Aeons ago, I wrote about the Leftfield collection that was supposed to happen at Rezzed 2020. Ploughing through several emotions without comment, in amongst the games that we never got to see as a result of Things Happening was an earlier version of Lunark, a clearly Flashback-influenced action puzzle platformer.
I've kind of worried about it ever since, so I was glad to see it released recently, and gladder still that it's a lot of fun.
Beleaguered vampire huntin' FPS Redfall has at least one seal of approval, even if our reviewer Ed was left cold. Shortly before release, Valve bestowed it with Verified status for the Steam Deck, a coveted green tick that represents more or less complete compatibility and suitability for the portable PC.
I wouldn’t normally curl an eyebrow at this sort of thing – having more great Steam Deck games is good for PC gaming – but given how all-over-the-shop Redfall’s performance is on desktop PCs, could it really settle in on the less powerful Deck? A few ambulatory vamp slaying jaunts later, I can conclude that it... maaaaaybe can. Sort of.
The Crucial X8 is one of our favourite portable SSDs, having in its corner a tough and compact design, impressive speeds and very reasonable pricing. That last point is especially true today, as the 1TB model of this external SSD has dropped to £61 - nearly half of its original £116 UK RRP.
Samsung's 980 Pro SSD remains one of the fastest PCIe 4.0 options on the market in terms of both raw numbers and real-world gaming performance, so it's worth knowing that the capacious 2TB size is now available for £122 at TechNextDay when you use code TND-10, knocking £10 off its price to come well under the next-nearest retailer.
Take one look at Luna Abyss and you'll probably go, 'Wait a minute, this looks like first-person Returnal!' And having played the first mission of the game at GDC, I can confirm that yes, this is very much in the vein of first-person Returnal. It's a fast-paced, bullet hell shooter set on a strange alien moon where everything's out to get you, but the shift in perspective makes everything in its titular abyss feel closer and more intimate, calling to mind the frantic, confined gun fights of Doom and Quake more than Housemarque's seminal roguelike - games that creative director Benni Hill tells me were formative experiences for him growing up.
There's also a greater emphasis on story-telling in Luna Abyss, with Hill also citing Nier: Automata and Bioshock as other key influences. It's a compelling mix, based on the first chunk I played, and arguably one of my surprise GDC favourite demos alongside The Thaumaturge and The Lamplighters League. Indeed, Hill tells me they started working on Luna Abyss a year before Returnal was even announced, and when they first saw it during Sony's PlayStation 5 reveal stream in the summer of 2020, he and his team did a collective double-take.
For the past while, I've been playing a closed beta build of Park Beyond, and let me tell you, I am very bad at it. I can just about (by the skin of my teeth) make a profitable park, but my god, that park will have the worst layout you've ever seen in your cursed, vomiting in the bins at a Disneyland life. But look, if the park works, it works, right? The shareholders can't complain!
Thing is, much like with the internet or your mum's relationship with the binman, theme park simulators can really change> while you're not paying attention. While part of Park Beyond's selling point is making literally impossible rides via the aptly-named method of Impossification (an upgrade to rides you buy by spending units of amazement gleaned from your slack-jawed guests, in order to strap a canon to a rollercoaster), I really was not prepared for how simulation-y the simulation bits are.
You’ve probably head by now that Redfall is a few virgins short of a vampy picnic, mainly by un-virtue of its undercooked co-operative cryptid blasting. But there are plenty of PC performance problems to contend with as well, despite it getting a helping hand from DLSS and FSR 2.1.
On account of not loads happening in the last week apart from the Actiblizz acquisition news, which I do not want to talk about under any circumstances, the Electronic Wireless Show podcast talks this week about DLC, because a couple of good games got some DLCs - good, but different games getting different kinds of DLC expansions. Thus we discuss DLCs in general and what the difference is between a live service game and a game that is supported with DLC for years. As usual, we all talk about what we've been playing - what's up with Redfall, y'all? - and have some recommendations. The mini-game this week is to imagine feeding beans to Quentin Tarantino.
"What will ye do, when steel hearts break, and courage does abscond?" reads the penultimate line of The Pale Beyond’s poetic prologue. Actually, it’s less of a poem and more a call to action: how on earth will you keep a ragtag bunch of sailors alive in the harshest conditions on the planet? If you hadn’t already twigged, The Pale Beyond is a narrative survival sim that puts you in the frostbitten boots of First Mate aboard The Temperance - a coal guzzling steam ship that set out on a polar expedition in search of its sister, The Viscount, which went missing five years prior. As Captain Hunt’s second-in-command, you’ll take daily requests from the crew, manage the food rations, and settle petty squabbles on the poop deck.
Beginning life as a way for co-founders Michael Bell and Thomas Hislop to create World of Warcraft mods, Bellular Studios grew alongside its gaming and Warcraft YouTube channels into a fully-fledged development team based out of their hometown of Belfast, Northern Ireland. The Pale Beyond is their debut game that fittingly draws on Ireland’s rich maritime history, although, as Hislop tells me, this wasn’t always the plan. "We initially didn’t set out to do so, but it quickly emerged as a core influence that we kept finding ourselves drawn back to," he says. "The further we delved into the golden age of exploration, and its very local routes, the more it resonated with us personally."
Back in February we posted a deal on Logitech's K400 Bluetooth keyboard/trackpad combo device, which offered a convenient way to control Steam Deck, media PCs and other gizmos that don't come with built-in desktop-friendly controls.
Today we're back with a similar deal on the Logitech Wireless Starter Kit, which bundles a K380 keyboard and M185 mouse for £40 (down from £50). Both elements are surprisingly high-quality for the price, with a nicer-looking and better-feeling scissor switch keyboard with circular keycaps and a compact 2.4GHz mouse that provides better speed and accuracy than a trackpad.