Auto Added by WPeMatico
Ever since rocks and sticks formed the first proto-drumkits, mankind has understood the uplifting power of a good bop. So too does Billie Bust Up, an upcoming 3D platformer that’s just as much of a Disney-style cartoon musical.
When I see dirt, I know what I must do: clean. Whether it’s in my own, real-life home or in a game, I am compelled to scrub, wipe and tidy – and the oily, purple globs of gunk clogging up Loddlenaut‘s appropriately named region of Flotsam Flats are just begging to be zapped by my little diver’s handy laser gun. With just a single squeeze of the trigger, he sets to work, moving his arm automatically to neatly attack each neighbouring blob without any further prompting or manual aiming. All I need to focus on is getting him close enough to the gunge and he’ll take care of the rest. Sure, it’s perhaps not quite as involved as your PowerWash Sims and other polish em ups, but the combination of Loddlenaut’s lo-fi visuals, comforting score and surprisingly soothing controller rumble all work to give it its own kind of zen-like charm – and it was enough to make me forget the surrounding din of the EGX Rezzed Zone for a very enjoyable 20 minutes or so.
Sometimes, the ability to push over a tree was inside you all along. Retrieving woodland traversal skills from the depths of memory is key to Pine Hearts, an easygoing adventure/exploration game that I’ve spent a very relaxing half-hour with in the EGX 2023 Rezzed Zone.
Pitched as “a racing game for people who don’t like racing games,” Resistor shows an immediate disinterest in tracks, time trials, or even really the cars themselves. This racing game, I’m told as I sit down to play a demo in the EGX 2023’s Rezzed Zone, cares about the person behind the wheel – and their burgeoning camaraderie with a roughneck pit crew.
Lords Of The Fallen has issued a major performance patch for the technically troubled Soulslike, helping its Steam reviews to escape their early ‘Mostly Negative’ rating as developers Hexworks resolve a number of the biggest problems on PC.
The makers of fresh Soulslike Lords Of The Fallen have taken a strong position against the use of digital rights management software Denuvo, promising players that the game will never dabble with the controversial anti-piracy tech.
Grotty fantasy Soulslike Lords of the Fallen – which I have been cautiously looking forward to, despite Ed’s efforts to temper my expectations – is getting its chainmail-wearing arse kicked by Steam players. It seems to be selling well, squatting at third on the platform’s global top seller charts by revenue, but the user review consensus tells a different story. There are 1,320 reviews at the time of writing, and they are Mostly Negative, which is quite the showing for a game’s first day on sale.
The next game in RGG Studio’s Yakuza/Like A Dragon series, Infinite Wealth, is a melting pot of old and new. As the bare buttocks of returning Yakuza: Like A Dragon hero Ichiban Kasuga indicated in the reveal trailer for Infinite Wealth, we’re not in Yokohama anymore, but Honolulu, Hawaii. He’s not alone on his journey either. As well as his mates from the first LAD, plus lots more newcomers, mainline Yakuza stablemate Kazuma Kiryu, now extra frosty with his silver hairdo, is also coming along for the ride as well.
Alas, the circumstances in which the two join forces wasn’t covered in my 30-minute demo at this year’s EGX. Rather, we pick up Ichiban, Kiryu and fresh faces Chitose and Tomizawa as they land in Honolulu, in search of a dodgy cop named Roman who’s managed to wrong almost everyone in the group at some point in the past. 30 minutes isn’t long in a game like Yakuza, but hey, I still got to screech at restaurant goers in one of its sidequest stories, as well as terrorise the general public on Ichiban’s always-deployable segway, which I’d still call a pretty strong introduction to this latest LAD.
Microsoft have finally, finally, finally bought Activision Blizzard after many months of haggling with regulators in several countries. The total figure for the company behind Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, Overwatch and Hearthstone, to say nothing of whopping mobile game publisher King and Candy Crush Saga? $68.7 billion, making this the biggest buyout in videogames industry history.
