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Just when I thought my longtime love/hate relationship with Pokémon (and all of its off-shoots) was over, the recently released Cassette Beasts pulled me back down the rabbit hole. The newest creature-collectathon is only getting better, though, as developer Bytten have announced a new expansion and an upcoming multiplayer mode. In the meantime, you can check out the 1.2 update called Catacombs which is out right now.
Five days of verbal jousting and juicy internal documents later, the court battle between the US Federal Trade Commission and Microsoft is over. The FTC have worked to prevent Microsoft’s proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard in court, and now the overseeing Judge will look back on the proceedings to make their final decision in the next few days.
Over a decade on from its Nintendo DS release, there’s still nothing quite like Ghost Trick. In this smart murder mystery detective game from the creator of Ace Attorney, you play the recently deceased amnesiac Sissel as he attempts to piece together his own demise. Who killed him? And why? And what’s the deal with these newfound powers he has to turn back time and manipulate inanimate objects in his vicinity? That definitely wasn’t in the ghostbusting 101 manual. Alas, he doesn’t have long to find out, as he’ll cross over to the afterlife in the morning. Thus begins a frantic night of whodunnit puzzling at its finest, with director Shu Takumi showing us exactly what he’s made of outside the courtroom dramas he built his name on.
Tonight’s Annapurna Interactive Showcase brought us 30 minutes of fresh game announcements, putting a lovely (and hopefully final) full stop on this year’s notE3 / Summer Game Fest period. While most of the announcements were updates on games we already knew about, there are a couple of cool new things in there that I’m personally quite pumped for, including a new Blade Runner game being developed internally at Annapurna Interactive, a new Keita Takahashi joint about a kid stuck in a T-pose of all things, and a new ghostly biking game from the team behind Nidhogg. I’d highly recommend watching the showcase in full if you can, but in case you need a quick refresher of what happened, or are just short on time, we’ve rounded up every announcement in order below.
During tonight’s Annapurna Interactive Showcase, we got another lovely look at Flock, the latest game from Wilmot’s Warehouse and I Am Dead devs Hollow Ponds and Richard Hogg. In it, we get to see exactly how its adorable creature herding works in co-op, which you’d probably hope to see, given its own Steam page also describes it as a co-op multiplayer game. But rest assured, Flock is still very much a game you can play on your own, without the need to have a pal along for the ride, the devs tell me.
Annapurna Interactive have announced their first internally developed game at their publishing showcase this evening, and it’s an all-new Blade Runner game. Exciting! It’s called Blade Runner 2033: Labyrinth, and it’s set “squarely between” the original Blade Runner film and its more recent sequel, Blade Runner 2049, say Annapurna. The reveal trailer doesn’t give too much away at this stage, but I’m getting very big Her Story and Immortality vibes from it. Come and have a gander below.
Steam’s summer sale is live now and will run until July 13th. As always, there are discounts across all kinds of games, including 30% off Elden Ring, 70% off Need For Speed Unbound and 40% off Valheim. Of particular note: there’s also up to 20% off the Steam Deck.
World Of Warcraft Classic is introducing Hardcore realms where death is permanent. Blizzard say testing of Hardcore will begin on the Public Test Realm today, June 29th, and have outlined how it’ll impact PvP, Battlegrounds, quests and more. In short: they’re all being changed to try to stop your death being random or cruel.
Cities: Skylines often felt more like a traffic management sim than a city simulator, as I spent hours tinkering with my road networks to try to clear jams. Cities: Skylines 2 looks like it’s going to support an even deeper level of tinkering, judging by two feature spotlight videos released on roads and traffic AI.
Among the new additions: car crashes, much improved pathfinding, and car parks. I find all of these as exciting as each other.
When is a game not a game? When it’s a sim, according to the head developer of Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024. While we quickly agree on a “fair enough” response to this assertation of non-gameyness, we also can’t help but spend much of this latest Electronic Wireless Show podcast remembering the most fun we’ve in the diverse world of sims, be it some actual flight simulating or merely bullying smaller dinosaurs. Also: we chat about how big a deal it is that the Metal Gear Solid Master Collection might not support mouse and keyboard on PC, and discuss what we’ve been playing this week.
