The noise of flies fills your ears as you step down from the highway in search of shade. The body of a great white bull lies sprawled in the dirt among bits of rope and broken board, his hide blazing in the sunlight. You approach, covering your mouth, and recoil. The bull's chest - it's not maggoty flesh but beaten metal, held together by rivets the width of your thumb. Through tears in the beast's flank you see swarms of tiny brass pistons, shooting back and forth in a blur. The bull raises his head abruptly to regard you. Then he clambers to his feet, creaking like a furnace, and ambles back onto the road. The buzzing rises to a peak. When the air clears, the animal is gone.

That isn't quite my story, but nor is it entirely a story from this game. It's an embellishing of something I witnessed while trudging around Dim Bulb's haunted, patchwork vision of the United States during the Great Depression, a tribute to a game made up of stories that are always changing, picking up material like snowballs as they travel from mouth to mouth. Created by Gone Home programmer Johnnemann Nordhagen in partnership with a scattered throng of writers, Where The Water Tastes Like Wine sees you wandering a rich yet desolate continent, collecting tall tales and sharing them so that they can prosper and mutate.

The game's key thrill is of hearing a yarn you know well come back to you in a new, outlandish guise. The tragic spectacle of a cowboy lost in a tornado might eventually become the legend of a rider who could tame the wind, recounted by some Texan boozehound who swears that he saw it all firsthand. An anecdote about sharing a cigarette with a bootlegger might beget a sensational newspaper report of a gunfight. The tale of a mysterious dead bull might take on a supernatural aspect in the testimony of a child you run into a few states over.

Read more…

Cevat Yerli, the controversial boss and co-founder of Crysis developer Crytek, has stepped down as CEO and president.

Yerli, who was public enemy number one as Crytek staff went unpaid for months, will continue as "strategic shareholder", but the company will now be led by his brothers Avni and Faruk as joint CEOs.

The change comes following the launch of multiplayer first-person shooter and monster hunting game Hunt Showdown, which is developed alongside CryEngine at the company's Frankfurt, Germany office. Crytek continues to work on Warface at its Kiev studio. Crytek's Istanbul office operates Warface in Turkey.

Read more…

The Trail, Peter Molyneux's chilled out hiking game, is out today on Nintendo Switch priced 11.99.

The Trail first launched on mobile devices late in 2016 before a Steam via PC launch in 2017. It's easily the best game from 22cans, the studio Molyneux founded after leaving Microsoft and Lionhead Studios.

The idea behind the game is for players to explore, collect, craft and trade as they make their way to a frontier town called Eden Falls, one camp at a time. The Switch version is a port of the PC version (which carries the subtitle Frontier Challenge), and as such includes challenges and character skill upgrade trees. Here's the official blurb:

Read more…

The next game from Question is a co-op horror for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

The Blackout Club, which is due out during the first quarter of 2019, follows a group of teens who discover they've all been temporarily losing consciousness and waking up in strange places with no memory of what they have done. Sounds like a regular night out in Croydon, then.

The teens band together to try to work out what's going on, and discover tunnels that lead to an underworld filled with weird music and even weirder adults.

Read more…

Ex-Duke Nukem owner 3D Realms has released a new game and, coincidentally enough, it looks quite a lot like Duke Nukem. But it isn't!

This retro first-person shooter is called Ion Maiden and it's made by a team called Voidpoint, with 3D Realms as publisher. It's on Steam Early Access now with a full desktop release planned for the third quarter of 2018.

Ion Maiden is actually a prequel to another 3D Realms game people would rather forget: Bombshell, a cruddy shooter/action-RPG from 2016. Ion Maiden stars Shelly "Bombshell" Harrison from Bombshell and was once a digital extra included with Bombshell (as listed on a QuakeCon 2015 poster spotted by NeoGAF). But as the "retro FPS prequel" grew into something bigger and standalone, Voidpoint decided on a new name - one that might put a bit of distance between it and Bombshell.

Read more…

If you don't fancy Steam's offer of Half-Life bonuses in Final Fantasy 15 on PC, you can now get costumes from The Sims if you buy from Origin.

Get the game before 1st May and you'll unlock a Llama Suit outfit, complete with the franchise's signature hovering Plumbob, for both the game's hero Noctis and your avatar in multiplayer expansion Comrades to wear.

Origin pre-orders also get a some bonus decals - based on the game's many characters - to stick on your vehicle, the Regalia.

Read more…

Warner Bros. has announced yet another version of Injustice 2.

Injustice 2 - Legendary Edition includes the NetherRealm fighting game and all downloadable playable characters released so far as well as the premiere skins available from the Injustice 2 Ultimate Edition.

The DLC characters are Darkseid, Red Hood, Starfire, Sub-Zero, Black Manta, Raiden, Hellboy, Atom, Enchantress and The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Read more…

Remember H1Z1? The early Battle Royale Steam hit has seen a drastic drop in player numbers ever since PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds and Fortnite took hold of the genre. But its developers have come up with a plan to get the game back into the big time - and it involves cars.

H1Z1 (the game formerly known as H1Z1: King of the Kill) leaves Steam Early Access today with a new "Auto Royale" game mode. The developers at Daybreak describe Auto Royale as an "arcadey, vehicle-only" Battle Royale experience. Essentially, it's Battle Royale with cars.

The mode sees up to 30 teams of four battle to be the last vehicle standing. There's a massive map packed with power-ups, weapons, ammo, fuel and health. Auto Royale introduces two new vehicles to the game: a sedan and an armored recon vehicle (ARV). Expect ramps, land mines, oil slicks, turbo boosts, vehicle jumps, corrosive smoke and more.

Read more…

Blizzard has announced details of Hearthstone's next yearly cycle, named The Year of the Raven.

As usual, this will see card sets older than two years cycled out of the game's Standard format and into the anything-goes Wild play mode. Retiring sets include Whispers of the Old Gods, One Night in Karazhan and Mean Streets of Gadgetzan.

Three cards from Hearthstone's base sets are also getting pulled out of Standard: the powerful mage spell Ice Block, card-drawing murloc Coldlight Oracle and the beefy Molten Giant.

Read more…

Electronics retailer Maplin is the second UK chain to fall into administration today, following the earlier announcement of Toys R Us failing.

Talks with potential buyers for Maplin collapsed this morning, BBC News reported.

The company has 217 UK stores and more than 2500 staff - all of whom are now at risk. It's not known if any of the chain will survive.

Read more…