The Maw: what's new in PC games this week?
Frostpunk 2, GOW Ragnarok, UFO 50, FF16 and so forth and suchlike
Live
Happy this week, everybody! The squirrels are trying to kill me. There's a massive horse chestnut tree outside my flat, and whenever I walk under it they drop conkers on my head. The squirrels are clearly Maw cultists. They want to give me a concussion and choke off the supply of video game news to the Maw, which will then manifest fully and bring about an age of darkness. Well, the joke's on you, squirrels, because I used to play grass hockey as a kid and I've been hit in the head by hard round objects a million times over. How else do you explain my choice of career? Anyway, here's a curated list of PC games that are out in the next five days.
On Monday 16th September, we've got stop-motion odyssey Judero, supersports-me-do Fairy Tale: Beach Volleyball Havoc, match-3 spellcaster Witching Stone, wall-punching Duke Nuker Chains Of Fury, and whatever Starstruck is supposed to be - toytown Black & White? Guitar Hero? On Tuesday 17th September, please either: help small blue folk survive glacial conditions in Goblin Camp, disrespect the boundary between 2 and 3D in The Plucky Square, or get your Devil May Clive on in the PC version of Final Fantasy 16. On Wednesday 18th September, Enotria: The Last Song and musical cyber-JRPG Keylocker join hands in a desperate effort to overpower UFO 50, which is trying to corner the market by being 50 games in one. On Thursday 19th September, a sophisticated blend of deicide and nostalgia in the shape of beardy axe management sim God Of War Ragnarok and SNES throwback Beyond Shadowgate. And on Friday 20th September, the chance to scale megastructures in Lorn's Lure, be a sliding bird in Faaast Penguin, and play post-apocalyptic politics in Frostpunk 2.
Some good stuff there, I think? There's a few promising games I've left out for compactness and also, because I keep getting double vision for some reason. Can you guess what they are? As ever, you can follow our news-botherings in the liveblog below. Have a fine week all, and beware the conkers.
Eurogamer's got a collection of interview smidgeroonies and smatterings from BioWare. There isn't anything massively new there but there's some stuff about moving on from the Hinterlands and having more compact, linear areas that gave me a pang of Inquisition nostalgia.
Fridayshock Infinite
So awful. What's to be done? Ah yes, FEED THE MAW.GTA Online is suddenly no longer compatible with Steam Deck, thanks to the introduction of new BattlEye anti-cheat software. "You will be able to play GTAV Story Mode but unable to play GTA Online," Rockstar explain. Ta, The Verge.
Krafton CEO Changhan 'CH' Kim has spoken to Game Developer about the still-in-progress acquisition of Tango Gameworks and the rights to Hi-Fi Rush, commenting that they're hoping to rebuild the studio up to "a minimum of 100 people". He also said they wouldn't expect a potential Hi-Fi Rush 2 to make money - to baldly summarise, the point of the acquisition is "to mitigate risk" for Krafton by having more development teams trying different things, rather than because they're confident any one project will be a hit.
Rogue Waters is a pirate's rogue(waters)lite with turn and grid-based combat, out on 30th September. Amongst other things you get to summon three sea monsters, the Kraken, the Mermaid and the Giant Snail. You can have the Giant Snail, I will take the Kraken thanks.
The Lethal Company dev's next game looks, or rather sounds, like A Lot.
About 50% of this morning's editorial meeting was dedicated to the revelation that Tommy Lee Jones has a sprawling alternate life as a promoter of Japanese coffee.
Here's a trailer for Double Dragon Revive:
Here's a clip from the upcoming new Witcher animated thing, with Doug Cockle himself:
Eulogy Of An Insect is also pretty varied, and a lot more twisted. "A skullcap-wearing woman makes a woefully wrong turn, ending up in a crapsack world full of fantastical creatures. Among them she finds misery, BUGS, apathy, and a shockingly strict adherence to paying one's fair share in taxes."
A PR got in touch about the 9th Dawn Remake last night. I never played the original RPG, but the remake's variety of game styles and hippity-hoppy graphics make me smile.
Here's a tech demo for Den Of Wolves, the next thing from GTFO devs 10 Chambers.
Thiefsday
I rate immersive sim puns week 6/10 so far - whose idea was this anyway? FEED THE MAW.Dead by Daylight's PvE spin-off Project T has been cancelled after "unsatisfactory" player testing. I, er, didn't know they were making a PvE spin-off. It was announced back in May, with Midwinter Entertainment at the helm.
I'll do what the hell I like!
"Wednesday: The Mawsquerade - Bloodlines"
Brendy you're not allowed to touch the liveblog ever again
A remaster of the first Red Dead Redemption may be slipping onto PC soon, if a leak is to be believed. In the Rockstar Games launcher, the developer accidentally included some metadata for their as-yet unconfirmed PC port of the open world western. As PC Gamer note, this isn't the first clue we've had that the cowboy caper is coming to big machines.
Comedy horror game Anthology Of The Killer is coming to Steam on October 8th, says creator thecatamites in an update post. Just in time for the season of scares.
Wednesday: The Mawsquerade - Bloodlines
I'll immerse your sim.Witch the Showdown is an anime girl duelling game in which you parry, dodge and perform attacks in real-time, with moves drawn from a deck of cards. So, a boss rush fighting game with a deckbuilding component, I guess. Still struggling to frame it, but it looks cool. Steam page here.
Extremely nippy first-person shooter Echo Point Nova will launch on 24th September.
Dragon’s Dogma 2 has been patched with a new "casual" mode that makes inns and ferrystones cheaper, tinkers with stamina consumption and weight limits, and stops your pawns going absolutely postal when they contract dragonsplague. Amongst other things - there's a lot more through the jump.
As detailed on Steam, Colossal Order have pushed back release of several Cities: Skylines 2 DLC packs in order to finish the game's mod editor. "To ensure we don’t split our focus, we’ve made the decision to push the release of the Creator Packs [Modern Architecture and Urban Promenades] to Q4," it reads. "This will also affect the upcoming release of Bridges & Ports Expansion that will instead come in Q2 2025."
SeekerX says: Back in July, some fella named Edwin talked about having liked the demo for spaceship deck-builder Breachway, which at the time was slated for an Early Access release in August -- that window doesn't seem to have happened, and instead Breachway is also releasing Thursday 9/16. Possibly even a full release? I'm not seeing any mention of Early Access on the Steam page. That Edwin guy's article: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/deck-building-space-sim-breachways-re-emerges-from-warp-with-an-august-early-access-release-date
There's a running joke around these parts that whenever I'm assigned to review something it gets delayed. Edders keeps calling it "The Curse Of Edwin". So I guess let me know if there's anything you'd like delayed.
Not new, but worth a mention: Szrot is a "semi open world" "CaRPG" about the underappreciated cars and cultures of Eastern Europe, set in Belgrade, Yugoslavia during the late 80s. Here's the Steam page.
As reported by PCGamer, the makers of Half-Life 3 fan game Project Borealis have released their first teaser in several years. "Return to the snow-covered streets of Ravenholm in this reimagined continuation of the beloved Half-Life saga." It's based on former Valve writer Marc Laidlaw's discarded draft synopsis for Half-Life 2 Episode 3 from August 2017
Tuesprey
The immersive sim puns have it! FEED THE MAW.A deep dive for Starfield's Shattered Space expansion.
Old Alice B favourite Vampire Therapist is getting a bunch of free updates. Here are some freshly bled/psychoanalysed cuts of press release.
The first update, out today, is entitled The Blood of Troy and follows the story of the founding of Rome through the eyes of an immortal vampire.Two more free updates, entitled Spanish Nights and Fathoms Below, will explore the history of pre-Renaissance Spain and the birth of psychoanalysis, respectively. Both will be released within 2024.
Pacific Drive has received a big update adding a bunch of starting "presets" (modes, basically) with over 50 individual settings to twiddle.
Hyperbeat is a rhythm-based affair in which you fly a rad wireframe knight down a tunnel of gremlins synched to rave and jungle beats.
Palworld's devs assure that the game will never go free-to-play or become a full-blown game-as-a-service.
Not content with being a heavily physics-based rover-building sim, Mars First Logistics is getting into the rail and road construction business.
Mondeus Ex
This week's pun theme is either immersive sims or Latin stagecraft, I can't decide. FEED THE MAW.