Month: September 2024

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…