Last time, you decided that shopkeepers annoyed when you don’t buy anything is better than security cameras following your every move. So rather than an implied surveillance which doesn’t actually have consequences, you wish to be actively scolded for things you’ve not done. Alright reader dear, I’m noting that in your psychological profile. Onwards! This week I ask you to choose between soaring through the sky or making something else soar. What’s better: gliding powers or Dragon’s Dogma 2‘s Unmaking Arrow?
Revealed at the Triple-I Initiative just now, Vampire Survivors is getting another cool DLC, this one a crossover with classic Konami run ‘n’ gun Contra. It’s called Operation Guns. Get on board. Trailed with, as is now traditional, a cool animated trailer that suggests the game is a Saturday morning cartoon and not a top down pixelated nightmare that will flush out any latent photosensitivity lurking in your skull (complimentary), Operation Guns is arriving on May 9th, so about a month away.
Last week I went to a screening of Amazon and Bethesda’s Fallout TV show, a spin-off yarn starring Ella Purnell (who voiced Jinx in the Arcane Netflix adaptation) as a recently surfaced Vault Dweller, scouring the irradiated wastelands for [SPOILERS REDACTED]. It’s early days, but the show’s first two episodes didn’t make a massive impression on me, though I will concede that the sight of Amazon’s branding on Fallout’s infamous Please Stand By emergency broadcast titlecard makes a dangerous amount of sense.
Drop Bear Bytes, the studio behind post-apocalyptic RPGBroken Roads, are named after Australia’s deadliest creature. The Drop Bear might look like a normal koala, but they’re actually dangerous predators, fond of jumping from trees to maul unsuspecting chumps who forget to take adequate precautions, like urinating on themselves. Really, the story is a wind-up the aussies like to blag tourists with. If it looks like a koala, it’s just a koala. But it’s this sort of character, inspired by love for Australia’s unique landscape, culture and good-natured mick-taking, that forms the heart of the best bits in Broken Roads. I say ‘best bits’, but I should probably say ‘the only bits that I actually enjoyed’, unfortunately.
Bombs wiped out 80% of Australia’s population, and left the remaining nail-hard Nancys and tough Tobiases to fend for themselves in a world short of resources, but shockingly plentiful in both guns and pre-made Vegemite sarnies. You’ll pick one of four character classes – I went with ‘Jackaroo’ (cattle hand), because it was called ‘Jackaroo’ – before tackling a short tutorial section. You’ll then be thrust into some events, where you’ll meet the rest of your starting party and kick off the game proper.
Bungie have released a big overview video of Destiny 2‘s Final Shape expansion, introducing a new, openly overpowered Prismatic subclass, fresh Exotic items and the new Dread enemy faction.
I’ve worked from home for most of the past decade, but it was during the pandemic lockdowns that I was finally indoctrinated into the world of co-working streams, pomodoro timers and lofi beats to chill/study to. I’m better now, but I absolutely see the appeal of Spirit City: Lofi Sessions, a “gamified focus tool” that just launched on Steam.
The original Gigantic blended MOBA and hero shooter ideas together at the height of the gold rush in both genres, but failed to carve off a large enough audience of its own and sadly shut down in 2018.
As of today, it’s back as Gigantic: Rampage Edition, with new characters, a new mode, and an upfront fee in place of its former free-to-play model.
Ubisoft Massive’s open world action-adventure Star Wars Outlaws will release on 30th August 2024, according to a new story trailer which introduces us properly to “emerging scoundrel” Kay Vess, aka Hannah Solo. If you haven’t had the pleasure, Kay is a budding crook on the run from her underworld boss, a journey that sees her tangling with several other Star Wars crime syndicates on various planets. It really feels like they’re keeping a lot of the headline Star Wars stuff at a respectful distance for this one: yes, Jabba the Hutt makes an appearance, but there’s nary a whiff of The Force, Jedi or Sith in the trailer and not once does anybody build a Death Star.
If you’re from the USA, Britain or France, and also possibly a Victorian time-traveller, you might be familiar with the dunce cap – a conical humiliation bestowed on struggling or misbehaving schoolchildren, who were then told to go sit in the corner and think about their sins. Well, get ready for the dunce cosmetic. In Sumo Newcastle’s Deathsprint 66, an 8-player on-foot racing game based on Stephen King’s dystopian novel The Running Man, players build a Hype multiplier by combo-ing stunts such as railgrinds, and also, murdering each other.
In many ways Children Of The Sun is a highly relatable game. I do not have telekinetic powers that allow me to control the path of a bullet from a sniper rifle, and I was not part of a murderous cult that killed my father-figure. But if I did and I were, you can bet that I’d go on a rip-roaring rampage of revenge! Stepping into the be-grimed trainers and unwashed jacket of the protagonist – a misused girl whose vibe is that of a member of Gorillaz – you shoot a single bullet from your gun and control it in first-person as you zip it through the heads, hearts and hands of cultists placed around a level. It’s a satisfying Sniper Elite meets Superhot puzzle of ultraviolence, and it’s neat.
