If you thought twitchy roguelike platformer Dead Cells was hard before, you’re in for a hell of a time when the free Rise Of The Giant expansion launches this Thursday, March 28th. While daring players can opt in to a testing build now, the major, story-focused update to the game will officially roll out soon. It adds more enemies, weapons, zones, boss fights and multiple new endings to the story, although you’ll need to play on the highest possible difficulty to access the toughest battles. Below, a cute animated short in the style of the game’s launch trailer.
Ian Hitman is at it again, this time doing a scenic bit of sunset sniping in Singapore. While not a full map, today’s Hitman 2 Hantu Port Sniper Assassin mission (part of the Expansion Pass) feels like a nice warmup for the new maps to come, presenting a fresh challenge. Unlike the previous Himmelstein sniper mission, your targets won’t immediately scurry for safety when threatened, but instead are liable to try to execute the hostages you’re meant to be liberating. Perhaps an easy way to lure your targets out, but an interesting new failure state. Below, the mission briefing.
2019 continues to be a rubbish year for job stability in the industry, as Electronic Arts have laid off 350 people, mostly in marketing and publishing, and their overseas offices. Kotaku got hold of an internal e-mail to employees from CEO Andrew Wilson stating that the cuts were to “streamline decision-making in the marketing and publishing departments”. I can only hope that there’s a similarly streamlined path to new jobs available to those areas hit, especially those in EA’s Japanese and Russian offices, which are facing closure.
Teased a year ago, Cyan Worlds are ready to unveil their next esoteric point-and-click puzzler, Firmament, and have turned to Kickstarter to raise the $1.28 million it’ll take to get it finished. Weird steampunk technology, ghosts in machines and all the obscure pushing of buttons and pulling of levers you’d expect from the makers of Myst and Obduction, but this time with a focus on VR. Fortunately it won’t require a fancy headset and controllers, but it seems like that’s the intended way to experience the game and its tactile puzzles. Below, their Kickstarter pitch trailer.
The sci-fi first-person spooker Moons Of Madness has reemerged from its dark development cave after a year scratching runes into the wall with splintered fingernails, now aiming to launch around Halloween 2019. And it’s also now quietly tied into the spooky-ooky stories of The Secret World, thanks to finding a publisher in the form of Funcom. Observe, a new trailer hinting at spookies including someone with more tentacles than a biped could reasonably require.
Experienced riders of the post-apocalyptic Russian rails in Metro Exodus can now upgrade to first class with a New Game+ mode, starting their journey afresh with all their weapons and gear from the end of the game carried over to a new save. That arrived in today’s update, along with a running commentary from the conductors (developer commentary tapes) explaining more about the train’s journey (the game’s development). Plus performance improvements, bug fixes… patch stuff.
All of human history is just moving stuff from one place to another. We scoop stuff up out of the ground and stack it into great big pyramids to dispose of unwanted mummies and ankhs. We blast stuff out of rocks and turn it into gardening shears and fidget spinners and lamp shades and clothes hangers, before dumping it all back into the sea nature s bin where we can only assume it safely disintegrates back into benign molecules that fish love.
So this latest spate of factory games should come as no surprise to anyone, scratching, as they do, our very human urge to convert raw wood into planks and then into wagons. First came the more puzzle-focused Infinifactory, and the addictive, top-down, conveyor belt sandbox game Factorio. More lately there is the three-dee Satisfactory, whose developers were so pleased with their own bad pun that they wilfully called their game something that literally means good enough I guess .
The highlight of any From Software game are the bosses. Some of the most tense, inventive, and downright difficult battles have come to define their body of work and Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice continues this trend – to a point. There are a surprising number of sub-bosses that are just as tricky at times.
[cms-block]Plenty of systems in The Division 2 have been rethought and refined from its first iteration in The Division 1, and prime among them is the redesigned Recalibration Station. This station is unlocked through Staff member Emma Richards, and can be used to transfer attributes and talents from one item or piece of gear to another. It’s also a pretty confusing station to get to grips with at first, which is why our The Division 2 Recalibration guide will walk you through how to use this area of your Base of Operations to upgrade both your items and your Gear Score while you’re at it.
Having survived the death of Telltale Games and risen from the grave, The Walking Dead: The Final Season today launched its fourth and final episode. This is the end, the end of Clementine’s story, the proper end of Telltale’s tales, the end of it all. I’m sure she’ll be fine. Here, have a peek at the trailer.