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

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Monday gaming news, part number two:

'Veilguard is 4 games stitched together', says ex-BioWare lead Mark Darrah, and it might've been better to 'shut the project down completely' around 2017
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/dragon-age/veilguard-is-4-games-stitched-together-says-ex-bioware-lead-mark-darrah-and-it-mightve-been-better-to-shut-the-project-down-completely-around-2017/
Mark Darrah's tell-all with YouTuber MrMattyPlays has been doing the rounds—including on the good site PC Gamer—and for great reason. The former BioWare producer seems to've hit a point where he's happy to simply divulge exactly what (he believes) went wrong with BioWare, the dozen little disasters that led to the, at the moment, death of Dragon Age.
In the video below (starting at around 39 minutes), Darrah says he believes Veilguard was "four games stitched together, and you can really see the stitching," a shot before the absolute chaster that is: "assuming that EA was gonna prioritise Anthem over Dragon Age … the one single act that could've made a massive difference to Veilguard would've been to shut the project down completely when I moved on to Anthem."
>> PCGamer keeps milking this interview, like they did last week, with another two articles about how Dragon Age 2 wasn’t Dragon Age Origins 2, and the Stop Killing Games initiative.

Bongo Cat, still one of the biggest games on Steam, gets even bigger with multiplayer: You can now have up to 100 cats on your screen at once, all of them happily bapping away as their owners type
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/life-sim/bongo-cat-still-one-of-the-biggest-games-on-steam-gets-even-bigger-with-multiplayer-you-can-now-have-up-to-100-cats-on-your-screen-at-once-all-of-them-happily-bapping-away-as-their-owners-type/
Back in April we discovered Bongo Cat, a silly idle game about a cat with a hat who smacks your screen when you type. Silly, but also huge: Bongo Cat was one of the biggest games on Steam at the time, holding the number 12 spot on Steam's most played chart. Four months later it's still riding high on the charts, and earlier this week it got even better—because Bongo Cat is now multiplayer.

I had low expectations for this upcoming FMV 'interactive horror' game, but its hour-long demo turned out to be one of the most entertaining things I've played all year
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/adventure/dead-reset-preview/
The first time I encountered the multi-tentacled specimen living in the guts of the anonymous, unconscious woman lying on the operating table, I was genuinely creeped out. It was gooey, pulsating slightly, and clearly on the cusp of doing something startling and very gross. A few minutes later, it did, and it was—and I died horribly.
By the fourth time I laid eyes on the specimen, I was laughing. Not because it was no longer gooey and gross—it was—but because I'd started picking up what FMV "interactive horror movie" Dead Reset was putting down: Alien by way of The Evil Dead, caught up in a Stargate: SG1-style time loop. It's earnest, serious, horrific, and absolutely goofy as shit—and, through the hour-ish runtime of the demo I played, an utter riot.

Battlefield 6 and Valorant's invasive anti-cheats are locked in a turf war
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/fps/battlefield-6-and-valorants-invasive-anti-cheats-are-locked-in-a-turf-war/
The girlies are fighting. And by girlies, I am of course referring to invasive anti-cheat solutions vying for territory at the deepest levels of your PC.
We are firmly in the age of kernel-level anti-cheat, a reality demonstrated last week when some Battlefield 6 beta players were restricted from playing until they uninstalled a conflicting bit of software called "Valorant."
(...)
Both anti-cheats are so aggressive in their cheat-countering tactics that they butt heads when trying to do the same thing. As Tom's Hardware's Hassam Nasir elegantly put it: "[Vanguard] basically impersonates Windows by inserting itself into the OS’s low-level dispatch paths and memory management in a way few other commercial drivers do. And this is where it collides with other games: kernel-level anti-cheats can’t easily share control."
>> They cite a Tom’s Hardware article detailing the clash of both systems.

'It is straight up junk': Fan favorite mode Rush is going down like a lead balloon in the Battlefield 6 beta
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/fps/it-is-straight-up-junk-fan-favorite-mode-rush-is-going-down-like-a-lead-balloon-in-the-battlefield-6-beta/
What have they done to my beautiful boy? Rush, one of the greatest modes of Battlefields past, is a total bust in the Battlefield 6 beta. Its debut is going down so poorly with fans that Battlefield Studios should seriously consider going back to the drawing board.

'The Day Before 2?': Everyone is skeptical about this survival game promising a map five times the size of DayZ and 5,000 players per server
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/survival-crafting/the-day-before-2-everyone-is-skeptical-about-this-survival-game-promising-a-map-five-times-the-size-of-dayz-and-5-000-players-per-server/
Survival game fans are an eternally hopeful lot. We're always on the lookout for the next great open world sandbox offering up a new survival experience. Your game has base-building? Crafting? Exploring? Survival systems? You've already got our attention.
But we're a wary group, too. We've been burned far too many times in the past.
That explains the mostly skeptical reaction to the new trailer for CrisisX you can see above (via IGN), a free-to-play open world survival game from HK Hero Entertainment. The trailer shows a bunch of survival-ish things happening, like tree-chopping, base-building, zombie shooting, and PvP combat with other players, though none of it looks particularly interesting. Its Steam page also makes some big promises, like a 1200x1200 km map (about five times the size of DayZ's Chernarus) and support for 5,000 players on a single server.

As the legal debate between Subnautica 2's publisher and former studio execs rages, the original game and its spinoff quietly receive small patches and big discounts
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/survival-crafting/as-the-legal-debate-between-subnautica-2s-publisher-and-former-studio-execs-rages-the-original-game-and-its-spinoff-quietly-receive-small-patches-and-big-discounts/
Subnautica 2 has become one of the year's most talked-about games, albeit for reasons I don't think anybody wanted. A big legal brouhaha has developed in the wake of publisher Krafton abruptly dismissing the entire leadership team of Subnautica 2's developer Unknown Worlds Entertainment.
(...)
It's all very messy and unpleasant, with Unknown Worlds caught in the middle of it all as it continues to work on the sequel. And not just the sequel, apparently, as the original game and its spinoff Below Zero have quietly received new patches.

The sequel to Half-Life modding classic Pirates, Vikings & Knights quietly hit 1.0 after nearly 18 years of development: 'It's been over 6,500 days since PVK2 was unleashed'
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/the-sequel-to-half-life-modding-classic-pirates-vikings-and-knights-quietly-hit-1-0-after-nearly-18-years-of-development-its-been-over-6-500-days-since-pvk2-was-unleashed/
Well, here's a cannon blast from the past. Pirates, Vikings & Knights 2 hit 1.0 on Steam while nobody was looking. What's that? You don't remember Pirates, Vikings & Knights 2? Don't blame yourself. There's a reasonable chance you weren't born when it first set sail into the freshly pixel-shaded waters of Half-Life 2 modding.

Sea of Thieves' latest update slips The Smugglers' League in through the back door, offering high-risk, high-reward voyages for the most daring pirates
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/action/sea-of-thieves-latest-update-slips-the-smugglers-league-in-through-the-back-door-offering-high-risk-high-reward-voyages-for-the-most-daring-pirates/
Season 17 of Sea of Thieves has sailed silently into port, using the moonless night as cover while it unloads its contraband cargo of new features. The latest iteration of Rare's multiplayer pirate sim introduces The Smugglers League, a furtive new faction that operates from six secret hideouts dotted across the game's treacherous archipelago, offering players the chance to acquire some valuable new booty in numerous ways.

I played this free, 15-minute claymation horror game about examining an ancient idol in the morning while the birds were chirping, and it still scared me more than anything I've played in years
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/horror/i-played-this-free-15-minute-claymation-horror-game-about-examining-an-ancient-idol-in-the-morning-while-the-birds-were-chirping-and-it-still-scared-me-more-than-anything-ive-played-in-years/
By the end of my brief time playing The Children of Clay, a free horror game available on Steam, I had taken my headphones off and was holding myself away from the screen as I selected each action. It was a bright and cheery morning around 11 AM, the sun was shining, my coffee warm, and I was freaked the hell out.

The First Descendant is using AI ads with weird digital clones of actual streamers
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/action/the-first-descendant-is-using-ai-ads-with-weird-digital-clones-of-actual-streamers/
If you've scrolled past an ad on TikTok for Nexon's gooner-looter-shooter The First Descendant you might not have noticed it was made by AI. But if you watch one of them for more than a second, you'll probably figure it out. Each one features an AI streamer rambling about the new boss Wall Crasher and maybe the Nier: Automata crossover while doing an odd headbob that I assume is supposed to make their rubber faces look more excited and emphatic. (The way one of them pronounces "Automata" sounds ridiculous, but has probably been trained on real people struggling to say it.)

Starship Troopers: Extermination implements a 'total overhaul' to its spawning system, adding a Left 4 Dead style AI director: 'We realized that our original spawning system, while functional, was starting to show its limit'
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/fps/starship-troopers-extermination-implements-a-total-overhaul-to-its-spawning-system-adding-a-left-4-dead-style-ai-director-we-realized-that-our-original-spawning-system-while-functional-was-starting-to-show-its-limit/
Starship Troopers: Extermination has always had a bit of "we have Helldivers 2 at home" energy; ironic considering how much Helldivers 2 channels the tone and ideas of the Paul Verhoeven film Extermination is based upon. While I enjoyed Offworld's large-scale, team-based multiplayer in my Starship Troopers: Extermination review, it was a frequently uneven experience beset by technical issues and the wrong kind of bugs.
Nonetheless, I've kept one eye on it since it launched last October, and its latest update sounds pretty nifty. Described by Offworld as "one of our biggest updates yet" patch 1.6 brings some major technical and mechanical changes to Extermination's cooperative arachnid-blasting.

SnowRunner dev's latest vehicle sim lets you channel your inner Frank Sobotka by managing a struggling port
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/sim/snowrunner-devs-latest-vehicle-sim-lets-you-channel-your-inner-frank-sobotka-by-managing-a-struggling-port/
I recently finished rewatching all of the Wire, and on reflection I think Season 2 is my favourite of five. This is in large part due to the tragic character of Frank Sobotka, the stevedore and union leader driven into the arms of organised crime as he struggles to keep his workers paid and Baltimore's ailing trade port afloat.
While it's unlikely that Docked will be as thematically complex as one of the most critically acclaimed TV shows of all time, it does lump you with a similar challenge as poor ol' Frank. This latest entry in Saber Interactive's fleet of vehicle simulators puts you in the role of a longshoreman tasked with rebuilding and expanding a struggling dockyard. In this case, your problems aren't caused by economic tides, but by a recent hurricane that has battered your port.

Homeworld 3 developer acquires the rights to its superior previous game about salvaging spaceships, with 'multiple' new projects in the works
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/sim/homeworld-3-developer-acquires-the-rights-to-its-superior-previous-game-about-salvaging-spaceships-with-multiple-new-projects-in-the-works/
Homeworld 3 developer Blackbird Interactive has announced it has acquired the full rights to its previous game Hardspace: Shipbreaker, which saw players deconstructing decommissioned spaceships and recycling their parts for profit.