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Earlier this year, Bungie revealed a Destiny 2 expansion that I can still only describe now as a head scratcher. It’s called Renegades, a Star Wars inspired expansion (quite literally as it’s been made in collaboration with Lucasfilm) that was shown off properly for the first time in a livestream earlier today. Oh, and there’s a release date for it too!
Keep your hands at 10 and 2, drivers, as Ironwood Studios has just offered up a first look at Pacific Drive’s first big expansion, Whispers in the Woods. Where the survival game has a sort of Stalker-but-you’re-in-a-car kind of feel, this DLC looks like it’s fully leaning into some horror vibes. The first half of the trailer has some real ’70s era, found footage horror vibes, which feels laser targeted at my artistic proclivities.
Jump Space! It’s a game with a name that’ll have you thinking, “wait, that’s not what it was called, was it?” And you’d be right about that, as due to some trademark problems, the game was rebranded from Jump Ship to its new name Jump Space back in August. Later that same month, developer Keepsake Games announced the game would be launching into early access September 19th. And now, as in today September 9th now, Keepsake Games have shared an early access roadmap for the game, as well as how much it’ll cost you.
I want to give Hollow Knight: Silksong a thrashing. A fully suited C-suite bollocking. I want to verbally repay unto it every cruel death, every pernickety jumping puzzle, every time-thieving runback it’s inflicted on me across the past five days.
But I can’t. For every moment of frustration, there are five of relief, of joy, of beauty even. As in Hollow Knight, Silksong stretches itself over a vast Metroidvania map, and yet its intricacies – its narrowest tunnels leading to grand new regions, its more acrobatic and tailorable combat movesets – make for constantly rewarding exploration, as well as some thrillingly free-flowing bugfights. There have been a couple times when I never wanted to play it again, and many more when I wish I never had to stop.
Dune: Awakening has received its first “major” free update, a continuation of the MMO survival game’s story following the revelations of Act 3. What revelations were these? Honestly, lads, I never made it that far. My character is presently a furry chunk of worm jerky, crammed into a half-built shack after accidentally encasing herself in the furniture, so I couldn’t spill the beans even if I knew. But I can reveal there are “gruesome murders” to investigate from this point on, and further opportunities to dig up the misbegotten secrets of Arrakis. Here’s a trailer.
GTA 6 will feature a bunch of in-game websites with real-world URLs, going by various domain registrations spotted by an active and efficient dataminer. The site URLs offer potential clues about the businesses and organisations you might patronise, during your time in Vice City. They include what sound like parody versions of ride-sharing app Uber and communication network WhatsApp, together with a government website for Leonida, the fictional US state and parody of Florida in which Rockstar’s new Grand Theft Auto takes place.
One of the other rumoured GTA 6 websites appears to feature “hookers galore”. I give odds of 6-4 that this will prove to be an in-game fishing supplier, ho ho. And then there’s “myboyhasacreepycorndog.com”. I give odds of 3-2 that “corndog” means “penis”, har har. It’s GTA, isn’t it. There’s absolutely a dick joke in there somewhere.
The notes for Hollow Knight: Silksong‘s first proper post-release patch have arrived. Team Cherry have been busy fixing bugs and making some “slight balance adjustments in the early game”, which you can now give a go early via beta branches on Steam and GOG.
That’ll mean you’re testing the changes ahead of the update’s planned full deployment next week, with Team Cherry aiming for a mid-week arrival “barring any unforeseen issues”. Now you know that, let’s get into the changes, which the studio have outlined in a post on the Steamy platform.
Ok, that was quick. Hollow Knight: Silksong has been out less than a week, and no less than two modders have already had a crack at getting multiplayer working in it, so you can take on those pesky bosses with some co-op aid or moral support.
Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised. After all, the Skong modding scene has exploded out of the gates with the same level of gusto folks have had for just playing the base version of the long-awaited metroidvania. Then again, it’s one thing for folks to be putting out a bunch of smaller scale tweaks that can help make things easier, and another for them to turn a one player game into a more than one player game.
Helldivers 3, or whatever they call the follow-up to Helldivers 2, may have a social hub in the style of Destiny’s Tower, Arrowhead CEO Shams Jorjani has told the Helldiverati in a new Q&A.
Former Bethesda marketing chief Pete Hines has been chatting about the ups and downs of videogame subscription platforms, such as Microsoft’s Game Pass service, GeForce Now and whatever the hell Ubisoft are calling theirs at the minute. Subisoftscription? UbiPassPlus? Answers on a postcard.
Hines is broadly of the opinion that subscription platforms are failing many of the developers who sign up to publish through them, though he cautions that his experience is out-of-date – he retired from Bethesda in October 2023.
