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

[JEMC]

The second part of the Tuesday gaming news:

Blade and Magik lead as Marvel Tōkon's most popular characters during its beta
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/fighting/blade-and-magik-lead-as-marvel-tokons-most-popular-characters-during-its-beta/
The Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls beta has been and gone, and while I'm not usually a fighting game person, oh boy did this new superhero tag fighter have the sauce. It was only marred by the fact that PlayStation Network was down for almost the entire opening day, and its PC performance was terrible at best for many—I was one of the lucky few who didn't have any issues.
The highlight of the beta was, as you'd expect, getting to grips with the roster—16 of the 20 available in the full build. I saw a hell of a lot of Blade and Iron Man in my matches, and it turns out I'm not alone.
Fighting game content creator AlietteFaye gathered data from their high-tier Viranium-rank matches to crunch the numbers and figure out who the most popular heroes are. Overall, Blade and Magik were tied for the top position, followed up by Iron Man, Magneto, and Black Panther. Danger, bless her, was right at the bottom.
>> The devs have apologized for the poor performance of their game on PC and are working on a fix (link).

Cyan releases teaser for the first new Myst game in 20 years, then breaks the news that it's not actually being made
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/adventure/cyan-releases-teaser-for-the-first-new-myst-game-in-20-years-then-breaks-the-news-that-its-not-actually-being-made/
Myst was a massive success: Not only was it the best-selling PC videogame of all time for years, it helped usher in the CD-ROM era, opening the door to expansive new technologies and previously unseen levels of fidelity in gaming. In 1993, Myst was nothing short of a revelation.
The fortunes of Myst, and developer Cyan Worlds, have waned since then. (...)
The studio laid off "roughly half" its staff in 2025, leading PC Gamer's Justin Wagner to write that "it's galling to see a historic indie like Cyan Worlds hit so hard" by the brutal, ongoing contraction of the game industry. Justin sure wasn't wrong about that, but some folks are finding this even more galling: Over the weekend Cyan released a teaser for a new Myst game, codenamed Project Anglerfish, which looks really good—and then said it's not in development because apparently publishers aren't interested.
Cyan said it spent about four months developing a prototype for the game in 2025, which was "purpose-built for publisher-eyes only," as was the teaser video. "For a variety of reasons, this project couldn’t move forward at the time, BUT we’re still proud of the work the team did—so we’re sharing the teaser for the prototype with you all now."

'Wtf is going on': Indie dev discovers their neglected Steam game is powering an Undertale multiplayer mod following its freak 1700% jump in player activity
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rpg/wtf-is-going-on-indie-dev-discovers-their-neglected-steam-game-is-powering-an-undertale-multiplayer-mod-after-noticing-its-freak-1700-percent-jump-in-player-activity/
A few months ago, indie developer RetroSpecter noticed something unusual about Crashphalt, their first completed game that launched on Steam in 2018: Since their last check-in on the neglected platformer, Crashphalt had suddenly gained over 500 reviews. In its first four years, it had barely managed a dozen.
And almost none of those new reviewers had anything to say about Crashphalt itself. Mostly, they just talked about Undertale.

Cringe '90s stoner icons Jay and Silent Bob are getting a cosy farming sim, but wait for it: you farm weed
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/life-sim/cringe-90s-stoner-icons-jay-and-silent-bob-are-getting-a-cosy-farming-sim-but-wait-for-it-you-farm-weed/
Jay and Silent Bob first appeared in the 1994 grunge film Clerks as eccentric weed dealers. Jay was the sweary, loquacious, long haired slacker, and Silent Bob was the silent, ruminative long haired slacker. They were cult figures in the '90s. Most of my teenage friends thought they were very funny, and Clerks is still a fun time capsule of the early '90s.
(...)
More recently they've started getting their own videogames: Jay and Silent Bob Mall Brawl is a 2020 sidescrolling beat 'em up developed for NES but also ported to PC and consoles. In April, Atari published Jay and Silent Bob: Chronic Blunt Punch, which is also a sidescrolling beat 'em up but with a modern comic book presentation. There are also two Jay and Silent Boss phone games, and an in-development VR game, and they both cameoed in Black Ops 6. Talk about selling out!
Now they're back again: Jay and Silent Bob's Joint Venture is a cosy farming sim about running a farm. "Armed with some old tools, a handful of seeds, and a couple of questionable business partners, you'll turn a trashed yard into a thriving weed business," the Steam description reads. "Get your hands dirty doing things the way it used to be done before corporate cannabis moved to town – slinging dank dimes outside the Quick Stop!"

Arc Raiders is changing its matchmaking again to fully soothe your self-defence fears
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/third-person-shooter/arc-raiders-is-changing-its-matchmaking-again-to-fully-soothe-your-self-defence-fears/
Over the past few months, Embark has been pulling some levers behind the scenes to improve Arc Raiders' matchmaking. Despite the devs previously saying matchmaking wasn't "binary," it didn't feel like that in practice. My solo lobbies were peaceful walks in the park, while trio lobbies were much more violent.
From these experiments, "one change has stood out with the community," Embark explains in a new blog outlining changes. That being, "defending yourself is no longer treated the same as starting a fight."
At launch, fighting back against aggressors would, for some reason, contribute to your playstyle profile, so to speak. In a mythbusting update at the end of May, defending yourself was finally changed so that it mattered less than initiating the fight, but it was still considered aggression.
In today's update, 1.39.0, defensive PvP no longer has any impact on your matchmaking tendencies: "Only the fights you choose to start will influence your playstyle estimate, and defending yourself won't affect it at all."

Nioh 3's first DLC hits in August, brings new weapons, a trip to the (sort of) future, and there's a mega-hard difficulty mode for the sickos
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rpg/nioh-3s-first-dlc-hits-in-august-brings-new-weapons-a-trip-to-the-sort-of-future-and-theres-a-mega-hard-difficulty-mode-for-the-sickos/
I will be truthful: if you grabbed me by the lapels and demanded I tell you when Nioh 3 came out, I would answer something along the lines of 'the late 1980s'. The fact that the third Nioh—a rather good game, per our 90% Nioh 3 review—only released in February of this year feels like a weft in the tapestry of space-time.
But so it was, and so it is that Nioh 3 will, on August 19, get its first DLC in the form of Hell Rising: "Our protagonist and appointed shogun, Takechiyo, journeys through time and is led to Edo in the future by an unknown yokai he met in his dreams," goes the blurb.

Next year's Fallout 76 major expansion will explore a 'prequel story to Fallout 3'
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/fallout/next-years-fallout-76-major-expansion-will-explore-a-prequel-story-to-fallout-3/
A few weeks ago Bethesda Studios hit the big red button and announced that both Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas remasters are in pre-production, but that wasn't all—there was also news of Fallout 76's next major expansion.
"Fallout 76 continues to be home to millions of players exploring Appalachia together," an official news post from Bethesda explains. "With nearly 70 free updates released to date, the journey is far from over. In fact, we have a major Fallout 76 expansion planned for next year; Raven Rock, a prequel story to Fallout 3."

I'm pretty sure we know Final Fantasy 14 Evercold's second job, unless Soken's playing a big trick on us
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/mmo/im-pretty-sure-we-know-final-fantasy-14-evercolds-second-job-unless-sokens-playing-a-big-trick-on-us/
Call me delusional, but I think I—well, a collection of sharp eyes from the Final Fantasy 14 community—have cracked what Final Fantasy 14: Evercold's next job is going to be. We were introduced to the Bastion during the latest fanfest, but we've still got one more job to go—a job we happen to know is a ranged physical dps.

Since there’s only one short form article, I’ll also post it here:

EA is 'a hedge fund with a videogame hobby,' former Dragon Age boss says, and that's why he reckons the series is probably dead and buried
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/dragon-age/ea-is-a-hedge-fund-with-a-videogame-hobby-former-dragon-age-boss-says-and-thats-why-he-reckons-the-series-is-probably-dead-and-buried/

Last edited by JEMC - on 28 July 2026