This Week in Gaming (Week 18)

[TheLostSwede]

Welcome to the end of April and the start of May, which ends up being something of a gap week when it comes to big releases. This week's major release is an open world RPG with very obvious Asian influences. This is followed by some castle building, some fast paced FPS action, a Sci-Fi FPS shooter, a spirit world RPG and finally some MOBA battleship action.

Wuthering Waves / This week's major release / Monday 28 April
Wuthering Waves is a story-rich open-world action RPG with a high degree of freedom. You wake from your slumber as Rover, joined by a vibrant cast of Resonators on a journey to reclaim your lost memories and change the world. Steam link




Castle Craft / Monday 28 April / Early Access
Will your castle survive the relentless onslaught, or collapse under pressure? Build, manage resources, and outsmart your foes in a world where everything can be destroyed. Use strategy and creativity to turn the chaos into your greatest advantage. Steam link



Deadzone: Rogue / Tuesday 29 April / Early Access
Deadzone: Rogue is a fast-paced roguelite FPS set in deep space. Blast through hordes of enemies with devastating weapons. Define your combat style with powerful augments and upgrades. Grow stronger with each death, solo or in co-op. Fight. Die. Revive. Repeat. Steam link



Skin Deep / Wednesday 30 April
Skin Deep is an immersive first-person shooter. We got sneezing. We got things getting stuck in your feet. Stalk through a vast non-linear starship and sneak, subvert, and sabotage to survive in this stellar sandbox. You're outnumbered, outgunned, and have no shoes. Welcome to Skin Deep. Steam link



Freeride / Thursday 1 May
Freeride is a game about YOU. Board a train to the Spirit World in our oddball RPG where you make friends, use telekinesis, find secrets, consume ice cream and chart your own path. Each character is uniquely troubled, and in helping them find their way, you might just find yourself, too. Steam link



Sirocco / Friday 2 May / Early Access
Ditch the roles, hard counters and last hits in Sirocco: a new MOBA inspired by the beloved Warcraft 3 mod: Battleships. Rally your team as you swap abilities mid-match, load up auto-firing weapons, and craft strategies on the fly. No rules—just fun. Steam link

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[Chaitanya]

None of them look particulalry intriguging. Will wait be looking forward to new Doom.

 

[Space Lynx]

Only one that looks interesting to me this week is Castle Craft, added it to my wishlist, thanks! Appreciate the Steam Links, makes my life easier.

 

[Sithaer]

I was wondering for a few seconds like why Wuwa is here like I've been playing that game for a year now and then remembered that its cause of the STEAM relase with the anniversary update.
Love that game a lot and for a gacha the overall quality of the game is very high like better than a fair number of the fully priced crap we get as AAA games in the past years.. 'respect for the few good ones..'
I'm prepared to pull for Zani 'the girl with the horns',been waiting for her to be relased as a playable character ever since she was introduced in the story a few months ago.

 

[QuietBob]

Skin Deep has me intrigued. An imm-sim from a small studio, that doesn't take itself very seriously and runs well on substandard hardware? Yes, please!

 

[TheLostSwede]

I was wondering for a few seconds like why Wuwa is here like I've been playing that game for a year now and then remembered that its cause of the STEAM relase with the anniversary update.
Love that game a lot and for a gacha the overall quality of the game is very high like better than a fair number of the fully priced crap we get as AAA games in the past years.. 'respect for the few good ones..'
I'm prepared to pull for Zani 'the girl with the horns',been waiting for her to be relased as a playable character ever since she was introduced in the story a few months ago.

Sorry, I can keep track of all the games out there, so when there's a release date of something, I throw it in.
We have in all fairness not covered the game before, just the fact that there are driver updates for it.

 

[Aquilino]

Only one that looks interesting to me this week is Castle Craft, added it to my wishlist, thanks! Appreciate the Steam Links, makes my life easier.

Yup. Same here.

Love the weekly update.
Because, you know, there's a serious lack of games available.

 

[Sithaer]

Sorry, I can keep track of all the games out there, so when there's a release date of something, I throw it in.
We have in all fairness not covered the game before, just the fact that there are driver updates for it.

Aye I kinda thought the same and some extra coverage never hurts so its all good. 'That and there are ppl who are only willing to play games on STEAM so for them this is a new game after all'
Good reminder about the drivers, I should actually update it already.. 'I do use DLSS Transformer mode in the game via the APP + forced RT on top so eh maybe it helps a little who knows'

 

[Rjc31]

I was wondering for a few seconds like why Wuwa is here like I've been playing that game for a year now and then remembered that its cause of the STEAM relase with the anniversary update.
Love that game a lot and for a gacha the overall quality of the game is very high like better than a fair number of the fully priced crap we get as AAA games in the past years.. 'respect for the few good ones..'
I'm prepared to pull for Zani 'the girl with the horns',been waiting for her to be relased as a playable character ever since she was introduced in the story a few months ago.

I played for awhile last year too and I agree with the quality description... Very well done

 

[Sithaer]

I played for awhile last year too and I agree with the quality description... Very well done

I will admit that the launch of the game with version 1.0 was rough around the edges and I wasn't sure if I'm gonna stick with it but the combat and the overall design of the game made me stay and looking at it now I have zero regrets.
Like every update is better than the previous and they also keep working on quality of life changes to improve the game in general.
The previous story update literally locked me infront of my PC for nearly 4 hours until I've finished it cause it was that good imo and that is something I very rarely do nowadays like I can hardly game for longer than 1-2 hours in 1 sitting or sometimes I don't even play that much in a day. 'Personally I don't even look at the game as a gacha anymore its just a part of it'

 

[heady01]

Finally will be able to show how much hours of my life i've spent on wuthering on my steam page

 

[Veseleil]

I dig the possible benefits of having a certain game on Steam, and the publisher marketing goals, but in this (wuwa) case having an another launcher/layer on top is kinda insane.

And why the hell does it need a kernel lvl anti-cheat when everything of importance is server sided just like in GI is beyond me.

Spoiler

Finally will be able to show how much hours of my life i've spent on wuthering on my steam page

These might be some rookie numbers, but it's just the last year of a casual playing after a 3-year break.

 

[Rjc31]

I will admit that the launch of the game with version 1.0 was rough around the edges and I wasn't sure if I'm gonna stick with it but the combat and the overall design of the game made me stay and looking at it now I have zero regrets.
Like every update is better than the previous and they also keep working on quality of life changes to improve the game in general.
The previous story update literally locked me infront of my PC for nearly 4 hours until I've finished it cause it was that good imo and that is something I very rarely do nowadays like I can hardly game for longer than 1-2 hours in 1 sitting or sometimes I don't even play that much in a day. 'Personally I don't even look at the game as a gacha anymore its just a part of it'

Good point about the roughness... I remember having to edit the registry just for options like invert camera and unlocking the frame rate. I'm probably going to give it another go when it launches on Steam and I hope the QoL updates you referenced have those couple things taken care of!

 

[Sithaer]

Good point about the roughness... I remember having to edit the registry just for options like invert camera and unlocking the frame rate. I'm probably going to give it another go when it launches on Steam and I hope the QoL updates you referenced have those couple things taken care of!

Idk about the invert camera but we do have both in and outside combat camera distance setting and the max ingame fps cap is 120 currently.
Most of the QoL changes were the gameplay/systems related but this new update thats launching on Steam also has a bunch of smaller stuff that I might not be aware of so it worths checking out just in case. 'not all of the changes are listed in these trailer vids, some are kind of undocumented'

The game also has both DX11 and 12 mode cause they did enable RT on the 40-50 series cards, its kind of subtle but whenever I'm playing the story modes I have it enabled otherwise I'm sticking to DX 11 cause in my case its still smoother than 12. 'I've force enabled RT on my card via editing some stuff'
You can also switch between male or female Rover once a day in case you feel like to.

 

[Zathrontria]

Idk about the invert camera but we do have both in and outside combat camera distance setting and the max ingame fps cap is 120 currently.
Most of the QoL changes were the gameplay/systems related but this new update thats launching on Steam also has a bunch of smaller stuff that I might not be aware of so it worths checking out just in case. 'not all of the changes are listed in these trailer vids, some are kind of undocumented'

The game also has both DX11 and 12 mode cause they did enable RT on the 40-50 series cards, its kind of subtle but whenever I'm playing the story modes I have it enabled otherwise I'm sticking to DX 11 cause in my case its still smoother than 12. 'I've force enabled RT on my card via editing some stuff'
You can also switch between male or female Rover once a day in case you feel like to.

on a GPU supporting in-game frame generation the game is actually allowed to run with no caps, only limited by your computer's speed (though CPU limitations can crop up especially if RT was also turned on)

this anniversary update should offer RT to "select AMD and Intel GPUs" in particular, so there's going to be expanded support without any forcing. I believe that the current implementation of RT is broken on Intel GPUs previously

 

[Sithaer]

on a GPU supporting in-game frame generation the game is actually allowed to run with no caps, only limited by your computer's speed (though CPU limitations can crop up especially if RT was also turned on)

this anniversary update should offer RT to "select AMD and Intel GPUs" in particular, so there's going to be expanded support without any forcing. I believe that the current implementation of RT is broken on Intel GPUs previously

What I meant is that w/o tinkering outside of the game the ingame menu allows 120 from the previous 60. 'beta version also had 120 I think and then they lowered it to 60 and now back to 120'
I have a global cap of 100 via RTSS in every game I play now so eh for me its a moot point so 120 is enough in my case.

I'm using a 3060 Ti and officially RT is not supported on anything older than 40-50 series but with some editing it was possible and its running properly on my end so idk why they aint supporting the 30 series by default, hopefully that will change. 'Performance is alright for playing the story or doing side stuff in the game, I also have DLSS 4 Transformer model applied via the APP and its so much better than the crap AA they have built in the game'

 

[Zathrontria]

What I meant is that w/o tinkering outside of the game the ingame menu allows 120 from the previous 60. 'beta version also had 120 I think and then they lowered it to 60 and now back to 120'
I have a global cap of 100 via RTSS in every game I play now so eh for me its a moot point so 120 is enough in my case.

I'm using a 3060 Ti and officially RT is not supported on anything older than 40-50 series but with some editing it was possible and its running properly on my end so idk why they aint supporting the 30 series by default, hopefully that will change. 'Performance is alright for playing the story or doing side stuff in the game, I also have DLSS 4 Transformer model applied via the APP and its so much better than the crap AA they have built in the game'

Aye. I was thinking of "no tinkering needed"
Either way feels funny to see this game from "hmm, there's a pre-registration event going on..." to a launch disaster to the current state. I still remember when I kept crashing on my phone and later frequent A-poses, as well as how stilted the story was early on... and then the game started defining itself since 1.1 and on. For people coming to the game for the first time, you're in for a treat should you decide to stick with it.

 

[Sithaer]

Aye. I was thinking of "no tinkering needed"
Either way feels funny to see this game from "hmm, there's a pre-registration event going on..." to a launch disaster to the current state. I still remember when I kept crashing on my phone and later frequent A-poses, as well as how stilted the story was early on... and then the game started defining itself since 1.1 and on. For people coming to the game for the first time, you're in for a treat should you decide to stick with it.

O ye the 1.0 story in the first few hours was like what is even going on around here?
1.1 was indeed a pretty nice jump and thats when I was staring to feel like that I might want to stick with this and 1.3 made it clear to me and I've been pretty much playing on a daily basis since.