Control was a brilliant and weird return to form for Remedy, with James describing it as “a doozy” in his review—that means it’s good. In addition to being a fun game to play, it’s also one of the best showcases for ray tracing, so if you’ve recently purchased a capable card, it’s something you probably want to investigate. And that’s a bit easier now, because as of January 21 it’ll be part of the Xbox Game Pass for PC line-up. The addition was confirmed on Twitter earlier today, and it’ll join what’s becoming a very substantial line-up: check out the…

Enderal: Forgotten Stories is an ambitious total conversion mod for Skyrim, with an entirely new plot and significantly tweaked mechanics. Its creators were previously responsible for other Elder Scrolls mods like Nehrim for Oblivion, but are now moving on to a commercial project, which they say “will hopefully be announced this year.” SureAI, the German studio in question, announced this in the final set of patch notes for Enderal. The patch fixes some problems like a talent not causing the right amount of damage and bows sometimes disappearing when dropped, as well as a few typos. The modders note that…

IO Interactive has changed tack on its earlier statement about levels from Hitman 2 not being freely available in Hitman 3 for owners of both. An update to the Hitman 3 Pre-Launch Guide notes that, “We are continuing to work on a solution with our partners to allow PC players who own HITMAN 1 or HITMAN 2 to import locations from those games into HITMAN 3 at no additional cost.” “We can guarantee that players will NOT need to repurchase the games”, the IO site says [emphasis original].  That doesn’t mean access will be immediate. It will release “in the coming weeks,”…

Cloud Climber is a nice way to spend fifteen minutes of your day, I think: A surreal walking simulator about exploring the environment of three massive towers, each stretching towards the sky to reach the clouds. It’s a fully voiced game with a nice, hand-drawn graphical style and casual gameplay, where mostly you just wander about, climb stairs, turn cranks, and lay planks. Classic video game stuff, really.  As you explore the clouds you’re treated to voiceover narration about why the towers were built and why you’re climbing them—the surface of earth no longer has water, and you’re going to…

Star Wars Battlefront 2 is currently available for free on the Epic Games Store, but you might have trouble playing anything other than the singleplayer modes. Players have been seeing error codes 623, 918, and 721, all of which point to the same problem—no connection to EA’s servers. EA has been working to fix the problem, as the EA Help Twitter account explained: “An incredible number of players have joined us during our @EpicGames Store free week and we’re scaling up new servers to welcome you all to the Battlefront.”  Seeing Error Message 623 or 918 in #StarWarsBattlefrontII?Sit tight, we’re…

I saw a Kickstarter last year for a digital assistant called the Hybri, which came in various shapes though the marketing focused on hot cyberladies because of course it did. The idea that we’ll make artificial intelligences look and act like attractive women is a cliché of science fiction that’s bleeding over into the real world—maybe because it’s what people want, maybe because it’s just what we expect. In Acolyte you’ve just been hired to bug-test an attractive chrome personal assistant named Ana. Acolyte runs in a portrait window on your desktop (there’s a phone version in the works too),…

Path of Exile’s wild new Echoes of the Atlas expansion, the one that turns its endgame into a vast interdimensional fight club, has triggered the biggest wave of players logged into the game since its 2013 launch. According to SteamDB, Path of Exile had an all-time peak of 157,103 simultaneous players on January 15th, the day Echoes of the Atlas released. That’s only a fraction of the playerbase, however—Path of Exile also has a standalone client available directly from developer Grinding Gear Games.   A lot of those players are probably jumping in for the new multiplayer Challenge League, which…

Update: Epic CEO Tim Sweeney says he’s looking into the problem, so stay tuned. Sorry, the team is looking into this with IO. It’s never Epic’s intent to create a situation where someone who owns a game on Steam would have to buy it again on Epic Games Store to get the full benefits of it.January 16, 2021 Original story: In August 2020, IO Interactive said ahead of the start of Hitman 3 preorders that players will be able to import their progression and unlocks from Hitman 2, as well as locations from the previous two games, at no extra…