Last week the Maw fattened itself upon the fizzy nectar of human romance. I'm not sure what it's in the mood for this week. Perhaps some nice buttered abbots? Sprinkled with freshly plucked silicon ants? And a side helping of heavily salted gangsters? With some crusty cyberpunk cities for dessert? Let's have a look at this week's new PC games, then.
On Monday 17th February, we resign ourselves blissfully to the cushiony procedural mountains of SNØ: Ultimate Freeriding. On Tuesday 18th February, we descend regretfully from the mountains and immerse ourselves in one or all of: Obsidian's first-person RPG Avowed, insect strategy circuit-builder Microtopia, apple-cheeked brewing sim Ale Abbey, and Don't Nod's latest smalltown wistfiller Lost Records: Bloom & Rage. On Wednesday 19th February, there's Tribe Nine - a free-to-play action-RPG from the Zenless school. On Thursday 20th February, it's time to dress loudly on the high seas in Like A Dragon: Pirate Yakuza In Hawaii, murder the heck out of some destructible furniture in F.E.A.R. X Bloodborne shooter Unbroken, or roam a misty Japanese village in horror game BrokenLore: LOW. And on Friday 21st February, please be upstanding for Polish cyberpunk imsim Peripeteia.
Should these morsels leave you dissatisfied and battering against the bars of your cell with your comically oversized rubber mallet, please recommend some alternatives. Also please explain why you're locked in jail with a comically oversized rubber mallet. Here's our weekly news liveblog. May the next seven days of your life be filled with joy and possibly also video games.
This week instead of day puns, we're doing console games we want somebody to port to PC. Loved Vandal Hearts 2. It's a Konami JRPG that came out for PS1 in 1999. It has a nifty dual-turn system.
– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
Ubisoft are teasing season 10 of Rainbow Six Siege, which will be revealed in full on 13th March. Promised new gadgets include the DOM launcher, which, yes, sounds like a Saints Row weapon, but is actually a remote-deployed bulletproof door cover system with panels both attackers and defenders can shoot to open or close the barricade.
– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
I enjoyed this time-lapse of people picking up dropped player goods in Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2. According to Warhorse programmer/open world scripter Patrik Papšo, they'll pick up objects corresponding to their social station.
Haha, that's an NPC behaviour I made! They choose what they pick based on the value of the item and their social status. That's why nobles might ignore cheap items, but beggars will pick them up. https://t.co/pVeiP3A0HA
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– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
Drone Sector is a chilly futuristic wargame in which you circle the battlefield as a gunship, carrying out airstrikes and reconnaissance. Best played alongside Killbox, perhaps.
– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
Overwatch 2 director Aaron Keller has acknowledged that the much-played Marvel Rivals is quite a lot like Overwatch, telling Gamesradar that "we're obviously in a new competitive landscape that I think, for Overwatch, we've never really been in before, to this extent where there's another game that's so similar to the one that we've created."
– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
An amusing excerpt from Baldur's Gate 3's developer dialogue notes in the toolkit, cautioning Astarion's voice actor Neil Newbon to only be "slightly horny".
– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
Cthulhu Keeper seems to be a bit like Bullfrog, a bit like Commandos.
– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
TUESDAYS ARE FOR SUPER MARIO 64
Hell will freeze over, sprout wildflowers and become a thriving alpine resort before this happens, but I'd love it if Nintendo's pioneering 3D Mario came (officially) to PC, because it would create more opportunity to write about mods such as the Danielewskian opus B3313.
– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
Liquid Swords, the NetEase-backed Swedish studio founded by former Just Cause creative director Christofer Sundberg, have announced layoffs due to "shifting market conditions". They've yet to announce their first game. As Eurogamer note, they're far from the first NetEase-funded joint to experience difficulties lately.
– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
As reported by Gamesradar, you can "kill off a lot of NPCs", including "really important NPCs", in Blood Of Dawnwalker, the new RPG whose creative director Mateusz Tomaszkiewicz is the former director of The Witcher 3.
– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
Bethesda are taking part in a charity auction for the Make-A-Wish foundation, offering bidders the chance to create an NPC in The Elder Scrolls 6. "This once-in-a-lifetime opportunity allows you to immortalize yourself in one of the most highly anticipated video games of all time," reads the auction page.
– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
Citing three anonymous industry sources, Digiday claims that Rockstar Games have been talking to people who make and sell stuff via Roblox and Fortnite creators about potential "custom experiences" in GTA 6 that let creators "modify the game’s environment and assets to bring their own intellectual property — and potentially their brand sponsors — into GTA’s virtual sandbox".
– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
Tempopo is a musical puzzler in which you, a child conductor, send squidgy dancing pink creatures to floating blockworlds in order to rescue singing plants.
– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
Marvel Rivals is presently the fourth most-played game on Steam, so it's a great time for... layoffs?
– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
WEDNESDAYS ARE FOR AZURE DREAMS
Now here's a deep cut: a PS1 creature-catching, town-building dungeon-crawler with a dating sim element I was too juvenile to notice at the time. If they bring it to PC I will bore you all with memories of how I once financed the construction of a theatre. Anyway, FEED THE MAW.
– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
According to Bloomberg, Pokémon Go creators Niantic Inc. are in talks to sell their video game division to Scopely, a US-based wholly owned subsidiary of Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund. Niantic and Scopely haven't commented at the time of writing.
– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
Warner Bros. Discovery have put up a job listing for a game director with experience in "Third-Person Action, Melee Brawlers, and Open World Traversal", which might support those Batman rumours.
A former Amazon executive has blogged about the company's failed efforts to disrupt Steam. "We needed to build something dramatically better, but we failed to do so. And we needed to validate our assumptions about our customers before starting to build. But we never really did that either."
Game Developer are reporting layoffs at Oxenfree creators Night School Studio, acquired by Netflix Games in 2021.
– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
THURSDAYS ARE FOR CARNAGE HEART
Now here's a game that surely belongs on PC. It's a primordial PS1 autobattler in which you program mechs using a drag-and-drop visual interface, then watch them fight other mechs. I never played the later PSP incarnations. Anyway, FEED THE MAW.
Where is Brendy! Dang it, I think he is travelling today.
– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
As reported by PCGamer, BioWare veteran Mike Darrah has decried "cruel" celebrations among fans of developers being laid off. "You are entitled to your opinion," he said in a personal address on Youtube. "You are entitled to be angry about a game that you bought - you paid good money for it. But try to remember that it's just a game."
– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
Sony have filed a 128-page response to former Bungie developer Christopher Barrett's lawsuit claiming that his termination for misconduct was based on a "sham" investigation. Sony's new filing includes details of alleged inappropriate messages sent by Barrett to junior female employees.
Microsoft hope to use their recently announced "Muse" AI technology to help with game preservation by automatically optimising games for any device. "We’ve talked about game preservation as an activity for us," sayeth Phil Spencer in a video. "And these models and their ability to learn completely how a game plays, without the necessity of the original engine running on the original hardware, I think opens up a ton of opportunity." AI researcher Mike Cook has significant reservations.
– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
Withering Realms is the new action-RPG from the creator of Withering Rooms. Proper Bloodborne energy to this one. Touch of Lies Of P as well.
– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
FRIDAYS ARE FOR POWER STONE
This was a faintly glorious arcade beat 'em up series for Dreamcast. I owned the PSP version of the second game and loved its changing levels. Let us FEED it to THE MAW.
– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
A new PC update for Indiana Jones And The Great Circle, adding NVIDIA DLSS 4 amongst other bits and pieces.
– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
Speaking on the Sacred Symbols+ podcast via PushSquare, former PlayStation executive Shuhei Yoshida has said that porting console games to PC is "almost like printing money".
– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
cpt_freakout says: Oh and there's a demo for Solasta 2 now!
Lord of the Rings life sim Tales of the Shire has been delayed to July 29th 2025, for the foothair still needs to be fluffed, and the pipe-weed is not yet at its pongiest.
– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
Team Jade have released a free Delta Force single player campaign based on Black Hawk Down. It's not the first time Delta Force has leveraged the Ridley Scott movie, which is itself based on the 1993 Battle of Mogadishu in Somalia.
