Diversions this week include the fact that Nate imagines game characters are whatever size they appear on his screen, conspiracy theories about Avril Lavigne (side note: totally forgot she was married to Chad Kroeger for a while there, and also that Chad Kroeger cut his hair), and an extended series of in-jokes that will sort the TRUFANS of EWS, the Shergar’s Heart Squad, from the fake haters. You can listen above, or on on Spotify, iTunes, Stitcher, or Pocket Casts....

Developers Rockfish Games also promise new missions, legendary items, and a “significant overhaul of our level-scaling approach”. I love it when people come up with an excuse for space to be purple. More details can be found on the Steam update page, where community ambassador Erik Schrader explains those rifts are multi-stage affairs that see you slapping down bosses to net legendary items, while dying kicks you out with nothing....

Added on Thursday, Powerwash Simulator’s online cooperative multiplayer lets two cleaners work together in Career mode, though only the host earns cash while the guest is limited to the host’s unlocked equipment and can’t use soap. I guess the guest is a new employee who can’t be trusted with purchasing decisions or expensive supplies. Or up to six players can clean together for funsies in Free Play, going through any jobs you’ve completed in Career mode and using any equipment you have unlocked....

More significantly, it’s also opened up the option for players to create and join teams with unfamiliar players. I’ve been giving that a go and it’s… well, an improvement. A bit. The S.C.O.R.E thing is mildly confusing. Modern MMOs are generally confusing and esoteric, to the point where even writing about them is difficult without first translating a load of jargon and obtuse systems. I actually started doing that with this post, then had to cordon it off because god, it’s so boring....

How to earn REACT Credits in Maelstrom Protocol Maelstrom Protocol is Rainbow Six Extraction’s endgame mode, featuring a weekly challenge recommended only for players who have fully levelled up their Milestones and Operators, and you’re advised to bring along only your best weapons. In a Maelstrom Protocol challenge, you’ll need to finish nine objectives per mission rather than the regular three. Each objective features a different mutation, and for every three objectives you complete, health and ammo pick-ups will become rarer and the objective timer will get shorter....

Development on Men Of War 2 was temporarily held up while Best Way assisted their staff and families relocate from the city of Severodonetsk in the Luhansk region of Ukraine. Best Way have restarted development in the past few months, during which time they’ve been running closed playtests. They now say that the playtests have given them feedback that’s spurred them on to make the game “bigger and better than anyone originally imagined”....

The slightest mistake can be fatal, and this is what makes Receiver 2 one of the most captivating games I’ve ever played. You need to intensely examine your environment. That’s how it sucks you in, how it demands every drop of your focus. You’re crawling through apartments and arcades, across rooftops, warehouses and deserted scaffolding, eyes and ears peeled for a telltale whirr or splash of blue. A turret can kill you in a second if it takes you unawares....

Dissembler - £1.99/€2.24/$1.99 (50% off) As I’ve written before, it takes tile-flipping ideas of match-3 games but has you finding the correct order to make matches and carefully remove every tile until nothing remains. I dig it! Return Of The Obra Dinn - £10.84/€11.75/$13.99 (30% off) This murder mystery aboard a cursed ship has been cheaper in sales before, but it’s still one of the very best puzzle games and worth it....

Knowing the Elder Scrolls mod scene, they’ll be nude within the hour. Unless… hang on a minute, are fall guys naked or no? Released this week over on the Skyrim Special Edition Nexus, FallGuysFollowers does exactly what it says on the tin by adding ten pint-sized Fall Guy followers to fantasy Scandinavia. Now, the purists out there who’ve already begun commenting “well, actually, Fall Guys are 183cm tall” can calm down, because there’s also an eleventh big lad rendered at their monstrously true scale....

The livestream is hosted by one of Capcom’s community managers, who says that they’ll not be solving any puzzles during the stream to avoid spoiling anything. Instead, we take a meandering tour around early Raccoon City and fight off a few zombie baddies in the process. We see some button-mashing events used to shake zombies off of Jill’s neck. There’s a jump-scare or two when she gets bitten from behind by a couple zombie cops....

RimWorld spruced things up for the expansion UI improvements, performance optimisations, and new animals (including a goose) arrived in Update 1.1 alongside the surprise launch of its first expansion, Royalty. GTA Online added Formula One-ish races This being GTA Online, they are full of crashes and ocasional deaths. But it is cool that you can drive F1 cars upside-down on the ceiling. Steam got new search filters You can now filter Steam store search results by price, genre, whether they’re singleplayer or what, and more....

Along with creating mixes, players will be able to “share their creations socially, making their game performances available for watching online.” Whether that’s a special player or a YouTube exporter, I couldn’t tell you at this point. “Music today is an experience,” Harmonix CEO Steve Janiak said in today’s announcement. “It’s not just people listening to albums any more – it’s recording and sharing videos of you singing along to your favourite songs, watching your favourite bands play at festivals, and sharing hit music with your friends....

We haven’t seen a lot of Synced since it was first announced as Synced: Off Planet all the way back in 2019, but the core of the game remains the same. You play as a Runner, a mercenary who enters The Meridian to take on Nanos and get paid. The new trailer showed five heroes: Deadcut, Glory, Doc Stone, Ragna, and Park. I particularly like the sound of Deadcut, a gambler who spends his non-gambling time blowing stuff up....

VGHF has a number of preservation projects, though this one in particular is focused on collecting and preserving the “source” of old games. To be clear, that’s not necessarily source code they they’re talking about. Sometimes it is, but they describe source as “the raw materials used in [a game’s] production, including but not limited to source code, art, documentation, and records of correspondence”. They say that source materials, especially for older games, can be tough to find....

The more modern frame of reference is Stardew Valley, but alongside farming and romancing the Rune Factory series has a larger focus on crafting and combat. All of these systems link together, with your farming providing the ingredients you use to craft items that you use to beat up big angry trees (with lovely apples) as per the header image above. Rune Factory 4 originally launched on Nintendo 3DS back in 2012, but RF4 Special came to Nintendo Switch as recently as 2020....

Legends of Runeterra champions guide Our Legends of Runeterra champions guide will have the card stats, level up conditions, and abilities of all champions available for the game at the time of writing, including the new Bilgewater region. You can learn more about the best decks in our Runeterra best decks guide. All of the cards in the game can also be found in our Runeterra cards list guide, so be sure to look at those if you want to build your own decks....

In Japan, the Yakuza series has always been known by the same name as its developer. Ryu Ga Gotoku basically translates to Like A Dragon. That’s why the last game had it in the title, and why the series is changing to that name for the future. It’s like when Resident Evil 7 was subtitled Biohazard, except we didn’t then see Biohazard Village happen. Thanks Capcom, I guess? Yokoyama said that the response to Yakuza: Like A Dragon was good enough for RGG to consider dropping the Yakuza part at last....

It sure looks shiny, though, helped in no small part by the rather lovely looking ray tracing effects. Gun flashes reflected in the water puddles in dark, spooky hangers, and lashes of electricity lit up the nearby metal walls. It looks to be every bit the technical showcase that 4A Games’ Metro Exodus was before it. Who knew the nuclear post-apocalypse made for such a stunningly pretty setting, eh? The focus was definitely on the action we’ll be seeing in Stalker 2, rather than its immersive sim elements, so we’ll have to see how the rest of the game plays once we get a bit closer to launch....

This pocket sized and portable drive is available in three colours - however only the metallic red and indigo blue options are available for the bargain prices of £79 and £74 respectively. Now that’s out of the way, let’s take a better look at it. These drives are probably smaller than you think - almost like a very thick credit card size, which is great for any desk that lacks a lot of space....

Sable is the latest in 15 days’ worth of freebies from the Epic Games Store over the festive holiday period. Each new game is a mystery, and only revealed after the previous day’s free game expires. The offer kicked off with tower defense game Bloons TD6 on December 15th, and runs through until December 29th. So far it’s been quite a mixed bag of genres, with Double Fine’s RPG Costume Quest 2 and arcade racer Horizon Chase Turbo free over the weekend....