Rock, Paper, Shotgun | Game Infliction

Arc Raiders is out now, and the best thing about it so far is bumsliding through a buried desert city

I’m not that keen on extraction games like Arc Raiders. The last two I played at length were Tom Clancy’s The Division (specifically its Survival mode), which features possibly my favourite videogame piles of trash, and Hunt: Showdown, which features possibly my favourite (i.e. the absolute worst) videogame spider. I just don’t see the point of a loot commute, even with other players around to add spice. Still, I do think I’ll spend more time in Arc – out now on Steam, EGS and the Microsoft Store – after losing a few hours to a pre-release multiplayer session last week. Amongst other things, it has an enticing buried city and a neat sliding mechanic.

Amazon have cancelled their second attempt at a Lord Of The Rings MMO as part of recent mass layoffs, according to a now-former senior gameplay engineer at Amazon Games.

Once upon a time, the great graven cave troll Terry Cavanagh rose from his slumbers, scratched the opals from his beard of woven copper, and said to himself: “Today I will make a 3D egg platform game in which a 3D egg goes platforming, like my hit game VVVVVV, but 3D and with eggs.” And because there was no-one around to say “WTF, Terry” or “perhaps you are just hungry” or “Mr Cavanagh, the egg’s paucity of external appendages and senses wholly disallow it as a means of self-directed locomotion”, that is exactly what he did.

We are all the richer for it, because Egg (subtitle “why not be an egg”) is eggcellent. It’s also free and playable right now in a browser on Itch.io.

For as video gamey a series as The Matrix is, it is a touch surprising there have only been a handful of actual games. Obviously the one that makes most sense is The Matrix Online, what other genre but an MMO could The Matrix could be? Well, there’s also Enter The Matrix, which is basically Max Payne, but you still have to wonder what else could have been. Especially because The Wachowskis literally pitched the idea of Metal Gear Solid creator Hideo Kojima making a Matrix game directly to Konami.

Right, what do we have here, a new game called The Florist, ‘ey? About a woman delivering a beautiful flower arrangement to a lakeside town? Well, surely this is one of those wholesome, cosy games I’ve been hearing about! Nope! It is, in fact, a survival horror, and not the kind that’s trying to trick you like I just made a less than half-arsed attempt at.

Because that sacred line called profit must always go up, we are seeing more and more game studios announce their intention to incorporate various forms of AI tech. PUBG publisher Krafton just recently referred to themselves as an AI-first company, the big wigs up top at EA are reportedly pushing for it hard, it is, seemingly, unfortunately, inevitable. Which makes Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick’s comments on it ever so slightly surprising – but only slightly, we’ll get back to that.

I’m two for two on writing about games set on the moon today, but sometimes that’s just how it is! This time around it’s about a newly revealed game called Descent of Lunaris, a dungeon-crawling, turn-based RPG whose devs say it’s inspired by classics like Wizardry and Shin Megami Tensei. And, truth be told, it truly looks like a game for sickos, who I’d like to clarify here I am referring to with every sincere ounce of love in my heart.

Ring ring. Ring Ring. Ring ring. The stern and bespectacled manager of Blake Manor’s hotel appears for the eighth time. You’re looking a bit narked there mate, I, the investigatorman, observe. Yes, he says yet again, I’m a bit stressed and busy on account of our telegram machine having gone kaput. Makes sense, I reply, can’t think of any other reasons why you might be pissed off. He shuffles back into his office for exactly five seconds. Ring ring.

You’re being haunted in the demo for spooky detective puzzler The Séance of Blake Manor, which released in full earlier this week, having had a demo up on Steam for a good while. However, I can confirm having taken in the first night of that demo that you’re also give the power to do the haunting yourself.

In their first set of financial results since issuing a profit warning and switching CEOs earlier this month, Remedy have revealed that they’re moving resources away from FBC: Firebreak amid a “sense of urgency”, and aiming to rely on established series Alan Wake and Control delivering hits which’ll shore up their commercial fortunes in the long-term.

Let’s get the hot potato out of the way without preamble: Embark’s extraction shooter Arc Raiders doesn’t include any gun models generated from Youtube videos, executive producer Aleksander Grøndal has told RPS in an interview about the game’s usage of generative AI and machine learning technologies.

This clarification follows the partial online publication of an Edge magazine interview in which Embark CEO Patrick Söderlund made various claims for the studio’s in-house tech, including the suggestion that the developers “can take a video from YouTube, feed it through our tools and pipelines, and [produce] a 3D model of the weapon you had in that video.” According to Grøndal, this particular technology is not actually used in Arc Raiders. “That’s a research project, and that’s not something that we’re using in the game now,” he told me over a video call this Monday, following a sprawling and generally enjoyable hands-on.

Category: Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Arc Raiders is out now, and the best thing about it so far is bumsliding through a buried desert city

Amazon have reportedly cancelled their Lord Of The Rings MMO, again

VVVVVV and Super Hexagon’s Terry Cavanagh is back with a joyfully cracked platformer about eggs

We could have lived in a world where Hideo Kojima made a Matrix game, if only someone had told him he was offered to make one

The Florist sounds like a lovely, cosy game right up until its a survival horror about killer plants

CEO of GTA 6 publisher Take-Two is surprisingly hesitant about AI usage for entirely unsurprising reasons

Descent of Lunaris is a sci-fi dungeon crawler RPG for sickos, with Wizardry and Shin Megami Tensei roots

Floorboards creak, spooks spook and I harass a man with a bell in detective puzzler The Séance of Blake Manor

Following FBC: Firebreak flopping, Remedy have a “sense of urgency” and are banking on hits from their established series

Arc Raiders doesn’t AI-generate guns from Youtube videos, Embark clarifies: “that’s a research project, and not something that we’re using in the game now”