We’re back in the 1980s again, you’d be forgiven for thinking, after a billboard in Melbourne Australia has received enough complaints to prompt a response by the Australian Ads Standards Community. While it has mercifully dismissed the complaint, Josh Taylor—a reporter for the Guardian Australia—tweeted the following:

One concerned motorist complained on the grounds of “Religious reasons, and it’s promoting evil and satanic paraphernalia.” Looking at the full case report, I feel like I’ve taken a step back in time to an era when Dungeons and Dragons was wrapped up in the satanic panic.

“The words [Welcome to Hell, Melbourne] as part of the advertisement for this game and a picture of a devil are offensive to me as a Christian. The imagery is also inappropriate for my children to see and has already given them nightmares.”

“I feel it’s inappropriate to show such disgusting and disturbing content on a billboard where children are seeing this on a daily basis. It has no context and for an adult of 43, I found it unsettling.”

One complaint even cited the Covid-19 Pandemic as a reason for their upset: “Even as an adult it brought back memories of …

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Stealth-horror immersive sim Gloomwood has development continuing apace, with the latest development preview bringing attention to extremely important—nay, vital—advances in rat-based gaming technology. A couple videos posted by developer Dillon Rogers over the past few weeks shows off some cheese-seeking AI behavior for Gloomwood’s rat NPCs, behavior that made its way into the January 30th update.

The critters will now sniff things out, eat them, and attack them. Also, rats can now navigate around through rat-only wall holes. You can also pick up dead rats if you are some kind of monster that has allowed a rat to die. What these changes herald, we do not know, but tinkering with little game systems for useful and unexpected outcomes is the heart of the immersive sim genre.

The advances in rat behavior are part of making the systems of animal behavior in Gloomwood more predictable and consistent, in line with how NPCs behave. In a stealth-based, sight-based, and behavior-based immersive sim like Gloomwood that’s a pretty good place to lavish some attention to detail.

“The rat (and fishdogs) have had their lure systems expanded, so they will now trac…

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At this year’s Summer Game Fest, we finally got a look at gameplay from Slitterhead, the first game from Silent Hill creator Keiichiro Toyama’s studio, Bokeh Games—unless you count the trailer having leaked a few hours ago as our first look, that is. I don’t know what I expected otherwise, but it looks sick and nasty as all hell, seemingly takes a page from beloved 7/10 superhero game Prototype, and is coming out this November.

The first big surprise of the trailer comes when, instead of the handsome detective guy who looks like a protagonist, we see the player controlling a random middle aged man who jumps off a roof, with the player then leaving his body in spirit ectoplasm form, the camera zooming into first person as they peruse a crowd of people for a new host.

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It’s giving Prototype by way of Ghostwire: Tokyo, basically. Prototype, while not a great game, had a fantastic core idea: you’re a nasty freaky symbiote from an experiment gone wrong, and can possess anyone in its open world. Ghostwire Tokyo, meanwhile, had a stunning, surreal vision of that metropolis that still sticks with me despite its other failings.

It looks like things aren’t …

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We’ve been hearing about the PC version of Final Fantasy 16 for months and months now—Square Enix has confirmed it’s coming, but “when” has been the big question. Fans on Resetera and Reddit now think the answer might be soon, because the latest Nvidia driver update, released today, slipped in a GameReady profile for Final Fantasy 16. 

While you won’t find any mention of Final Fantasy in the release notes for driver 560.81, a Redditor keeping track of changes in Nvidia’s driver updates pointed out that the latest release includes profiles for Final Fantasy 16, a Final Fantasy 16 demo, and Once Human, the latest survival game hit on Steam.

Comment from r/nvidia

I updated to the latest driver and confirmed all three are present when using the Nvidia Control Panel’s custom 3D settings feature. Nvidia works closely with big game developers to integrate their driver features and make sure the games run well on Nvidia graphics cards, and for a big release like Final Fantasy 16 will often push a driver update to users close to release date. The marquee game for this driver release is Hunt: Showdown 1896, for ex…

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Wild and weird action roguelike Picayune Dreams released from Early Access recently, meaning it’s definitely time to enjoy this thing if you’re a fan of horde survival roguelikes, bullet hells, or games that get all meta and screwy. Populated by a cast of surrealist 3D renders that look like rejected 1990s clipart and backed up with a very serious drum and bass breakcore soundtrack, this is an indie that’s decidedly, committedly into a specific aesthetic.

For me, this sucker’s doing interesting stuff by varying the type of gameplay you’re up against every five or so minutes. Each time you horde survive long enough you’ll go up against a nasty bullet hell boss, each of which in genre tradition is its own little dance to learn and appreciate. 

None of them are particularly ultravicious, so I do think those who don’t love bullet hell can still enjoy it. Then, at the end of it all, the game will just suddenly and forcibly inject interactive Evangelion-esque digital horror dream sequences into your eyeballs. I love it when games do that, and the ones I’ve seen don’t feel trite or forced. 

The fans love it, so to speak: The release version has 318 reviews a…

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Only a few years after Amazon launched New World, it’s launching again in the form of New World: Aeternum. This new version of the game is being billed as a “spiritual successor” to the original MMO, but it’s also a mix of console port (that will also be available on PC), remaster and big update. 

Aeternum is separate from the original New World but also contains everything from New World and its Rise of the Angry Earth expansion, rejigged for consoles, and featuring a slew of changes and additions that go beyond what you’d expect in just an update. 

One very notable change is how much focus is being put on solo play. In the press release, the word “MMO” was nowhere to be seen. Instead, Amazon describes it as an “action RPG”. The whole thing can be played on your own, and you’ll be able to experience all the story beats without needing to team up. This means that things like expeditions (New World’s dungeons) are entirely optional, and the big moments that were once exclusively contained within them can be experienced by solo players outside of these group instances. 

It’s a bit strange that Amazon’s really pushing this angle. Most MMOs …

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On Wednesday, the 3rd of April, a 7.4 magnitude earthquake struck Taiwan. It was followed by a series of aftershocks and there were fears that many of the Taiwanese based chip makers and manufacturers would see production disruptions as a result. In the week or so since, those fears look mostly unfounded.

Thankfully, most of Taiwan’s population centers and semiconductor manufacturing facilities are not located in the mountainous eastern regions of Taiwan, where the earthquake’s epicenter was located. TSMC was quick to resume operations following an assessment of its critical tools. As much as 80% of its production capacity was back online within just 10 hours of the quake.

TSMC isn’t the only chip maker with Taiwan-based facilities. According to Trendforce, DRAM manufactures including Micron, Nanya and Winbond had achieved a near full recovery by the 8th of April. 

However, Micron’s Taoyaun facility reportedly had to scrap over 60% of its wafers in progress. These wafers are built with Micron’s most advanced manufacturing processes, so there could be some upwards price adjustment in the server markets, where high density chips and modules are destined to e…

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