The demand for weapons in Subnautica 2 reveals the difficulty of separating open worlds from conquest

When I play Subnautica 2, I often feel as though I am swimming in two worlds simultaneously. On the one hand, there's the world that goes on without me, the world of wonky indigenous beings living out their lives, careless of my presence: shoals of unharvestable fish swizzing past like dropped fireworks, growth cycles half-deciphered in flooded laboratories, crested hammerheads idly circling their territories. On the other, there's the world that goes on for me, its rewards and hazards colour-coded and reasonably predictable, its flora and fauna gated-off and patterned according to their role within the crafting and progression systems.

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Paralives is possibly the first ever videogame with a character editor that gives people motion sickness

Cosy life sim Paralives launched into early access this week, sweetening the initial reception with a roadmap full of free goodies. I've been looking forward to the game, if only because there has been such disappointment of late on the life sim front – Paradox Tectonic's Life By You fell foul of funding cuts, Inzoi is a horrible haunted Botox catalogue, and EA's plans for The Sims 5 remain nebulous and live-servicey.

Paralives? It appears both throwback and forward-thinking, a game of rosy cheeks, antique shops and smaller mechanical touches like skill progression juddering to a halt if your character's needs aren't met. It's the champion this wayward genre needs. What could go wrong? Ah, it seems the character creator has been making people physically ill.

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007 First Light's PC performance isn't quite martini-smooth, but it's a damn sight better than that stuttering reveal footage

While Mark’s off doing the actual review and/or agonising over watch straps, I’ve spent my time with 007 First Light slowly moving a laser beam up between its legs, demanding it reveal its PC performance secrets. Which it did immediately and without protest, to be fair. But you know the saying: when you’re holding a laser, everything looks like James Bond’s crotch.

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007 First Light is now out in full, and I hope the masses are ready to face the most difficult decision of their lives

What took you so long, Bond? I asked you to meet me here, with the nuclear codes I politely requested, in good time. Instead, you've turned up right as I'm about to give this presentation on said codes, meaning I've had no time to grill you about them as part of my prep. You're right, you owe me nothing and at least you're here now. I'll order your signature tippl-wait, what's that you've got there? A box? What's in the box, Bond? This is what delayed you, is it? Ok, I'll take a look inside, if you insist.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeegggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

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Helldivers 2-esque war against a giant evil robo-eye beckons in No Man's Sky's The Swarm update, invading the galaxy right now

It's the Death Star! Well, sort of. It's a big robo-eye invading the galaxy with a swarm of killer drones, as No Man's Sky goes a bit Helldivers 2-ish in its latest update. Dubbed The Swarm, it'll see folks filed away from their not quite Pokemon battles to join three factions who'll need to work together in ship battles to fend off a big Robo-eye with a space station-scorching laser.

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After 10 years of work, modders have remade classic RPG Ultima Underworld in Unity with 3D models, new sound effects, and controller support

Eyes up, dungeon delvers! Or down, rather. Some bright spark has remade Looking Glass classic Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss in the Unity engine with new 3D models and sound effects, plus controller support. Ultima Underworld, often cited as the original first-person 3D RPG! Ultima Underworld, also considered a primordial specimen of the immersive sim! Ultima Underworld, which has influenced everything from Bioshock to Tomb Raider! Ultima Underworld, which... some appropriately rousing fourth thing!

The Unity revival is an unofficial project, titled Unity Underground. I guess we must brace for the potential wrath of license holders EA, but it does require ownership of the old game files to work, so surely it's on the level? Anyway, here's the first ten minutes in video form.

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Geralt's back for one last Roach ride in long-rumoured The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt expansion Songs of the Past

Silver-haired fox of an RPG The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is officially getting a new expansion, ten years after Blood and Wine and over eleven since the base game launch. It’s called Songs of the Past, it’s being co-developed between CD Projekt Red and The Witcher 1 Remake devs Fool’s Theory, and its coming in 2027 – potentially the same trip round t’Sun as The Witcher 4.

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Red Dead Online wasn't a missed opportunity in the eyes of Take-Two's boss, but I'd say it's proof that following the GTA train doesn't guarantee the world

As Rockstar gear up to release GTA 6 (at least on consoles), spare a thought for Red Dead Online. The multiplayer element of Red Dead Redemption 2 had its steady flow of major update-carrying stagecoaches stopped all the way back in 2022, with its makers explicitly citing a desire to shift those development resources over to that next entry in the stealy wheels series.

There've been a few moments in the years since when Red Dead Online has looked a bit like it might bounce back to prominence, but nothing substantial in that vein has materialised. It essentially had a solid three year run, but failed to come close to grasping the reins from its older inspiration, GTA Online. In the eyes of Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick, however, that doesn't make it a missed opportunity.

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There are a million ways to deliver ore in Starminer, a real-time space strategy sim with zero-G physics - just beware your greed doesn't attract the aliens

Attention unidentified spacecraft, this is the USS Asteroid Paper Railgun. Please maintain your current heading and velocity. I am about to rotate 34 degrees and jettison a new early access space strategy game from my cargo hold. If my calculations are correct, the package should arrive in your airlock in precisely 14.7 seconds. If my calculations are incorrect – well, I'm not sure if Starminer simulates damage from loose storage modules, but it's probably better avoided.

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The first, cinematic look at Marathon season 2 paints it as the horror game it always should have been

Marathon is a horror game. Well, it should be, anyway (or I suppose in some ways it already is). The ever under-respected genre is not where Bungie's take on an extraction shooter currently sits, even if there are still qualities to be found in the likes of jump scares, a clingy, sticky tension, hints of something that went catastrophically wrong. I want more of these elements of horror, and oh lucky me, the first trailer for the game's second season looks like it will deliver on that front.

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Yerba Buena, out today, is a Portal-esque puzzle platformer where your weapon of choice is copying and pasting physics

The problem with Portal is that Valve only made two of them. Those are some dang good puzzle games! And they're not very long. I don't necessarily need more Portal exactly per se, I just want more of that style of puzzle platforming that's equal parts physical as it is clever. Hopefully, Yerba Buena, a puzzle platformer where you can copy and paste the physics and movement of one object to another, can deliver on that front.

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Unsanctioned GTA Online modding platform Rage:MP is shutting down thanks to a cease and desist from Take-Two

As it currently stands, it's a bit unclear how Rockstar are planning to approach multiplayer with GTA 6. It seems that GTA Online will continue to run even after the impending sequel launches, but beyond that who really knows. What is clear is that Rockstar and their publisher Take-Two are still pretty committed to GTA Online and its ecosystem, given that they've now apparently sent a cease and desist to the popular modding and roleplay platform Rage:MP.

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At long last, Dead by Daylight welcomes Friday the 13th's Jason Voorhees, and he's now available for some beta slashing

With all of the iconic horror villains Dead by Daylight has featured over the years, the one character's absence has stuck out like a bit of a sore thumb: Jason Voorhees of Friday the 13th fame. That'll be in no small part due to the fact that the horror series was in licence limbo for many years, resulting in the amusing fact that Nicolas Cage (National Treasure, Ghost Rider) made it in before Jason did. But now, as we await his own game, Mr. Voorhees is coming to Debbie Daylight, and you can currently try him out on the beta branch version of the game.

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Remedy's new CEO doesn't want to "change the DNA" of the Control studio, but he does still think their games "could give a lot more"

Back in February, Remedy appointed Jean-Charles Gaudechon as its new CEO following last year's FBC: Firebreak flop. This quickly raised some eyebrows given Gaudechon's tenure at EA, a game studio that's had its fair share of controversies over the years thanks to its business practices. After all, Remedy are meant to be this quirky, Finnish game studio that does things their own, weird way, such an appointment felt out of step. But, in a recent interview, Gaudechon made it seem like he's not about to "change the DNA" of a place like Remedy (even if he does still want to bring more money in by expanding in other ways).

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Life Below sees you restoring a dying sea floor, yet it makes for a surprisingly cosy city builder filled with touches of vibrant life

For people who don't play city builders, it may be easy to look at them as something mechanical and bureaucratic. Grids of streets, well-ordered manufacturing production lines, and carefully tailored catchment areas to ensure residential zones will efficiently staff nearby businesses, don't scream the stuff of life. Though, play enough of them and you will often see there can be a good deal of living going on at street level. Zoom in close on Cities: Skylines and you can follow people as they travel to work, hover over your town in Anno 1800 and you watch the carts take goods from the harbours to factories to markets to the doors of your townspeople.

Life Below may not be about constructing a city exactly, but this underwatcher cosy city builder still captures that sense of bustling life.

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Skyblivion's gorgeously revamped Ayleid ruins are all done and dusted, the folks behind the Oblivion Remake mod have announced

One of the bits of Oblivion remake mod Skyblivion I'm most keen to explore is all sorted and ready to go. The modders have announced that they've finished making and QA testing their revamped versions of The Elder Scrolls 4's Ayleid ruins, marking another key step forward in their journey, even if the mod's still without a final release date following its delay last year.

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"It felt like we had needed couples therapy": Dishonored devs Arkane making Thief or Blade Runner games sounds ace, but might have sparked a creative director scrap

Dishonored co-directors Raphael Colantonio and Harvey Smith seem like good mates. In a newly published YouTube let's play of their creation, they sit side by side, both dressed in black t-shirts like a married couple who've gone to great pains to coordinate their threads. Would that still be the case if their efforts to make Thief 4 and a Blade Runner game respectively hadn't ended up being mashed together to form 2012's sneaky holiday to Dunwall? Perhaps not, given Smith said it felt as though the pair needed couples therapy by the time they wrapped up a game which wasn't based on a single established work one director would have loved more than the other.

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My memories of classic GTA have been gloriously smothered by this reasonably SFW giantess erotica game

My intolerable efforts to become Rock Paper Shotgun's new Erotica Uncle proceed apace with Step 'n Smush, a free WIP browser game in which you play some extremely large women sexily stepping all over bustling 2D cities. You've got 70 seconds to squash as many buildings as you can, gaining size for every pedestrian you amorously flatten. It could be a mod for the original Grand Theft Auto; given a larger butt budget, it should be a mod for GTA 6.

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After seven years of development, Paralives is out in early access

The day has come. After first being announced all the way back in 2019 by then solo dev Alex Massé (a small studio has been formed since then), Paralives is now out in early access. Being an early access release, that means you shouldn't expect something as refined as its biggest source of inspiration, and now competitor, The Sims, but it does seem like there's plenty to get started with.

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Most of Bungie's staff were reportedly unaware of the decision to end active development on Destiny 2 until it went public

Last week, Bungie made a half surprising, half the writing was on the wall decision to end active development on Destiny 2. The long running live service shooter's final update has been set for June, with responses to the news generally oscillating between genuine upset and baffled disappointment. Worse still, a report suggested that the studio is facing "significant" layoffs as a result of this choice. Except the choice didn't come last week, but earlier in the year, a choice that another report now claims that many at Bungie weren't privy to until it was made public.

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