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A group of modders who got multiplayer servers running for Rockstar’s schoolyard mischief simulator Bully late last year have suddenly pulled all traces of their creation offline. The project’s been shutdown about a month after release, and thus far its creators haven’t offered an explanation as to why, beyond emphasising that this outcome wasn’t what they hoped would happen.
There are two blue wolves inside you. One is actually a hedgehog, prone to loop-the-loops and drowning in caves. The other one is actually a dolphin, who is also prone to loop-the-loops and drowning in caves. Clarification: when I said you I meant me. I’m referring to my own squalid psychological architecture as a Sega Mega Drive player with vivid memories of Sonic the Hedgehog (especially the Star Light Zone) and Ecco the Dolphin.
While Sega’s pugnacious pinball mascot continues to star in videogames of all flavours, poor Ecco has been absent from screens since the early noughties. No longer: this year shall be the year of Ecco. Developers A&R Atelier – whose members include the character’s original creator, Ed Annunziata – have declared that they are working on “several” new Ecco things, including a videogame. No, I won’t accommodate any criticism of my framing here. If we can have a year of Luigi and a year of Shadow, we can have a year of Ecco.
We’ll heave him up an away we’ll go. ‘Way, me Assassin’s Creeda! We’ll heave him up an away we’ll go. We’re all bound over to Ubisoft’s official music YouTube channel! We’ll heave him up from down below. ‘Way, me Assassin’s Creeda! Oh, this is where a bunch of the original Black Flag‘s sea shanties have just been reuploaded, potentially providing yet another hint that we’re all soon bound to be playing that long-rumoured remake of the pirassassin adventure!
This sudden influx of classic ditties might not have meant much in a vacuum, but it follows many reports about the badly kept secret that is the remake and a PEGI rating that’s about as close as you can get to a seal of approval short of Ubisoft finally giving up the ghost anmd revealing the thing themselves.
It’s kind of baffling how Mirror’s Edge came out almost two full decades ago, and there’s hardly a whisper of a game that’s managed to match its art direction. The thing is just too clean, too specific, there’s a purpose to every detail. It feels like the future distilled into digital form, though no one really followed suit in the years since, opting for drab, lifeless realism instead. Except, as it turns out, that’s almost what Mirror’s Edge looked like too.
Anyone order a point-and-click adventure puzzle game for later this month featuring a cast of British actors that’ll make you go “oh, right, them!” when you Google them? Well, someone must have, because Earth Must Die, the next game from Lair of the Clockwork God developer Size Five Games, now has a release date. Come on, it’s getting cold!
Right at the end of last year, Cyberpunk and Witcher developer CD Projekt Red sold off its game distribution company to its original co-founder, Michał Kiciński (who is also the co-founder of CD Projekt itself, so, go figure). With this sort of new owner, the plan is generally to stick to what it knows best, i.e. sprucing up old games and making sure any game on the platform is DRM-free. But in a new interview, Kiciński also shared his interest in the platform doing some publishing.
It is not news to anyone that Nightdive Studios’ System Shock remake took a while to make. The remake started development in 2015, with a successful Kickstarter project held for it the following year. After a few engine changes and attempts at making the thing, it finally released back in 2023, a good eight years after development had started. But such a long wait is absolutely not worth calling the FBI over, folks, are we being serious right now? Which is, apparently, a thing that happened to Nightdive.
Right up until its early access release, Hytale’s chances of Steam Deck-enabled portability were anyone’s guess. Even the blocky sandbox’s developers Hypixel seemed unsure, announcing a SteamOS-friendly native Linux version (good!) but forgoing an actual Steam release (less good!) and warning Deck owners of Hytale’s absent controller support (definitely not good!).
However, as fellow cube enthusiast Minecraft would know, the Steam Deck doesn’t always let something like an apparent lack of basic functionality keep it down. The device itself provides all the tools you need to get Hytale up, running, and playable, and while the process is hardly a one-click install, the fruit of your toils is a game that Valve’s handheld PC can happily keep going for hours.
What’s that screaming around the bend, tyres squealing and RPMs peaking? It’s Forza Horizon 6’s release date arriving ahead of schedule, assuming a pop-up ad allegedly spotted in Forza Horizon 5 is the genuine article. If that’s the case, then the open-world racing series’ trip to Japan is booked to arrive in May this year.
BioWare’s misbegotten mech-me-do Anthem died this week after EA pulled the official servers. It’s a sad day for people who saw promise in the game’s sci-fi world and flight mechanics, however spoiled by the always-online looter-shooting, and a happy day for people who really hated being called “freelancer” in community bulletins. I was an actual freelancer when Anthem came out in 2019, and I didn’t get no mech suit. At least when the Destiny developers call you a Guardian, it feels sort of romantic, rather than like rubbing your nose in your own economic precarity.
Anyway, ‘officially unsupported’ doesn’t necessarily mean ‘gone for good’. In one of his many tell-all videos, former Anthem executive producer and Dragon Age/Mass Effect kingpin Mark Darrah has outlined a plan for bringing Anthem back as a single-player RPG, with a “conservative” budget of $10 million.
