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I’m a bit of a sucker for weird genre combos. With the amount of games getting released every single day that often combine the same kinds of genres, you start to get hungry for mashups that make you go, “hang on, would that even work?” So when I saw Drop Duchy release yesterday, which mixes Tetris, land-grabbing strategy, deckbuilding and roguelite gameplay, I asked that exact question. Turns out the answer is yes!
Stellaris is one of those forever games where occasionally I’ll see that it’s released something new and think “dang, that old dog is still truckin’ along?” It seems to be that time of year again, as both a big update for the game as well as a new expansion dropped yesterday. Paradox previously described this as a “phoenix update” to try and sort out a bunch of the game’s long-running issues, as well as make some tweaks to help bring in new players.
I think this Alienware Aurora ACT1250 deal is exactly what I’d recommend to anyone who wants a top-end desktop without falling into the rabbit hole of part-picking and compatibility headaches.
What in the name of jumping jellybeans is happening to The Maw? Our grizzled regular column summarising all the latest game news is going through some sort of midlife crisis and doesn’t know what it wants to be. I can hear it grinding its molars, squelching its many news bladders, and unfurling its long, insipid tendrils. The usual Mawkeeper, Edwin, is away today, so it’s up to me to soothe the beast and tell you all the new games being released on PC this week, as well as a hint for some anticipated strategy game news from Paradox Interactive.
I have an unhealthy habit of throwing money at several solo tabletop RPG projects a year, whether or not I actually plan on playing them: tables and lists corresponding to dice rolls are one of my favourite ways to consume microfiction, and I get a real buzz out of TTRPGs as discrete creative writing artefacts, if not necessarily functioning games. Naturally, I’m all over Spindlejack – a print and play solo game set in the Citizen Sleeper universe that you can download for free here on itch.io.
I once got in a heated debate with Graham over whether the chest-high walls in the Gears Of War series could accurately be called ‘massive’. The Gears men are massive, I argued. So it stands to reason that any wall that could provide adequate bullet cover to a massive man must itself be a massive wall. No, said Graham. They’re famously normal size walls, hence why the massive men have to squat down like they’ve just had a bowling ball lobbed at their kidneys. Well, we can finally examine the true scale of these walls – in 4K no less – with Gears Of War: Reloaded. A “faithfully remastered” version of the 2006 large man action game, coming to Steam on August 26th this year.
I couldn’t find a trailer so enjoy this extremely old one and just imagine it looks nicer. Bit nicer. Little bit nicer. That’s it, now you’re thinking like a customer!
Do you ever think to yourself, “gee, I wish that LA Noire actually looked like a noir film and also everyone is a furry”? Then boy howdy do I have the game for you: The Shadow Syndicate. It just got announced yesterday at the Gamescom Latam showcase, and I should say it’s not exactly like LA Noire in that you don’t have to try and read the faces of motion capture actors overperforming their hearts out. What it does have is some detective work, gunplay, and even some Max Payneish bullet-time. How can you not be into that mixture?
I’m not sure how they have time for it, but as part of a livestream held earlier today, HoYoVerse revealed yet another new game. This one isn’t a completely new world, it’s actually another Honkai game, though right now it doesn’t have a name. A very short teaser was shared for it which literally just called it a “brand new Honkai game”, but there were a couple of signs that it was one anyway. Namely, the presence of a couple of characters, Kiana and Blade.
Well, this is all a bit awkward. Yesterday, you might have seen claims that Chrono Trigger writer Yuji Horii accidentally confirmed that a remake of the beloved JRPG is in the works. It all read a bit suspicious right off the bat, because it initially just came from a Reddit post from someone who attended a panel Horii was speaking at during Napoli Comicon without any video evidence. Then some other posts started cropping up, alongside commenters saying they were also there and that this was true. Except, it isn’t true, because it was all a translation miscommunication.
We’re not too far off Elden Ring Nightreign now, with the spinoff game due out right at the end of the month. Some of you might have even played some of it already, unlike James, who struggled to play any of it at all when the test was held back in February. Considering how few of us have actually spent any time on it overall though, quite conveniently FromSoftware and Bandai Namco shared a little overview trailer yesterday that dove into what you’ll be doing in the Fortniteish Souls game.
