Новости за 01.05.2024

Starfield’s biggest update since the Bethesda space game came out last year (remember that?) is arriving in a couple of weeks - with its Steam beta already live now, if you’re interested in poking around. The chunky patch finally tidies up the game’s oft-complained about surface maps to make them easier to navigate, as well as introducing new difficulty options, a decoration mode for the inside of ships and a bunch of other tweaks and fixes.

Good news! There’s a new Batman: Arkham game on the way that’s not Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. (Potentially) not-so-good news! It’s a virtual reality game that you’ll only be able to play if you own a Meta Quest 3. Hmm.

Your feelings on Funko Pop probably fall into one of two categories: you either hate the black-eyed, copy-paste figures modelled on pop-culture characters with a burning passion, or you own enough of them to construct a small fortress and defend your newfounded Funko nation from the government. Either way, it looks like the first video game starring the ubiquitous toy collectables might somehow scratch your itch.

While they ponder which developers should face the difficult task of following up one of the most acclaimed games in a long time by making a sequel by Baldur's Gate 3, the makers of Dungeons & Dragons are also putting their own money into making video games themselves. Over a billion dollars of their own money, in fact.

Last month, GTA 6 publishers Take-Two Interactive announced plans to "rationalize" their "pipeline" by laying off five per cent of their workforce - around 580 people - and cancelling various games. As part of that, they're reportedly now doing away with 70 positions at their Seattle offices - Seattle being the home of the Take-Two-owned Intercept Games, the current developers of space sim Kerbal Space Program 2.

The Amazon Gaming Week sale kicked off on Monday, although you wouldn't know looking at the Amazon homepage. Despite little fanfare, however, there are some good discounts on gaming hardware and accessories to be had. These limited-time deals will run until 5th May, or until they sell out.

4X-meets-real-time-strategy game Sins Of A Solar Empire 2 will finally launch on Steam this summer, Stardock and Ironclad Games have announced, a couple of years after going into technical early access on Epic Games Store. I loved the first Sins and so did Kieron Gillen (RPS in peace) whose 16-year-old review dwells appreciatively on the spectacle of cruisers and frigates bouncing to hyperspace on the very edge of a solar system. We don't seem to have written about the second one - time to change that, I guess. Читать дальше...

Last week a Catholic media ministry (not sure what that is but okay) called Catholic Answers created a generative AI priest chatbot called Father Justin. Fr. Justin used a large language model to answer questions about the Catholic church and Catholic orthodoxy, and if you have any familiarity with how people love to test AI chatbots - or you read the headline of this article - then you know where this is going. Fr. Justin, who was already kind of controversial anyway, offered the sacrament and claimed to be a real priest to Futurism... Читать дальше...

Following a report by Game Developer on the ESA’s refusal to budge during a hearing on easing copyright restrictions around academia’s remote access to legacy games, Deus Ex creator Warren Spector has written for the website on his own frustrations with, and efforts to aid, game preservation. Channeling some of the classic immersive sim resourcefulness he helped pioneer, he writes that he’s “literally dumpster dived to retrieve information other developers have simply thrown away, believing it... Читать дальше...

Yesterday, coinciding with the release of the Thrones of Decay DLC, Total War: Warhammer 3 jumped 90 places in the Steam charts, trailed closely by the three lord packs that make up the strategy game's latest expansion. Those lord packs are now the three top rated expansions in the series’ history, and the base game itself saw a huge uptick in positive reviews. The last day also saw a peak player count of around 66,000, putting it ahead of giants like Palworld, Rimworld, and Fallout 76. None of this would be especially notable... Читать дальше...

A player-run troupe of actors will be performing an adaptation of Richard III in Fallout 76, featuring a "ghoul" in the lead role. They're partly inspired by the recent Fallout TV show, which puts a jaded cowboy ghoul in a pivotal role and has led to an increase in players of the online multiplayer RPG. This production will likely be more faithful to the bard than to Amazon Prime. It will open with the line: "Now is the nuclear winter of our discontent."

We learned a bit about Deep Rock Galactic's upcoming Season 5 update a few weeks ago, and now we know a bit more thanks to a Ghost Ship dev stream. Not only has it gifted us details on the new mission type and the new season event, it's also given us an idea of when we might see Season 6 emerge. I suppose you could liken the stream to a bushy Dwarven beard, from which the devs pluck out announcements like it's show and tell. And the show and tell is set in a dingy mine. And there are multiple pints involved. Читать дальше...

The high-fidelity rustic hurly-burly of Manor Lords is all very well, but some of us yearn for a simpler and perhaps, more elegant age, when city builders looked like a bunch of copulating squares, and could run on PCs with approximately the computing power of a slice of bread (toasted, but not buttered). Step forward Mini Settlers, which has a free prologue version you might try if you're weary of Manor Lording, or you've already exhausted the play possibilities of early access Franconia.

Microsoft's Xbox summer showcase in June will reportedly include a hefty post-show segment on the next and currently untitled Call Of Duty, alongside release dates for such first-party headliners as Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, Avowed and Indiana Jones And The Great Circle. As rumoured in April, they're also apparently going to show off a new Gears Of War game. Nice to see the COG and Locust still getting work.

I'm not sure how I, a committed Getting Over It With Bennett Foddy fan, managed to miss A Difficult Game About Climbing. It is, like its obvious inspiration, a difficult game about climbing, but here you're using your arms independently to grip and hoist yourself rather than hooking and swinging a pickaxe. It is, also like its obvious inspiration, frustrating and moreish, like a scab you keep picking at.

Square Enix have announced 22.1 billion yen (around £112m) in "content abandonment losses" for the fiscal year ending March 2024. The loss is the result of the publisher being "more selective and focused in the allocation of development resources," suggesting they have cut funding to or cancelled undisclosed projects.