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

[JEMC]

The Monday news, the long part two:

Alone in the Dark, Trine 5, and more to be shown off at THQ Nordic's summer showcase
https://www.pcgamer.com/alone-in-the-dark-trine-5-and-more-to-be-shown-off-at-thq-nordics-summer-showcase/
THQ Nordic's Digital Showcase will grace our screens again this summer, and promises to "not only include world premiere announcements but also updates and reveals for previously-announced games". It'll run on August 11 at 12 pm PDT / 3 pm EDT / 8 pm BST / 9 pm CEST / 10 pm EEST on the company's YouTube and Twitch pages, and also its Steam page, if you're really keen to watch it there for some reason.

Victoria 3's first gameplay DLC lets you invite Marx and Lenin to your place for tea and revolution
https://www.pcgamer.com/victoria-3s-first-gameplay-dlc-lets-you-invite-marx-and-lenin-to-your-place-for-tea-and-revolution/
Victoria 3 has announced its first piece of gameplay-focused DLC, and it sounds radical. The Voice of the People immersion pack releases on May 22 alongside Vicky 3's 1.3 update, and adds a whole roster of historical troublemakers and rabble-rousers to the game in the form of agitators, "a new kind of character that rally your pops to support Political Movements that align with their Ideology".

Garry's mod wrestles with the complexities of just outright banning Nazi stuff
https://www.pcgamer.com/garrys-mod-wrestles-with-the-complexities-of-just-outright-banning-nazi-stuff/
Eighty years later the shadow of World War 2 still looms large over our world, and remains an enduring obsession for some, but on one thing nearly all are agreed: The Nazis were complete pricks, and any contemporary hint of their ideology and symbolism must be met with the greatest possible pushback.

Dark and Darker lawyers fire back at Nexon: 'nothing more than anti-competitive bully tactics designed to put a small indie firm out of business'
https://www.pcgamer.com/dark-and-darker-lawyers-fire-back-at-nexon-nothing-more-than-anti-competitive-bully-tactics-designed-to-put-a-small-indie-firm-out-of-business/
Dark and Darker developer Ironmace may be the "punk hero of PC gaming" right now, but it's also making some power moves in the strait-laced chambers of the law. The studio has now fired back at Nexon with a full-throated defense of its game, saying that Nexon is just mad that some of its former employees have struck out on their own.

Over a million people have played the XDefiant beta
https://www.pcgamer.com/over-a-million-people-have-played-the-xdefiant-beta/
Ubisoft's upcoming 6v6 shooter XDefiant is doing pretty well for itself in closed beta. According to the publisher, it's attracted a million players so far. For a while, it was even beating Modern Warfare 2 on Twitch, although viewership has fallen off as the beta has gone on—it's got about 12K viewers as I write this.

The cute cozy cat game we've been watching for 6 years is finally coming out
https://www.pcgamer.com/the-cute-cozy-cat-game-weve-been-watching-for-6-years-is-finally-coming-out/
Mineko's Night Market, a game about earning a living, playing with cats, and hanging out with the Sun God, really impressed us when we first looked at it in July 2017. We remained impressed when we checked it out again in November of that same year—and for the record, that's not a typo, it was 2017. Now, six years down the road, it's finally got a release date: September 26, 2023.

Four more Ubisoft games are headed to Steam this summer
https://www.pcgamer.com/four-more-ubisoft-games-are-headed-to-steam-this-summer/
Ubisoft's return to Steam continued today, as store pages for four more games slated to arrive this summer—Far Cry 6, Rainbow Six Extraction, Riders Republic, and Monopoly Madness—are now live.

'We're running at a f**king wall, and we're gonna crash'—CD Projekt's lead quest designer on big budget RPGs
https://www.pcgamer.com/were-running-at-a-f-ing-wall-and-were-gonna-crashcd-projekts-lead-quest-designer-on-big-budget-rpgs/
Recent PC Gamer editorial "The cinematic BioWare-style RPG is dead, it just doesn't know it yet" caused quite "a commotion" between the lead designers at developer CD Projekt Red, Cyberpunk 2077 quest director Paweł Sasko said in a recent PC Gamer roundtable interview. "Everyone actually, after reading this article, said: we mostly agree, actually, with the thesis. At least when it comes to triple-A, we are just running at a fucking wall, I think, and we're gonna crash on that wall really soon."

Zero-gravity FPS Boundary is quietly one of April's coolest new releases
https://www.pcgamer.com/boundary-early-access-release/
Boundary is a game about astronauts—sorry, astroperators—who float around in space having gunfights with each other, and if space sounds like a challenging place for shooting guns at people, you'd be right. Space is really not the ideal location for anything humans do, nevermind tactical infantry battles, but it is quite a lot of fun.

Sony likes this studio's unannounced service game so much it bought it
https://www.pcgamer.com/sony-likes-this-studios-unannounced-service-game-so-much-it-bought-it/
Sony is so pleased with work done by external developer Firewalk Studios on an as-yet unannounced game that it has decided to acquire the development studio part and parcel with its in-progress game. We don't know much about Firewalk, which was founded in 2018, but we do know that it was working on some kind of live service game—you know, your eternal games, your Destinys and all that.
>> the-pi-guy made a thread about this days ago.

Josh Sawyer: 'The most compromised games I worked on were Pillars of Eternity 1 and 2'
https://www.pcgamer.com/josh-sawyer-the-most-compromised-games-i-worked-on-were-pillars-of-eternity-1-and-2/
At GDC this year, PC Gamer hosted a roundtable in which a group of veteran RPG designers came together to discuss topics ranging from whether the cinematic BioWare-style RPG is dead to the impact of Elden Ring's success. When the conversation came around to the subject of how much their games were based on what the RPG audience was looking for, versus their own personal taste, Obsidian's design director Josh Sawyer—whose design credits include Fallout: New Vegas, Pentiment, Alpha Protocol, and plenty more—went all the way back to the beginning of his career.

Immersive sim Consortium delisted to make way for a remaster, free to owners of the original
https://www.pcgamer.com/immersive-sim-consortium-delisted-to-make-way-for-a-remaster-free-to-owners-of-the-original/
In his deep dive on the history of the best immersive sims, Rick Lane called 2014's Consortium "a dynamic murder mystery that takes place inside a giant military plane" that was "rather rough around the edges". Some of those edges are about to be sanded smooth, with indie developer Interdimensional Games announcing via Steam blog post that it's developing Consortium Remastered.

Toasterball is kind of like pong but with toast instead of paddles
https://www.pcgamer.com/toasterball-is-kind-of-like-pong-but-with-toast-instead-of-paddles/
Have you ever asked yourself "What if The Brave Little Toaster was a sports movie? " No? Me neither, but here's Toasterball anyway, a hysterical-looking little party game about toasters competing in a professional tennis or pong-like sport by shooting toast in the air to deflect balls. It's a physics-based sportslike that's definitely laser-focused on the delight of local multiplayer—either in person or via Steam's Remote Play Together.

16-year-old LOTRO invites you to go loot the Witch-king's house for its anniversary
https://www.pcgamer.com/16-year-old-lotro-invites-you-to-go-loot-the-witch-kings-house-for-its-anniversary/
Lord of the Rings online is celebrating its 16th anniversary this year, releasing this past week update 35.1 (wow) and adding a cool new raid alongside a bunch of upgrades and gifts for players. While players long-ago plundered the Witch-king's citadel at Angmar and deposed the wraiths dwelling there, it turns out that like every other evil in Middle-Earth they probably should have just gone and chucked everything there in a volcano for good measure.

Diablo 4 will have a a 'pinnacle boss' intended to be your character's final challenge
https://www.pcgamer.com/diablo-4-will-have-a-a-pinnacle-boss-intended-to-be-your-characters-final-challenge/
The endgame of Diablo 4 sure does sound like it includes a bunch of MMO dailies in disguise, but not to worry: Blizzard has said the latest incarnation of its action RPG hasn't been designed to devour your entire actual life. After all, that's what World of Warcraft is for.