Hip and happening disc jockeys including The Black Madonna will ride the wheels of steel in GTA Online when the next major update lets players run their own nightclubs. Crimefolk will get to buy, design, and run clubs, turning them into moneymakers (and maybe handy fronts laundering money from less honest ventures). The Black Madonna, Solomun, Tale Of Us, and Dixon will all appear in clubs playing sets, which is pretty nifty. But god, I’d love a cheesy DJ spinning Agadoo, The Locomotion, Y.M.C.A., Oops Up Side Your Head, Cotton Eye Joe, Time Warp… all the church disco classics. (more…)

Telltale have been very busy lately, in-between signing deals with Netflix and tussling with their former CEO. The studio that (gradually) popularised episodic games has a lot on their plate, and now they’ve got a pretty heavy dessert lined up for once they’ve finished the upcoming fourth and final Walking Dead game season. According to anonymous sources speaking to Variety (and somewhat supported by job listings), the studio are retiring their long-lasting but occasionally wonky in-house Telltale Tool engine and moving over to Unity.

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I’ll be the first to admit that football is not my thing. The World Cup? Baffling, honestly. Rocket League managed to make the concept of punting a ball into a net more enticing by adding jet-boosted RC cars to the mix, but I think Last Man Kicking might be what the doctor ordered today. A 2v2 office kickaround may not sound too interesting, but when everyone’s glued to their office chairs and only able to move via the recoil of their pump-action shotguns, you’ve got a good time. Plus, it’s free to grab on Itch.io for today.

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It’s easy enough to make a bot that can trounce a human player in a first-person shooter – just react faster and shoot straighter – but anything strategic presents a fresh set of exceptionally complex problems. To this day, few Starcraft or Dota bots could rival a decently skilled player or group, at least until now. AI research group OpenAI reckon that their Dota 2 bot team (dubbed OpenAI Five) is nearly good enough to give the pros a run for their money, and will be testing that theory this August at The International 2018.

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They re climbing the walls. Hundreds of tiny warriors are using grappling hooks to scale the stone barriers of a Chinese settlement, as I look down on the battlefield from my perch at E3. I bite my lip and pretend to know what I m doing. Yes, swordsmen, through the breach. Spear dudes, down the middle. Grappling hook men, up you go. Only stinky Romans use anything as primitive as a ladder to assault a city. But oh no, I ve forgotten my heroes. Three horsemen that are now hundreds of metres away from the action. These units are what Total War: Three Kingdoms is all about. Special warriors, similar to the powerful hero units of the Total War: Warhammer spin-offs. I send them in and they slaughter dozens of soldiers, holding entire battalions at bay. But the enemy has one of these heroes too L Bu. And he LOVES to kill. (more…)

Upcoming strategy-RPG City of The Shroud looks notable enough on a purely mechanical level, but studio Abyssal Arts’s unusual release plans for it are especially interesting. While a concrete ‘definitive’ edition of the game will be launching next year, the initial release this August will be episodic, and the cumulative, democratic choices of all players will determine how the plot of each successive episode will play out, and how a city-wide power struggle will be resolved.

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I always enjoy when ‘community challenges’ have logical in-game consequences, when players pull together to change the world by perhaps shaping a story or opening a new area. In American Truck Simulator, virtuatruckers are pulling together to help clear a landslide and re-open a closed stretch of California’s Highway 1. A real-world landslide last year blocked off sections of the beautiful coastal route near Big Sur, and developers SCS Software followed suit. Now the real-world route is closer to re-opening, SCS are preparing to do so in their simulated America too. The community challenge: when players have hauled enough loads to and from the landslide, Highway 1 will reopen. (more…)

It s Monday, and what better way to start the day than with a crunchy bowl of Honesty covered in ice cold, full fat Admissions of Failure: I have not played much Life Is Strange. I got about fifteen minutes into the first episode, the dialogue started to grate, and I zoned out. Controversial opinion maybe, but if you re making a game about teenage girls, it can t hurt to pay someone who is or has previously been an actual teenage girl to help write it for you.

Guess what though? I played through the whole of The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit, got a bit sad, and then I played it again, and now I m well up for spending more time in the Life Is Strange universe. Which is great, because it means I don t have to talk shit about a small child. Yay! (more…)

This odd little game has blown in out of nowhere for me. I’d not heard a single thing about it before playing but within minutes it had completely won me over. After a few hours I adored it. I’ve never played anything quite like Far: Lone Sails, and in this turbulent world of ours its meditative and gentle journey was exactly what I needed. And, you know, I got to pretend to be the captain of a mad sail train for a few hours, so that’s something.

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Fred Ford and Paul Reiche, the lead developers of the first two Star Control games from the 90s, have launched a crowdfunding campaign to help pay legal fees in their battle with Stardock. Both sides are claiming to hold varying rights to the sci-fi RPG-o-adventure series, and scrapping to secure rights the other believes they hold. Ford and Reiche are currently making Ghosts Of The Precursors, a sequel (but not in name) to their Star Control 2, while Stardock are making alternate-universe prequel Star Control: Origins. Ford and Reiche say their defence fees will cost an estimated $2,000,000 ( 1.5m) and would very much like the public’s help to pay them. (more…)