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

[JEMC]

The third and last gaming news post. At least for today:

After 6 years, fantasy survive 'em up Necesse leaves early access with 'infinite seamless biomes', an end to its endgame, and a half-price discount
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/survival-crafting/after-6-years-fantasy-survive-em-up-necesse-leaves-early-access-with-infinite-seamless-biomes-an-end-to-its-endgame-and-a-half-price-discount/
While by no means the longest-running early access project on Steam (that honour belongs to the perennial alpha juggernaut that is Project Zomboid) top-down survival RPG Necesse has been in development for quite some time. Fair Games' pixel-y fantasy romp first stepped onto the road back in 2019, and only revealed it was prepping for a 1.0 launch during this year's PC Gaming Show.
Now, Necesse is not done, exactly, but feature-complete as far as Fair Games' main plans for it went. The 1.0 update introduces multiple significant changes to its fantasy world, the biggest of which is, well, the world.

Surviving Mars: Relaunched arrives in orbit next month, bringing a whole new political system and every DLC from the get-go
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/strategy/surviving-mars-relaunched-arrives-in-orbit-next-month-bringing-a-whole-new-political-system-and-every-dlc-from-the-get-go/
When I first saw that city-builder Surviving Mars is getting a remaster, my first thought was "Isn't that a bit soon? It only launched recently." It turns out 'recently' was seven flipping years ago. That's a shorter period than between the original Resident Evil and its 2002 HD edition. Truly, my ability to measure the passage of time has been destroyed since 2020.
Anyhow, Surviving Mars: Relaunched goes a little further than your standard visual overhaul. It aims to upgrade the game's tech and refresh the UI like most projects of its ilk, but it also introduces a whole new system to your Martian colony—politics.

Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun's free typing spinoff doubles its wordcount with 3 new levels and over 400 extra phrases
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/fps/warhammer-40-000-boltguns-free-typing-spinoff-doubles-its-wordcount-with-3-new-levels-and-over-400-extra-phrases/
Warhammer 40,000 Boltgun: Words of Vengeance originally launched as a stopgap/marketing gimmick to coincide with the announcement of Boltgun 2. But it appears to have gone down swimmingly with the Boltgun playerbase in its own right, having accrued a 'Very Positive' Steam rating out of 1,700 reviews. The 2.5D blaster's free-to-play spinoff swaps out clicking on enemy heads to kill them in traditional shooter fashion for keyboard-based mass murder a-la The Typing of The Dead.
Words of Vengeance is deeply silly and entirely disposable, but a far more entertaining way to test your WPM than Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing. There is one recurring complaint developer Auroch Digital has received, however. (…)
The actual complaint was that there wasn't enough of Words of Vengeance, from both a structural and lexical standpoint. In response, the developer has released a new update that effectively doubles the spinoff's size.

Shovel Knight dev's next game doesn't have a single parry, pulling from Castlevania and Bloodborne instead of Sekiro: 'Every game has a parry now … even Doom has Dark Souls stuff in it'
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/adventure/shovel-knight-devs-next-game-doesnt-have-a-single-parry-pulling-from-castlevania-and-bloodborne-instead-of-sekiro-every-game-has-a-parry-now-even-doom-has-dark-souls-stuff-in-it/
It's no secret that parries are en vogue right now—they've broken their just containment in character action games and spectacle fighters and wormed their way into roguelikes, horror games, JRPGs, and FPSes, all while properly taking over the Soulslike in the wake of Sekiro.
If you long for the simpler times back when enemies just smoked you and got it over with, you might take a shine to Classicvania and Zelda-inspired adventure game Mina the Hollower, the next game from Shovel Knight developer Yacht Club Games. Speaking with Knowledge, Yacht Club co-founder Sean Velasco highlighted the game's simple control setup intended to "take something old and rejig it," as reported by GamesRadar.

Don't count on Arc Raiders ever getting a first-person mode: 'Once you start being able to put your face right up against an asset, it kind of falls apart'
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/third-person-shooter/dont-count-on-arc-raiders-ever-getting-a-first-person-mode-once-you-start-being-able-to-put-your-face-right-up-against-an-asset-it-kind-of-falls-apart/
Arc Raiders looks great: My pals at PC Gamer think it's the most exciting thing to happen to the extraction genre in a long time, and the huge numbers the server slam playtest is putting up at this very moment prove that they're not alone in thinking so. For me, though, there's just one problem: It's a third-person shooter, and I don't like third-person shooters.
That leads me to a second problem: The odds of Arc Raiders ever getting a first-person mode are basically zero.

Arc Raiders designer says Marathon's reception'was a great A/B test': 'They made decisions that we didn't, and vice versa … we could compare and contrast how some of those things shook out'
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/third-person-shooter/arc-raiders-designer-says-marathons-receptionwas-a-great-a-b-test-they-made-decisions-that-we-didnt-and-vice-versa-we-could-compare-and-contrast-how-some-of-those-things-shook-out/
It might feel like there's been a shedload of extraction shooters lately, but the genre still seems to crackle with untapped potential. Two heavy hitters—the reboot of Bungie's venerable shooter Marathon and Embark's fresh up-and-comer Arc Raiders—are nearly here, and both have had a chance to gear up with playtests. Speaking with PC Gamer US editor-in-chief Tyler Wilde, Arc Raiders design director Virgil Watkins said the shared timing made for a fortuitous opportunity.
>> Watkins also said that the game was nowhere near ready for launch during that playtest, with the game having some “bad bugs” (link).

Hearthstone and Warcraft Rumble devs join the over 1900 Blizzard workers to unionize: 'We deserve to be heard and respected'
https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/hearthstone-and-warcraft-rumble-devs-join-the-over-1900-blizzard-workers-to-unionize-we-deserve-to-be-heard-and-respected/
Only a few months after most of the Warcraft Rumble team was laid off as all future development was canceled, a majority of the remaining workers therein and the Hearthstone team have voted to organize—joining over 1,900 Blizzard workers now in a union under the Communications Workers of America.

A Nintendo DS horror game first pitched as a Silent Hill sequel is coming to Steam
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/horror/a-nintendo-ds-horror-game-first-pitched-as-a-silent-hill-sequel-is-coming-to-steam/
Dementium: The Ward is a cult-classic survival horror game first released on the Nintendo DS in 2007. There weren't a lot of horror games on Nintendo's handheld, which is most of the reason for Dementium's cult reputation. It cast you as an amnesiac trapped in a hospital full of zombies and giant worms you had to defeat with various guns and a nightstick. Nintendogs this ain't.
(...)
The trailer sure makes Dementium look a lot more like Doom 3 than Silent Hill 2, so I can't say I'm disappointed Renegade Kid had to come up with their own mythos rather than borrowing Silent Hill's. And while there wasn't anything else like it on the DS back in 2007, it does look like a textbook horror game in 2025. Maybe playing it on Steam Deck will bring back some of those handheld-horror vibes?

AWS outage affecting Fortnite, Roblox, Reddit, and many others is close to fixed, with Amazon saying services are showing 'significant signs of recovery'
https://www.pcgamer.com/software/aws-outage-affecting-fortnite-roblox-reddit-and-many-others-is-close-to-fixed-with-amazon-saying-services-are-showing-significant-signs-of-recovery/
Even if you're not much of a digital dweller, you might have noticed some of your favourite websites, apps, and even games have been, well, just not working today. This is because there's been an Amazon Web Services (AWS) outage across all regions, including the US, EU, and even over here in the currently very dreary UK. It looks like this might be clearing up already, though, after a couple of hours of downtime.

Marvel Rivals is getting a PvE zombies mode, so you can finally know what it feels like to cleave through hordes of the undead as a cute little shark guy
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/third-person-shooter/marvel-rivals-is-getting-a-pve-zombies-mode-so-you-can-finally-know-what-it-feels-like-to-cleave-through-hordes-of-the-undead-as-a-cute-little-shark-guy/
Marvel Rivals is finally getting its first PvE mode—and in true shooter fashion, it's zombies. Zombies is the mode. Now, to be fair, it's based on the Marvel Zombies TV show (which is, itself, based on the Marvel Zombies comic, an AU storyline that first made its debut in the halcyon days of 2005), so there's precedent.