This Week in Gaming (Week 24)

[TheLostSwede]

Welcome to the second week of June and boy is it a crowded week of big new releases after a week of mainly Switch 2 games. It's almost as if every game publisher out there decided that this is the week to release a new game and it all kicks off with a dusty game full of worms for this week's major release. First out in the regular line-up is a retro top down arcade game, followed by a futuristic third-person shooter, an MMORPG, a long time coming Korean ARPG and a sci-fi survival game. Make sure to check out the additional release this week as well.

Dune: Awakening / This week's major release / Tuesday 10 June
Dune: Awakening is an open world, multiplayer survival game on a massive scale. More than just survival, Dune: Awakening offers a large-scale, persistent and highly immersive world with social hubs bustling with other players, server-wide politics and intrigue, and a cinematic storyline that will leave you at the edge of your seat. The Fremen have vanished. Paul Atreides was never born. Lady Jessica obeyed the Bene Gesserit and gave birth to a girl. Duke Leto Atreides survived the assault on Arrakeen and is now locked in a brutal conflict with the Harkonnen over Arrakis and its precious spice. Steam link




Hopeless Sea / Monday 9 June
Hopeless Sea is an arcade-inspired STG with roguelike elements. You pilot a ship to cut your way through hordes of procedurally generated, merciless sea monsters. Choose wisely from a variety of ships, weapons and traits since conquering this hopeless sea is the only option to survive. Steam link



MindsEye / Tuesday 10 June
MindsEye is a narrative driven, single-player action-adventure thriller set in the near-future fictional desert city of Redrock. Featuring best-in-class cinematics, high octane driving, and explosive combat from game director, Leslie Benzies. You'll play as Jacob as he fights to uncover his truth in a world where AI, hi-tech experimentation and unchecked military power shapes every encounter. What starts as a personal quest quickly becomes a mission that's critical to all of humanity's survival as sentient robots rise, propelled by human greed. Steam link



4Story: The Original / Wednesday 11 June
Between Berkilious, the God of Destruction, and Lea, the Goddess of creation, long-lasting antagonism has repeated numerous creations and destructions. In the name of the Goddess Lea, exists the world of Iveria. In this world of chaos, will there be a hero to end this war once and for all? Steam link



Stellar Blade / This week's second major release / Thursday 12 June
Save humanity from extinction in post-apocalyptic action-adventure Stellar Blade. Experience blistering combat and a twisting storyline as you unravel the mysteries of Earth's downfall. Steam link



The Alters / Friday 13 June
Explore an emotional sci-fi game with a unique blend of survival, adventure, and base-building elements. Help Jan Dolski—the sole survivor of an ill-fated space expedition—create alternative versions of himself to escape a hostile planet and tackle personal turmoils with this unconventional crew. Steam link



Also launching this week: Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine - Master Crafted Edition, Ertugrul of Ulukayin, Heroes of Valor and Five Nights at Freddy's: Secret of the Mimic.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[lexluthermiester]

Dune looks good, as does The Minds Eye.

Heroes Of Valor looks interesting. Is it just me or was Jaime Hyneman in that trailer?

 

[Count von Schwalbe]

Dune would be a lot better as a single-player game.

It's by the same studio as Conan Exiles, and carries over a lot of mechanics from there.

From what I have seen, it isn't PvP (which is good) but there is not really a lot of interaction between players. Mostly it just makes it easy to wander in behind a higher-level player and get a bunch of loot without too much effort.

They monetized in an interesting way - public servers only, unless you want to rent a private one. The public ones have been so far very crowded - not quite desert suburbia but getting there.


Other than that, it looks like a great game.

 

[Sithaer]

Counting the days for Stellar Blade, already took a week off from my part time job so that I can play it in peace. 'Waited years for this damn game and the demo was already a lot of fun for me'

 

[Veseleil]

Dune would be a lot better as a single-player game.

It's by the same studio as Conan Exiles, and carries over a lot of mechanics from there.

From what I have seen, it isn't PvP (which is good) but there is not really a lot of interaction between players. Mostly it just makes it easy to wander in behind a higher-level player and get a bunch of loot without too much effort.

They monetized in an interesting way - public servers only, unless you want to rent a private one. The public ones have been so far very crowded - not quite desert suburbia but getting there.


Other than that, it looks like a great game.

My first impressions were either it's going to be a great one, or a total fail. I didn't pay attention who is behind it, but now that you've mentioned it's coming from a Conan Exiles devs, I'm afraid it's closer to the latter.
CE started as a great game, and ended up far from there.
The absence of the custom servers is a great mistake. If you already pay full price for a game, then why to be forced to play on the official servers, which always were and are garbage by default for these kind of games.
Custom servers are a thing that kept games like ARK:SE, Rust, etc, alive for so many years. Locking them behind a paywall, with a questionable modding freedom and uptime is the worst choice possible.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Dune would be a lot better as a single-player game.

Agreed.

 

[Dristun]

Interested in playing the release date Mindseye version without any bugs fixed, I think it's one of those games that are more fun this way.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Interested in playing the release date Mindseye version without any bugs fixed, I think it's one of those games that are more fun this way.

This was what it was like BITD before the internet when games where on carts and glitches were a fun bonus to find!

 

[Count von Schwalbe]

questionable modding freedom

For a survival crafting game, this is a big downside.

Less so since it is based on existing IP, but still not so great.

Honestly, without a P2W monetization, what is the real benefit to anyone?

 

[Dristun]

This was what it was like BITD before the internet when games where on carts and glitches were a fun bonus to find!

I'm not that old but I have fond memories of playing very buggy early 00s open-world games like Xenus (Boiling Point) together with my high school friends. We gathered in front of a single PC and just laughed at all the dumb stuff that didn't work, like broken animations or trying to figure out a way to complete a quest that was left in the game unfinished - never bothered to even look for patches on the internet.

 

[AGlezB]

Counting the days for Stellar Blade, already took a week off from my part time job so that I can play it in peace. 'Waited years for this damn game and the demo was already a lot of fun for me'

Hope nobody griefs you about the age rating if you're under 17. IMO anyone making their own money is a full adult for entertainment purposes, if not legally.

 

[Sithaer]

Hope nobody griefs you about the age rating if you're under 17. IMO anyone making their own money is a full adult for entertainment purposes, if not legally.

Oh I'm way past that age and I can play whatever I feel like to + nobody really cares about the games I play.

 

[Veseleil]

For a survival crafting game, this is a big downside.

Less so since it is based on existing IP, but still not so great.

Honestly, without a P2W monetization, what is the real benefit to anyone?

Their apparent goal is to cash out on another IP, with guarantied sales to those who are die hard fans of the franchise, and it will probably be abandoned after or maintained for a certain period of time to achieve just that.
The huge problems this game is facing right now (at its release) are obvious, but beware of the fanboys!
Only a few of these reveal some major issues:

Steam Community :: Dune: Awakening

Dune: Awakening - Pre-Purchase OfferULTIMATE EDITIONDELUXE EDITIONAbout the GameDune: Awakening is an open world, multiplayer survival game on a massive scale. More than just survival, Dune: Awakening offers a large-scale, persistent and highly immersive world with social hubs bustling with...

steamcommunity.com

I really like sandbox games, but this implementation is the worst I've seen/heard of so far.

Spoiler

And for the context of this game's server implementation failure, people should know that I even bought an extra hardware more than 5 years ago, for the purpose of building a dedicated ARK: SE server.
Hardware that sits around not being used in any of its iterations like 99.9% of time, because my internet connection sucks. And it's light years away from being adequate for a game that demands at least 20MB/s upload for a dozen of people to properly enjoy a couple of huge maps and a heavily modded setup without any restrictions.
Now it's even worse, as I've ended up using my 4G+ phone network with quite expensive bandwidth, but I'm not giving up on my dreams yet.
And that was and still is the beauty of dedicated server feature, not depending on shitty companies, but just on trusted individuals that just give something, provide a space for others to hangout, not asking for anything in return. Your hardware, your community, your rules, and a middle finger to the corpo greed.

 

[Rover4444]

Hopeless Sea looks interesting. I'm a sucker for these types of games.

 

[Pepamami]

Prob will try the Dune game after release. Game is not region locked in steam.

 

[HOkay]

I've never heard of 4STORY, it looks like a WoW clone? I'm kinda intrigued, does anyone know much about it?

 

[Chomiq]

I gave Stellar Blade demo a try but to be fair I couldn't really get into combat in it. It felt a bit disconnected from the controls and I didn't feel the impact of my actions. I don't know how AA(A) title can't pull this off and something like ZZZ does it perfectly.

 

[Solidstate89]

Mindseye is going to suck shit through a hose. Every gameplay video of it looks like the most generic garbage, and a bunch of executives have already resigned from the company right before the launch. It's going to be a hilarious catastrophe.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Mindseye is going to suck shit through a hose. Every gameplay video of it looks like the most generic garbage, and a bunch of executives have already resigned from the company right before the launch. It's going to be a hilarious catastrophe.

Wow. So positive. So insightful.

 

[Rover4444]

Wait, FNAF only got a footnote? Boo.

 

[Frick]

@Veseleil An Ark server can be run on almost anything. We had it on an i7 920, and that was just a few years ago.

As for Dune ... I'd like to try but I honestly don't know when I'll have the time. Lack of modding I'm indifferent to, but the lack of private servers suck.

 

[Veseleil]

@Veseleil An Ark server can be run on almost anything. We had it on an i7 920, and that was just a few years ago.

For a couple of people with a moderate building affinities, no doubt. But we had ours on a 4390k in 2018, and with 10 or more on a ragnarok + aberration + island heavily modified cluster it could get pretty bumpy, because people don't care how their building and taming/procrastination abominations affect the whole server. A police officer role on a casual server isn't fun.