Creative Assembly reveal Total War: Medieval 3, while teasing a huge game announcement to follow

Total War: Medieval 3 is in early pre-production, Creative Assembly have revealed during Total War’s 25th anniversary showcase, with release still years away. It’s to be the “rebirth of historical Total War”, and CA are unveiling it earlier than they’ve ever announced a Total War game before, so that you crafty peasants can offer more feedback throughout development.

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Wreckreation studio put entire staff on notice of redundancy, but still believe in their latest Burnout revival

Three Fields Entertainment, developers of Burnout with sky roads racer Wreckreation, have announced that their entire team have been put on notice of redundancy. According to the announcement from CEO and former Criterion studio director Fiona Sperry, this comes as Three Fields find themselves without backing from Wreckreation publishers THQNordic, having “had to self-fund most of this year”.

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Hytale won’t be on Steam right away, as its devs want to avoid “overindexing on negative reviews” from players who “aren’t as well-informed yet”

Revived Minecrafty survivabuilder Hytale got a fresh early access release date of January 13th the other week. However, the team behind it how now confirmed you shouldn’t expect to see it hit Steam at that point, with the game’s executive director not seeing the need to knock on Valve’s pipe-laden door yet and keen to avoid an early access spent drowning in negative reviews.

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Russia bans Roblox, with state censor accusing it of spreading “LGBT propaganda” and “justifying terrorism”

Access to Roblox has been blocked in Russia, with federal censorship and media oversight agency Roskomnadzor accusing the platform of distributing content “justifying terrorism” and spreading “LGBT propaganda”. According to Russian media reports, the state body said Roblox has become rife with content that can “negatively impact the spiritual and moral development of children”.

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Hi-Fi Rush is ditching Denuvo in January, and it’ll become unplayable if you don’t grab the latest patch

Hi-Fi Rush is ditching its Denuvo anti-tamper software as part of developers’ Tango Gameworks transition to working under new owners Krafton. A fresh patch has been released swapping logos to reflect that switch in management, and you’ll need to install it before mid-January if you want the game to stay playable.

Krafton, of course, bought up Tango after the studio’s former parent company Microsoft announced plans to shut it down back in May, alongside Redfall developers Arkane Austin and Mighty Doom creators Alpha Dog Games.

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Element-bending RPG The God Slayer has decent fight scenes, but systemic smarts could elevate it

I’ll forgive you if you’ve not clocked The God Slayer. While it’s always been vaguely curious in an Inside Baseball sort of way, its action-RPGness being a stark departure for My Time at Sandrock/My Time at Portia lifesim devs Pathea Games, the project’s been in hiding since its 2023 reveal as an apparent PS5 exclusive. Yet it’s still in the works, release date TBD but with a PC version confirmed, and has successfully caught my eye after a hands-off preview session last week – even with said preview being shy about its most intriguing, immsim-influenced openness.

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PlayerUnknown wants to listen to your Prologue: Go Wayback feedback, just not all of it

There are two Brendan Greene’s (or PlayerUnknown’s, however you prefer to refer to the game dev). There is the Brendan Greene who wants to listen to the feedback offered up by those partaking in the early access period of his current game, Prologue: Go Wayback. And there is the Brendan Greene who doesn’t, for quite reasonable reasons. Both of these are still him, and both show up in a recent interview.

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Chill cyberpunk city builder Dystopika’s B-Sides DLC offers up polished experiments for you to play with

I think games are generally quite bad at acknowledging that they are things that are made by people. These people tend to have conversations about ideas, which turn into implementing those ideas, and sometimes these ideas are abandoned. We’ve all enjoyed a deleted scene in the extras of a DVD, yet the cutting room floor does not seem to be a thing for most games, at least not publicly. Which is why the new B-Sides DLC for Dystopika, a chill cyberpunk city builder quite liked by some former RPSers.

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The wonderfully titled Schattenjäger is a bite-sized take on Castlevania where you can see the whole level at once

Truth be told, I have never played a Castlevania game. Just haven’t gotten round to one of ’em yet! Symphony of the Night is probably more my speed over the original games, but I do see their importance too of course. However, what I have played, at least a little bit of, is a game that is very derivative of OG platformer except for the fact you can see the entire, 8-bit level at once: Schattenjäger.

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