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Valve have launched Steam Families on the Steam Beta Client, a suite of new and refreshed family sharing options that replace Steam’s existing Family Sharing and Family View features. The idea is that you’ll now have a single location where you can manage your family’s games from, as well as have more control over what and when other family members can play.
A heaving expo floor is not a great place to sample a first-person open world hunting game that wants you to monitor your own heartbeat, but The Axis Unseen manages to be pretty atmospheric regardless. It helps that I’m hunting Bigfoot. Hefting my magical bow, I peer around a tree trunk at the creature as he wanders down a slope of vivid orange grass sprinkled with pale blue rock. I only have a couple of arrows in my quiver, which doesn’t feel like nearly enough, so I edge across the hillside to another tree trunk, where I can hopefully line up a headshot.
If you’ve ever tried to play a hardcore RPG that’s way above your brain’s pay grade, or got lost in tutorials that use complicated words and bizarre jargon, then you’ve probably felt right at home reading headlines about AI recently. Why are people angry that this character has seven fingers? Why does Nvidia want me to talk to a robot about ramen? Why is everyone saying AI is smart when it still can’t manage its Classical Era luxury resource economy in Civilization properly? In this new series, we’re going to explore what ‘generative AI’ is, why it’s arrived now in the games industry, and what it might mean for people who make, write about and play games in the future.
HoYoverse have announced that sign-ups for Zenless Zone Zero‘s next closed beta test are now available. While the start and end dates of the next closed beta haven’t been unveiled just yet, we do know that there’s going to be a new character to play, a new faction, new missions, and overhauls to the game’s combat and exploration. I’d imagine it’s worth a look if you’re into Genshin Impact, or are into your anime fights. Either one will suffice.
Every weekend, indie devs show off current work on Twitter’s #screenshotsaturday tag. And every Monday, I bring you a selection of these snaps and clips. This week, my eye has been caught by a meaty walking truck, opportunities for hubris, slime cleanup troubles, submarine dilemmas, and more. Check out these attractive and interesting indie games!
Solo developer Billy Basso’s enigmatic Metroidvania Animal Well has been dated for May 9th, publishers Bigmode announced yesterday. In it, you’ll explore a vast labyrinth of tunnels, solve puzzles and escape its many mammalian-based horrors, all of whom are out to gobble you up in one fell swoop – though as a strange, tiny little blob creature the size of a chicken nugget, it’s unclear both what you are, and why exactly you’re so appetising to them. Well, it probably has something to do with looking like a sentient chicken nugget, I suppose. Come and watch the release date trailer below.
It’s GDC week over in San Francisco at the moment, and such a high concentration of video game developers in one place can only mean one thing: The Maw has turned its ever-dribbling gaze to America’s west coast, and is preparing to bask in all the fresh learnings being shared about how last year’s best video games were made and created. Edwin is one the ground there for us, so we wish him well in his news gathering and interview appointments. Back home, the news cycle still continues apace, with lots of great releases big and small coming up over the next seven days. Here’s what we’ve got our eyes on.
Having spent close to 40 hours hanging out with Cloud and co. on my (entirely accidental) Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth holiday last week, I’ve been absolutely bowled over by the sheer size and scale of its big, open world map regions. I’ve only seen three of them so far, out of its total of eight, but it’s immediately obvious just how much of a step-up these places are compared to the dusty plains and rolling hills of the most recent Final Fantasy game to hit PC, FF15. An obvious take, perhaps, given that FF15 first came out eight years ago in 2016, but I’m sure anyone (all right, mainly me) who’s ever despaired at Noctis’ seeming inability to climb even the smallest hillock in front of him, or how everyone always rides right into your backside while gunning about on a chocobo, will feel some mild, tangible relief at how elegantly Rebirth has solved both of these particular problems. Not only can everyone’s chocobo navigate the world seamlessly without getting tripped up on either yourself or the nearest pebble, but Cloud can also jump, leap and haul himself up crags and rocks with one easy button press.
But there are aspects of Rebirth’s approach to open world adventuring that also feel distinctly underwhelming at the same time. When you look past the splendour and rich reimagining of this once flat and detail-less world, it’s ultimately quite a standardised take on what modern open world games have become in recent years. There are towers that reveal more points of interest on the map; there are special monster encounters to find; summon temples to discover; and lifestream springs to analyse that also reveal more and more about your immediate surroundings. There are proper sidequests with their own multi-part story objectives, too, which is arguably where Rebirth feels most alive, but most of the activities you’ll be doing between critical story missions all generally fall into the same identical categories in each region. FF15 had some of these, too, of course, but it never felt quite so formulaic in how you went about them.
I’ll be honest: fried eggs are my least favourite way to enjoy the versatile food. But even a noted fried-egg hater like me was left salivating over a pan full of sizzling yolks by my first look at strange yet mesmerising upcoming sci-fi cooking sim Arctic Eggs.
Mojang have announced a new Minecraft subscription service, the Marketplace Pass, which grants access to a catalogue of “150+” community-created Minecraft thingy-ma-bobs. Skins, adventure worlds, survival spawns, mashups, bizarre textures – with a Marketplace Pass, the wider monetisable universe of Minecraft is your (rented) oyster, except that this being Minecraft, the oyster looks like a weird underwater trapdoor. Here’s a trailer.
