I’m not personally familiar with Nexon’s 2010 MMO Vindictus, but its upcoming action-RPG spin-off Vindictus: Defying Fate is looking like a fairly flashy mix of Celtic mythology, dodge-and-slash swordplay and some sharp visuals. Luckily for me and you, we’ll be able to give it a go for free for the next week, as the game’s pre-alpha playtest is now live over on Steam.
After two years slumbering in the coffin of early access, vampire survival game V Rising is lifting off the lid and rising into a full 1.0 release. Having previously been announced with a somewhat vague Q2 launch window, we now know exactly when V Rising’s 1.0 release date will be: May 8th.
Fallen behind on Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn’s story? Whether you’re still yet to finish Endwalker or are looking to pick up the MMO for the first time in anticipation of enjoying a lovely summer holiday with your fellow Scions of the Seventh Dawn, you’re going to have to work before your Warrior of Light can kick back in next expansion Dawntrail; there won’t be a free way to simply jump to the latest chapter of the story for free anytime soon.
Not content with being one of the best single-player experiences of 2023, Sea of Stars is readying the modern-classic RPG to become one of this year’s most delightful multiplayer games. Developers Sabotage Studio have revealed that three-player co-op is on the way, letting you adventure through the entire campaign with a party of pals.
In some respects, Helldivers 2 did come as a bit of surprise. Not a huge amount of marketing, no betas, and review codes didn't go out until it basically launched. Before it landed on my PC, there was a small part of me that thought it was going to be a rocky ride with severe performance issues or the like. Nope! It's easily slid into one of my favourite games of the year without question, and presumably, for the hundreds of thousands of others who've also opted into preserving democracy.
But there seems to be this sentiment that Helldivers 2's roaring success has come as a shock, so much of a shock that top execs and investors are doing YouTube thumbnail faces in boardrooms with mini-nuke explosions erupting from their heads. Should its success come as that much of a surprise, though? No, probably not.
After writing about the upcoming visual novel-ish game Vampire Therapist (in which you are a vampire, acting as a therapist to other vampires) back in the middle of January, developer Cyrus Nemati reached out asking if I'd like to ask him more questions about it. This was surprising, because while I'd been broadly positive about the vibes of Vampire Therapist, I was reasonably concerned about the specifics of how it would all shake down. But it turned out that the critical perspective was something Nemati appreciated, and so we had a chat that dug down into the meat of it all. Although I was initially interested in how he'd come up with the idea of a vampire therapist, it turns out all roads lead back to Twilight's Edward Cullen.
CCP Games have shared a few more details about Project Awakening, a new game or at least, "survival experience" set in the Eve Online universe, which is getting a closed playtest from 21st May 2024. Project Awakening is a single-shard affair - that is, one in which all players inhabit the same world, rather than being split up across servers or instances. It's "built upon the principles of freedom, consequence, and mastery within a living universe", and "represents the next step in CCP Games' journey to create virtual worlds more meaningful than real life", which, you know, wind your neck in.
I’ve spent many gleeful hours in The Finals (as has Graham), but I’ve always felt it could do more with the concept of its FPS gameshow deathmatches essentially taking place in hyper-realistic VR. Exploding into coins upon death notwithstanding, and to be clear, rad as hell. Happily, its Season 2 update is all about rewriting the rules of its glistening digital battlefields. I’ve played a few rounds and the new, hacking-themed gadgetry it introduces looks like just the thing to freshen The Finals up.
Discord is making a play to not simply be the software you use to talk while playing games with your pals, but the software you use to play them too. The ubiquitous chat client already lets you play a handful of approved games inside itself without dowloading or launching anything seperate, along with other 'Activities' like watching YouTube together, and next week it will open up to a whole lot more. Discord will let all developers make their own Activities, wanting to jam in more games and social hangout experiences and stuff. I'm broadly up for things removing faff from getting casual hangout games running with pals.
One of my favourite 'jokes'to do is parody Raymond Chandler, i.e. I shout "She had legs all the way up to her thighs!" and then laugh at myself. Chandlers's trademark "blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window" kind of zingers are very hard to do well, so it's better to say you're doing Philip Marlow badly on purpose. The trailer for Nobody Wants To Die seems like it's self-seriousness is actually self-awareness. I mean, I kind of refuse to believe that hard-boiled future crime detective James Karra saying "I'm in the business of secrets... But it's more of an addiction... And I like 'em straight... No chaser..." while sipping from a glass of amber liquor isn't indulging in some amount of winking and nudging.