What's galactic drama without an evil empire to rally against or a mighty hero to save us all? A bit of a damp squib. The latest Stellaris expansion, Nemesis, today spices up the end-game by offering extra powers for domination or liberation. It's got big Star Trek baddie vibes, enough that it even adds new ship designs which look like Star Destroyers. And as ever, the expansion is accompanied by a patch adding and changing loads in the 4X strategy game.
Square Enix have been rummaging around in their back catalogue of 90s JRPGs... and they still haven't released the Final Fantasy 7 remake on PC, sorry. Today, they launched SaGa Frontier Remastered, an improved version of the old 1998 PlayStation game, with refreshed graphics, an extra main character and some restored old cutscenes to boot. Get a load of the new look in the trailer below.
It is the year 980AD, in a very odd game of Crusader Kings 3, and under the brassy gloom of a midwinter afternoon, Europe holds its breath. For one hundred and fourteen years now, the continent’s fortunes have been driven by the whims of a single, anvil-sized heart. But today, in a sprawling fortress-chapel beside the Thames, that monstrous drum is striking its final, furious beats.
The last of the succession parchments have been signed. The last threats have been sent to the East. In the great hall, beneath the alabaster snarls of Zeus and Demeter, a marsh of sick cools from the near-apocalyptic revels of the emperor’s farewell feast. And now, in the imperial bedchamber, with a wheeze like a ruptured bouncy castle being leaned on by thirty builders, the soul of a god escapes its prison of flesh at last.
What's up? The thermostat, that's what! After a very brief hiatus last week (when Nate and I were both away and Matthew didn't want to rant into thin air by himself) we return in time to greet the sun. The approach of Summer in the UK has been heralded by the big hot ball in the sky, but also sometimes snow in the same day, because this is Normal Island in many ways. The changeable weather made me suggest this as our topic for the Electronic Wireless Show podcast this week should be the best weather in games. So it is.
We open, as you can predict, with a discussion on Matthew's opinions on barbecues. After this, and a lengthly chat about police procedurals, we do talk about some of our favourite game weather (not including mud, which is not weather). There is also a lengthly argument about whether "the moon" counts as weather, which it clearly does not.
The delightful duo of Detective McQueen and Officer Dooley return to solve more spooky mysteries today in The Darkside Detective: A Fumble In The Dark, a second season following 2017's comedic adventure game. Six new cases will send our heroes to places including a carnival, a wrestling league, and (spookiest of all) a retirement home for more pointing, clicking, and laughing. A funny and gentle adventure game sounds ideal right now.
Outriders may have had a rocky couple of weeks since it launched at the start of April, but People Can Fly's new looter shooter does have a Destiny-like moreish-ness that makes it jolly good fun to play, especially when its headshots erupt in such spectacular fountains of gooey, red space chunks. It's entertaining stuff, as we said in our Outriders review, and from a performance point of view, it seems to be running relatively smoothly now that most of its early bugs and crossplay kinks have been ironed out.
However, to my eyes at least, some of the environments on old planet Enoch can sometimes look a little, well, plasticky. Outriders is a handsome-looking game, don't get me wrong, but stare at its glossy visual feasts for too long and their clean lines and smooth textures betray a distinct lack of nitty gritty detail. Even in its torn-up battlefields, there's very little roughage in the wilds of Outriders, as if every rock and mud track has been buffed and polished within an inch of its life, even on Ultra quality settings. But there is a way to bring back some of that missing detail to Outriders, and that's by enabling the game's Nvidia DLSS settings if you've got an RTX graphics card.
I remember the first time I thought I'd gotten to the bottom of Yedoma Globula. I was descending through a chasm in my airship - a beautifully ramshackle steampunk vessel, the only homely object in the game's fathomless procgen world, with a charming, leather-bound steering wheel and, as it turns out, seriously inadequate handrails. Disengaging from the wheel, I fired a flare over the side and accidentally threw myself after it.
For the best part of a minute I fell - through coloured light and a confusion of curving distances, the thudding of my ship's engine melting into the mists above. The worst thing about falling in Yedoma Globula is the sound. There is none. No air screaming past your ears, no rattle of loose cloth or equipment. Touching down, you brace for the crunch of bone but it's as gentle as a bubble meeting water. This being a work-in-progress game with an early build on Itch, it feels like the force of impact isn't so much absent as deferred, waiting to be inflicted by an update – all those fatal tumbles catching up with you simultaneously in a liquefying spacetime implosion.
Konami unveiled GetsuFumaDen: Undying Moon during Nintendo's Indie World Showcase last night. It's a 2D roguelike hack-and-slasher, and an unlikely follow-up to GetsuFumaDen, a Japan-only Famicom game from 1987. Plus, it sports this traditional Japanese art style which I can't get enough of.
If you've been keen to hop over to Ireland in Assassin's Creed Valhalla, bad news: Ubisoft have announced a two-week delay for its first expansion, Wrath Of The Druids. Previously expected on the 29th of April, it's now due on the 13th of May.
Last night, Annapurna Interactive announced Hindsight. It's a narrative exploration game where you'll revisit a woman's memories, from her childhood to her adult life, after the death of her mother. It seems like a simple and heartfelt experience about learning to let go. From puddle-splashing in the rain, to getting a quick haircut from mum, the trailer shows the sorts of memories you don't think much of while they're happening, but mean quite a lot when looking back.