Gaming

Another week, another “What are you playing this week?”-thread? Triple A? Indie gems? Casual games?

What are you playing this week?

Wardogs' closed beta ends TODAY. Here's the exact end time, what to know before it shuts down, and how Twitch Drops actually work if you're still trying to claim rewards

I just wondered what happened to the weekly “What are you playing”-thread and it seems it went on a long summer break. Outdoors. Without electronics. Or Internet.

So, as fall/autumn is around the corner, it’s time to get back in front of your consoles, gaming PCs, smartphones, tablets.

What are you playing this week?

Hi friends! What do you think?

Shop Crush is a mysterious shop simulator with psychological horror elements, set in the early 2000s.

In this hybrid visual novel, you run a small thrift shop, get to know your customers, figure out what they really want, and decide what to put in front of them. Every customer has their own personality, preferences, and hidden motives - and it’s up to you to figure them out.

Behind each customer is a small psychological mystery waiting to be uncovered. Read their behavior, make the right calls, and balance profit against customer trust as you try to keep the shop running for one more day.

You can find the trailer here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2J_H6metLI

Captured entirely from in-game footage on PlayStation 5, this extended look at the next Grand Theft Auto showcases the biggest, most immersive evolution of the series yet.

As a big Elden Ring person with an additional 600 hours in Nightreign, the FOMO of FromSoftware's next multiplayer experiment, The Duskbloods, being a Switch 2 exclusive was hitting me hard. That is, until I actually played it: I spent the majority of the closed network test held over the weekend confused about what the hell was going on, and even when I finally learned, I wasn't particularly impressed.

To be fair, the network test wasn't built to make a great first impression. It was limited to one map, six playable characters, no build customization, solo queue only, and seemed to only have a portion of its intro tutorial. I also experienced borderline unplayable input lag from the Switch 2's docked and handheld modes, which meant I was fighting the basic controls for longer than I'd like.

Assuming the final game will have all of that fixed and more, I might end up liking The Duskbloods in the end. Elden Ring Nightreign didn't click for me for close to 20 hours, and when it did, I dug it so much I spent the first half of this year playing it daily, even climbing to the highest level of its ranked mode. The Duskbloods might reveal itself to be a masterfully created vampire multiplayer game, but as it stands right now I think it's an aimless mess of intriguing systems that don't cohere into anything worth PC gamers buying a $500 (for now) console for.

Vapor World: Over The Mind is a Soulslike Metroidvania with an evocative, painterly art style reminiscent of Lies of P and the narrative platformers of Playdead. According to Korean studio Alive Inc, the game had 100,000 wishlists just before its early access launch on August 19, mostly on the strength of a demo available since January 2025.

But what should have been a triumphant early access launch went pear shaped very quickly. At launch, few talked about the quite distinctive worldbuilding or the parry-heavy combat. Instead, all focus was trained entirely on something absent from the popular demo: very obvious AI use.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/74416381

The relevant section is blunt. "The Software is licensed to you, not sold," the EULA states. "You are granted a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, and personal license to play or use the Software for your private, non-commercial use on the system or device it was intended for."

The terms also restrict renting, modifying, or obtaining games through unauthorised means. Nothing in there is new, technically. Sony's EULA has always said this. The timing is what makes it land differently right now.

Remember dialing into a BBS just to play 10 turns of Trade Wars and spending the whole day wondering what your rivals were plotting? That was multiplayer, decades before Wi-Fi.

The #GTA6 leaker is defying Take-Two & Microsoft legal subpoenas, dropping 2 more gameplay clips to promote a crypto scheme! Full chaos inside Rockstar.

How a simple human error exposed GTA VI and changed game dev security forever

Days after Deus Ex director Warren Spector announced that he was quitting the business, another former Ion Storm developer, Harvey Smith, has revealed Black Pony Immersive - a new studio dedicated to the creation of "imaginative first-person action RPGs set within well-realized worlds, where players create their own memorable experiences with expressive, emergent game systems." The announcement features the maxim: "through the looking glass, we’re chasing a dream of mystery, meaning, and creative play." Hey, I understood that reference! Sure sounds like an imsim shop to me.

Black Pony are based, or at least, "centralised" out in Austin, Texas. Smith - former creative director for Dishonored 2 - is joined in the cockpit by a couple of other former Arkane developers, Ben Horne and Ricardo Bare. The studio's wider workforce are located around the United States, and include people who've spent time at Spider-Man makers Insomniac, Fortnite wranglers Epic, Just Cause inventors Avalanche, and Saints Row... bejanglers Volition.

It's a hopeful turn of events because it wasn't long ago that Microsoft closed Arkane Austin, creators of the very good Prey 2017 and the sadly not very good Redfall. Nic (RPS in peace) had thoughts. Microsoft are currently taking the axe to what's left of Arkane in Lyon – as of writing, the developers are haggling out the terms of their sale, closure or buyout with the Xbox team. Smith alludes to this in a forgiveably buzzwordy press release.

Jacob Geller plays with Expert Controls and So Can You

Resident Evil Requiem sold 5M copies in a week. So why does half the fanbase call it overhyped, undercooked slop? The marketing worked. The game? Debatable.

RetroSpace launches October 1st! Disco-punk space horror where you can be a sneaky chap or a mutant action hero as you try to survive on a space station swall...