Locare

Activision’s rollout of the new “Call of Duty HQ” launcher has been anything but elegant. The HQ, which is really just a rebranded frontend for a single CoD game, is the only way to launch the new Modern Warfare 3, and until yesterday, that process was a real slog. To play MW3, you had to first launch the CoD HQ, then click MW3, then return to the desktop, then wait for the actual game you wanted to play to boot.

That’s now been reversed by a patch deployed on the eve of Modern Warfare 3’s full release: Launching “Call of Duty” now takes you to the front end of Modern Warfare 3 (whether you actually own it or not), and switching over to last year’s MW2 or Warzone now requires a return to desktop first. Essentially, MW3 is now the homepage of CoD, making the launch process easy for folks making the leap to the new game, but simultaneously much worse for the hundreds of thousands of people who prefer to stick to Warzone, DMZ, or Modern Warfare 2.

No matter what mindset I try to place myself in, the decision is just mind-boggling. I can’t think of another instance in the history of videogames where you’ve been required to launch a different game you may not own or want …

A Youtube channel specialising in Minecraft animations has produced an incredible recreation of the recent Grand Theft Auto 6 trailer using Minecraft assets and Unreal Engine 5. Boranium Art, run by the Miami-based Ray Escobar and three collaborators, cut its teeth with an almost equally impressive recreation of the Red Dead Redemption 2 trailer a year ago (and also has a thing for Oppenheimer-via-Minecraft), but this raises the bar and then some.

Not only does this recreate the trailer shot-for-shot, but easily the most impressive aspect of it is how it captures the tonal aesthetic of Rockstar’s Vice City: the neon-flecked nights, the breathtaking sun-kissed sweeps, and the grimy urban sheen. The eagle-eyed Minecrafters will spot it uses the Minecraft Story mode style for the characters, and several GTA elements have been swapped-out for Minecraft in-jokes.

But given this is the year of our lord 2024, perhaps the first important clarification is this: “It’s not AI,” says Escobar. He says they’ve been planning the video for around a year, and it was a “no-brainer” to “bridge one of the best-selling video games ever with another future best-selling one”.…

Helldivers 2 has announced the latest twist in its galactic war, and it’s one that will have Helldivers rushing in en masse. The planet under attack by the Automatons is Tien Kwan, a name that will be familiar to any liberty-loving patriot who saw Arrowhead’s mech tease a few days ago: Yep, this is the place where they make mechs.

Now, the question of why an Automaton might want an exosuit is just the type of commie reaction I’d expect from someone who isn’t currently diving into Tien Kwan at a rate of knots. Make no mistake that if these robots get hold of more robot bits they’ll probably be comforted or something, and such shall not be tolerated.

This is the kind of situation where one name is going to be on every player’s lips: Joel. The Helldivers 2 game master is watching over the game’s meta-structure for moments such as this, and no matter how many soldiers Super Earth sends, the Automatons won’t be going down easily: the whole job is ensuring that the live service side doesn’t feel like most every other game.

Even though the game has only been out for a few weeks, the Tien Kwan liberation follows on from one of the game’s first grea…

Remember when Thanos snapped his fingers and killed half the life in the universe? Well, imagine he had Infinity Gauntlets on both hands, and maybe Infinity Booties on his feet, and he just kept snapping, tapping, scatting, and bebopping like crazy until all life in the universe was nothing but dust. Everything except you.

That’s the tone in Adrift, a new Expedition for No Man’s Sky, where you’ll “explore an abandoned universe” all by yourself, with “no other lifeforms, no shops, no help.” Those cute little aliens? Gone. Bustling space stations? More like busted. You’re on your own, Traveler. Have a look at the unsettlingly lonesome trailer above.

It’s worth pointing out that the “no lifeforms” claim isn’t quite what the trailer makes it out to be. Immediately you can see several types of those weird wriggling tentacle monsters, a sandworm abruptly leaps through the air, and other winged creatures appear in the sky. So there are still critters to discover and catalogue, but there’s no intelligent life out there: no NPCs, no traders, no friendly aliens or robots to chat with or buy ships from or stumble upon in a remote outpost. Any buildings you fin…

If you can’t beat ’em… make ’em join you? That’s not quite how the saying goes, but that’s how co-op zombie survival game Welcome to Paradize works. The country has been overrun by zombie hordes, but instead of hacking them up with a machete you hack their brains with technology, turning them into loyal companions who can help you fight, gather, build, and survive.

Your mind-controlled zombies aren’t as cute and cuddly as Palworld’s critters, but they’re sort of charming in their own way and they look incredibly useful in the gameplay trailer below. When you capture one of these shambling, rotting former humans, clap a device onto its head and it’ll start following you around. Thanks to a little control panel you can assign them different tasks in and out of combat, and load them up with gear like tools and weapons. Each “zombot,” as they’re called, can help you build your base, gather resources, and even shuffle around in the garden to plant and harvest crops.

You’re gonna need that help because you can’t tame every zombie in the world, and there are huge hordes of the undead (and apparently one extremely angry elephant) that want to tear you limb from limb. …

Transcripts of analyst-facing conferences, held by multi-billion dollar organisations, are usually terminally dull affairs. But a recent Intel chat contains a wee snippet we can add to the rumour fire about when the next version of Windows is due. And in this particular case, Intel is hinting that it’s definitely next year.

Intel sat down with Citi last month to chat about how things had been going and what the near future looked like, in terms of finances, foundries, and so on. But stuck in amongst it all was a brief, almost passing, comment about how Intel thinks sales will improve during 2024:

“We actually think ’24 is going to be a pretty good year for client, in particular, because of the Windows refresh. And we still think that the installed base is pretty old and does require a refresh and we think next year may be the start of that, given the Windows catalyst. So we’re optimistic about how things will play out beginning in ’24.”

I know what you’re thinking: Windows 12 isn’t explicitly stated, but at no point is any normal update to Microsoft’s operating system ever referred to as a refresh. Or something that will be enough of a catalyst…

If you’re anything like me, you’re eager for it to be June 21 already, when Elden Ring expansion Shadow of the Erdtree drops. FromSoftware’s largest expansion to date, it promises a slew of new horrific enemies to battle, creepy lands to explore, and weapons to collect. In the meantime, however, we can cruise around the Lands Between in style as we collect all the runes, smithing stones, and talismans our hearts desire on a brand new mount.

A giant capybara.

Delamain’s “Capybara Island” mod, available here on Nexus Mods, turns our beloved Torrent into a gigantic fluffy capybara. Apparently it also changes all goats, deer, and wild boars as well, which begs the question of whether or not our intrepid mod author took the time to animate the capybaras rolling around like maniacs. Why do the goats in Elden Ring roll around like that, anyway? Someone ping the lore guys, we’ve got big questions here.

The mod also promises fun capybara facts on the loading screens. Perhaps it will tell you that capybaras are the world’s largest rodent (they can grow up to 170 lbs!), or that their large front incisors never stop growing and they need to grind them down on foo…

This week lead character artist at Larian studios, Alena Dubrovina, took to Artstation with a heartwarming Artblast entry. Not only does it showcase some of Baldur’s Gate 3’s incredible 3D work, concept art, and animation, it also stands as an attempt to inspire future generations of game artists.

“It is in the artists’ nature to doubt ourselves, to constantly ask if we are good enough, struggle and get upset that our art is still not quite there”, the post says. 

“Well, we have good advice for you—don’t go it alone. Most of the art that you will see in Baldur’s Gate 3 Art Blast is a collaboration. It’s the teamwork and constant help from others that got us here. There were a lot of successes and failures along the way and the art you are about to see is the result of 6 years of hard work.”

The main takeaway is that art isn’t easy, and it takes iteration to get it right. This is something my tutors instilled in me at university, back when I was studying game art and design, and it’s something that’s been true for every generation of artists:

Art doesn’t exist in a vacuum.

Picasso didn’t pick up a …

“Wanzers,” “The Huffman Conflict,” “The People’s Republic of Alordesh,” this is the kind of ’90s/’00s anime bullshit I crave, and the Front Mission series seems to have it in droves. Described as “Final Fantasy Tactics with mechs” by PCG editor-in-chief Evan Lahti, the second game in the series is coming to PC for the first time via Steam on April 30.

Front Mission battles take place on a grid over a 3D map, with a zoom in to a cinematic view for individual attacks⁠—think XCOM or Fire Emblem and you’re basically there. Our primary warfighting platform in this particular dark future is the, ahem, Wanzer, a portmanteau of “Wandering Panzer.” They’re mechs, basically, and unfortunate fantasy naming convention aside, giant robot guys with tacticool weapons will always be sick. Front Mission 2 initially released on the PlayStation all the way back in 1997 as a Japan exclusive, with Squaresoft (sans-Enix at this point) not caring to invest in a Western localization.

Story-wise, I’m reminded of how games like Valkyria Chronicles or Ace Combat have these vaguely-European alternate universes with semi-realistic, industrial military tech in fake countries&…

Remnant 2 is an absolute banger. We gave it a solid 84 in our Remnant 2 review, and I’ve personally been an ambassador for this thing since day one. It’s a multiversal romp with some weird builds and creepy monsters to shoot, and it’s also received some really solid post-launch support.

Now you can play its standard edition for the price of a good burger. Remnant 2 has dropped along with its previous entry, Remnant: From the Ashes, onto PC and Xbox Game Pass. The only downside is you won’t be getting access to the DLC (unless your mate has it, of course). 

As it stands, Remnant 2’s standard edition is $50 (£42) on Steam. Meanwhile PC Game Pass is $10 (£8) a month, or $1/£1 for 14 days if the trial’s available for you. You could pick this thing up and blast through it in a couple of weeks for the price of a chocolate bar. I don’t need to tell you that’s a good deal.

Contrary to how we felt about Game Pass back in May, there are actually some other really solid offerings online right now. Persona 5 Tactica got a 90 from reviewer Lewis Parker, and it’s a new release too, having dropped earlier this month. Spirittea, which I’m told is the cos…

Helldivers 2 is going to make you link your PlayStation Network account—and boy, are liberty’s finest upset about it. If you dare to venture into the game’s Discord server at the time of writing, you’ll find the place is thoroughly on fire, with timeouts being issued left and right. 

As a recap in case you didn’t see the news earlier: Helldivers 2 will require you to link your Steam account to PlayStation Network starting May 6, though said requirement will roll out piecemeal. By May 30 Steam users will be confronted with a login screen, and by June 4 they’ll absolutely, 100% need to register.

This move, Sony claims, is to “protect players from griefing” among other ‘benefits’—and was only ever delayed thanks to the state of Helldivers 2’s servers at launch. Here’s the proper rundown of the change—or, more accurately, reinstatement—in policy. For now though, let’s turn our gaze towards the community.

First up, people are—understandably—worried about region locks. PSN serves around 69 countries at the moment which, as you might have put together, is not all of them. From where I’m sitting this whole debacle is mostly just…