Graham Dunning has done songs and live performances for a few years now, and he’s about to release a whole album of it. Which I guess is why he’s treating us to Twitch streams like this: [n.b. I’ve since replaced the archived stream with a highlights video cos Twitch killed the full one] That was cracking, that. Often he just played Half-Life, letting the music be whatever came out when he played....
This is nothing, though. This is a terrible level of excitement in comparison to abusaad3, who is more up for Elden Ring than anyone on this planet. To prove it, they’re doing a no-hit boss challenge each day in Dark Souls 3 until Elden Ring is released. This is phenomenal levels of dedication and I am very here for it.
There’s no video of it by its maker MrFace, so here’s YouTuber AviationSimulation driving around various locales for an hour with (I think) no narration: As I say in the headline: it looks just good enough. Juuuuuuust. Flight Simulator’s recreation of planet earth is astonishing and gets better with each update, but it’s designed to be viewed from thousands of feet in the sky. Buildings and vistas still look pretty good from ground level, but you quickly spot the errors in its tree placements and the blurriness of its ground textures....
And it was a bit weird, which is sometimes enough. It depicts a frankenstein cast out by villagers, left to wander the wilderness, across forests and mountains, still peppered with arrows, turning up at a sinister tower that seems to welcome them. And just a few minutes in, it reveals itself as a mystery puzzle game with bullet hell parts. Almost none of this is my thing at all, but here I am playing it....
For the longest time I kept mixing up this and Splitgate, the Halo-with-Portals shooter that came out a few weeks ago. It’s also not to be confused with Quantum League, a more cartoon-y shooter with similar time looping mechanics. In Lemnis Gate, matches take place inside time loops. Rounds are turn-based, and you have 25 seconds to make your move - shooting someone, repositioning, setting up a teammate, that sort of thing (or all of the above if you’re quick)....
As with the originals, the remaster puts you in the sneakers of pro skaters shredding old warehouses and parking lots while nailing tricks that you probably shouldn’t be trying at home. They’ve got more pixels this time around, but there’s more than that. The Create-A-Park and Create-A-Skater features have both gotten a buff up as well, Vicarious Visions say. For putting your parks together, they say you’ll have a “robust editor that allows for park customization like never before, such as Smart Pieces that can be molded and twisted in insane ways....
There’s a new trailer showing the quality of life updates coming to Total War: Rome when the remaster releases later this month. The quality of life for all these tiny men being stabbed doesn’t seem that great, honestly. Otherwise, the list of tweaks is long, and less focused on graphical upgrades than “hey, you can make the UI bigger now.” You know, the stuff that really matters. There’s an enhanced camera, tweakable rulesets, Steam Workshop support, sixteen new playable factions, map overlays, a modern tutorial… It goes on....
This is our first time getting a look at Warhammer 3’s campaign map, which covers territory “from the frozen wastes of Kislev to the deadly Mountains of Mourn and the isolated lands of Grand Cathay.” The map seems a lot larger and more detailed than that in Warhammer 2. Trees are less flat, mountain ranges are dotted with details like giant skeletal ribcages, wide rivers cut across the terrain, and there’s variety as it stretches from snowy plains to flowing lava mountains....
Called “Vera 2.0”, the update seemingly adds a new area called Vera, which mostly consists of a desert excellently called Gobby in which you’ll find a huge cyberpunk city called Mirroria. Mirroria, or Mirror City, is the floating pyramid structure seen in the trailer above, inside which you’ll find neon-lit skyscrapers and flying cars. The video also shows a few new characters, including Ruby, a Flame Simulacrum whose weapon is a friend named Sparky....
Perhaps my increasing apathy is what prompted the creation of Trackmania Royal mode, which adds spinning pads on plastic platforms which knock you into water, and which looks a lot like Fall Guys. Here’s the trailer from tonight’s Ubisoft Forward pre-show: As a set of additions to the game, I’m into it. Royal mode is designed for team play, where the last team standing is the winner. It adds bouncy water, plastic blocks, animated items (which I’m surprised to realise it didn’t have already), and a summery theme of track parts to build with....
Turbo Overkill is what I imagine you’d get if Doom were set in a cyberpunk city, which isn’t surprising considering that Prebble spent 15 years working on the Doom 2 mod Total Chaos. During my time with the game, I ripped and tore my way through a stunning maze of neon high rises called Paradise. Instead of demons, you’re beasting your way through a cyber city full of criminals with techy augmentations that a rogue AI has taken control of....
Twitch apparently liked the suggestion put forward by Sean “Day9” Plott of creating a pool of shocked face emotes and having a random one chosen each time the PogChamp emote is used. They’ve not done exactly that, but they are crowdsourcing faces. “In the spirit of figuring out 2021 together,” they say, Twitch will have a shiny new global PogChamp every 24 hours. First up as the new PogChamp appears to be Kenny “UnRooolie” McWild who tossed up his face up for consideration as a possible replacement....
The accusations are distressingly familiar. Sending sexual pictures unsolicited to fans and colleagues. Rape. Physical assault. Using their status to pressure people. Sabotaging employment opportunities for women who wouldn’t sleep with them. Starting sexual conversations with minors. Being controlling and abusive in relationships. Gaslighting. Cheating on partners with fans. Taking and sharing nude photos of people without their consent. And more problems endemic in society. Allegations started on Twitter amongst the Destiny 2 streaming community last week, and accusations have been made against dozens of streamers, from relative unknowns to some with hundreds of thousands of followers....
“Our ambition from the start has been to release Two Point Campus across all PC and console platforms simultaneously to the quality and standard that our community expects from us. This means we will need a little bit more time with Two Point Campus to make sure we deliver the best possible game that can be enjoyed equally on all platforms,” said game director Mark Webley in Two Point’s announcement....
Among them, Two Strikes, pictured above. It’s the sequel to One Strike, and must be a contender for Biggest Series Glow-Up. Here’s a trailer: Like, dang. For context, the first game in the series, One Strike, had perfectly acceptable IK+-style pixel art. Two Strikes switches it out in favour of stark, painted backgrounds and readable, black-and-white line drawing characters. Even the character select screen looks gorgeous: It remains, like the original, a fast-paced fighting game where opponents can be defeated in just one or two hits....
While some other countries have approved the buyout, the three most important regulators (US, UK, EU) are all on the same page with a thumbs down. Last December, the US Federal Trade Commission moved to block the deal, arguing it would suppress competition in the console market alongside emerging business models like cloud gaming and subscription services such as Game Pass. Microsoft were hoping to finish the deal by the end of their fiscal year in June, but that seems unlikely as the FTC hearings are scheduled to begin on August 2nd....
This week’s theme is Call Of Duty: Vanguard flavoured, thanks to the campaign mode I reviewed early in the week. We question whether FPS games with a strong multiplayer focus need story modes anymore. What do you reckon? And to round things off, I look at a random site with suggested CoD names under different categories: funny, cool, and clan. Turns out they all don’t quite fit into any of their categories and are, in fact, a bit naff....
Then we dive into our theme of the week, which sees Imogen guide me through D A R K lore. Turns out Overwatch and Valorant’s heroes and agents aren’t as heroic as they seem. I mean, I now know why Widowmaker is blue. I thought she was an alien being or something, but clearly not. Then to round things off, I surprise Imogen with three player names I’ve encountered recently....
Uther is a sort of cross between Obi-Wan Kenobi and Bean Dad, who in Warcraft lore does such a piss-poor job of mentoring young Prince Arthas, that the geezer only goes and becomes the Lich King. Over the eight battles of Uther’s story, the paladin himself narrates these events from his perspective, and some insights are gleaned: Uther used to be a priest. Uther really, properly despises orcs (in a way that gets quite uncomfortable to listen to)....
Our Valheim cheats and console commands list will show you how to use the console and unlock cheat codes, along with an explanation of every console command available. We’ve also detailed every single spawn item command that we know to be available in Valheim. On this page: How to use the Valheim console (post-patch) Valheim cheats and console commands list Valheim Creative Mode controls Valheim Spawn Item list How to use the Valheim console (post-patch) For Valheim version 0....
