1 month ago
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Civilization 7, Afterlove EP and a touch of city-building and rogueliting
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Image credit: 2K / Polygon
This week is the week of Valentine's Day, and therefore theoretically the most romantic week of the year even though it's still winter here and the drizzle feels like it's falling inside my bones and the thought of another human's touch makes me want to wipe myself with sandpaper.
Some trivia from a person who's been in a relationship for decades: Valentine's Day comes less than a month after "Blue Monday", the most depressing day of the year according to a random travel company, and you know, I think we need more time to, as it were, switch between varieties of blueness. My picks for this week's new PC games likely won't help, assuming you aren't especially turned on by the thought of Harriet Tubman being queen of Carthage. Ah well. Let's commence feeding the Maw and hope that we strike a few sparks of amore from the creature's heaving flanks.
On 10th February 2025, a choice of two space-me-dos: Reality Break, a roguelite starfight 'em up in which you can "rewrite the universe", aka pick from a spread of game modifiers, and Astronomics, in which you stripmine procedurally generated asteroids as they tumble through your claim. On 11th February, it's time to recolonise the chronology in Civilization 7 - our review is on the way. On 12th February, some episodic pixelart psychic detective work care of Urban Myth Dissolution Center. On 13th February, it's time to harvest some adjacency bonuses in lightweight survival city-builder Dawnfolk. And on 14th February, a choice of decreasingly iconic grave-robbing in Tomb Raider IV-VI Remastered, or getting the band back together post-bereavement in visual novel Afterlove EP.
On dreary days like these I take comfort not in romantic poetry, but the Good Book. Here is John 15:13 - "greater love hath no one than this: that they post any hot new PC games we've missed in the comments thread". Find our weekly news liveblog below. I wish you a week filled with both saucy shenanigans and embiggening gaming experiences.
11:21 am UTC
Valve are banning games on Steam that feature in-game adverts, although not in-game advertising, via Eurogamer.
– Nic Reuben
10:43 am UTC
Original Diablo developer David Brevik reckons action-RPGs have a loot-mageddon problem. “I think that ARPGs in general have started to lean into this: kill swaths of enemies all over the place extremely quickly,” he told Videogamer recently. “Your build is killing all sorts of stuff so you could get more drops, you can level up, so you can like, and the screen is littered with stuff you don’t care about.” Brevik thinks Diablo 2 struck a better, slower balance with its flow of trinkets and level-ups.
– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
10:36 am UTC
Great Scott! Back To The Future co-writer Bob Gale claims that a new video game adaptation is being made. "I don't want to tell you any more than that because I'm not allowed to, but this is something I've wanted to do for a long time," he told Cleveland.com. "Knock on wood that it will happen. Of course, 2025 is the 40th anniversary of the original movie. We're planning on some events, plus there's a documentary that's in post-production now about the making of the musical."
– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
10:24 am UTC
Bloomberg have a report on goings-on at Warner Bros. Allegedly, Monolith's Wonder Woman game is "struggling to coalesce" with $100 million already spent, and is "years" from release. Warner Bros Montreal are now said to be helping Monolith with development after Warner Bros scrapped their unannounced adaptation of The Flash in response to the disappointing financial performance of the 2023 movie.
– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
10:19 am UTC
PSN had a massive outage over the weekend. It's apparently been fixed now. PlayStation Plus subs will get five days of service free as compensation.
Network services have fully recovered from an operational issue. We apologize for the inconvenience and thank the community for their patience. All PlayStation Plus members will automatically receive an additional 5 days of service.
— Ask PlayStation (@AskPlayStation) February 9, 2025– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
10:17 am UTC
IN THE MOOD FOR MONDAY
It's getting hot in here, because I've just turned on my small fan heater that is my best friend in the world. FEED THE MAW.
– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
English (US) ·