This week’s new videogame releases, care of our weekly newsblog
Gamers, non-gamers and those who Walk Between – lend me your ears, eyes and other sensory organs! It’s time for another week of new videogames and videogame news, as sponsored by that extradimensional terror known as the Maw. May our children forgive us.
Here are a few games releasing this week that we think could prove special:Mad Max-ish turn-based roguelikeOutcast Tales: The First Journey(29th Jan), 1970s French detective simChronique des Silencieux(29th Jan), raunchy gay sci-fi visual novelThe Symbiant Re:Union(29th Jan),Overcooked-style workplace comedySpeed Crew(31st Jan), swooping fantasy action-RPG epicGranblue Fantasy Relink(1st Feb), co-open world superhero murder partySuicide Squad: Kill the Justice League(2nd Feb), gilded PS2 RPG remakePersona 3 Reload(2nd Feb).
As ever, if our list seems desperately inadequate that’s because we have absolutely no taste, and you should definitely address this by leaving a comment (but not a link – beware the dread Automoderator) pointing us toward a game of note. Happy videogaming all.
Our live coverage of this event has finished.
IT IS MONDAY. The beast surfaces! Put on wellies and uncork the harpoons. FEED THE MAW.
–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
An enterprising Palworld dataminer has discovered an unused Pal, “Dark Mutant”, hidden away in the game’s code. It looks like Pokémon’s Mega Mewtwo Y with the brightness settings turned down. Ta,Eurogamer.
–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
Insider Gaming’s Tom Henderson reports that Crash Bandicoot devs Toys for Bob and Call of Duty studio Sledgehammer Games have lost around40%and30%of their staff respectively, as part of Microsoft’s mass layoffsrevealed last week.
–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
ViaVGC, Final Fantasy 7 Remake producer Yoshinori Kitase estimates that it would take “twice as long” to remake Final Fantasy 6 - as long as 20 years, even.
–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
Somebody’s shared videos and details of a cancelled Call of Duty game, NX1, which was apparently in development at Neversoft, and was supposedly discarded in favour of Call of Duty: Ghosts. The leak has beenrubber-stampedby former Neversoft project director Brian Bright, who has replied to the tweet below.
Fuck it, NX1.pic.twitter.com/KDPh6pwHxn
–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
Just 3 months after@Microsoft’s merger with@Activision, 1,900 workers have lost their jobs.I warned that this deal would hurt workers. These layoffs are a stark reminder that corporate mergers are bad for workers.The@FTCshould keep up the fight to unwind this merger.https://t.co/Nh6vpAXeYd
–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
Handsome Robert Purchese of Eurogamer (hello Bertie, I love you - why aren’t you returning my calls?) hasan interview with Obsidian about Avowed. Amongst other things, we learn that the game doesn’t let you romance companions, so apologies recovering Baldur’s Gate 3 players, you’ll need to get your fix elsewhere. There’s also some intriguing chat about whether players should be mindful of a developer’s budget and team size when deciding the worth of a game. Should we?
–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
As passed on byPCG, Rocksteady have said they don’t want Suicide Squad “to feel like a life commitment or be a game where you have to sacrifice a lot to see all the content on offer, or feel like you’re not making good progress in the game if you can’t play hundreds of hours”. The proof will be in the pudding, but this is music to my ears.
–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
If you’re one of the New Zealanders (or “New Zealanders”) who are among the earliest early access players of Suicide Squad, know the game has been hit by a bug whereupon players have full story completion when they log in for the first time. Rocksteady have taken the game offline while they fix this.
We’re aware that a number of players are currently experiencing an issue whereby upon logging into the game for the first time, they have full story completion.To resolve this issue, we will be performing maintenance on the game servers.During this time the game will be…
–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
Some more bad news out of Embracer today, asEidos Montreal confirm almost 100 layoffs at the studiobehind Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Marvels' Guardians of the Galaxy. A new Deus Ex game said to be two years into development is reported to be cancelled, too.
–Matt Jarvis
Open Roads, the mother-daughter road trip game from former Gone Home and Tacoma devs,will take a one-month detour before it arrives at a new release date in March. Annapurna say the delay is to “ensure the most polished experience for players”.
–Matt Jarvis
Another important discovery in the ongoing human quest to run Doom on literally everything: an MIT researcher has found a way toplay Doom using gut bacteria. (The framerate is atrocious, mind you!)
–Matt Jarvis
–Matt Jarvis
IT IS TUESDAY. I saw a beautiful grey fox on the way back from the coffee shop just now. FEED THE MAW.
–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
As reported byGamesradar, Bungie have absent-mindedly suggested that they once experimented with a Destiny-themed dating sim, or at least “stuff like that”, in the course of routine internal gamejams. Cat Manning of Firaxis has thoughts.
if you have a very popular game with beloved characters and do not release (an already made!) dating sim you are leaving money and/or goodwill on the tablesincerely, someone who made a wildly successful dating sim for a very popular game with beloved charactershttps://t.co/30IdZj06Kp
–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
The original Dragon Quest Builders, aka Dragon Quest Minecraft, is coming to PC on February 13th. Here’s theSteam page.
–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
PSA that there are lots of Suicide Squad spoilers in the wild, now that the early access builds are in circulation. Watch out for those auto-playing videos.
–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
As reported byPCGamer, people are getting robbed by online randos in Enshrouded. Remember to give your world a password!
–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
Activision have published a blog aboutthe dark art of Call of Duty match-making. Going by PvP community tendencies at large I suspect it will make everybody feel like the system is letting them down, but I’ve yet to dig in.
–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
Former Volition developers havefounded a new studio called Shapeshifter Games. The announcement post highlights the team’s “deep experience in open-world and character action games earned while working on some of the industry’s most beloved franchises”. Principal lighting artist AJ Nelson says he’sworking on an Xbox Games Studios project. Ta,Techraptor.
–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
Dicey roguelikeSpellRoguegoes into early access on February 12th.
–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
The Militsioner devs havewritten a new devlogabout the act of eluding/appeasing the massive policeman at the centre of the game’s town setting. An excerpt: “All immersive-sims have some form of combat through which its immersion is revealed. Fighting the giant is not an option, so the player will have to resort to tricks - flattering, lying, stealing, giving gifts to appease the giant.”
–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
Activision’s former general manager of Call of Duty, Johanna Faries, is the new head of Blizzard following Mike Ybarra’s departure. I share this mostly for the additional detail that her replacement as COD GM is VP of product management Matt Cox. I knew that guy had a second job.
Hi all. Today I sent the below note to@Blizzard_Ent. As for X: I play to stay in “listen mode” here, but trust I’m tuned in! As for me: a typical day=work life+yogi life+games life. Currently on heavy rotation: D4, COD, BG3. Feeling blessed & grateful🙏🏽Onward. ✨pic.twitter.com/Ph8XgsTcpk
–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
The voice of Adam Jensen isn’t surprised bynews that an unannounced Deus Ex game has been cancelled.
If they had been working on a#DeusExfor two years, and they still hadn’t contacted me, there’s a good chance it wasn’t a Jensen story anyway.I’m more pissed for all the people getting laid off. This industry is fucked with this stuff.
–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
OMG, the Palworld Pokémon modder is back with a “legally-distinct pocket creatures” Palworld mod, after apparently being slapped down by Nintendo’s lawyers earlier in the month. Highlights of the mod include “Yellow Rat”. ThanksEG.
It features some amazing pocket sized creatures, such as Yellow Rat!pic.twitter.com/V5Saw3AIUI
–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
Starfield’s “biggest ever update” is now live on all platforms.
Our largest update to date in@StarfieldGameis now available on all platforms, featuring numerous fixes and improvements. Get all the details here:https://t.co/m2qO8r1pYzThis update contains everything recently added to our Steam Beta with the addition of a fix for a PC…pic.twitter.com/TVH2eYb9RS
–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
Spec Ops: The Linehas been removed from sale on Steam, without comment from publisher 2K Games.
–Graham Smith
Meanwhile, the original Diablo and Warcraft: Orcs And Humans are nowboth available from Battle.netwith functioning multiplayer. They had previously been confined to GOG.
–Graham Smith
As Edwin mentioned earlier, Starfield’sbiggest patch yet is out nowwith dozens of bug fixes and some updates to lighting and shadows.
–Graham Smith
Oh, there we go. A 2K Games rep has confirmed that Spec Ops wasremoved from sale due to expiring licenses.
–Graham Smith
Shapeshifter Games - the new co-development studio founded by former Volition Games staff, which Edwin mentioned earlier today - are working alongside inXile on upcoming RPG Clockwork Revolution,inXile have announced.
–Graham Smith
IT IS WEDNESDAY. I have just checked the traffic stats, and goodness me, people do love reading about bacterial Doom. FEED THE MAW.
–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
Ruh roh, Long Dark devs Hinterland are teasing some kind of unannounced survival game thingy. It’s being made in Unreal Engine 5 and appears to feature grand pianos.
Some good things happening in the Unannounced Survival Games space…#survival#unrealengine5pic.twitter.com/CiKSfGvMOS
–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
As reported byVGC, Rocksteady are gifting early access Suicide Squad players $20 worth of in-game BatBucks (not actual name, sadly) to apologise for the anti-superhero blockbuster’s launch technical troubles.
–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
Destiny 2 game director Joe Blackburn is leaving Bungie for “a new adventure”.
Next month, The Final Shape will be hitting one of its most critical internal milestones: a ritual we call the End-to-End playtest.This ritual has been a key part of development since Forsaken.
–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
Inflexion have detailed theaccessibility optionsfor Nightingale, including an arachnophobia mode that delimbs all the spiders, resulting in something that looks like a really pissed-off balloon with teeth.
–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
Perhaps ironically, Palworld clones are multiplying. Pocketpair are warning people not to be fooled by “Palworld apps” on mobile.
[Warning]There is no Palworld application for phones. Apps using names and product images such as “パルワールド” and “Palworld” are appearing on the AppStore and Google Play, but they are not affiliated with our company in any way.We have reported this issue to Apple, which…
–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
Enshrouded hasbeen patchedto address save data loss and progression bugs - I’ve read a fair few complaints about this, though I have no idea how widespread the issue really is.
–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
It’sreportedthat layoffs are happening at Sega of America, though we haven’t had any official announcements yet.
–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
What is news-gathering without music? Here’sLegion Of Dawn, from BioWare’s Anthem.
–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
In about five hours time, Sony will host their latest State of Play showcase. Games rumoured to appear include Death Stranding 2, FF7 Rebirth, Judas (the new game from Ken Levine’s Ghost Story studio) and Bloober’s Silent Hill 2 remake. Games confirmed to appear include Team Ninja’s Rise of the Ronin and Shift Up’s Stellar Blade. The focus will be on PS5 and PSVR 2, of course, but the line-up appears to be dominated by third party projects, which stand a good chance of appearing on PC. Here’s theYoutube stream.
–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
IT IS THURSDAY. Did you catch the State of Play stream last night? There’s a new free Silent Hill game and Norman Reedus has gone into puppetry! FEED THE MAW.
–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
Age of Empire players, assemble! There’s adeveloper livestreamon February 23rd to discuss plans for various Age games this year, including Age of Mythology: Retold
–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
Palworld has afairly big patch, which went live on Steam a few hours ago. Major fixes include various crash bugs, stopping enemies getting stuck in the scenery, and stopping other players from poaching your pals when their health falls below 30%.
–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
It is! I’m working on a piece that touches on this, as it happens.
–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
Graham has left a note pointing us towardsNews Tower, a game about running your own 1930s newspaper company. It’s got a demo.
–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
The next Battlefield game is “not in the FY25 outlook”, according to EA’s chief financial officer Stuart Canfield, which means no new Battlefield this year. Ta, Battlefield Bulletin.
–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
Alan Wake 2 hasa new updatethat introduces chapter select, and lets you “tune down” the game’s “horror flashes”, which I’m guessing refers to those split-second close-ups of Something Ghastly.
–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
The just-announcedSixty Fouris a factory sim from Oleg Danilov with an almost Inception-esque air of cosmic grandeur. Here’s the trailer.
–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
New Inkle game klaxon. It’s free to play in a browser, too.
…. There once wasa labyrinthat the end of time ….🚨 ANNOUNCING 🚨THE FOREVER LABYRINTHAn inkle gameIn collaboration with@googleartsFree to play right now, in browser or the GAC app🖼️https://t.co/EXIv0Y5au8pic.twitter.com/DeQFwvG0go
–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
It never ends.
–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
Daniel Linssen, whose Game Boy-style creations I’ve always loved, has released what is basically a Frogger FPS.
–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
“There’s around a year left of development” for Citizen Sleeper 2, according to the latestJump Over The Age substack.
–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
–Katharine Castle
This, admittedly, is not particularly Maw-like in theme or tone, but I’m still very pumped aboutCobalt Core being this month’s Game Club pick, so here’s some music for the day to get us ready for the weekend.
–Katharine Castle
–Katharine Castle
The sequel to action RPG Earthlock has been “re-revealed” this week, with a new cinematic trailer:
–Katharine Castle
Good news for Ichiban and co. Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth has become the fastest-selling game in the series, Sega have announced. It’s sold over 1 million copies in its first week of release, and to celebrate, Sega will be giving players a free in-game T-shirt set, which will be released via an update at a later date.
🎉Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth 1 Million Units Shipped Globally Celebration🎉To show our appreciation and commemorate this occasion we’re preparing a free in-game Celebratory T-Shirt Set!We’ll share timing and other details as soon as we can🤙Thank you!pic.twitter.com/gMyyVFXUmi
–Katharine Castle
Need another medieval citybuilder in your life? The Steam Next Fest demo for Thrive: Heavy Lies The Crown has gone live early onSteam, letting you get to grips with its real-time combat and co-op/competitive multiplayer ahead of Next Fest’s proper start date next Monday.
–Katharine Castle
–Katharine Castle
After five years in early access,Satisfactory will finally launch into 1.0 later this year- with no more updates or patches before the full release as developers Coffee Stain go heads-down to get it feature-complete.
–Matt Jarvis
There won’t be a Persona 5 Royal-style expanded edition for Persona 3 Reload, Atlus promise, calling “a complete experience” (despite missing parts of FES and Portable).
–Matt Jarvis
Roll into the weekend with some chill vibes courtesy ofupcoming indie Tranquil Isle, a mixture of Townscaper and Islanders that’s part cozy city-builder, part resource-management roguelite (but only if you want the challenge). It lookslovely.
–Matt Jarvis
Puzzle masterpiece Threes! is back to eat every moment of your spare time,this time on Steam Deck. Next Tuesday’s arrival on Steam will also bring cloud saves, controller support and new music for its night mode. But mostly: it’s Threes! It’s great!
–Matt Jarvis
Palworld’s servers have costnearly half a million dollars to run so faraccording to its developer’s CEO. That’s a lot of ongoing expense for a game that has no live service monetisation.
–Graham Smith
Starfield is getting AMD FSR 3 supportin a Steam beta update next week, with a full release to come later in the month. It launched with FSR 2 support, with Nvidia’s similar DLSS 3 being added in a patch last November. FSR 3 helps increase framerate without any performance cost.
–Graham Smith
Final Factory looks like Factorio, but you build your mining operation in space, then construct spaceships, then go exploring space and battling aliens. There’s ademo available right now.
–Graham Smith
News Tower lets you manage a newspaper in 1930s New York, perhaps the last time working in media might have been considered a secure career. There’sa demoand it’ll launch into Early Access later this month.
–Graham Smith
