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

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Thursday news, part two:

Lords of the Fallen's latest story trailer gives me hope for its shamelessly heavy metal album cover setting
https://www.pcgamer.com/lords-of-the-fallens-latest-story-trailer-gives-me-hope-for-its-shamelessly-heavy-metal-album-cover-setting/
I got my hands on Lords of the Fallen earlier this month—and what I experienced was pretty promising. Weird multiverse shenanigans with a lantern that let you explore the environment, shaking up a classic souls formula by letting you peek into another world whenever you wanted.
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That vibe of unleashed high-fantasy nonsense carries on with the story trailer Hexworks dropped during Gamescom 2023, which features plenty of weird creatures I didn't get to see in the preview. It's a story trailer, sure, but I'm far more excited by the aesthetic sensibilities on display here, which you can see below.

Teenager found liable for GTA 6 hack did it in a Travelodge where police put him after he was arrested for another hack
https://www.pcgamer.com/teenager-found-liable-for-gta-6-hack-did-it-in-a-travelodge-where-police-put-him-after-he-was-arrested-for-another-hack/
A court in the UK has found that an 18-year-old from Oxford, Arion Kurtaj, was a part of the Lapsus$ hacking group responsible for hacking a range of tech firms including Nvidia and Rockstar Games. These intrusions resulted in a major leak of footage from the upcoming Grand Theft Auto 6, a game that Rockstar has yet to officially unveil, and the court heard that Kurtaj leaked the clips from a Travelodge hotel while he was already on bail after being arrested for another hack.

Beware the corpse nuke that can end your Baldur's Gate 3 playthrough with a bang
https://www.pcgamer.com/beware-the-corpse-nuke-that-can-end-your-baldurs-gate-3-playthrough-with-a-bang/
There are many ways to do massive damage in Baldur's Gate 3, we've learned. Players have devised an owlbear orbital strike and an impressively coordinated explosive barrel chain, but the greatest damage of all is hiding in your party just waiting for you to neglect it. Some early spoilers for Gale's storyline to follow, if you'd not guessed yet.

Move over every other 2024 game, the next great mud trucking sim just shot to the top of my wishlist
https://www.pcgamer.com/move-over-every-other-2024-game-the-next-great-mud-trucking-sim-just-shot-to-the-top-of-my-wishlist/
Some people took up gardening in the first months of the pandemic. Others learned to cook, built Lego sets, or got buff. My pandemic fixation was SnowRunner, the sequel to off-road trucking sim MudRunners that's essentially Death Stranding with killer mud deformation tech. It's a challenging, gorgeous, and surprisingly tranquil driving game that we wholeheartedly recommend, but my eyes are now firmly fixed on the next entry announced yesterday at Geoff Keighley's Opening Night Live stream—Expeditions: A MudRunner Game.

BioWare lays off roughly 50 employees: 'We must shift towards a more agile and more focused studio'
https://www.pcgamer.com/bioware-lays-off-roughly-50-employees-we-must-shift-towards-a-more-agile-and-more-focused-studio/
In a blog post that studio manager Gary McKay said was "deeply painful and humbling to write," BioWare announced that it is laying off roughly 50 employees in order to "preserve the health of the studio and better enable us to do what we do best: create exceptional story-driven single-player experiences filled with vast worlds and rich characters."

Bethesda exec's 'one piece of advice' for Starfield players: don't skip 'amazing stuff' because it doesn't seem like a real quest
https://www.pcgamer.com/starfield-activities-advice-gamescom/
There's no "wrong" way to play big, open-ended RPGs like Baldur's Gate 3 or Starfield, but there kind of is, right? At least, there are a lot of opinions on how to have the most fun in these games, and some of them even come from their creators. Larian boss Swen Vincke offered some advice for our first Baldur's Gate 3 playthroughs, and now Bethesda head of publishing Pete Hines has dropped a Starfield tip ahead of the September 1 launch for premium edition owners.

My favorite plane of all time is now in Microsoft Flight Simulator and oh I think I've got something in my eye
https://www.pcgamer.com/my-favorite-plane-of-all-time-is-now-in-microsoft-flight-simulator-and-oh-i-think-ive-got-something-in-my-eye/
The Dornier Do X was the biggest, heaviest, and most powerful flying boat in the world when it launched in 1929. It was also magnificent, weird, brashly ambitious, deeply flawed, and inevitably doomed—and, for those and unrelated reasons, my favorite plane of all time. We'll never be able to fly in one in real life (they're all long gone) but now we can get a sense of what it was like in Microsoft Flight Simulator, which just added the great flying boat as a new Local Legend.

The Lord of the Rings game we're actually excited to play is coming in October
https://www.pcgamer.com/the-lord-of-the-rings-game-were-actually-excited-to-play-is-coming-in-october/
Upcoming survival crafting game The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria has just announced a release date and it's breaking ground pretty soon, it turns out. We'll be delving down into the dwarven homelands starting on October 24.

Here's when Armored Core 6 unlocks in your time zone
https://www.pcgamer.com/armored-core-6-release-time-date-pc-console/
Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon brings back FromSoftware's mech series after a 10 year wait, and it's every bit the revival Armored Core deserved. After such a long wait, it'd be a shame to waste time not playing Armored Core 6 when that time could be spent tinkering with mechs and jumping into frenetic missions as soon as the game goes live. AC6 doesn't have a single global release time across platforms, though, so when exactly you'll be able to play it depends on whether you're on PC or console.
Here's Armored Core 6's release time, broken down by time zone and platform.

Stalker 2 looks great but, thanks to the situation in Ukraine, is delayed into early next year
https://www.pcgamer.com/stalker-2-looks-great-but-thanks-to-the-situation-in-ukraine-is-delayed-into-early-next-year/
Russia's illegal invasion of Ukraine is ongoing, sadly with no end to the conflict in sight, and its impacts continue to be felt globally and most acutely in Ukraine itself. Developer GSC Game World was based in Kyiv and, since the war began, has been facing the direst of circumstances: development of Stalker 2 was temporarily paused while it helped some employees flee the conflict zone, while other staff are volunteering or have signed up for the Ukrainian armed forces.
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Now there's good news and bad news. The good news is that our own Phil Savage went hands-on with Stalker 2 at Gamescom, and within three minutes had been chewed up by a dog, blasted by an anomaly, and irradiated. In other words, this sure sounds like the zone, and looks the part too. The bad news is that as part of the Gamescom appearance GSC has released a new fact sheet for the game, which pushes the release date back from late this year into Q1 2024: so anytime from January 1st to March 31st, 2024.
>> And there's an official Gamescom gameplay trailer.

Skateboarding roguelike Helskate shows off damage-buffing barrel rolls, and I'm stoked to shake off the rust
https://www.pcgamer.com/skateboarding-roguelike-helskate-shows-off-damage-buffing-barrel-rolls-and-im-stoked-to-shake-off-the-rust/
I used to love the Tony Hawk games—Underground's antagonist Eric Sparrow might still be the most punchable villain in gaming, and shredding the half pipes of Pro Skater 3's Warehouse level to Goldfinger's Superman was a formative experience.
But all good things must come to an end. I eventually betrayed my Pro Skater roots to EA's Skate games. It's been years since I've balanced on a grind rail of any description, and I'm sure that muscle memory has completely atrophied. It's going to get a workout soon though, because Phantom Coast's skateboarding action roguelike Helskate looks like it could bring me out of retirement.