Who let the dogs out? The answer is Valve Corporation, an American video game development and digital distribution company headquartered in Bellevue, Washington, United States. I feel I’m burning two jokes here (a pop music reference dated to the point of being cringeworthy, and a clearly-lifted-from-Wikipedia description) in a way that wastes them both, but let’s roll with it. Operation Bloodhound has launched in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive [official site].

Operations Bloodhound brings new maps to CS:GO, with a lineup now on official matchmaking including one set in a zoo. A zoo! Plus more stats to track and more shiny weapons, obvs. But zoo!

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If I have a weakness, other than being so unspeakably beautiful that I inadvertently make all other humans feel awful about themselves, it’s that I’m highly susceptible to games in which the primary purpose is to accrue money. That’s not the sort of person I want to be. I want to be the sort of person who helps people. Yet dangle a glorified beancounter in front of me and I’m lost. I still fire up Adventure Capitalist from time to time to see how many greenbacks have backed up during my absence, then exit it immediately with a faint, sick sense of accomplishment. These Cookie Clickerlike don’t even require me to do much of anything: they just feed more bottomless hunger for more>. 19th century oil rush sim-ette Turmoil, out on Early Access next week, at least asks me to build crazy pipework before I can roll around in dollar bills. … [visit site to read more]

The release of Magicka 2 is today’s freshest wizard news, but Magicka: Wizard Wars [official site] exited Early Access and impressed Adam just two weeks ago. It’s a multiplayer, free-to-play spin off from the main series and “a smart piece of design”. We’ve got 5000 starter packs to giveaway, including everything you see in the image above.

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Remember that time I said “if The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth adds daily challenges, I will ditch every commitment short of a funeral to hit the day’s run.” Well! To my friends, my family, lovers, acquaintances, colleagues, rivals, and enemies, I apologise. I shall bail on you all soon.

The ‘Afterbirth’ expansion for The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth will add daily runs with leaderboards, co-creator Edmund McMillen has announced. Like in Spelunky, Nuclear Throne, and many more roguelikelikes, daily challenges let everyone compete by playing on the same set of levels.

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I haven’t posted about The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt [official site] since I started playing it so, as I won’t write any diaries or reviews or thinkpieces about it, please allow me a moment to say: oh my gosh isn’t it great? I only have a few words here so I’ll quickly say I’m delighted to see colours in an 18-rated game. The sunrises, sunsets, days, fields, buildings, decor – everything! it’s all so pretty.

Now, the news: developers CD Projekt RED today released the third and fourth free DLC bits for their RPG, bringing a new outfit for Yennefer and a new quest.

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I can think of lots of reasons why shotgunning your way through some 2D pixels might turn your day around, but whatever the cause I recommend Butcher. It’s a three-level prototype of an ultraviolent run-and-gun platformer from the makers of Soldat and King Arthur’s Gold. You can play it in your browser now and it is distracting me from the neighbours drilling, sawing, sanding and hammering their way through their walls and my patience.

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Continuing a (mostly) in-character diary of my adventures in The Witcher 3. Probably contains spoilers. N.B. critical opinion & technical complaints are happening elsewhere on the site.>

Hands up if you’re not a jerk. No-one? Thought not.

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Stop me if this sounds familiar. Imprisoned within an enclosed facility by a disembodied female voice, you re given control of a prototype weapon and led through a series of physics based puzzle rooms which… No, it’s not Portal.

This is Magnetic: Cage Closed [official site]. Which seems very similar in a lot of ways, except for one; there are no portals. Instead, that untested gun in your hand allows you to control magnetic fields. Now you re thinking with Magnets. Hmm, come to think of it, that sounds familiar too…

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Like a video games company keen to own and preserve everything it makes, Double Fine have swooped in to snatch back 2012’s Iron Brigade [official site]. That simile’s perhaps unpoetic and unamusing. Could’ve said “a big protective bird” or tried a 50 Shades of Grey> joke that didn’t work and was a good few years behind pop culture.

Anyway, the point is, Double Fine now own The Intellectual Property Formerly Known As Trenched and have started self-publishing it – taking over from Microsoft Studios. To celebrate this, they’ve put it on sale and ripped out the hateful Games for Windows – Live.

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Whatever Hidetaka ‘Swery’ Suehiro is up to, colour me interested. An episodic adventure game about a former cop trying to solve the murder of his wife by diving back in time? Yep, I’m up for D4: Dark Dreams Don’t Die [official site]. After Deadly Premonition, which he directed, I want more of whatever’s in his head. Scrape it out and offer it to us. Yes, including the idea he has for “a story about a high school girl detective who uses the imagination (fantasising) energy from masturbating to help her solve murders.” Sure thing, Swery!

For now, I’ll settle for D4: Dark Dreams Don’t Die, which next week comes from Xbox One to PC.

… [visit site to read more]