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Audio player loading… What would superhero universes look like if the superheroes... well, lost? It's an avenue not often explored, but it's what the team behind deckbuilder Hand of Fate is looking to do with its newest game Capes. The tactical RPG looks at the bleak world of supervillain supremacy, where they managed to wipe out the good guys two decades prior and have since wreaked a fair bit of havoc. But now the new generation of superheroes are all grown up, ready to reclaim the city from the various baddies that have set up shop. It's a fun premise, and I'd be interested to see how a band of green champions can stand up against veteran ne'er-do-wells. The trailer gives a good glimpse of what can be expected. There'll be a whole slew of superheroes to recruit, with the developer promising some neat diversity in powers as well as "ethnicities, genders, hopes, and dreams." The turn-based combat will have the heroes rescuing civilians from debris and taking on the bad … [Read more...] about Capes is a superhero tactical RPG where the good guys already lost

In 2018, developer Two Point Studios brought silliness back into simulation with Two Point Hospital. In the spirit of Bullfrog classics like Theme Park and Theme Hospital, they infused the game with an irreverent cartoon quality that means that you were playing with a smile on your face even as everything was falling apart and people were relieving themselves in your corridors (Rule No. 1 of Two Point games: you can never have enough toilets). Two Point Campus takes that formula to University (or College, depending which side of the Atlantic you're looking at it from). As you'd expect, throw a bunch of students and absurd classes into the Two Point mix, and you end up with a management game that's the right kind of ridiculous. There are over a dozen courses to choose from across multiple colleges, and we played around with some of the most eye-catching ones on offer. If a student has culinary ambitions that go beyond stir-in pasta sauces and beans on toast, then they should try … [Read more...] about The classes of Two Point Campus take their silliness very seriously

Audio player loading… The music video embedded above has the power to crash computers. Back in the hazy days of Windows XP, a major computer manufacturer discovered that playing the music video for Janet Jackson's 'Rhythm Nation' would crash some models of laptops. And not just its own laptops in some quirky coding error: it was affecting competitors' laptops, too. This is a tale taken from Raymond Chen's blog and book 'The Old New Thing', and it recounts a bug fix story (opens in new tab) told to Chen by a colleague in Windows XP product support. "And then they discovered something extremely weird," Chen says. "Playing the music video on one laptop caused a laptop sitting nearby to crash, even though that other laptop wasn’t playing the video!" Now Rhythm Nation goes hard, but there was something else going on here. "It turns out that the song contained one of the natural resonant frequencies for the model of 5400 rpm laptop hard drives that … [Read more...] about Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation is a form of cyberattack

Audio player loading… I'm a nosy gal, so I can't exactly blame Guybrush for being a bit salty that it's been three goddamn decades and he still doesn't have a clue what Monkey Island's secret is. But hey, anything can happen—after all, Return to Monkey Island is a thing that's actually releasing. This month, we're chatting to Ron Gilbert about the sequel that was never supposed to exist. The old Monkey Island team has a new perspective, from evolving its art style to modernising the point-and-click style of gameplay. What exactly is the plan for our dear Guybrush Threepwood all these years later? Monkey Island fans are in for a treat with the subscriber cover too, featuring gorgeous art of Guybrush's favourite zombie pirate pal LeChuck. We also got to sit down with director and producer of Final Fantasy 14 Naoki Yoshida, looking back on what's been a phenomenal 12 months for the critically-acclaimed MMORPG and seeing what's in store for Yoshida and our Warriors of Light in … [Read more...] about PC Gamer UK October Issue: Monkeying around

Audio player loading… Talk about the butterfly effect. When something goes wrong (or indeed right) with your PC, cosmic rays aren't exactly the first phenomena that spring to mind. But once you've ruled out software bugs, and established that a hardware fault isn't the culprit, there's a very real possibility that high energy radiation from supernovae could be to blame for your game character's erratic behaviour, or that random Blue Screen of Death. Youtube's Veritasium (opens in new tab) detailed in a recent video how cosmic rays could be spicing up your technological encounters—for better or worse. As Dr. Leif Scheick, Principle Engineer in Radiation Effects at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, confirms: "An upset there, a transient there, can alter the function of these devices," he explains. "So a blue screen of death that you get, might actually have been a neutron or whatnot." I'm sure this article will be followed by a slew of speedrunners blaming their … [Read more...] about Rampant space particles might be behind eight-year-old Mario speedrun glitch

Audio player loading… Bad news came for Marvel fans yesterday when we learnt that Avalanche Studios—the maker of Just Cause—was working on an Iron Man game ten years ago, but it ended up being canned due to "company politics". The news came as part of a MinnMax interview (opens in new tab) with Avalanche co-founder Christofer Sundberg, who revealed that the developer's Stockholm studio worked with Disney on an Iron Man game for two years before it ended up cancelled. "It was a mess by the end," said Sundberg, noting that the game's shortening development time and ballooning budget would have required Avalanche to hire an extra "70, 80 people to the team" in order to finish the game to Disney's specifications. "It would have broken the company completely" to do that, he added, pointing out that there wouldn't be a new project for all the extra hires to work on after Iron Man was concluded. Sundberg didn't go into much detail about how the game would have played, … [Read more...] about Just Cause devs spent two years on an Iron Man game before it got cancelled over ‘company politics’

Audio player loading… China's Sichuan province has had to make some tough decisions in face of the most intense heatwave in 60 years. The three-level power supply control measures now in place have seen giants like Intel closing factories in order for the province to keep up with its rising air conditioner usage. What does that mean for us? Higher chip prices in the future, potentially. For now, though, the important thing is trying to keep the Chinese population alive . Already one of the warmest regions, Sichuan is now competing with soaring 40°C (104°F) temperatures, as well as the least rain recorded in decades. It's meant a frightening lack of water in reservoirs for hydropower. As such, China's having a hard time keeping up with the demand coming from the power grid, especially since usage has spiked so violently as its inhabitants' try to keep cool in the heat. "The power supply situation in the province is extremely tense," Sichuan Daily (opens in new … [Read more...] about Intel production halted in Sichuan China due to 60-year-high heatwave

Audio player loading… With a name like a long-lost Japanese tokusatsu series and a slavish dedication to a 16-bit aesthetic, Blazing Chrome (opens in new tab) developers JoyMasher are at it again. They've just announced their fourth game, Vengeful Guardian: Moonrider, an action platformer the the kind of 16-bit style that would have been right at home on the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive, or even the glowing backlit screen of a Game Gear. In Vengeful Guardian: Moonrider you'll play the eponymous Moonrider, a super soldier who turns against the evil government that created it and fights for its overthrow. It's an action platformer that draws from the classic era of action platforming, with the creators citing Ninja Gaiden and Shinobi as inspirations. Like Blazing Chrome, JoyMasher will partner with indie publisher The Arcade Crew to help Vengeful Guardian: Moonrider along. Yes, I'm going to type out the entire title Vengeful Guardian: Moonrider as many times as I can … [Read more...] about Here’s a 16-bit cybersamurai epic from the devs of Blazing Chrome

Audio player loading… Elden Ring was released on February 25 this year and, just under six months later, publisher Bandai Namco has announced it's sold a staggering 16.6 million copies of the game. This makes it by far the biggest individual success in developer FromSoft's history: the Dark Souls series has sold a combined total of around 27 million, while the most recent figure for Sekiro was 5 million copies sold as of summer 2020. Clearly the mass market loves some demigod runes and a bit of body grafting. The news came as part of Bandai Namco's financial results (opens in new tab) (thanks, Gamebiz.jp (opens in new tab) ) for the first financial quarter of 2023 (meaning April through June 2022), which show that the Japanese giant is in rude health: it reported videogame sales totalling ¥40.5 billion yen, a roughly 55% year-on-year increase, with 11,444,000 units sold over these three months. Despite such sales, the publisher forecasts an overall drop in profit … [Read more...] about Elden Ring’s sold just under 17 million copies in six months

Audio player loading… The Xbox Adaptive Controller has proven itself a tremendously useful device for anyone with limited mobility to game without compromise. So much so that Nintendo may have been eyeing up its own version of the accessibility controller, with a view to making it platform agnostic. Former Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aimé has spoken about the possibility of such a controller in an interview with Inverse (opens in new tab) (via TechRadar (opens in new tab) ). "Imagine an adaptive controller that you could play with your latest Xbox, PlayStation, or Nintendo platform. That's what we were working on three years ago." Fils-Aimé left Nintendo in 2019 and cannot say for sure whether Nintendo still has hopes of creating such a controller. He notes that he would like to see it reach the market sooner rather than later, however. "My hope is that the effort has continued. I'm not sure if it has or has not," Fils-Aimé says. "But … [Read more...] about Nintendo was working on its own cross-platform version of the Xbox Adaptive Controller