Update: Relax, everyone! A bit, at least. Steam’s offering each Redux for half-price if you own the original game.

Huh! Metro 2033 and Metro: Last Light are being “remastered” for re-release, which is a funny thing. The pair of solid shooters are still quite recent, after all, not to mention pretty enough. It all seems quite odd until you remember new consoles now exist–shiny new consoles hungry for pixels and games, which people are quite keen to feed. So thank you, Xbox One and PlayStation 4. Thanks to you, 4A Games are giving 2033 a grand makeover and Last Light a fetching new outfit.

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You’ve got to get your Humble Bundles out when guests come over, haven’t you. Show them the collection, that’s right. They always say they enjoy looking, don’t they, though they do ask why you never play any of them. They don’t get get it, do they, but that’s fine. You’ve got your collection, all tidy and shiny in those pewter frames. Those frames with a gap in the middle. That dreadful, gaping gap that creeps into your dreams and you awake screaming. The Humble Bundle you missed.

Chin up, chuck! You might catch it again. The Humble folks are running a fortnight of daily pay-what-you-want Humble Bundles–some old favourites and some new hopefuls–so fingers crossed That One That Got Away comes around again.

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Update: Confirmation/statement from Nordic Games below. The short version? “We can and will not settle for second-best solutions in the case of Darksiders.”

Original: Things were not looking so great for, er, Death for a little bit there. THQ had a run-in with its own sort of reaper, and the Darksiders license sat in limbo seemingly unwanted for ages. That is, until Nordic Games scooped it up along with roughly one trillion other pieces of THQ’s flaming wreckage. But it’s not like the Painkiller: Hell & Damnation publisher can just churn out sequels to everything from Red Faction to Supreme Commander. You’d figure, then, that Darksiders is probably stuck on the sidelines – not pushing up daisies, but not pushing blocks or scything occult beasties either. Former series creative director Joe Madureira, however, claims we might not have to wait long to see something new after all.

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Although Survarium shares some DNA with the magnificent, terrifying ecosystem of S.T.A.L.K.E.R., the Lost Alpha standalone mod is the closest thing to a new game in the series we’re probably going to see for a good while. What began as an attempt to restore content cut from the original release of Shadow of Chernobyl has become a total overhaul of the game, with sections redesigned and reintegrated, and changes to elements other than maps. It’s been in development for five years and is now available, slightly earlier than originally planned. There are download links (including an official torrent) over at Moddb and you won’t need to have the original game installed to play. I want to spend my day in the Zone.

… [visit site to read more]

Like old Stalker tales told around the campfire, a lot of strange and wonderful things were once said to be in S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl, from naked green dwarves to driveable vehicles and a whole extra city. Several mods have restored various bits of cut content, based on leftover files and leaked dev builds, but Lost Alpha is one of the more ambitious. What began as a project to remake and reintegrate these leftovers has blown up into a new parallel story which includes (new) old content and a bits of the creators’ own design too.

In response to some ruffian leaking a scrappy old build from November, developers Dezowave Group have decided to release Lost Alpha earlier than planned then keep working on it. It’ll arrive on April 26, the 28th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster which started all this.

… [visit site to read more]

Normally I wouldn’t even bat an eyelash at some random cross-game promotional effort – let alone dedicate precious RPS Hyper Maturity Space to it – but this time is different. The reason? Two of the dumbest, most laughably enjoyable games I’ve played in ages are colliding, and there is now no way> that last clause wasn’t a euphemism for something, authorial intent be damned. Yes, it’s finally happening: Saints Row The Third‘s infamous dildo bat is invading another game. I know, I know. It’s only a matter of time before it replaces the standard-issue pistol as every game’s go-to default weapon of choice, but for now Shadow Warrior’s caught its purple, pulsating disease. Continue not being able to look away below.

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We haven’t mentioned before now, but the current Humble Weekly Sale is a clutch of Cliffski’s Positech games, which have already netted over $100k, with a day and a half to go. Beers are on Cliffski! (Just don’t mention piracy.) And now a new fortnight-long Humble Bundle proper has launched, this time showcasing the products of the decidedly not indie Deep Silver. Four of their games (including Saints Row 3!) for pay what you want, two more for over the average, and the rather average Dead Island Riptide if you throw in $25.

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The Western Front isn’t as quiet as you may have heard from other sources but the Eastern Front is almost certainly a great deal louder. That’s what Company of Heroes 2 would have you believe at any rate, with a flashy new engine and a great deal of clamour presenting its conflict. But does the long-awaited sequel add anything more than enormous flurries and drifts of snow? I donned my thermal underpants and went to war.>

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News out of IdolNinja suggests that Volition are gearing up to support modding on Saints Row The Third, with potential support for mods on the fourth game. They explain: “Jeff Thompson, the Studio Director of Programming at Volition, is putting together a package for us containing documentation, file formats, tools, and more on the Saints Row: The Third engine. Myself, Minimaul, and gibbed will be working closely with Jeff over the coming months to use this information to create a robust set of modding tools to supplement our existing ones and creating what is essentially a full sdk for the game! But, that’s not all! Saints Row: The Third is only the beginning!” I can only imagine how awesome this could end up being, especially if it really is a test bed for modding support on the fourth game.

Let’s have a look at that Saints Row IV trailer again… (more…)

OK, Nordic Games, the jig’s up. You can go ahead and change your name to THQ II: The Rise Of Mecha-Bilson already, because seriously, you just purchased the publisher’s legacy. Sure, Gearbox snagged Homeworld, and the company’s modern heavy hitters found new, loving homes, but Nordic now (pending court approval) owns nearly everything else>. Red Faction? Yep. Darksiders? Oh, certainly. And oh man, Titan Quest? Sure, why not. Supreme Commander too. And hey, remember Full Spectrum Warrior? I must admit, I – along with my good friend, Basically The Entire World – had forgotten about it, but Nordic deemed the military tactics sorta-sim worth salvaging. Here’s the kicker, though: all those? Only the tip of the iceberg.

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