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

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Tuesday news, part two:

Suda51 thinks Shadows of the Damned has a better shot today than it did in 2011: 'Weirder, more non-standard games feel much more natural to players nowadays'
https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/suda51-thinks-shadows-of-the-damned-has-a-better-shot-today-than-it-did-in-2011-weirder-more-non-standard-games-feel-much-more-natural-to-players-nowadays/
Despite being a beloved game studio with more than 25 years of history, scrappy Japanese game developer Grasshopper Manufacture has never made mega sellers. Founder Suda51 has a knack for niche between the likes of The Silver Case and Killer7, and almost every game released by the studio has reviewed fairly well and enjoyed cult following. But sales have been, well… from what we can tell, Killer is Dead is the best performing on Steam with an all-time peak of just 4,255 players according to SteamDB. Over a decade ago now, Grasshopper’s at-the-time CEO Yoshimi Yasuda claimed that Lollipop Chainsaw was the studio’s best-selling game ever at 700K units.
But maybe this time will be different. Since Grasshopper's shooter Shadows of the Damned came out in 2011 and was a notorious flop, games for us sickos have become more lucrative—or at least have a much better chance of finding their people. That's what Suda51 hopes for Shadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered, out this week.

The new Call of Duty Zombies mode is bananas: players are going bowling, turning into superheroes, and crafting jet guns
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/call-of-duty/black-ops-6-zombies-mode-is-bananas/
The vibes are good in Call of Duty Zombies this year. Black Ops 6's latest crack at the beloved PvE mode is a genuine hit with fans so far, and it's easy to see why: This is the first CoD in four years with traditional round-based Zombies developed by the mode's creators, Treyarch, and the wacky, unbelievably elaborate Easter eggs the mode has become known for are even wackier and more elaborate than usual.

One of Baldur's Gate 3's cut NPCs is an Oscar-winning liar who probably would've rinsed my bleeding heart out of 50 gold, if I'm being honest
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/baldurs-gate/one-of-baldurs-gate-3s-cut-npcs-is-a-oscar-winning-liar-who-probably-wouldve-rinsed-my-bleeding-heart-out-of-50-gold-if-im-being-honest/
Baldur's Gate 3 has a wealth of cut conversation and content that, a year later, is still getting dredged up by its data mining fans. This latest one comes from YouTuber SlimX, who managed to find an all-time swindler meant to mess with you in Act 1—you can watch her legendary Charisma (Deception) check below.

Baldur's Gate 3 publishing chief praises Dragon Age: The Veilguard as a 'binge-worthy Netflix series' and says that it knows what it 'wants to be'
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/dragon-age/baldurs-gate-3-publishing-chief-praises-dragon-age-the-veilguard-as-a-binge-worthy-netflix-series-and-says-that-it-knows-what-it-wants-to-be/
This week, BioWare is releasing Dragon Age: The Veilguard, an RPG that is sure to see endless comparisons to Baldur's Gate 3, the Larian Studios-developed sequel in a series started by BioWare 26 years ago. Larian's publishing chief Michael Douse has been playing The Veilguard alongside reviewers for the last few weeks and went on X to call it "the first Dragon Age game that truly knows what it wants to be."

Bungie has finally broken its silence on Marathon, but without the promised gameplay and practically no details—gulp?
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/fps/bungie-has-finally-broken-its-silence-on-marathon-but-without-the-promised-gameplay-and-practically-no-details-gulp/
After "going dark" over a year ago, Bungie is again talking about Marathon—the PvP extraction shooter based on its '90s classic—although it hasn't brought along the gameplay footage it promised, and is being about as vague as you can be while still technically using words in an order that conveys meaning.

'This really hurts': Path of Exile 2 early access has been delayed by three weeks
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rpg/this-really-hurts-path-of-exile-2-early-access-has-been-delayed-by-three-weeks/
Path of Exile 2 will launch into early access three weeks later than planned due to last-minute "server side infrastructure work". More specifically, it's to do with making sure microtransactions work seamlessly across both Path of Exile and the forthcoming sequel, a long-promised feature that will, according to game director Jonathan Rogers, require a lot more load testing before it can go live.

No Man's Sky dev pulls out all the stops to fix a player's buggy save with 611 hours of playtime at risk: 'I promise to hawk that bug and fix it'
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/survival-crafting/no-mans-sky-dev-pulls-out-all-the-stops-to-fix-a-players-buggy-save-with-611-hours-of-playtime-at-risk-i-promise-to-hawk-that-bug-and-fix-it/
What's the biggest save disaster you've ever had? I still wake up in a cold sweat remembering the cold April day in 2009 when I quicksaved in the final level of Max Payne a nanosecond before a bullet took my head clean off. Was that my only save? Yes. Was I an idiot? Yes. Did I learn anything from it? Absolutely not.
But I only lost about eight hours of progress. That's a pittance compared to the 611 hours—or 25 days—that was recently at risk for one No Man's Sky player who recently submitted a broken save to Hello Games in search of a fix (via GamesRadar).
Their problem wasn't a mistimed quicksave, though. As No Man's Sky engine programmer Martin Griffiths details over on X: "Today I received a 611 hour save that reproduced a flickering bug that has been reported half a dozen times on my posts here." Naturally, said Griffiths, "when a player has put that much into our game it deserves the engineering fix… and this then trickles down to all our future long term players," who promised to "hawk that bug and fix it". You can see a video of the glitch in action below.
The good news is that Griffiths managed to save the player's, uh, save. In a further update, he posts a video of the game running flicker-free in the same area on the same save. Per Griffiths, the problem was a "general engine bug/limit being reached," which means that his fix will "probably help other large bases that had this issue on Xbox."

WoW massively buffs rewards for its anniversary event a week after its release—which would be the fourth time in a year it's had to do similar
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/world-of-warcraft/wow-massively-buffs-rewards-for-its-anniversary-event-a-week-after-its-release-which-would-be-the-fourth-time-in-a-year-its-had-to-do-similar/
World of Warcraft's released a limited-time event with stingy rewards and has, after community backlash, massively buffed the rate at which those rewards are doled out—if that sounds familiar to you, it's because Blizzard's now done it four times in the past year.

Shinji Mikami applauds the Resident Evil 4 remake for taking 'the half-assed scenario that I just wrote up in 2 weeks' and fleshing it out
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/action/shinji-mikami-applauds-the-resident-evil-4-remake-for-taking-the-half-assed-scenario-that-i-just-wrote-up-in-2-weeks-and-fleshing-it-out/
Shinji Mikami is the original mastermind behind Resident Evil and played the impressive role of creating Resident Evil 4's original story. I never thought that a remake could beat the original Resi 4, but I was quickly humbled once I actually played the one we got last year, and it seems like Mikami has a similar view towards the later iterations of his games.

Stardew Valley creator has bested his own cursed minigame to snag 100% achievement completion on Steam
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/sim/stardew-valley-creator-has-bested-his-own-cursed-minigame-to-snag-100-percent-achievement-completion-on-steam/
I feel like there are few games endearing enough to have their own creators playing in their spare time, but ConcernedApe has racked up his fair share of non-development hours in Stardew Valley at this point. He spent a good chunk of Covid working through a co-op farm as a way to keep in touch with friends, and now he's managed to do something I'm still nowhere near after hundreds of hours: snagging every achievement in the game.