Rarely have I felt so powerful as I did the second time I defeated Lady Butterfly in Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. During my first playthrough, Lady Butterfly was the boss that forced me to really learn how to play the game, to spend time internalising all the movements and steps of the intricate dance of metal and death that makes the game what it is. I was determined to beat her fair and square, rather than engaging in any kind of underhanded cheesy tactics like stunlocking. It must have taken me twenty attempts to finally triumph, and it wasn’t anything like as clean as I wanted it to be.

In my second playthrough, I defeated her on my first attempt, without hesitation or injury. Like all the best moments in Sekiro, it was relentless and beautiful. It showed me exactly how far I’d come.

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Once more, it’s time for the fine folks at Overwatch to put down their guns, stop shooting each other for a moment, pick up their guns again and go blast some robots and armoured goons. It’s Archives time, team. With no new story to plug through this time, all three of Overwatch’s co-op stories are coming back with wild new variations, alongside the requisite bucket of new skins and cosmetics to unlock after all that carnage. Archives 2020 runs ’til April 2nd, at which point everyone can go back to shooting their best mates.

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It’s freebie o’clock on the Epic Games Store once again. This week’s a proper bonanza, too. Between A Short Hike, Anodyne 2: Return to Dust and Mutazione, there’s no shortage of familiar and fantastical indie worlds to poke around in. All three are free to add to your library for good ’til March 19th, when they’ll be slapped back to full price to make way for The Stanley Parable and Watch Dogs.

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I often wish I had the mind for puzzle games. Alan “Draknek” Hazelden’s catalogue of deceptively hard brainteasers look bleedin’ lovely, but I simply can’t be screaming at my monitor with strangers in the office. After solving lunar train dilemmas with Cosmic Express and teaching us that A Good Snowman Is Hard To Build, Draknek And Friends are returning with A Monster’s Expedition – pushing over trees to explore a water-logged museum of human ruin on Steam and Itch.io later this year. (more…)

One of Eve Online‘s longest term players has made a dubious name for himself by forgetting the golden rule: don’t fly what you can’t afford to lose.

This Tuesday, a pilot named “Lactose Intolerant” made the timeless mistake of transporting valuable cargo through a ‘safe’ area of space without taking proper precautions, like not doing that. The result was a ganking that cost him the ship and its cargo, worth an estimated 150 billion Interstellar Kredits. Or, to put it in normal people terms, about 1460.

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Typical: you wait decades for a release of Westwood’s Blade Runner game then two come along at once. The original 1997 adventure game popped up on GOG in December, powered by ScummVM, and now Nightdive Studios have announced an Enhanced Edition. They say they’ll update character models, upscale cutscenes, and improve the technical trimmings.

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After being robbed of two of the best little puzzlers on mobile, Monument Valley developers Ustwo Games are finally making their PC debut with Assemble With Care. Arriving on Steam later this month, Ustwo’s pastel-painted repair ’em up has you dissecting people’s junk – and their personal problems – before putting it all back together again. In this economy, who can afford to be an engineer without doing a little counselling on the side?

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To help folks using Discord as a substitute for in-person contact during these Covid-19 days, the gaming communication software has helpfully raised limits on screensharing. Discord may be designed for video games but is one of the text, voice, and video chat tools growing popular for remotely replacing classes, workplaces, and just plain human contact as schools and workplaces start shutting down and people start self-isolating. In recognition of this, Discord’s makers have temporarily raised the limit on how many people can watch someone’s screen view from 10 to 50. “We want to help make your world a little less stressful,” they say.

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The Longing is a game that takes 400 days to play. You control A Shade, a little servant to an underground king who’s taking a very long nap, and in those 400 days you can… well, you can lots of things. Explore the caves. Build a nice home. Sit and wait.

But I have been playing The Longing for about three months now, and my goal has been, and remains… to escape! I want to give our Shade, who we have named Burnsy, a better life on the surface. This has proven more difficult than I first imagined. But we are still working on our list of other goals, too. This latest chapter in Burnsy’s life gets a bit grim, though. Or at least, I get a bit grim. (more…)

While Doom Eternal will not launch until next week, the launch trailer has ripped and torn through the pages of the calendar to show us its sights early. Ah sure, go on, I’ll take a little ultraviolence now to tide me over. A little plasma to warm my hands in these tumultuous last days of winter. A small swell of screams to drown out the noise of the road. Just a splash of blood to wet my lips. That’ll do. I’m sure Animal Crossing’s Isabelle will be thrilled for her pal. See the trailer below.

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