Last month, Crusader Kings 3's 1.3 patch broke mods that allowed players to have same-sex concubine relationships in the medieval strategy game. Paradox Interactive told us they didn't intend to break mod functionality, however, and now they say there's a new patch in the works that should fix them. They plan on making same-sex marriages moddable for the first time in CK3 as well.
Recently Call Of Duty: Warzone had been plagued by two guns: the FFAR and the AUG. If you wielded both of these hunks of metal, you'd be able to delete enemies at all ranges. Nothing came close. In an attempt to fix the game's stale meta, Raven Software have hit them both with nerfs. But the question remains, is it enough?
Ever since I was small, I've had a thing about maps. I love a good map, me, and at school I was one of those freaky kids who actually liked studying geography. Not only do I love looking at maps and trying to memorise the locations of places I've never heard of, but I'm consistently fascinated by the way contour lines on ordnance survey maps can turn a flat image of the world around you into a three dimensional one. When I get to spend time poring over video game maps as well, it's a little slice of heaven.
By this measure, I should absolutely adore indie puzzler Carto, which is all about rearranging squares on your map to forge new paths and discover lost lands so you can make your way back to your gran. It's a lovely chill game that's very relaxing and gentle to play, but I have big beef with it, too.
Buildings Have Feelings Too! is a city management game in which the buildings are characters, with arms and legs, fears and aspirations, and the ability to talk to one another. It looks neat, and it now has a release date - April 22nd.
Introversion Software, the makers of Prison Architect, have been making a video series about all the prototypes they've created and scrapped over the past several years. This month's prototype is 'Minecraft Factory' or 'Voxel Factory', an attempt in 2017 to make a Factorio-like game out of Minecraft-style blocks.
You can watch a video where they demonstrate the prototype and why they binned the idea - and then you can buy and play it, if you like, with all the money going to charity.
As esports becomes bigger business, it's beginning to deal with the issues faced by more mainstream sports. That includes betting and match fixing scandals. The commissioner of the Esports Integrity Commission says that they're now working with law enforcement, including the FBI, to help combat the problem in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.
I've twice tried to get into the Mass Effect series and both times I've given up a few hours into the first game. 'That's where it starts to get good!' my friends tell me, while also saying that Mass Effect 2 fixed a lot of the first game's problems.
I'm therefore pleased to learn of how Mass Effect Legendary Edition will tweak the first game to make it more consistent with its sequels. A new blog post on the RPG remaster's official site goes into detail on how they're tuning combat, boss fights and the Mako "without outright scrapping the spirit of the original games."
Diablo 2: Resurrected is running a singleplayer "technical alpha" this weekend. Beginning Friday, April 9th at 3pm BST (7am PST), the remake of the action-RPG classic will be accessible to a limited selection of players signed up and will include three classes and the first two acts of the game.
The creator of Forager has scrapped plans to add multiplayer to the explore-o-crafting clicker game, explaining that the feature was too buggy to reasonably fix. So it's off. The update is cancelled. If multiplayer was why you bought the game or backed its Patreon, the creator encourages you to seek a refund. A shame, because the game's an interesting one, but it sure does sound a big task.
This is a slightly different episode of The Weekspot. We had to record a little earlier because of the Easter weekend in the UK, and Matthew wasn’t able to come on because of prior commitments.
So, instead of talking to myself for an hour and a half, I drafted in two lovely guests: Josh Wise of VideoGamer and Rich Walker of Xbox Achievements.