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In a metaphor far too on the nose to turn into any form of fiction, at least without the writer getting mercilessly cyberbullied, a game about finding a needle in a haystack has now become the genuine needle at the heart of a pile of imitators. A pile so large, in fact, one copycat game stands accused of ripping code from another. Read more
Despite being a lover of the King of the Monsters, I was unfortunately too young to experience Pipeworks Software's Godzilla trilogy of 3D kaiju-fighters back its PS2/Gamecube-era heyday (there was a PS2 in the house as a young child, but I also had no agency to ask for games or money to buy them). As such, I'm not necessarily the intended audience for Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee Remastered, a remake of Pipeworks' first entry back in 2002, but I can gladly tell you thanks to my time with the Steam Next Fest demo that nostalgia is not needed to enjoy this classic made anew. Read more
Arc Raiders is still going strong almost a year after finding viral success, and it's all thanks to Embark Studios' one-two-punch strategy of launching a huge new update, Frozen Trails, to coincide with a free weekend. Read more
Subnautica 2 has begun its "voyage to Early Access 2.0", developer Unknown Worlds has said, with the revelation of a new update containing the "scariest" region they've ever made for the underwater game. Delightful. Read more
Right, let's get one important thing out of the way first: I've played a fair bit more of Dawn of War 4's main campaign, after my initial impressions of a single mission last year, and I think it is very good. The action is as screen-filling as ever, the Orks are a delight, and the combat director, which sees individual combatants lock onto each other with bespoke animations when groups fight in melee, remains a genuine feat of RTS engineering. I'll have much more to say on that front soon, though I'd like a little more time with it first. Read more
And lo, mushrooms! This is what I imagine an old timey tour guide might say while on a hiking trail, but we aren't on one of those, so get that wonderful fungi image out of your brain. No, today is the day that Mycopunk has arrived into 1.0, an online co-op looter shooter about embodying robot rejects fending off hordes challenging champignon. Read more
Bracingly moist open world survival game Subnautica 2 is embarking on the "voyage to early access 2.0" - this being developer Unknown Worlds' excitable term for the next round of updates, which will include a new region, creature, and Tadpole chassis, plus some tweaks for biomods and creature behaviour. I like Subnautica 2 and am happy that Unknown Worlds appear to be enjoying some stability, after all the firings and ChatGPT-abetted lawyer-wrestling over publisher earn-outs, but I really hate "early access 2.0". I know other teams use nomenclature like this, but seriously, what even is time a
I may have set my expectations for Dawn of War 4 too high, but it's a series that, to my mind, never retreads the same ground. It's therefore been disappointing to feel, having played it across two its campaigns that this long-awaited sequel may have taken too few risks - or been too reverent of the games that came before. Read more
There is this idea that, for a long-running series to remain as consistently popular as Forza Horizon has been, it needs to diminish itself somewhat with each new entry, gradually losing more and more of its edge in a bid to appeal to the widest possible audience. Read more
Last week, Creative Assembly and Sega pulled Total War: Shogun 2's remastered Complete Edition from Steam, after an avalanche of complaints about technical problems and some AI-generated art. Now, Total War vice president Roger Collum has written a personal apology, while pinning some of the blame on an unnamed external partner. He's also clarified Creative Assembly's stance on generative AI, conceding that the studio do use it to help with "analysis, debugging, or speedy prototyping", but that they're against using it to generate game assets and art. Read more
Beyond Good & Evil 2 is reportedly still in pre-production a staggering 18 years after it was first announced, and it has apparently evolved from being a multiplayer-first project to being "solo-first" and story based, with additional, optional co-op. Read more
Masahiro Sakurai has spoken about the pitfalls of generative AI use in game development, saying that while he believes the technology will result in a surge of unoriginal video games, human creativity - such as that shown by designers like Ico's Fumito Ueda - can't be replicated. Read more
