First Hades 2 patch lets you gather seed, silver and souls simultaneously

Hell-wandering roguelike Hades 2 has received its first proper patch, and it does everything the developers said it would. You now sprint faster and, significantly, you can gather more than one type of crafting resource per run (as long you’ve unlocked the tool that lets you gather that resource). This means Melinoë can now go fishing, dig up seeds, mine silver, and gain the trust of errant shades, all in a single night’s work. There is a catch though.

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Excellent 4X strategy sim Endless Legend is free on Steam for a week

Being offered a 4X game for free is definitely one of those cursed-monkey-paw situations. Sure, you’re saving physical currency, but at what price in terms of that most treasured and least tradeable of commodities, time? In the hours it takes to properly clean out a 4X game, you could probably build an empire yourself. OK, not a huge empire. An empire the size of the Vatican or the Principality of Sealand, perhaps. Maybe an empire that only covers the distance between your desk and your fridge. But an empire nonetheless. Go on, pronounce yourself God-Tyrant of your bedroom while you download Amplitude’s Endless Legend, which is 100% off on Steam till 10am PDT, 1pm EDT and 6pm BST on May 23rd.

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Biomorph is one the best of its genre, of 2024, and maybe all time

There are exactly one million metroidy rogueishy action platform games and that is okay. There’s no such thing as too many of an entertaining thing in a world with, god I dunno, at least thousand humans in? Maybe more? Who knows.

They are rarely my thing, though. I try more than I really want to, for you, and games like Biomorph give me the energy to keep going through the many that leave me indifferent. This isn’t one of my grudging admissions that a subgenre isn’t all bad; it’s a game that I can’t even think of a way to complain about.

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Helldivers 2 players rally around an unlikely hero who just wanted to make friends

When they’re not banding together to take on Sony or attempting to reinstate fired community managers, it turns out that Helldivers 2 players just want to make sure everyone feels included. Included in the co-op game’s endless war of attrition to protect Super Earth from bugs, robots, and basic awareness of military propaganda, and included in just having mates. Enter player ‘dremskiy’, whose tragic booting from a private game in which they just wanted to make friends has resulted in so many friend requests that their Steam account won’t accept any more.

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Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser’s new studio is making an “open world action-adventure” game

Absurd Ventures, the company started by Rockstar Games co-founder and head writer Dan Houser after he left said juggernaut, are working on a new “open world action-adventure” game. That’s according to recent job listings on Absurd’s website (cheers Gamesradar for the spot), which mention such a thing. And to be honest, are any of us surprised? Not really. Will the finished product resemble GTA to some degree? I imagine yes. Am I happy about this? Yeah, go on then.

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Shockingly great soulslike Lies Of P is due a DLC by the end of the year

Our Edders, the RPSer I’d most trust to help me gank a rival covenant member with hammers, reckoned Pinocchio soulslike Lies Of P was an “instant must-play” in his review, and I was pretty fond of it myself. We already know that we’re due a sequel at some point the future, thanks to impressive sales. Director Jiwon Choi previously teased some DLC concept art, and now it looks like we’ll be seeing that DLC by the time the year’s out, according to a fiscal report.

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Ubisoft quietly cancel The Division Heartland

As Ubisoft revealed Assassin’s Creed Shadows they also released their earnings report for the financial year 2023-2024. Buried among the chatter of “profitable growth trajectories” and “B2B partnerships” was a brief note about looter shooter The Division Heartland. “Ubisoft has decided to stop development on The Division Heartland,” it reads, “and has redeployed resources to bigger opportunities such as XDefiant and Rainbow Six.” Ah, so this is the games industry equivalent of being summarily dumped by text.

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Ghost of Tsushima’s PSN login requirement will stop you playing multiplayer on Steam Deck

We’re just a couple of days away from Ghost of Tsushima’s PC release date, as the former PlayStation exclusive prepares to drop its Director’s Cut – including its expansion and multiplayer DLC – on Steam. Having recently cleared up the question around whether you’ll need to sign in with a PSN account after the Helldivers 2 debacle – yes, if you want to play the co-op mode – developers Nixxes and Sucker Punch have now revealed that the login requirement will mean multiplayer won’t work on Steam Deck.

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Assassin’s Creed Shadows is both a samurai and a ninja game, as it borrows Syndicate’s dual-character story

After being unceremoniously thrown into the spotlight yesterday with a pre-reveal leak, Assassin’s Creed Shadows has been given a proper unveiling via a flashy cinematic trailer, confirming both its leaked November release date and revealing that we’ll be playing as two protagonists for the first time in the series since Syndicate almost a decade ago. One of those heroes will also be the series’ first playable real-life figure: the African samurai Yasuke.

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It’s not just Helldivers 2 – plenty of games owe a lot to the films of Paul Verhoeven

Remember when Control came out and your mate Terry appeared out of nowhere to rant endlessly about how they’ve always loved brutalist architecture? Come on, Terry. No you haven’t. You spend weekends eating custard creams and watching Bake Off. You haven’t thought about brutalism since undergrad, be honest. Anyway, my version of that is Starship Troopers. As in, I’ve been waiting for a videogamey excuse to bang on about it in public for ages. Helldivers 2 is obviously as good an excuse as any, but really, I needn’t have waited so long. Official offerings like strategy game Starship Troopers: Terran Command and FPS Robocop: Rogue City aside, I reckon you can find Paul Verhoeven’s fingerprints all over games.

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