With Baldur’s Gate 3 and its gang of rowdy adventuring mates in the rear view mirror, Larian are hoping to improve a couple of aspects of how they handle companions going forwards – a process that’ll likely kick off in Divinity. In particular, the development of deeper relationships between party members and a more subtle build to the moment when the player’s relationship veers into deeply horny territory are on their list of learnings.
This is proving to be one of the worst weeks of my life, for various reasons (no, not because Jason Schreier is mad at me). In my time of need, I open the magic portal of escapism and find Pathologic 3 looking back at me like a poison toad.
Manor Lords and Terra Invicta publishers Hooded Horse are imposing a strict ban on generative AI assets in their games, with company co-founder Tim Bender describing it as an “ethics issue” and “a very frustrating thing to have to worry about”.
What did you do while recovering from your big medical thing, Sin? Well. Loath as I am to talk about myself (“lol. lmao.” – Combative New Ed), I… don’t know? There was some Ultima Underworld, some workers, some resources, some Pagonians pioneered. But in the dimensionless vortex of first-time-off-since-2020, I think I did… nothing. The lists barely moved.
Except, finally, for a game I struggled with last year. A strange game, easily punished, as all turn-based games must be for dolt reasons, for not being bloody XCOM. USC Colon Counterforce is more like oldXCOM, aka UFO. But it’s not a recreation of that, nor of Aliens, its other obvious inspiration. It diverges as much as it reminds, and makes some mistakes in a way that we all must, when pursuing our own identity instead of an impression of someone else’s.
I wish I’d given it a second chance sooner. I wish I could shake everyone and say “This! This is the way! There is more than one path, if you just look for it! Yes, the one before you stumbled. But look at it it. See the admittedly weakly-named USC, and its bruises. It is beautiful. It is itself”.
Following the parliamentary debate of the Stop Killing Games campaign‘s petition to the UK government last year, a group of Green Party members have announced plans to propose an amendment to the party’s policy which would “compel” its MPs to support the campaign.
CES 2026 doesn’t technically end until tomorrow, but then if it were a football match, it’d be the kind where the home side gets battered 4-0 and the cameras keep cutting to a stream of season ticket holders slumping towards the doors with 20 minutes left. An all-timer in the history of Consumer Electronics Show, it has not been.
Minecraft‘s getting marginally cuter with its next update, as it continues to pretend it isn’t designed for the express purpose of teaching innocent children that in order to survive, you’ve sometimes got to beat some pigs and trees to death with your bare hands. Baby farm animal mobs, long just mini-mes of their adult versions with slightly different head/body size ratios are getting their own unique appearances.
Right, so, Starcraft. A new shooter in the series is reportedly set to be revealed this year, possibly as the big headline act of Blizzcon in September.
The existence of such a secret shootery thing in the works at Blizzard was first reported by Jason Schreier last year, being one of the revelations to come out of his book on the publisher, titled Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future of Blizzard Entertainment.
The world could certainly do with another game about slapping up Swastika-wearers right now. Thankfully, having finished off Indiana Jones And The Great Circle, Machine Games are reportedly working on the previously teased Wolfenstein 3.
You know what South Park feels like to me? It feels like randomly waking up in the middle of the night, looking around your bedroom as you think “cripes, it’s still not morning yet?” A feeling of waiting for the inevitable, the end, or the beginning. Not so much the contents of the show, none of that needs all that much thought, more so its very existence, which is now apparently transplanting itself into Fortnite.