Today in FP I talk to David Lagettie, the bold resurrectionist behind the recently announced MicroProse revival, share - possibly not for the first time - my most precious MicroProse memory, and sample one of the studio’s later sims. Like many middle-aged strategy gamers/simmers, I experience a Pavlovian response when I see “MICROPROSE” emblazoned on a splash screen or screenshot today. My pulse quickens, my fingers fidget, my mood improves....
Apologies - you’ve caught me limbering up in readiness for the exertions to come. For the next fortnight I’ll be chronicling, with daily battle reports, The Flare Path’s sixth experiment in co-op play-by-comment wargaming. The concept for those who’ve not encountered communal Combat Mission before: I fashion a map and scenario for one of Battlefront’s ballistically rigorous turnbased battle sims, and you, issuing orders via comments, play said scenario against a CPU-controlled opponent at a rate of one turn/minute a day, until the big-boned diva warbles....
This is just a microcosm of the stories to tell about Battlestate Games’ online survival FPS Escape From Tarkov. In a genre that often either fails or doesn’t try to convey any type of legitimate emotional response, raids in Tarkov become these enigmatic tales of the senses. My stories differ from most because I play Escape From Tarkov single-player. Using the mod SPT-AKI, players create private servers that modify the game into a purely offline experience....
If you’re unfamiliar with World Of Horror, it’s a 1-bit adventure set in a Japanese town. You play a teenage detective intrigued by the cosmic horrors seeping back into the world, and the reawakening of the Old Gods. The game mixes card-collecting RPG elements with a roguelike structure as you investigate several randomised mysteries. World Of Horror’s randomised design worked for Katharine (an avid jump-scare avoider) as it gave the sinister world an “ever-shifting, ever-changing nature"....
But the best and probably most unintentional new addition to Tendershoot’s Bestest Best internet sim adventure is that it’s finally turned my Switch into the ultimate console. With its new mouse and keyboard support, the Switch is finally the portable PC of my dreams. Look, I even made some GIFs with the Switch demo to prove it. I am so excited I might actually explode. Brilliantly, lead developer Jay Tholen didn’t even realise the Switch version (and indeed all of its console ports) had mouse and keyboard support until yesterday, and it was actually Nintendo who suggested to publisher No More Robots that they should include it....
What could it be but some Cosmo D? Have a ball in Betrayal At Club Low! Alice0: Most RPGs are too long. Most games are too long, but RPGs especially. Initial excitement will boil away as premises stretch thing, repetition develops, and busywork becomes evident. How wonderful, then, to play a two-hour RPG set around one nightclub in a world I already adore. Cosmo D’s latest glimpse of the surreal and musical Off-Peak City sends us into a nightclub as an agent sent to exfiltrate an undercover operative who’s in far too deep with a crime boss....
Maxis showed the feature off during their regular livestream. Called Scenarios, it’s a main menu option that lets you start a new game or use an existing save with an applied set of conditions, and an objective to aim for. The free update will come with two such challenges, called ‘Making Money’ and ‘Finding Love After A Break Up’. Maxis showed the former off in detail, although its fairly straightforward: you start the game with zero simoleons, the Sims’ in-game currency, and must gather a million simoleons to win....
The first trailer just released, starring Tom Holland and Mark Wahlberg. I don’t hate the look of this, but it sure is an action-comedy in the year 2021. This is a ‘young Nathan Drake’ adventure, if you’re wondering why Drake and Sully look substantially younger than in any of the games. That weirdness aside, I like Holland, the banter is fine, and I like the hijinks around falling out of a plane....
So much green Matrix text! So many video games! So many futuristic alien devices! So many anime babes! So many mock-Macs! So much rusty metal! I wish I could remember the names of skins I used, there was a beautiful teal one I’d love to see again. The only one I could find again is the System Shock 2 skin (below, in the middle). Made by Jordan Eldredge, the Museum draws skins from the Internet Archive’s Winamp Skins Collection....
“Let’s make this 7th anniversary even better, shall we?” begins the tweet. “We’re delighted to share that the Next Gen version of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is planned to release in Q4 2022. See you on the Path, witchers!” The Witcher 3’s next-gen upgrade was launched all the way back in September 2020 and has been delayed repeatedly since. Back in April, The Witcher Twitter account tweeted that they had decided that their “in-house development team [would] conduct the remaining work on the next-gen version” and that it was therefore postponed “until further notice” while they evaluated the work that needed doing....
It is now nine years old, and so of course it’s received a 9th anniversary update. It has been “updated for modern operating systems”, with menu, HUD and UI fixes, and Mac and Linux ports. Lovely. Here’s the original release trailer: The trailer contains the quote, “Tells a better story in 13 minutes than most games do in 13 hours.” It’s credited to cheeky RPS fanzine PC Gamer, though, so you probably can’t trust whoever wrote that....
Get the Dell G15 5510 for £532 (was £849) The Dell G15 is a well-equipped laptop in general you’d have to say, with its current-gen RTX graphics card unlocking future-proofing RTX and DLSS functionality and a powerful 10th-gen Core i5, backed by a 1080p 120Hz screen, 8GB of memory (easily upgradeable to 16GB) and a roomy 512GB NVMe SSD. The G15 drew plaudits last year for its ‘gaming, but not too gaming’ design, and with specs like these, you’ll be thrilled to pick it up for a mite over £500....
Here’s the new trailer: Roguelike deckbuilders often have the feeling of creating a damage-dealing engine with your card abilities, but it seems more literal here. The different modules you can append to your rack can either generate energy, modify it, or spend it to attack your foes, and you’ll be deciding what modules to add, swap out and how to wire them together. From the look of it, it also reminds me of various Zachtronics games....
A viking tamer by the name of “buzz” has created a Valheim mod called “AllTameable”, which lets you tame and breed creatures which aren’t normally tameable. By default, this only includes trolls and goblin brutes, but if you’re willing to do some config file tweaking, a huge number of nasties opens up: trolls, skeletons, leeches, almost any beast your heart desires can be domesticated. Yes, that includes a number of the bosses too....
Deep Rock Galactic Season 2 will launch on 28th April and it introduces an all-new mechanical threat to your mining expeditions, alongside some new secondary weapons, a refreshed Performance Pass with new cosmetic items, and a new mineable currency that’s used in the in-game store to – you guessed it – buy lots of cool hats and beards for your favourite dwarves. All of this is free if you own the game too....
Mortal Empires was an update for Total Warhammer 2 which combined its map and races together with Warhammer 1, to form a grand scale version of the already grand strategy game. Immortal Empires will follow in kind, smooshing together the map and races from all three Warhammer strategy games into one. It’s a giant undertaking and it’s due to arrive in Update 2.0 sometime in Q3. Old World Update 1 will arrive in the same update....
First things first, the London Calling comic. I’m no up on my Overwatch lore, but it seems Tracer’s dealing with her post-Overwatch-disbanding blues by meeting cool crime robots, gushing over The Ramones, and oi luv it’s aw proper Lahndun and that, innit? If you’ve been following Overwatch’s “Challenge” events so far, you’ll know how this works. Win 3, 6 or 9 games over the course of the event, and you’ll unlock increasingly flashy cosmetics - a player icon, spray and legendary skin, respectively....
“The comments given by John Gibson are of his own opinion, and do not reflect those of Tripwire Interactive as a company,” Tripwire said in a statement last night, announcing his replacement. “His comments disregarded the values of our whole team, our partners and much of our broader community. Our leadership team at Tripwire are deeply sorry and are unified in our commitment to take swift action and to foster a more positive environment....
Now just a few days later, my life ruined, I see jumps and punishing falls everywhere. Is indie developer Daniel Linssen’s new free game Tumbledown Drive a Jump King and Getting Over It With Bennett Foddy-inspired platformer in which you are a car hopping up a mountain, or is this another hallucination? If it is what I think it is, Tumbledown Drive challenges you to “drive, jump and honk” up a series of platforms....
After reading that, you’re probably wondering “These companies are tackling toxicity? Really?” Ubisoft and Riot have their own histories of alleged inappropriate behaviour within their company cultures. Although both companies have said they’re committed to behavioural change, it could prove tough to win over players who are aware of their history. Though still in it’s early stages, Zero Harms In Comms is an attempt at co-operating to answer a thorny issue that’s relevant across the industry, but it’s just one possible response to the issue of disruptive behaviour in chat....
