Tomb Raider developers Crystal Dynamics lay off more staff, say the series’ future is “unaffected”

Tomb Raider developers Crystal Dynamics have laid off an unspecified number of staff, their second round of jobs cuts this year. The studio say that the future of the Tomb Raider series won’t be affected by this latest taking away of folks’ livelihoods.

The news comes not too long after the Perfect Dark reboot Crystal Dynamics were working alongside The Initiative was cancelled amid Microsoft’s mass cuts in July. The Initiative were shut down as part of that culling.

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The creator of Dread Delusion is making a turn-based JRPG set in another Morrowindy fantasy world

Dread Delusion developers Lovely Hellplace and their sinister backers at DreadXP have announced Entropy – a turn-based party RPG inspired by classic Japanese RPGs, which retains Dread Delusion’s fungal pixel aesthetics.

Like Final Fantasy 9, it starts with a theatre show. You play a rank thespian initially equipped with a simple prop sword. But then horrible creatures crash the stage, and it’s time to armour up your troupe and quest forth to snuff out a demon incursion. What’s the best Shakespeare line to invoke here, hmm. Ah yes: “target their elemental weaknesses!” Hamlet said that before he shanked Polonius through the curtain. No, don’t google to check, dear reader – I am in haste. Quickly, watch the below trailer.

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Vaults are open, flames are thrown and ghouls are sick, as Doom mod Fallout: Bakersfield shows off more shootering

We’re back again, gang. Bang bang. The Doom modder behind Fallout: Bakersfield, which recreates the city of Necropolis from the original Fallout as the backdrop to irradiated boomer shooting, has followed up their first trailer in ages with some more footage of the mod in action.

Alexander ‘Red888guns’ Berezin, the modder in question, caught most of us off guard last month, when he whipped out that trailer for a GZDoom WAD plenty had assumed wouldn’t ever see the light of day. After all, Berezin had plenty of other stuff on his plate. He’s definitely working hard to show it off now, though.

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No Man’s Sky’s Voyagers update adds in big custom ships crewed by you and your mates

Have you ever wanted to swim out of a spaceship’s backside while it sits in orbit, the sound of two dear friends arguing over whether it really needs a fifth teleporter room not seeping with you into the inky blackness? You know, because space is a famously scream-free zone. Well, the latest in No Man’s Sky‘s endless string of free updates has you covered. It’s called Voyagers, and adds in custom multi-person ships dubbed corvettes.

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Paradox are “making adjustments” to Bloodlines 2’s day-one vampire clan DLC plans, following backlash

Well, there you go. Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 publisher Paradox look like they might be sticking a stake in their rather unpopular plans to sell two of the game’s vampire clans as paid day-one DLC. I say “might be” because nothing specific’s been committed to yet, beyond some nebulous making of “adjustments ahead of launch” in response to fan feedback on the gating-off of Lasombra and Toreador bloodsuckers.

In case you missed the announcement of these two clans being packed away into the £18.69/€21.99/$21.99 coffin of Bloodlines’ Shadows and Silk DLC pack, it came right as the long-in-the-works RPG got a fresh trailer and what should hopefully be its final release date. The only ways to get the clans were to buy that pack on top of the base game, or splash out £74.99/€89.99/$89.99 for the premium edition.

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Wily FPS modders remake the original Quake from memory alone – imagine if triple-A remasters worked this way

A Quake modding group have just polished off a game jam in which they challenged themselves to recreate every singleplayer map in id Software’s 1996 FPS from memory alone. That is, they were forbidden from replaying the original game before they started. As Slipseer user iLike80sRock puts it, “if somehow id1 was wiped off of all computers in the world, do we collectively remember the maps well enough to recreate them?”

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Silent Hill f loves combat so much, it feels like it’s fighting itself

Prior to getting a big, fat, four-hour demo with it at Gamescom, I was worried that banging on about Silent Hill f’s newfound enthusiasm for monster fighting – with all its parries, zippy dodges, and slow-mo focus meters – would be doing a disservice to its bolder, more ‘interesting’ series departures, like the new 1960s setting or its deep embrace of homegrown Japanese culture and myths. A certain missing of the point, like setting out for a lovely drive through the Scottish highlands then stopping to gawp at a lightly crashed Peugeot on the hard shoulder.

But no. Combat is as deeply ingrained within Silent Hill f as guilty moping was to Silent Hill 2, and from what I’ve played, doesn’t work nearly as well.

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