Fresh Lies Of P footage shows off a fight with a lightning gorilla robocop

Lies of P hopes to fix, as revealed in a new gameplay trailer designed to show off how nice it looks on a Radeon RX 7900 XTX. I will likely never own a Radeon RX 7900 XTX, but it’s looking increasingly likely that I will buy Lies of P.

It’s a Soulslike that plonks you into an alternate Victorian London where people got real good at inventing creepy automata. You play as the big P himself, Pinocchio.

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Shang-Chi is apparently the most overrated card in Marvel Snap

Marvel Snap that destroys any and all opposing cards in his lane with a power of 9 or above. He feels great to play, and miserable to play against. He is also, apparently, quite bad – at least according to project lead Ben Brode, who’s consulted his big statistics bank to discover that he appears in more losing decks than anyone else.

Huh. I suppose I can stop agonising over whether he has a place in my latest Patriot deck.

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Valheim’s next biome update will be the Ashlands, a volcanic land of the dead

Valheim developers Iron Gate have decided it’s time to start cracking on their next biome update. They’re now chiselling away at the Ashlands, a volcanic “land of the dead” packed with skeletal horrors.

It’ll be a while before all the horrors are ready, but a smaller update with clothes and haircuts is on the way soon.

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Howl is a devious tactics game that channels Into The Breach and Inkle’s Pendragon

The Lion’s Song devs Mi’pu’mi Games to be a turn-based tactical folktale, but cor, Howl sure does tick a heck of a lot of boxes for me. Due out later this year, you play a deaf hero in search of a cure to a sinister ‘howling plague’ that’s devastated the land around you and turned all its inhabitants into blood-thirsty beasts – and having played its first chapter last week, its combination of tight planning, grid-based shoving and limited ammo a la Into The Breach is very, very moreish indeed. Definitely one to watch for strategy game fans.

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The EU are slapping Microsoft with an antitrust warning over their Activision-Blizzard buyout

has already committed to blocking Microsoft’s $69 billion Activision-Blizzard buyout, so now it’s the EU’s turn to kick up a fuss. The EU’s antitrust watchdog is nearing the end of a 90-day probe into whether Microsoft’s buyout violates antitrust laws, and they’re reportedly about to serve up a charge sheet that lays out all their beef. As with those of the FTC and other regulators, their objections are likely to centre on the likelihood of Microsoft saddling Call Of Duty with Xbox or Gamepass exclusivity.

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Lost Ark’s latest effort to tackle its bot problem ended up banning lapsed players

Lost Ark got a bit too happy with its banhammer over the weekend, with lapsed players taking to the game’s Steam page to complain that they’d been banned for no reason other than inactivity. Players, or at least former players, of Lost Ark left more than 1300 negative reviews of the game on Saturday, and more than 1000 on Sunday. They claimed they’d received bans that appeared on their Steam profile without actually logging into the game recently.

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Screenshot Saturday Mondays: dual-wielding katanas and duel-wielding fruit

#screenshotsaturday tag. And every Monday, I bring you a selection of these snaps and clips. This week, my eye has been caught by a pleasing assortment of zippy and dramatic movements—hoverboards, airdashes, grappling hooks—but also some cute, weird, interesting, and uh I guess hypothetically erotic indies games. Come have a look!

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Awesome Games Done Quick 2023 raised more than $2.6 million for charity

Twitter after the event concluded, and thanked all the runners and those who’d donated.

A number of speedruns throughout the week-long event smashed world records for their respective games and categories too, including PC runs of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge and my own personal GOTY from 2022, PowerWash Simulator. You can watch the AGDQ 2023’s record-setting No Soap PowerWash Simulator run below, and weep into your coffee at the sheer cleaning ability on display.

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SimCity 4, the greatest citybuilder of all time, was released 20 years ago

SimCity 4 had its problems. Its huge cities would chug on even decent PCs, for one, and its traffic simulation seemed outright broken.

Twenty years later – thanks to faster PCs, the Rush Hour expansion, and a huge modding community – SimCity 4 is the best of all SimCity games. If what you care about is simulation, scale, variety, and the beauty of urban sprawl, it’s also the best citybuilder.

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Fantasy citybuilder Against The Storm now lets you create your own custom mode

Against The Storm provided some of the most fun I had playing a citybuilder last year. That was in part because, despite being set in a dark fantasy world in which you must satisfy an unyielding Queen, and despite being in early access, it’s remarkably graspable. It’s the kind of citybuilder where, if you place a building in the wrong place, it simply lets you pick it up and move it at no cost.

As of its latest update, there’s now a new customisable game mode that lets you make your expeditions even more relaxed – or much harder.

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