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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Fan-made The Crew revival gets a release date, a year and a bit on from the Ubisoft racer’s controversial shutdown

The developers behind The Crew Unlimited, a community project that aims to make Ubisoft racer The Crew playable again following its unceremonious shutdown last year, have announced a release date.

If you need a bit of a refresher, Ubisoft’s decision to take The Crew’s servers offline in March 2024 rendered it totally unplayable even for those who own a physical copy, due to its online-only nature. That’s since served as the spark for the Stop Killing Games campaign we’ve reported on as its organisers have petitioned lawmakers across the world to ensure companies are required by law to put concrete end-of-life plans in place, when they decide to switch a game’s servers off. It also set a group of Crewers off on a quest to make the game playable again.

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Even unintentionally, sorting puzzler A Storied Life: Tabitha risks gamifying grief

I should say, up front, that I believe A Storied Life: Tabitha means well. Although it joins a swelling collection of cosy/’wholesome’ games that also happen to be about death, it’s more grounded than most, forgoing grand scenery and grander metaphors to simply have you clearing out a deceased loved one’s house while patching up her unfinished memoirs. All perfectly earnest and untoward, it would seem, and yet I walked away from my Gamescom demo last month feeling uneasy – especially about how its puzzle aspect undermines, rather than enables, its posthumous storytelling.

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Cyberpunk 2077 devs CD Projekt might have invented presidential time travel just to tease something

It’s been a little while since we got another Cyberpunk 2077 tease that makes folks wonder whether CD Projekt are about to u-turn on adding more stuff to it yet again. Here one is, though, and it invites us 2025 dwellers to help out a president who isn’t elected in-universe until 2065.

Is it evidence that the NUSA have invented time travel tech that also allows Cyberpunk characters to migrate into our own reality? Is it just a way to spice up some promo for something like a livestream or minor reveal? I mean, almost definitely the latter, but the former’s a lot more fun to consider.

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NetEase shut down studio of Fallout and Star Wars alumni who were making an online sci-fi action game

NetEase have shut down T-Minus Zero Entertainment, a studio founded in 2023 by former BioWare developer and Star Wars: The Old Republic executive producer Rich Vogel.

The studio had been working on an online multiplayer sci-fi action game, with contributions from a number of ex-BioWare and Bethesda staff including Fallout 76 design lead Mark Tucker and senior producer Scott Malone. However, that project and T-Minus Zero Entertainment’s on-going existence are not a good fit for “current market conditions”.

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What can a 34-year-old Sonic level teach us about videogame light?

No videogame fantasy setting will ever disquiet me as much as an empty business park at night under blue and yellow floodlights. A business park, or the access road down the side of a corrugated steel warehouse, where the alcoves cast by the LEDs look like a procession of hooded figures beneath the fixed, unblinking blackness of the sky.

I can’t actually be present in that scene, mind. I don’t belong there. No being does, not even the people who come by day to fill the striped lines with cars or raise the shutters on the loading bays. Instead, I have to be travelling past very fast. Preferably, I will be looking out the window of a train that shows the place for only a few seconds. I will feel as though I’ve glimpsed another planet’s scrolling surface in a mirror. Except this isn’t right. I will never find the words for it. Nothing written above is adequate. Balls.

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Morrowind is being ported into Elden Ring by a modder, complete with the vast army of goats and female clones Vvardenfell’s always had

Remember when, back in the day, you made the trek through the ashlands to Red Mountain? Within, you encountered an unforgettable foe. “Come, Nerevar. Friend or traitor, come. Come and look upon the Heart, and Akulakhan. And bring Wraithguard… I have need of it”, they said. “Heed my words. I am Malenia. Blade of Miquella. And I have never known defeat.”

Okay, so maybe not, but it’s a nice image with which to open the news that a modder’s managed to port the entirety of Morrowind‘s landmass into Elden Ring. It’s still very much a work-in-progress, as you might expect given its version of Vvardenfell’s populated by copies of the same random woman and goats, but it certainly makes for a surreal watch.

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