Hollow Knight: Silksong‘s second patch is here ahead of an impeding full release, with Team Cherry having shared the notes and initiated Steam beta testing. No balancing tweaks this time around, just a bunch more handy bug fixes that’re well worth being aware of.
Be very, very quiet. Yes, I know this is being yelled from a page on a video game website that at least five people have heard of, so it’s hardly hush-hush, but if Randy keeps shouting unhinged things at people about PC specs, I think we might slip under the radar.
There’s a Borderlands 4 build. It’s a bit broken, and can reportedly down bosses in a click of your fingers by doing a craptonne of damage. I am telling you this information now. The game’s director is aware of the quirk at the heart of this slapping-up setup, and I’ve a sneaking suspicion it might be tweaked soon.
I maintain that the bounties of Hollow Knight: Silksong’s drum-tight action and hyper-intricate world exploration ultimately outweigh its repeated acts of smirking sadism. It’s a fine dining restaurant where the waiters insist on bashing your kneecaps out with claw hammers before serving the most delightful, perfectly layered mille-feuille you’ve had in your life. It’sh delishush, you mumble through a full mouth and agonised tears.
Still, sometimes I’ll fancy a taste of the good stuff without necessarily having my skeleton destroyed. To that end, I’ve been taking regular breaks from Silksong’s usual heroics to pursue the simpler life of a package courier for Pharloom’s surviving insects.
The Crew Unlimited, a fan project making Ubisoft racerThe Crew playable again following its unceremonious shutdown last year, released yesterday, September 15th. There’s been some early issues to rectify, with the developers having put out two hotfixes already and emphasised that they’re “not responsible” for any problems caused by people having grabbed “broken/corrupted game files” from “shady sources”.
As we reported earlier this month, The Crew Unlimited’s devs started working on it not long after Ubisoft pulled the racer’s official servers offline in March 2024, rendering it unplayable. Cue a group of fans deciding to set up a server emulator that’d allow them to get it up and running again for players who still had the game files installed.
This news story about Fata Deum is written in homage of a random early access Steam reviewer who remarks that if you’ve never played a god sim before, they’re kind of like idle sims. My word, the casually ferocious and embittered atheist poetry of that. Consider my fedora tipped, milords and ladies. I’m off to read the Screwtape Letters again.
Fata Deum isn’t just any born-again idle sim. It pays overt homage to Lionhead’s Black & White, with higgledy-piggledy 3D island maps and a familiar hand cursor, used to carry believers to safety or lob them into the sea. There are some significant differences, however.
There’s a fresh update from the organisers of the Stop Destroying Videogames citizens’ initiative, that being the petition asking EU lawmakers to look into the issue of publishers rendering online games unplayable when servers are switched off. Despite some concerns on their part a few months ago, the group claim that while the signatures they amassed are still being verified, “early reports from several countries” suggest “around 97%” of these are valid.
…And so the thick snow feels like a sweet variant of obscuration: an invitation to go make my own footprints. The signs are blanketed to invisibility or missing entirely, though I wouldn’t know the difference in weather this insistent. But: Easy Delivery Co.‘s map is very good. And by very good, I mean it tells me slightly less than what I want to know at all times.
Oh, Netflix’s The Witcher TV series is back with its fourth series next month, following a lengthy hiatus that’s seen Geralt regenerate from Henry Cavill into Liam Hemsworth. The new series premieres in late October, and first official looks at both the HemsGerry and Laurence Fishburne as Blood and Wine vampire Regis have been offered.
Hang on a minute, I thought, when I scrolled past this news on one of the screens in my Adrian Veidt-esque world-watching setup – Laurence Fishburne’s in it? Yep, it seems that after not getting around to watching the third series, I’ve managed to completely blot out all knowledge that the actor behind The Matrix’s pill distributor is being cast in The Witcher.
Some weeks, finding new games for the Maw is like scouring a village of octogenarians for the last remaining virgin to throw into a rumbling volcano. You awkwardly pop the question during a dozen hastily organised afternoon tea dates, and riffle through family trees in desperation as the air thickens with sulphur.
This week, it’s like the mountainside has been invaded by a horde of teenage firebugs. Stop shoving! Form an orderly queue! You are going to give the volcano constipation. Here’s a moderately curated round-up of the most promising specimens. May they burn brightly and stave off the magma for at least another seven days.
Borderlands 4 developers Gearbox have chucked more wrenches at the shooter‘s PC performance over the weekend, following issues that’ve landed it mixed Steam review fortunes since launch last week. However, if you’re looking for patch notes, you’re gonna be a bit disappointed. Ah well, at least there are essay-length Randy Pitchford Twitter threads to scroll through if you’re partial to someone waffling about how the game runs.