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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.
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. Here’s the Steam release announcement trailer.
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, and gave the thumbs up to baptising a baby in Gatorade in an emergency.
Catholic Answers (who have the domain Catholic.com; gotta imagine His Holiness wishes he’d moved quicker on that one) then defrocked Justin, making him a lay theologian in a suit jacket, jeans and an open collar shirt that gives him a “me and my wife saw you across the bar” kind of vibe, when before he had the whole dog collar kit and caboodle.
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, however, if this wasn’t a complete turnaround from how things have been for the best part of a year now.
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 lead 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 lines: “Now is the nuclear winter of our discontent.”
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.
The developers of sci-fi action-adventure Deliver Us Mars have laid off all their staff. The news was announced by KeokeN Interactive’s leadership in a statement in which they state they have “exhausted all our possible options” of finding funding for a new project. They also say they plan to rebuild the company.
Recently, I spent around two hours with Shin Megami Tensei 5: Vengeance, the Persona 5: Royal-fied version of the original SMT V. Vengeance promises many new things: a revised battle system, a new story branch, new areas, and more. What I found when I played, was several punches to my metaphorical ribs. A few to my gut. Sure, I spent some time with the new stuff, but really, I spent most of my time being absolutely demolished in turn-based battles against various demons of a phallic and non-phallic nature. I will now attempt to summarise my time against these creatures, wish me luck.
Dread Delusion is a creepo-tastic open world RPG that positively reeks of King’s Field and the Elder Scrolls of yore. Created by Lovely Hellplace and published by horror anthology specialists DreadXP, it’s so far up my alley it’s probably been mugged by some kind of hideous clockwork cutthroat – and yet somehow, I’ve never played the thing. I’ll be rectifying that on 14th May, when Dread Delusion leaves early access.
