Anyone else have a sticky note of games they’ve got an eye on called “Stardew but…”? Just me? Alright, well here’s a Stardew but stone age game just announced called Roots Of Pacha. Even I grow slightly weary of pastoral anywheresville so I quite like seeing the farm and life sim trend breaking ground in new settings. Look, instead of cows you have big bison things. Cute! Pacha’s announcement trailer shows off all the farmlife sim activities you know and grind.

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As have many game studios during the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic, Zenimax Online’s developers have been working from home. Zenimax previously acknowledged that this could impact the release date for The Elder Scrolls Online‘s next expansion set in Western Skyrim. They’ve now piped up to say that they’re pushing back its release date, but only by a week. You’ll be able to head to the Blue Palace on Tuesday, May 26th.

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Following a curious build-up through a livestreamed drawing, Ubisoft today announced Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. This time, Vikings seem to be the stars of the sandbox murder simulator. For now, all Ubisoft have to show is a seven-hour drawing and all they have to say is mutterings about the lads coming “to conquer a new land” and that. We’ll learn more tomorrow when a trailer arrives.

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How often does a game get new DLC five years on? Maybe more often than I can recall offhand but hey, here’s Dying Light announcing an upcoming DLC for its zombie action parkour world from 2015. As with the main game, you’ll be able to dive into Dying Light – Hellraid either alone or with friends. It’s planned for release sometime this summer.

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After quite a good run in Early Access, Deep Rock Galactic is emerging from the depths in just a couple weeks. The co-op dwarf FPS will move to version 1.0 on May 13th with new tunes, ranks, and quality of life improvements. If you’ve already been playing in Early Access, you can try out the release candidate by opting in to the experimental branch through Steam.

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Armor in Fallout 76 can be made and repaired using scrap. With irradiated creatures and other players trying to kill you around every corner, you’ll want some protection from damage. Luckily there are also plenty of unattended items lying around that are yours for the taking. It’s worth grabbing a ton of scrap to repair armour. (more…)

It’s not even out of beta yet and Valorant is tempting pros from other games into its ranks. San Francisco Shock’s star player, Jay “Sinatraa” Won, is the first Overwatch League player to be making the switch, joining up with the Sentinels’ new competitive Valorant team. Sinatraa announced his retirement from Overwatch yesterday, saying he “straight up just lost passion for the game”.

“Idk what the real killer was for me but maybe it was 2-2-2 lock, maybe it was bans I’m not sure… I just know it was hard for me to log on to play and I didn’t have fun in scrims/ranked at all anymore.”

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The new Gears Of War spin-off, Gears Tactics came out yesterday, and already players are turning their soldiers into characters from other games. Tactics has you recruit various soldiers as you go on, you see, and while you can’t change the general look of their bodies or faces, there are still a bunch of features you can alter to adjust them to your liking.

So, here’s a few examples you could follow if you fancy having characters like Duke Nukem or Doom Guy in your squad.

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As they’re wont to do, like kids sneaking peeks in their holiday presents, some regular Fortnite dataminers have gone snooping through the game files in today’s 12.5 update looking for clues to Fortnite’s future.

They’ve unwrapped what might be a big one: something that appears to be a new, smaller map for Fortnite all about partying and minigaming with friends rather than fighting for victory royales. According to the data leakers, a new map called “Papaya” will have obstacle courses, fishing, and skydiving with friends among other activities.

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It’s always been hard to accept the beat ’em up’s idea of depth perception. Here’s a genre that asks you to punch and kick on a single wafer-thin plane, before slowly readjusting your 2D sprite a few millimetres deeper into the screen, to make a tentative punch at a foe somehow just out of reach, as if everyone exists as a sort of juiced-up Paper Mario goomba. Streets Of Rage 4 proudly holds that tradition aloft, like a big chicken drumstick. It is a solid game, in the sense that it is a handsome, tightly made thump ’em up, but also solid in the sense that it remains anchored in place by the genre’s rules and regulations. Between a rock and a chokehold, for better and for worse.

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