Awesome Games Done Quick 2024 is already a delight—and not just because it’s already raised over $1 million for the Prevent Cancer Foundation. In a recent speedrun of Doom (2016), Hugo Martin, the game’s creative director, decided to make an appearance as a guest commentator.
During the speedrun, the BFG 9000 came up—BFG stands for ‘Big Fucking Gun’, if that’s an indication of what this thing does. In the game, this plasma weapon obliterates pretty much everything you point it at, with a direct hit connecting at 6,000 damage according to the game’s wiki.
Being an important part of the speedrun, runner Raitro_ (Going by J0ker on the Stream) asks Martin how the team at id Software balances weapons like the BFG, to which Martin flatly replies: “Uh, we don’t.” …
Read moreAfter a few years of development teases, retro-style RPG Skald: Against the Black Priory has a release window: spring 2024. The party-based RPG has been touted as an example of marrying a retro aesthetic—Commodore 64 era, in this case—with a more modern style of game and interface design.
To go along with the announcement that it’s coming in spring, Skald has released an updated demo that has a lot of really improved visuals and interface elements from what was released in January of this year. That’s alongside the new trailer, on YouTube and above, that shows off the updated looks and gameplay. Here’s a bit of description from the publisher:
“Experience an engaging, branching story with rich exploration and multiple-choice dialogue. Battle foes in gripping turn-…
Read moreA lot of action games promise the thrill of a choreographed martial arts movie, but when I play them the fights tend to look more like a panicked scramble than a martial arts masterpiece. If my execution’s ever artful, it’s during a repeat playthrough when I’m not learning on the fly.
Forestrike, an upcoming action roguelike revealed by Devolver earlier today at Japanese indie game festival BitSummit, hopes to provide a solution for the problem of delivering elegant action: It lets you see the future before you have to punch it.
In Forestrike, you play as a novice martial artist, seeking to liberate your country from the clutches of an evil admiral by conquering a series of kung fu encounters—as all the coolest revolutionaries do. You’re outnumbered in every brawl, but…
Read moreMaking goofy Sim versions of your rivals to enact a little digital revenge upon them is such a universal experience that now even an American football team has done it. This week a bunch of NFL teams released videos to announce their schedule for the 2024 season and, as I’ve just learned is tradition, they’ve had a bit of fun with it. The Kansas City Chiefs did their take on those hydraulic press videos—crushing the competition, get it?—the Jacksonville Jaguars did a classic superhero cartoon-style animation of defeating all their challengers, and the Los Angeles Chargers made an entire video using The Sims 2.
And it’s long, like an entire three and a half minute roast. The jerseys are all a nod to other teams but, presumably due to trademark reasons, are blurred out a…
Read moreThis morning, developer Ironmace confirmed that Dark and Darker would release today, and now it has—this article has been updated with the latest info.
The demo for PvP extraction dungeon crawler Dark and Darker was a hit earlier this year, but then Nexon alleged copyright infringement, it got booted off Steam, and its early access release was pushed back. Developer Ironmace persisted, going so far as to distribute a playtest by torrent, and this morning, Ironmace CEO Terence Park confirmed to PC Gamer that Dark and Darker would release in early access today.
That has now happened: Dark and Darker is available to purchase directly from the developer at www.darkanddarker.com. It’s also available on a storefront called Chaf Games.
Dark and Darker has…
Read moreTake-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick has been on the business interview circuit since last week’s financial results, reassuring all those skittish stockholders after the company announced “a narrowing of Rockstar Games’ previously established window of Calendar 2025 to Fall of Calendar 2025 for Grand Theft Auto 6.”
That wasn’t a delay: the game had previously been announced only for “calendar 2025”, and I don’t think even the most Rockstar-pilled conspiracist thought that meant January. But it did nevertheless confirm GTA 6 would be coming later rather than sooner: and let’s not forget, that’s a console release date only. Even 2026 for PC seems optimistic at this point.
So Strauss Zelnick is out there calming some nerves. During an interview with CNBC (spotted by VG…
Read moreThe first hint that Striden is a little different comes part way through the trailer above, when a player absolutely decks the glass face of a vending machine and a soda can pops out. The Half-Life throwback seems out of place next to the very dramatic, blue-filtered WW2-ish shooting—but then you get to the bear.
Striden is not what it seems in another way, too: At first I clocked it as a Battlefield-like large scale team shooter, but the format is more like a mix of Battlefield and modern extraction shooters, with unique elements: five teams of four fight over resources, strongholds, and anti-radiation medicine over the course of roughly 30-minute matches, winning by accruing the most points.
“Striden is an experience like no other,” says creative director Johan Sundq…
Read more