The latest news comes via a set of job listings on the Funcom website. “Dune is calling and Funcom has answered. Will you?” reads the top of the page. Below, there’s a broad description of what they want to make: a multiplayer open world survival game, set on Arrakis, which will be Funcom’s “most ambitious project yet.” This isn’t the first time we’ve heard of the project. It was reported by VentureBeat in December last year that Funcom were making a survival game set in the Dune universe with development support from German studio Nukklear....

Gives off big “I want to turn you into a robot” energy. “We’re working on an open source project so that everybody can have high-resolution [brain signal] read technologies built into headsets, in a bunch of different modalities,” Newell told 1 News. BCIs could personalise what happens to you in a game by reading brain signals to increase game difficulty if you’re getting bored, for example, which is pretty cool....

I first played Game Dev Story on PC over a decade ago, when its hugely popular iOS release prompted me to seek out its original Japanese PC release. Given that version was released in Japan in 1997, its return to PC is long overdue. If you haven’t played it, Game Dev Story is about founding your own game development studio. You hire staff, choose what kind of game to develop, ship it, and then read the unsympathetic reviews from the idiot games press....

Embracer are paying $363 million (£262m) in cash and shares up front for Gearbox. They say up to another $1015 million (£734m) in cash and shares could potentially follow if Gearbox meet targets over the next six years. Today’s announcement says that Gearbox’s plans as part of Embracer include “the expansion of talent at both studios, the creation of new Gearbox studios, and expanded partnerships.” They say the merger “enables Gearbox to do more with its existing brands, create new brands, and, potentially, undertake the merger and acquisition of other successful industry and industry-adjacent entities and properties....

I think it’s the best monitor deal I’ve seen for months, so let me tell you more about it. Get the Lenovo G27Q 27-in 1440p 165Hz monitor for $200 (was $350) First, some background info. The Lenovo G27Q-20 debuted last year and was already one of the cheaper 1440p 165Hz monitors available, yet it doesn’t lack for quality. It uses an IPS panel that offers a 3ms GtG response time, about average for monitors of this type that don’t have ‘Fast IPS’ or ‘Nano IPS’ branding....

It also looks quite a bit like earth, don’t it? A very picturesque and ideal version, with weird plants. The showpiece here is your big mech, obviously, which looks like a transformer that turns into a John Deere. In the trailer you see it change to have, for example, caterpillar tracks. It is with this machine that you build your homestead, create raised beds and grow your crops. You can see the player using the mech to harvest resources from a tree by plugging some kind of wood-harvesting appendage into it, for example....

It didn’t help that throughout my time with Gotham Knights, I was thinking about the Arkham series. Rocksteady’s trio of Batman-em-ups are essential superhero games, titles that redefined the genre and provided a template that still feels contemporary to this day. Aslyum, City and Knight fully immerse you in the Batman fantasy, successfully crafting a depiction of the caped crusader that was deadly, capable and - perhaps best of all - human....

Straight off, the game looks and feels very similar to that 2019 Grid reboot. Handling is a pleasing mix of realism and arcade accessibility, only now there’s less feeling of the engine bogging down on the exit of corners and the cars are less finicky when turning, so it’s more satisfying to play. Racing is close as you trade paint through city streets, nudge supercars into piles of shipping containers at the docklands or leap over ramps by the Eiffel Tower in the ridiculous, leaning stadium trucks....

When I heard the news, I felt a quiet sense of elation. I was happy that more people would now finally be able to experience Grindstone’s delicious delights of slicing through its hordes of cute creep monsters in ever-increasing chains of fleshy meat chunks, but part of me’s still very much wedded to the progress I’ve made over on my Switch save. Then I learned that Grindstone’s PC release would have, and I quote, a “super innovative and groundbreaking windowed mode”, and man alive, I think I’ve become addicted to it all over again....

After going through testing with Halo Insiders last month, Halo 4 is finally ready for official spartan space fights. It’s the last game being added to The Master Chief Collection, but 343 Industries have said in a previous post that this won’t be the end of updates coming to the collection. The era of live service warthogs on. “We will continue bug fixing and delivering quality of life improvements while bringing in new season content, features, customization abilities, and new ways to play across campaign and multiplayer,” 343 say....

Ross said that she had hoped to stay at 343 until the release of Halo: Infinite’s winter update, which is due to arrive for the game in November. “I am incredibly proud of the work everyone at 343 Industries has done with Halo Infinite, the Master Chief Collection, the Halo television series and so much more,” Ross said. “It has been an honor to serve alongside the team for the last 15 years and to be a part of a universe that I love....

I wasn’t the world’s biggest fan of Stardew’s pixel art, but the snowy, cosy scenery here is lovely. If you’re a big fan of Stardew Valley, it looks like there’ll be plenty that’s familiar. You arrive in a new town, explore, talk to the townspeople, seemingly win their affections with gifts, and all while also brewing chocolate to sell in your shop. The game’s official site has a few more details on where exactly it differs from Eric Barone’s previous game....

Narrative Device offers to provide “inspiration for a story from an AI”, eating the themes you suggest to write the opening paragraph. Its creator, Rodolfo Ocampo, explains, “I am doing this to explore creative augmentation using AI, and human-AI creative collaboration” (the topic of his PhD research). It uses the much-vaunted OpenAI GPT3 API, which is trained in natural language from terabytes of text from websites, books, and Wikipedia pages....

Mylo Steamwitz is the little bloke you bound around Crystal Caves’ three episodes as. He resembles a blond, chisel-jawed Mario in his purple dungarees. I sometimes wonder if anyone at Nintendo ever saw Crystal Caves before they made some of the later Wario Land games. Mylo has to contend with more expansive levels than Wario or Mario, though, and carries a pistol that fires rockets. Probably the best part of Crystal Caves’ platforming is its gravity system, which inverts what Mylo considers the floor and lets you jump – and fall – upside down....

Nioh 2 has loads of cool weapons with cool looks and equally cool abilities. Everyone bangs on about Sekiro’s combat, which is clean and graceful - and ultimately very good, don’t get me wrong! But Nioh 2’s is almost the opposite. I like that you trudge through endless skill-trees and forever unlock complex combos. At first it’s overwhelming, but once you’ve got your character build under control and you shred an angry yokai in a blink of an eye, it’s pure bliss....

I mean, it’s fun as well, but honestly. Throw me a bone here, game. I’ve described plenty of games as “surreal”, but Pato Box really earns it. It’s not just wacky incongruent things like having the head of a duck (and nobody really making that big a deal of it). It has the consistent, low-thrumming tone of a nightmare scenario that even some far more self-serious dystopian fiction lacks. Pato Box is stabbed in the back and left for dead, and gradually punches his way up the sinister corporate boxing/gambling/mad science world seeking revenge, justice, or maybe just a continuance of his purpose: to punch....

Grab Haven Park from its GOG store page before the offer expires on January 24th and it’s yours to keep forever. Haven Park is about being a little bird fella called Flint who is trying to keep his grandma’s park a friendly, functional place for the campers who come to stay there. You can learn the residents’ desires and build what will keep them happy, while also exploring, chatting, and completing quests....

Here’s Baldur’s Gate 3 game director Swen Vincke in the archived stream from yesterday’s D&D Live 2020 event: I have not been following BG3 too closely, beyond knowing that it’s an unexpected ‘return’ of BioWare’s fantasy RPG series built on Dungeons & Dragons dicerolls, so I could not see specific changes myself. For word on what’s new, I turn you over to the official explanation: I see, I see, yes of course....

You’re looking to overwhelm the board with tempo, forcing your enemy to deal with your early game minions and ideally running out of stuff once you draw your stronger cards.. Highlander Galakrond Rogue Deck List The Rogue class has a host of quintessential tools that’ll help you through the early game before the powerhouse plays come in late on, as well as Galakrond, the Nightmare’s Lackey generation. It’s well worth putting this deck together if you happen to have enough of the cards in your collection....

Galakrond’s Guile is the card’s Hero Power. It adds a random Lackey to your hand for 2 mana, and with every Invoke. It’s pretty good for value plays, and can be very helpful for aggression and board control depending on the Lackeys generated. For Scholomance Academy, we’re going for a Highlander deck in Galakrond Rogue. We’ll be sure to stay on top of exactly what truly is the best way to use Galakrond, the Nightmare of course....