Borderlands boss Randy Pitchford submitted an-all timer entry into the pantheon of neoliberal thirst tweets earlier this week, telling a player concerned about a potential $80 asking price for Borderlands 4 that "if you're a real fan, you’ll find a way to make it happen", before telling an anecdote about how, when he were a lad, he used to lick the fleas from unwashed goats for quarters to play Bubble Bobble, or something.

This went down about as well as you'd expect, prompting Pitchford to yesterday follow-up with a clip of him on a panel talking about a potential price increase in, wait for it, much more sober and considered terms. So, in the interest of not only reporting on Pitchford when he says something incredibly stupid (although, lets be real, only because it's related, I'm still muckraking here) here's the clip.

Read more

Have you seen Eriksholm: The Stolen Dream knocking about? I can't seem to find it. It's an upcoming adventure game about some sneaky urchins from a fictional Scandilike country in the 1900s. We've previously described it as "a bit Dunwall and a bit Desperadoes". I got to play a short preview build, and being offered its toylike city from a top-down perspective made me eager to explore and find its many collectible artworks. It's a lavishly animated and handsomely modeled piece of work. But, well, its approach to stealth veers bland and predictable. I don't know if sunkissed tiles and cobblestone alleyways are enough to forgive what so far appears to be an entire game based on the derided "instafail stealth section". But sit down, we can talk about it.

Read more

About 30 minutes into the demo for We Harvest Shadows a picture appeared on my wall, just by the farmhouse main entrance. The picture is of a long hallway of nested door frames, with a sealed door at the end. Any mystery it offers is, in theory, cancelled by the tutorials, which briskly informed me that the picture is, essentially, an alarm system. It will change in subtle and less subtle ways when danger is nearby. Still, this blunt advertisement of mechanical purpose does nothing to dispel the artefact's menace. It's right opposite the stairs, so that I can't avoid seeing it every morning unless I walk down the stairs backwards, and if I do that, I'm leaving myself vulnerable to anything else that might be waiting in the front hall or the kitchen to the right.

Read more

Sending my trading vessel to sail the seas of Anno 117: Pax Romana offers up a cornucopia of dangers and discoveries. Dastardly pirates. Lush islands. New leaders to barter and play diplomacy with. Most of all though, it allows me to discover hitherto unknown depths of petty jealously, as I realise how much nicer everyone else's city layout is compared to mine. Time to go demolish several family's houses and rearrange them in a slightly more aesthetically pleasing manner it is, then.

Read more

Hello reader who is also a reader, and welcome back to Booked For The Week - our regular Sunday chat with a selection of cool industry folks about books! No cool industry person this week (I'd like requests though. No Classical Gas), but I want to get back into the habit of posting the column regularly regardless, since the comments are always a medium good time, which is the maximum amount of good time allowed on a Sunday.

Read more

I don't know what Sundays are for, or indeed any other moment of spare time. Listlessly re-watching YouTube videos and refreshing BlueSky then feeling bad that I'm wasting my time rather than playing the games I want to play or reading the books I want to read? Probably. At least this way I stumble across some articles worth reading.

For 404 Media, Nicole Carpenter - former Polygon reporter - wrote about how videogame sex scenes are made.

Read more

I write to you from the heart of an on-going emergency. Somebody or something> keeps digging holes in the notionally shared lawn outside my block, and the neighbours who actually own their flats are mounting a witchhunt. It's brilliant! They’ve been taking photos from multiple angles and accusing the local kids. As far as I’m concerned, all this is divine vengeance on the building owner for having somebody mow the grass twice a month. It looks like the Bay Of Tranquility out there. The holes are an improvement. Anyway, here’s what we’re all playing this weekend.

Read more

Four dead. Four from a company of ten. Excellent Log, worm soup. Dietmar the Geldling, worm salad. Wolfgang Silkworm, some sort of delicious worm entrée, which he might appreciate. Reiner, worm dessert. They talk about survivor's guilt but no-one tells about you survivor's malice. At camp, watching that grinning blackguard Rick Nipples drink and breathe air meant for better men is as maddening as it is exhausting. Night falls, and I try to count the stars to keep my mind off wondering if I could feasibly jam an entire skillet handle into his earhole.

There may be a time, I think, when the land our descendants travel over runs small despite its vastness; when the night that now belongs to wolves and animate dead becomes as commonplace as draped tapestry. In stars, the wolves see loping gods; the dead, sepulchral torches in a gravecold pit. Us, bright horses for breaking, dreaming of spinning astrolabes like spurs and hung parchment charts for roughspun livery; owl and bat and comet song as muted muzzlesnorts.

Read more

Objects of power play a crucial role in the fiction of Control, the setting for three-player co-op shooter FBC: Firebreak. In the lore, they're archetypal artefacts that have gained strange powers. In Firebreak itself, they represent random events that can suddenly make the game's enemies, the Hiss, more powerful for short bursts - and there's usually enough of them that a short burst is all they need for things to get frantic quickly.

You might even say power is a major theme of this setting. Power over the control of information. The institutional power of the Federal Bureau Of Control itself, in whose brutalist, labyrinthe HQ the game is set. The power of the archetypal ideas that give the altered objects their strength. One thing you won't be thinking about power in relation to, however, is the guns. They are, in a word or two, wilting shitlillies.

Read more

Doom: The Dark Ages has encouraged us to redirect our booting utensils away from Rematch's leather balls and into the vital organs of Hell's revolting soldiers. Along with various punches, flail strikes, and shield thrusts, most of which aren't even allowed in football. But could the manner of their delivery also be cause for a critical kicking? The Dark Ages notably replaces the lavishly animated glory kills of recent Dooms with faster, simpler melee strikes, so reviewer Nic and I sat down for a gentle argument over whether this was a change for a better.>

Read more