Category: Rock, Paper, Shotgun

The current custodians of the World of Darkness tabletop RPG universe are bang up for doing more video game adaptations like the troubled Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2, according to White Wolf brand marketing manager Jason Carl. In fact, they may be working on a few already, with Carl naming Mage: The Ascension, Changeling: The Dreaming and the Dark Ages setting as deserving of “the Bloodlines treatment”.

People who’ve been keeping up with the vamps and their video game misadventures may find that last phrase a bit rich. For clarity, I assume that by “Bloodlines treatment” Carl means “we’re going to make a big 3D RPG with a lot of lore”. Rather than “we’re going to delay it so often it becomes a running joke, fire the original narrative director, hand it to a different studio with no real track record for RPGs, then tell people it’s more spiritual successor than sequel“.

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As a faction, the strength of Total War: Warhammer 3‘s Bretonnia lies in their knightly calvary. The peasant infantry is basically just there to squishily hold the enemy in place for charges. However, I’m feeling revolutionary today, so we’re staging a serf uprising. Let’s see how long we last. Pretty simple rules here, then. No knights. No horses. Conquer the entirety of Bretonnia. Defeat every horse I see in one-on-one combat.

Indeed, the serfs of Carcassonne had suffered too long under feudalism’s gussied-up protection racket, and the battle fought for their freedom had been long and bloody. Bretonnia’s knightly class were better armed and better trained, their bodies nourished and strong. The bones of the common folk creaked from years of tireless field work. Their frames were frail from a diet of nettles, bruised turnips, and a wide selection of delectable artisanal French pastries which they all refused to eat, French being the language of their oppressors.

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Y’know what, I think we’ve lived long enough in the post-Steam Deck world that it bears weighing up what the current best handheld PCs are. A few years ago this would have just been a vaguely-ranked list of whatever portables were available, but after Valve demonstrated that the palm-resting format could not just work, but actually be good, handhelds have arguably become the most interesting and rapidly-changing thing in all of PC hardware. Even Microsoft are having a go, slapping their branding on the upcoming Asus ROG Xbox Ally – though here, I’m sticking strictly to the finest handhelds that I’ve tested and that you can buy.

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Microsoft have reportedly set in motion the wave of layoffs the company were said to be gearing up for last week – the fourth round of major job cuts to hit Xbox in 18 months.

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Look, EA and Maxis, did you really have to do this? The Sims 4‘s virtual humans, who’ve long been able to take solace in the fact that random virtual people in the street couldn’t see absolutely everything their despotic overlords force them to do indoors, no longer have that privilege. The game’s latest update has made glass walls for houses a thing.

You can also stick plants on roofs, to give your prisoners something nice to stare at through their transparent cells when you inevitably delete all of the doors and watch them die. Yep, I know the myriad crimes that’ve been perpetrated with pool stairs over the years, and this looks like it’ll start a terrifying new chapter for sim cruelty.

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Copper golems and new types of copper equipment are coming in the next big Minecraft update, which is available to test now in Minecraft Bedrock and available shortly as a Snapshot for the Java edition. The golems actually date back to Minecraft’s 2021 Mob Vote – players cruelly snubbed them in favour of the musical, item-fetching Allay. Classic case of robophobia, if you ask me. What can some fairy jukebox junkie do that a golem can’t. Luckily for you nay-sayers, Mojang have seen fit to add the oxidisable automatons to Minecraft anyway, in keeping with the idea that Mob Vote outcomes are more of a guide for development than a rigid prescription.

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Nexus Mods is set to introduce age verification for folks in the UK and EU attempting to gander at NSFW add-ons, as part of incoming changes to how the site handles mods containing adult or “illegal” content.

In a news post, Nexus Mods content team lead SlugGirl outlined that these changes are being made in response to the UK’s Online Safety Act and the EU’s Digital Services Act, along with guidance being issued by UK regulator Ofcom. Site founder Robin ‘Dark0ne’ Scott has commented on the post in an effort to reassure users that these policy adjustments aren’t a result of Nexus Mods’ recent change in ownership, and would have had to happen regardless.

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Publishers Krafton have removed multiple senior staff at Subnautica 2 studio Unknown Worlds in a sudden shift that swaps the leadership team for a single head honcho from the studio who made sci-fi horror game The Callisto Protocol. It’s not clear why. At Unknown Worlds, co-founder Charlie Cleveland, CEO Ted Gill, and technical director Max MacGuire have all been “replaced” by Steve Papoutsis, CEO at Striking Distance, the creators of the Dead Space-ish game.

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We all have things we liked that we didn’t realise were considered a bit naff at the time, and for me that thing was FMV games. Well, I win. FMV games are back and cool again. Which, by extension, basically means Dragon’s Lair was good. I don’t make the rules. Here’s the latest trailer for Dead Take.

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It’s the Fourth of July this week, and that means there are deals to be had on the other side of the pond.

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