Category: Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Port-o-remaster publishers Aspyr yesterday launched the Star Wars: Battlefront Classic Collection, bundling together the two ‘What if Battlefield but Star Wars?’ shooters originally released by Pandemic Studios and LucasArts in 2004 and 2005 (not to be confused with Dice and EA’s uncolonic Star Wars Battlefront games from the mid-tensies). It’s one of those rereleases that exists mostly for consoles which never saw the games in the first place, made a bit useless on PC by the fact that you can still buy and fully play the originals for half the price. It’s made even less useful by launching in a right wonky technical state, with bad lag, crashes, and reportedly only three 64-player servers online at first.

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What do you reach for when you’re waiting in line at the supermarket, or waiting in a shop doorway for the rain to stop, or even while you’re waiting for a game to finish downloading? I don’t mean to assume, but let’s face it, it’s probably your phone, where some idle doomscrolling likely awaits you, or some other, time-wasting distraction that will help fill the dead air between one task and the next. Well, While Waiting is a game that delves into precisely this fundamental human question: what is the best thing to do while waiting for something else to happen? It’s from the makers of the very good puzzle game Moncage, and its newly released Steam demo is a pure, fidgety brilliance.

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My day in Lightyear Frontier starts out with a bit of farming. On a good day, it’s raining, so I don’t need to water the crops. On a bad day, there are weeds spontaneously spawning from the sky and I need to catch them before they land right on top of my precious plants. Either way, when I’m done, I’ll put the day’s harvest into the processing machines to work while I’m away, and then go exploring for minerals.

My goals are clear. I need to build a new machine, or upgrade my mech so that I can clean up a new area of the map and get new resources in return. Those will – you guessed it – let me build new machines or upgrade my mech again. There might be a few steps to juggle on the way, but nothing that needs me to hold long recipe flowcharts in my head. When I get back I’ll have everything I need to take the next step. It always feels like I’m making forward progress.

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If you’re fond of the fairly specific blend of doomy theology, rich art direction and Soulslike-tinted metroidvaning encapsulated by Blasphemous, you might also enjoy Saviorless from Cuban team Empty Head Games and publisher Dear Villagers, which now has a PC release date of 2nd April.

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Pocketpair have popped up a trailer for Palworld‘s first new raid battle boss, Bellanoir, who is “coming soon” to the monster-catching survival game in a big old Palworld update that will also include some fixes and additional anti-cheating measures. First impressions: it’s an evil Goth girl with a jellyfish where her legs should be.

This being a Palworld story, the (SFW) reactions I’ve read on social media and reddit fall into two categories. Firstly, which Pokemon is this one based on? The consensus seems to be that it’s a moodier version of Gardevoir, though in Pocketpair’s defence, comparisons are also being drawn with Palworld’s own Lyleen Noct. And secondly, what work suitability does this one have? Because there is no Pal so magnificent and terrible that it can’t be beaten up, Palsphered and demoted to chopping wood or tending a furnace.

🚨Attention Pal Tamers🚨A powerful evil Pal has appeared and is laying siege to the Palpagos Islands! Only the most skilled Pal Tamers stand a chance against her…Palworld’s first raid, Bellanoir, is coming soon! pic.twitter.com/jZ4iWVl1Qk

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Final Factory has already impressed via a couple of demos. It’s effectively ‘Factorio in space’: you construct space bases by chaining together machinery, protect by commanding ships and turrets to fight off alien invaders, then explore the galaxy to secure more resources.

It’s now got an Early Access release date: April 9th.

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As if colony sim RimWorld doesn’t already have enough ways for your sci-fi frontier adventurers to die, a new expansion titled Anomaly is goiong to add “all manner of monstrous, mysterious, and maddening threats”. It’s out in around a month, and will be paired with a free 1.5 update for the base game.

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Helldivers 2‘s Cutting Edge Premium warbond, aka DLC battle pass, is now available to buy in-game, and it is chock-full of oddball gadgetry such as lightning shotguns, burst-fire laser rifles and experimental armour. As with the Arc Thrower stratagem, the lightning shotgun fires arcs of electricity that conduct between players and enemies alike, but there’s a fresh armour perk, Electrical Conduit, which reduces arc damage by 95%, allowing close-knit teams of Helldivers to roll around the battlefield frazzling themselves without much penalty.

Still, I think the real star pick here is surely the Localization Confusion booster, which extends the time between enemy spawns, allowing weirdo solo players such as myself to disentangle from a dragged-out gunfight a little more gracefully.

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You wouldn’t know because she hardly ever mentions it, but Alice Bee is not a Ready Player One fan. In fairness, the newly revealed Open (or Opthreen), a RPO-themed metaverse battle royale thing, does look, sound, feel, and smell horrible, so a solid chunk of this week’s Electronic Wireless Show podcast is just us despairing over it. But there’s also some honest-to-goodness games chat, as we field a question from EWS listener Pete (thanks Pete!) on the games our younger selves were parentally forbidden from playing – and how we feel about them as ostensible grownups.

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This week’s announcement that Embracer are selling off Saber Interactive to new company Beacon Interactive has cast further doubt over the future of one of Embracer’s bigger projects, the much-delayed Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic remake. While Embracer have yet to actually state this out loud, it sounds like the KOTOR remake will be a “joint project” between Saber and Embracer. It also probably won’t be out in the next 12 months. Given the project’s repeated disruptions and delays, I suspect many of us will settle for the game coming out at all.

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