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

[JEMC]

The second part of the gaming news:

This Final Fantasy Tactics-like RPG from former Octopath and Destiny devs lets you do the best thing a videogame can: Make a town look cooler while you rebuild it
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rpg/this-final-fantasy-tactics-like-rpg-from-former-octopath-and-destiny-devs-lets-you-do-the-best-thing-a-videogame-can-make-a-town-look-cooler-while-you-rebuild-it/
When I approach a videogame, all I'm looking for is one thing: the ability to construct a small hamlet. This is why I still, in stray moments, catch myself reflecting with a wistful sigh on my time rebuilding Monteriggioni in Assassin's Creed 2 or that one village you build in Breath of the Wild. This is it; this is what it's all about, man.
So my eyes quite naturally bulged out of my head when I saw what looks alarmingly like someone rebuilding a village in the trailer for upcoming tactical RPG Never's End, coming from a gaggle of devs whose previous work includes stuff like Destiny, Triangle Strategy, Octopath Traveller, Enter the Gungeon, and Gang Beasts.

This Russian fishing sim is bizarrely popular on Steam but players hate the monetisation, and to be fair it has a $2000 microtransaction
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/this-russian-fishing-sim-is-bizarrely-popular-on-steam-but-players-cant-decide-if-they-love-or-hate-it-perhaps-because-of-the-usd2000-microtransaction/
I hadn't heard of Russian Fishing 4 until PCG's Wes Fenlon noticed it was weirdly popular on Steam. The game's been available since 2018, launching on Steam in November 2021, and since then it's steadily built a considerable audience over time: per SteamDB's three year charts, it was pulling in around 7,000 concurrent players after launch, and three years later averages just over 20,000 concurrent players every day.

RuneScape studio Jagex confirms layoffs 'to reduce complexity, increase agility, and ensure we are fully focused on the areas that matter most'
https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/runescape-studio-jagex-confirms-layoffs-to-reduce-complexity-increase-agility-and-ensure-we-are-fully-focused-on-the-areas-that-matter-most/
Less than two months after releasing the open-world survival game RuneScape: Dragonwilds into early access on Steam, Jagex has laid off an unspecified number of employees. The studio says the vast majority of cuts are being made in "non-game development roles," and won't have any impact on the future development.
>> And they’ve also paused the development of private servers.

Here's when Dune: Awakening pre-loads and unlocks in your time zone
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/survival-crafting/dune-awakening-preload-time-release-date/
Dune: Awakening is almost here! After a slight delay from a planned May release, Funcom's new survival MMO set in the Dune universe is now set to launch in June, giving players the chance to build bases, harvest spice, engage in politics and PvP (there's a difference?), and get swallowed whole by massive sandworms.

Smite developer Hi-Rez Studios cuts 'senior management positions' because after all the other layoffs, 'the company had a lot of senior management in relation to our current size'
https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/smite-developer-hi-rez-studios-cuts-senior-management-positions-because-after-all-the-other-layoffs-the-company-had-a-lot-of-senior-management-in-relation-to-our-current-size/
Less than six months after laying off an estimated 70 people, Smite 2 developer Hi-Rez Studios has made another round of cuts. But this time, rather than rank-and-file employees, the layoffs are focused on "senior management positions" near the top of the company's food chain.

MindsEye is set to launch next week, so it's probably not great that the studio's chief financial officer and chief legal officer have both resigned
https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/mindseye-is-set-to-launch-next-week-so-its-probably-not-great-that-the-studios-chief-financial-officer-and-chief-legal-officer-have-both-resigned/
The pre-release saga of MindsEye, the debut game from former Rockstar Games stalwart Leslie Benzies and his Build a Rocket Boy studio, has taken another strange twist. As noticed today by Eurogamer, Build a Rocket Boy's chief financial officer and chief legal officer have both left the company, just a week ahead of MindsEye's release.
>> I’m curious about the game, but there are so many red flags around it.

Remedy announces very friendly minimum specs for its co-op Control spinoff, FBC: Firebreak. You only need a GTX 1070 for 1080 60 fps play
https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/remedy-announces-very-friendly-minimum-specs-for-its-control-spinoff-fbc-firebreak-you-only-need-a-gtx-1070-for-1080-60-fps-play/
I've been hanging out for Remedy's next game after falling head over heels in love with the developer's last big hit, Control. So when FBC: Firebreak was announced by the brand last year, I was delighted to see the team is bringing a cooperative shooter into this twisted world. Control resonated with me so intensely that it's in my top ten games of all time. This is in no small part thanks to how deeply weird the game can be, and FBC: Firebreak is looking to ramp this right up for some silly fire-zombie shenanigans.
With any new game release, there's always the question of hardware. And given how much of a ray tracing demon Control was for its time, I was a little worried about how demanding FBC might end up. There's not much reason to get excited for a game that my machine can't even run. Well, thankfully, Remedy recently announced the required specs over on BlueSky, and this is looking like a game that will still run, even on a fairly dated rig.

'I want you to have the confidence to give it a try': Elden Ring Nightreign's combat director politely tells you to git gud, says he's beat all the game's bosses, solo, without relics
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rpg/i-want-you-to-have-the-confidence-to-give-it-a-try-elden-ring-nightreigns-combat-director-politely-tells-you-to-git-gud-says-hes-beat-all-the-games-bosses-solo-without-relics/
Elden Ring Nightreign is a hard game—no, not just hard, sometimes downright unfair. It's in a way that's incredibly charming, mind, but as our own Ted Litchfield wrote last week, it's "player hostile" or, in other words, occasionally "such bullshit". I had my own taste of this recently as, while playing with a couple of other PCG folks, we got a boss down to around 2% HP, decided to try and finish it off, and got insta-gibbed by a muddily-telegraphed AoE. Nightreign'd.
However, combat director Junya Ishizaki wants you to believe in yourself, especially in the face of a capricious game that mostly hates and wants to murder you. That's per an interview with CNET, wherein Ishizaki says:

'Why are they so greedy': Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 players are in disbelief to find bundle ads but Activision claims it's simply a 'UI feature test' that was published 'in error'
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/call-of-duty/why-are-they-so-greedy-call-of-duty-black-ops-6-players-are-in-disbelief-to-find-bundle-ads-but-activision-claims-its-simply-a-ui-feature-test-that-was-published-in-error/
Over the weekend a Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 player noticed something different about the weapon select menu: for some reason there were bundle ads embedded into it. This feature has since been taken down by Activision, which claims it was just a mistake, but even just a glimpse of these ads was enough to infuriate players.

'The problem isn't necessarily the yellow paint', says the Witcher 4 design lead, but its overuse: 'People see through the smoke and mirrors'
https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/game-development/the-problem-isnt-necessarily-the-yellow-paint-says-the-witcher-4-design-lead-but-its-overuse-people-see-through-the-smoke-and-mirrors/
One of the more surface-level discourses in videogames in recent memory has been the hullabaloo over yellow paint—gamers the world over decrying games with obvious sunshine climbables as being patronising slop for little babies (I'm exaggerating, a little). But Miles Tost, the level design lead for The Witcher 4, tells PCG's Joshua Wolens that it's a little more complicated than yellow paint good or yellow paint bad.