UPDATE 1.45pm: It looks like Microsoft is pushing a similar change live to the game's non-Bedrock console editions, such as its Xbox 360 and PlayStation 4 versions, overseen by 4J Studios:
ORIGINAL STORY 10.25am:A new Minecraft update has removed references to creator Markus "Notch" Persson from the game's main menu.
Messages such as "Made by Notch!", "The Work of Notch!" and "110813!" - a nod to the date Notch got married - now no longer appear.
"I see you're no stranger to cruelty," observes a character later on in From Software's predictably astonishing Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. Hearing that, I couldn't help but reflect on how many games are strangers to their own cruelty, wilfully blind to it - exhorting you to kill and pillage while insistently styling you a do-gooder. Consider The Division, a game about massacring the dispossessed for guns and T-shirts which hails you throughout as a hero, decorously concealing the faces of your victims beneath gasmasks and goggles. Set in Sengoku period Japan, a realm of blood and fire where no field is without its crop of dropped swords, Shadows Die Twice admits no such disunity of theme. It embraces the fact that you are a malevolent presence, if not beyond redemption, and, like its spiritual forebears, Dark Souls and Bloodborne, plays this out at every level of what is probably the year's finest game.
You'll usually see the faces of the people you're killing, for one thing - close enough to watch their mouths stretch wide as blade slithers under collarbone - and it's obvious from the outset that Sekiro himself is no angel. Look at that lump of frozen granite he calls a head, that shrapnel-burst of witchy white hair from sideburn to top-knot. Look at his threadbare coat tails, that dead cat of a scarf - more Fagin than Hattori Hanzo. Look, above all, at the prosthetic arm he acquires after failing to save his young retainer Kuro from a rival lord - a blood-caked tangle of iron and wood you'll endow with a variety of fold-out killing instruments, switching between them with a flick of the wrist. There are poison blades for quick, corrosive strikes, firecrackers to paralyse crowds for easier dissection, and a clump of mystic raven feathers to spirit you away from a killing blow. These aren't the weapons of a warrior - they are the tools of a murderer, albeit an outlandish one, happy to seize any advantage in a fight.
The prosthetic is literally animated by death, with abilities performed using spirit emblems reeled like fish from falling bodies. It's bestowed on Sekiro by a sculptor who spends his days obsessively carving Buddhas, each contorted by rage, reflecting a colossal karmic debt (if you're feeling curious, or kind, you can fetch him sake to hear a little of his life story). This penance will one day be your own, the sculptor warns, but in the meantime, the wrathful Buddha idols have a certain utility. They create places of respite throughout the game's mountainous landscape where you might enhance your ninja skills, top up your flask of healing waters and fast-travel, much like Dark Souls' campfires.
Standing before me is the caretaker of a cemetery. He's old, dirty and lecherous, and he is accused of murder - of decapitating a young lady and selling her bleached skull to science. Her body was found in his woodshed and, frankly, it doesn't look good for him. Everyone expects the guillotine, and for him to be decapitated in kind. But something's not right.
Standing before me is a young woman, visibly distraught at having discovered the man she loves dead in his bed. She was found at the crime scene and is the only real suspect, but society loves her and wants her to walk free. How could someone so delicate do something so barbaric? But something's not right.
Standing before me is Citizen Capet, better known as King Louis 16th, the last king of France. He is an enemy of the Revolution and the trial feels like a formality. The decision in the hearts and minds of the fevered French public has already been made. But something's not right.
Shovel Knight studio Yacht Club Games has formally unveiled Cyber Shadow, a Ninja-Gaiden-inspired 8-bit-style platformer from developer Aarne "MekaSkull" Hunziker.
Cyber Shadow sets players loose among the ruins of an enemy-infested, trap-laden Mekacity, and is described as an NES-style platformer with "the level design principles of Mario, the skills and action of Ninja Gaiden, the enemy designs of Contra, and the dark visual aesthetic of Batman."
It promises "authentic 8-bit presentation", "sharply honed ninja platforming action", unlockable Ninjutsu skills and abilities, over a dozen bosses, and more. You can get a taste of all that (as well as a cracking ditty from Enrique Martin's soundtrack) in the trailer below.
Failbetter Games has revealed that its excellent, narrative-focussed intergalactic space adventure Sunless Skies will be getting a brand-new update next month, aimed at adding "more to see and do during voyages".
It's called the Wayfarer Update and consists of two main components. The first is a major overhaul of Albion (one of Sunless Skies' four regions), while the second is focussed on introducing a host of new narrative encounters and options.
Part of Albion's new makeover brings visual enhancements designed to improve the "general look and atmosphere" of the region, and Failbetter has released a few screens showcasing the changes, as seen below. Additionally, the map itself will be notably altered, with Failbetter increasing terrain "to make navigation and combat more interesting".
Enter the Gungeon's last-ever content update will arrive on Switch, Xbox One, PS4, and PC on April 5th, developer Dodge Roll Games has announced, marking three years since the wonderful rogue-like shooter's initial release.
Fittingly, this final update is titled A Farewell to Arms, and adds a host of new features and quality of life improvements to the already meaty game. For starters, there're two new playable characters (or Gungeoneers as they're known) in the form of The Paradox and The Gunslinger. These will be joined by "dozens" of new guns and items, a new secret floor with its own boss, and a new NPC called Bowler, linked to the new community-inspired Rainbow Mode.
Players embarking on this trip-with-a-twist through the Gungeon are able to select one gun or item from a special Rainbow chest at the start of each floor. It's important to choose wisely, however, as that's all you'll get, aside from regular pick-ups and Master Rounds.
Sam Barlow has fully unveiled the follow-up to 2015's award-winning Her Story, with Telling Lies picking up the tale of four people and their interconnected lives through the filter of a stolen NSA hard drive.
In a stylistic spin on Her Story's formula, the stories unfold through footage of the characters talking to each other online, and once again it'll offer a non-linear approach through its tale as you use search terms to unearth footage. It's a bigger, broader game than Her Story, and features a recognisable cast - Prometheus' Logan Marshall-Green, X-Men: Apocalypse's Alexandra Shipp, Halt and Catch Fire's Kerry Bish and Westworld's Angela Sarafyan take on the four starring roles.
Telling Lies is being published by Annapurna and is set to come out later this year on mobile and desktop. We'll have plenty more on the game early next week for you.
Larian has announced a new Divinity: Original Sin game but it is not, before you lose your potatoes, Divinity: Original Sin 3.
It's Divinity: Fallen Heroes, a co-production with Danish studio Logic Artists (maker of Expeditions: Conquistador). And while it occupies the same universe as Original Sin 2, it goes off on a slight tangent. An XCOM tangent, according to Rock, Paper, Shotgun, which sounds rather scrumptious to me.
Instead of flowing through a world and story, you embark on missions from your flying battleship hub. You send squads of four, comprised of various kinds of unit, out on missions, while in between researching new tech - gunpowder! - and diplomatically managing your crew. Piss them off and they will leave, apparently.
The game most well known for transforming your friends into Gordon Ramsay is getting yet another expansion, as a camping-themed DLC has been announced for Overcooked 2.
Moving beyond the tropical and Chinese New Year themes of the past two DLCs, Campfire Cook Off is stirring things up by letting players "head into the forests of the Onion Kingdom to cook under the stars". Players will be able to cook their way around a brand new map comprising of 12 levels, along with new recipes, playable chefs and some mysterious new mechanics.
Unlike the free Surf n' Turf DLC, this one will set you back 4.49 - although Team 17 has simultaneously unveiled a new season pass, which will get you this and two further DLC packs for 14.99. In other words, that's "all the content released in 2019". It sounds like we've got at least two further packs coming this year, so if you're really into Overcooked, you can now put your money where your mouth is.
Wolfenstein: Youngblood comes out 26th July 2019 for PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch, Bethesda has announced.
Wolfenstein: Youngblood is a co-op shooter set in 1980s Paris. There you fight the Nazis as one of BJ Blazkowicz's twin daughters, Jess or Soph. It's in development at Machine Games (Wolfenstein: The New Order, Wolfenstein 2), which is collaborating with Arkane Studios Lyon (Dishonored).
There's a new gameplay trailer below.