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

[JEMC]

Thursday news, part two:

World of Warcraft player gets visited by benevolent twink 'Boostlord', a level 10 monster mage juiced up on funky dungeon scaling
https://www.pcgamer.com/world-of-warcraft-player-gets-visited-by-benevolent-twink-boostlord-a-level-10-monster-mage-juiced-up-on-funky-dungeon-scaling/
Since World of Warcraft's release, "twinks" have been a problem. For those familiar enough with gay culture to be scandalised, I promise that's the actual MMORPG lingo. A twink in an MMO is a low-level character you pour a bunch of effort (and typically money) into, giving them absurdly powerful gear—proportionately, at least. Etymology lessons will come later.
It's usually used to dunk on people in PvP. The twinks I know would grab an alt character, level them to 19, kit them out, and run rampant. This happened so often during my time with Vanilla WoW that I still get a fight or flight response when I see anyone with those freaking goggles on. If you know, you know.
Nowadays, though, some gamers are twinking for good. (...)
>> I'll leave it here, Check the article to learn more.

The reason we got Left 4 Dead 2 as a standalone game was because the first one 'was such a broken thing that nobody wanted to touch it'
https://www.pcgamer.com/the-reason-we-got-left-4-dead-2-as-a-standalone-game-was-because-the-first-one-was-such-a-broken-thing-that-nobody-wanted-to-touch-it/
It was Left 4 Dead 2's birthday two days ago, marking 14 years since the release of our 70th top PC game of all time. It's all a distant memory now, but that game's announcement originally drew a fair bit of heat from fans, even sparking one of our hobby's many doomed fan boycott movements. Releasing almost exactly a year after L4D1, some fans felt that Valve had betrayed them. Where was the long tail of development for the first game? Why was the studio moving on to something entirely new instead of integrating L4D2's content into the first game?
Well, it turns out there's an answer to that, and it's because L4D1 was so spectacularly broken no one at Valve dared touch it. So says Chet Faliszek, former Left 4 Dead lead and current lead on The Anacrusis, in a recent chat with Game Developer.

PUBG is getting an extraction shooter spinoff next year
https://www.pcgamer.com/pubg-is-getting-an-extraction-shooter-spinoff-next-year/
The house that PUBG: Battlegrounds built is branching out from battle royale. Krafton announced in its latest financial report that its latest game from PUBG Studios is "Project Black Budget," an extraction shooter planned to release in the second half of 2024.

Classic Digimon fans are digging this creature catching RPG I almost missed last week
https://www.pcgamer.com/classic-digimon-fans-are-digging-this-creature-catching-rpg-i-almost-missed-last-week/
Just like with cozy farm sims, there are way more monster-taming PC games to choose from than there were only a few years ago. It's easy to miss some of the smaller contenders, so I'm glad I managed to catch Anode Heart. This monster taming RPG launched just last week and, based on what I've played in its demo, is doing a great job channelling the good old aughts.

Six months after rebooting Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time Remake, Ubisoft says it's coming along nicely: 'The project has passed an important internal milestone'
https://www.pcgamer.com/six-months-after-rebooting-prince-of-persia-the-sands-of-time-remake-ubisoft-says-its-coming-along-nicely-the-project-has-passed-an-important-internal-milestone/
Is the Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time remake a new Skull and Bones? I'm starting to think it might be. After multiple delays, a complete reboot, and a warning to fans not to expect to hear more about the game in 2023, Ubisoft has dropped a brief message reassuring everyone that it's coming along nicely, and we'll be hearing more about it at some undefined point in the future.
>> Something positive coming from Ubisoft? Wow, that rarely happens nowadays.

An alt-history 'city builder grand strategy hybrid' set amidst two World Wars? Yes, you have my attention
https://www.pcgamer.com/an-alt-history-city-builder-grand-strategy-hybrid-set-amidst-two-world-wars-yes-you-have-my-attention/
Just the words "city builder" are enough to get my attention. Tack on "grand strategy"—as in you not only build a city but clash with a larger world using military and economic strategies—and I'm even more interested. Throw in an alt-history World War 1 and World War 2 setting, and yes. Yes, I am definitely sitting up and taking notice.

Sources claim the Knights of the Old Republic remake isn't dead, though what's really going on is anyone's guess
https://www.pcgamer.com/sources-claim-the-knights-of-the-old-republic-remake-isnt-dead-though-whats-really-going-on-is-anyones-guess/
It's been yet another rollercoaster week for Embracer's beleaguered remake of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, which was "delayed indefinitely" last year after Texan studio Aspyr Media was relieved of development duties. On Friday, reports emerged that Embracer's boss had refused comment on the fate of the game, stating with exquisite irony "I notice that anything I say to this becomes a headline."
This triggered a fresh wave of speculation about the game, speculation that was further fuelled by claims from Giant Bomb's Jeff Grubb that the remake "is not being worked on right now". Now, though, two developers at Saber Interactive, Asypr's parent company, have stated that the game is still in production.

17 years after its release, the best Star Wars strategy game gets converted to 64-bit
https://www.pcgamer.com/17-years-after-its-release-the-best-star-wars-strategy-game-gets-converted-to-64-bit/
November is a time for looking back at the past, whether that's through Bonfire Night, Thanksgiving, or in a more recent tradition, randomly patching up old-ass games. Last week, Valve were patching decades-old bugs in Half-Life as part of the game's 25'th anniversary celebrations. Now Star Wars: Empire at War is getting 64-bit support, 17 years on since its release.
Issued as a "maintenance patch update", the headline change in the patch notes reads "Both games have been converted from 32-bit to 64-bit applications". This has been done to "solve many out-of-memory bugs and crashes that players were experiencing."

Bayonetta creator Hideki Kamiya says 'It would be a disaster' if he ever collaborated with Hideo Kojima or Yoko Taro: 'It doesn't work like in Dragon Ball'
https://www.pcgamer.com/bayonetta-creator-hideki-kamiya-says-it-would-be-a-disaster-if-he-ever-collaborated-with-hideo-kojima-or-yoko-taro-it-doesnt-work-like-in-dragon-ball/
"Unemployed man" Hideki Kamiya continues to update his YouTube channel in the wake of his departure from Platinum, keeping the world at large updated on what he's been cooking, his opinions on onsen, and the last time he visited an aquarium.
All of which is a treat, but Kamiya has been chatting about a few videogame-related things too, including the likelihood of him ever teaming up with other legendary devs like Yoko Taro and Hideo Kojima. In short? Kamiya reckons a team-up like that would just cause friction.

A former GTA dev made an ill-fated blog about his experiences, and boy did Rockstar not like that: 'Maybe I'll try again in a decade or two'
https://www.pcgamer.com/a-former-gta-dev-made-an-ill-fated-blog-about-his-experiences-and-boy-did-rockstar-not-like-that-maybe-ill-try-again-in-a-decade-or-two/
I love hearing about all the little bits of developer weirdness that go into making games—cursed rain orbs, hidden centrifuges, and, most recently, the revelation that Grand Theft Auto 3's weird moon sniping easter egg was due to an unresolved dispute between artists. That last one's thanks to a dev blog by Rockstar North's former technical director, Obbe Vermeij.
According to his LinkedIn profile, Vermeij was a technical director at Rockstar North from 1995-2009, working on Grand Theft Auto 3 & 4, Vice City, and San Andreas. On November 11, Vermeij announced he'd be starting a developer blog about his "time at Rockstar North" on Twitter/X.
Vermeij's insights—both silly dev anecdotes and genuinely fascinating details, like the reveal that GTA 3 had a short-lived deathmatch mode—were all pretty interesting. Unfortunately, the lion's share of them are gone now, which Vermeij says are due to an email from his former colleagues.
"I got an email from [Rockstar North]," Vermeij writes in his final post. "I genuinely didn't think anyone would mind me talking about 20 year old games but I was wrong. Something about ruining the Rockstar mystique or something."
>> You know, I'm "starting" to think that it was Rockstar the ones that went after the mods of their games, not Take Two, and that their bosses are a bunch of d*ckheads.

Dave the Diver studio's zombie survival sim gets its pre-alpha playtest next week
https://www.pcgamer.com/dave-the-diver-studios-zombie-survival-sim-gets-its-pre-alpha-playtest-next-week/
Dave the Diver is one of PC Gamer's favourite games of 2023, no small feat in a year as crammed with great releases as this one has been. (...)
Naturally, we were hugely excited by what colourful, charming adventure developer Mintrocket might conjure up next. The good news is that its next game is coming much sooner than you'd expect, with a planned release in 2024. The…interesting news is that it’s a PvPvE Zombie Survival game called Nakwon: Last Paradise.