Carzy Zarx’s PC Gaming Emporium - Catch Up on All the Latest PC Gaming Related News

[JEMC]

The Tuesday news, with not a single article from DSOGaming:

SALES /PLAYER COUNT & DEALS

Steam has a new daily deal but, strangely enough, there are no new weeklong deals. In any case, the new daily deal is We Need To Go Deeper, 69% off: https://store.steampowered.com/app/307110/We_Need_To_Go_Deeper/

The Humble Store has two new sales:

• The Female Hero Sale features up to 90& discounts for the next 6 days: https://www.humblebundle.com/store/promo/female-hero-sale/
• And the Gods & Monsters Sale comes with up to 90% discounts for the same 6 days: https://www.humblebundle.com/store/promo/gods-monsters-sale/

Fanatical's Spring Sale is still going on, don't forget to check the new flash deals, and now there's also a new bundle: the Build Your Own Spring Bundle, with 26 games to build your 1, 5, 10 or 20 games bundle: https://www.fanatical.com/en/pick-and-mix/build-your-own-spring-bundle

SOFTWARE & DRIVERS

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MODS, EMULATORS & FAN PROJECTS

This Dark Souls 3 mod brings Sekiro's weapons and movesets to Lothric
https://www.pcgamer.com/this-dark-souls-3-mod-brings-sekiros-weapons-and-movesets-to-lothric/
If you're like me, every new playthrough of Dark Souls 3 demands a new weapon, trying your luck with a new aspect of the game's arsenal. But if you're looking to really dart around Lothric's monsters, you could always try returning to Dark Souls 3 with one of nine weapons pulled from Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice.
Spotted by the chosen undead over at RPS, Rogier "Rhodan" Noordhuizen's Blades Of Ashina mod let you nip around with the lightning-fast strikes of Fromsoft's more recent slasher. While it's been out in some form since last June, the latest Nexus release lets you play around with nine of Sekiro's weapons—from Katanas and Kunai to the more esoteric Flame Vent and the Talon Of Hatred.
The best part? These aren't simply model swaps for existing weapons. Each comes with a bespoke moveset that aim to emulate their corresponding Sekiro attacks as closely as possible.

Dark Souls 3 is a damn sports game now thanks to this amazing mod
https://www.pcgamer.com/dark-souls-3-is-a-damn-sports-game-now-thanks-to-this-amazing-mod/
When you're invaded in a Dark Souls game, it's never certain whether the trespasser is there to kick you off a bridge, offer up a helping hand, or judge your outfit. And until now, playing soccer with a phantom has never been one such possibility. To see what I mean, you'll need to download and install the Lothric Olympics mod, one of the most impressive Dark Souls 3 mods I've seen yet—and I've seen Pocket Souls, a mod that turns the game into a grimdark Pokemon.
But what Pocket Souls does for PvE, the Lothric Olympics does for PvP, creating whole new games within Dark Souls 3 rather than adding new cosmetics or tweaking basic variables.
The Lothric Olympics mod description puts it plainly, asking what the Ashen Ones do in their spare time. Dark Souls 3 is pretty difficult, so I figured they'd kick back and relax, sip on some craft estus, but mod creator Wallacetheswifter thinks they'd instead kick around a Rock Lizard in a soccer field suspended over Archdragon Peak or stumble through an elaborate, devious obstacle course in the Undead Settlement.

GAMING NEWS

Six Days in Fallujah publisher does a 180, now says the game is 'inseparable from politics'
https://www.pcgamer.com/six-days-in-fallujah-publisher-does-a-180-now-says-the-game-is-inseparable-from-politics/
After previously telling Polygon that it wasn't "trying to make a political commentary," Six Days in Fallujah publisher Victura has now walked that back in a Tweet saying that "the events recreated in Six Days in Fallujah are inseparable from politics."

Doom Eternal's next DLC teases the battle with the Dark Lord
https://www.pcgamer.com/doom-eternals-next-dlc-teases-the-battle-with-the-dark-lord/
Dropping what might appear to be the most fire Speed Metal album cover of 2021, the Doom Twitter account has let us all know that a teaser for Doom Eternal: The Ancient Gods - Part Two will be coming on March 15th, just a week from today. The DLC will presumably give us some closure to the exponentially-increasing stakes of the convoluted Doom 2016 timeline. It will likely answer important questions like "What's a Dark Lord, and can you kill it?"

You can now play 2D Minecraft in the Minecraft chat window
https://www.pcgamer.com/you-can-now-play-2d-minecraft-in-the-minecraft-chat-window/
I wish it was 2007 again because there's rarely been a better reason to use Xzibit's "Yo Dawg" meme. "I heard you liked Minecraft, so we put Minecraft in your Minecraft so you can Minecraft while you Minecraft."
The first Minecraft in this case is regular Minecraft, but the second Minecraft is a wee little itty bitty 2D version of Minecraft you can play in the chat window of regular Minecraft. The question isn't why, the question is: why not?

World of Warcraft's much-anticipated patch arrives tomorrow, improves Mythic+ dungeon gear
https://www.pcgamer.com/world-of-warcrafts-much-anticipated-patch-arrives-tomorrow-improves-mythic-dungeon-gear/
Though World of Warcraft's big Chains of Domination update is months away, it's getting a smaller patch tomorrow that brings a bunch of exciting improvements—especially if you spend a lot of time in its Mythic+ dungeons. That's because Patch 9.0.5 is bringing back Valor points, a currency used to upgrade Mythic+ dungeon gear. As I explained in a previous article, Shadowlands endgame gear is so sparse that a lot of players feel stuck or forced to participate in activities that might not interest them, such as PvP. With the introduction of Valor points, however, dungeoneers will be able to upgrade their gear to higher levels even if they don't get a coveted loot drop at the end of a dungeon.

Latest Call of Duty: Cold War patch adds a new hardcore mode
https://www.pcgamer.com/latest-call-of-duty-cold-war-patch-adds-a-new-hardcore-mode/
Treyarch is showing some love to its most hardcore players in a minor Call of Duty: Black Ops - Cold War patch. Live now, players will find a brand new hardcore option for Moshpit, a variety playlist that cycles between CoD's most popular modes and maps. Also in the crosshairs are a few particularly troublesome Outbreak bugs and fixes to the competitive League Play mode's ladder system.

The studio that made sci-fi shooter Disintegration is closing
https://www.pcgamer.com/v1-interactive-disintegration-closure/
Hoverbike shooter Disintegration had only been out for a few months when developer V1 Interactive removed its multiplayer modes, saying that they failed to attract "a significant audience" despite some interest in the singleplayer campaign. That was in November of last year, and at the time, studio co-founder Marcus Lehto said on Twitter that the game "never got a fair shake." We didn't hear much about Disintegration after that, and so today's news doesn't come as an enormous surprise: V1 Interactive is closing.

Dota 2's tutorial sucks, so Dota 2 players are spending $25,000 to make a new one
https://www.pcgamer.com/dota-2s-tutorial-sucks-so-dota-2-players-are-spending-dollar25000-to-make-a-new-one/
It's a perennial joke in the Dota 2 community that the last tutorial started with the objective to buy a Stout Shield—an item that was removed from the game three weeks later. Dota 2 is a game that regularly reinvents huge parts of itself with massive shakeups like the late 2019 Outlanders patch, and what tutorials once existed quickly became loaded with outdated mechanics and inaccuracies.

Source Engine Aesthetics is a museum of level design vibes from 2004 to 2014
https://www.pcgamer.com/source-engine-aesthetics-is-a-museum-of-level-design-vibes-from-2004-to-2014/
What do SiN Episodes, Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, and Pirates, Vikings, and Knights 2 have in common? They're all Source engine games, which means that even though they have wildly different art styles, they somehow all look like Source engine games.
Identifying a game's engine is kind of like identifying what kind of paint was used: Even if they're very different from each other, two oil paintings both look like oil paintings, not acrylics or watercolors. The effect is easy to see via Twitter account Source Engine Aesthetics, which was created by Dusk developer David Szymanski. He's on a mission to collect iconic screenshots from the Source era of mods and games, as well as some general dreamscapes.

Valheim has fireworks, if you're willing to sacrifice your surtling cores
https://www.pcgamer.com/valheim-has-fireworks-if-youre-willing-to-sacrifice-your-surtling-cores/
If you've spent time exploring the darkened burial chambers and slurpy swamps of Valheim, you've probably collected your fair share of surtling cores. The glowing, presumably evil cubes can be used to craft some of the most important items in the game like smelters, kilns, blast furnaces, and fast-travel portals. Early in the game, surtling cores are a pretty precious resource that takes a lot of dangerous work and exploration to find.

Wow, MicroProse Soccer just hit Steam
https://www.pcgamer.com/wow-microprose-soccer-just-hit-steam/
Long before EA started churning out annual FIFA games there was Sensible Soccer. And before Sensible Soccer, there was MicroProse Soccer. It was a popular Commodore 64 title developed by Sensible Software (yes—they of Sensible Soccer fame) and released in 1988, though in the United States it was initially released as Keith Van Eron's Pro Soccer.
As part of Ziggurat Games' mission to shovel tons of buried retro classics onto Steam, it's now available to buy.

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive mysteriously vanished from Steam
https://www.pcgamer.com/counter-strike-global-offensive-mysteriously-vanished-off-steam/
A bunch of store pages for Steam games bizarrely vanished earlier today, including the store page for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.
As noted by VGC24/7, a quick glance at SteamDB will show that all promotional screenshots, videos, Steam achievements, and store description for CSGO all disappeared one by one before the listing for the game was taken down all together. The game still appeared in search bars, but the store page was very much gone for several hours.

Marvel's Avengers dev attempts to justify slowing down levelling
https://www.pcgamer.com/marvels-avengers-dev-attempts-to-justify-slowing-down-levelling/
Last week, Crystal Dynamics announced some sweeping changes coming to Marvel's Avengers' levelling system. They didn't go down well. In fact Rich S felt they sucked hard, making the game's harsh grind even grindier. Now, the developer has admitted that its announcement may not have been "comprehensive enough" to explain the rework.

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 ventures into the Chaos Wastes next month
https://www.pcgamer.com/warhammer-vermintide-2-ventures-into-the-chaos-wastes-next-month/
In Warhammer's Old World, the Chaos Wastes are the one place you'd never want to visit. An ever-shifting nightmare realm of monsters, carnage, and physics so broken they'd make Garry's Mod look sensible. Naturally, Warhammer: Vermintide 2's band of disgruntled adventurers are preparing for a trip up north when the rat-smasher's next DLC arrives this April.

Huge Hunt: Showdown update overhauls the experience for new players
https://www.pcgamer.com/hunt-showdown-update-1-5-whats-new/
Crytek's Hunt: Showdown is a unique shooter, a medium-scale open world where players team up, find and take down monsters, then ultimately fight each other (or gleefully evacuate with arms a-laden). It's been receiving updates fairly regularly ever since its early access launch in February 2018 (it hit full release in late 2019), and now a major 1.5 update has overhauled the game's frontend, made changes big and small, and added an armory's worth of new ammunition types. In a game where one good shot is a kill (on players, anyway), the latter is a Big Deal.

Microsoft has acquired Bethesda, some future games will be exclusive
https://www.pcgamer.com/microsoft-has-acquired-bethesda-some-future-games-will-be-exclusive/
After getting the approval of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission and the European Union Commission, Microsoft has officially announced that the acquisition of ZeniMax Media, owner of Bethesda, is complete.