Bulletless hell It wouldn’t work without the sounds. The thwop of your whip, the thwick of your dagger. The electronic twinkle of health-restoring chicken, which sounds uncannily like the shield’s up sound from 1999 classic 3D Astro Blaster. The ‘boo boo de boo, boo boo de boop’ of the chest-opening jingle, to which my shoulders cannot help but shimmy. Best of all: the plink of picking up an XP-granting gem - at first a sporadic treat, soon a near constant hum as the tide of enemies grows from a trickle into a flood....

Atuuk my time wi’ this preview build Following Code Force’srecent demonstration, I was optimistic about the upcoming space 4X/simulation/strategy/forward slash gameDistant Worlds 2. The original was a game I very nearly adored, but playing it always meant being a little too frustrated to talk about it without complaining a lot (which, granted, I do about everything, but still). Code Force have since sent us a preview build, and I’ve been consumed with it for the better part of a week....

Games take a long time This past week Blizzard announceda survival game set in an all-new universe. There were almost no other details about it and it was described as being at an “early stage”, but it seems the studio have been working on it for close to five years already. Although the announcement didn’t come with much more than a couple pieces of concept art, Blizzard employees have been able to talk about their involvement with the game on social media....

But they do think they’ve fixed it Halo Infinitehas been having trouble with its Big Team Battle mode since launch. Attempts to fix it before Christmas and earlier in January largely failed, with the mode availablebut matchmaking issues making it near-impossible to play for some. Now 343 Industries think they’ve fixed the issue, with a patch due to be deployed sometime after February 3rd. “Using the telemetry we received from the hotfix on January 19, we were able to make a new build with an update that we believe should address the core issue impacting the BTB playlist,” wrote senior community manager John Junyszekin an update yesterday....

Under pressure from UK regulator The changes the CMA have secured include offering clearer information to customers about auto-renewal policies, offering pro-rata refunds to customers who cancel during a recurring 12-month sub, refunding and automatically cancelling unused accounts, and better information about price increases. Here’s the full breakdwon, asshared by the CMA: These changes are described as an “undertaking”, which means this is a “voluntary agreement” on Microsoft’s part to address the CMA’s concerns without the need for court action....

Build your own endgame On February 4th,Path Of Exile’s next expansion will launch. Siege Of The Atlas will revamp the action-RPGs endgame, letting you customise it by pick-and-mixing content from previous challenge leagues. There’s a dramatic new trailer below. The Atlas Of Worlds is Path Of Exiles expansive endgame, which has been refreshed every three months for years with new twists on its levelling and looting. Siege Of The Atlas lets you pick elements from those previous leagues as you play to construct your own experience....

A long way from making armour shiny Humanity, an in-browser shader created by David A. Roberts, is worth the four minutes it takes to watch. If you’d rather, instead of clicking the link above, you can watch the animation with some music on Vimeo: The animation runs through six main stages in its development of a planet: protoplanet, in which the surface is red hot; the shifting of tectonic plates to establish moutains and oceans; hydraulic erosion, which marks the terrain with rivers; global climate, which depicts the changing of seasons; the distribution of life, including plants, herbivores and predators; and finally humanity, as we construct cities....

God Of War and Kena: Bridge Of Spirits have taught me valuable lessons about the art of a good action pal Through an entirely unplanned sequence of events, I’m currently playing two big action adventure games that couldn’t be less alike. One isGod Of War, a big, serious dadventure epic about an emotionally distant father trying his darnedest to connect with his (at times very irritating) son. The other isKena: Bridge Of Spirits, an altogether more wholesome adventure about a young girl cleansing a lush, forested mountainside from a serious case of bad vibes and helping lost ghosts pass on to the other side....

Discover the Apex Legends Season 12 release time Want to know the Apex Legends Season 12 release time?Mad Maggie’s dropping into the Apex games, which meansApex LegendsSeason 12 is almost here. If you’re eager to paint the town red and cause carnage withMaggie’s wrecking ball ultimate ability, you’ll want to know the exact release time for Apex Legends Season 12. Below, we’ll cover the exact release time for Apex Legends Season 12, so that you can be one of the first to drop into Sabotaged Olympus as Mad Maggie....

With Yooka-Laylee’s sidescroller free next week I watched Daemon X Machina trailers around both its launches, and god it’s pretty. Those colours! Tango Orange deserts and turquoise skies - and then, why not,Tango Orange skies and turquoise deserts. DxM offers mech combat of the anime-not-MechWarriorvariety. Think zippy, flying ninjas, more like a character action game, than slow and stomping battle houses. You can customise the mechs and their anime pilots, and there’s co-op and competitive multiplayer alongside the singleplayer story....

As hoped WhenDeath Stranding’s PC pubishers announced in January that the expandedDeath Stranding Director’s Cutwas indeed coming belatedly to PC, they neglected to mention whether they’d offer a cheaper upgrade. Seeing as the newness is very much not worth buying the game again, it was a weird omission. But, now they say they’ll offer a £9/$10 upgrade from the base game, and announced a release date of the 30th of March....

Their year-in-review has interesting stats Here’s a breakdown of the key stats from the post,which you can read in full here: I don’t use the Epic Games Store much, bar when there’s an exclusive that forces me to. Still, I’m glad that it exists and is growing, because I want Steam to have a decent competitor. That feels more important than ever, givenGOG is losing moneyandBattle.net will presumably vanish in the next few years....

Everything I need Grapple Dogis one of those games I’ve been watching on Twitter for years. It’s a 2D platformer in which you play as a dog with a grappling hook. Grappling hooks are the best thing in video games, and I am fully ready to swing through a colourful, cute platformer. To my infinite delight, Grapple Dog now has a release date: February 10th. I like that Grapple Dog doesn’t seem to be resting on its grappling laurels....