This week featured some bordered lands. Four of them, in fact. A real turn up for the books, that one. Here's hoping the five people on Earth who aren't singing songs of silk appreciate a good knob gag, or several bad ones made in quick succession by a rectangular robot. I should de-sark myself. It's Friday. There's no place for sentences that mean the opposite.
Here's what we're playing this weekend:
Smile and say AIEEEEE, horror fans! Tecmo and Team Ninja are bringing a "remake" of PS2 survival horror Fatal Frame 2: Crimson Butterfly to PC via Steam in early 2026. Why am I brandishing a glyph-covered Canon EOS 90D at you, while singing the Ghostbusters theme? Allow me to explain: Fatal Frame's signature touch is that you defeat spooks using a magic camera. Naturally, this also means that you have to look steadily and calmly at said spooks while they shimmer and sway towards you. Catch some of that nonsense in the remake's announcement trailer.
Balatro's free 1.1 update won't release in 2025 as originally planned, developer Localthunk has announced. There's no new release date, but they say the update'll arrive when they've been able to complete it, while continuing to work at a healthy pace.
This update was first announced by publishers Playstack in August last year, with Localthunk subsequently revealing in a chat with Bloomberg that it'll feature, among other stuff, some new jokers and a revamp of the Matador card. The latter dishes out a cash boost whenever you play a hand that triggers a boss blind's ability.
For a week or so now, we've heard rumblings that Valve are preventing the creators of games with "mature themes" from releasing their games in Steam early access. At least two developers have disclosed that they're affected - Dammitbird, creators of raunchy fantasy RPG Heavy Hearts (do not click unless you are happy to look at a werewolf's penis), and Blue Fairy Media, creators of The Restoration of Aphrodisia (do not click unless you are happy to read about lewd transformations).
Dammitbird have screencapped and shared a message from Steam's submissions team, via Ana Valens on Bluesky. It reads: "Your app has failed our review because we're unable to support the Early Access model of development for a game with mature themes. Please resubmit when your app is ready to launch without Early Access."
It’s been a rough first day at the office for Borderlands 4, which has launched amid spyware denials and widespread user reports of dodgy PC performance. That being crashing, stuttering, the usual Unreal Engine 5 trouble at the mill. Framerate-related grumbling in particular has prompted a Steam post from Gearbox, presenting a setting-by-setting guide to optimisation on GeForce graphics cards that their pals at Nvidia put together.
First off, oi, that’s my job. Second, I say "prompted", but the sheer number of GPUs it covers – separately for 1080p, 1440p, and 4K resolutions – has produced settings tables so rich in cells that it’s far more likely a sweating intern has spent the entire past week cranking these out. No disrespect, obviously. Solidarity to benchmarkers. But, are these guides reliable?
Supergiant Games have finally done The Thing, following some patch teases that'd left things in a bit of an 'either go or get off the pot' situation. Hades 2's full release is nigh, with version 1.0 set to drop later this month.
I'm pleased, because the sequel to the horniest ancient Greek roguelike of all time was already very good in early access form. I'm also terrified, because it's not like September hasn't already had enough games to fight for my attention, between Silksong and Borderlands 4. I mean, I've not gotten around to playing either of those yet, because basketball, but hey.
"What does flirting actually look like?" is one of several, quintessentially Friday-afternoon questions raised by the latest development footage for Paralives, the upcoming life sim with its heart set on stealing yours away from The Sims.
We last covered Paralives in October last year, when the devs confirmed an early access release in 2025. That early access launch date, 8th December, is fast approaching, so it's high time we treated this would-be Maxis-feller to some fresh scrutiny. If only to stop ourselves thinking about The Sims 4's harrowing suite of imaginary friends.
Françoise Cadol, the long-time French voice actor for Lara Croft, has reportedly launched legal action against Tomb Raider IV-VI Remastered publishers Aspyr over alleged use of generative AI to replicate her voice for lines in the game. Cadol claims Aspyr didn't contact her to ask for permission, and it appears the voice of Croft in at least one other dub of the remasters may have been put in a similar position.
Gearbox and Take-Two Interactive's Borderlands 4 has launched to cries of "pretty good" from (some) professional reviewers, and "Stutterland bugfest" from a vocal portion of the Steam playerbase. In amongst the complaints about performance, there are some fears about potential breaches of player privacy supposedly allowed for by Take-Two's terms of service. A Borderlands developer has now responded to these fears in the Steam forums, reiterating that Take-Two at large aren't in the business of "spyware".
You're gonna have to wait a bit longer to murder the steeple for a second time, with Slay The Spire II's early access release having just been delayed until March next year. Developers Mega Crit have at least cushioned the blow by revealing the day of the week it'll arrive. A Thursday. Which Thursday? The cheeky folks won't say.