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

[JEMC]

Monday gaming news, part number two:

I feel like I'm running a corner store in Dredd or Cyberpunk 2077
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/sim/i-feel-like-im-running-a-corner-store-in-dredd-or-cyberpunk-2077/
I dove into the demo for Probably Stolen yesterday, and it took me quite a while to come up for air. As a shopkeeper running a cramped store on a dystopian space station, the cyberpunk sim lets you deal in just about anything: rat meat, purified water, contraband weapons and drugs, stolen goods, food, household supplies... you name it.

'I sit in terror looking at the 750,000 wishlists': A nervous dev brings a classic Flash game to Steam
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/i-sit-in-terror-looking-at-the-750-000-wishlists-a-nervous-dev-brings-a-classic-flash-game-to-steam/
In 2021 Chrome finally killed Adobe Flash and with it countless fantastic browser games.
That's why it's always great to see a Flash classic survive, like Happy Wheels, the mega-popular ragdoll physics racing game-slash-bloodbath. Its developer, Jim Bonacci, created a Javascript version in 2020 so the classic game could live beyond Chrome and Adobe's murder party, and this week it finally arrived on Steam, too. I'm already having a bloody good time with it.

My favorite $6 RPG on Steam just got a beastmode free 'Enhanced Edition' update
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rpg/my-favorite-usd6-rpg-on-steam-just-got-a-beastmode-free-enhanced-edition-update/
FlyKnight is a $6, first-person RPG in the King's Field/Lunacid mold that whips ass, looks like Old School Runescape, and feels like it could have asked for twice as much money and still been a bargain.
That alone makes it one of my easiest recommendations on Steam, but it also just got a free update of the GOTY/Enhanced/Definitive Edition variety, from its solo dev, while still only asking new players for $6 upfront⁠—$4 at the time of writing, thanks to a sale running through September 30 (...)

Between 70 and 80% of Blood Bowl 3 games were solo
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/strategy/between-70-and-80-percent-of-blood-bowl-3-games-were-solo/
You'll know this frustration if you've ever been part of the community around a game that has both singleplayer and multiplayer modes. People who prefer one to the other are always convinced the other cohort doesn't exist. "Nobody plays this game in a different way to me and my friends, and anyone who says they do is lying."
In the case of the Blood Bowl videogames, the fact the CPU's tactics are so rudimentary has always given people who prefer the multiplayer mode ammunition for claiming the other half doesn't exist. Now we've got proof they're actually the majority. As Cyanide programmer Mathieu Valero recently told Wargamer, between 70 and 80% of Blood Bowl 3 games were played solo in Eternal Leagues.
This came up in the context of Blood Bowl 3's imminent replacement by Warhammer Blood Bowl. One of the improvements, Valero suggests, will be the AI. "We didn't have an AI—now we do", as he put it. "There are still a bunch of factions and builds that it's more able to play well: you want to give it Guard and Block, and don't go fancy with the combos that a human would be able to do", he went on to say, but "give something reliable to the AI, and you're gonna have a game to play".

The next retro games coming to Steam are a pair of extremely 1990s run-and-gunners where Spanish Goku fights mutants
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/action/the-next-retro-games-coming-to-steam-are-a-pair-of-extremely-1990s-run-and-gunners-where-spanish-goku-fights-mutants/
In the 1990s, Spanish videogame label Gaelco was responsible for a string of arcade games (and also electronic dartboards) that hardly anyone outside Spain knows about, bar perhaps the occasional breakout like World Rally.
Retro specialists QUByte Interactive are bringing two of Gaelco's obscurities to Steam this year, resurrecting arcade action games Thunder Hoop and its sequel TH Strikes Back. The genetically engineered and oddly named Thunder Hoop of the title is a hand-blasting hero who fights armies of mutants unleashed by the evil Dr Genbreak.

Minecraft is getting its first new dimension in 15 years, and it is riotously pink
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/survival-crafting/minecraft-is-getting-its-first-new-dimension-in-15-years-and-it-is-riotously-pink/
Since its release in 2011, Minecraft has received countless new biomes, but its number of dimensions has remained consistent over the last fifteen years. But that's all about to change. As of next year, a fourth dimension will soon join the Overworld, the Nether, and the End. It's called the Sift, it is riotously pink, and features bunny-like creatures that walk rather than hop.

The spiritual successor to classic JRPG Wild Arms has seemingly been cancelled, four years after its Kickstarter raised nearly $3 million
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rpg/the-spiritual-successor-to-classic-jrpg-wild-arms-has-seemingly-been-cancelled-four-years-after-its-kickstarter-raised-nearly-usd3-million/
Armed Fantasia— which was a spiritual successor to the popular JRPG series Wild Arms and not a first-person shooter starring Mickey Mouse—has been cancelled four years after its Kickstarter campaign raised almost $3 million.
As reported by Rock Paper Shotgun, Armed Fantasia is one of several titles for which Digital Bros—the parent company of 505 Games—has decided to "discontinue development of" as revealed in its most recent financial statement.

Gears of War story director laid off mere days after E-Day went gold
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/third-person-shooter/gears-of-war-story-director-laid-off-mere-days-after-e-day-went-gold/
Gears of War: E-Day is almost here, but that doesn't mean its developers have been spared in Microsoft's latest wave of layoffs as part of the Xbox "reset." While The Coalition, the studio currently working on the Gears of War series, was not mentioned by name in Matt Booty's "Continuing Our Reset" blog post, story director Juan Vaca announced on LinkedIn that he is now looking for work.

I'm sure whoever chose to charge for WoW: Forever beta access is feeling very chuffed, given Blizzard's had to expand its server size a second time
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/world-of-warcraft/im-sure-whoever-chose-to-charge-for-wow-forever-beta-access-is-feeling-very-chuffed-given-blizzards-had-to-expand-its-server-size-a-second-time/
It's official—the WoW: Forever beta has sold like hotcakes for Blizzard. In case you're not in the know, Forever doesn't have an entry price (it's just part of your normal WoW subscription), however, its elves are $30. And, if you want to get into the beta, which'll be running until the game releases in November? That'll be $60 (£52), please.
Server queues were rammed on November 17, and Forever's devs have been utterly swarmed by the amount of people clamouring to play this reinvented version of Classic. So much so that, as Longdale reveals above, Blizzard's had to increase the population cap not once, but twice.

Arc Raiders is messing with your loot hotspots to make games more exciting
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/third-person-shooter/arc-raiders-is-messing-with-your-loot-hotspots-to-make-games-more-exciting/
I'm really liking what I've been seeing from Arc Raiders over the last few weeks in the lead up to its major Frozen Trails update. It feels like the devs have stacked up a slew of quality-of-life improvements in preparation for this big '2.0 moment'.
A PvE mode is the one the bigger changes, but there's also a few smaller tweaks which could have a major impact on the game and its replayability: Such as the dynamic loot zones, mentioned above.