Month: September 2024

Clockwork Revolution—a steampunk-themed first-person shooter from InXile Entertainment—was revealed at the Xbox Games showcase last week, and its look and setting already has folks getting steamed-up. The game features a few stylistic choices and mechanics that are familiar: that steampunk aesthetic, time-travelling hijinks, and a rebellion against a ruthless dictator who rules the city with a brass fist. Yes, everyone’s thinking of Bioshock Infinite.

Some have taken issue with just how closely this hews to that inspiration, however, particularly Butmac on Twitter. They’ve got an impressive run of trailers under their belt as a producer—including Bioshock Infinite but also the likes of the trailer for MultiVersus, which I remember fondly for how well it captured the nostalgia of that game, even if the brawler has had a rocky time since.

“I’ve never seen a game take from another game as directly as Clockwork Revolution took from Bioshock Infinite,” said Butmac. “I mean, that was IP infringement levels of borrow”.

Butmac then made a separate thread going on to draw comparisons between screenshots—”only about half” of which were from traile…

Starfield is less than a month away and the drip-feed of information about the space RPG continues: Bethesda has published a timeline of events leading from the fictional colonization of Mars in 2050 to the beginning of the game in 2330.

As you can guess, a lot of that timeline is taken up by humans killing each other. War never changes, and this time it’s in space.

The timeline shows that after landing on Mars it would take humankind another century to reach Alpha Centauri, our nearest neighboring star system, in 2156. Humans begin colonizing the heck out of it, so much so that the United Colonies are established just a few years later. In 2188 another alliance of colonies is made, the cowboy-ish Starfield faction called the Freestar Collective, which goes to war with the United Colonies in 2196 (this might be the war with those mechs we saw).

That war lasts a whopping 20 years. Shortly after, the Freestar Rangers is established as an “elite protective and investigative force.” Cowboys and detectives? They’re the Space Pinkertons, essentially.

Apparently nothing of note happens for another 50 years or so until exploration group Con…

Ye olde 1990s knockabout shooter Rise of the Triad was remastered and rereleased as Rise of the Triad: Ludicrous Edition last year. As our Shaun Prescott said at the time, it hasn’t aged well but you should still play it. It’s a goofball historical artifact with some fun power-ups and more hidden doors than Castle Dracula, and it’s just received an update.

Version 1.1 brings cross-platform multiplayer, meaning that players on Steam and GOG can gib each other at last, as well as our friends over on Switch, PlayStation, and Xbox. It also adds an alternate Lightning Guard enemy—the last cut character from the beta version to be restored for the Ludicrous Edition—and shows your kills and secrets completion on the map screen for each level.

Other additions include a toggle to turn off automatically switching to new weapons when you pick them up, a jukebox for the level editor, and default sound settings that the patch notes call “less ear-splitting.” Here’s the complete list of changes.

Added

• Cross-platform multiplayer.
• Added the final alternate actor, the lightning guard.
• A new setting that allows players to prevent automati…
  

Earlier this week, Wudijo, who found Diablo 4 fame during the beta by soloing the world boss, became the first player to reach level 100 in the game’s Hardcore mode entirely on his own. But glory is short-lived, and so too was Wudijo, who has been killed in a throwdown with the game’s toughest boss.

Wudijo wasn’t the first person to reach Hardcore 100—that honor went to cArn_, who claimed the crown on June 5. But cArn_ did so with a supporting team—Zizaran, Steelmage, and Nugiyen—who helped him push past Wudijo and other players in the final stretch of the race. Wudijo, on the other hand, did the whole thing on his own, so even though he’s not first to reach the top, it is by some measures an even more impressive accomplishment.

Alas, the epic tale has come to an end. The good news, such as it is, is that unlike cArn_, who lost his Hardcore hero to a glitch, Wudijo went down swinging in Diablo 4’s toughest fight: The Echo of Lilith, an ultra-powerful pinnacle boss designed to give max-level, fully-equipped players something to worry about.

Which isn’t to say the death wasn’t frustrating: As soon as his character goes down, Wudijo asks, “What h…

It’s very common for farm sims to cite Stardew Valley as inspiration, which Mirthwood definitely does, but it’s less common to see them name drop Fable, The Sims, and RimWorld. This upcoming sandbox-y farm sim RPG is definitely trying to tick a lot of boxes to give us farmlife sim lovers as much freedom as possible, and its new trailer shows off more farm customization, processing goods, and the demands of the winter season. 

The new trailer rehashes some of the things we learned about Mirthwood last year, like its simulation-focused world where villagers go about their own daily schedules, weather and disasters that are likely to strike, and its socialization system where you can gain and lose favor with neighbors through different actions. What the trailer expands upon is the number of refining stations you’ll have access to, buying livestock from markets, and paying local townsfolk to work on your property.

One of the biggest bits from the new trailer is the gridless decorating mode, which it shows off through interior decor and also by drawing stone pathways onto the ground in a free edit mode. The other biggie is the winter season, which you’ll need to be p…

It’s official: at nearly $678 million in takings so far, The Super Mario Bros Movie is the biggest grossing videogame movie adaptation of all time (as well as the biggest grossing movie of 2023)—as reported by The Numbers. And given that it’s only been out a couple of weeks so far, you can expect that number to climb to even more unassailable heights before its run is over.

That’s a very healthy lead over its closest competitors, including former number one Warcraft at $439 million (despite a very lukewarm reception in the US, that one was a huge success overseas) and Detective Pikachu at $433 million. You’d think the number four spot would be one of the Sonic movies, but no—it’s Rampage at $428 million, a movie I’m convinced no one on earth could recall the plot of in 2023, but another that was a big winner overseas.

The Super Mario Bros Movie hasn’t been especially well received critically, with only a 58% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes, but movie-goers both domestic and international have turned out in their droves to see it. A very aggressive marketing campaign, bolstered by the viral appeal of Jack Black and his wonderful new earworm from the film, …

If you’ve been tempted to get into D&D—perhaps after enjoying Baldur’s Gate 3?—but been intimidated by the price, now might be the time to jump in. With big sales on both the official D&D store and D&D Beyond, core books and sets are looking a lot more affordable, and it runs until 17 September.

Dubbed the “Back to School” sale (sounds like a lot more dragon-slaying is going on in classrooms these days than there was in my day?), it offers its biggest savings on digital books. On D&D Beyond—a digital platform for playing D&D that you can read more about in our guide to online role-playing—you can pick up the big three core books (the Dungeon Master’s Guide, the Player’s Handbook, and the Monster Manual) for 40% off. There’s also some good savings on the big campaigns and adventures, including 25% off Descent Into Avernus (a campaign that serves as a prequel to Baldur’s Gate 3) and 30% off the sprawling Dungeon of the Mad Mage. 

These books don’t come as PDFs—they’re unlocked on D&D Beyond, which allows you to read them in a really handy wiki-like format on the site, as well as using content from them in your …