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The Maw: what's new in PC games this week?

All that's fit to play over 1st-5th July, plus our weekly newsblog

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A 17th century drawing of a fish monster attacking a sailing ship
Image credit: Johann Christoph Wagner / Rock Paper Shotgun

Happy this week, everybody! Not going to lie, it's a dry one. Drier than a doldrum dunked in silica gel packets, dustier than Death's doorstep. There are precious few eyebrow-raising new PC games on the cards, but I have swaddled my head in wet blankets, braved the desert and returned with a small handful of dreams.

Monday 1st July is a day of immaculate blackness and creepy lo-fi linework, care of space station spook-a-walker Vorago. Tuesday 2nd July is a time of much free-to-play schlooting, care of The First Descendant - and of much pay-to-play mmorpging, care of Final Fantasy 14's Dawntrail expansion. On Wednesday 3rd July there... is... Connect-4, but inside a computer? On Thursday 4th July therrrrrrrrre isssssss... a game literally just called Multiplayer RPG? That's like naming your dog "Dogs". And on Friday 5th July, a relatively electrifying shmup called Void Reaper.

You may not get to play that last one, because odds are high that the Maw, our resident dark god of video game news, will have blossomed in outrage and swallowed the world by Thursday. Please: if you spy any headline-worthy new PC games anywhere, perhaps sheltering from the summer torpor on Itch.io, sing out in the comments. Please. The Maw's shadows are growing clearer and sharper, lengthening like silences. Our generators agonise, struggling to fill the calm. It may already be too late.

Key points

Escape from Tarkov will now grant players in-game currency as a bounty for reporting cheaters, as part of devs Battlestate Games' ongoing war against ne'er-do-wells in the extraction shooter.

Matt Jarvis

Factorio's long-awaited expansion Space Age and its 2.0 update arrive this October, with the expansion costing as much as the original game - it sounds like you’ll get more than your money’s worth, though.

Matt Jarvis

Battlefield 2042’s Dead Space crossover, which arrives in its final seventh season next week, just makes the absence of a Dead Space 2 remake hurt all that more.

Matt Jarvis

Highly satisfactory factory sim Satisfactory has a 1.0 release date and yes, you will at last be able to flush the toilets. All those outraged letters to Sweden have finally paid off.

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

Final Fantasy 14’s Dawntrail expansion has only been out a few days, and one of its new jobs is already being adjusted in its next set of patches.

Matt Jarvis

I've also got some hot, tasty brain emissions to share about Horticular, which is Viva Pinata with dead planets and gnomes.

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

Nocturnal 2 is a nifty, dare I say snazzy 2D metroidvania in which you have to light your sword on fire. Some quick impressions.

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

Former Rockstar senior camera artist and virtual cinematographer Joseph Rubino has shared a little about GTA 5's scrapped Trevor DLC, speaking to SanInPlay via Eurogamer. The key line: "When GTA Online came out, it was so much of a cash cow and people were loving it so much that it was hard to make an argument that a standalone DLC would out-compete that."

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

Capcom have ended support for multiplayer mechs vs dinos shooter Exoprimal, a year after launch. Online services will still be available, cycling the available four seasons of sweet, sweet Content.

Nic Reuben

As reported by PCGamesN, Bodycam developers Reissad have removed some neo-Nazi graffiti - the number 1488 - from one of the game's maps. "Certain players pointed this out to us, and we, like many people, had no idea that this sequence of numbers was a symbol," a representative of Reissad told the site. "It was also graffiti coming from an Unreal asset pack… which was not created by us. We corrected the graffiti as quickly as possible and notified the pack creator of the error."

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

Hark, a new Elden Ring patch. It makes changes to PvP, weapon throwing ranges and one of the bosses, while quashing a few bugs.

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

While we're talking charitable donations, Bit Golem have raised $50,000 in humanitarian aid for Ukraine via paid DLC packs for their free Lovecraft adaptation Dagon. Why, that doesn't sound cosmically horrible at all!

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

Annual speedrunning event Summer Games Done Quick 2024 has raised a lifetime total of $50 million for charity. This year's funding goes to emergency medical aid nonprofit Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières. The event runs for another couple of days - here's the full schedule

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Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

UK readers: without necessarily broaching the ever-delicate question of who you voted for, did you have an OK time getting to the voting booth yesterday? No dog-related mishaps?

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

Suicide Squad's season 2 roadmap is in the wilds.

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

As reported by Eurogamer, D&D lead designer Jeremy Crawford has changed the legendary table-topper's rules based on his experiences with noted D&D adaptation Baldur's Gate 3. The spell Cloud of Daggers, for example, can now be moved around the battlefield because Crawford really wanted to do that in BG3.

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

IT IS NEW UK GOVERNMENT DAY

Well, that happened. FEED THE MAW.

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

IT IS UK ELECTION DAY

Being a bear of little brain, I forgot to mention a couple of things in the weekly round-up. Firstly, today 4th July sees the release of Zenless Zone Zero, the new free-to-play action-RPG from the makers of Genshin Impact - probably a bigger deal than Multiplayer RPG, with all due respect to the latter's developers. Secondly, today is the day of the UK general elections, and we've been given the day off by Ian Games of the Ian Games Network to go vote. As such, it's going to be a quieter Thursday with minimal updates, though Brendy did find time to rank the best JRPGs on PC. We'll see you on Friday.

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

Tiny Garden plants a charming, cozy farming sim inside virtual Polly Pocket toys. it looks very sweet, and it's already passed its funding target on Kickstarter ahead of a release next February.

Matt Jarvis

Matt Jarvis

Matt Jarvis

As Edwin mentioned earlier, Tales of Kenzera: Zau developers Surgent Studios, founded by Assassin’s Creed Origins actor Abubakar Salim, have laid off over a dozen staff less than three months after their debut game hit PC.

Matt Jarvis

Someone done a The Bear videogame mock-up and it is incredible.

Nic Reuben

Paradox have posted a video about the Byzantine Empire, this being the key inspiration for the upcoming Roads To Power DLC. It features actual history professor Anthony Kaldellis. Look at him go!

Watch on YouTube

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

Powerwash Simulator's Alice In Wonderlands DLC is out now.

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

Kring is a bizarre collection of festively fleshy minigames - "clicker, bullet hell, top-down platform, side-scroller platform, shoot'em up, beat'em up, and other strange genres that defy categorization" - that together wear the label of a god sim. It's from Italian dev Ivan Venturi, one of the minds behind Hell Galaxy, and has a demo on Steam.

Watch on YouTube

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

Game Informer have been talking to BioWare about Dragon Age: The Veilguard's difficulty settings. They are Storyteller, for people who are less interested in stomping Fade demons, Adventurer, for people who don't mind stomping a Fade demon now and then, and Nightmare, for people who only feel alive when they're almost being murdered by Fade demons. There's also Unbound, aka custom, for people who refuse to be pigeonholed. The custom settings include a no-dying option. Haha journalist mode, amirite gemarzs?

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

Nexus Mods have launched their "next generation" mod manager, though it only supports Stardew Valley for the minute.

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

Tales of Kenzera: Zau developers Surgent Studios have laid off staff, as reported by Game Developer, just three months after the studio's debut release (which we largely liked).

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

HAVE GENERALLY AMICABLE RELATIONS WITH YOU TILL WEDNESDAY

The beast frolics and fevers! Reload the 18-Inch Patch Noter and set headlines to "Dazzle"! FEED THE MAW.

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

Graceborne is a mod that makes Elden Ring all Bloodborne-y, with new weapons, costumes, and enemy redesigns. *Micolash voice*: Ah, trailer. Or as some say, tray-tray:

Watch on YouTube

Nic Reuben

Capcom still haven't heard our cries for Dino Crisis (see yesterday's Maw-ing) but they have given us a demo for dreamy yōkai slayer Kunitsu-Gami: Path Of The Goddess. This was Edwin's favourite game at Summer Games Fest, and the way he described it has made me immediately download the demo on Steam.

Brendan Caldwell

Resident Evil 9, a game we all knew would happen, is officially happening. It was confirmed in Capcom's NEXT showcase yesterday, and It'll be lead by Resident Evil 7 director Koshi Nakanishi.

Watch on YouTube

Nic Reuben

Hitman's next elusive target is punchy man Conor McGregor playing an MMA fighter called The Disruptor. Lovely coat, to be fair.

Watch on YouTube

Nic Reuben

LOVE YOU TILL TUESDAY

The Maw's sundering tongue-barbs glisten with organ-melting venom in anticipation.

Nic Reuben

"A UK employment tribunal has ordered Star Citizen developer Cloud Imperium Games (CIG) to pay almost £30,000 ($38,000) in compensation for discriminating against a disabled worker," write Game Developer. CIG dismissed the employee after issuing a return-to-office policy, despite the claimant having made CIG aware of his disability at the start of his tenure.

Nic Reuben

The Metal Gear Solid movie - starring Oscar Isaac as Solid 'Solid' Snake - is still in the works, according to a recent chat between producer Avi Arad and Journalist Brian Crecente. "We're working on the script some more, but I can't talk about it yet. I think everyone's going to be really excited and surprised," Arad told Crecente, via VG247.

Nic Reuben

It's Dino Crisis' 25th anniversary! Hey. Hey. Capcom. Hey. Hey Capcom. Hey. Capcom.

Hey

Nic Reuben

Glass-shattering first-person shooter Selaco has been updated with a big patch that adds new weapons upgrades, difficulty mutators, and the ability to pet the vacuum cleaner robots. Among many other changes, you can also now kick people (hooray!) but only when you have your fists out as a weapon (booo!).

Brendan Caldwell

The upcoming Crazy Taxi will include multiplayer, according to a page made to hire fresh developers for the SEGA game. The company also released a recruitment video in which devs talked about working on the game, and series producer Kenji Kanno confirms there will be a multiplayer component (thanks, Automaton).

Brendan Caldwell

Poor Edwin, eh? Takes a few well-deserved days of, and immediately, an upcoming crowdfunding campaign for a Soul Reaver graphic novel prequel is announced. I guess I'll steal his chance to get excited about it in public for myself then. Cheers, Ian Games!

Nic Reuben

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2'S public beta - due in a few month's time - has been cancelled, with Focus Interactive saying they didn't want to take dev resources away from the full launch on the 9th of September. You will get a free pistol skin if you signed up, though. Cheers, VG247!

Nic Reuben

Modders have discovered a hidden bit of ending in The Witcher 3, thanks to the recently released REDkit. The cut section would have had Yennefer betray the Lodge of Sorceresses to Emperor Emhyr. Cheers, PC Gamer!

Nic Reuben

HAPPY MAWNDAY

I'm off on holiday till Wednesday, but there is yet time for a bit of housekeeping. Perhaps due to the dreadful lassitude, this week's liveblog has frayed away from the timeline and become entangled with last week's. Either that, or Graham accidentally popped Friday's updates in the draft liveblog I'd set up, because I did not tell him I was setting up a draft liveblog. I know which explanation I prefer.

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

Dune Imperium, which I adore, is getting its first digital expansion in July with the arrival of Rise Of Ix.

Graham Smith

Graham Smith

The Sims 4's next expansion is called Lovestruck, and it adds a dating app and outdoor woohoo on July 25th.

Graham Smith

Graham Smith

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