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Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2 was featured in this evening’s Xbox Developer Direct. Ninja Theory gave a further glimpse of the things they show when talking about Hellblade: motion capture, graphical fidelity, mental health representation, and stabbing. They also provided a release date: May 21st, 2024.
Tonight’s Xbox Developer Direct brought an update on Avowed, Obsidian’s first-person fantasy RPG. A new trailer provided a substantial look at combat, including pistols, dual-wielding swords and wands, as well as a slightly updated release window: this autumn.
Today’s Xbox Developer Direct stream offered updates on some of 2024’s biggest Microsoft games, including MachineGames’ Indiana Jones And The Great Circle, Obsidian’s Avowed and Ninja Theory’s Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2. If you missed the stream and want a quick roundup of all the news, games, release dates and trailers featured, we’ve gathered it all together in this post.
I think we’re well into “milking the gimmick” territory for bodycam horror games now – last week’s Digested may have been one giant snake too many – but Zoochosis does have the additional virtue of being heavily inspired by the cute doggy scene from The Thing. And also, perhaps, Five Nights At Freddy’s.
In this latest, gruesome escapade from Sparky Marky developers Clapperheads, you are a zookeeper working the night shift. Your job, initially, is to feed the incarcerated animals and clean up after them while giving them an occasional pat on the nose. But Something Is Wrong. Giraffes aren’t supposed to have that many legs, or mandibles. Kangaroos aren’t supposed to stick to the ceiling, or have several sets of teeth.
Games Done Quick is busy raising loads of money for the Prevent Cancer Foundation, so we have a little chat about speedrunning, speedrunners, the benefits of breaking the game vs. the quality of a purist speedrun, and also a dog. We don’t have a Nate this week, but James has been playing Apelegs again and offers a surprising self-assessment of how he feels like he’s past his Apex Legends prime, and how confidence is a really necessary skill in competitive shooters. Worth tuning in for a listen to that.
Your favourite beaver-based colony sim Timberborn‘s latest big update has arrived, and honestly, I’d say your poor beavers won’t appreciate it one bit. The main reason being, it adds a new ecological hazard called Badwater, that doesn’t only make your water bad, but your crops and beavers at risk of being bad. Still, there are plenty of new buildings to help you harness the power of the stanky water and errr, exercise halls for beavers to get their sweat on. I wouldn’t recommend they rehydrate with the bad water, though.
As we all know, I like vampire stories, and I like different takes on vampire stories. Yesterday Edwin dangled an upcoming visual novel called Vampire Therapist in front of my nose. I am intrigued, also because I appreciate a Ronseal approach to titles. In Vampire Therapist, out on Steam this June 17th, you play Sam, a vampire who becomes a therapist to other vampires. So the title works twice!
Readers may remember how much I liked Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion, principally because of how funny it was. It was an intelligent and somewhat loving take on a Zelda-y RPG – a small town hero gets a sword and goes on a rampage fighting some bosses – except the main character is a turnip. And also he tears up any paperwork handed to him. Turnip Boy Robs A Bank follows directly on from his Tax Evasion, and it’s not quite as funny or as focused, but it’s also an entirely different genre of game, and I have a huge amount respect for that.
Puzzle game classic Threes is getting a Steam PC launch to celebrate its 10th anniversary, developer Asher Vollmer has announced. The release date is 6th February, and here’s the Steam page. The new version adds controller and Steam cloud support together with achievements and leaderboards. Given its mobile origins, it should scrub up nicely on Steam Deck.
Intel’s Core i3 12100F is a surprisingly viable gaming CPU, with four Golden Cove P-cores and eight threads with DDR5 and PCIe 5.0 support, all for under £100. Don’t be put off by ‘Core i3’ either – this model is similar in speed to the last-gen Core i5 11600K and not too far behind the Core i7 10700K, such is the leap forward Intel made with its 12th-gen CPU architecture. Today this processor is even cheaper than normal too, with prices dropping to £88 at Ebuyer in the UK.
