Help a spaceship give birth before it collides with a star in Ultrasound

How are you feeling today? Relatively untroubled by visions of squirming, organic gunk clogging your vessel’s exhaust ports as you fall steadily toward an enormous ball of fire? We’ll see about that.

I’m here to tell you about Ultrasound, in which you are stranded aboard a spacecraft that has been colonised by growths of the Gigery persuasion. If you don’t purge critical systems pronto, you’re going to end up the wrong side of a photosphere. Here’s a trailer.

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Giant new bug worms of Helldivers 2, I will find you and I will watch someone else kill you

Right, where in the name of disposable infantry were you? Yes, I’m talking to you, Helldivers 2 hive lords, added into the shooter as part of yesterday’s Into the Unjust update with what looks like nary a patch note peep from Arrowhead. Why didn’t you unleash your big worminess on me when I dropped onto some Terminid hive worlds last night?

You missed out. I’m an easy target. Dressed head to toe in bright yellow Helldiver armour, because it’s always best to be highly visible on the battlefield. Armed with the trigger finger prowess of a sleeping librarian. Sometimes alone because no one’s answered my SOS beacon yet. I was right fugging there.

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Saudi government-backed firm and “giga project” now co-owns fighting game tournament Evo

A company backed by the Saudi Arabian government’s Public Investment Fund have become the co-owner of the Evolution Championship Series (Evo) fighting game tournament.

Following Sony’s sale of their stake in Evo, with India-based esports company Nodwin gaming buying it up, the event’s co-owners have been Nodwin and talent management company RTS. Well, RTS have now been bought by Qiddiya Investment Company, a PIF-backed firm that’s also overseeing the building of Qiddiya City as part of Saudi ruler Mohammed bin Salman’s Vision 2030 initiative.

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Arrowhead will target Helldivers 2’s “crippling” tech issues now Xbox release is sorted, but would rather not do a “performance-only update”

Shams Jorjani, boss of Helldivers 2 developers Arrowhead, has taken to Discord to address the rise in reports of performance issues following the arrival of the shooter’s Into the Unjust update. In addition to admitting that the new addition has missed the mark from a stability pespective, the exec added that the game’s Xbox release now being in the rear view mirror should free up more resources to tackle performance problems.

Since the Terminid spelunking expedition-themed update arrived yesterday, players have cited an uptick in crashes that Arrowhead are already looking into, with the installation size the game’s ballooned to on PC and your usual sorts of pesky bugs also being sources of ire, at least among vocal online Helldivers.

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Bitten by the hardware bug, Hollow Knight: Silksong gets ultrawide support

Good news for the ultrawide monitor-owning Nic Reubens of the world: Hollow Knight: Silksong will, unlike its narrow-eyed predecessor, natively support stretchy displays up to the 21:9 format when it finally releases tomorrow. Silksong marketing-man-at-large Matthew Griffin shared some demonstrative screenshots on Xitter, confirming that it won’t require any of the weird bodging that Hollow Knight did to fill out those bigger screens.

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Fallout 76’s latest update relaxes its building rules so you can try erecting a nuclear bunker in mid-air

Fallout 76‘s latest patch is following up the addition of fishing in the only way that’s natural. Bethesda have opted to revamp its base building mechanics in an effort to make thing easier for newbies and offer veterans some extra freedom to stick huge shacks full of stuff together in different ways.

For Patch 62, dubbed ‘C.A.M.P revamp’, menus have been rejigged and placement restrictions relaxed in an effort to have you spend 60 more hours slapping bits of wood into accomodation, rather than going off and ruining some super mutant’s day. Then again, I can’t imagine the green folks are too happy about the wasteland being turned into a showroom of properties that’d probably cost several million quid despite the fact they can barely keep the radiation out, such are modern house prices.

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The Sonic Rush games on Nintendo DS are getting a “definitive” PC release care of boisterous fangamers

A group of fangame developers have taken it upon themselves to make a new Sonic Rush game for PC, combining the previous Sonic Rush games for Nintendo DS into one “definitive” remastering, with extra stuff and some apparently overdue fixes. Seems bold! I missed the Rush games back in the noughties, but I do like me a Sonic. Here’s a trailer for Sonic Rush Rerun.

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Rayman’s 30th birthday prompts Ubisoft to fish out login deets for the first time in years, reaffirm they’re working on his future

February 1st, 2021. Until yesterday, that was the last time Ubisoft had posted anything on the official Rayman Tweeter account. That outstanding streak has been broken because the platforming series has turned 30, promting the publisher to reaffirm that a team of devs is still busy working on Rayman’s future, with news to come, er, not very soon.

Before you shout at me for writing about a games company posting that, yes, they still plan to make video games in the future, this is also a chance to highlight Rayman Alive 2025, a pretty hefty community showcase of fan projects helping to keep the aged limbless being’s legacy alive.

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Our favourite videogame vapourware: No Silksong Allowed Edition

Vapourware! We all say we despise it, but everybody loves thinking about games that spend an eternity in limbo, whether due to chronic mismanagement or simply because the developers feel no need to rush. So many teasers to unravel, so many conspiracies to bake from the most ludicrous of breadcrumbs, so much delicious exasperation to wallow in as yet another year goes by without a new trailer. Hollow Knight: Silksong is no longer vapourware, barring some extreme last-minute drama. Announced in 2019, it will finally launch this Thursday 4th September. To mark the occasion, we of the Treehouse have been chatting about our favourite examples of vapourware, if “favourite” is the right word.

Your contributions are very welcome. A question of terminology for the physicists in the comments: what should we call a vapourware game that has actually released? Condensedware? I await your complex mathematical explanations. In the meantime, here’s James.

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