So I’m looking forward to seeing how Remnants of Naezith turns out when it launches next month. Its hook, literally, is that you use a grappling hook to swing yourself around its levels. Those 80 levels, across four chapters, look pretty impressive, with lots of blocks of bright light and plenty of lasers to dodge. The hook itself looks flexible, and you can use it to carry on forward momentum, pull yourself up to a ledge or change direction in an instant. I like the visual effects, too: your ho

This year’s Awesome Games Done Quick has sadly come to a close. But there’s good news: the celebration of speedrunning raised more than $2.25 million for the Prevent Cancer Foundation, which is a new record and about $40,000 more than last year. At the moment, there’s only 81 videos in there compared to 181 total runs, so more should appear over the next few days. Summer Games Done Quick, the other big event of the speedrunning calendar, starts on June 24. Update: I initially wrote that the larg

Death Trash promises to be a lot of things, most of them unpleasant. It’s a post-apocalyptic, cyberpunk RPG filled with, in its own words, “large flesh beasts, grotesque, sexual references and trash-talking unlike anything seen before”. But despite all that, it’s the art that’s really caught my eye. It’s twisted pixel art that’s disgusting and engrossing at the same time. Creator Stephan Hövelbrinks cites Planescape: Torment and Ultima 7 as inspirations, and promises a proper role-playing game f

The latest talks about the way that the AI of skeletons will work—they’ll be one of the main enemy types you’ll face in the game. A lot of their AI will revolve around hearing the player, and the game models sound in a fairly realistic way to make that feasible. If you’re nearby a skeleton and digging into sand, they’re unlikely to spot you. Post-launch, the developer will dedicate a team to further improve the AI and respond to player feedback. Skeleton AI was one of the things Steven was least

1C Company, owner of the combat flight sim franchise IL-2 Sturmovik, has announced a new cyberpunk RTS called Re-Legion (religion, geddit? ), and the first batch of screenshots look impressive, with plenty of neon glare and a wide variety of objective types. 1C will publish the game, as it did with recent roguelike Deep Sky Derelicts, but hasn’t yet announced who’s developing it. It sounds pretty generic, but I like the look of the colourful screenshots, which you can see more of below. Those sc

Absurdity is always with us, though, and the good gods know we’ve needed every laugh we could find in 2017. To find the very best ones, I dove through the 2017 community updates and patch notes from all kinds of games. 12/7Toxic Cargo Pants have been updated to be more consistent11/15Shooting from a passenger seat should no longer result in hitting a teammate in the backseat. Preyvia reddit user u/everypostepic8/2Fixed crash when mimicking bass guitar in the Yellow Tulip. It was in this moment t

Twitch Prime subscribers have had a run of cracking games included with their subscription recently, including time-bending FPS Superhot and 2D strategy game SteamWorld Heist. The next one is another gem: Tales from the Borderlands, Telltale’s story-driven take on the Borderlands universe. Anyone with a Twitch Prime subscription (which is included with any Amazon Prime account) will be able to pick it up for free between January 18 and January 24. If you don’t know whether it’s something you’ll

Operation Campaigns string these Operations together back-to-back, and until this week there were just two, one free and one that was available to Premium Pass holders. From now on they’ll all be available for free, developer DICE said this week. The change comes alongside the release of the Fire & Ice Operation Campaign, which combines Operations from the They Shall Not Pass and In The Name of the Tsar expansions. Again, even if you don’t own those expansions, you’ll be able to pay the Operatio

Dusk isn’t shy about its inspirations, taking elements of Doom, Quake, Half-Life, Hexen, and Redneck Rampage and mashing them together into a bloody pulp. But as Norm discovered when he played an early version last year, it’s more than just a retro throwback, with dense, elaborate level design and modern environmental storytelling. Now you can try it out for yourself, because it’s just launched on Steam Early Access. The Early Access version throws you into the first two episodes of a three-epis

The Nemesis System first turned up in Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor. It’s a great system that generates great stories, and more game series should steal it. Jarred Walton: FalloutThe Nemesis System is such a great tool, and it generates some awesome stories, so it’s difficult to imagine a game where it wouldn’t improve it in some fashion. Austin Wood: Dark SoulsSomeone had to say it, and lord knows I’m game for a tailor-made Dark Souls nemesis. side of the Nemesis System and iterate on returnin

We got to see BFGD in action, and it looks like a great upgrade to the living room. CES has brought us all sorts of novel ideas for getting around over the years, like the Segway. That idea might actually work, though I’m not sure why we need a brand new cryptocurrency for this purpose. Going truly wireless on your mouse: Razer Mamba HyperfluxThere are plenty of wireless mice available, many of them quite good, but Razer ups the ante with the Mamba Hyperflux , a wireless mouse that charges direc

It appears that Sega is getting ready to unveil something new next week: Earlier today, the publisher tweeted an image of a light bulb, with the date “16th January” stenciled beside it. PCGamesN pointed out that Two Point Studios tweeted back in November that it would unveil its new project on January 16 of this year—and Two Point Studios, as we reported in May 2017, has a publishing partnership with Sega. We’re excited to share…We’ll be announcing our game on January 16th 2018. pic.twitter.co

THE HIGHSTom Senior: Year of warThe next big Total War was announced this week. I appreciated that it tried to do something radical, even if it I didn’t warm to its world all that much. Joe Donnelly: Out of the dark and into the… darkDespite the multitude of new and exciting games I didn’t make time for last year, I did replay both Dark Souls and Dark Souls 3 in 2017. Revealed at this week’s Nintendo Direct Mini, Miyazaki’s first Dark Souls game is in line for a modern reimagining, and is en rou

Image source: Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times via APTyler Barriss, who instigated the swatting that led police to kill an unarmed man in Wichita, Kansas in December, has been charged with involuntary manslaughter, according to Glixel, as well as giving false alarm and interference with law enforcement officers. Barriss, who has previously faced charges of making fake bomb threats, was arrested in California on December 29 and extradited to Kansas yesterday. Kansas law defines involuntary manslaught

At CES this week MSI unveiled two new gaming monitors: the Optix MPG27C and MPG27CQ. These are both 144Hz 27-inch curved monitors, the former being 1080p, while the latter is a 1440p panel. Both monitors feature a VA panel with 1ms response time and 1800R curvature. The 1440p MPG27CQ variant has a brightness of 400 nits, while the 1080p panel has a brightness of 250. The monitors feature two HDMI 2.0 ports, one DisplayPort (1.2), and three USB 3.0 ports—two Type A and one Type B.

On the heels of Yume Nikki’s recent Steam release, publisher AGM Playism is teasing Yume Nikki: Dream Diary, believed to be a follow-up game of some sort, with two strange trailers and a vague countdown site. The short teaser above can be found by clicking Yume Nikki protagonist Madotsuki in the bottom-left corner of the teaser site. The countdown site was announced in a post to Yume Nikki’s Steam community hub which calls Dream Diary “the next Yume Nikki project” but says nothing else. At the v

“With the end of the holiday event we’re going to be removing the Christmas trees and the treasure chests that spawn next to them,” Epic’s Eric Williamson says in the video. Williamson said it’s also possible that Epic will add other event-specific chests in the future. The map update itself will add new POIs and also named areas on the west side of the map, which Eric said is currently “a little bit light on points of interest.” “Really, the different areas of the map feel more unique.” The For

As if dealing with Meltdown and Spectre wasn’t enough of a mess already, Intel has revealed that its firmware updates are causing problems on some older PCs. “We have received reports from a few customers of higher system reboots after applying firmware updates. We are working quickly with these customers to understand, diagnose and address this reboot issue,” Intel said. In other words, the patches for Meltdown and Spectre may need patches themselves, though Intel has not come to that definitiv

Electronic Arts has signed a deal with Major League Soccer to launch the eMLS Cup, a competitive esports tournament with representatives of 19 real-world teams vying for a shot at the FIFA 18 World Championship title. “We’re honored to partner with MLS within the EA Sports FIFA 18 Global Series as we continue to help grow competitive gaming and soccer in North America,” EA’s Competitive Gaming Division general manager Todd Sitrin said. “We engage millions of soccer fans daily through FIFA and at

Corsair announced a handful of new products at CES this week, including a beastly 1,600W power supply, it’s burliest model to date. Beyond a whole lot of wattage, Corsair’s AX1600i offering is 80 Plus Titanium certified. That is the highest level of 80 Plus certification available, indicating a level of efficiency that exceeds 80 Plus Platinum and 80 Plus Gold models. Corsair also unveiled a couple of new all-in-one liquid coolers, the H150i Pro and H115i Pro. You can order either one now—the H1