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

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Monday news, part two:

PUBG owner begins active development on lavish adaptation of Korea's biggest fantasy novels
https://www.pcgamer.com/pubg-owner-begins-active-development-on-lavish-adaptation-of-koreas-biggest-fantasy-novels/
PUBG owner Krafton announced last year it had acquired the rights to the popular Korean fantasy novels, The Bird The Drinks Tears, and today revealed it has moved into full production on the title and launched an official website with a bunch of concept art and background information.

Zenless Zone Zero's first beta shows off its roguelike city
https://www.pcgamer.com/zenless-zone-zeros-first-beta-is-showing-off-its-roguelike-city/
Hoyoverse's free-to-play action follow up to Genshin Impact is a game whose combat looks nearly identical but is set in a vastly different structure and world. Zenless Zone Zero is an anime action game where you collect characters (presumably with gacha systems to be revealed at a later date), but instead of an open world game, it's a room-based roguelike.

Tiny MMO Book of Travels lays out big plans for the future
https://www.pcgamer.com/tiny-mmo-book-of-travels-lays-out-big-plans-for-the-future/
Associate editor Lauren Morton chose Book of Travels as her personal pick for game of the year in 2021, but she also acknowledged that its unusual ways—it's "distinctly inconvenient," as she put it—might put some players off. That appeared to be the case in December 2021, when developer Might and Delight laid off a large portion of its staff, although it vowed to continue development of the game.
To its credit, Might and Delight has stuck with it. Earlier this week it posted a new early access development roadmap, and today it dove deeper into what it all means, and what players can expect in the future.

Valorant dev tackles smurfing paranoia: 'smurfs are less common than players think'
https://www.pcgamer.com/valorant-dev-tackles-smurfing-paranoia-smurfs-are-less-common-than-players-think/
Bam! You're dead. It was a headshot from far away with the same gun you're using. Dang, they're pretty good. Maybe even too good. Could they be smurfing?

The Ascent's DLC adds glowing neon melee weapons
https://www.pcgamer.com/the-ascents-dlc-adds-glowing-neon-melee-weapons/
Cyberpunk action RPG The Ascent's got a big DLC on the way, called Cyber Heist, that'll add a journey to a whole new cyberpunk arcology for your mercenary for more cooperative shootin and—in a whole new twist—slashin. The Cyber Heist DLC will add melee weapons to The Ascent, like a big sword, or a big hammer, which naturally have neon on them because if it doesn't fit the aesthetic why bother.

Clever KBRD is a breakout where you bounce balls with your keyboard skills
https://www.pcgamer.com/clever-kbrd-is-a-breakout-where-you-bounce-balls-with-your-keyboard-skills/
I'm a big fan of breakout-style games. You know, ones where you hit a little ball with a paddle and it breaks the blocks? I like those. They are good. One of the first games I ever remember buying was Super Break Out on the Game Boy.
Enter developer Connor Aitken, a fairly new game design graduate, who had an oddly clever idea and made a prototype for us all to enjoy: KBRD. The basic idea is that you've got a little pixel ball, but instead of a paddle you make a paddle using any combination of two keys on your keyboard. So you might stretch between Q and P for a big wide paddle bounce, or broadly redirect using something like P and Z, or W and C for a perfect angle towards a block. New blocks pop up over time, as do little yellow bonus balls.

PC screenshots of Spider-Man Remastered have leaked
https://www.pcgamer.com/pc-screenshots-of-spider-man-remastered-have-leaked/
If you can't wait until August 12 to see how Spider-Man Remastered will look on PC, a handful of screenshots from the review build have leaked via Twitter and Reddit. Here's a look at the display settings and key-mapping menus, and here's some screenshots taken on an ultrawide monitor (though not at high settings). Actually, here's a couple more.
>> You'll have to check the article to see the screenshots.

Multiversus is getting a coop arcade mode "very soon" in Season 1
https://www.pcgamer.com/multiversus-is-getting-a-coop-arcade-mode-very-soon-in-season-1/
Surprise hit platform fighting game Multiversus is picking up steam, with an announcement of what's to come in its Season 1 update at this week's EVO fighting game tournament. Most of it was known: A ranked mode, new cosmetics including skins of bugs bunny as Brünnhilde the Valkyrie, some icons and such, alongside new characters like actual real world basketball player LeBron James, or the decidedly-fictional Rick and Morty.
Perhaps most surprising was an unexpected play mode, a singleplayer and coop Classic Arcade Mode. If that's anything to go on it'll be a mode of successive battles against the AI, like classic arcade fighting game machines. Leakers and rumors say it'll be available either solo or in Multiversus' signature 2v2 mode cooperatively, will have several difficulty settings, and up to 10 stages.

Dragon Ball FighterZ and Samurai Shodown are getting rollback netcode
https://www.pcgamer.com/dragon-ball-fighterz-and-samurai-shodown-are-getting-rollback-netcode/
Annual fighting game tournament EVO returned as an in-person event for the first time since 2019 this year. As well as the competitions, including the first MultiVersus tournament, EVO 2022 included some welcome quality-of-life announcements from Bandai Namco and SNK: rollback netcode is coming to both Dragon Ball FighterZ and Samurai Shodown.

Street Fighter 6 shows off new fighter Kimberley and the return of Juri
https://www.pcgamer.com/street-fighter-6-shows-off-new-fighter-kimberley-and-the-return-of-juri/
As another riveting Evo comes to a close, the fighting game community has been treated to a bunch of neat teasers and announcements. Among them were two character announcements for Street Fighter 6: new fighter Kimberley and the return of fan favourite Juri.

'Epic has been great for many indies', says X-COM and Phoenix Point creator
https://www.pcgamer.com/epic-has-been-great-for-many-indies-says-x-com-and-phoenix-point-creator/
Epic's strategy of timed exclusives helped make it an established source of videogame deals, but not without inspiring quite a bit of vitriol—some from folk with understandable grievances, but a lot of it from Steam stans. This vitriol often gets directed towards the developers who accept these deals, too, as it did when Phoenix Point (opens in new tab) studio Snapshot Games teamed up with the store. This has not, however, soured CEO and X-COM creator Julian Gollop on the strategy.
"When we did our Epic exclusive—this was the very early days of the Epic store promotion—yeah, there was a lot of hostility. And also a lot of conspiracy theories about it. The whole Chinese spyware and all the rest of it. Obviously, that's settled down a bit, and Epic has been great for many indies, in fact. It was another avenue to get funding, of course, which is very, very difficult to get with an indie studio. So overall, it was very positive for Phoenix Point itself. We had extra money that would go into making the game, which we didn't have otherwise. So it really did help the quality of the game itself, helped us get it released sooner rather than later and enabled us to put more content in so it was good."