No “live service” game lives forever, or in the euphemistic language of the games business, they all get “sunsetted” eventually. At a GDC talk this week, Velan Studios director of marketing Josh Harrison implored other developers to prepare for that inevitability, ideally by doing the thing we also hope they’ll do every time: making their games available to play even after the official servers are unplugged.

Harrison was in charge of marketing for competitive dodgeball game Knockout City. We loved the game, which we awarded a 90% in our review, but even after going free-to-play, it struggled to retain players. Velan Studios shut down Knockout City’s servers two years after it launched.



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Industria is a creepy, surreal FPS set in Cold War-era East Berlin that gave us “serious Half-Life vibes” when it was announced in 2020. At the Future Games Show yesterday, developer Bleakmill unveiled the sequel, Industria 2, and you know what? Yup, serious Half-Life vibes.

It’s far from a direct lift of Valve’s most famous shooter: There’s a more overt horror aspect to Industria 2, at least in this trailer, although that’s not too far removed from Half-Life 2’s famous Ravenholm level. And rather than packing high-end Combine military hardware, the weapons here look more like something you’d be stuck dealing with in, say, Stalker.



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There hardly goes a day without news of cyberattacks taking place at banks, tech companies, or government agencies. From targeting the individual to the masses, hackers are getting ever more creative in what they strike at, in order to compromise systems and gain sensitive information. Well, the US White House and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are now warning that public water and sewage systems are the latest points of attack and state administrations are being urged to improve the security of such plants.

The plea for ‘water resilience’ from the White House and EPA (via The Verge) came in the form of an open letter to US state governors and a call to attend a virtual meeting on how best to combat attacks from state-sponsored groups. In the letter, it’s claimed that ‘drinking water and wastewater systems are an attractive target for cyberattacks because they are a lifeline critical infrastructure sector but often lack the resources and technical capacity to adopt rigorous cybersecurity practices.’



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We’ve had plenty of intriguing news about Path of Exile 2 today, like the combat having been reworked around a new control scheme and the announcement it will be sticking to its “ethical free-to-play” model. However, to pour a little ice water on the fire, here’s one bit of not-so-great news: the beta previously announced for June 7 now won’t be happening until late in the year.

Grinding Gear Games announced the news in a tweet that said, “while we think we would be able to get the game’s content ready in time, we underestimated how long it will take to get gameplay polished to a standard we’re happy with. We’re still going to be doing alpha testing in June, but we are going to be delaying the beta until later in the year.”



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The mind physically integrating with the machine can be an uncomfortable concept to think about. Something about the idea of implanting electrodes, chips or indeed anything non-biological inside the delicate workings of the brain can create squeamish thoughts. However, Neuralink has released a livestream of a quadriplegic patient using artificial brain implants, a tech it calls “Telepathy”, to play games, and it’s difficult to argue with it as a potentially beneficial use-case for the technology.

In a Twitter livestream, patient Noland Arbaugh is joined by a Neuralink engineer to demonstrate the change the implant has made to his life. Arbaugh was injured in a diving accident, causing his C4 and C5 vertebrae to become dislocated, paralysing him from the shoulders down.



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The Nameless Village in Dragon’s Dogma 2 has a secret and it’ll take a little bit of finesse to find it. You’re told to turn back as soon as you arrive, but won’t face any consequences for poking around anyway. All the people here will refuse to tell you what’s going on until you discover the whole point of the village’s existence in the first place. And, it turns out, this place is hiding some very useful items and gear.

Chances are you’ll be pointed toward this place after talking to Brant as part of Dragon’s Dogma 2’s main quest. He needs you to travel to the eastern side of Vermund to look for more information about the false Sovran. It’s not far from Vernworth, the capital city, but far enough that you should make sure your party is well rested and prepared for any battles you stumble into on the way

How to find the secret of the Nameless Village

How to find the secret of the Nameless Village 



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With embargoes lifted and reviews rolling in for Dragon’s Dogma 2, I’m willing to say it: after more than a decade since the original game’s release, Dragon’s Dogma sickos are finally vindicated. We’re poised to enter an era where we’re regularly regaled by our friends’ tales of their Arisen’s latest, delightfully-sidetracked quests alongside a gang of misfit pawns. Even if Dragon’s Dogma 2 follows its predecessor as a cult classic, it looks like it’ll be a much bigger cult.

After shotgunning a healthy hundred hours of adventure alongside his hand-sculpted goblin sidekick, Fraser Brown leads our own Dragon’s Dogma 2 review with a bold declaration: “I guarantee this is a game that will be talked about for a long time.” Well, critics are already getting a strong start on the talking. Currently sitting with an admirable 87 on Metacritic, Dragon’s Dogma 2 looks fit to follow Baldur’s Gate 3 as a landmark fantasy RPG—assuming you can stomach some eminent jankiness.

“No other game in recent memory has inspired the same feeling of captivation and wonder” 

Eurogamer: 5/5

I mentioned Dragon’s Dogma sickos above, and Lewis Parker at Eurogamer seems to be a sicko among sickos, writing that, after an introductory binge of Dragon’s Dogma 2, “I realised attempting to be unbiased may no longer be possible, because Dragon’s Dogma 2 isn’t bothered about appeasing those who had issues with the original game.”

Encapsulating the emergent magic on offer, Parker includes a retelling of a prolonged saga that began with escorting a merchant, who was fatally bludgeoned moments later by an ogre, who was then killed a griffin, which was in turn killed by a speeding oxcart (that also collided with Parker and company), whose driver would then go on to give their life in a battle after ferrying Parker to the nearest village which, by coincidence, was in the midst of a dragon attack. Excellent. No notes.

“A living, breathing place that will march on valiantly whether you find what you’re looking for or not”



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There’s a hint for today’s Wordle waiting below if you need a little guidance, ready to give your guesses a nudge in the right direction without spoiling all the fun. Need something more direct? Then you can have it. The answer to the March 20 (1005) Wordle is ready and waiting for you on this very page.

Who knew so many words began with those three letters, or that unearthing the last two could take so long? As much as I would have enjoyed clearing this game up in just a few rows, I did have fun playing cat and mouse with today’s Wordle answer, chasing it around the alphabet until there was just one word left.

Today’s Wordle hint

(Image credit: Josh Wardle)

Wordle today: A hint for Wednesday, March 20



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When I meet with Jonathan Knight, Head of Games for the New York Times, I have one big, burning question:

“What’s your Wordle streak?”



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If you’ve played Final Fantasy 14, you’ll be familiar with the Leveilleur twins: Two young prodigies in their respective fields. Alphinaud is intelligent, cautious, and a magnificent diplomat, while Alisaie is a headstrong go-getter who—spoilers for Endwalker—eventually makes good on her promises to cure the world. 

They’re exceptionally well-written characters, to the point where a single dialogue prompt in Endwalker’s finale Ultima Thule had me blubbering (I’d made a promise, damnit). In the game’s stellar English localisation they’re played by Colin Ryan and Bethan Walker, respectively, sharing heaps of voiced lines with each other over the game’s hundreds-hours long story.



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