It’s been a few months since Hyper Light Breaker launched into early access, unfortunately arriving in a bit of a mess. The game just wasn’t there, which obviously is what early access is for, but it was rough. Everything was just a bit too difficult, too unbalanced, and the loop wasn’t strong enough to do over and over again, none of which you want in a roguelike. Developer Heart Machine have been tinkering away at it though, bringing in some much needed tweaks here and there, and now the game’s first big update is coming next week.
It was literally only last week that 11 bit studios announced a new Frostpunk was on the way, even saying that it could have a release date “as early as 2027.” Yet, here we are now, with the reveal of what it actually is. It’s not Frostpunk 3, it’s not a spinoff, it’s Frostpunk 1886, a “reimagined” version of the original game. Yes, that basically just means that it’s a remake, though it does sound like it’s got a bit more going on from it than the original.
As a Steam Deck game, I already prefer The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered to the original Oblivion, and for reasons mirroring why the Deck itself still beats newer, faster handhelds: the performance might be lower but everything, as Toddy H himself would say, just works. Spend two miserable minutes trying find a custom controller configuration that makes thumbing through OG Oblivion’s menus even remotely comfortable, and you’ll appreciate all the more how the remaster gels with the Steam Deck immediately.
That said, its 2025-ified visuals do present a relatively distinct challenge. Indulge too enthusiastically in their fancy lighting and hyper-detailed Patrick Stewart facial creases, and the Steam Deck’s hardware is quickly overwhelmed. But, drop the graphics settings to their lowest, and Oblivion Remastered simply looks like bum, to the point of undermining the point of the whole ‘Remastered’ thing. The solution: a healthy, balanced mix of low and medium settings, which you can find further down in case you don’t want to run your own trial-and-error experiments on how Cyrodiilian bush rendering affects framerates.
There’s still no solid release date for Subnautica 2, but the studio making the fishy survival game have given folks a glimpse beneath the surface of development in a devlog video. There are shots of a bubbly submarine speeder pod, and a brief sighting of a sea creature that does an annoyed underwater bark at you, before headbutting something it doesn’t like. We also get some idea of co-op, with footage of two players helping each other out – a feature that’ll be new to this sequel.
Tenderfoot Tactics is a wistful and dreamlike turn-based indie that I had a real soft spot for the year it released. It’s still available on Steam and well worth a look, but won’t be available on the Xbox Store from today. In an act of solidarity with the BDS boycott of Microsoft following their reported connections with the Israeli military, the development team have removed their game from sale on Microsoft’s storefronts.
There’s no official mod support for The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered. But when has that ever stopped modders from forcibly isekai-ing their favourite anime characters into the wrong realm? Not even 24 hours have passed since the fantasy RPG remaster was released in a “surprise” announcement by Bethesda, and the modding scene has already created 90+ mods and counting (and that’s just on one popular modding website). What’s most intriguing is that they’ve discovered some old mods for the original game still work in the remaster. It’s an exciting time to be an Elder Scrolls modder.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is Sandfall Interactive’s debut, which tells me two things about the French studio. Firstly, that they’re a bunch of utter show offs and, secondly, that they’re a bunch of utter show offs. You can’t do this, Sandfall. You can’t just come storming out the gate with a turn-based RPG possessed of all the flash and experimentation of Lost Odyssey or Legend Of Dragoon plus all the haunting playfulness and bizarre beauty of both Miyazakis having a thumb war while Yoko Taro rolls around on the floor beside them.
I don’t know how they do things in France, but where I’m from, pulling off such clarity of vision on your first attempt is illegal – as is this much earnest outpouring of feeling on any attempt. Indeed, I can see some of you finding Clair Obscur a little too cute, a little too eager to dazzle and move with its operatic spectacle and Lisa Simpson-ish virtuosity.
Me? I find it hard to even get lost in games I love these days. I’ll usually settle for anything that stops me checking my email for an hour. But if Clair Obscur’s brilliant combat had me hooked, the journey it offers had me enchanted. It would appear that they really do make ’em like this anymore.
What is a video game NPC, if not a scared creature that needs a bit of help? That’s exactly what the just announced PANIK cuts right to the core of, and I’ve been charmed by it quite quickly. In PANIK, there are Panikers, which are a type of scared creature that are just so unbelievably anxious they cannot move from where they stand. This is where you come in, a, uh, well they didn’t name the player character so I’ll just keep saying you.
In a free world, all Overwatch 2 heroes would be playable no matter how annoying they might be to face off against because sometimes them’s the breaks. We don’t live in a free world though, not anymore at least, as Overwatch 2 season 16 starts today. Most notably it’s introducing its new mode Stadium, but also something that’ll change up the competitive aspect of the shooter quite a bit: hero bans.
