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Earth Defense Force 6 players on Steam aren’t happy about having to sign into the Epic Games Store, it seems. The latest entry in the co-op ant-control shooter launched yesterday, and critics reckon it's a decent time. Still, it’s currently sitting at an angry red 'mostly negative' on Steam. In response, D3PUBLISHER have put out an apology statement, reassuring players that this third-party log in will only be required once.

The last time I played Dope Wars (Drug Wars), I was hunched on ‘the shit chair’ over a CRT around my mates house. It was school lunchtime, and I was in either year 7 or 8. I was quite overweight, scruffy, and I probably had specks of bean juice on my white shirt. It’s occurring to me now how deeply cursed the term ‘bean juice’ is. Tomato sauce, then. Tomato sauce on my school shirt, because it took me longer than normal to develop a sense of self-awareness about such things, and thus embarrassment, and thus I stunk and looked like shit all the time. I sort of miss it, honestly.

Dope Wars ‘98 is an updated version of the 1984 MS-DOS strategy game by John E. Dell. Its famous for being everywhere at the time, including calculators. The Windows version I played is by Beermat Software and now it's become abandonware. In brief, it’s a game about being a drug dealer, and occasionally running from the po-po. The cop is called ‘Officer Hardass’. You can shoot him to death! With a kill-gun! Otherwise, this is the same version, visually identical. It's also not exactly the version in the header image, but I'm not even going to try screenshotting it.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl, the beautifully grotty sci-fi shooter sequel from Ukrainian studio GSC Game World, has been delayed once again. It’s a relatively good-spirited delay, though: first off, it’s not that long, with the previously planned September 5th launch pushed back just a few weeks to November 20th. There’s also clever little in-universe announcement video (one which gives the fourth wall a study kick on its way out), and an accompanying promise of a meaty "developer deep dive video", set to reveal much more of the game’s radioactive hellscape on August 12th.

Yet again, some good food. Following the news earlier this week that 241 Bethesda Games Studios staffers had formed what was at the time the biggest wall-to-wall under Microsoft, The Verge reports that over 500 World Of Warcraft developers have voted to form their own union, alongside the Communication Workers of America (CWA).

Fallout: London, the massive fan-made Fallout 4 mod set in Poundland Prime (No Elephants, Some Castles, Canary Wharfare) has finally got a release date. Happy days, it’s actually today, Thursday 25th July. The news comes from Inverse, who’ve sent their dear alsatian companions sniffing around the mod’s Discord. Yesterday, Team FOLON lead Dean Carter shared the song I Just Can't Wait (For Tomorrow) then, when sniffed at harder, confirmed that the 'Tomorrow' part meant tomorrow (as in, today), "Unless nuclear war happens."

The immersive sim has seen a revival in recent years. Not only from larger studios like Arkane, keeping the faith alive with their time loops and space stations, but also from a bunch of smaller developers bravely exploring a typically ambitious genre. RPS has always had an affinity for these systemically luxuriant simulations, historically lauding the likes of the original Deus Ex as the best game ever made. But given everything that has come since, is that still the case? Only one way to find out: make a big list.

Animal caretaking sim Zoochosis is about being an ordinary zookeeper working in an ordinary zoo. What's that? There are no ordinary zoos? My mistake. Let me start again. Animal caretaking horror game Zoochosis is about being a stressed-out zookeeper in a hideous zoo where the giraffes have tendrils coming out of their chests and the kangaroos have rows of chattering teeth in their marsupial pouch. There, got it right in the end. We've known about the development of this terror-heavy tourist attraction since its announcement early this year. But now the upcoming horror sim has been given an autumn release date in a new trailer.

In a certifiably not-great week for gaming CPUs, AMD have announced that the new Ryzen 9000 series is being delayed for a few days. That’s thanks to initial production units not being up to standards, an AMD executive admitted, and comes shortly after rivals Intel copped to a potentially chip-killing fault in their latest Core processors. Ah well, there’s always – oh, wait. No. Those are the only two.

I've never been a poetry guy, not because I don't like it, I've just never gone out of my way to read them over books or whatnot. The poems I've engaged with the most are those read out during wedding ceremonies, those that pop-up before the start of a horror game, or The Tiger by 6-year old Nael that occasionally pops up as I'm doomscrolling. But thanks to the multiplayer web game "fridge poetry", where you drag words to create poems, I might become a day-to-day poem guy. Going off my first effort, I don't think many will appreciate my career switch.

Apex Legends developers Respawn Entertainment have announced that poorly-received plans to overhaul the battle royale's Premium Battle Pass will be partially walked back. Most crucially, the new passes – set to launch alongside the upcoming Season 22 in August – will no longer be sold exclusively for real-world cash; as with previous BPs, players will still be able to buy them with accumulated in-game currency.

Grit And Valor 1949 certainly evokes the tactics of Into The Breach, with its stompy machinery and floating tile battlegrounds. But, despite all appearances, this one isn’t actually turn-based at all. A tiley, tiny real time strategy then? Aye, and one that’s actually pretty frantic as it happens. Missions are snappy, intense skirmishes. You’ll fight off waves while trying to protect your useless, freeloading command vehicle. This threat, combined with on-the-fly tactical consider-me-do's like utilising cover and keeping rock-paper-scissors matchups in your favour ends up spawning something quite distinct. Please, do stomp on, preferably with less hypens for all our sakes.

Capcom's turned back the clock with Kunitsu-Gami: Path Of The Goddess, bringing to us an action RPG tower defence hybrid that's very 2000s and very welcome in this age of open world, live service-ness. And for some, it'll deliver what's needed: a fairly good time. A time marked by a loop that does hack 'n slash, management, and a dash of base repairs to an average degree. For me, though, and possibly many others, I simply don't think this mix ever truly captures what makes even the simplest of tower defence games so captivating.

All 36 employees of Humble Games publishing have reportedly been laid off. According to business developer Nicola Kwan, staff were informed at 9am this morning, and told that “the company is shutting down.” Humble dispute this in a statement made to Game Developer, claiming that the publishing label is "undergoing restructuring," as opposed to a full shutdown.

Humble’s statement - which you can read in full here - attributes the events to “challenging economic times for indie game publishing,” saying that “Humble Games has made the difficult but necessary decision to restructure our operations.”

The latest free update to The Sims 4 will let you "define the conditions under which your Sims become jealous". That's handy. The new feature, called "Romantic Boundaries", will give you some settings to tweak that determine whether a Sim will be bothered when they see their partner flirting with the neighbour, or kissing the neighbour, or getting into bed with the neighbour, or becoming a blur of obscene pixels with the neighb- okay Cindy, stop! I'm not comfortable with this. When I said we could open up I didn't mean with Nigel.

Intel have identified the fault behind reported stability issues with their 13th and 14th Gen Core CPUs, many of which have been failing after feeding themselves excessive voltages. The blame, Intel told PCG, lies with the same kind of pernicious force that fills your Twitter feed with pillocks, has turned Google into an AI-sodden shell of its former self, and keeps making Spotify suggest I listen to ninety different electroswing arrangements of Everybody Wants to Be a Cat. That's right: an algorithm.

Likely as a conspiracy to make me use the word boner in two different articles on the same day, campy horror shooter Shadows Of The Damned: Hella Remastered has received a release date - this Halloween, 31st October 2024. This spiffier version of the 2011 console game was announced earlier this year. Aside from a few costumes and NG+, it's basically the original package you know and - if you’re one of the fifteen people that bought the original - love.

"Do you fancy playing as a couple of skellies named 'The Boner Brothers' riding a bike and sidecar while chunky bastard-metal blasts out, also they’ve got a gun, also they can do tricks?" asked Motördoom, to which I became so instantly hyperactive I somehow worked out how to headbutt my own face. Of course I want to put a chainsaw on the front of my bike, Motördoom. Obviously I want a rougelike-able upgrade that perchance may set my demonic enemies on fire. Yes, I’d like to combine a sick manual with an action game killstreak for a very large combo, Motördoom. Is this what overly concerned parents thought PS1 games were actually like? If I got a disc with this demo on as a kid, I’d be significantly radder than I am today. Gnarly, even. Made of gnarls.

In the heyday of Sierra's adventure game years, there was a series called Space Quest that featured an intergalactic janitor named Roger Wilco. The series was more satirical than King's Quest, less preachy than Police Quest, and not quite as adult as Leisure Suit Larry. Spearheaded by Scott Murphy and Mark Crowe - a pair of devs who called themselves "Two Guys from Andromeda" - Space Quest was renowned for its humour, and there was a nice sense of progression throughout most of the series, with Roger Wilco leveling up from working class spaceman to the head of his own Star Trek ship.

Between Against The Storms’ critters, Manor Lords’s perfect oxen, and now Cataclismo, Hooded Horse’s roster of strategy games share a common thread that many guard-the-village-em-ups can fatally overlook: they present a civilisation that’s worth protecting. Even if the fallen culture you’ll defend against waves of gribblies offers fascinatingly few concrete details on its origins, there’s a lithe and impressionistic otherworldliness and use of colour in Cataclismo’s art that evokes unearthed layers of history. Also, everyone is just so gosh darn likeable, with their foppish hats plopped atop stretched bodies, and dialogue that remains resolute, chirpy, and eager, even when you’re click-marching these poor folk straight to their deaths.

Still, none of this will stop me will sacrificing every last man, woman, and child of these beleaguered warriors if it means preserving a single one of my immaculately crafted staircases.

I've not played Counter- Strike 2 in yonks, but I know a big update when I see one. That's right: Valve have added some new crates just outside of counter-terrorist spawn, near bombsite A. This means that players can now use these boxes to hop from CT up to catwalk with little fuss, where previously you'd need to use your teammates' heads as a springboard. What does this mean as a layperson who sort of plays the game sometimes? More than you might think!

A glance at comedy medieval medic sim Stretcher Men might have you believe it is a co-op game about co-ordination and teamwork. Not so! It's a singleplayer game in which you control not one but both carriers of a stretcher. You have to ferry a sick man over the hilly countryside, past muddy lake banks and over snowy mountains, all without dropping him on the ground. I can only imagine it controls a bit like Brothers: A Tale Of Two Sons, but with added ragdoll jollity. We'll know next week, when it releases on Steam.

One of the most memorable moments of Metro Exodus comes from a standoff with a giant catfish, who you have to avoid for a while (along with the cultists who worship it) before going "fishing" using an entire human corpse as bait. I didn't expect to see any rival catfish appearing in games after that, but now that I think about it - why not? They're a naturally freaky animal, perfect video game antagonists. And the developers of upcoming Japanese folklore 'em up Otoshi No Shima seem to understand this, having created a monstrous creature with a gaping mouth that follows the player at every turn. Come see.

Readers, something actually magical has happened! I’ve spent a non-zero amount of time this week compiling a wishlist for potential Stardew Valley-likes that also let me keep pets. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to play, but I knew I was burnt out on both stabbing and shooting, and wanted something light and colourful with a solid loop that I could veg out (pun intended) with at the end of the day. I even went to so far as to create a chap named Karrot King in Stardew before quitting in disgust because I couldn’t easily access carrot seeds.

I cannot in good conscious claim that I manifested such a videogame - that was the work of Skyreach Studio. However, this is the internet, so I will both take credit for it and offer you an exclusive discount on my course. While I’m waiting for your membership fee to arrive, I’ll be playing Critter Crops. It’s a witchy farming sim in which you grow odd pets and cast spells from flesh-bound grimoires. One of the verbs it offers on its Steam page is 'noodle'. Apologies to all the other games on my wishlist.

Baldur's Gate 3’s latest patch was due to launch in closed beta yesterday, but Larian have decided to give it a bit more time in the oven due to bugs. Namely, a bug that caused passive rolls - like those that detect traps - to stop working.

Happily, if you hadn’t already registered to take part in the beta, you now have more time to sign up. Scroll down a bit on the RPG’s Steam page and click the ‘Request Access’ button.

Tiny Garden is a puzzle game about planting flowers and crops you can then sell to buy seeds for new types of flowers and crops. That would be charming enough on its own, but your agricultural endeavours are set inside a Polly Pocket-style toy, with crops also able to be exchanged for furniture with which to decorate your diorama home. After blowing past its Kickstarter target, there's now a playable demo.

Fighting game tournament EVO 2024 took place this weekend, an annual event marked by fierce competition between the best players in the world and several update announcements for just about every fighting game going. The most exciting this year, to me: Lucy from Cyberpunk 2077 anime Edgerunners is joining the roster of Guilty Gear Strive.

MultiVersus development studio Player First Games has been acquired by the game's publisher, Warner Bros. The studio's co-founders will continue to lead the studio. The platform figher's second season is due to go live tomorrow, adding a ranked mode and new characters Samurai Jack and Beetlejuice.

Arranger is a puzzle game about moving, in both metaphorical and literal senses. Movement is the entire basis for the puzzles in Arranger, and is hard to explain without showing you (if you're able to watch the trailer that will be helpful). The world of Arranger is divided into a grid, and you don't move the main character, feisty misfit kid Jemma, across the squares. Rather, imagine that the row or column Jemma is on becomes a travelator, and you control the direction and speed of it. Jemma stands still and you move the ground, and anything on it left, right, up or down - like How To Say Goodbye but with more squares. It's one of those things that makes sense when you're doing it, trust me.

Heihachi Mishima, the mustachioed malevolence of the Tekken series, is going to be the next DLC character for Tekken 8. He was last seen with his loving son Kazuya, who threw him into a volcano. Of course, to be fully submerged in impossibly hot liquid rock is merely a long-running family prank for the cast of this 3D fighting game, sort of like forcing your granddad to do the ice bucket challenge, but with lava. Nobody truly expected the horn-haired headbutter to be fully removed from the series. But I am a little surprised to see him back so soon.

Fish! Tea! Time! Space! An ‘immersive horror sim’! Stopping the sun from not burning anymore but also not getting burnt in the process! Locally Sourced Anthology I: A Space Atlas does not, somewhat disappointingly, offer the infinite possible game concepts that space allows for. It’s got eight though, which I must say is a good start. Eight experimental indies from different developers, each equally taking part in space as the last.