Larian have released a new Baldur’s Gate 3 update which – in news which will surely lead to V-Day-style mass celebrations throughout the forts and dungeons of Faerûn – removes the loathed shared stash system introduced by Patch 3, which caused companions to dump their entire inventories on you when dismissed. The new patch reverts companion behaviour to their pre-Patch 3 behaviour, for a less frustrating RPG experience. In even more momentous tidings, it re-shaves that cat everybody loves. Ah, videogames.
Valve have released a small Counter-Strike 2 update that, amongst other things, stops mud slowing you down and stops incendiary grenades forming fiery rings in mid-air, like excitable kids with sparklers. There are also fixes for a shader compilation bug that may, nonetheless, still exist for AMD GPUs when playing this latest iteration of the developer’s free-to-play team and objective-based shooter. Many of the larger issues returning players have, such as the absence of Mac support, have yet to be addressed.
Sergiy Galyonkin – aka Mr. SteamSpy himself – has left Epic Games after almost a decade at the Fortnite maker, including six years as its director of publishing strategy, saying that he is no longer “a good fit” for the publisher.
Payday 3 makers Starbreeze have promised that the matchmaking woes of its launch are at an end following multiple rounds of maintenance to the co-op shooter’s servers.
Ivar Hill and Slipgate’s Core Decay is a Deus Ex and System Shock-flavoured immersive sim that’s all about the ABCs. A, of course, stands for Attacking by means of things like energy rifles, electro-batons and shotguns. B is for back-stabbing, referring to the stealthy player who may stack objects so as to clamber into vents, and whack guards deftly in the noggin to escape detection.
And C is for Conversing, referring to the act of wooing civilians – who thus far seem miraculously unbothered by your menacing hooded appearance and sepulchral accent – so as to procure door codes and the location of keycards. You can see all these approaches in the game’s new trailer, below.
Blackbird Interactive’s next big thing is Homeworld 3, out February 2024, but Homeworld 3 has a little cousin, Earthless, which tells approximately the same tale of a big colony ship fleeing across the galaxy, but takes the form of a deck-building roguelite cardgame. Never one to say no to a bout of space strategy, I fired up a preview key over the weekend, and while I wouldn’t say my pulse has jumped to hyperspace, I’m certainly enthused.
Amazon Prime Big Deal Days is both too hard to say and weirdly close to the most recent Prime Day. And yet, as expected, it’s set to be stuffed senseless with computer kit; there are already dozens of offers on SSDs, gaming mice and keyboards, and laptops ahead of the main event on October 10th-11th. Also: loads more. This guide to the best early Prime Big Deal Days PC gaming deals (urgh, see?) will pick out the highlights for your consuming convenience.
The majorest of major disclaimers: these early deals aren’t yet subject to the defining rule of Prime Big Deal Days, specifically that its juciest savings will only be for Prime members. In other words, any deals on this list, right now, are available to everyone.
In the frozen hellscape of Frostpunk, you eked out your existence in hours and days, clinging to your heat- and life-giving generator at the centre of your fledgling city like there was literally no tomorrow. In 11 bit Studio’s forthcoming sequel, Frostpunk 2, the apocalypse is yesterday’s news. Now you’re dealing with “what happens when you survive the un-survivable,” as the game’s co-director and design director Jakub Stokalski neatly puts it when I sit down for a hands off presentation at this year’s Gamescom. And to do this, Frostpunk 2 is going big, measuring its time not in days, but weeks, months and even years.
“If we want to show the evolution of societies and different utopias/dystopias, we need breathing room,” says Stokalski. “And this breathing room really is in the scale, both in the physical sense but also in the sense of time. It’s difficult to show meaningful social change in the space of a month, so the time ticks now in weeks and months, and in a long playthrough you’ll get up into years, so you can see the consequences of your choices.”
Paradox have announced that they’re publishing Channel 3 Entertainment’s Foundry, a first-person factory management sim set in an… “infinite” world. Factories with no maximum size limit? Oh dear. I had a hard enough time shucking off my addiction to Dyson Sphere Program, in which you can build a factory that encloses the sun. I dread to think how much time I could waste away playing this.
