The Maw - 17th-22nd June 2024 | rockpapershotgunz

This week’s least pestiferous PC game releases, plus our weekly news blog

Beloved friends, hated enemies - last week, we let the side down. Due to ashortage of hands at the pumpandpersistent clouds of Geoff Keighley activity, there was no weekly Maw liveblog, and this has bred disaster. Shaken, stirred and finally ignited for want of two-sentence updates aboutDragon Age, the Maw emitted a full 13% of its cosmo-puissance into Mundus and took a grievous bite out of the ailing and fearful lasagne of reality itself. Hated friends, beloved enemies - I am very sad to say that the proud nation of Dimplexland is no more.

Never heard of Dimplexland? Ah, but this is what happens when the Maw escapes containment and gets its infinitesimal, polychromatic fangs into something other than a news story about video games. Whatever the creature devours is stripped from the empirical realm and becomes the merest fantasy, be it a person or an entire country with 15 ethnic groups, a prosperous silver mining industry, and a royal family that traces its history back to the early 1200s. Why, I could almost have made Dimplexland up while writing this post, based on the logo of the radiator behind my desk! Pray for Dimplexland. You shall be avenged, just as soon as I’ve had my coffee.

Let us strike the drum and proceed to this week’s most ravishing new PC games releases with an air of appropriate solemnity and despair. Actually, let’s not do that, because it’s a pretty attractive haul this week. On Monday 17th June we’ve gotEl Dorado: The Golden City Builder, one of Alice B’s (RPS in peace) ones-to-watch, whose name very much sums it up. On Tuesday 18th June, we’ve got The Chinese Room’sStill Wakes The Deep, a game about Scottish oilmen dealing with an undersea threat in the 1970s, together with the early access launch ofPax Dei, which Matt Cox describes as “an attempt to pull offEVE Onlinein medieval Europe”, and theForges Of Corruptionexpansion for cherished Space Marine shooterWarhammer 40,000: Boltgun. Wednesday 19th June bringsScars Of Mars, a first-person real-time RPG which looks likeUltimaUnderworld put through the teleporter with Cosmic Encounters, andMurky Divers, which looks likeLethal Companybut underwater. On Thursday 20th June, there’s a regular meteor strike in the shape ofElden Ring: Shadow Of The Erdtree. Assuming there’s any games industry left after Erdtree makes landfall, we’ll be simmering down on Friday 21st June with offworld newspaper intern simTimes And Galaxyand cyberpunk citybuilderDystopika.

As ever, it’s possible these are not in fact this week’s most important new PC game releases. It’s possible I am abysmal at this job, and there are a bunch of other games that deserve your attention. Go on, there’s the comments thread. PC game news aside, there will be a two minute silence in memory of Dimplexland at 2pm today. If you’re participating, please wear the official Dimplexland colours and use the hashtag #Dimplextinguished.

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Balatro creator localthunk xeeted this earlier (Balatro already contains two banana Jokers, the Gros Michel and the extremely hard-to-obtain Cavendish). If I didn’t know better, I’d say this is a reference to a certain other banana game that has been doing the rounds on Steam lately.

Balatro: Potassium Edition 🍌pic.twitter.com/jWylvoNVVd

–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

There’s something in the water (19th-century literature, clearly), asPowerWash Simulator’s trippy Alice in Wonderland DLC arrives on July 2nd. You’ll be able to douse down five new maps - including a dapper frog - dressed in a fresh outfit, gloves and water gun.

–Matt Jarvis

Southfield, the physics-y farming game perhaps best described as Gang Beasts meets Stardew Valley,has delayed its release date three days before launchin order look after its devs’ ‘health and wellbeing’.

–Matt Jarvis

I have been enjoying Champion Shift, an early access Vampire Survivors-like that lets you play as King Arthur (and other mythical figures) and transform them into cars with machine guns, for the last few weeks. As it happens,it’s now hit 1.0 on Steam, too.

–Matt Jarvis

As Edwin shared earlier,Elden Ring is suffering a new bug on Steam Deckthat makes the game inoperable if left inactive too long - watch out if you’re playing Shadow of the Erdtree!

–Matt Jarvis

Here, have a live action turtle pope, courtesy of yet another Elden Ring trailer:

–Nic Reuben

The Guardian’s Keza MacDonald hasan interviewwith Hidetaka Miyazaki which digs a bit deeper into Miyazaki’s preoccupations than some of the other recent interviews. One standout is that he thinks (to paraphrase a bit crudely) the world today feels more like a Souls game than it did when he started making Souls games: “I don’t think what we’ve been doing in our games has changed, but perhaps the world has come closer to that type of feeling.” Try hope.

–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

ViaReddit, Sony appear to have leaked a new Helldivers 2 stratagem. It’s some kind ofquad-barrel launcher thingy.

–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

ViaPCGamer, you can getall three existing Dragon Age games for $10 or £8.50. The fourth game, Dragon Age: The Veilguard, is out later this year.

–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

ViaVGC, Beyond Good & Evil’s 20th anniversary remaster contains a mission that connects to the long-awaited Beyond Good & Evil 2, which Ubisoft offer as proof of their “enduring commitment to the franchise”.

–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

There’s some manner of Elden Ring Shadow Of The Erdtree bug out there that stops the game accepting inputs if you leave it alone for five minutes.

Note: a Steam Deck related issue has been identified and a hotfix is being worked on.Leaving your Steam Deck inactive for more than 5 minutes may stop the game from accepting inputs.We apologize for inconvenience.The date and time of the hotfix will be announced separately.

–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

PVKK: Planetenverteidigungskanonenkommandantis Papers, Please, but instead of a rubber stamp you have an orbital defence cannon.

–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

FRIGEDÆG AGAIN

–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

–Nic Reuben

–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

Bamco have popped up aSteam postabout today’s pre-Erdtree Elden Ring patch, notable for itsfree hair. Look, “a new tab called “Recent Items” has been added to review recently obtained items”! By gawd, these are the kind of gnomic asides I play FromSoftware games for.

–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

Rusted Moss, a nice-looking twin-stick Celeste-o-shmup we haven’t covered much before, has receiveda chunky updatewith an estimated 7-8 hours of new stuff.

–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

Ubisoft have started yanking Beyond Good & Evil from digital stores ahead of an announcement about the 20th Anniversary Edition of the game today, Thursday 20th June. AsVGCpoints out, this suggests they’re going to release the new edition (which wasaccidentally released early to certain playerslast year) today. But what about the legendarily long-in-development Beyond Good & Evil 2?

–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

Elden Ring Shadow Of The Erdtree has got a final trailer in the run-up to launch (11pm tonight UK time on PC.) It does show what looks very much like several bosses and distinctive enemies though, so gaze into it at your own peril.

–Nic Reuben

ÞUNRESDÆȜ DAWNS

–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

As Edwin shared earlier,Call of Duty is following Fortnite in adding Fallout skins- and they’re out this week. Anything except news on Fallout 5, eh Todd?

–Matt Jarvis

Final Fantasy 14 is bracing for new expansion Dawntrail’s login queueswith plans to limit travel and crack down on AFK players, promising that “precautionary measures” have been taken since Endwalker’s gruelling launch almost three years ago.

–Matt Jarvis

A new Marvel vs Capcom collectionis bringing all-time fighting game great MvC2, plus six more classic brawlers - including the first home port of The Punisher’s arcade game - to PC with rollback netcode later this year.

–Matt Jarvis

–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

Another slice from thatMrMattyPlays interview with Todd Howardthat’s been doing the rounds, viaPCG- Bethesda have no plans to remake the first two Fallout games. Quoth Howard: “I could argue that some of the charm of games from that era and the original Fallout is a little bit of that age. I would never want to sort of paste over some of that with, ‘Well we changed how this works so it’s more modern.'”

–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

This is what Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s skill trees look like, care ofGame Informer.

–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

I had a poke around earlier and couldn’t find anything mega-new beyondthis brief Steam updateabout the game’s mysterious cat, who is apparently based on Robin Jarvis’s demonic moggy Jupiter from the Deptford Mice books - which I adore.

–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

Call of Duty has “teamed up” with Fallout in the shape of someFallout bodysuit COD skins.

–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

Square are remastering Romancing SaGa 2, one of the heroic high fantasy RPGs I spent approximately 30 minutes with back in the 90s. I’m sure I’ll find time to play it now, ho ho.

–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

NOW FOR WODNESDÆG

–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

A video about the future direction of space sim Nebulous: Fleet Command, which I think is stonkingly good, and also, very hard.

–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

ViaMrMattyPlays, Todd Howard has responded to Starfield player upset over Bethesda selling a DLC mission for $7. “We need to evaluate both pricing, what we put out for free, how we communicate what’s in something, and really hear from the community there,” he said. Wait and see, then.

–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

Bandai Namco have suddenly released the Steam version of theirBaten Kaitos 1-2 HD Remastercompilation. Plenty of RPG to get your teeth into there.

–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

–Nic Reuben

TĪWESDÆG ALREADY?

–Nic Reuben

Starfield will get at least one more expansion after Shattered Space, Todd Howard has confirmed - as Edwin shared earlier - but don’t expect the DLC to answer every question from the sci-fi game’s universe.

–Matt Jarvis

I haven’t played much ofExogate Initiative, but “Stargate base management sim” is a combination of words that surely yanks my crank, and now they’readding 4X-style mechanics to the gamein the form of alien races who have bases of their own.

–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

PCGamercall our attention tothis 8-bit demake of Baldur’s Gate 3, which you will seemingly need a TRS-80 Model 100 to run.

–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

There is at least one more Starfield expansion on the way aftercosmic horror outing Shattered Space, according to Bethesdabossman Todd Howard via YouTuber MrMattyPlays andEurogamer.

–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

–Nic Reuben

Some more Dragon Age: The Veilguard intelligence, care of a Discord Q&A with BioWare which I believe some of you sat in on. Some highlights: there’s a max of two active party members this time, there’s no campaign progression blocker akin to Inquisition’s power mechanic, you’ll be able to revisit areas, and you can pet the griffin.

Dragon Age: Veilguard | New Discord Q&A Details🔷Asked about the world🔷▪️Takes place 10 years after Dragon Age: Inquisition▪️The Inquisitor will definitely be part of the story▪️You can go back to previous locations you visited, do side content, etc▪️Everything is…pic.twitter.com/413CWAlL5y

–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

–Nic Reuben

–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

Shovel Knight is getting a Definitive Edition for its 10th anniversary this year, named Shovel Knight: Shovel of Hope DX. Dig the trailer below.

–Nic Reuben

IT IS MŌNANDÆG

–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell