Category: Video Gaming

I know we’re all at our limit with tech ventures that the financial powerhouses of the world rapidly rally around as more foundational and beneficial resources to civilization wane. I know we don’t have enough ear space to fill with all the promises of utopian computer advancements that in practice require comical amounts of human intervention. That after all of the crypto, NFTs, AI, video pivots and pets.com collapses, the last thing we need is more gambling on speculative futurist nonsense. But hear me out: what if we fucked with the moon?

This week, Deutsche Bank said they are fixing their attention to the “moon economy.” Earth’s lonely little celestial satellite, greeting us each night, shifting the tides and summoning werewolves. Though the grand prize of the 1960s space race, it hasn’t really taken center stage in the human imagination for generations. While we love our big floating space rock, it doesn’t have the potential or allure of Mars, our nearest understudy. The richest among us have begun to feel otherwise.

Deutsche Bank’s focus is on Intuitive Machines, a Houston-based company developing tech for lunar exploration. They’re primed for the windfall of any moon-bound interest, and Deutsche Bank analyst Edison Yu says the moon economy “may have just gone through a key inflection point.” Which is to say we’re gearing up for a nitwit-off.

Through 2025, the White House stated a renewed interest in moon missions. As part of the Artemis program, the U.S.A. is looking to beat China to the moon for military infrastructure and spycraft securities. That space race has kicked off a second, simultaneous one amongst billionaires. Jeff Bezos announced that Blue Origin is aiming to develop lunar landers for the program. It plays into the tension between NASA and SpaceX, whose progress on their contract has been sluggish.

Incapable of sitting still, Elon Musk, who previously wrote off the moon as “a distraction,” said he is shifting SpaceX’s focus toward building a “self-growing city” there. It’s a screeching pivot for SpaceX, a company whose sole mission is colonizing Mars. “We can potentially achieve that in less than 10 years, whereas Mars would take 20+ years,” Musk posted.

Obviously government contracts are a financial boon in and of themselves. Much of Musk’s fortune comes from federal arrangements. But what’s the long-term economic benefit of chilling on the moon? Never mind establishing the first space city? As far as space campaigns go, it’s much easier to launch off a low-gravity body than fighting to escape Earth’s orbit and barrier of space junk (though new complications will surely emerge). You probably wouldn’t be surprised to hear this moon situation links up with the current AI situation.

You’ve probably noticed AI, for all of its promises, is incredibly expensive. Consumer technology is in disarray as firms get first dibs on microchips. Data center construction is the toothpick holding up the American economy. The use of electricity and water cooling is exhaustive to local infrastructure. To set up camp on the moon would solve… some of that. If you think that sounds risky and untested, you’re correct. Just like current AI ventures, a loose promise is enough to bet the house on.

The original space race ended on a win, something our current futurists are desperate to secure. It came through sweatbox collaborations between technicians, physicists and experts across all disciplines. It was to prove the capitalist west was greater than the USSR and develop some new rockets along the way, but still required putting that glory before short-term gains. The theme of the last decade has been “why we can’t have nice things.” There are strong use cases for the blockchain, language learning models and moon bases alike. But instead of researching and refining how this tech can secure a better future for all, we’re subjected to useless tchotchkes at the cost of breathable air. Our survival into this century is increasingly beholden to refried futurists, addicted to singular persuasive visions that don’t behave well with reality.

Spider-Man is a Magic: The Gathering Card, Eric Cartman pilots a cardboard mech in Fortnite, and once the new season drops March 3, Solid Snake will be an operator in Rainbow Six Siege. A teaser foreshadowing the news dropped back in January, and now a full reveal trailer has dropped alongside a Year 11 roadmap forecasting the coming year of Siege.

The full roadmap isn’t live on the Rainbow Six website just yet, but you can find it in the reveal livestream that went up earlier today. The four seasons will mark “a new content cadence” and come bearing a new update every three weeks. Highlights from the first season include a new 1v1 arcade mode, the end of Dual Front, and “modernized” map updates for Coastline, Villa, and Oregon.

Sundays are for lying in bed and listening to the persistent rain beating at the skylight. It’s a comforting sound but one that’s become all too familiar in this seemingly endless winter. This week has at least brought murmurs of sunlight in the mornings, but for now they’re often drowned out by the tap tap tap of rain.

While the sound of the rain is exhausting its welcome, the urge to stay in a cosy bed and pooh-pooh the outside remains very welcome. For now, I will put the thought that I need to go to the shops and pick up food for the week into a shoebox and hide it away under the bed, next to the lost socks and sleeping spiders.

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Bloober Team has revealed the video game it teased last month as Layers of Fear 3.

In a video presentation celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Layers of Fear franchise, CEO Piotr Babieno thanked fans for keeping the series “close to your hearts for all these years,” before setting up the final reveal: Layers of Fear 3.

Layers of Fear is a psychological horror series that has seen three main releases so far: 2016’s Layers of Fear; 2021’s Layers of Fear 2; and a remake released in 2023.

Layers of Fear 3 doesn’t have a launch window or confirmed platforms, but Bloober Team did release a creepy live action teaser, which features a man reading William Blake’s The Sick Rose in a grand room. We see a painting of a woman, presumably the “sick rose,” and another painting of what looks like a humanoid figure, potentially the same woman, amid a sickness with their mouth sewn shut. A ghostly figure moves past this painting before the painting of the woman falls to the ground. The man waves this away as being the responsibility of his “little friend” who “tries to help” but hasn’t quite got the hang of the afterlife. The teaser ends with the man issuing a Valentine’s Day warning to the audience before turning over a sand timer. The Layers of Fear 3 tagline reads: “Some Things Never Leave The Walls. They Only Learn To Wait.”

That’s pretty much all we have for now on Layers of Fear 3, which sits alongside the Silent Hill remake Bloober Team also has in the works. There’s also a number of smaller games from its subsidiary, Broken Mirror Games, which include a mysterious Switch exclusive codenamed Project M. This all follows what has been a high-profile period for the Polish studio, which has enjoyed success with the Silent Hill 2 remake for Konami, as well as self-published releases including Cronos: The New Dawn and The Medium.

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Larian recently streamed Divinity: Original Sin 2, the studio’s last RPG in the Divinity series before it made Baldur’s Gate 3. During the stream, communications developer Aoife Wilson brought up the topic of hints in D:OS2 about what Larian was working on next.

“Originally the reference to BG3 was very explicit,” Larian CEO Swen Vincke explained while plotting out his next move in the famously flammable oil fields of the Blackpits area. “We did it very last-minute because we actually, in the summer when D:OS2 shipped, we wrote the first draft of BG3 because we had a contract with Wizards of the Coast and we needed to do it then. It was very bad.”

• General tips for any Sims 4 career
  • Pick an active, self-employment, or rabbit hole job

The second series of Amazon’s Fallout adaptation has now fully emerged from the vault, its eight episodes having been plinked out gradually, rather than whipped out in one fell swoop. Naturally, one of us has taken in the show how its distributors intended, injecting a stimpak a week in calm and measured fashion. The other waited until all the episodes were out, and then injected them all at once like an unhinged adventurer blowing through half their chem stash in a mid-fight panic. I’ll let you try to work out which is which, here’s our verdict.

Major spoilers for season 2 of the Fallout TV Show lie ahead.
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I thought I would make it all the way through winter without getting ill. We’re practically touching March. Yet, despite being within spitting distance of the clocks changing and bright evenings returning, I have the lurgy. This weekend, I will practice the art of the double duvet sausage roll.

I would hope we’re all familiar with rolling over and over in a duvet until we’re wrapped up in its insulating down, for all outward appearance becoming a blanket sausage roll. Of course, to the true artist there’s more to it. You’re not really looking for a sausage roll effect, that would mean your feet are exposed to the elements. That wouldn’t do. You must tuck a bit of blanket between your feet so that when you roll, the end of the duvet becomes a tight little hat for your toe hands.

Toe hands? I think the virus has got to my word store. I best let the team take it from here.

Ollie
Against the odds, my group has returned to Overwatch. Which is now Overwatch again, rather than Overwatch 2. We had a look at the Stadium Mode for the first time last night, and it’s rather overwhelming, but it reminded me how good a game Overwatch still is. We always end up giving it up after a while though, because we’re just a group of 3, and it becomes too frustrating to be let down constantly by random teammates playing their own game. Maybe this time will be different. Or maybe we just need to find more friends. Or perfect the cloning process.

James
God help me, I’ve started playing Dota 2 again. Only against bots for now, but I’m already finding them too easy to roll over, so I might have to hurl myself off that cliff and into the raging sea of unranked All Pick. Has my constitution remained strong enough after my time away? Can I learn all the updated ward spots? Do I understand enough Russian swear words? I just don’t know.

Jeremy
It’s more Nioh for me this weekend as I pulverise the remaining bosses that I’ve missed in this game’s sizable maps. Hullo, have you seen our weapons tier list? Give it a look and then join me as I repeatedly charge up my axe to deliver grand retribution to yokai-in-hiding everywhere.

Mark
I’ve managed a few runs through Mewgenics‘ alley and sewers so far, so my churning army of feline friends will likely face more this weekend. Despite generally being a bit crap at turn-based combat, I’m faring surprisingly well so far, which is probably a sign that I’m about to hit a boss I’ll end up stuck on for a month solid.

Callum
Valentine’s Day weekend, you say? NOPE! IT’S REANIMAL WEEKEND! While you’re all out there appreciating your partners, eating heart-shaped pistachio chocolates and holding hands over romantic candle-lit dinners, I’ll be running away from a mutated lamb titan with human limbs sprouting from its spine. Yes, this is definitely by choice. No, we won’t consider that I’d maybe have plans for Valentine’s Day if I didn’t keep talking about mutated lamb titans with human limbs sprouting from their spines.

Julian
If I break out of the swaddling embrace of this duvet I want to play some XCOM 2. I’ve a hankering to kick some alien invaders out of our solar system. I could do that in Terra Invicta, but the slow build of that grand strategy’s ramp up is putting me off playing. If I have an hour to play something, I want it to feel like I can do something meaningful. It’s also why I’ve been playing quite a bit of Ball x Pit lately.

And you, reader dear, what are you playing this weekend?

I know you’ve done a million Final Fantasy 14 events already and may hit Skip Cutscene when given the chance, but hear me out: this year’s Valentines Day celebration is the best seasonal sidequest FF14 has had in ages. And you should do it before it’s gone.

All you have to do is help the holiday NPC Astrid by successfully decorating five overly extravagant cakes in time for the annual “Valentione’s Day” celebration. The instanced task is available to solo players, pre-made parties, or matched with strangers. I know it doesn’t sound like the usual high-stakes affair that’s suitable for Warriors of Light, but don’t judge the sidequest too hastily. As long as you don’t complete the challenge alone, it rules.

“Hell is not other people. Hell is yourself.” – Ludwig Wittgenstein

It begins with a group of children looking down a hole. A boy in a hood, the remains of a hangman’s noose around his neck, pilots a boat adrift at sea. I do not know where he has come from or where he is going or if he was one of the ones staring into that well’s abyss. I only know the way forward. Red lights peak through the dark and fog. They are my compass, and I follow them. Buoys. Where they guide me, I do not know, but there is no other path. The ocean is so vast, and my boat is so small. For a time, I am alone. At the fourth buoy, the boy stops the boat and pulls aboard a girl. When he reaches for the hare mask covering her face, she pins him to the small outboard’s wooden bottom, her hands ripping at his mask until he kicks her away. They stare at each other from opposite ends of the boat. It might as well be a chasm. “I thought you were dead,” the boy offers. “Where are the others?” the girl asks. The boy doesn’t know. She takes a lantern and stands at our boat’s bow. The buoys are still our guide, but the girl lights the way forward.

By the time I reach the end of Reanimal, the latest horror puzzle platformer from Little Nightmares developer Tarsier, I have forgotten all of this, and lost track of what parts of this opening are most important. I am too busy trying to make meaning from what I have seen, too focused on trying to connect the pieces of Reanimal’s puzzle, to understand how we got here. But stories, at least the good ones, the ones that know what they’re doing, tell you what they’re about from the beginning. And Reanimal is a very good story. Remember this, it tells you. Remember all of this.

Together – I play the boy, my co-op partner plays the girl. There is no way to select who plays who; it simply works out this way – we sail through jagged cliffs, past mines larger than our boat, bisect a forest of jagged, barren trees. Then the banks of the river we have followed fade, and a large industrial building looms out of the fog ahead of us. It is a remarkable image in a game of remarkable images. Reanimal certainly knows how to set a scene.

There is very little overt explanation.The boy and the girl are brother and sister, but this fact is never told to you. You learn it through the way they help each other up, comfort each other when things go wrong. Their relationship is something you experience, the questions largely left for you to answer. Why does she attack him after he fishes her out of the sea? What happened to them before they were in the boat? Reanimal unspools its story slowly, and asks you to fill in the gaps yourself. To remember what you’ve seen, to put together the imagery, the symbols, notice patterns in the shapes throughout its world. I’m unsure of what they’re after until we find another child separated from us by steel bars blocking a drain pipe. “You came back,” he whispers. “I knew you would. You should leave… while you still can.” But we don’t. The girl’s earlier question is the answer to mine. We are here to save the others. Our friends.

We navigate broken buildings, push through dark forests, leap across gaps, crouch into places only a child can fit. Often, we need to work together. The world is so big, and we are so small. It takes two of us to lift a metal trapdoor. I hold a lever to still a rotating metal shaft so my partner can pilot the girl across. On the other side, she knocks down a piece of wood so I can cross a gap. Reanimal is simple, elegant. You walk, run, jump, interact with and carry objects, boost one another to ledges neither of you can reach alone, and occasionally fight off foes in the clumsy way a child might. Little distinguishes the boy from the girl, save that she can attach her lantern to her hip while carrying something else. The boy’s lighter, on the other hand, is only usable if his hands are free. It’s a subtle distinction, but an important one, and my partner and I often made significant choices about who would do what based on how much light it would cost us, and whether we felt we could sacrifice it.

Reanimal can be played alone, but I found it more meaningful to take the journey with someone else, to coordinate and work together, to congratulate ourselves on our success and discuss our failures before trying again. Like the boy and the girl on screen, we are experiencing this together. Like them, we are not alone. That subtle distinction – of working with a living, breathing person – made it much better than it would have been had I spent the whole experience with a computer-controlled girl who always did exactly what she was supposed to. That’s not what this story is about, and I am deeply grateful that, in an era which has largely abandoned local co-op, Reanimal offers it.

Reanimal Switch 2 Screenshots