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

[JEMC]

PCGamer has published over 100 new articles since Thursday. I’m obviously not going to post them all so check their archive to read them all. And I suggest you do it, because there are a lot of new game announcements

Meanwhile, here are 10 randomly selected articles published between the 5th and the 8th:

Jean-Claude Van Damme is coming to Hitman, and you better believe he's doing splits all over the place
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/action/jean-claude-van-damme-is-coming-to-hitman-and-you-better-believe-hes-doing-splits-all-over-the-place/
Hitman has a new celebrity Elusive Target and it's none other than The Muscles From Brussels, Jean-Claude Van Damme. The '90s action movie icon will portray Max Valliant, a legendary former ICA operative taken out by his own agency after he was found doing deals with the wrong people. Presumed dead for years, he's back—and he's not happy.

Craftlings looks to occupy some beautiful place between Terraria and Lemmings
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/city-builder/craftlings-looks-to-occupy-some-beautiful-place-between-terraria-and-lemmings/
Adorable strategy games where you herd a bunch of tiny idiots are in short supply these days, so let me tell you how exciting the trailer for Craftlings, debuted today at the PC Gaming Show: Most Wanted, has made me: Very excited. As a child of the Lemmings generation still very much in love with modern pixel art, this one's just for me, specifically, but it can also be for you.

Rogue Eclipse joins a procedurally generated campaign for Star Fox’s contested crown
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rogue-eclipse-joins-a-procedurally-generated-campaign-for-star-foxs-contested-crown/
You wait forever for a new Star Fox, and suddenly they’re everywhere. Sadly most lack the charm of Nintendo’s classic semi-on-rails shooter series, but Rogue Eclipse looks to be one of the more interesting contenders for the throne, at least judging by its PC Gaming Show: Most Wanted trailer today. Indie studio Huskrafts is beaming at least 70% of your RDA of Space Explosions into your eyeballs here, so give it a look.

Moonlighter 2: The Endless Vault reopens the RPG shop in 2025 with a new look
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rpg/moonlighter-2-the-endless-vault-reopens-the-rpg-shop-in-2025-with-a-new-look/
Moonlighter, the 2018 merchant RPG that found its way into my library based on art style alone, is getting a sequel. Moonlighter 2: The Endless Vault was revealed during today's PC Gaming Show: Most Wanted, with plans to open up shop sometime in 2025.

Mohrta is now one of my must-plays for 2025: A surreal, striking FPS that somehow got soulslike levels and bosses working on the Doom engine
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/fps/mohrta-is-now-one-of-my-must-plays-for-2025-a-surreal-striking-fps-that-somehow-got-soulslike-levels-and-bosses-working-on-the-doom-engine/
Doom engine FPS-RPG-soulslike thing Mohrta has gotten a new trailer highlighting its strange world and 2025 release window as part of The PC Gaming Show: Most Wanted, but you don't have to wait until next year to check this one out⁠—I spent nearly three hours playing Mohrta's generous demo on Steam, and it got me giddy for the full deal even with the glut of boomer shooters in recent years.

'Survival-climber' Cairn just dropped a demo so you can go hands-on with the insurmountable Mount Kami
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/survival-crafting/survival-climber-cairn-just-dropped-a-demo-so-you-can-go-hands-on-with-the-insurmountable-mount-kami/
Everything from Assassin's Creed to Tomb Raider makes climbing sheer rock faces look cool and effortless. But "survival-climber" Cairn is not going to hold your hand when it says this: climbing is hard as hell (and still cool).
The next game from the developers of Furi and Haven debuted a new trailer during today's PC Gaming Show: Most Wanted showcase and it really makes clear just how stressful surviving a climb can be. It's downright nerve-wracking hearing the shallow, panicked breathing of protagonist Aava as she jams pitons into a rock face in the middle of a downpour—and eventually slips.
>> I won’t make you scroll until the very end of the article for the link: here it is… at the end of my version of the article.

PUBG creator Brendan Greene just released a free tech demo of his new game engine on Steam that lets you play with 'an Earth-scale world generated in real-time'
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/pubg-creator-brendan-greene-just-released-a-free-tech-demo-of-his-new-game-engine-on-steam-that-lets-you-play-with-an-earth-scale-world-generated-in-real-time/
How do you follow up the creation of one of the biggest games of all time? If you're Brendan Greene, aka PlayerUnknown, it's by building something even bigger. Greene, creator of PUBG, founded a studio called PlayerUnknown Productions where he and his team have been working on a massively multiplayer sandbox called Artemis: a digital world the size of an actual planet.
Today on the PC Gaming Show: Most Wanted, Greene revealed that he's ready to let players get some hands-on time with the engine powering that planet by releasing Preface: Undiscovered World. Preface is a tech demo of the engine the studio is using to build Artemis, which generates planets "using machine learning technology [and] natural Earth data to generate these worlds from latent space," Greene said.
Want to see a planet-sized planet on your own desktop? You can download Preface: Undiscovered World on Steam and play with it for free right now.

Tempest Rising is a modern take on Command & Conquer you probably know you want
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/strategy/tempest-rising-is-a-modern-take-on-command-and-conquer-you-probably-know-you-want/
Classic-style RTS Tempest Rising has debuted a new trailer at the PC Gaming Show: Most Wanted today, where the peacekeepers of the Global Defense Forces take on their enemies of the Tempest Dynasty in the kind of base-building RTS that ruled the '90s and early 2000s. Though it has CGI characters rather than full motion video, it's still got that dark-but-upbeat vibe you associate with the best RTS of that era. The trailer comes complete with a new release window: April 2025.

'We have more levels than players': This indie dev's game was a complete flop, but he's powering through with his plan to release 20 seasons of new content anyway
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/action/we-have-more-levels-than-players-this-indie-devs-game-was-a-complete-flop-but-hes-powering-through-with-his-plan-to-release-20-seasons-of-new-content-anyway/
I was initially attracted to Endlight, a weird indie game about getting hoops, by its intense, almost overwhelming trailer, but what hooked me were the less obvious but very clever bits lying beneath its sensory onslaught: Levels are punctuated by odd, sometimes very funny chunks of text that made me feel as though developer Jim McGinley was watching and talking in the background as I played. I also loved the game's central conceit: Every level can only be completed once. After it's done, it's gone forever.
The twist is that once a year, Endlight offers a "Right to Replay" challenge, the reward being an in-game "coupon" allowing the holder to play Endlight again—but just once, from the very beginning—at any time over the following 12 months. It's twisted, completely counter-intuitive, and to McGinley, extremely funny: He acknowledged that a lot of players would hate the idea, but added, "I think people will come around to appreciating the humour."
Some no doubt did. Endlight has a "positive" user rating on Steam, which is good: The bad is, that rating comes from just 28 reviews. Endlight launched on Steam in July 2023, and put up an all-time peak concurrent player count of—it almost physically hurts to say this—three. Endlight, McGinley said earlier this year, has more levels than players.
"Still the case!" he told me in a more recent chat. "After returns, we're at ~325 sales. Endlight has 16 seasons, 400 levels."

Civilization 7 is officially 2025's Most Wanted PC game, and the creative director told us how he’s going to get you to finally finish a Civ campaign
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/civilization-7-is-officially-2025s-most-wanted-pc-game-and-creative-director-told-us-how-hes-going-to-get-you-to-finally-finish-a-civ-campaign/
Okay, be honest; you’ve probably not finished too many full campaigns in the Civilization series. It’s okay, neither have I—there’s always some reason to tap out and start fresh. We’re not alone, and Firaxis has the numbers to prove it. Answering an assortment of interview questions from our sagely Council for The PC Gaming Show: Most Wanted—where Civilization 7 was just voted the #1 anticipated game for 2025—creative director Ed Beach got on camera to let us know what’s going to be different this time, and how Firaxis is going to be re-defining the genre after 34 years of iteration.