The Sims 4's latest expansion Cottage Living has just recently launched, bringing with it a free base game update. In among all the new additions is the Pond Tool, which some folks are using to build lovely water features outside their idyllic countryside homes. Others are making monstrous, flooded disaster lots. Which is a thing that the pond tool does apparently let you do.
Free-to-play FPS Splitgate was planning to move from beta to full launch tomorrow but there's been a bit of a snag. It turns out that "Halo plus portals" was too popular a concept, raking in 2 million downloads during its open beta. So many people jumped in to take a turn with cross-platform team portal shooting that 1047 Games say they're delaying full launch of the game until next month while they work to scale up their available servers for all those players.
The HP X24ih is an awesome 24-in budget 144Hz monitor, and today it's available for £60 off its regular price - just £129.97 - from Currys PC World. To get this price, use code FNDDGAMING at the checkout to knock £5 off the price and secure free next-day shipping.
Reliable games retailer Fanatical are offering a bevvy of discounted games today in their 'Build Your Own All-Stars Bundle' event. You can pick up one game for 89p ($1), five for £2.59 ($3) or ten for £4.29 ($5), making your selections from 20 games in total.
There aren't any particularly recent AAA releases here, but it's still a good chance to play some great games at some heretofore unseen low prices. Best of all, most of these games are being sold in comprehensive bundles that include all of the post-launch content or even a whole series of games in the case of Leisure Suit Larry.
Assassin's Creed Valhalla's next major expansion is setting out next month. The Siege Of Paris expansion will send players off to yet another new explorable area in the Frankish countryside. Even if you don't decide to tackle that battle, the next free game update is inbound this week too. Sigrblot Festival kicks off this week with new activities while the raid on Paris will be making landfall on August 12.
Now that reservations for the Steam Deck have kicked off, there's plenty to chat about the power and performance that can be expected from Valve's handlheld PC. When it was announced, Valve gave all sorts of details on the device's specs. As for the specs of games running on it, one of Steam Deck's developers has clarified that 30fps is the minimum that they're considering playable during performance testing.
For the past few weeks, I've been knee deep playing and preparing for my Great Ace Attorney Chronciles review. It's a long old game - around 60 hours between the two adventures - and holy moly, I have never wished so hard to be able to play them on Valve's portable Steam Deck instead of being sat up at my PC the whole time. The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles does bring some welcome improvements to Capcom's Phoenix Wright series, such as a new auto-text function so you're not endlessly clicking your mouse to advance the text, but what I wouldn't give to have the chance to play that game cosied up in bed or lying down on the sofa. Honestly, the Steam Deck can't come soon enough.
In a rare turn of events, it seems a Final Fantasy game has been recorded in English before Japanese. Final Fantasy 16 producer Naoki Yoshida has reportedly said that Square Enix are focusing on English voices with British accents for the upcoming action-RPG. If you've seen the reveal trailer from last year, it makes a fair bit of sense. The game is set in a ye olde fantasy setting, and everyone knows that people only spoke in English accents in medieval times. And of course, we can't forget that very English protagonist, Clive.
Nate is excited about HighFleet. Graham was excited about HighFleet before he became head vampire, or whatever. I was excited about HighFleet.HighFleet is exciting. It is also very frustrating.
We're at the point where we need a good shorthand for games built around a diagetic interface. HighFleet's puts you in the sky-shoes of an admiral poring over an electronic map display ringed by analogue radar-tuning dials, chunky buttons, a dangling telephone receiver like your gran's, and a big level to pull when it's time to land. But there's a weird divide going on.
I remember being blown away by Dead Space when it first game out. It's partly the movie Sunshine, partly the movie Event Horizon, and I guess a bit of Alien and a bit of Resident Evil. I just really loved that creeping horror reveal, as you slowly discover that the ship you're on, the Ishimura, is empty and then discover that actually it is not> empty at all, which is so much worse.
It was recently revealed that Dead Space is going to be remade "from the ground up" by Motive (who previously did Star Wars Squadrons and Star Wars Battlefront II). I assume this means that it's going to have, just, loads of lightsabers in it, and the main character is now Baby Yoda. My boiling hot take is that they should only really bother redoing that first bit - the cut off their limbs section - because that's the best bit anyway.