“Everything is floating islands and airships and we’re not going to explain how or why” is a setting I nearly always respect, but fighting a campaign against pirates leaves me feeling distinctly uncool. This is the dilemma Black Skylands leaves me with.
You’re a very young officer of… something, battlefield promoted to captaincy of the Fathership, essentially a giant floating base from which you set out on your airship in an open world kinda way to trade broadsides with baddies and land at occupied islands to do the twin stick shooter thing on foot. I… don’t like it as much as I want to.
Hello everybody! This is Edwin, your resident news-wrangler. I’ve been in this glorious job for a whole two weeks now, and alas it is time to say goodbye… because I’m off on holiday. Genius-level journostrategist that I am, I managed to book a week away walking in Scotland during Gamescom before landing the gig, and I can’t rebook without incurring the everlasting hatred of Caledonian Sleeper. I do have a few under-embargo stories and a review going live next week, but beyond that I’ll be up a mountain somewhere until 29th August. Apologies – if you’re up that neck of the woods and we happen to sight each other on opposing hillsides, I’ll try to bellow something about Starfield.
Before I go, though, I wanted to check in about this whole “news” concept that’s doing the rounds. The past two weeks have essentially been an exercise in tentatively pressing buttons and apologising to Katharine when half the website backend catches fire. I’ve tried to put together a fun mixture of stories – I particularly enjoyed the chat below yesterday’s musings about pacifism – but I’ve mostly been settling in, and dealing with such evergreen journamalism questions as whether companies are singular or plural, and what proportion of any given article should consist of begging Blackbird Interactive to reveal something else about Homeworld 3.
A single GTA 5 mod has rekindled the age-old shouting match about the precise legality and contribution of videogame mods, in the eyes of developers, publishers and players – while also threatening to trigger fresh debate on the use of large language models, aka AI, in game development. The mod in question, “AI Powered GTA V: Story Mode with AI NPCs” sees you investigating a cult of weirdo AI worshippers, with characters capable of real-time AI-generated dialogue. It’s now been struck from several sites by GTA 5 publisher Take-Two Interactive.
The characters in what we might term the Aperture Cinematic Universe are a memorable bunch (as I have said before). Though GLaDOS rightfully tops the list another, introduced in 2011’s sequel spectacular Portal 2, became an instant favourite. Voiced by J.K. Simmons, doing a turn adjacent to his J. J. Jameson from Spider-Man, Cave Johnson is the founder of Aperture Science (which used to primarily make shower curtains before it evolved into being a death trap puzzle company), and he made an instant impression. And though Aperture Desk Job is nominally a tech demo for the Steam Deck, it also expands the Cave Johnson lore in a very satisfying way. Spoilers beyond for Aperture Desk Job, and Portal 2 if you haven’t played it.
As Edders Sheeran the bard in Baldur’s Gate 3, I’ve come to realise I’m a jack of all trades. I do a bit of bow, a bit of sword, a bit of plucking the lute and buffing my pals with a nice song. My greatest strength, though, lies outside of combat in the arena known as “conversation”. Seriously, I’ve played for around 30 hours now and haven’t lost a single chat skillcheck. At first I loved being a master of chats, but ever since I played some co-op with my pals using a less charismatic dude, I’ve found Edders Sheeran’s unbeatable gob a bit… deflating?
If you long for an excuse to return to Himan 1’s stellar levels, like Sapienza and Hokkaido, the latest patch for Hitman: World Of Assassination might provide. Alongside a selection of fixes, it also brings a new set of DLC missions – or “new”, at least. The Sarajevo Six Campaign includes six assassination missions set across the six missions from Hitman 2016 which were previously only available on PlayStation 4.
Creative Assembly’s scifi heist ’em up Hyenas received a new trailer yesterday, showing its teams of three doing battle in zero-G. It also got dates for a new closed beta due to begin on August 31st.
The bigger news is that its business model is seemingly up in the air. Publishers Sega had previously said it would not be free-to-play, but are now “making final adjustments to its business model” and will use the closed beta to finalise plans for launch.
Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 was announced a little over a week ago, offering a back-to-back sequel for the first time in Call Of Duty’s history. Now we have a release date of November 10th and a proper first trailer.
In a move that I already know I’ll live to regret making, this week the Electronic Wireless Show podcast takes a look at the discourse that flared up in and around the release of Baldur’s Gate 3. Larian’s epic RPG had people asking: why aren’t all games like this? But in an angry tone of voice that we feel left some things out of the conversation. Also, Nate challenges a Times columnist to single MMA combat, and we talk about the games we’ve been playing this week (spoilers: none of them are Baldur’s Gate 3!).
The brutish “X curio is like Y behemoth” logic of mass entertainment nooze requires me to associate Selkie Harbour’s The Anglerfish Project with Starfield. They do form a pleasant contrast, in fairness. Both are space games but one doesn’t have a fishing mechanic, whereas the other is all fishing mechanic. One is about visiting strange new worlds, establishing outposts and shooting or romancing the heck out of the locals, while the other maroons you on a single asteroid. The Anglerfish Project deserves better than to serve only as a counterpoint for the Bethesda colossus, however – it’s a sweet and tidy stargaze ’em up with a dry sense of humour, and you can download it for free on Itch.io.
