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Sonic Frontiers has been a rather baffling project so far. PC Gamer's Morgan Park saw a 30-minute playable demo during not-E3 and though he thought it was "bad" in the way many modern Sonic games are, he also couldn't wait to play more. This open-world, puzzling platformer looks like the hedgehog's attempt to get a little Breath of the Wild, but how that works as a tiny mammal whose sole desires include going fast and fast food, lord knows. In any case we've now seemingly got a release date due to a new Japanese trailer. An unlisted video on an official Japanese Sonic YouTube channel has shown that the game is set to release on November 8, 2022. The short 30 second video shows a little gameplay, including a massive structure Sonic runs up, as well as a quick flick between some of the settings the blue blur will encounter during his adventure. There is also a voice in the background of the video monologuing, as all good dramatic montages need. I don't speak Japanese so I can't comment too much on YouTube auto translate authenticity, but the narrator says something about a mighty enemy standing in their way and the constant ability to move forward despite challenges. At the very end of the trailer there is a card showing a November 8 release date and the confirmation that the game will come to Steam as well as consoles. Also there's a cheesy rock song in the style you'd see as intro music for Rooster Teeth anime RWBY screaming about Sonic and his Frontiers which I rather enjoyed. The trailer still makes Sonic Frontiers look pretty weird. Not in a bad way, but in a way I can't understand how this project is real or coming out soon. Some of the shots from the trailer look like they belong in an early Halo game and I have no idea why we're climbing up monsters that look like Pokémon legendaries, but we'll find out more in November. View the full article

In case you ever wondered how Disney managed to de-age the voice of Luke Skywalker in the recent Star Wars spin offs, you'll be unsurprised to learn that an AI was involved. But while AI does much of the heavy lifting, it's the people behind this timbre tweaking droid that really deserve recognition. In speaking to Respeecher CEO Alex Serdiuk, I learned that much of the voice conversion work for the Obi-Wan Kenobi series was delivered from sound engineer Bogdan Belyaev's hometown near Mariupol, Ukraine during Russia's initial invasion. Bogdan is a long time Star Wars fan. He was over the moon when he was assigned to work on Mark Hamill's voice, only he found himself working through the sound of air raid sirens when Russia began its war on Ukraine. I understood that if I don't send them now, I might never send them. Bogdan Belyaev "He is from those regions of Ukraine that's currently occupied by Russia. He has been relocated from there," Alex says. "[Bogdan] has been delivering work for Obi-Wan from bomb shelters when the full blown invasion started." The Respeecher blog goes into more detail about the terror he had to endure, but it's this quote from Bogdan that really got me: "About 80% of subsequent iterations from the conversion push were accompanied by an air alarm. But I understood that if I don't send them now, I might never send them." (Image credit: Quantic Dream, Lucasfilm Games) It's uncanny, really, listening to Mark Hamill's voice from a bygone era spewing new, cheesy lines, but in the words of Master Qui-Gon, "The ability to speak does not make you intelligent." As such, the general rule is that AI itself cannot claim rights to the voices, or indeed hold patents since it doesn't legally count as an individual. And while the AI may not be able to claim rights to the work being done here (yet), in a big world of corporations small companies like Respeecher sometimes have to fight to have members of the team credited for their work. "As a company we always should negotiate the publicity rights," Alex continues. "We try our best to get as much of the publicity rights as possible, so in the case of the Star Wars projects we were credited as a company." In a lot of Respeecher projects today, however, "there is not just a company credited, but particular people from our team who worked on that piece." (Image credit: Valerie Macon) "We actually made it to the Emmy Awards. Once a person is credited, you are eligible for receiving an Emmy, and we have four Emmy statues in the office. That's really encouraging for the team when you have those shiny, shiny pieces." Right now the team is working on a triple A video game—which they can't talk about, for obvious reasons—but when it comes out later this year you'll notice in the credits that "not just the company, but also a person from the team will be created there." Alex is proud to see Respeecher standing with the 250 Ukrainian startups, zero of which have had to shut down due to Russia's invasion. "Only 4% had to significantly reduce their business." That's just an incredible feat considering the circumstances. So here's to all the badass Ukrainians out there working through the horrors of war. Whether you're working on nerdy cult classics like Star Wars or just generally keeping the country above water, the PC Gamer team salutes you. View the full article

The yearly German gaming festival Gamescom is back in person this year and so is its kickoff event Opening Night Live. Geoff Keighley is returning again to host the evening and we can expect a similar sort of event to his Summer Game Fest shows. ONL will come with premieres and announcements and gameplay for some of the big upcoming games of 2022 and 2023. Of course, ONL isn't the only place for previews and announcements next week. Check out our full Gamescom 2022 schedule for a list of events to watch. Don't worry, this week isn't as cram-packed with broadcasts as the middle of June. For the most compact reel of reveals though, Opening Night Live is where you'll want to tune in. How to watch Gamescom Opening Night Live Gamescom Opening Night Live premieres on Tuesday, August 23 at 8 pm CET / 2 pm EDT / 11 am PDT on YouTube and Twitch. Keighley has announced that it will be a two hour show with over 30 games involved. We'll embed the livestream here for you once the link is available. As usual, Keighley has also been revealing a large chunk of the attendees and announcements ahead of time on Twitter. Here are the games that have been publicly announced as appearances: Sonic FrontiersGotham KnightsHogwarts LegacyTekkenThe Outlast TrialsThe Callisto ProtocolThe Expanse gameDying Light 2: Bloody Ties DLCHigh On LifeReturn to Monkey IslandGoat Simulator 3Subnautica developer's next game View the full article

Whether you're just after a few Wordle tips to help point you in the right direction, or you'd like to quickly scroll down to the answer to the August 23 (430) puzzle and quickly save your win streak, I've got everything you need to solve today's Wordle just below. I'm experimenting with some new openers this week. The letters I'm searching for are still more or less the same as they've ever been (it's always sensible to check for Es and Ts), but I think the visual refresh is helping me see things from a new angle and make connections I wasn't getting before. Wordle hint Today's Wordle: A hint for Tuesday, August 23 Baskets, fabrics, stories… all of these things and more are brought together using today's word. It's the technique rather than the material that matters, the act of taking multiple threads, reeds, or anything and then skilfully intertwining them into something new. Almost got it? Here's one last hint: You're after the past tense version of the word. Wordle help: 3 tips for beating Wordle every day If there's one thing better than playing Wordle, it's playing Wordle well, which is why I'm going to share a few quick tips to help set you on the path to success: A good opener contains a balanced mix of unique vowels and consonants. A tactical second guess helps to narrow down the pool of letters quickly.The solution may contain repeat letters. There's no time pressure beyond making sure it's done by midnight. So there's no reason to not treat the game like a casual newspaper crossword and come back to it later if you're coming up blank. Wordle answer (Image credit: Josh Wardle) What is the Wordle 430 answer? The word you're looking for is right here. The answer to the August 23 (430) Wordle is WOVEN. Previous answers Wordle archive: Which words have been used The more past Wordle answers you can cram into your memory banks, the better your chances of guessing today's Wordle answer without accidentally picking a solution that's already been used. Past Wordle answers can also give you some excellent ideas for fun starting words that keep your daily puzzle solving fresh. Here are some recent Wordle solutions: August 22: MERITAugust 21: WASTEAugust 20: TREATAugust 19: SHRUGAugust 18: TWANGAugust 17: TWICEAugust 16: GRUELAugust 15: POKERAugust 14: KHAKIAugust 13: HUNKY Learn more about Wordle Every day Wordle presents you with six rows of five boxes, and it's up to you to work out which secret five-letter word is hiding inside them. You'll want to start with a strong word like ALERT—something containing multiple vowels, common consonants, and no repeat letters. Hit Enter and the boxes will show you which letters you've got right or wrong. If a box turns ️, it means that letter isn't in the secret word at all. means the letter is in the word, but not in that position. means you've got the right letter in the right spot. You'll want your second go to compliment the first, using another "good" word to cover any common letters you missed last time while also trying to avoid any letter you now know for a fact isn't present in today's answer. After that it's just a case of using what you've learned to narrow your guesses down to the right word. You have six tries in total and can only use real words (so no filling the boxes with EEEEE to see if there's an E). Don't forget letters can repeat too (ex: BOOKS). If you need any further advice feel free to check out our Wordle tips, and if you'd like to find out which words have already been used you'll find those below. Originally, Wordle was dreamed up by software engineer Josh Wardle, as a surprise for his partner who loves word games. From there it spread to his family, and finally got released to the public. The word puzzle game has since inspired tons of games like Wordle, refocusing the daily gimmick around music or math or geography. It wasn't long before Wordle became so popular it was sold to the New York Times for seven figures. Surely it's only a matter of time before we all solely communicate in tricolor boxes. View the full article

On an average day about a dozen new games are released on Steam. And while we think that's a good thing, it can be understandably hard to keep up with. Potentially exciting gems are sure to be lost in the deluge of new things to play unless you sort through every single game that is released on Steam. So that’s exactly what we’ve done. If nothing catches your fancy this week, we've gathered the best PC games you can play right now and a running list of the 2022 games that are launching this year. Catizens Steam‌ ‌page‌ ‌ Release:‌ August 18 Developer:‌ badopticsgames Launch price:‌ ‌$16 |‌ ‌£12.59 ‌|‌ ‌AU$23.35 Heard of cats? They're the best animal, and Catizens is basically a hybrid of RimWorld and The Sims, except with cats. You're probably smashing that buy button already—because of the cats—but there are some other things to know: you have to build a town for the cats, but not according to your own whims and fancies, because its the cats' proclivities that really matter. That's the hard part. The easy and possibly funnest part is creating "unique cats", and making sure their homes are as feline friendly as possible. Along with the detailed settlement and home management you'll also go hunting in the wilderness. Catizens is an Early Access affair and will launch into 1.0 in roughly six months while it gains new content and sheds some rough edges. Cursed to Golf Steam‌ ‌page‌ ‌ Release:‌ August 19 Developer:‌ Chuhai Labs Launch price:‌ ‌$18 |‌ ‌£15.29 ‌|‌ ‌AU$26.05 It's a sidescrolling platformer with golf, basically. You're the "Cursed Golfer" who is trapped in "Golf Purgatory", and in order to escape this purgatory you have to get extremely good at playing golf under bizarre conditions. Split into levels, you need to get the ball in the, uh, golf hole, before your PAR count runs out. But that's not going to be easy because you're in purgatory, which is riddled with supernatural obstacles, spikes, and aggressive things that want to kill you. Oh, and it's a roguelike, so expect to stay infuriated-yet-entertained by this one for a while, especially with the "70+" holes promised across four biomes. Slaycation Paradise Steam‌ ‌page‌ ‌ Release:‌ August 18 Developer:‌ Affordable Acquisition Launch price:‌ ‌$12 |‌ ‌£9.59 ‌|‌ ‌AU$17.20 If you thought this week's column was a little too family friendly, here's a game about an intergalactic resort themed around mindlessly killing things. That's pretty bleak on paper, but this twin-stick shooter and tower defence hybrid has a bit of a grim smirk to it. Basically, each arena in Slaycation Paradise is based on a real world environment—ruined cities, tranquil farms—except they're all on fire by dint of the fact that they're murder playgrounds. You'll get to roam these environments from an isometric view, shooting at things with a large array of weaponry, but you'll also get to play with turrets and barricades as well. Looks like some decent, albeit disturbing, tension release. This Rain Will Never End Steam‌ ‌page‌ ‌ Release:‌ ‌August 18 Developer:‌ Marginal Act Launch price:‌ ‌$10.39 |‌ ‌£8.23 |‌ ‌AU$14.80 Subtitled a "noir adventure detective (game)", This Rain Will Never End also stars a cat, which is good. It's a point and click adventure set in Sunny City, which is suddenly always dark and awash in rain. The protagonist cat detective is investigating the suicide of the city mayor, which caused this onslaught of rain, and to solve the mystery you'll need to explore the city, chat to its varied inhabitants, and combine evidence in order to arrive at some truth about the strange circumstances. It's a dark affair then, somewhat offset by the fact that you are, indeed, appealingly, a cat. OneBit Adventure Steam‌ ‌page‌ ‌ Release:‌ August 19 Developer:‌ Galactic Slice Launch price:‌ ‌Free OneBit Adventure has existed as a browser and phone game for a while but now it's on Steam. It's a casual turn-based roguelike that's best played in short bursts, and the objective is to climb as high as possible through its monster-filled environment, picking up loot along the way. There are seven classes, all unique and customizable, and if you love it you can enjoy cross-saves with the Google Play or App Store versions, so you never have to stop playing. View the full article

On August 21, Stardew Valley creator Eric Barone, aka Concerned Ape, shared a screenshot and accompanying OST snippet of his upcoming game, Haunted Chocolatier. It's a snappy little tune to go with what looks like a bee boss fight in a giant, golden hive. It's a shame you've got to fight them, because it's certainly a cute little (big?) bee and these vital pollinators have long been threatened by human activity. Now the "threat from human activity" is a little more overt, with players engaging in deadly combat with the hive. Presumably you'll need that honey for some confection or another in your titular chocolate shop. Sorry little guys, save the bees or no papa's gotta get paid. This new, big bee looks like a scaled up version of an enemy shown in previous gameplay footage, but the hive interior is brand new. It reminds me of the hive from Click Clock Wood in Banjo Kazooie, or The Gyldenhal golden castle from Dragon Quest 11. The song, presumably only tentatively titled bee_boss, gave me a similar vibe to Papyrus' theme Bonetrousle from Undertale. We're likely still some ways off from Haunted Chocolatier's release. Back at the time of the initial reveal trailer, Barone stated that "While the video I put together may look like the game is at an advanced stage of development, there is still a ton of stuff to do." Responding to a fan in the Twitter thread of the new screenshot, Barone cautioned "I think I could make it faster, but I don't think I am making it faster. Also... though I have more experience, I also have more ambition with the scope of the game (in some ways.)" It's coming when it's done then, but it's always exciting to hear about an anticipated game's expanded ambition and scope. In addition to following along with Barone's periodic progress updates, you can catch up with our guide to everything we know about Haunted Chocolatier. View the full article

Gaming Minds Studios and Kalypso have announced that Railway Empire 2 is on the way in 2023, complete with sprawling maps depicting the entirety of Europe and North America. It'll come to Steam, and I'd guess Epic too, and publisher Kalypso notes that it'll come to Xbox Game Pass for PC. The announcement was made at GamesCom 2022. It'll feature much larger maps than the previous game. Two large maps will cover the entirety of the US and Continental Europe, while smaller regional maps will put detail on specific areas. Railway Empire 2 also promises to have more intuitive, improved track construction with automatically placed signals, larger train stations, and real-time terraforming. There will be 60 historical steam engines in the game, which begins in the early 1800s and focuses on running train companies in 19th century amid the railway-driven industrial revolution. Back in 2017, Leif Johnson liked the first Railway Empire well enough, calling it a "mostly satisfying management sim" that "captured the complexity behind building a railway." He noted, however, that it first and foremost a railway expansion simulator, not a historical piece, and glossed over complex political issues around building rails in the 1800s. Nonetheless, Railway Empire did pretty well for itself, racking up a fat pile of globe-trotting expansions in places like Mexico, Europe, the Andes, and Japan. This train-building sequel will clearly focus on its strengths, and Kalypso's announcement mentions difficulty settings catering to both casual trainset-builders and those who like tough transport logistics. Railway Empire 2 was revealed as in development early last year, but we've heard little about it since. It'll once again have main characters to play as, each with their own abilities, alongside five campaigns, 14 different scenarios, and a free play mode. You can read the full announcement for Railway Empire 2 on Steam, as well as check out its Steam page. View the full article

You know what's cool? When you can walk around a city and don't have to use a car. That's cool, and the developers of Cities: Skylines agree, as the upcoming Plazas & Promenades DLC will add pedestrian-only zones, specialized districts, and services that cater to a playstyle I've seen people clamor for since Cities launched in 2015. The expansion trailer, from a literal bird's eye view, showcases the calm and delightful concept of walkable, bikeable city centers complete with outdoor plazas and trams. In addition to new zones and districts, the expansion includes "over 300" new assets for the reigning champion of city builders. The new pedestrian-only streets are placed like any others, but the only vehicles that can access them are emergency services like fire, police, and ambulances. That lets you cut down on pollution and noise for citizen quality-of-life bonuses. New district specializations add wall-to-wall buildings for pedestrian high density residential, commercial, and office areas that mimic more modern city centers. There are also service buildings to match. New policies go along with them, allowing you to slow road driving speeds, ban sugary drinks, and allow street musicians inside pedestrian-focused areas. Images also show off some other neat features. The new plazas can have food trucks, for example, and huge constructed glass-roof sunshades can overhang metro stations and open-air malls. I'm a particularly big fan of the shots showing off bus-only and tram lines through the pedestrian areas. Image 1 of 15 (Image credit: Colossal Order)Image 2 of 15 (Image credit: Colossal Order)Image 3 of 15 (Image credit: Colossal Order)Image 4 of 15 (Image credit: Colossal Order)Image 5 of 15 (Image credit: Colossal Order)Image 6 of 15 (Image credit: Colossal Order)Image 7 of 15 (Image credit: Colossal Order)Image 8 of 15 (Image credit: Colossal Order)Image 9 of 15 (Image credit: Colossal Order)Image 10 of 15 (Image credit: Colossal Order)Image 11 of 15 (Image credit: Colossal Order)Image 12 of 15 (Image credit: Colossal Order)Image 13 of 15 (Image credit: Colossal Order)Image 14 of 15 (Image credit: Colossal Order)Image 15 of 15 (Image credit: Colossal Order) Cities: Skylines - Plazas & Promenades has no official release date, but it's "coming soon" say Colossal Order. You can find out more on Paradox's website, and for now it's up on Steam and Epic but I'm sure it'll show up elsewhere soon enough. View the full article

The NASA Exoplanets social media team recently released an audio recording of a black hole, an ultra-dense cosmic body left over from a collapsed star. Conventional wisdom holds that sound waves can't travel through the vacuum of space, having no medium to move through, but NASA's post mentions that gas-dense galaxy clusters actually contain enough matter for the agency to record distant sounds. The result is incredibly unnerving, a sort of hollow chorus of ethereal moaning that feels perfectly at home in some kind of experimental horror project. It's another compelling reminder that you don't have to turn to fiction to find the cosmic horror in the cosmos. The misconception that there is no sound in space originates because most space is a ~vacuum, providing no way for sound waves to travel. A galaxy cluster has so much gas that we've picked up actual sound. Here it's amplified, and mixed with other data, to hear a black hole! pic.twitter.com/RobcZs7F9eAugust 21, 2022 See more The most important takeaway is that videogames and old sci fi shows were right all along, and prestige sci fi stuff from the 2000s onward with silent outer space scenes can suck it. Every nerd on TV Tropes who exaggeratedly adjusted their glasses before pointing out that space battle sound effects are unrealistic has been soundly rebuffed, and by the agency that put a man on the Moon with human calculators no less. Alright, maybe the pew pews and kabooms of Trek and Battlestar Galactica don't hold up to scrutiny, but the silent space of a SyFy Channel original probably isn't quite there either. The heart of the matter might be that human senses just aren't cut out for the void at any level, and all we have is artistic interpretation. NASA describes its black hole recording as being "amplified" and "mixed with other data." That level of processing isn't unique among astronomic data presented to the public⁠—many of the most iconic images of celestial bodies are not quite as they would appear to a naked eye "looking out the window of a passing spacecraft." A useful parallel here are the iconic images of the planet Venus we've become accustomed to over the years. The swirling yellow orbs or hellish craggy landscapes you might immediately think of are actually false color composite images combining the visual spectrum with ultraviolet or infrared data. That "Commander Shepard looking out their viewport" shot of Venus would likely be a "bland and largely featureless disk" according to home astronomy resource In-The-Sky. This gets back to that "cosmic horror" idea⁠—you don't need old gods, deep ones, or 'ole Howard Philips Lovecraft to see that our universe is already unknowable, hostile to our senses. It requires herculean efforts of scientific ingenuity to parse the cosmos in a way we can understand. That black hole recording though, it certainly sounds like a portal to hell or something. View the full article

For the first time in over ten years, iconic Minecraft default skin/character Steve has a beard again, via the latest update to Minecraft's upcoming version. The skins for both the default Steve and Alex characters in the beta launcher now have a couple small tweaks to texture that make a big difference. Steve now has, once again, that iconic beard. rolled up or cuffed sleeves, and a bit more color definition on key areas like the arms, shoes, and chest. Perhaps they've just shined the shoes. Hard to say, all that mining dust, you know? Alex, meanwhile, has those same sleeve cuffs alongside more contrasting colors on most of their clothing. Notably, there's a clear depth and layering on Alex's hair. The multi-year global pandemic has been rough on everyone. Lots of people decided that this was a key time to grow a beard, since they weren't leaving the house or anything—including, it seems, Minecraft Steve. Is that canon or something? No, of course it isn't. I made it up. Steve's beard first disappeared in 2009, 13 years ago, long before Alex even made an appearance on the scene. Despite that, the neglected beard still appeared in official artwork at times and even the showed up that time they put Steve in Super Smash Brothers, all the way down to an Amiibo figure. Welcome back, beardy Steve. The fans seem excited. In other Minecraft news, we've rounded up a bunch of the best texture packs for the venerable survival game. There's also a bit of a ruin-restoring trend going on, as players spruce up both out of game historical castles and the newly-added in-game ancient ruins. View the full article

Pasokon Retro is our regular look back at the early years of Japanese PC gaming, encompassing everything from specialist 80's computers to the happy days of Windows XP. Developer: Nihon Falcom Released: 1989 Japanese PCs: PC-88, PC-98, X68000 port (Image credit: Falcom, via Retroplace) (Image credit: Retroplace / Nihon Falcom) "We made 'STAR TRADER' because We were interested in exploring this theme further" states the oddly capitalized cover of the otherwise entirely Japanese manual for Falcom's 1989 adventure-shmup hybrid. No further explanation of this straightforward sentence is given—apparently Falcom thought that it was all the justification needed, even though it had spent the decade building a reputation on RPGs filled with heroes and gods and little else. At the end of the '80s Falcom wanted to do something different from Ys and Dragon Slayer, so it just did, simple as that. Bold creativity was part of the company's culture: Falcom pretty much invented the whole concept of action-RPGs with 1984's Dragon Slayer, and the studio's development history between then and Star Trader is littered with a diverse range of swords and sorcery series. Some are still going strong today, and almost all of them were standout successes at the time. But how would any of that help them create a shmup that was any good, never mind stood out, during a hyper-competitive period for the genre—the same year R-Type II was making waves in arcades? It doesn't seem like much could transfer over from Falcom's specific brand of fantasy action to a setting filled with sci-fi ships and space stations. But the truth is Ys, which debuted on Japanese computers just a few years earlier, turned out to be the perfect training ground for this one-off shmup. A bullet is just a small pixelated fireball when you get down to it, and by the late '80s Falcom had already mastered flinging those around a screen. From a certain point of view making a gigantic metal fortress spew electricity from protruding pylons isn't all that different from designing a large god/demon/monster capable of flinging a lightning spell from their hands/staff/tentacles. A sleek spaceship's power level is really just a health bar with another name. Even though it's broadly familiar, Star Trader was an off-kilter success because of that very different creative background. It's a shmup made by a team who hadn't made a shmup, a shmup made exclusively for home computers (initially NEC's PC-88 and PC-98 in this case, with a distinct third-party port to Sharp's X68000 a few years later) rather than powerful arcade machines, and a shmup sold to people who weren't expecting a shmup from this particular developer. It was the gaming equivalent of a popular metal band's surprise smooth jazz EP. Star Trader didn't follow the unwritten rules that already bound the better established examples of the genre. Star Trader eagerly demonstrates its independence by opening with a lengthy cutscene full of art that could've fit into any high quality adventure game from the era. Instead of then hastily cutting to the "real" game everyone came for—the shooty bit—it instead merrily carries on with a whole lot of not-shmupping business: introducing new characters, offering multiple dialogue options during numerous conversations, and letting me decide where I'm going to fly off to next. That's where the shmup part comes in, with playable space routes between locations. Unlike most shmups, Star Trader isn't limited to pre-arranged levels, and it doesn't introduce its lore and characters in the manual, to be read once and then ignored forever. We get lots of time with the Han Solo-ish pilot Kain and the friends, enemies, and frenemies he makes along the way, and it's time well spent. They add personality and context to the action where there would have otherwise been nothing more than infinite starfields and laser beams. The stakes are higher when I'm defending space stations because I've spent time with the characters inside them, chatting while Kain leans up against a bar. Even the most impressive final boss sprite or bass-heaviest battle music couldn't deliver that extra drama. (Image credit: Nihon Falcom) Characters in shmups are "unnecessary" in exactly the same way adding large shopkeeper portraits to an old RPG is "unnecessary"; they have no impact on how Star Trader plays, but the world feels so much more alive and vibrant for having them. The forgotten origins of JRPGs Did you know the Japanese RPG has its roots on the PC, not consoles? Read more about it in our feature here. Even with all of these chatty diversions to take in one dialogue box at a time there's still plenty of shmupping to be done. As with everything else Star Trader casts a questioning eye over genre tradition and happily jettisons anything it sees no use for. That includes the one thing you would expect every shmup to have: scores. Sorcerian didn't need a scoring system to be successful, Ys didn't need a scoring system to be successful, so why should Star Trader? The best response I can come up with is to weakly insist "But shmups are supposed to have a score system!", even though I was so caught up in the action I honestly didn't miss it while I was playing. Power-ups floating along in the depths of space are also conspicuously absent Star Trader uses equippable weapons bought in a shop using money earned by completing optional side ques—sorry, jobs—instead. And from there it keeps playing with the formula. One area begins with a screen-sized boss battle, breaking pretty much every shmup rule pacing rule. Another chooses to end in a thrilling do-or-die escape sequence, the ship licked by floor-to-ceiling flames from behind as the destructible shutters ahead slam closed. I squeak through and am immediately thrown into an intense one-on-one battle against an assault ship so large it must be destroyed piece-by-piece. It's wrong. It's wrong because… because other shmups don't do that. Escape is supposed to be a reward, an end—not the breathless prelude to a massive boss. But this sequence was so memorable precisely because Falcom didn't bother to read the shmup rulebook. I was genuinely surprised by a type of game I've been playing since I was old enough to grasp an Atari's rubber-coated joysticks. (Image credit: Nihon Falcom) Falcom's RPG roots just keep peeking through, giving scrolling and shooting the reimagining they need to feel dramatic—cinematic, even, to make Star Trader more than Another '80s Sci-Fi Shmup. It's bursting with visual embellishments that exist solely to help players believe they're on an interstellar journey through fantastic, hostile, territory. Metallic pods peeling back like blooming flowers, forcing out a cluster of deadly missiles ahead and leaving their outer shells passively floating in space. One part of one route skims a desolate moon's surface, Star Trader never taking a second's break from the action even as this breathtaking background scrolls into view. Despite the sci-fi skin Star Trader truly was a natural evolution of Falcom's early magic-infused RPGs and adventure games. It's a sincere attempt to combine shmups and interactive stories at a time when doing either one well was a hell of an achievement. Star Trader feels daring and subversive even today—it only could've come from a team that was just passing through the genre instead of trying to make it their company's bread and butter, and it's a great reminder that rules are made to be broken. View the full article

Creative Assembly has published a new video detailing a lengthy list of updates coming to Total War: Warhammer 3 tomorrow, as the studio gears up for release of its Champions of Chaos DLC and beta access to the massive Immortal Empires campaign. Titled "Patch Notes 2.0", the video charts various additions and changes coming to the base game, all of which will be free. First off, the update introduces several new game mechanics to Warhammer 3. This include "Gifts of Chaos" which provide "god-given boosts" to your chosen faction. These can range from enhanced abilities for specific unit-types, to more passive bonuses like extra ammunition for ranged units. There's also a new settlement structure for vassals, and warband recruitment, letting you recruit mercenary units from throughout the realms. A major update has also been made to the Realm of Chaos map, with four new provinces available to conquer. You'll also be able square off against the new Champions of Chaos on the map, although the video points out these characters won't themselves participate in the race to claim Ursun's power. Alongside these mechanical changes, Warhammer 3 has also received some visual touch-ups. The options for occupying cities are now accompanied by faction-specific illustrations, while the war-coordination interface has been refined. More broadly, the game's UI has been tweaked to make it more colourful, which hopefully will also make it more readable. The second half of the video is dedicated to smaller tweaks and bug fixes, such as ensuring that battle reinforcement countdowns are always accurate, and the ability for allied outposts to be built outside their province capitals. There is one other notable announcement toward the end of the video though, which is that for players who have access to the Immortal Empires campaign (i.e., those who own all three Total War: Warhammer games) "all legacy battle content" from the previous two games will be ported to Warhammer 3. While the number of updates mentioned in the video is extensive, it doesn't represent the complete list of changes that will be made by the coming patch. In the video decription, Creative Assembly mentioned that a "massive" changelog is "on the way", which will provide a complete overview of how the game is being updated in preparation for Champions of Chaos and Immortal Empires. On the subject of Immortal Empires, Fraser recently gave Warhammer 3's mega-campaign a whirl, and was utterly enthralled by it. " It should be too big, too unwieldy, and it's certainly very messy and hard to wrap your head around," he wrote in his preview of the beta. "But it's all just brilliant." Somebody better hurry up and add an extra two days into the week, otherwise it looks like there are a lot of late night ahead of me. View the full article

Talking space worms. Ghosts on the moon. Nightmares with guns. Giant magic alien pyramids in places giant magic alien pyramids shouldn't be. Destiny 2 is packed with fantastic ideas that couldn't be more appealing to someone like me, someone who grew up adoring the more mystical side of science fiction—and I had virtually no idea any of these incredible sights were in the game until recently. You see, Destiny 2 may have a story so deep the game has an official historian on staff, but the trouble is it's shattered into a million pieces and scattered who knows where—the game more concerned I kill 25 Fallen using a particular type of gun so I can get a slightly different version of a glove I already have. That's the impression I've been carrying around with me all these years anyway, created from a combination of hazy launch-window memories and Bungie's strangely cold marketing messages—a thousand thrilling sights reduced to, and this is a direct quote from an old "Please come back" email, "A new campaign and a new destination". (Image credit: Bungie) For the first few hours of this second attempt to like the game I was convinced I'd wasted my time and my Steam sale money. Destiny 2's onboarding experience for new and lapsed players kept pushing me between people I barely knew the names of keen on sending me off to do things that didn't really seem to matter all that much. It felt bewildering, directionless… and very familiar. Only when Final Fantasy XI used to do this to me on a daily basis—as I wandered around the Valkurm Dunes or died again in the Horutoto Ruins searching for a very slightly different kind of wall—I didn't call its hard to follow stories and their obtuse progression requirements "shattered". I called them "immersive". I'd log in just to spend some time in beautiful Vana'Diel, savouring a world filled to the brim with hidden secrets and fragments of lore. And that's when I realised everything I wanted from Destiny 2 was already in there, I just needed to bring a retro mindset to a modern game to see it. Striking out To me, Destiny 2 is an old MMO in a shiny new coat, and when I play it using a Ye Olde Onlyne Gyme mindset it shines. The answer to "Where do I go next?" is often "Wherever I like". Many mandatory activities offer a broad range of ways to complete them, free from restrictive 'kill these here' circles shown on a patch of the minimap. My time and my experience are my own and those stories I'd been craving are all around me, in the same way they've been since the dial-up days. They're in my Ghost's patrol dialogue, in Strikes, in idle vendor chatter caught by accident as I mull over the next batch of Bounties. Freshly unlocked lore pages may serve as quiet epilogues to earlier conversations I'd heard over the radio, and absorbing multi-paragraph tales are tucked away in places I'd wrongly assumed were reserved for nothing more than stats and dry descriptive text. I will never unearth it all, and the thought of the game choosing to keep some secrets to itself only makes it more enticing. (Image credit: Bungie) Ragnarok Online is another old MMO with a rich seam of lore hidden under a million layers of grinding and easily clicked through quest dialogue, and even World of Warcraft once encouraged players to stay in one zone for more than ten minutes, learning character names and inching carefully into minor dungeons for fear of aggro trains. Like these, the joy I find in Destiny 2 isn't in methodically checking every box in every list, it's in seeing a mysterious ancient monument or the remains of a broken something in a strange place and slowly gathering a whole host of disjointed rumours, legends, and half-told truths about it. Maybe I'll unravel their mysteries one day. Maybe I won't. Maybe I can't. It doesn't matter—what matters is these features exist in some fashion and enrich the entire solar system with their semi-explained presence. The joy I find in Destiny 2 isn't in methodically checking every box in every list, it's in seeing a mysterious ancient monument or the remains of a broken something in a strange place. Every new piece of information leads to further tantalising secrets, tangentially adding layers of complexity to supposedly 'bland' NPCs and 'pointless' areas that at first appear to serve no greater purpose beyond being a place to shoot aliens in the face. I know there are people working at Bungie who care if I notice these details, and I know they're working hard to weave these little threads I keep picking up into an elegant tapestry even if I don't necessarily have the time or the skill to see it all myself. (Image credit: Bungie) My own Guardian has not been forgotten in this sweeping vista of Light, Dark, and silent Travelers. I've improvised my way through kinetic plot twists that have seen me desperately fighting my way out of Hive-infested territory, lured otherwise invincible enemies into fiery deaths, and thoroughly enjoyed the slight tingle of panic whenever I've had to deal with an objective update containing the word "survive". Bungie's sci-fi shooter has not only given me the chance to read a thousand tales of days gone by and interplanetary enigmas yet to be unwrapped, it's given me the chance to weave a story all of my own as well. Appropriately enough in a game where every player is a resurrected avatar with little to no recollection of their past, Destiny 2 has been transformed because I've finally remembered something I'd forgotten. The game still hopes (in vain) I care a lot about Season Ranks and Light levels and Fireteams, and there's no use denying I'm still using the same guns on the same maps to shoot the same aliens in the face I did the last time around. But now, instead of trying to force Bungie's sprawling space epic into a more modern box it was never meant to go in—an AAA FPS, Halo 2.0, a "theme park" MMO—I'm finally seeing it for what it is; a rich framework I am invited to explore as and how I please, a place where effort is encouraged, curiosity is rewarded, and every small detail may be a fine thread in a much larger tapestry. It's the best of the old ways wrapped up in a new game that's always proud to be itself, and long may it continue to defy the expectations people like me thrust upon it. View the full article

Much is afoot in the dank and dismal world of The Last of Us. The upcoming remake of the original game is coming to PC at some point in the near future, while Naughty Dog is also working on a multiplayer game set in its post-apocalyptic world, although we don't know if that one's coming to PC yet. And, of course, there's HBO's TV adapation of The Last of Us, which you can now watch a whole thirty seconds of, you lucky pups. The footage is bundled into HBO Max's showcase for its upcoming programmes, which you can view aboe. It also includes snippets of Succession, The White Lotus, and an announcement of a new season of Barry. The Last of Us teaser is right at the end of the video, so skip ahead to 1:40 if you just want to see that. It's hard to form much of an opinion based on a few seconds of footage, but the show certainly looks the part, with moody shots of snowy wilderness and sufficiently dilapidated building interiors. Meanwhile, the two leads, Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsay, both seem well suited to their roles. The show is being executive produced by Naughty Dog's Neil Druckmann, alongside Craig Mazin, who previously created the outstanding miniseries Chernobyl. That means it should be a faithful adaptation with an eye for detail, and that certainly seems the case from the available footage. The big question, of course, is whether it'll bring anything new to the story. Either way, the TV show is scheduled to air at some point early next year. The Last of Us Part 1, meanwhile, is due to come to PC "very soon" after the PS5 launch, which is on September 5. View the full article

Since the launch of Total War: Warhammer 3, I've dedicated a substantial portion of my brain to endlessly thinking about Immortal Empires. Despite its diminishing returns, I really dug the weird, experimental Realm of Chaos campaign, but it felt like a starter designed to whet the appetite before the mega campaign's appearance. This is what I was waiting for. And, thank Sigmar, Creative Assembly has delivered. 278 factions and 86 playable legendary lords. That's how many groups are vying for control of Warhammer's battle-scarred world. And what a world. Tiny, one-settlement islands beset by enemies, archipelagos surrounded by shipwrecks, massive continents full of killer deserts, magical forests and mountains shaped like skulls—it's a big, diverse place. (Image credit: Creative Assembly) This collision of three games is, naturally, quite a bit larger than the already mind-bogglingly massive Mortal Empires, but adding all these extra races, factions and landmasses into the brawl does more than just fatten up the campaign. It's also been remixed, with familiar factions moved around to make use of all this extra space and create interesting match-ups. You'll now find undead and dark elf pirates hanging around Cathay, for instance, who make excellent use of the rivers that cut through the empire. It breathes new life into old factions, making it just as fun to start a game with a familiar legendary lord as it is to dive into something brand new. Sowing Chaos Of the new additions, the Chaos armies leave the largest impact. Thanks to Warhammer 3's focus on daemons, Chaos quickly spreads in Immortal Empires, which will be good news for anyone who's grown sick of the Ordertide. The elves, dwarves and humans were much more likely to work together and overtake the forces of Chaos in Mortal Empires, but now they have Nurgle's plagues, Slaanesh's seductive abilities, Khorne's unrelenting armies and the magical powerhouse of Tzeentch to contend with. In my first campaign, I picked one of the new Champions of Chaos factions, the Ecstatic Legions, led by the horny Azazel. The Champions of Chaos are a lot like the armies of the Chaos gods, and in Azazel's case he gets a lot of Slaanesh's tricks, but they also have plenty of their own, like the ability to elevate units. Troops can be transformed from mortal humans into Chaos-infused nightmares, while lords and heroes can eventually become daemon princes. This is the most attached I've become to Total War armies, as I get to watch them grow from a bunch of rowdy Norscans into an army of mutated monstrosities. My big, ugly babies. (Image credit: Sega) Despite the fact that Azazel wants to turn the world into his personal sex dungeon, he's not above diplomacy. In fact, it's his superpower. Just like in the Realm of Chaos campaign, Slaanesh's minions can seduce not just armies but entire factions, building up their seductive influence until they can consume their target. This influence spreads by contact, both diplomatic and violent, so enemies and friends can be turned into vassals against their will. By the time I turned my gaze south, to the Empire and Co, I'd already turned most of the Norscans into loyal vassals, and half of the surviving Dark Elf factions. I was planning to turn the Empire, too, but I ended up being too effective, and wiped them out before my seductive influence had reached the maximum level. I still ended up with the largest collection of vassals I'd ever gathered in a Total War game. And those I didn't consume or conquer, I befriended using more conventional means. Power-up The advantage it gives you feels a lot more pronounced in Immortal Empires, thanks in part to the sheer number of targets you get. Great! I want to feel overpowered when I'm a daemonic monster on a conquest binge. And when I'm fighting said daemonic monster, I want to be terrified that my allies are going to fall to his influence. Immortal Empires is full of stuff that will inevitably be labelled unbalanced, and tweaks are just as inevitable, but hopefully not at the cost of that wonderful, wild asymmetry. Unlike the real world, inequality makes Immortal Empires so much more compelling, whether you're crushing the opposition with massively powerful tricks or struggling against an all-consuming empire that seems impossible to halt. (Image credit: Sega) Performance (Image credit: Sega)One of the biggest surprises in Immortal Empires is that it runs quite smoothly. Performance is comparable to the Realm of Chaos campaign, though obviously the turn times are longer. But even they are pretty good given the scale of the campaign, certainly compared to what they were like when Mortal Empires launched. It's the same with load times—they aren't brief, but with an SSD you won't be waiting long. And while I encountered several bugs, only one of them—a broken quest—had any tangible impact. A big part of Immortal Empire's appeal is the absurdly different abilities of each faction. Not just their comparative strength, though that's certainly welcome, but the way they traverse the world differently, teleporting, travelling underground, dominating land from the ocean; or how they fight, some bombarding enemies with spells, while others refuse to use magic at all. And when the factions clash, it's hard to predict what will happen. A powerhouse in one campaign might be wiped out by turn 50 in another, even the ones with a significant edge. Naturally, players are going to find ways to exploit every advantage and probably break the game in various fascinating and fun ways, but Creative Assembly has clearly considered this, and the solution is a much more interesting way to stop players steamrolling the opposition. Randomised mid and endgame scenarios will appear and freeze your relentless march to victory. A bit like Stellaris's crises, these events shake things up by throwing a huge challenge the player's way, like all the vampire factions rising up in an attempt to occupy their places of power and take over the world. When this one happened to me, I was leisurely mopping up the map and kicking the 'frack' out of some elves. 10 turns later I was fighting for my very survival. (Image credit: Sega) It's a great concept, but I confess I wasn't entirely convinced by it when the vampires first started to kick off. I'd had barely any contact with any vampire faction, and I had no beef with them, so they made for a weird endgame adversary. But as the war progressed, I got to know them very, very well, and developed plenty of grudges, so that by the end I was fully invested in not just stopping their ascension, but wiping them out entirely. And the world changed dramatically as a result. As I focused on the vamps, a combined elven assault gobbled up most of my settlements around what was once the Empire, Bretonnia had become emboldened and started to rapidly expand, while the orcs I'd been palling around with had been completely exterminated. It was disastrous, and I was overjoyed. Empires can collapse in a few turns, and just as quickly old ones can come back from the dead. This constant cycle of death and rebirth sees borders perpetually undulate. Look away for a few turns and you might come back to find a new world. And then there's the stuff you can't see. A massive invasion with world-shaking ramifications could be happening on the other side of the map involving factions you've not even met. It should be too big, too unwieldy, and it's certainly very messy and hard to wrap your head around—there must be a limit to the number of unique faction mechanics the human brain can juggle—but it's all just brilliant. View the full article

My first time playing Realm of Chaos, the default campaign in Total War: Warhammer 3, I had a grand old time. As the daemon prince N'Kari I lured enemy units over to my side on the eve of battle while hopping in and out of interdimensional rifts like I was doing the Time Warp. Then I started a second campaign as Miao Ying, who plays quite differently—defending Cathay's Great Bastion while sending trade caravans out to deal with distant lands. Except that periodically the rifts would open again and I'd have to jump into the Realm of Chaos to fight the same battles I'd fought as N'Kari, then fight back the same daemonic invasions coming through them in my lord's absence. Immortal Empires is one way of alleviating Realm of Chaos fatigue, letting you drop the whole storyline in favor of direct world domination. It's also a serious time investment, demanding you spend hundreds of turns yanking the borders of the map in your direction like you're fighting over a blanket with a partner who keeps hogging it. There is another option. One that won't eat quite so many hours of your life. Some of the DLC for previous Total Wars of the Warhammers included modified campaigns, like the Vampire Coast's quest for magical sea shanties to control a legendary beast. The Champions of Chaos DLC for Warhammer 3, which adds four legendary lords leading Warriors of Chaos factions, does the same. Its campaign follows on from the Realm of Chaos story: the rifts are closed, Ursun the bear god has quit his bellowing, and Archaon the Everchosen is preparing for war. For my first campaign I pick Valkia the Bloody as my legendary lord. The Gorequeen serves Khorne the Axefather, and knows no chill. All her faction's armies get 15% extra movement on the overworld map after winning a battle, and her personal army gets a 35% movement bonus if an enemy retreats. She's relentless, incentivized to never stop fighting—her armies also get the same bloodletting effect as Skarbrand, earning buffs that decay if they stop fighting—and capable of crossing the map at outrageous speed. That sounds like a perfect match for a horde faction, but the Champions of Chaos aren't hordes. They can settle anywhere, and if they take a settlement with a Dark Fortress in it (like the capitals of Norsca), they immediately vassalize a faction. My early turns as Valkia are spent besieging every Norse city within reach, rushing them with marauders and warhounds while Valkia flies directly at their general. One of her abilities gives her a window of invulnerability, so while she takes hits when it's on cooldown and the rest of the army hasn't caught up to her, this tactic literally never fails me. (Image credit: Sega) Before long I earn some Gifts of Chaos, upgrades that include specialists added to a pool of gifted units that can be summoned directly into an army. All the Champions of Chaos are an army type called warbands, which means they recruit troops instantly and don't have to be in a settlement or even the recruitment stance to do it. However, which ones are available and how much they cost depends what territory they're in. You put out the call and marauders ride down from the hills and trolls lumber out of caves to sign up, no hanging around. The Vilitch people Another champion, Vilitch the Curseling, has a foothold on the western end of Norsca. He's a wizard who grows out of the back of his heavily armored conjoined twin in a way that's super gross. I thought the slimy daemons of Nurgle looked upsetting, but these guys are just wrong. (Image credit: Sega) Since my gifted units include Bloodthirsters, greater daemons who are straight-up flying murder machines, I make pretty short work of Vilitch and friends. My mortal troops have leveled-up too, and that means I can upgrade them, giving armor to the trolls and turning the marauders into Chaos Warriors, as well as dedicating them to Khorne so they earn bonuses from my soaring Dark Authority score. Finally, it's time to turn south. The goal of the Champions of Chaos is to earn souls, which are spent on Gifts of Chaos but also activate the dormant rifts scattered across the map. Instead of portals to the Realm of Chaos, once reactivated they become teleporters that let your forces appear directly in someone's face, then stab it. Open enough rifts and you can travel to the lost city of Zanbaijin, claim its altar, and officially declare yourself King 'frack' of Chaos Mountain. (Image credit: Sega) The mortals of Kislev provide a solid harvest of souls. After field battles I get to choose whether to sacrifice the prisoners for souls, and after settlement battles the option to raze them notes it'll give more souls too. (The illustrations for these post-battle options, absent in Warhammer 3 at launch, have returned. Which is nice.) With tribute flowing in from my vassals and no need for settlements to recruit from, I'm free to go on a razing spree—pausing only to take Praag while I recuperate, though now I've got a second army to continue the rampage as I heal up. We are the champions The reason I need that breather in Praag is due to fighting a relatively tricky quest battle. Like all legendary lords, Valkia the Bloody earns unique magic items, including a shield wrapped in the face of a daemon of Slaanesh, via quests ordained as she levels up. These artifacts are worth having to take on a couple of enemies at once. Regular lords and heroes in the Champions of Chaos roster are rewarded through Paths to Glory, conditions that give stat boosts or abilities when met. Winning a battle with two units of Chaos Knights in my army gives my hero vanguard deployment, and once he reaches rank five I can dedicate him to Khorne, though that means lowering his level. I figure it's worth it to get him access to my Dark Authority buffs, but if you don't want to go all out on one god you can have followers dedicated to others or plain Chaos Undivided if you like. (Image credit: Sega) Soon I've got the souls I need to bamf to Zanbaijin and the final battle for the altar, holding it against all comers. Azazel, the Champion of Chaos devoted to Slaanesh, is first to attack, maybe because I'm carrying his mate's face around. I batter him with it, and then do the same to everybody else. Though this battle's a drawn-out finale, I wrap up the campaign in just under 20 hours. On normal difficulty it's not been much of a challenge, which might be down to Valkia's starting position and blunt playstyle. The good thing about that is it leaves time to start another campaign as Vilitch the Curseling, whose magic-heavy focus and ranged units should play pretty differently. We'll see if I make it to the end of this one, but at least I got through one more campaign without having to go through the Realm of Chaos again. View the full article

Need to knowWhat is it? An urban playground where the cars are made of explodium but the tone's not quite as incendiary. Expect to pay: $60/£60 Release date: August 23, 2022 Developer: Volition Publisher: Deep Silver Reviewed on: Windows 10, Ryzen 9 5900X, 32GB RAM, RTX 3080 Multiplayer? Yes Link: Official site Saints Row is a knockabout driving/shooting/flying ragdoll-em-up in which you lead a misnamed gang of sociopaths. The Saints are loveable sociopaths to be fair, who alternate between organised crime and high-spirited hijinx like throwing themselves into traffic for insurance money, and also some light drug trafficking on the side. That's probably the only description I can come up with vague enough to describe every game in the series, including this new reboot, without just saying it's Grand Theft Auto except the jokes are funny. Until now, every Saints Row sequel was more over-the-top than the one before, eventually finding new tops and then somehow over-ing them. Saints Row 2 had a villain with voodoo powers and your sidekick could take on an entire police force solo. Saints Row: The Third made you fight wrestlers, cyberpunks, and zombies, which Saints Row 4 bettered with an alien invasion, while its spin-off Gat Out of Hell had Satan as the final boss. (Image credit: Deep Silver) When fans of SR2 say they miss how grounded it was, they mean they were OK with a game that had motorbike katana duels, but SR3 including a Japanese game show about straight-up murdering people crossed the line. Personally, I enjoyed the escalating wackiness of the series, but it didn't leave itself a lot of places to go. Which I guess is why, instead of making a new Saints Row where you time-travel or establish a branch on an alien planet or something, Volition hit the reboot button. A Saints Row about starting from the ground floor might please people who miss the 'grit' of Saints Row 2, but if the internet is anything to go by they hate it already. The reboot comes with a new cast they despised from the first trailer. Online I've seen these Saints called zoomers and millennials, as well as hipsters, which is an impressive range of meaningless descriptors that all amount to "young people I don't understand." One of the new Saints quit an unpaid internship to become a mechanic for a crime boss, one's a startup entrepreneur who overdosed on motivational TED talks and podcasts, and the other's a DJ who is allergic to wearing a shirt. Meanwhile, you work for a private security firm whose disposable employees often don't survive training. All these characters parody modern archetypes just like the old games' wannabe energy drink mogul, post-hippie stoner, and Auto-Tuned pimp did back when they were relevant. While I don't care about the new crew in the same way as the scoundrels who grew into a close-knit family over the course of the original games, these characters haven't had a bunch of sequels to develop. They're fine. We meet these rebooted Saints at their peak in an intro where they run the city, then spend the next 25 hours in a flashback covering how they got there. That means after fully customising your boss to look like, say, an elderly Batman villain or a mime who has turned to crime, suddenly you're an ordinary schmo with a day job in law enforcement and roommates who are so young they know and care who Doja Cat is. I ended up swapping my carefully designed character for the first preset an hour in because I felt like a miscast actor. Which is a shame, because it's a great character creator in a series known for them. (Image credit: Deep Silver) Even if you stick with a default face, the clothing options let you get fancy with layers, mixing and matching shirts under jackets and socks separately from shoes. That's something Saints Row hasn't done since embracing clothes with physics. The cost is that coats and skirts are noticeably stiff and most of the hairstyles are static, for reasons that became obvious when I tried a ponytail and it clipped right through my face. Still, whether you want your boss to be a leather-jacket badass, bright green doofus, or someone dressed as a taco, Saints Row provides. When I'm wearing a luchador mask and murdering EDM-themed criminals who twirl glowstick shields, Saints Row is a good time. You can shoot while lying prone on top of moving cars, and unlock abilities that let you do gun-fu or jam a grenade down someone's pants then chuck them at a crowd. The takedown animations include gory knife-and-pistol work, but also human torpedoes and a Karate Kid crane kick. (Image credit: Deep Silver) Options to change how it plays are welcome and plentiful, with a menu that should be shown to other games while they sit in the corner and think about what they've done. The GPS arrows that illuminate streets to show you where to go can be turned off or tweaked so they only highlight corners, the minimap can be resized, enemy health changed if you find them too spongy or too weak, ammo scarcity altered, nudity toggled or covered with a variety of humorous censor bars, time limits extended or turned off completely, and more. I was tempted to set mission timers to be more forgiving after a bug made the countdown vanish and I failed one because I didn't realise the clock had started. In the end I didn't actually mess with these settings, apart from the vehicle camera's snappiness. I just appreciate they exist, which is how I feel about the drop-in two-player mode I will also never bother with because leave me alone. (Image credit: Deep Silver) It runs well on PC too, which wasn't a given. To get a decent framerate out of Saints Row: The Third Remastered I had to turn off Windows 10's data execution prevention, and the original version of SR3 is just as quirky about running on modern hardware. Meanwhile, the reboot stays well over 60 fps and looks nicer doing it than early trailers suggested. Some of the corners cut to make that framerate happen are obvious, like the fuzzy hair that makes your cat look like it stepped out of another game, the occasional odd shadow or jagged item of clothing, and the way cars in the middle distance transition to the ethereal plane when they see you coming. The city's not particularly bustling either. Santo Ileso, a desert burg somewhere in the American Southwest, doesn't have the kind of crowded centre that's fun to buzz in a stolen helicopter as you weave between the skyscraper forest. It's so flat I forgot I even had a wingsuit when I wasn't doing the side hustles where you have to use it. (Image credit: Deep Silver) Saint nobody got time for that A hallmark of the Saints Row games is how they connect those open world activities. You never feel like a different character to the one in the main plot when you pull some sidequest mayhem, because you're just as much of a maniac in the cutscenes. And you have to do side stuff to unlock new missions, a push-and-pull that usually means at least one long stretch of chores because you ate too much meat before polishing off your vegetables. That's more aggravating than usual here because the jobs you need to do, called criminal ventures, are the worst they've ever been. Having to drive trucks full of toxic waste to a dump without spilling it gets real tedious, and the returning insurance fraud activity (the one where you run into traffic) is less fun than it used to be. The ragdoll after-touch has been toned down, making it harder to tumble into multiple cars for combos as you flop down the highway like a fish with a death wish. (Image credit: Deep Silver) The best new venture is testing experimental prototypes you get to keep, including a hoverboard and sticky rocket-bombs called thrustbusters that propel targets into the sky like they've been alien-abducted. Apart from that I found myself sticking to vanilla side missions, like stealing food trucks, because the others were so underwhelming. Unlocking these criminal ventures costs increasing amounts of cash too, and spending $400,000 or more on one that turns out to be a dud is a real kick in the teeth. (Honestly, delay the toxic dump one as long as you can.) Compared to spraying sewage on mansions to lower property values or driving a car while being mauled by a tiger who sits in the passenger seat, the reboot's activities seem down to earth. One of them is literally just taking photos. Likewise, apart from the thrustbusters and a foam glove pistol, most of the weapons are real guns, and while there are perks to throw antigravity grenades or summon backup Saints out of thin air, you're only allowed to put four on your ability wheel at a time. (Half the time the backup Saints stand around doing nothing while getting shot anyway.) Saints Row is always at its best when it cuts loose, when it goes full dubstep-gun stupid, and the reboot forgets that for long stretches. When it remembers, you get things like a storyline in which you take part in a citywide LARP, fighting Mad Max roleplayers with foam weapons while dressed in cardboard armour, and that's the kind of daftness it could do with more of. Image 1 of 14 Burger chain Freckle 'witches' has been renamed FB's. The internet thinks this is the end of the world. (Image credit: Deep Silver)Image 2 of 14 Unlockable themes make your crew more distinct. (Image credit: Deep Silver)Image 3 of 14 Kev is allergic to cats as well as wearing a shirt. (Image credit: Deep Silver)Image 4 of 14 The crib gets more luxe as you play. (Image credit: Deep Silver)Image 5 of 14 A variety of censor bars for the connoisseur. (Image credit: Deep Silver)Image 6 of 14 Boats blow up real nice. (Image credit: Deep Silver)Image 7 of 14 OK millennial (Image credit: Deep Silver)Image 8 of 14 References to the original games show up in weapon decals. (Image credit: Deep Silver)Image 9 of 14 Manny? Sorry. Manny? (Image credit: Deep Silver)Image 10 of 14 Turret sections, check. (Image credit: Deep Silver)Image 11 of 14 What have Daft Punk been doing since they disbanded? Crime. (Image credit: Deep Silver)Image 12 of 14 I want this jacket in real life. (Image credit: Deep Silver)Image 13 of 14 Who would have thought the young man to have had so much blood in him? (Image credit: Deep Silver)Image 14 of 14 You cannot pet the cat. (Image credit: Deep Silver) View the full article

Finding the Eye of Horus and placing it on an altar in Trismegistus is an unforgettable event. The entire world fades away before returning as a warped version of itself, cloaked in ominous purple hues. It feels like the kind of trick Trismegistus just shouldn't be able to pull off, considering how it was made: as an original adventure built with the 22-year-old Sword of Moonlight: King's Field Making Tool, a dungeon crawler construction set released on PC by FromSoftware long before Dark Souls or Elden Ring. Building a game with FromSoftware's ancient tools took creator Thomas Eversole "multiple hours out of each day" over six months of toil. The effort shows. Strange monsters await your move on a chess-like floor. Serene pools are replaced with fiery lava. The playable duality only becomes more impressive when you realise that travelling back and forth between these skewed reflections is the only way to make any headway. It's the kind of tricky design FromSoftware would appreciate. Field work These days being made to wander decaying, obtuse worlds bursting with secrets and unforgiving bouts of combat almost surely means you're playing one of FromSoftware's Souls games. Its PlayStation-born King's Field series, which began in the '90s, paved the way for FromSoftware's later successes. Their blocky models and short draw distances—forgivable considering the original debuted the same year 16-bit console owners were rushing out to buy NBA Jam—gave King's Field not only a distinctive look but also an almost symbolic visual language of its very own. Its worlds existed in a dreamlike state somewhere between being perfectly understandable and eternally inscrutable; herbs, chests, and people always immediately recognisable yet never given enough detail to stop our imaginations from eagerly filling in the blanks. Everything we have collectively come to cherish in Dark Souls and now Elden Ring can be traced back to these earlier games: they're demanding, stubbornly refuse to give up anything without a fight, aren't afraid to inconvenience anyone playing... and by some arcane magic, that makes them utterly irresistible. That magic was carefully preserved in the collection of models, textures, settings, and capabilities FromSoftware included in Sword of Moonlight, released for Windows in Japan in 2000. The software appropriately seems to have just as many quirks as the series it came from. "The limitations I encountered all seemed to have an alternative to bypass [it]," says Eversole. "Sword of Moonlight seemed to have a problem with DirectX hardware acceleration and I kept having to toggle it on and off to successfully preview the map and game and use the map editor." (Image credit: From Software) Moonstruck Eversole discovered that Sword of Moonlight's framerate's would tank depending on how areas were connected. There was, of course, an arcane solution. "If Map 0 led to Map 1, and Map 1 led to Map 2, Map 2 would already be showing some major performance issues, and Map 3 from Map 2 would be completely unplayable, or would crash," he says. But if Map 2 and 3 were connected to Map 0 instead? No problem. Many fan games made with Sword of Moonlight, like Dark Destiny and Heir of Granatyki, use the software to craft new adventures in old King's Field worlds, expanding on their locations and fragmented stories as prequels to key events in the often hazy timeline. Going through them, with their remarkable FMV introduction sequences, surprising twists, and obvious love for the series baked into every hidden room and deadly chest mimic, feels less like a walk in the past than a gift to the future. It is 2022, there are still new King's Field games out there waiting to be played, and they've been created by people who understand exactly what it is that makes the series so enthralling. Even MasterTaffer's Return to Melenat—a game that visually echoes the originals so closely it starts you off in the same spot you do in 1995's King's Field 2 (confusingly released in the US as King's Field, since the first game never left Japan)—sparks the imagination. It subtly rebuilds old areas to show them in a whole new light (and to trip up any seasoned hands who wrongly assume they already know how this is going to play out). (Image credit: From Software) Trismegistus is something of an outlier, with more cerebral challenges and outright puzzles that draw from a very different well. "I am a fan of the Myst series as well, and decided to try to make a game like that using Sword of Moonlight," Eversole says, because he wanted to try "pushing the limits" of what it could do. The tonal shift still feels completely fitting, shining a spotlight on King's Field's quiet mastery of environmental storytelling. Every broken pedestal and torch-lit corridor somehow gives the impression they're steeped in lore, and familiar King's Field architecture and enemy models being used in new ways enhances the unsettling feeling that the environment around you is a shattered version of itself. Games built with Sword of Moonlight may look ancient and rudimentary next to Elden Ring, but there's a reason fans are still drawn to the engine all these years later. There's a real art to working with its limitations: the surrounding murk is meant to be enveloping as much as it is a trick to mask limited draw distances. The slow pace is a feature, not a bug. Even ankle-biting spiders must be treated with a healthy mix of fear and respect. These keepers of the old ways have given us the opportunity to once more wander through worlds gaming has left behind, with new, undiscovered places to explore before they too fade into legend. View the full article

If you've ever played Doom and felt like your feet touch the ground too much, then prepare to leap and dash your way to hell and back in The False Angel, a spectacular mod for Doom II that's launching later this week. The mod has you assume the role of Victoria Noire, a "once regular human" whose abilities have been enhanced with some celestial technology. Heavily inspired by Devil May Cry, the mod introduces a wide range of new, ridiculously powerful weapons to Doom. This include ranged weapons like high-powered assault rifles, sniper-rifles, and rapid-fire pistols. But the mod also adds melee weapons, like a pair of blades Victoria can use to slash up enemies and what appears to be some kind of chainsaw-spear for carving at-a-distance. While Devil May Cry is the primary inspiration, The False Angel is also heavily influenced by Doom Eternal, featuring a highly kinetic move-set. Victoria can dash, double-jump, mantle over ledges, and move almost as fast as the bullets she fires. The only feature it's really missing is a bunch of grisly ways to finish off demons, although Victoria can morph into "Angel form" massively boosting her damage output. You can check out the trailer for The False Angel here. The mod is due to launch later this week, specifically August 26. The mod's creator, who goes by D3athStalker, also states that the mod is "compatible with monster mods", meaning you can pack out Doom with extra foes to maximise the carnage. While you wait for The False Angel, there are countless other ways to muck about with id Software's classic shooter. Recent mods for id's classic let you play as Max Payne, blast demons as the cat from stray, and turn Doom into an unofficial Aliens versus Predator sequel. For something more substantial, Wolfenstein: Blade of Agony is one of the most impressive Doom mods ever made, a thirty-level total conversion that's for all intents and purposes a new game. View the full article

The Steam Deck is the single most exciting gaming hardware I've used in years, it just took some quality time with it alone to understand why. Prior to this week I've only had passing contact with a Steam Deck. The portable PC from Valve we received in the office is in a constant tug of war between members of the team as to who gets to play it, and if I'm completely honest I wasn't entirely sure why. From a techie perspective, I appreciate what this parsimonious PC has to offer to a busy or budget gamer, but I didn't really think I'd ever use one myself. I really do think it's a wonderful thing. Jacob Ridley, Steam Deck liker When I'm gaming on a desktop PC with enough power to keep up with today's games, it's tough to see what an embedded iGPU inside a low-power device really has to offer me. It's an intriguing device, no doubt about that, and its software stack of compatibility layers and low-overhead Linux operating systems is mighty impressive, but taking my Steam library on the go in a not-so-discreet plastic chassis just hadn't been convincing enough for the hype train to leave the station on this occasion. I still put down a deposit on day-one to secure the chance to buy a Steam Deck though, even if I wasn't necessarily going to redeem it when the time came. In the months that followed, a stream of updates for the Steam Deck and SteamOS kept my interest piqued. Valve appears dedicated to this little machine, more so than its previous hardware ventures anyways, and the company has been rapidly improving the state of the device. The praises of my colleagues that were spending hours gaming on the device would eventually sway me, too. By the time my ticket came up, I'd made a decision: my partner and I would go splitsies and buy one Steam Deck between us—effectively halving the cost and releasing one unwanted Steam Deck back into the ocean. A solid compromise for a device neither of us were completely sold on. I'm sure glad we made that decision. Since my Steam Deck arrived earlier this week, I've been using it religiously to play a bunch of games I wanted to play but hadn't thought I'd ever get around to. (Image credit: Future) Games such as Vampire Survivors, which is entirely the type of game that's a whole lot of fun to play but not something I would ever sit down at my desktop for the sole purpose of playing. A single-stick survival game, it makes for a perfect casual fling for playing in bed in the evening. Crushing hoards of ghoulish critters with a god-like combo of garlic and dual-wielded whips, with only a single push of an analogue stick, is my idea of a good time, and one that I wouldn't have experienced if it wasn't for the Deck. Though there are plenty of other games I've been playing too, including Strange Horticulture, Paradise Killer, and Hades. These are the type of game that I buy, promise myself that 'this one will be different' and 'I'll definitely find the time', and then never do. I'm sure we all have some in our library like that. Yet these three games are rated 'Great on Deck' and work like a charm even while I'm sitting on the sofa. My Steam Deck has become a vessel for the too-easily side-lined games in my library, and in that way it's quite similar to my Nintendo Switch. However, unlike my Switch, I'm not having to buy these games over again, and I'm just accessing them right from my library where they've been lying dormant for arguably too long. Plus my saves carry over between PC and Deck, which is doubly neat. (Image credit: Future) This isn't an article regarding which is better, the Switch or the Deck. Both are favourites of mine, and if anything I've been quite surprised that the Steam Deck has fit snugly into my life despite owning both a PC and a Switch already. My Steam Deck has become a vessel for the too-easily side-lined games in my library. Jacob Ridley, Steam Deck liker The desk, or lack thereof, is a key part of the appeal of the Steam Deck for me, and it's partially solved an issue with my gaming life ever since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. Yes, in singing praise of the Steam Deck I am going to have to mention the pandemic, but it's had a real impact on my enjoyment of spending an evening 'in' playing games at my desk. That's largely because, since the pandemic, I've been working from behind the same small desk for eight hours a day. The thought of continuing to sit in that same chair for any longer not only gives me cabin fever but makes my spine want to escape my body and find a new host that actually cares about ergonomics. With the Steam Deck being such an easy pick-up-and-play device, it's very neatly, if only partially, solved that issue for me. No more feeling guilty for sitting and playing games at my desk after I'm done with work, which was really starting to seep into my psyche and prevent me from getting all that into some games. (Image credit: Future) Steam in your hands (Image credit: Future, FromSoftware)Steam Deck review: Our verdict on Valve's handheld PC. Steam Deck availability: How to get one. Steam Deck battery life: What's the real battery life of the new device? How loud is the Steam Deck? And will it pass the Significant Other test? Steam Deck - The emulation dream machine: Using Valve's handheld hardware as the ultimate emulator. Admittedly, the Steam Deck isn't perfect. Destiny 2 is still missing-in-action due to anti-cheat shenanigans that may or may not ever be solved, which is a travesty, and the battery life doesn't make it feel like a device that's designed for leaving the house with. It also is far too tempting to use this device almost exclusively for a third playthrough of Disco Elysium, and that probably not be the best use of it. Or is it? Anyways, for letting me slip back into my pre-Covid gaming habits, and to dip my toe back into smaller games between all the major releases, I really do think it's a wonderful thing. Perhaps then this testimony will help someone else on the fence—I wasn't all that convinced at the start of this Steam Deck journey yet I've found its practical use to far surpass my expectations. That's why it's such a genuinely exciting piece of new hardware, and a rather polished one too despite its very recent beginnings. It's not often I run into that in this line of work, strangely enough. View the full article

There is no high quite like the emasculated agony of graphics envy. It was 2007, I was 16 years old, and still fully bound to the limitations of the Xbox 360 and PS3 in the bedroom. The hand-me-down laptop whirring on the desk could barely handle Battlefield 1942, much less the relentless tempo of speedy processors dutifully obsoleting the seventh generation of home consoles. Still, I voraciously tore through the games press, reading up on the mouthwatering vistas that were enthusiastically unavailable on a Dualshock, essentially as a way to torture myself. The primary object of my obsession? Supreme Commander. Gas Powered Games' watershed RTS arrived with exactly one selling point; this thing was a beast, and you should be jealous if you couldn't run it. And so, I binged the 360p E3 preview footage of Supreme Commander on my sad, dinky laptop, which seemed to wheeze and gag at the mere sight of all of the quicksilver troops swarming over the skirmish fields. So close, and yet so far. (Image credit: Square Enix) It sounds strange now, but there was a time in the mid-2000s where every GPU benchmark was set by the latest round of RTSes—much in the same way that Sony shows off new Playstation tech with rain-slicked Lamborghinis in a sumptuous Gran Turismo suite. If you grew up almost exclusively on consoles like I did, you became accustomed to this beautiful heartache when the PC class laps whatever third-party ports emanating from the family TV. 2007 was the apex of the cycle. Here I was stuck with, like, Mercenaries 2 while the adults in the room ran circles around us with the finely modelled tools of destruction deployed by Crytek and Relic. As I soaked up those titanium-plated mechs and supersonic bombing runs of the gorgeous Supreme Commander dystopia, I made a private pact that should be familiar to the many other young men reading this story. Someday, I too will dump a ton of my hard-earned income into a top-tier gaming rig, and then I'll never be left in the dust ever again. It goes without saying that the Alienware Aurora below my desk is more than capable of running Supreme Commander in 2022. This machine just chewed through Elden Ring, Battlefield 2042, and Forza Horizon 5 without a hitch; I put my money where my mouth was. There is something darkly satisfying about returning to a videogame that was once a GPU showcase after much time has passed—much in the same way a crosstown rival relishes the chance to get their revenge on a formerly great sports team. Supreme Commander creaks out of my Steam library with none of the expected orthodoxies of the last 15 years. The resolution sputtered to fit the aspect ratio of a widescreen monitor, any stray alt-tabbing was guaranteed to lead to a lock-up, and I actually needed to slow down my mouse cursor speed to molasses levels in order to cut down on the 120fps whiplash. At last, after the humiliation of my Xboxified youth, revenge was finally mine. But at what cost? (Image credit: Square Enix) Blowing off the dust Gamers have rarely asked for much from a graphical standout beyond their aesthetics. Simply watching Supreme Commander run was half the appeal in its heyday, so I was not surprised that the campaign offered me a few paragraphs of sparse flavour text before dumping me into the barren grasslands crucial to the RTS experience. The missiles are supposed to do the heavy lifting, right? So, a few power generators and mass extractors later, the war machine was up and running, and I was ready to make good on a derelict promise I made with my teenage self. But reader, just look at what time hath wrought. The starchy textures of the earth stretched out in every direction, featureless and bland, almost Cruelty Squad-like in its disorienting uniformity. The tank-shaped blobs that steadily pumped out of my munitions factory looked better, but not by much. They encircled the rival base and peppered it with raw, pixelated smoke and fire. It would've been right at home on the App Store, advertised in the bleakest corners of the web. How can that decay happen so quickly? Supreme Commander hasn't even celebrated its 20th anniversary, and yet its prime attribute has been absolutely obliterated by the PC power curve. A chill ran up my spine as I realised that this fate has probably befallen all of its peers; after all, it's been a while since I've seen Crysis up close, too. You really can build anything, which means you need to be scared of everything. Maybe this is a fitting fate. I have a faint memory of RTS diehards dismissing Supreme Commander while it was still at the peak of its influence, complaining that the game was more sizzle than steak compared to its deeper, but considerably uglier peers. (After all, Company of Heroes came out a year before.) I would never claim to be an expert of the genre, but after surviving the temporal horror of the boot-up, where it becomes excruciatingly clear that we're all deteriorating right alongside the video games we used to play, I can say for certain that Gas Powered Games got a bad rap. The studio was clearly in love with their tech, and gave the player ample opportunity to fill the screen with as many troops as possible. It's a philosophy that produced a gaucheness that likely turned off some of the traditionalists. My favourite quirk? Anyone can send an engineer into a blazing firefight where it can happily plop down a fresh manufacturing operation totally divorced from any adjacent resources or supply lines. Are you being victimised by bombing raids? No problem, just encircle yourself with a battalion of flak cannons anywhere on the map. These are the sort of firefights dreamt up by the most perverted Warhammer sickos; an endless tide of shocktroopers born into battle and living five-second lives. (Image credit: Square Enix) Step on the gas So yes, Supreme Commander is a little bit silly, but only as a way to summon up the primal joys of real-time strategy. If Mortal Kombat is a grotesque celebration of 100-hit combos and old-school arcade depravity, then this studio wished to celebrate the full-scale pyrotechnic throwdowns that define our favourite tactical successes. I never really loved managing an economy in the first place, and slamming up against the guardrails as I was trying to produce a legion of Mutalisks in various harebrained StarCraft schemes. Gas Powered Games was entirely disinterested in beating around the bush, and instead allowed players to prioritise whatever warfighters they want so long as the energy ratio is pointing up. Perhaps that's why there's still a small, dedicated Supreme Commander community crashing into each other on the desiccated servers. I became absolutely terrified to play them the deeper I got into the campaigns. There are so many bizarre strategic curveballs in this game, and that has undoubtedly consolidated into an abstruse meta that would leave me pantless and sobbing against even the most casual opponents. You really can build anything, which means you need to be scared of everything. (Image credit: Square Enix) Campaign trip That was fine with me though, because it's been years—maybe even decades!—since I sat down with an old-fashioned RTS solo story. You know what I'm talking about; disembodied voices hovering over NPC megabases, a foreboding mission timer in the corner of the HUD counting down to a game-losing assault, the developers desperately squeezing any potential varietal out of what will always be a fairly straightforward premise. (Destroy the enemies halfway around the map. Leave no survivors. Prepare for a crippling counterattack.) It all took me back to a happier place. In one level I was supposed to use an air transport to hoist a crucial unit over some distant mountains that bracketed the map into two theatres. First though, I needed to rout the mobile anti-air cannons patrolling the no-man's land. Out came the tanks, blasting through the heavy steel, avenging all of my doomed pilots. That's the sweet spot for me: an RTS objective that doubles as a weird, rock-paper-scissors logic puzzle. If it's been a while since you've indulged in that erstwhile gaming pleasure, then I highly suggest coming home to Supreme Commander. Honestly, that was my primary takeaway from the game, as it slowly morphed from an artefact of GPU lore to, well, an ordinary piece of outmoded software. This industry is cruel to its ancestors, especially those that once annihilated the motherboards of yore. In fact, I'd reckon that most people's relationship with Supreme Commander was one of inaccessibility—a faint idea of wondrous gaming superiority, something to flaunt over the plebs. All of that macho posturing has gracefully evaporated, leaving behind a very good RTS with a lot of neat systems, coming off more like an underdog indie project rather than the harbinger for a new era of PC engineering. In 2022 Supreme Commander is ugly, janky, and hopelessly out of step with modernity, but at least the giant robots explode in a nuclear fireball when they're killed. It was awe-inspiring in 2007, and now comes off kind of quaint—videogames in its primal adolescent period. Surely it is only a matter of time before another high-budget opus laps whatever I've got simmering under the hood, provoking a stressful search for a few extra gigs of RAM. That trick will keep working on me forever, and I'm all the happier for it. View the full article

Slime Rancher 2, the sequel to Monomi Park's 2017 hit about farming amorphous gelatinous blobs, will squelch onto PC in early access in September. It's a direct sequel to the original game, continuing the slime wrangling adventures of Beatrix LeBeau, and featuring a similar mixture of exploration, building, farming, and of course, collecting sparkling slime poo to sell for cash. But Slime Rancher 2 will move away from the first game's setting of the Far Far Range, to a new location named Rainbow Island. It's also significantly prettier than the original, which was pleasant enough visually, but had fairly basic environments. Naturally, Rainbow Island will have a host of new slimes to collect, such as the rabbit-like cotton slime, or the somewhat sinister-looking angler slime. As with the first game, these slimes can be cross-bred to create new-types of slimes, which is presumably still done by feeding one slime's, uh, leavings to another type of slime. Yummy! According to Slime Rancher 2's Steam page, the sequel's early access version will launch with "a big world to explore, many different slimes to collect and combine, and an introduction to the game story and the mystery behind Rainbow Island." Monomi Park also anticipate the game will remain in early access for "at least 18 months" specifying that "we have a lot of content planned for version 1.0 and are a no-crunch studio, so we will give development the time it needs". Slime Rancher 2 launches into early access on September 22, on both Steam and the Epic Games Story. If you've got a Game Pass subscription, it's also available day one on Microsoft's subscription service. View the full article

Warner Bros' character brawler MultiVersus has taken the industry by storm since it arrived in open beta last month. But the scale of its popularity was recently confirmed by analytics group NPD, which reported that Multiversus was the top-selling video game of last month, despite only landing on Steam on the 19th. MultiVersus is a free-to-play game, but alongside in-game microtransactions, Warner Bros also sells an array of Founders Packs for the game, which give players "character tickets" used for unlocking fighters. It was these Founders Packs which apparently launched MultiVersus to the top of the sales charts. The success of MultiVersus knocked Elden Ring down to second place, only the second time this year that From Software's fantasy phenomenon hasn't been in top spot. The massive RPG remains the overall top-seller for the year, however, with Namco Bandai reporting the game has sold almost 17 million copies since its launch in February. There's one important caveat to these rankings. While NPD's chart takes into account both physical and digital sales for most games, digital sales are not registered for the two Nintendo titles on the list, namely Xenoblade Chronicles 3 and the eternally popular Mario Kart 8, placed at fourth and seventh on the list. It also doesn't track Xbox and Digital sales for MLB: The Show 22, which ranks sixth. In any case, it's impressive stuff from developer Player First Games, although having every single character from everybody's childhood available to play as has probably helped MultiVersus gain traction. Nonetheless, it's is an undeniably solid brawler too. In her recent review, Mollie said "MultiVersus has done a bang-up job of laying the foundations for a fantastic platform fighter that has the potential to blossom into something amazing". View the full article

Have you heard of Sisyphus? I bet you have. He's the lad from Greek mythology who twice cheated death, so Zeus, king of the gods and occasional horny swan, cursed him to repeatedly roll a big rock up a hill for all eternity. Every time he reached the top, down the rock would roll back down and Sisyphus would start again. Which is bad. But what if, let's suppose, Sisyphus secretly loved rolling rocks? What if rolling rocks up hills, however repetitive, was as fun as shooting robots in Binary Domain? What then, Zeus? It's perhaps not a question that's troubled classical scholars, but it's relevant here. Because my memory of Binary Domain is vague and hallucinatory, like something from a Michel Gondry music video. I recall a game that scored 70%, lost 5 points for repetition and another 10 for poopoo boss battles, then clawed 20 back in hindsight for being a laughable cult classic. But I remembered it wrongly. Actually, the rock-rolling element of Binary Domain is simply magnificent. If Zeus cursed me to shoot olive robots in neo-Tokyo for the rest of time, only for a fresh dropship of enemies to arrive at the end of every level, I'd pretend to be sad so he didn't find a more upsetting punishment. (Image credit: Sega) The base game of Binary Domain is deeply satisfying—a burly, competent cover shooter with an infectious central gameplay loop. It's wonderful seeing glittering shards of scrap metal going flying off your robot foes. Most standard enemies are the right kind of slow and stupid, just agile enough to make you feel good about yourself when you explode their shiny metal heads. It makes me realise the only thing wrong with Binary Domain is that it tries to do too much, fussing and fluffing like an anxious vicar about to meet the head of the Women's Institute. But instead of offering an unnecessary proliferation of iced buns, Binary Domain insists on execrable boss battles and broken squad comms. Turrets syndrome It's like a TV Tropes page for third-person shooters. It's not enough that there are turret sections; they have to happen during boss battles and also incorporate a tedious reloading mechanic and blundering NPC interaction. There's a bit where you have to fight poison gas and security droids in a futuristic cannabis farm, shooting 'frack' you can't see while your suffocating teammate shouts at you. You even get to ride a Jetski out of a sewer, like Terminator and Police Academy 3 had sex and made a setpiece. There's far more variety here than I'd ever trust my brain to accurately remember. I would never have believed, for example, there was a bit where my team trundled around a car factory in little pods, like armed revellers in an unfurnished ghost train, but there it is. The problem is that most of these diversions are less fun than charging forward into cover and shredding metal enemies with a machine gun, but on occasion it bangs. The section on an elevated monorail, for example, is exhilarating, even if it is just a fast corridor with windows. I also have a special place in my heart for the cast of Binary Domain. Protagonist Dan Marshall is one of gaming's great dickheads. Controlling him is like playing as a Kevlar fistbump—a no-hands wheelie of a man whose favourite phrase is ‘holler if you're dead'. You get to carve out some of his personality via custom responses to your team's questions, but answering with anything even vaguely polite seems like a betrayal. But Dan seems positively nuanced compared to the rest of the team. We have Cain, a French robot who sounds like Poirot trapped in next door's dustbin; and Commander Charles Gregory, a character who's 70% posh British first names and 30% romantic lead from a Netflix Christmas film. Elsewhere there's a short-haired demolitions expert Rachel, whose character type is ‘the one you're not supposed to fancy', except I do; and Big Bo, a crayon drawing of an African American who's like someone gave an ice-cream truck guns and taught it how to party. (Image credit: Sega) Faye accompli Any attempt to add depth to the characters in Binary Domain is slightly undermined by the limited trust system. You build rapport with teammates by killing enemies with them and saving them when they're downed, but there's a conversational element, too. It's fun, even if your options are mostly limited to ‘yes', ‘no', and ‘dammit', and you mostly win points for agreeing with everything they say. Yes, inequality is bad. No, we shouldn't start shooting up the coffee shop. There's even a bit where you get universal approval from your team by not agreeing to romance a 15-year-old girl, which seems like rather a low bar, even for a throbbing gonad like Dan Marshall. It's clumsy, but it does add some welcome texture. There's also some interesting stuff with Faye, an impeccable sniper from the Chinese People's Liberation Army, who also acts as a love interest for Dan. The story goes to some unexpected places, asking questions about machine intelligence and what it means to be human, but it ends up feeling like the cup noodle version of a Kojima cutscene. Deep existential questions are avoided in favour of romance. Choices are made because Dan fancies someone, not because he's reevaluating the fine line between sentience and AI. And honestly, I'm sort of fine with it. It feels like a very Binary Domain way to deal with debates about transhumanism. There are some bits that simply don't work. For whatever reason, I couldn't get voice commands to function, so my first forays into the game were amazingly awkward. Bo would ask me a simple question and we'd have an excruciating pregnant pause while he waited for an answer. Yes, Bo, we should shoot the robots. In the end I had to turn voice commands off completely, but not before I got to try the calibration tool, which deserves a mention just because the choice of words—'frack', damnit, shitdamnit—is telling. Pad integration, if you chose to live that way, is shaky, too: onscreen prompts are still mapped to the keyboard, which adds an unwelcome layer of danger when it comes to in-game conversation. I managed to press the wrong button after a romantic cutscene with Faye and called her an idiot, which felt like too much of a jerk move even for Dan. (Image credit: Sega) Other wrinkles are more frustrating. There are moments when you're peppered by missiles from unseen enemies. Squadmates strafe into your line of fire then complain about it. And, on occasion, ammo can be frustratingly scarce, which feels like a terrible sin for a game with shooting this gleeful. The signposting is also terrible. It eschews in-game highlights in favour of dragging camera focus, which simply doesn't work. It's vague and frustrating, yanking your attention away from the action like a violent toddler holding hair straighteners. But despite all this, I absolutely forgive Binary Domain. I love its lunkheaded, clumsy honesty. I love the crisp, metallic cleanness that you only seem to get with games from the early 2010s, like a shiny, favourite shirt that's been ironed too many times. And, in fact, maybe I'm looking at it the wrong way. The misguided diversions that stop me doing the thing I adore—basically destroying green robots until my PC becomes obsolete—actually make those bits more appealing. Perhaps there's an alternate version of Binary Domain where I don't have to fight a robot gorilla too many times or get chased by electric spiders, and it actually makes me love the shooting less. The lesson here? Maybe all Sisyphus needed to appreciate his eternal punishment was a day spent rolling lots of different, smaller, more annoying rocks up the same hill. View the full article

Save your Wordle win streak with my helpful clue for the August 22 (429) challenge, or simply scroll a little further down the page to view the answer to today's Wordle. However you wish to tackle the Wordle of the day, I'm here to help. From the clues I'd built up over my guesses the answer to today's Wordle could've been the word I initially went for… except it wasn't. It was only through pure luck I had enough tries left to go for a different option, but if pure luck leads to a win, then I'll take it. Wordle hint Today's Wordle: A hint for Monday, August 22 If something possesses good or praiseworthy qualities, or if someone has behaved in an especially honourable way, then they're considered to have today's word. Another way of using today's answer is as a replacement for "advantages" or a similar positive term when describing something's good points. Wordle help: 3 tips for beating Wordle every day If there's one thing better than playing Wordle, it's playing Wordle well, which is why I'm going to share a few quick tips to help set you on the path to success: A good opener contains a balanced mix of unique vowels and consonants. A tactical second guess helps to narrow down the pool of letters quickly.The solution may contain repeat letters. There's no time pressure beyond making sure it's done by midnight. So there's no reason to not treat the game like a casual newspaper crossword and come back to it later if you're coming up blank. Wordle answer (Image credit: Josh Wardle) What is the Wordle 429 answer? Not enough guesses left to find those greens? The answer to the August 22 (429) Wordle is MERIT. Previous answers Wordle archive: Which words have been used The more past Wordle answers you can cram into your memory banks, the better your chances of guessing today's Wordle answer without accidentally picking a solution that's already been used. Past Wordle answers can also give you some excellent ideas for fun starting words that keep your daily puzzle solving fresh. Here are some recent Wordle solutions: August 21: WASTEAugust 20: TREATAugust 19: SHRUGAugust 18: TWANGAugust 17: TWICEAugust 16: GRUELAugust 15: POKERAugust 14: KHAKIAugust 13: HUNKYAugust 12: LABEL Learn more about Wordle Every day Wordle presents you with six rows of five boxes, and it's up to you to work out which secret five-letter word is hiding inside them. You'll want to start with a strong word like ALERT—something containing multiple vowels, common consonants, and no repeat letters. Hit Enter and the boxes will show you which letters you've got right or wrong. If a box turns ️, it means that letter isn't in the secret word at all. means the letter is in the word, but not in that position. means you've got the right letter in the right spot. You'll want your second go to compliment the first, using another "good" word to cover any common letters you missed last time while also trying to avoid any letter you now know for a fact isn't present in today's answer. After that it's just a case of using what you've learned to narrow your guesses down to the right word. You have six tries in total and can only use real words (so no filling the boxes with EEEEE to see if there's an E). Don't forget letters can repeat too (ex: BOOKS). If you need any further advice feel free to check out our Wordle tips, and if you'd like to find out which words have already been used you'll find those below. Originally, Wordle was dreamed up by software engineer Josh Wardle, as a surprise for his partner who loves word games. From there it spread to his family, and finally got released to the public. The word puzzle game has since inspired tons of games like Wordle, refocusing the daily gimmick around music or math or geography. It wasn't long before Wordle became so popular it was sold to the New York Times for seven figures. Surely it's only a matter of time before we all solely communicate in tricolor boxes. View the full article