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Last year’s Saints Row received a rough reception, leading developers Volition to become part of Gearbox and to pledge that they were “supporting Saints Row for the long-term.”
That pledge bears fruit on May 9th with the release of the Sunshine Springs update, which includes a new district, a combat overhaul, and many quality-of-life improvements.
F1 2021 had a story mode calling ‘Braking Point’, but it was absent from the racing simulation’s 2022 iteration. It returns in F1 2023, which will launch this June. There’s a reveal trailer below which features its protagonists, including newcomer Callie Mayer.
Redfall currently has ‘Mostly Negative’ reviews on Steam, reflecting a co-op shooter that feels sparse, unsatisfying and buggy to players. Our Ed is no fan either. In an interview with Kinda Funny earlier today, Xbox head Phil Spencer talked at length about Redfall’s issues.
“I’m upset with myself,” said Spencer, while defending the decision not to delay the game.
Take one look at Luna Abyss and you’ll probably go, ‘Wait a minute, this looks like first-person Returnal!’ And having played the first mission of the game at GDC, I can confirm that yes, this is very much in the vein of first-person Returnal. It’s a fast-paced, bullet hell shooter set on a strange alien moon where everything’s out to get you, but the shift in perspective makes everything in its titular abyss feel closer and more intimate, calling to mind the frantic, confined gun fights of Doom and Quake more than Housemarque’s seminal roguelike – games that creative director Benni Hill tells me were formative experiences for him growing up.
There’s also a greater emphasis on story-telling in Luna Abyss, with Hill also citing Nier: Automata and Bioshock as other key influences. It’s a compelling mix, based on the first chunk I played, and arguably one of my surprise GDC favourite demos alongside The Thaumaturge and The Lamplighters League. Indeed, Hill tells me they started working on Luna Abyss a year before Returnal was even announced, and when they first saw it during Sony’s PlayStation 5 reveal stream in the summer of 2020, he and his team did a collective double-take.
For the past while, I’ve been playing a closed beta build of Park Beyond, and let me tell you, I am very bad at it. I can just about (by the skin of my teeth) make a profitable park, but my god, that park will have the worst layout you’ve ever seen in your cursed, vomiting in the bins at a Disneyland life. But look, if the park works, it works, right? The shareholders can’t complain!
Thing is, much like with the internet or your mum’s relationship with the binman, theme park simulators can really change while you’re not paying attention. While part of Park Beyond’s selling point is making literally impossible rides via the aptly-named method of Impossification (an upgrade to rides you buy by spending units of amazement gleaned from your slack-jawed guests, in order to strap a canon to a rollercoaster), I really was not prepared for how simulation-y the simulation bits are.
You’ve probably head by now that Redfall is a few virgins short of a vampy picnic, mainly by un-virtue of its undercooked co-operative cryptid blasting. But there are plenty of PC performance problems to contend with as well, despite it getting a helping hand from DLSS and FSR 2.1.
Digital festival LudoNarraCon is back for its fifth year, showcasing games that are all about story-telling and narrative. It kicks off today, May 4th, at 10am PT/6pm BST and runs until next Monday, May 8th. The event is being hosted on Steam where you can sample 36 demos, enjoy discounts on over 140 games, and watch 15 panels through a livestream. Highlights this year include three ‘fireside chats’ with Ron Gilbert of Monkey Island fame, the designer of the OPUS series Scott Chen, and Life Is Strange: True Color’s staff writer Felice Tzehuei, who’s sitting down to chat with our lovely reviews editor Rachel.
When Nintendo first released their level-building game Super Mario Maker, many fans hoped for a similar set of tools based on The Legend Of Zelda series. The Big N haven’t gotten around to it yet, but indie developers Rokaplay and Firechick have beaten them to the punch with Super Dungeon Maker, which just released out of early access. It’s what the name implies: a game where you can build your own classic Zelda-like dungeons, share them online, and then play through other people’s whacky creations.
The Pokéverse continues to spread onto the PC route this summer with an updated digital version of the trading card game. The free-to-play Pokémon TCG Live is set to leave open beta and launch fully on June 8th at 10am PT/6pm BST, The Pokémon Company have announced. TCG Live will be replacing the older version of the creature-card-collectathon Pokémon TCG Online, which was first released back in 2011.
Back in February we posted a deal on Logitech’s K400 Bluetooth keyboard/trackpad combo device, which offered a convenient way to control Steam Deck, media PCs and other gizmos that don’t come with built-in desktop-friendly controls.
Today we’re back with a similar deal on the Logitech Wireless Starter Kit, which bundles a K380 keyboard and M185 mouse for £40 (down from £50). Both elements are surprisingly high-quality for the price, with a nicer-looking and better-feeling scissor switch keyboard with circular keycaps and a compact 2.4GHz mouse that provides better speed and accuracy than a trackpad.
