Microsoft today announced that you'll be able to Master Chief it up with your consolepals in Halo Infinite, thanks to cross-platform multiplayer and progression. Details on how it will actually work are thin for now, but in theory that sounds neat. Nice to play with your pals. Though less fun to face mousefolk if you're playing on controller. Ah, we'll see in due time.
16 years after launch, the third game in the Total War series today returns with a new lick of paint and a few new features as Total War: Rome Remastered. Touched-up models and textures! New user interface bits! Extra factions unlocked! New merchant agents! Other newness! But... it's ultimately still Rome: Total War at heart, a game which seems a bit ropey after newer, better games in the series.
Sad news: the next Five Nights At Freddy's Game, Security Breach, has been delayed again. Glad news: you can instead hang with Freddy and friends in a surprise new free game - a side-scrolling beat 'em up, of all things! Series creator Scot Cawthon yesterday released Fury's Rage, which gives the gang a rude 'tude 90s makeover and pits them against punk gangs in Streets Of Rage-style violence. I do like all the things Cawhton does for fans.
Failbetter are revamping their gothic space-train RPG Sunless Skies next month with the Sovereign Edition, coming to PC as a free update. They promise better performance and loads of balance tweaks, as well as improved character progression, new interfaces, and a reworked starvation system that'll give you "various new and probably inadvisable choices about what to eat." Yum. All this and more will arrive on May 19th.
I think everyone breathed a big sigh of relief when Microsoft announced their upcoming DirectStorage tech would work with both PCIe 3.0 and 4.0 SSDs last week, as it means we don't have to necessarily shell out the seriously big bucks to benefit from shorter loading times once it gets released. Indeed, prices for PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSDs are still eye-wateringly high compared to their PCIe 3.0 counterparts, and you only need to look at the Adata XPG Gammix S70 on test here today to see that difference in action.
Before Verdansk got nuked into the 1980s, Call Of Duty: Warzone had a subway you could use to fast travel around the map. I used it a total of once, then totally forgot it was there. So it's surprising to see that a new fast travel method might return. Only the trains may be ditched in favour of magical Red Doors, and I'm not sure how I feel about it.
It looks like the time-looping space exploration game Outer Wilds might be getting a DLC, because something named Outer Wilds - Echoes Of The Eye has popped up in Steam's records. This little leak was circulated on Twitter last night, and rather than simply ignoring the rumour, the game's publisher Annapurna Interactive shared the tweet and added a cheeky eye emoji. It's not exactly a confirmation that a DLC is happening, but it's certainly not a denial either.
Domina is a game about managing a stable of gladiators during the last days of Rome. It’s pretty great, once you realise that winning isn’t really the point of it. Winning is> possible, of course, but doing so is an uphill struggle against wild balance issues, hellish RNG, and a rigid approach to permadeath. Honestly, it’s much better (in my opinion), just to enjoy it as an ultra-brutal, vaguely historical software toy about the horrendous cheapness of human life.
As we've already seen several instances of so far, attitudes about remote work have been shifting in the games industry since the Covid-19 pandemic forced a work from home lifestyle last year. Multiple companies have since instituted permanent work from home policies, such as Square Enix and Hi-Rez Studios, after finding that the setup was working well for them.
According to this year's GDC survey, many developers personally feel that they're doing well working from home. A total of 67% of the more than 3,000 developers surveyed feel that their productivity has been the same or better since working remotely.
Freezy survival-ish battle royaler Scavengers launches today in early access. Although we've got more than enough squad-based royale 'em ups in every flavor right now, Scavengers seems to lean into the "environment" bit of PvPvE enough to have caught my attention. It's caught plenty of other folks' attention too, it seems. Scavengers is entertaining over 100,000 viewers on Twitch at the moment, though it surely owes a good chunk of that to the fact that it's currently handing out early access keys exclusively through Twitch Drops. It will be openly available free to play in early access "in the near future".