, everyone, these are the 11 best racing games on PC. 3! 2! 1! ...

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Reptilian Rising is an enjoyably naff toy-based tactics game featuring Spartacus, St George and Einstein

The next advance in video game graphics technology is not ray-tracing or tray-racing or any variation thereof - it's janky stop motion and rubbish plastic dolls, and it actually began about 30 years ago, when I watched the Adam and Joe show for the first time. If you never watched the Adam and Joe show, they used to do home movie recreations of famous films like Titanic and Saving Private Ryan using stuffed animals and action figures. I found these "Toymovies" hysterical as a kid - I suspect they are less so now. Probably, they are full of jokes we might tentatively class as "of their time". The point is, Reptilian Rising is sort of Toymovie: The Game.

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The Crimson Diamond review: an enthralling retro-inspired EGA game with modern mystery style

The Crimson Diamond is a proper old-school style puzzle adventure. It's 2D pixel art, with a limited colour palette as in EGA games, and you control it with a text parser, like King's Quest or one of them other Sierra adventures old men like Graham remember. It's important to mention this up front because it's very possible that, despite The Crimson Diamond's tale of betrayal, murder, and mineral rights in 1914 Canada, the text parser element will be a Rubicon you instantly can't be arsed to cross. A not unreasonable stance - though I think the text parser in The Crimson Diamond is fantastic. Such beef that I have with this adventure game is down to the specificity required to solve some of the puzzles.

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KIBORG: Arena is a free slice of Arkham-style combat starring a John Protagonist-ass punchy cyborg

KIBORG: Arena feels like a throwback in several ways that I quite enjoy. It’s a free prologue to the upcoming cyberpunk puncher KIBORG. The titular arena is a large room in which you, a large man, bash a large amount of enemies. You have to punch a gong between waves to trigger the next, and this struck me as a nice pre-emptive nudge that every problem you face in Kiborg can be solved by rapidly moving your fist towards offending objects, which turned out not to be too far off the mark.

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Outer Worlds 2 is looking "incredible", says Obsidian boss, but they did consider "throwing the whole team on Avowed"

Satirical space RPG sequel The Outer Worlds 2 was announced back in 2021. Since then, we've heard nary a peep about it, with developers Obsidian focusing on Pillars Of Eternity successor Avowed and their ace survival game Grounded, which left early access in September 2022. According to Obsidian's studio head Feargus Urquhart, the project is rubbing along nicely. But it was not ever thus: during the opening years of the Covid pandemic, there was apparently "talk of 'do we stop Outer Worlds 2 and just throw the whole team on Avowed'."

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Valve are still taking SteamOS beyond the Steam Deck, though dual booting is a ways off

Valve have made no secret of their plans to make SteamOS – the Linux-based operating system that powers the Steam Deck – available to other games-playing devices, including rival handhelds. After a recent beta update mentioned adding support for the Asus ROG Ally’s inputs, The Verge confirmed with Valve that SteamOS support for non-Steam Deck portables is still very much in the works. The Deck’s long-promised dual booting capability, on the other hand, sounds further down the to-do list.

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Arrowhead emerge with a bullet-pointed peace offering to pacify mutinous Helldivers 2 players

It’s been looking grim for Super Earth recently. I mean, not really. Multiplayer shooty Helldivers 2 is still sitting around 35,000 concurrent players, which is perfectly respectable, if only around 10% of its peak back in April. Still, a clutch of disgruntled ‘divers have recently found a novel way to protest an increasingly unpopular series of nerfs: laying down their guns and letting the bots take the damn planet.

“If Super Earth wanted to remain safe, they would stop nerfing our guns," reads one comment on the subreddit, in response to a post titled “Let the bots advance. Let the Super Earth burn.” It seems to have picked up some steam inside the actual game, too. As of earlier this week, there’s only around a thousand players actively trying to stop the bots advancing perilously close to the home planet, via Gamesradar.

Whether this is all massively overblown for the sake of a dramatic yarn or not, Arrowhead themselves have taken note of player concerns over nerfs. Yesterday, game director Mikael Eriksson unveiled a plan for the next 60 days, directly addressing player feedback over the controversial ‘Escalation of Freedom’ update.

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Steam now has a Trending Free tab for demos, full free games and free-to-play

Finding and sharing Free Stuff is one of the time-honoured duties of the video game journalist or SEO-monger. Back when I was OXM's online editor, "free Xbox games" was one of our golden Google pillars, the other two being "Minecraft Xbox 360 update" and "Skyrim something something". Well, uncle Valve has just rudely torpedoed that ancient investigative initiative by adding a Trending Free tab to the Steam frontpage, encompassing prologues, demos, free-to-play games and that most treasured of jewels, a full free game with no monetisation elements, such as Grimhook.

Do not cry for us pitiful electronic scribblers, crowded on our melting internet icebergs. Play free games instead! Thanks to that new tab, I've just discovered a demo for neato wide-format tower defender Frontline Crisis. Hah, that'll keep the awareness of steady livelihood erosion at bay.

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The Dead Rising remaster no longer gives you points for "Erotica" creepshots because it's not "required" or "appropriate"

Aside from being a game where you run around a shopping mall murdering the living dead, the original Dead Rising from 2006 is a clownish satire of sleazy tabloid photojournalism. It expresses this by way of its scoring system, where you earn "Prestige points" for snapping pictures that fit one of five categories: "Brutal" scenes of characters being slain; moments of "Horror", such as the spectacle of an approaching horde; comical "Outtakes", like characters caught in bizarre poses; moments of "Drama", such as people reacting to discoveries; and "Erotic" photos of women alive or undead, which range from snaps of exposed underwear to close-ups of cleavage.

The Erotica tag has, however, been chopped from the Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster, in what Capcom gingerly suggest isn't "a response to a changing cultural climate", but expressive of the view that earning points from such photos is not "an appropriate reward for survival and not a skill required of a journalist trying to stay alive".

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Even with some annoyances, game streaming can feel like a Steam Deck cheat code

The Steam Deck’s competitors, whether they’re the old guard Ayaneo family, the luxe Asus ROG Ally X, or the shapeshifting Lenovo Legion Go, usually share the same attack line: they can play more of your games. The Deck’s compatibility issues aren’t nearly as issue-some as they were at launch, but between its Linux-based SteamOS and its relatively mild processing power, but it is true that beefier Windows handhelds will more likely cater to your entire cross-launcher library.

Unless, that is, you get something else to run them for you. Streaming games on the Steam Deck has emerged as a nifty workaround for the portable PC’s lingering compatibility woes, making even officially unsupported games playable. Usually with much better performance, too, as the actual rendering work is done remotely – what you see on the Deck’s screen is basically a video feed of that remote device’s display output, with your control input beamed the other way via a low-latency connection. And because you’re not using SteamOS or the internal hardware to actually run the game, it’s not bound by their limits.

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Arcade shooter Nova Drift is a Petri dish in which to spawn the daftest, deadliest spaceship

I'm no shoot 'em up nutter - or "shmutter", as I understand they prefer to be called - but some of the first games I remember playing are shmups. Games like Maelstrom, Ambrosia's Macintosh clone of Asteroids, and the proto-shmup Crystal Quest from Patrick Buckland, who would go on to make Carmageddon. Little did I know that the humble premise of a small 2D spacecraft shooting baddies on a wrap-around screen would reach the glittering heights of Nova Drift. Had you shown me this game back in 1995, I dare say I'd have shmupped myself.

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Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster’s survivors are still idiots, but at least they can die horribly in style now

The survivors in the upcoming Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster - itself an update of the 2016 HD version of the 2006 zombie open-mall action game - are still idiots. I’m starting to regret giving Burt a gun, honestly. Every time he bumps into a magazine rack he starts screaming like someone’s eating his face, and the little circle above his name turns red to indicate he’s in danger. That’s a mannequin, Burt. They can’t hurt you. They’re actually known for not being able to move.

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The Curious Expedition studio’s next game Mother Machine lets you co-op as emotional support chaos gremlins created by a lonely supercomputer

As long-time readers will know, I'm a piteous mark for weird little game guys. I’m currently trying to puzzle out what the titular Mother Machine in The Curious Expedition studio Maschinen-Mensch’s upcoming co-op platformer refers to. But, if it’s a reference to forming a parental bond with what the game has saw-me-comingishly named “chaos gremlins”, I'm way ahead of you.

Ah, the press release speaketh! Probably should have read some more before I began exclaiming “Chaos Gremlins!” over and over. Have an announcement trailer.

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Alien: Romulus has turned Alien: Isolation's savegame mechanic into a way of spoiling its own scares

Among the many, Gigery beauties of 2014's Alien: Isolation is that you save using an in-game, wall-mounted Emergency Phone - a maddeningly analog process of slotting a keycard into the machine and waiting for three beeps. Doing this requires you to stand upright in full view, with your back turned upon an entire space station's worth of shiny domed technology and guttural industrial noises. Delightful!

Amongst the players harrowed and compelled by this fixture is Fede Álvarez, director of the 2013 Evil Dead remake, 2016's Don't Breathe and, most recently Alien: Romulus - the seventh and avowedly "back to basics" Alien movie. Isolation is the Alien experience that convinced Álvarez the Alien could still be scary, after decades of milking the creature's dugs for spin-off movies and making it share a screen with the Predator, the Pepsi Max to Alien's Dom Pérignon 1921. In possibly self-defeating homage to Creative Assembly's work, he's filled the movie with Emergency Telephones, turning them into a straightforward-sounding form of foreshadowing.

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Abiotic Factor's biggest update yet adds new sectors to explore, plus jetpacks, jeeps and laser katanas

Everyone loved Half-Life yet no one in 1998 was brave enough to say: "Okay, but what if this was an early access crafting survival game voiced by a bunch of New Zealanders?" Those 90s cowards. Abiotic Factor is the courageous game that has been correcting this historic oversight. It's fun, and the fun just got funnerer. The "Crush Depth" update, released yesterday, adds a heap of new areas to the game's messed-up scientific facility, including a dangerous Security Sector and a vast reservoir zone called the Hydroplant. On top of that there are new weapons, tools, workbenches, drivable vehicles, fishing rods, and quite a bit more. It's all shown off in the trailer below.

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Black Myth Wukong's benchmarking tool lets you test your rig's capacity for monkeying around

Are you a prospective buyer of Black Myth Wukong and would like to see if your PC qualifies for uninterrupted monkeying around? Wowee, would you look at that! There's a BMW (no, not the German multinational manufacturer of vehicles) benchmarking tool out now that lets you preview how the game would run on your hardware.

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Thousands are playing Valve's unrevealed shooter Deadlock, a blend of Team Fortress 2 and Dota with Bioshocky skyrails

Valve's third-person hero shooter Deadlock hasn't been officially revealed yet, but thousands of you unscrupulous devils have been playing it thanks to stolen development builds. Speculation abounds that these "leaks", coupled with Valve's obstinate silence about it, are a calculated publisher psyop. Are they deliberately letting people play the game early so as to temper the marketing rollout in some way? Perhaps handle any initial player criticism under cover of non-announcement? It seems unlikely, but as other writers have pointed out, this is Valve, unaccountable elder god of PC gaming. I guess we should be thankful it isn't another Half-Life tease.

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Playstation Store lists Red Dead Redemption as “now on PC for the first time ever”

Update: The PlayStation Store's description has now been changed to omit the part quoted below. Being a forward-thinking individual, however, I took a screenshot.

Well, root my toots. Unless you’re Australian, in which case don't do that. Just enjoy the now very much confirmed-looking release of the original Red Dead Redemption on PC. That’s according to a listing on the PlayStation Store, which contains the currently inaccurate but tantalising phrase “now on PC for the first time ever.”

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Shadows Of Doubt emerges from the wet alleyway of early access with 1.0 release next month

In Shadows Of Doubt you can fall from the roof of a corporate office building during a routine investigation, shatter all the bones in your frail detective body, wake up in a clinic fully healed, and then sprint out the door without paying your sky-high hospital bills while the clinic's auto-turret shoots at you for doing a medical dine and dash. The early access game is on our best immersive sims list for a reason, you know, and now it has an autumn release date for the final version, along with a new trailer.

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Doom modders are annoyed at the "chum-bucket" of wrongly credited mods in the latest Doom remaster

Last week, Bethesda released a remastered edition of Doom and Doom II on Steam, with lots of extra episodes and improvements. One of these new features is a built-in browser for mods, and support for many existing mods that previously required a different version of the game. Basically, lots of good fan-made mods are now playable on the Steam version of ye olde Doom. That's neat! Ah, but there is some demon excrement on the health pack, so to speak. The mod browser lacks moderation and lets people upload the work of others with their own name pinned as the author. That's prompted one level designer to call it "a massive breach of trust and violation of norms the Doom community has done its best to hold to for those 30 years."

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Become an aging court jester trapped in a cyclical hell at the whims of a fickle audience in Conan Throwbrien

Conan Throwbrien welcomes its host to the stage with discordant jazz and uncanny colour bars glitches. It feels eerie. Desperate. A crushing inevitability. Four joke topics appear at the bottom of the screen. Ridiculous celebrity kids names. Action figures for news anchors. Diet water sales boom. You cautiously slide that last one over to the microphone. Throwbrien emits a string of chirps, like a flame-crested lyre bird with a wounded voicebox trying to mimic human language. “Have you folks heard about this one…”

There is an implied terror in this seemingly friendly opener. What if they have heard this one? What will Throwbrien do then?

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PUBG owner Krafton have acquired Tango Gameworks and the Hi-Fi Rush IP

Tango Gameworks are back from the dead. The Hi-Fi Rush studio have been acquired - alongside the IP for future games in the rhythm action series - by South Korean company Krafton, who also own PUBG Studios and Striking Distance, among others. “This strategic move will include the rights to Tango Gameworks’ acclaimed IP, Hi-Fi Rush,” Krafton said in a statement today. I particularly enjoy the hand-rubbing, grinning use of the word ‘strategic’ here. Great news though.

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The Maw: what's new in PC games this week?

There are times when I think each week's most intriguing new PC releases are being organised behind the scenes by a fiendishly plotting, Left 4 Dead-style "AI Director". Mostly, the games approach in small groups distributed evenly among the weekdays - a steady assault. But every now and then, they treacherously mass and pounce on one particular day. This week, it's the latter.

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What's on your bookshelf?: Destiny 2 and Dishonored narrative designer Hazel Monforton

Hello reader who is also a reader, and welcome back to Booked For The Week - our regular Sunday chat with a selection of cool industry folks about books! This week, I’ve been half reading in the garden and half staring in awe at my Kindle’s paperwhite doohickey and it’s ability to stay readable in searing sunbeams. I’m tempted to look up how it works but I don’t want to find out it’s made from the luminous, genetically-engineered husks of the workers that drop dead from dehydration at the fulfilment centers or something. To help distract me with yet more books, it’s Dishonored: Death Of The Outsider writer and Destiny 2 senior narrative designer, Dr. Hazel Monforton! Cheers Hazel! Mind if we have a nose at your bookshelf?

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The Sunday Papers

Sundays are for more Gene Wolfe. I’ve finished Shadow Of The Torturer now, and I think Claw Of The Conciliator might be even better so far? Before I become ever more enamoured with Severian’s self-mythologising antics, let’s read this week’s best writing about games (and game related things!)

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What are we all playing this weekend?

The search for the cheapest and yet best quality supermarket drink-as-you-go coffee continues. I know it's the first time I've made you aware of this project, but it's been going on since I moved to Glasgow. So far, Lidl's own brand remains the clear winner, a solid 8 on the taste meter at just 59p. But while writing this, I'm sipping an "Intenso" Arctic Coffee from Morrisons, which is giving the Lidl frontrunners some stiff competition at last, albeit at 145% the cost. Will one true victor emerge? Find out next week! For now, here's what we're all clicking on this weekend!

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Here's a free miniature town-builder with trams from the creator of Viewfinder

Sometimes I want to play a video game, and sometimes I just want to assemble a quiet little Dutch town with iron bridges, fountains and dinky trams bustling about like bumble bees. The project in question is Tramstertram. Aside from being a terrifying feat of punmanship, it's a browser-based building toy from Matt Stark, creator of the really rather lovely Viewfinder.

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Control 2, Condor and the Max Payne remakes are shaping up just fine, say Remedy

The weekend bears down on us like a host of hissing, barrel-throwing psychics, but there is yet time for some brief updates on Remedy's Control 2, which Remedy say is coming along nicely. The same is apparently true of the multiplayer Control spin-off Project Condor and the Max Payne 1 & 2 remakes, on which Remedy are collaborating with GTA and Max Payne 3 developers Rockstar.

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Splitgate 2 will add bum slides and time-altering bubbles to its portal-hopping shootsing

The first Splitgate was a cracker mash-up of Halo multiplayer gunfights and Portal's nifty spacetime windows. It was a gimmick that made flanking fun again, at least until you died to a distant rifle that was right next to you all along. Its sequel, Splitgate 2 is continuing that gimmick but is also sprucing up the free-to-play arena shooter with a few modern additions, like bum-sliding around corners and big deployable bubbles called "time domes" that slow down your enemies yet speed up your allies. All this and more comes from a gameplay trailer that went up yesterday.

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I hope you've got a spare 190GB kicking about for God Of War Ragnarok on PC

The new God Of War duology has my favourite snow in gaming. I can take or leave about 60% of everything else in them, but lawdy, that snow! In God Of War Ragnarok, the action kicks off a during the apocalyptic fimbulwinter, which is probably bad for some characters I don’t care about, but it is good for me personally, because there’s a lot of snow to play with.

How much snow, you ask? 190 flippin’ gigs worth, apparently, according to Sony’s system requirements.

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Warhammer 40k: Space Marine 2 PvP multiplayer certainly has that old timey Gears Of War energy

Yesterday, Nic took James and I on a tour of Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2's co-op campaign. A merry old time was had, romping through fortress cities like a small herd of crusader buffalo, using the game's absurd jetpack functionality to pancake invading Tyranids, and getting our screens so slathered in gore we couldn't work out who was killing what.

It looks like the gargantuan action game's PvP multiplayer will be even messier. Saber and Focus Home have released an extended trailer that walks you through two major modes - the PvE boss and wave-slaying frenzy of Operations, and the 12-player PvP carnage of Eternal War, which spans a range of match types. The ecstasy of dying for the Emperor aside, both give me frightful flashbacks to the early days of Gears Of War.

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Shapez 2's Early Access should run smoothly with factories 12x bigger than the first game

Shapez 2 will launch in Early Access on August 15th, bringing the relaxing, shape-cutting factory builder into 3D.

In a new post, its lead developer has laid out what to expect from Early Access. In the main: a polished, 40 hours-or-so experience with no known major issues, and a post-release roadmap waiting to be defined by player feedback.

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Cat Quest 3's pun-soaked animal pirate action-RPG is out on Steam now

Did The Gentlebros come up with the pun "Pi-Rats" and then work backwards from there in deciding that Cat Quest 3 should be pirate themed? Or was "Purr-ibean" the initiating pun? I feel that the action-RPG sequel had to begin with one of wordplay or another, given that its Steam page boasts that it also has "furr-ocious spells" and "gla-meow-rous costumes".

It's also claws-out now on Steam, which has me feline fine.

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7 Dos and 7 Don'ts in 7 Days To Die

You're a long time undead. 7 Days To Die was shuffling along in early access for 11 years, until version 1.0 finally burst through the windows. In that time, many other survival games have sprouted, blossomed, and gently faded away. I first visited the burnt-out ruins of this zombie-infested world a decade ago and I returned to it this week to find a tree-puncher that, despite bearing the pockmarks of early access, retains much of what made it enjoyable back when the survival genre was still wearing its baby onesie. Instead of a review, I figured I'd scribble together a mini starter guide for new (or returning) players. Partly because the game is a proper time sink and it was taking me so long to get through everything. But mostly because I wanted to use that numberful headline. So, here you go: 7 dos and 7 don'ts in 7 Days To (7) Die.

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The Rally Point: Messy urban wargame Khaligrad is this year's low-intensity strategy game for when it's blisteringly hot out

I was partial to a scrappy little strategy game even before idiot billionaires doomed the planet, and the UK to brain-steaming heat just when you thought we'd escape it this year. Khaligrad is plenty scrappy. Its edges are rough and you have to figure it out yourself, but it's more intuitive than it appears, and easy to operate once you discern some basics. It's scrappy too in that it's, well. It's Stalingrad. Not really: its world is so fictional it's their 15th century. But the invaders are explicitly fascists and the defenders communists embroiled in a long and brutal semi-guerrilla city war with World War 2 technology. Thankfully, it's stripped of any actual fashy or genocidal play-acting beyond each side doing "hail the empire/union" bits as a sign off.

I think that's why, despite its brutal and difficult setting, it's this year's entry in the long tradition of Low-Intensity Strategy Games For When Hot Why Hot Please Stop You Cannot See My Begging Tears For They Evaporate.

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WolfEye's new first-person RPG is "an evolution" of Prey and Dishonored featuring mechs, magnets and a continuous world

WolfEye's debut game Weird West attempted to pack a little of Dishonored's immersive sim sorcery into a top-down action-RPG. For the studio's next game, co-founders Raphaël Colantonio and Julien Roby are leaning into comparisons with their old endeavours at Arkane more earnestly. The new game - currently untitled and without a release date - is a first-person sci-fi RPG set in an alternate-1900s North America, which ostensibly combines the ingenuity and gadgetry of Dishonored and Prey with a "real RPG" experience redolent of Skyrim and modern-day Fallout.

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Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers review: a fickle but fun roguelike that stretches Blackjack to the moon and back

Hm. Hmmmm. Right. So, what have we got here? There’s my Blood Donor card, which reduces the value of the hearts I play, but also heals me. That’s fine, actually. Reduced score means I can squeeze in another card for more healing. If I can pull my Tarot card, I'll deal damage with each heal, and I’ve already pulled two scratch cards for yet more quick damage. Now, if I can just pull a Jack, I can plonk down the King Of Space And Time for a brutal finisher. That’ll transfer everything on my side over to my opponent’s, forcing a bust for a nice final chunk of hurt and…

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New Elite Dangerous spaceship is advertised as a space trucker's dream, but it'll cost ya

Spaceship likers, come hither. Long-running space sim Elite Dangerous has just unloaded a new interstellar vessel into its universe, and she's a beaut. The new Type-8 Transporter is a medium freighter capable of hauling a maximum of 406 tons of cargo. It's got a default jump range of 17.55 light years and two big prongs sticking out of its face like a sci-fi forklift. Cool. The catch is that this ship can only be bought with real money for now, say the developers. This is part of Frontier's new strategy of having paid-for ships in the game. I don't really play Elite Dangerous anymore, so I don't have strong feelings about that. But I do have strong feelings about the space trucker advertisement the developer has put together for the new ship. Come watch it with me.

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Sliding Hero turns a contentious puzzle type into an otherworldly jaunt through a cursed Venetian carnival

I’d initially assumed that puzzle game Sliding Hero counts was a Sokoban-like, until I realised that it’s actually you, not endless boxes, that do the sliding here. Still, I wasn’t entirely convinced. The only thing that’s fun to slide back-and-forth indefinitely is a lounging cat on a smooth kitchen worktop. Still, after messing around with Sliding Hero’s Steam demo, I think this one might have much longer legs than its restrictive-sounding concept suggests. All the better to endlessly slide with.

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In cute throwback RPG Super Dungeon Muncher the dungeon is being eaten by a monster

What is it with monstrous eating mechanics in games of late? Last week it was carnivorous post-Soviet elevators, now it’s retro fantasy RPGs that devour themselves. In Super Dungeon Muncher, you are a teeny-tiny hero navigating a corridor-shaped map full of fireball traps and crumbling platforms, spinning coins and patrolling critters. That’s the “Super Dungeon” part. The “Muncher” part refers to the corpulent red monster guzzling the whole level in your wake.

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