It’s been a wild week for Human Head Studios. They finally launched Rune 2, the oft-delayed sequel to their third-person Viking murderer from way back in the year 2000, then shut down and immediately reformed under Bethesda as Roundhouse Studios. I was surprised by this, but my surprise is nothing compared to what Rune 2’s publishers felt. “We found out about this news when you did,” they said yesterday, and they’d been counting on Human Head being around for ongoing support. They assure they’re working to fix bugs and will continue their post-launch content plans but sheesh, that’s a surprise alright.

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A new season in Teamfight Tactics means that we’ve somehow got a whole bunch of brand new champions and items. Putting them all together in one coherent TFT comp might be a little trickier as you’ve now got to contend with elements, as well as the fact that everything is new again. So with the new beginning, we thought we’d once again bring you the TFT best comps list for the current patch – 9.22.

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Epic Games have only gone and launched a new game, Battle Breakers. It’s a turn-based “hero collector RPG” thing about building and upgrading an army of heroes, a game with so very many numbers and resources and timers. Battle Breakers seem built for idle tapping on a pocket telephone on the bus, watching explosions and numbers popping off as you wind home through the dingy streets of Romford, but it is out on PC too. After Epic scrapped Paragon and gave up on the new Unreal Tournament, I’d half-assumed they had binned Battle Breakers too and gone all-in on Fortnite Battle Royale. Nope! Huh.

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On the surface, Sparklite is as generically, pleasantly roguelikelike as it’s possible to get. You wander around randomly generated areas, clubbing baddies with a wrench and spelunking in sinkholes for treasure, before taking on big gits in caves. The story is bland as weetabix, there are secrets to be found everywhere, and there are helpful items that give you new abilities. The game is pretty good. But the thing that made it stand out for me – the thing that made it different – is the way it teased me with shiny new gadgets, and then snatched them away from me>.

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While none of the Auto-battlers out there are what we would know as “chess”, their existence did make me think of Khet 2.0 – a digital form of laser chess. Laser chess has you move pieces with mirrors, an the aim is to shoot the opponent s King (or get them to shoot it themselves with your Machiavellian manoeuvring).

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Put that six-shooter away, cowboy. While it looks mighty purdy on desktops, Red Dead Redemption 2‘s PC debut has been anything but smooth. From framerate dives to hard crashes and issues getting the game to boot in the first place, a fair few outlaws had trouble experiencing the wild wild west during last week’s troubled launch.

This afternoon, Rockstar offered two gifts to tide troubled fans over: an apology for the game’s sorry state, and a complimentary care package for players who bear through the pain.

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It should’ve been a big week for Human Head Studios. Rune 2 finally completed its rocky voyage onto store shelves, nineteen years after its predecessor. Unfortunately, Human Head’s latest would turn out to be their last. Today, the developers announced they’d be “closing the book” on the studio as we know it.

Fortunately, it’s not quite the end of Human Head entirely. The developers will continue their day jobs under new moniker Roundhouse Games, thanks to the intervention of Bethesda Softworks.

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Twitch Studio, the streaming firm’s tool for showing folks what you’re playing, wants to solve a fundamental issue with streaming. It’s bloody hard, is what. While plenty of folks reckon they have the gaming chops of [please put a popular streamer’s name here]>, you’ve got to reckon with the realities of live video production to really make a dent.

It’s a hassle. But after a few months in closed beta, Studio opened up to the public today, offering an alternative for the curious broadcaster who just wants to share some gameplay with their mates.

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Argh, yes, hello hello, intro intro, words, excuses. Sorry everyone, I’ve been rather ill and all the game devs selfishly decided to keep releasing their games anyway. Do they not KNOW what HAPPENS to troublemakers in the Unknownatorium?

It is, of course, time for a belated Unknown Pleasures, our regular selection of the best under-exposed games on Steam.

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A double-bill of revamped Pyro Studios games are coming our way on January 24th, 2020, publishers Kalypso announced today: “HD Remasters” of Commandos 2 and Praetorians. 2001’s Commandos 2 is a proper good’un, a squad-based tactical isometric sneak-o-shooter about covert operations in World War 2 – and a huge inspiration for newer games like Shadow Tactics. Praetorians is a Roman RTS, which I don’t know but I bet Ghoastus does. The HD Remasters look worse to my eye and the originals are still sold so I’m not wholly sure what the point is, but hey, any excuse to remind people of Commandos?

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