Quake Gets New Levels for 30th Anniversary

According to an official press release from Bethesda, the classic 1996 FPS, Quake, is receiving a brand new episode called “Dawn of the Machine. This update, which is free for owners of the recent Quake remaster on platforms like PC, Xbox, and PlayStation. In addition to 19 new levels, the anniversary update offers fresh achievements, multiplayer…

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Simpsons creator Matt Groening implies that a Hit & Run remaster is coming, current showrunner hastily disputes

First reported by Empire on X, “The Everything App,” Simpsons creator Matt Groening may have let slip the existence of some upcoming return for The Simpsons: Hit & Run⁠—though this was immediately disputed by another grandee of the Simpsons Industrial Complex. “I think the original game is coming back in some form,” Groening said in…

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Witcher 3 designer says it wasn’t easy to convince players its NPC simulation wasn’t ‘just fakery’: ‘People nowadays are interested in those kinds of details, and it really came to haunt us’

It might seem silly to ask in our post-Red Dead horse testicles world, but how much exacting detail is too much? How much is not enough? Gamedev can go on forever if you don’t prioritize the things that players actually notice, but if you’re making an immersive fantasy RPG, it’s critical that the intended illusions—bustling…

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I got so freaked out by the fact that Gordon Freeman is canonically 27 that I decided to find out how old all the other classic FPS protagonists are, and it didn’t make me feel better

When I first played Half-Life at the tender age of 11, I found it a terrifying experience. Admittedly, I was scared of pretty much everything at 11. Wasps, heights, loud noises, football (or more specifically, everyone finding out how bad I was at football). I was an anxious child all around. Hence, playing an interactive…

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The bigwigs who want AI-generated NPCs and writing think you’re too dumb to appreciate a good story—don’t prove them right

As I sit here, watching Saber Interactive’s CEO have a normal one about how generative AI dialogue can totally improve videogames, I can’t help but grit my teeth in the same, enamel-grinding fashion I have ever since companies like Ubisoft started promising a future with AI-powered “neo-NPCs.” If you’d believe the hype, these things are…

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This Solitaire game is so tiny it can load from a QR code, which is just what I need in the age of massive games and expensive storage

At a time when game file sizes are growing ever larger and disk space is astonishingly expensive, I increasingly appreciate the value of a small game. And they don’t come much smaller than TinySol, a solitaire game so diminutive that it can be loaded from a QR code. TinySol is the creation of vintage computer…

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