Teletext. Notepad. Twitter. A tractor. A pregnancy test. There have been few limits to the weird and wonderful ways enterprising Doom fans have found to play the seminal FPS over the past 30 years, but it could claim both the weirdest and the most wonderful crown. Someone teaches a bunch of lab-grown rat neurons to play Doom. Yes, their literal conscious existence is Doom. I told you it was weird.
PC GAME
Jagged Alliance 3 review: A solid sequel that aims to refresh, not just repeat
I will definitely continue to play Jagged Alliance 3. While I’m hesitant about my exact feelings on this, it’s crucial. As with its ancestors, you invade a fictional country with a team of dysfunctional freelance mercenaries, managing their equipment and taking on personalities through guerrilla warfare on an open world map each sector of which can host turn-based battles.
It defies the stifling XCOM norm of “two actions per turn” by restoring the old action point method. Each has a dozen action points per turn to split between moving, shooting, or various contextual actions. Chance to hit is never listed, but accuracy can be increased by spending extra action points. It also breaks new ground by giving everyone a small reserve of freedom of movement, keeping battles moving and expanding tactical possibilities. It borrows so much from modern designs and is mostly better for it.
The Joy of Getting Infinitely Rich in Luck Be A Landlord
I started with cats. They lapped up all the milk I could get them, earning me some coin splatter and an extra boost from a lucky first beastmaster. I also threw toddlers there, basking in candy bonanzas whenever I found a pinata to open, along with an assortment of chests, fruit, urns, and eggs. Then I slowly traded it all in for gems, and my board became a pristine, soulless, and essentially fully optimized money printer.
Luck Be A Landlord is all about meeting ever-increasing rent demands by playing a slot machine. Each month gives you a limited number of spins to find money and the chance to add one of three random symbols after each spin. These symbols bounce off each other in a wacky but logical way: bees pollinate flowers, comedians amplify monkeys. Dogs make friends with humans. Billionaires are guillotined.
What are we all playing this weekend?
Okay, my enthusiasm for the rain has been dampened somewhat. Drenched, maybe. We’re halfway through a soggy July and the ten-day forecast is even gloomier than Marti Pellow’s short-lived team with So Solid Crew, Wet Wet Wet Wet Wet Wet Wet Wet Wet Wet Wet Wet Wet Wet Wet Wet Wet Wet Wet Wet Wet Wet Wet Wet Wet Wet Wet Wet Wet Wet Wet Wet Wet Wet Wet Wet Wet Wet Wet Wet Wet Wet Wet Wet Wet Wet Wet Wet Wet Wet Wet Wet Wet Wet Wet Wet Wet Wet Wet Wet Wet Wet Wet Wet Wet Wet Wet Wet Wet Wet Wet Wet Wet Wet Wet Wet Wet Wet Wet Wet Wet Wet Wet Wet Wet Wet Wet Wet Still, a good day for playing video games. What are you playing this weekend? Here’s what we’re clicking on!
tinyBuild doesn’t spy on employees with AI, says CEO who suggested doing so to identify ‘time vampires’
Speaking at this week’s Develop:Brighton conference, tinyBuild CEO Alex Nichiporchik gave examples of how large language models like ChatGPT could be used by game studios to identify “potentially problematic players on the team.” Suggestions included feeding employees’ text conversations and video call transcripts into a system to detect certain words that could indicate burnout and “time vampires”.
After receiving online criticism, Niciporchik tweeted to say that parts of his presentation were taken out of context and that the examples were “hypothetical”.
Sunday newspapers | Rock Paper Shotgun
Sundays are for updating your drivers. Before you hit install, let’s read this week’s best writing on games (and things related to games).
Viewfinder review: A mind-blowing puzzler where perspective is everything
In Viewfinder, you solve puzzles by finding the right way to see things, and here you do that by both physically moving through its abstract 3D spaces and mentally wrapping your brain around its mind-bending set of rules. Perspective is key because here’s the thing: it’s a world where you can bring photos to life, with the 2D image becoming a 3D reality when you place it in the puzzle world.
It’s an amazing hook and one I’ve never seen in a puzzle game before. There are echoes of The Witness, Gorogoa and Superliminal here, but Viewfinder’s dizzying puzzles are still very clean. It impresses right off the bat and continues to pull tricks from its silky tophat until the end of its four-hour run. It’s compact, brilliant, and one of the best puzzle games of 2023.
Screenshot Saturday Monday: Immersive Sims and Frying Pans
Every weekend, indie developers showcase their work in progress on Twitter #screenshotsSaturday label. And every Monday, I offer you a selection of these shots and clips. This week my attention was drawn to my immersive indie sims, a great in-world menu system, and rattling pots and pans in a soundscape location. Come see!
Exoprimal Review In Progress: Kinda makes the dino-slaying squad a snoozefest
I have now been several hours into Exoprimal, a multiplayer PVEVP game where two teams compete to wipe out hordes of enraged dinosaurs as quickly as possible. And I’m sad to report that I’m having a miserable time. This feels like another cursed game I had to rewatch this year, and I don’t know what I did in a past life to deserve this. The chickens – which as far as I know are dinosaurs or distant relatives of the large lizards – have gone home to roost.
Step into a science fiction story by Stanisław Lem with The Invincible demo
A new demo invites you to marvel at a mysterious and alarming alien world in The Invincible, a video game adaptation of the 1964 science fiction novel by Stanisław Lem (the Polish author also known for Solaris). It’s basically Firewatch in space. I haven’t read the book, but I had a great time wandering around glowing 3D space spaces while taking in a BBC Radio 4 drama.