Ultimate Audio Bang #30: Steam’s most wishlisted FPS is in our crosshairs

Ultimate Audio Bang, we get an update on Hayden’s knees and the various ways in which he’s attempting to save them. We also take a gander at fantasy FPS Dark And Darker, Steam’s most wishlisted ‘shooter’. I’m less keen on it than Hayden is.

In the second part of the pod, we talk about the goals we’ve achieved in theHunter: Call Of The Wild, including a tale about moose and a deer that knocked me out.

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Outbound Ghost devs DMCA strike their own game and accuse publisher of withholding royalties

The Outbound Ghost was delisted from Steam after a statement from lead dev Conrad Grindheim claimed his relationship with publisher Digerati had “dissolved.” Soon after, Digerati filed a lawsuit against developer Conradical over a breach of contract and “several false defamatory” statements. When reporting on the original news, CJ thought the messy situation could get messier, and he was right. Grindheim has now DMCA’d his own game on console storefronts and accused Digerati of withholding royalties.

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Like A Dragon Ishin review: a step backwards in the best way

Like A Dragon: Ishin feels like a step backward, but in a brilliant way. Kiryu and co. may have moved onto a turn-based future, yet Sakomoto Ryoma and his pals have turned back the clock to an Edo period of brawlin’ and chicken betting that’s most reminiscent of Yakuza 0, only it’s not the roaring 80s but the bloody 1800s. There’s nothing here that will convert those who aren’t keen on the series, but if you’re an ardent fan or a newcomer eager to experience its wild swings between serious and silly, Ishin is an excellent place to start.

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Marvel’s Midnight Suns is free this weekend, with Venom swinging in next week

Spidey’s occasional rival and everyone’s favourite symbiote Venom is swinging into Marvel’s Midnight Suns as DLC on February 23rd. Venom was a villain in the base game, but he’s now transitioning into a playable antihero for the fight against Mephisto. To celebrate, the deckbuilding strategy game is free to try on Steam for the entire weekend.

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Watch Kerbal Space Program 2’s new trailer ahead of its early access launch

Kerbal Space Program 2 is crash landing into early access on February 24th, just under a week, and developers Intercept Games are celebrating with a new gameplay trailer. The trailer begins at the Kerbal Space Center, on the planet Kerbin, as the cute little aliens attempt to build a working spaceship and rocket off into the Kerbolar System. Genuine question: does this make the green minions Kerbites, Kerbals, or Kermen?

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Octopath Traveler 2 review: the flawed JRPG returns for more of the same

Octopath Traveler 2 in a nutshell, a JRPG that follows so precisely in the footsteps of its predecessor that you’d be forgiven for thinking it was suddenly 2019 again and that the last few pandemic years were nothing but a terrible existential nightmare. But alas, here we are in 2023 with another Octopath Traveler game that is, bar a couple of very light tweaks and additions, exactly the same game as what came before it, for better and for worse.

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WD’s blindingly-fast SN850x PCIe 4.0 SSD is down to $100 for 1TB

Solidigm P41 Plus 2TB at $99.99, and now it’s time to look at one of the very fastest PCIe 4.0 SSDs, the WD SN850x. It’s down to $99.99 for a 1TB model and $159.99 for a 2TB size, a new low price for each capacity and a great deal for our top PCIe 4.0 SSD recommendation.

This SSD is only really rivalled by the more expensive Samsung 990 Pro, our overall ‘fastest SSD‘ recipient, with both options offering random write performance well over 1M IOPS and sequential read speeds of up to 7300MB/s, at the very limit of the PCIe 4.0 standard.

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Magic in Veil Of Dust doesn’t make life easy, just slightly less hard

Veil Of Dust. Unlike some games, Veil Of Dust doesn’t make it sound like any sort of concession; the middle difficulty is called Challenge, and says “it’s pretty tough – you’ve been warned”. I took the warning seriously, and thank God, because even the easiest difficulty had me pouring dandelion tea down my brother’s throat like he was doing a kegstand (and in the game).

Áine and Shane are a pair of Irish siblings who’ve moved to Oregon to start a new life, which, in the main story, involves eating potatoes and trying not to get depressed. It’s difficult enough that I didn’t think I would like it at first, as even basic tasks deplete your stamina and sleeping in your 1860s hovel with a hole in the roof doesn’t restore very much per night. Áine can do spells, but they’re simple and only really take the edge off what is a very hard life. Magic isn’t a cure-all in Veil Of Dust, and using it has to be weighed up, just like everything else.

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