Новости за 04.01.2024

Super-powered MMO City Of Heroes closed down in November 2012, but in recent years it has been revived by industrious fans via privately-hosted servers. While those servers allowed caped crusaders to continue roleplaying, the caveat was that they could be shut down at any moment by the most dastardly supervillains of all: lawyers.

Every game is Who Framed Roger Rabbit now - or, less charitably, a metaversal hellscape where canonical integrity matters far less than providing a platform through which to sell cosmetics.

Over 14,000 games were released on Steam in 2023, according to according to data tracked by SteamDB. The number is nearly 2000 games more than in 2022, and continues a steady trend of growth on the digital storefront.

Marvel's Guardians Of The Galaxy was one of 2021's biggest surprises, succeeding where Square Enix's Avengers game failed by finding an identity beyond its movie counterpart thanks to strong writing. Alas, it didn't meet Square Enix's sales expectations.

I have been bouncing off Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, partly because the new protagonist design leaves me cold, and partly because it being a 2D affair has me yearning for something closer to the 1989 Apple II original, with its finicky platforming and sword-fighting. Katharine says it's decent, however, and the latest trailers are intriguing. One is an overview of the new metroidvania's locations, of which you can read much more in Katharine's last preview. The other is a quick dive into the game's approach to accessibility... Читать дальше...

Korean publisher Nexon have been fined 11.6 billion won - around $8.9 million - for secretly altering the drop rates of coveted items in free-to-play MMO gacha game MapleStory. The fine, issued by the Korea Fair Trade Commission, is the largest penalty ever doled out for violation of South Korea's Act on Consumer Protection in Electronic Commerce.

Russian Roulette is just an edgy version of Snakes & Ladders. It's pure luck gussied up with high stakes and the cool aesthetic of spinning a six-shooter. A grizzled mafioso whose cheeks glitter with fragments of other people's teeth has as much chance of winning Russian Roulette as a sleepy five-year-old in SpongeBob pyjamas. But take Russian Roulette, swap the revolver for a pump-action shotgun, mix up live and dud rounds, and add Inscryption-esque items which let you change the rules, and now you have a more skillful game. Читать дальше...

Happy New Year, folks! Have you recovered from the all the 100+ hour RPGs that came out last year? Well, I have good news and bad news for you. The good news is that everyone seems to be taking a bit of a breather in 2024, because (at time of writing at least) the official "big'uns" calendar is looking remarkably slim at the moment. There are still some heavy-hitters coming our way this year, such as , Star Wars Outlaws and Path Of Exile 2, but 2024 looks like another year where it will be the smaller... Читать дальше...

Rockfish have announced that they're updating arcade dogfighter Everspace 2 to run on Unreal Engine 5. The engine rollover will arrive as part of or alongside the game's Incursions update in spring 2024, which includes tweaks and bugfixes as well as extra legendary items and a new game feature of some description. The idea is less to take advantage of UE5's various whizbangs and bellwhistles, like the new Nanite geometry system, than to grease the launch chutes for future Everspace 2 updates and expansions. Читать дальше...

Having spent some time in Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth's Hawaii, I've come to realise that it's a wonderful place, home to trams that'll let you see the sights and soak in the warm breeze. But moreso than that, it's home to the previous game's Pokémon parody, Sujimon, which has now kicked into overdrive. From what I can tell, Infinite Wealth is as much a Pokémon trainers paradise as it is a game about the Japanese criminal underworld. I'm sold.

We got our first look at Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth's Dondoko Island at last year's Xbox Partner showcase. Right as it dropped, I was in New York giving the Animal Crossing-esque minigame a go myself, albeit for a quickfire half hour of bashing rubbish bags with a baseball bat and plonking a urinal on the dirt to satisfy a tutorial. Still, in that brief time I've come away thinking I could lose much of my life to the promise of converting a polluted island into an idyll with the power of abs and friendship. Читать дальше...

Well, well, well. Of all the detectives in all the world, she came to me. She was a dame with hair red as communion wine spilled by a bishop looking at a nun's cleava- oh what, wait, she's how old? Christ, Philip, get your head out of the gutter for once, this is a family website. I was previously a snob about the Nancy Drew point and click puzzle games, and then came to regret it when a fan of them (very nicely) emailed me explaining they're actually really good. We're going to find out for ourselves by playing them. Читать дальше...

I realise we're all struggling through the dank depths of January but it's never too early in the year to talk about sex, baby. Twitch have updated their attire policies to stop an outbreak of "implied nudity" among thirstier streamers, who have taken to filming themselves nude with black censor bars, or positioning the camera to suggest that they're fully or partially naked outside the frame.