All hands on deck for our first vessel, a vibrant sky-bound shipment from Hyperluminal creative director Rob Madden. To see this content please enable targeting cookies. Manage cookie settings — Rob Madden (@LaffingLad) May 23, 2020 Madden’s airships are consciously cribbing from Scottish artist Ian McQue. But that’s alright, really, because McQue’s cobbled-together mechanics were probably the best bit of The Signal From Tölva’s quiet open-world robot romp. Currently, in the works as an unnamed side project, Madden’s ship is steering itself towards being a rather good-looking exploration and delivery trip through the skies....

Just down here is Rare’s teaser video for the season which likely lets on some of the new cosmetics and other bits you can earn. There’s also a giant red-eyed cloud skeleton in the sky there which could be a new variety of Skeleton Fort to tackle out on the seas. The one seemingly unmistakable bit is right at the end where you can see a sneaky pirate tucking into a barrel that appears out of nowhere....

They recently announced their next step in that endeavour: Sherlock Holmes Chapter One, a new game in the series due in 2021, and serving as a prequel to the rest. Set when Sherlock is 21-ish and exploring a Mediterranean island from his childhood, Chapter One will see tweaks to combat, detecting, and the addition of a more open world format. As a fan of the series and detectives in general, I was intrigued....

Does that make any sense? I’ve got a touch of fever this evening and I’m writing this introductory paragraph in a state of delirious hypochondria, so my usually astute and cutting edge observations have reverted back to PC gaming circa 2007. Earlier however, back when I wasn’t careening ass-first down a greased-up slippy-slide to my almost certain demise at the gaping maw of a global pandemic, I was very much enjoying playing a little game called Skul....

As well as improving performance on lower-end PCs, one of the main reasons the modders are working on this plugin is to help boost frame rates when other graphically intensive Skyrim mods are installed. Alas, the Skyrim-Upscaler plugin isn’t compatible with graphics mods such as the popular Enhanced Natural Beauty series for now, but DLSS compatibility for it is being worked on, according to YouTuber Mern who spoke with Puredark in the video above....

I am therefore here for the similarly unlikely mashup of Sonic and Two Point Hospital, a free pack for the hospital management sim that lets you dress your staff as Sonic, Amy, Tails and Knuckles and pepper your hallway with Sonic statues. Watch the trailer below. There is something faintly dystopian about this. Imagine buying flowers for a sick relative from a hospital gift shop and being served by a man wearing a Knuckles costume....

Get Sony’s WH-1000XM5 noise-cancelling headphones for £249 w/ code UPGRADE50 Let’s address the elephant in the room first. Yes, these aren’t my number one choice for PC gaming - there are a lot of much better specialised PC gaming headsets - but for a headset that can go anywhere and do it all, they’re actually a surprisingly good option. Only something like SteelSeries’ expensive Arctis Nova Wireless or the Epos H6 Pro Hybrid offers similar levels of flexibility, albeit at a high price in both cases....

Apart from the whales. Obvs. Here’s the launch trailer, in which there is a strange paucity of explicit space whale. You’re managing a tribe of people who’ve spent several generations hiding underground, who are now eager for niceties like sunlight and the conveniences of modern technology. It’s sort of low-pressure, in that “there are no weapons”, and “no battles with neighbours for control of resources”. It bears repeating, though: space whales....

Ubisoft interspersed the concept art images as part of a video marking the series’ 20th anniversary, which saw four of the team working on the remake discussing how they’ll update the original. “We can look back at the plot, the characters, the overall story of the game [to] make some improvements,” creative director Chris Auty said, “but the core of the story, the core of the experience will remain as it was in the original game....

The announcement post goes into some detail about the situations in which you can and cannot get your Steam Deck fixed for free. If, for example, one of the buttons stops working - which Valve say is “rare, but it sometimes happens” - then you can contact support, ship the Deck off to a repair centre, and they’ll fix the issue and post it back. No fuss. Then there’s the dog example: you can still send in your Steam Deck and they’ll still diagnose the issue, but they’ll then send you a quote for the price of the fix, should a fix be possible....

The Steam Game Festival: Summer Edition will run June 9-12th, offering “time-limited demos or short playable experiences” for upcoming games, devs chatting, and so on. Like previous Steam Game Festivals, but now happening in the week E3 was due to fill. This is wholly separate to E3, to be clear, just conveniently claiming its spot. E3’s organisers don’t plan to hold an official online alternative, though it seems many publishers will still go ahead with announcements and such on their own livestreams....

It’s not the first Warner Brothers game to have its date moved, with the upcoming LEGO Star Wars and Hogwarts Legacy both missing their original release windows as well. “I know a delay is frustrating but that time is going into making the best game we can. I look forward to bringing the chaos to Metropolis together. Thanks for your patience,” Hill said over on Twitter. The other Warner Brothers Batman universe game Gotham Knights is still expected later this year though, and is currently being developed WB Games Montréal....

Mind, they don’t let just anyone become a surgeon these days. Even Bossa will require you pitch in for a pre-order before letting you loose on this weekend’s patients. If you didn’t play 2013’s Surgeon Simulator, you almost certainly at least watched its medical hijinks on YouTube. Launching later this month, Bossa’s comically-brutal human excavation sim zooms out from the first game’s fiddly fingers, giving free rein of an operating theatre to you and up to three medical professionals....

To be totally clear, I love Dark Alliance. It’s an action-RPG set in Dungeons & Dragons’ Forgotten Realms, and follows three heroes taking on an evil warrior who’s trying to destroy the city of Baldur’s Gate using a tower that controls the elements. Classic fantasy stuff. On Steam, the game supports Remote Play so you can do some long distance two-player co-op. I highly recommend playing it with a friend too, the characters aren’t really designed for solo play (much like D&D), and it’s just way more fun dragging a pal along with you....

Wildermyth always starts with a band of farmers taking up arms against monsters, then spirals from there depending on their randomly rolled personalities, and how your adventures go, and the decisions you make. Your band will grow more powerful, sure, but they’ll also age, and develop relationships, and fall in love, and grow as people, and suffer tragedies. “Most of these decisions will have consequences. All of them will breathe life into your story,” Sin explained elsewhere....

In my half hour hands-on with Tales Of Arise, I explored a very small slice of what seemed like a vast JRPG. I was plopped in a location pulled straight from the anime chapter of the Fantasy 101 textbook: a peaceful, grassy area flanked by mountains, home to a few nice trees, some strange pig-rabbit hybrids chilling in a pen, and off in the distance, a huge gilded city. I’d say that for the most part, Tales Of Arise’s exploration was adequate JRPG fare....

Temtem’s creature catching will feel immediately familiar to anyone who’s even dabbled in Pokemon over the years. You play as a child who leaves their home to go on a grand adventure through the Airborne Archipelago. Along the way, you’ll catch critters, battle numerous gym lead - sorry, dojo masters - and fend off a bad organisation named Clan Belsoto, a bunch of Toxic-toting meanies. Been there, done that. Lots of times....

For each boss, there’s some setup required to give you a fighting chance. This doesn’t just mean having the right equipment. You should also create arenas specifically designed around a boss’s attack patterns, making it easy for you to dodge them. Our Terraria bosses guide will tell you how to encounter bosses, detail their stats, and give you strategies for defeating them. How many NPCs are in Terraria? | Pre-Hardmode bosses | Hardmode bosses | Event bosses | Pre-Hardmode boss strategies | Hardmode boss strategies | Event boss strategies |...

I say “often” because The Ascent can veer from extremely fun to extremely infuriating in a matter of nano-seconds. There’s a lot to like here, but the way it’s wired means it frequently trips itself up. Remain patient enough to untangle the mess, though, and you’re in for a real RGB romp. You play as a lowly worker who’s enslaved by the Ascent Group, a shady mega-corporation that controls everything....