Epic has confirmed it's bringing back its 14 Days of Fortnite event following a mix-up with the end date.
The event closed on 2nd January, a couple of days earlier than expected given some players had read a Reddit post by Epic Games' David Spazinski, suggesting it would run until 3rd or 4th January. To compensate, Epic gave away the Equalizer Glider, but after further reflection it's decided to bring the entire event back to give players a second chance.
"We communicated an incorrect end date for the 14 Days of Fortnite event and did not feel the Equalizer Glider compensation was the right approach," Epic said by way of a blog post. "After further discussion, we've decided to bring back this event early next week through January 15 at 3 AM ET (8am UK time). We'll also be enabling some of the most popular Limited Time Modes that were available during the event."
Composer Mick Gordon is recruiting a "Heavy Metal Screamers" choir for an unspecified project that is highly likely to be, if not quite confirmed, Doom Eternal.
"I'm currently writing music for a video game. I really want to record a choir," Gordon told his YouTube followers (thanks, Polygon). "But for this project, I don't want to record a regular choir; I want to record a choir made up entirely of Heavy Metal Screamers."
"To the best of my knowledge, I don't believe this has ever been done before. Therefore, here is an open invitation to anyone out there who wants to apply to join our Heavy Metal Choir. We're looking for all types of screamers. Your level of experience doesn't matter. We're looking for all genders. As long as you're over 18, it doesn't matter how old you are.
Home is a children's book by the writer and illustrator Carson Ellis. It's concerned, as you might expect, with all the sorts of places that people might find to live.
The book is built around a series of paintings by Ellis - watercolours, I think, but I might be wrong about this stuff. And it's quietly fantastical, if such a combination is possible. "Home is a house in the country," is how the whole thing kicks off, and there's a nice little house with a red brick chimney, and a couple of horses running nearby. "Or home is an apartment," it continues: brickwork, graffiti, a cat stretching itself in a window while a girl in another window seems to be studying a nearby pigeon. Pages later, however, we learn that some people live in palaces, or underground lairs. Some people live in shoes or on the moon. Each illustration is delicate, detailed, and wonderfully, organically strange. This is a peculiarly unforced kind of strangeness: of course a Japanese businessman lives in a sort of geometrical papercraft rock with a chimney poking out of the top. Of course he shares the double-page spread with a Norse god and his wooden church. This is that kind of imagination that has a sense of certainty to it - its fancies do not feel like fancies at all. They feel like clear-eyed reports from another world that has its own rules and its own rigour.
But Home is also a game. At least I think it is. I think it has the space inside it to be a game.
The PC remakes of Hideo Kojima's PT keep on coming - and this one's got VR support.
Unreal PT is a remake of the original PT by game developer and 3D artist Radius Gordello. It's available now for free on itch.io and, based on comments from those who've given it a shot, is very good indeed.
Radius Gordello said they spent nine months building Unreal PT, recreating from scratch textures, models, animations and gameplay from the original. Speaking of gameplay, Unreal PT's is near identical to the original's, but the ending has been changed slightly "to make beating it more consistent".
Twitch let a Fortnite player who allegedly assaulted his pregnant partner in front of their kids on-stream back on their platform - then re-banned him after a social media outcry.
People took to Twitter to express concern that Australian Luke "MrDeadMoth" Munday, who is accused of assaulting his partner while livestreaming mid-December, was found streaming again on Twitch just a few weeks after his initial ban.
Munday, 26, was spotted on-stream arguing with his 21-year-old partner before allegedly hitting her in the face - in front of their two young girls aged three and 20 months, who can be heard screaming in the background.
UPDATE 8TH JAN 2019: Blizzard has issued a statement on the Second Wind imposter, warning others against trying the same thing.
"After investigating the matter, we found that 'Ellie' was a fabricated identity and is a smurf account - created by a veteran player to obfuscate their identity. The owner of Ellie's account is a player with no current or prior involvement with any Overwatch Contenders or Overwatch League team. 'Ellie' was never formally submitted to the active roster of Second Wind and never played in a Contenders match.
"As part of the process to officially add a player to a Contenders or Overwatch League roster, we do background checks to ensure that players are who they say they are as well as meet other eligibility requirements, and will take action against players if we discover any behaviour that warrants it."
A new and ambitious mod for Dark Souls 1 has reignited the game's community after surprise-launching this week.
Dark Souls: Daughters of Ash is Dark Souls re-imagined and massively expanded, according to its lone creator.
Redditor Grimrukh said they spent over 1000 hours over the course of 2017 and 2018 building the mod for Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition on PC.
One of the standout pieces at the V&A's video game exhibition Design, Play, Disrupt isn't a game or even an interesting design document. It's Le Blanc Seing, a painting by Belgian surrealist Rene Magritte, on loan from the National Gallery of Art in Washington. The painting made its way to London to acknowledge a reference in Kentucky Road Zero, the adventure game released by Cardboard Computer in 2013.
As magnificent as it can be to see the real version of a painting you've only seen by proxy, I'm not the biggest fan of its inclusion in the exhibition. Maybe it's due to my own insecurities surfacing whenever I tell the casually interested about the cultural importance of gaming, but referencing art so clearly both in a game and an exhibition can be construed as games still looking for validation in the art space. "This makes it official," reviews of exhibitions of this kind triumphantly proclaim, "Games are art after all!" The notion that game designers are people who sometimes watch films, read books or enjoy paintings seems to come as a surprise, something that isn't understood unless it's explicitly stated.
This reputation is of course one that the gaming industry often perpetuates. Certain games have influenced so many other games that their titles now serve as shorthand for game mechanics and sometimes whole genres - take Metroid, Zelda or Dark Souls. Game design stagnates when it's influenced my its own microcosm, and you can argue that games are the most fun when they take their cues from surrealism, and not just in a visual way.
Taken all your Christmas decorations down yet? Here's one last present for PC owners: the original version of Catherine looks set to launch for PC.
Yesterday, Sega teased the PC port on its Steam page for Bayonetta. Today, a PC version of Catherine has been rated by US ratings board ESRB (thanks, Siliconera).
Despite arriving on consoles back in 2011, Catherine has never launched on PC before. Although this is an odd time to release it - as an upcoming enhanced version of the game for PlayStation 4 is just a few months away.
Erik Wolpaw, best known for his work on Portal and Half Life 2's Episodes, has rejoined Valve after more than a year away.
Wolpaw left Valve in February 2017 to work on Double Fine's upcoming Psychonauts sequel. He co-wrote the original Psychonauts back in 2005 before his decade-long stint at Valve began.
While at Valve, Wolpaw worked on Half-Life 2 Episode 1 and 2, Portal, Left 4 Dead and Portal 2.