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

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And now, the proper gaming news:

GAMING NEWS

Rust gets 'biggest update to gunplay since launch'
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/rust-gets-biggest-update-to-gunplay-since-launch/
Cruel yet compelling survival sim Rust released one of its biggest updates in recent memory yesterday, making sweeping changes to the game's gunplay that for the most part seem to have been welcomed by players (even if some of those players seem happy mainly because the update will make other players unhappy).

English translations of Elden Ring boss music uncover grim, fascinating lore
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/english-translations-of-elden-ring-boss-music-uncover-grim-fascinating-lore/
True to FromSoft form, Elden Ring's soundtrack is phenomenal, bursting forth during boss fights to capture all the majesty and madness of the foes you face. The choral elements of these tracks are a big part of what makes them special, though I have to confess to not having known the actual words to any of them since the Tower Knight in Demons' Souls (and his banger of a track, HA-HAHA-HA-HA).

Marvel's Midnight Suns leak reveals Spider-Man, Scarlet Witch, and a release date
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/marvels-midnight-suns-leak-reveals-spider-man-scarlet-witch-and-a-release-date/
A late 2021 delay pushed Marvel's Midnight Suns, the turn-based tactical RPG being developed by XCOM studio Firaxis, into the second half of 2022. An official release date still hasn't been announced, but it may have slipped out thanks to leaked box art and preorder details.

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time Remake isn't cancelled, but it is delayed (again)
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/prince-of-persia-the-sands-of-time-remake-isnt-cancelled-but-it-is-delayed-again/
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time Remake was announced in 2020 with a 2021 release date, which eventually became 2022, and then 2023. Today Ubisoft did it again, saying that it is "no longer targeting a FY23 release."

Escape from Tarkov Arena will be a new 'standalone' FPS
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/escape-from-tarkov-arena-announcement/
Escape from Tarkov developer Battlestate Games announced on Friday that the arena mode players have been expecting is a "standalone game project."
Called Escape from Tarkov Arena, the spin-off will play like the existing Escape from Tarkov game, says the studio, but rather than high-stakes looting and extraction, it will center on "gladiatorial" combat in arenas situated throughout the city of Tarkov.

Report: The Silent Hill-like horror game Abandoned is in disarray
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/report-the-silent-hill-like-horror-game-abandoned-is-in-disarray/
Abandoned made a big splash when it came to light last year with a teaser that had many Silent Hill fans convinced that it was in fact a revival of Silent Hills, the cancelled Hideo Kojima project. But it's been a rough ride ever since, as the promised release of a playable demo fell through; in March, developer Blue Box Studios deleted most of its tweets, leading some followers to believe that the project had been quietly cancelled.
Blue Box insisted it was not, but a new report from Gamespot suggests it could be in trouble. Multiple sources have told the site that progress on the game is effectively stalled, while creative direction has changed multiple times, from its original inception as a survival-horror game about being trapped in the forest with a bloodthirsty cult to a story about a "rampant" AI and, more recently, a game about vampires.

Factory and city builder Captain of Industry also gives you a boat
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/factory-and-city-builder-captain-of-industry-also-gives-you-a-boat/
Okay, slightly-silly name pun aside, Captain of Industry is a brand new, pretty interesting colony and factory and city building game. In it, you and your busted ship and crew of post-apocalyptic survivors land on an abandoned island and promptly get to work building a sustainable industrial civilization, duh. It's a mix of popular tastes that taste great together in a proportion I don't think I've quite seen yet.

Nightdive wants to remaster the original Unreal next
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/nightdive-wants-to-remaster-the-original-unreal-next/
Last year Nightdive Studios released a Quake remaster giving the classic FPS 4K and widescreen resolution support, enhanced models, dynamic and colored lighting, anti-aliasing, depth of field, and some new levels by MachineGames. It also restored the original Trent Reznor score, previously absent from the digital version due to an expired copyright, and added a new theme song by Reznor. All that, and it was free for owners of the original Quake.
According to a tweet by Nightdive CEO Stephen Kick, following the Quake remaster, Cliff Bleszinski contacted Epic CEO Tim Sweeney on Nightdive's behalf. The co-designer of 1998's Unreal suggested it deserved a similar remaster. "I guess if you want that leave a message to let Tim know", Kick finished.

Fortnite's new season features mushrooms, mounts, and Darth Vader
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/fortinites-new-season-features-mushrooms-mounts-and-darth-vader/
Following yesterday's big Collision event and the inter-season downtime, Fortnite's Chapter 3 Season 2, "Vibin'" launched early this morning.
The mushrooms featured prominently in the Collision cutscene turn out to have been teasing a new biome: Reality Falls, a dense, magical forest. Players can also plant "Realty Saplings" that persist for them from match-to-match, and can eventually provide a source of mythic loot.

Claustrophobic cooperative shooter Space Beast Terror Fright has exited Early Access
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/claustrophobic-cooperative-shooter-space-beast-terror-fright-has-exited-early-access/
Eccentrically named cooperative shooter Space Beast Terror Fright has launched on Steam following a long sojourn through Early Access, bringing its cooperative horde shooter and roguelike horror energy to the masses. In it, you and a team of marines (read: your friends) must board a disabled spacecraft, recover the data stored on its drives, and disable to reactor coolant system so that it self-destructs as you escape. By the way, the disabled spacecraft is filled with a horde of toothy, clawed murder insects.

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide will have 'thousands' of party banter lines despite custom characters
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/warhammer-40000-darktide-will-have-thousands-of-party-banter-lines-despite-custom-characters/
Fatshark's Warhammer 40,000: Darktide is probably the most anticipated game of the year for not just fans of Warhammer, but fans of cooperative shooters in general. The studio's Warhammer: Vermintide series is outstandingly popular, and PC Gamer lists it as one of the best cooperative shooters on PC. One of the things people love most about Vermintide is how its five fixed characters interact with each other. They joke, banter, and bicker.
With the recent revelation that your characters in Darktide will be customizable, however, Fatshark has been quick to show how they're keeping the bantering spirit alive in a dev blog that includes raw footage of voice actors at work. You can choose from any number of voice profiles for each class, allowing for "thousands upon thousands of banter lines in Darktide," according to narrative director Mårten Stormdal.

Java and Bedrock editions merge, creating one Minecraft to rule them all
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/java-and-bedrock-editions-merge-creating-one-minecraft-to-rule-them-all/
The wild success of Minecraft didn't come without its problems, one of which was that the original game was coded in Java. This is still the version some players prefer, for a laundry list of reasons, but for many years now the 'standard' edition of the game has been the Bedrock edition, which was renamed to just 'Minecraft' in 2017.
Confused? The differences are very important to those invested in Minecraft, with the most crucial being that it's easier to mod the Java edition. Regardless of how you play, the split always had one very notable kink on PC: essentially you had to buy both separately. Now Mojang and Microsoft has announced that, as of tomorrow June 7, the two versions of what some consider the most successful game of all time have been smooshed-together into Minecraft: Java & Bedrock Edition for PC.

Half-baked battle royale with NFTs to launch on the Epic Games Store, pleasing nobody
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/half-baked-battle-royale-with-nfts-to-launch-on-the-epic-games-store-pleasing-nobody/
It looks like the Epic Games Store is getting its first NFT game. Um… yee haw? Grit was announced in 2021 as a cowboy battle royale coming to Steam, but after missing a few early access launch windows it went quiet, then resurfaced earlier this year as a blockchain game. While there's still no launch date, Grit now has a page on the Epic Games Store and is listed as "coming soon."

Tim Sweeney says Fortnite Token cryptocurrency is 'a scam'
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/tim-sweeney-says-fortnite-token-cryptocurrency-is-a-scam/
Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney says a newly-announced cryptocurrency called Fortnite Token is "a scam," and warned that the company is preparing legal action to shut it down. The creators of Fortnite Token have pushed back, however, describing it as a fan-created project "with no specified owner or company structure behind it."
>> To be honest, the scam part could be applied to most cryptocurrencies.

There's a new Just Cause in development
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/theres-a-new-just-cause-in-development/
During a financial results briefing in May, Square Enix stealth-announced that a new Just Cause game is on the way. The briefing document addresses Square Enix's $300 million sale of several overseas studios and IP (surfaced on resetera), including the Deus Ex and Tomb Raider series, and outlines what the publisher's intentions are in the future:
>> Good news aside (a new Just Cause game is positive), S-E decided to keep the Just Cause IP but decided to part from the Tomb Raider one... Either the execs need to pass drug tests or be more careful with the sake they take when they go eat out.

You can now run Doom entirely within a motherboard BIOS
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/doom-coreboot-coredoom/
Doom has been played on pretty much everything nowadays: a rotary phone (opens in new tab), via Twitter (opens in new tab), and even on 100 pounds of mouldy potatoes (opens in new tab). So in that spirit of playing Doom on all manner of hardware, from PC to potato, here's the 1993 game running from within a motherboard BIOS.
Yes, there's now a version of Doom that runs on a motherboard firmware platform known as Coreboot.
>> While it's great, it's also kind of scary to be able to run a game from the BIOS. Imagine what the malware could do...