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A bit of creepy crawly, low-key city building? Ah, go on then. October and Halloween might be behind us, but Fangtopia is a puzzle game stroke city builder that still feels appropriate for late autumn. Having had a go with its demo, it’s deceptively simple, in fact it felt so simple I wasn’t entirely sure if I was doing anything at all. But when it clicked, all the pieces fell into place resulting in a pleasantly chill time.
Here’s a sentence I am very glad to write: the first Citizen Sleeper-like is here! Or at least the first one I’m aware of (and the actual genre is dice-driven RPG, no more something-likes, ok?). It’s called Dusk Punk, which mixes the narrative and mechanical framework established by Citizen Sleeper with the aesthetics and world of games like Dishonored, and it’s out today.
Anyone order a free Mafia: The Old Country update? Well, whether you did or not, a free update is what you’re getting. This one’s quite features driven, focusing a lot of challenges and cosmetics, but there’s a few new weapons and the like too. Let’s take a little look-see!
Ark is one of those strange series to me that seems to have a ridiculous amount of cash to dispense, what with its star-studded cast in the animated adaptation. Gerard Butler and bloody Michelle Yeoh are in it! Not to mention David Tenant, Elliot Page, Russel Crowe and Vin Diesel, the final of whom is meant to be in the borderline MIA Ark 2. But some of those voices will be appearing in-game through Ark: Survival Ascended’s next expansion, Lost Colony, which now has a release date!
I won’t comment on the quality of Marathon, the game, because I’ve not had the chance to play it, though obviously it’s not been received with all that much fanfare. You know what I did quite like? Marathon, the short film, the one that came with the game’s reveal from Alberto Mielgo. It felt like a strong promise of a (more-or-less) fresh sci-fi world, the performances were subdued, it felt larger than life. Good stuff! Yet as many things currently are, it’s been scrutinised over potential AI use, prompting Mielgo to put out a (understandably aggro) statement.
On Monday, Hypixel co-founder Simon Collins-Laflamme revealed the good news that he’d followed through on saying he’d chat to Riot Games about buying the rights to the Minecrafty sandbox game Hytale by buying the rights to said game. Now, with an independent team back working on the game following the closure of itsoriginal studio, Collins-Laflamme and co have shared a 16 minute look at what Hytale’s currently like to play.
Microsoft have delivered a timely reminder that AI isn’t just effective at injecting ugly, soulless anti-art and nonsense robochat into your games – it also has the power to ruin your entire PC.
MS recently updated a support article explaining the ‘agentic AI’ features they plan to roll out for Windows 11, which involve creating a separate desktop instance and allowing AI ‘agents’ to perform supposedly menial tasks (like file sorting and email sending) within it. All while you kick back on your main workspace, online shopping for the third yacht that the AI revolution has surely enabled you to afford. Unfortunately, among the agents’ capabilities is the risk of installing malware.
Further down the page there are horrifying phrases like “makes Europa Universalis seem limited” and “every planet and moon and asteroid, all orbiting in real time”, woven through a fascinating account of a game that is sort of XCOM, but you’re organising a whole Earth’s worth of competing countries and factions to repel solar system invaders who may not even materialise for dozens of hours. But of course Hooded Horse are publishing it. This was one of their first signings, I believe. Those sickos.
Warhammer 40,000: Darktide is getting another new class, revealed last night as the Hive Scum. They’re a suitably skull-adorned outlaw who can dual-wield guns or shivs, while indulging in a cheeky bit of chemical warfare by homebrewing stimulants and lacing their weapons with harmful chems. Basically the opposite of the space-narc Arbites class added this summer, then: they got exploding dogs, the Hive Scum gets exploding drugs.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 creative director Guillaume Broche of Sandfall Interactive would very much like to play a remaster of Lost Odyssey, the mournful 2007-released Xbox 360 RPG from Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi and development studio Mistwalker. He feels the game was cruelly dinged by reviewers of the era for adhering to certain conventions. He also reckons it’d have done better if it had released for hardware other than the Xbox 360, which was trying to make in-roads among Japanese consumers at the time.
