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Friday, January 21st, 2022
| Time | Event |
| 1:03p | Xbox boss wants to revive old Activision Blizzard games like Hexen and King's Quest  Of the many possibilities that Microsoft buying Activision Blizzard might enable, only one seems really clear: that Microsoft will put Actiblizz games on Game Pass. Beyond that, it's all mights and maybes. Here's another maybe: Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer says they're hoping to dig into Actiblizz's "franchises that I love from my childhood," raising the likes of Hexen and King's Quest. What better use for $69 billion than wallowing in nostalgia? |
| 3:24p | Blood Bowl 3 ditches plans for early access, will run beta instead  Early access is a mixed bag. Sometimes it's an exciting early glimpse, sometimes it feels like supporting a developer or game you care about, and sometimes it can feel more like paying to beta test. That last one won't be a concern with Blood Bowl 3, not anymore. The latest adaptation of Games Workshop's tabletop fantasy bloodsport was headed to early access but now, naw. The developers are focusing on closed beta testing instead, and will simply launch the game in full once it's done. |
| 3:30p | Moons Of Ardan is a vibes-based space colony game 
If I ever achieve immortality, there might be time to sit down and work out exactly why some building games grab me and some don't. I fear I am too often left with a page of notes that are just variations on the word "vibes". Perhaps some taxonomy would help. Moons Of Ardan is a space colony building game that's mostly about balancing production rates by placing buildings. Less dryly, you're making a new home for mildly cute little space people on semi-cartoony worlds, where nothing ever really goes wrong and... the vibes. It's the vibes, you see. |
| 4:10p | Cute dog photography game Pupperazzi is actually kind of haunting  Pupperazzi is a game about taking pictures of dogs. They are, as is traditional, very cute dogs. You go around several areas that increase in complexity and dog saturation, completing photo challenges and unlocking more and more complex areas. An extreme sports dog wants a picture of a dog riding a scooter. The old sea-dog at the beach would like a photo of any dog, as long as the lighthouse is in the background. In return for this you get golden bones as a form of currency to buy different kinds of film, or weird lenses, to kick your photography into the next gear. It's cute. It's a really nice playground that facilitates the player's own creativity. You can pet dogs to make them happy, or find toys to make them do different things: turn on a radio and any furry pals nearby bust out some truly astonishing moves; throw a stick to initiate a huge game of fetch. You post your photos to a kind of dog-centric Instagram for likes and comments (possibly from dogs; possibly from humans). The colourful, chunky art, combined with deliberately stiff animation where nobody can move their joints, really reminds me of Playmobil toys. Despite this carefree, playful tone, I also find it unaccountably sinister. |
| 5:00p | Project Zomboid showed me that 11 years of The Walking Dead was useless  I’ve always entertained the idea of an apocalypse. I mean, zombies are definitely scary, but it’d be a cool fantasy to play out. Over the years, I’ve even formed my own little plan. Loot some local houses and then set up a base in the fire station on my street. They’ve got electric gates and metal fences to guard the perimeter, a renewable power source thanks to a wind turbine on the roof, and a really handy watchtower. I thought 11 years of The Walking Dead would’ve prepared me fairly well and I fancied my chances. So, I made myself in Project Zomboid. It turns out, everything I learned from The Walking Dead was useless. |
| 6:00p | Raven Software QA workers are unionising, keeping Activision Blizzard's week lively  What a ridiculous week. Activision Blizzard came in on Monday dragging a trail of lawsuits and scandal with allegations of widespread discrimination and harassment, on Tuesday were being bought by Microsoft for $69 billion (£50 billion), and now on Friday they've grown a union. 34 quality assurance testers at the Activision Blizzard studio Raven Software, who currently maintain Call Of Duty: Warzone, are forming a union named the Game Workers Alliance. They're seeking better working conditions in the wake of Raven QA layoffs. |
| 6:13p | Monster Hunter Rise fixes save bug which made it unplayable for some  Capcom have released a new Monster Hunter Rise patch aimed at fixing a frustrating bug with save files which stopped some would-be players from playing at all. Thankfully, a week and change later, that seems to be fixed—though a little extra fiddling is required if you did suffer this bug. |
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