London’s a weird place. As a Scot, I’ve always found my trips to the giant English sprawl to be bewildering affairs, as suited blokes ferry themselves from one Pret A Manger to another packed anchovie-like in screaming metal cans. Thank goodness then, that Watch Dogs Legion‘s condensed capital is an equally strange place – and it couldn’t possibly just be launch-week weirdness, right?
A creak behind the door. A shiver down your spine. A shriek pierces your ear, but before you can turn and run, you see it – thousands of hapless videogames, slashed into pieces by big Gabe’s discount knife. Oh, The Steam Halloween Sale has very much begun, dear readers, chopping the recommended retail price out of the storefront’s finest games – be they spooky or otherwise.
Despite having just launched one blockbuster with another due next month, we might have a while to go before Ubisoft’s next round of games. During today’s financial earnings report, Ubisoft revealed that both Far Cry 6 and Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Quarantine have been pushed back into the next financial year, setting their release dates as no sooner than April 1st, 2021.
We’re back on track for a trip to hell, adventurers. After last month’s delay failed to give us a new release date, Blizzard are now confident in their ability to deliver World Of Warcraft: Shadowlands by the end of November. It’s not the Halloween launch I imagine they were hoping for, but hey – what better way to close out this year than by yeeting ourselves into the fantasy underworld?
As you’ll probably know by now, Watch Dogs Legion‘s big boast is its “play as anyone” feature, where you can recruit and subsequently play as any one of nine million procedurally generated Londoners. As I done said in my review, it works as advertised… sort of.
The level of simulation is dead impressive, and can lead to some interesting situations. But it leads to a lot of weird ones, too. Regardless of how well Ubisoft have concealed the practical limitations of this extraordinary system, we’re just not at a point in game design where you can automate the generation of a character’s appearance, backstory and personality, and have them walk out of the process as a believable and compelling human being.
Adamgryu, creator of ‘Game That Graham Won’t Shut Up About 2019’ winner A Short Hike, has released a pay-what-you-can pumpkin carving game on itch. Just in time for the spookiest weekend of the year, Mayor Bones Proudly Presents: Ghost Town’s 999th Annual Pumpkin Festival is a genuine Halloween treat, and the best cure for October blues I have yet come across.
The premise is simple: you carve a pumpkin. Every player can submit three pumpkins to the server, but you can have as many goes as you want at the carving table. When you’ve got a pump you’re happy with, you can place it in the festival display alongside the work of your fellow ghosts. It is, and I am not exaggerating here, wonderful>.
What’s the point of forging an eternal space empire if you’re not around to see it? Why let a pesky thing like mortality ruin your timeless dominion over the cosmos? Such things don’t concern Stellaris‘s newest band of ramblin’ shamblin’ undead aliens, The Necroids, descending upon the galaxy in today’s new Species Pack. ‘Tis the season for an undead apocalypse, after all.
As is customary for a modern Ubisoft open-world icon-clearer, Watch Dogs: Legion launches today with not only a £50 price tag and a £34 season pass but optional not-so-microtransactions too. Ubisoft are selling ‘WD Credits’ in bundles ranging from £4 to £42, which you can spend on in-game goodies like unique characters, skins, maps of collectibles, and wads of digicash. You don’t need any of these to complete Legion but welp, it’s still gross to see them juicing the game so much.
Let’s face it, we’ve all been in situations where we’ve done something at work that’s resulted in a conversation we know is going to be awkward and embarrassing, but we’ve still had to do it anyway. On this basis, I sympathise with CD Projekt Red’s joint CEO Adam Kiciński and board member Michał Nowakowski, who had a Q&A call with investors yesterday to discuss the news that Cyberpunk 2077, big action RPG and pre-anointed game of the year 2020, has been delayed. Again.
On the call, Kiciński explained that the game is ready to go on PC and next-gen consoles, but on the current-gen builds “some very final optimization processes for such a massive and complex game require a bit of additional time”. This is what’s led to the three-week delay from its previous release date of November 19th. But they probably definitely will be ready to launch on December 10th – or at least that’s what he says in response to an investor asking if the studio can really be comfortable saying it’s going to actually come out on the 10th: “That’s more or less what I’m saying, I guess – yes.” But the full transcript goes from excruciating to downright embarrassing.
Feeling squeamish? If so, A Total War Saga: Troy‘s latest DLC probably isn’t for you. The subtly-named Blood & Glory DLC for Creative Assembly’s Ancient Greek murderfest arrived today, bathing Troy in a flood of blood, gore and grizzly details. And hey, if you’re a sicko wot wants to immortalise your bloodiest victories forever, you can now snap your most gruesome battles with Troy’s free photo mode update.