I don’t know where to begin with this—literally, figuratively, existentially? It’s a new browser ARG thing by Nathalie Lawhead who has made many odd things wot RPS folk have enjoyed like Froggy and Cyberpet Graveyard. Mackerelmediafish.com, which I suppose is the website and also the name of the game(?), is another such clever oddity.
The Elder Scrolls Online‘s next big expansion comes out in May but you can try out its prologue chapter for free. Zenimax Online Studios have also released a new story trailer for the expansion, showing off some vampire baddies and a few vistas from Western Skyrim that you’ll recognize if you played The Elder Scrolls V. ESO is hosting a free play period for over a week starting this Wednesday and say that free players will also be able to try out the Greymoor expansion prologue.
The annual Game Developers Conference, and a bunch of other gaming events, have been cancelled or postponed this year thanks to the spread of the Covid-19 coronavirus. Getting to GDC represents a serious financial commitment for indie developers especially, who have been impacted by its cancellation so close to the dates it was meant to run. Gamedev.world is hosting a fundraising week of livestreams to benefit the GDC Relief Fund.
Half-Life: Alyx is out, and where talk of Valve and Half-Life goes, so too does Garry’s Mod follow. You know Gmod for all the silly Source games the players made with it: Prop Hunt, Trouble In Terrorist Town, Jazztronauts, and the like. Original Gmod maker and Facepunch Studios founder Garry Newman has jumped on the Valve-talk train with a tease that they’re currently working on Garry’s Mod 2, which it turns out is something called Sandbox that they’ve been developing for quite a few years.
Success has proved troublesome for Last Oasis, the new survival sandbox MMO with wooden walking bases. After launching into early access on Thursday, it hit #6 on Steam’s top-selling chart for the whole week, it passed 25,000 players in-game at the same time, and it fell over so hard that the developers have taken it offline for a week. Bugs exacerbated by the weight of players caused the servers to crumple and it needs serious help. If you don’t want to wait for its return, you’re welcome to a refund.
There have been more and more portable SSDs supporting the new USB 3.2 Gen 2 standard cropping up over the last couple of months. First, we had the Samsung T7 Touch, the latest, touch sensor-secured successor to my current [cms-block] champion, the Samsung T5. Then there was Crucial’s X8, which was a smidge faster than the T7 Touch and cheaper to boot. Now, WD’s Black P50 has finally landed on my desk. Clad in the same tough, corrugated shipping container-like casing as WD’s Black P10 external HDD, the P50 certainly looks the part of a high-end, no-nonsense portable SSD drive, but does it have the speed to match? Here’s wot I think.
Runescape’s newest update, Archaeology, adds a whole new skill to the almost two-decade-old MMO, but there’s some necessary context for what it brings to the table – at least historically speaking. At only 10 years old, I was as industrious as they came, and actually set up my own in-game business. I had people – probably much older than I was – chopping wood for me, which I then sold for profit or used to increase my Firemaking skill, like a proper little capitalist. All I had to give them in return were axes worth a measly fraction of my wealth.
Runescape was a simpler game in those times, where ordinary skills could be paired with one another to create basic but effective economic structures, most of which were founded upon the exploitation of fresh-out-of-Lummy naivete. But that was 14 years ago. Runescape is a different beast now, and the addition of Archaeology is unprecedented in more ways than one. “Skilling is not traditionally a vehicle for storytelling,” lead designer Dave Osborne tells me in an interview conducted over Zoom. “This completely upends that expectation.”
If Black Mesa actually getting finished left you lost without a fan-made refresh of an old Half-Life to cheer on, rejoice: the new hotness is bringing Half-Life 2 into Half-Life: Alyx. Several modders are already showing off their progress in bringing Gordon’s adventure to Alyx’s shiny new VR game, though it’s all hella far from finished. Hey, we all need something to believe in. Come check out these two projects.
I love> The Dig. While I definitely played it in 1995, I’ve almost no memories of that. But the last time I played it in 2011, I rediscovered a LucasArts adventure that felt like something truly special, something unique in their oeuvre, and something that hit the sweet spot of the science fiction I most enjoy. In this difficult period, returning to it sounded just the ticket.
It’s time to saddle up and ride out, for Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord entered early access this morning. The long-awaited follow-up to Warband (one of the best RPGs, don’t you know?) will once again send us out to ride around a sandbox medieval world, raising armies, politicking, laying siege, and charging around big battlefields with hundreds of soldiers throwing down. But if you’d rather wait for the full and finished game, it’s expected to leave early access in “around a year.” For now, onwards to the launch trailer!