Friday has arrived again, which also means it is time to go through the news that has collected. First up is the time-sensitive news that GOG has begun its Spring Sale. Its warm-up sale ended and now the main event is here with over 4000 deals. Unfortunately the giveaway of Lorelai is over now, but another has begun for Neurodeck. Speaking of which, this sale goes until April 3, so you have plenty of time to peruse the offerings. With over 4000 items discounted, there is a good chance you will find something you will like.
Source: GOG (Spring Sale)
Devolver Digital has announced Sludge Life 2, in which you will need to find Big Mud, the rapping frog, in the game's bigger and weirder open world. As you search you will be free to tag a hundred spots, and there are three times the NPCs of the original game. You will also have more tools at your disposal for exploring, and finding places to vandalize, such as the Double Js that allow you to double jump and sprint, as well as the Portable Launcher that throws you into the air.
Sludge Life 2 is to release later this year, but if you are interested in the original, or just in grabbing a free game, it is being given away on Steam until March 30.
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Source: Press Release (Devolver Digital – Sludge Life 2) and Sludge Life (Steam Storepage)
EA has announced some of its older games are going to be leaving digital storefronts on April 28. These titles are Battlefield 1943, Battlefield: Bad Company 1, and Battlefield: Bad Company 2, with only the last having come to PC. The company connects this to the retirement of the online services they use for their multiplayer, which will be shut down on December 8. The offline features, including the single-player campaigns of both Bad Company games will remain accessible, though obviously only if you already own the game.
It seems an odd reaction to end the sale of games with offline components because the online services will be ended, but the story has already changed slightly since it first broke. Mirror's Edge was also mentioned for delisting, but has since been scrubbed from the original EA statement.
Source: EA (Battlefield Legacy Sunsetting) and Overclock 3D (EA Delisting News)
Go-Go Town has been announced by Prideful Sloth at the Future Games Show as an open-world, sandbox with life-sim gameplay. After being tricked by the TownCo corporation, you have become the mayor of a town past its prime but with the responsibility of turning it into a one-stop tourist destination. Restore Go-Go Town with new construction, tourist attractions, and terraforming while also dealing with the needs of your citizens and the disasters that will come up. By the end, perhaps you will be able to free it from TownCo.
Go-Go Town it coming to PC, Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo Switch in 2024.
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Source: Press Release (Prideful Sloth)
Also at the Future Games Show was Shiro Unlimited as it announced Decarnation will be arriving in May. This game from Atelier QDB has you follow Gloria, a cabaret dancer at her wit's end that goes from taking a dream opportunity to being trapped in a nightmare. Familiar haunts have been twisted into surreal versions and she has to deal with her greatest struggles that have been turned into hideous forms. You will need to overcome psychological puzzles and minigames in addition to getting through the game's twisted environments.
Decarnation is to arrive in May for PC and Nintendo Switch.
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Source: Press Release (Shiro Unlimited [1] – Decarnation)
Another announcement from Shiro Unlimited is the 1.0 release of Wartales arriving April 12. This medieval, open-world tactical RPG has already sold over 400,000 copies and when its v1.0 release arrives, players will get to enter the new Kingdom of Alazar region. Of course that is not all that will arrive with this major update, as it will also gain new and updated treasures inspired by the community. The world is filled with brutality and deceit, but also with opportunity if you search and fight for it. By joining with forces dispatched by the Church of Edoran, you can fight to protect the land from divine Wrath of the Eye, and you can track down what has unleashed this force too.
Wartales v1.0 releases on April 12 on PC, but you can enter the Early Access version now for $34.99.
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Source: Press Release (Shiro Unlimited [2] – Wartales)
Twin Sails Interactive and Odinsoft have announced the Early Access release of Survival: Fountain of Youth as April 19. In this game you join Juan Ponce de Leon's search for the mythical fountain of youth, but are shipwrecked and must fight for survival. Disease, the elements, and exhaustion will all be against you along with other hazards as you explore the Caribbean and search for other crewmates. There are over 15 islands to explore for their resources, fauna, and secrets, and to get to them you can build primitive rafts to grand Spanish vessels.
For this Early Access version of Survival: Fountain of Youth there will be two regions available at launch with three more planned to arrive in subsequent updates. These updates will also add biomes and story quests to take on.
Source: Press Release (Twin Sails Interactive – Survival: Fountain of Youth)
Another Future Games Show announcement came from Tic Toc Games as Wrestle Story was premiered. A turn-based RPG, you can enter the world of the Five Territories and fight to defeat the corrupt network that is trying to control the sport you love by defeating the so-called champs with time-based attacks and flashy finishers, making the crowds go wild. You will not be doing this alone as you will also build up your loyal crew of allies, which you can level up with specialty gear, perks, abilities, and entrance music, all to exploit your enemies' weaknesses.
I do not see a release target, but Wrestle Story will be coming to PC when it does launch.
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Source: Press Release (Tic Toc Games – Wrestle Story)
Lastly for the video game news, Valve announced Counter-Strike 2, which likely surprised many people. This will be a significant technical leap for the series, but considering Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, or CS:GO is over a decade old now, perhaps that is not the most surprising statement. Actually this new game is going to be delivered as a free upgrade to CS:GO this Summer, but you might not need to wait that long to try it out. A limited test is going to be run to test the new features and work on technical issues. Among these new features is an upgrade to smoke grenades so they are dynamic, volumetric objects that interact with the environment and other gameplay elements. This includes the smoke filling spaces more naturally and the unified lighting system allowing for more realistic lighting and coloring. It will also use a sub-tick update architecture and thus remove inconsistencies based on updates occurring on regular ticks. Moving, shooting, and grenade behaviors should now be more consistent. Maps have been overhauled as well to take advantage of technologies within the Source 2 engine, such as physically based rendering. Community map makers will have access to Source 2 tools as well, to make things easier to build and experiment on.
Getting access to the limited test is not going to be as easy as signing up and waiting for a slot it seems. Valve has decided to grant access to current CS:GO players based on factors such as how recently you played on official servers, your trust factor, and your Steam account standing. If you make the cut, you will receive a notification in CS:GO's main menu to enroll. This will allow the download of the new files, and once complete you can launch and select the Limited Test option.
Source: Valve [1] (Counter-Strike 2) and [2] (Steam Support CS2 Test FAQ)
Coming to the non-game news now, we have a couple announcements from Framework, a company trying to disrupt the laptop market by offering modular laptops that can be easily repaired, upgraded, and modified for other uses. Its original product is a 13 in laptop featuring an Intel 11th Gen CPU, and later it was upgraded to offer 12th Gen CPUs. This week the company announced the Framework Laptop 13 will be available with 13th Gen Intel Core CPUs and AMD Ryzen 7040 Series CPUs. AMD Ryzen support has been hotly requested for a long time now, making this announcement rather significant, though it will be a bit before it is realized. While Framework laptops with the new Intel CPUs will be shipping in May, the Ryzen versions will not be available until Q3. You can already pre-order though by putting down a fully-refundable $100 deposit, and the company will be using batch pre-order system. You can pre-order a pre-built configuration that starts at $1049 or the DIY Edition that starts at $849, but you have to supply RAM, storage, and an operating system. For anyone who already owns a Framework laptop, you will be able to order an upgrade module to drop in a mainboard with one of these newer CPUs.
Along with these upgrades, there is also a higher capacity, 61 Wh, battery that has the same form factor, achieving its increased capacity through chemistry. A matte option for the display and a new hinge kit have also been announced, with these coming with the new Framework Laptop 13 versions. You can find more information in a table in the post on this, but one thing to note is we do not have specific details on the Ryzen 7040 CPUs that will be offered. A Ryzen 5 and Ryzen 7 version of the laptop are listed, but the specific CPU model and its specifications have not been shared.
That was not the only announcement from the company as it also showed off the Framework Laptop 16, a high-performance model that is to arrive later 2023. It maintains the modular design philosophy and even takes it some steps further with a reconfigurable input deck and upgradable graphics. Starting with the input options, the larger design means the laptop can support a number pad, but not everyone wants one on a laptop. To address the even split in the community, Framework decided to create a modular system that makes the number pad optional, as well as the entire keyboard repositionable. This design features three sizes, with the main keyboard being a Large module, the number pad being a Medium module, and then Small modules that might just provide some color accents to the laptop, or be something functional such as an LED matrix or haptic slider. Powering the input modules is open source QMK firmware and the Raspberry Pi RP2040.
The Expansion Card system found in the current Framework laptops continues here, but with a total of six ports, three on each side. One of the new cards for it is an Audio Expansion Card, as the Framework Laptop 16 will not feature a fixed 3.5 mm headphone jack. While that might be annoying for some, it also means you could potentially connect multiple of these cards to the laptop.
The laptop will also feature the new Expansion Bay system that will enable its upgradeable, modular graphics, and more. In addition to allowing the Graphics Module to be upgraded separate from the rest of the laptop, or the rest of the laptop to be upgraded separate from the graphics, its PCIe x8 interface can be used for non-graphics purposes as well. The company created a dual M.2 card that can fit into the shell, allowing one add potentially 16 TB of NVMe storage to the laptop. As the documentation is open source, developers can create a variety of modules for the laptop, and as the bay is able to increase its thickness and depth, there is more freedom to the design as well.
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Source: Framework [1] (Framework Laptop 13) and [2] (Framework Laptop 16)
Closing this week off is the news of some personnel changes at Intel as Stuart Pann is taking over Intel Foundry Services (IFS) and Raja Koduri is leaving the company. Pann has been promoted to Senior VP and General Manager of IFS, replacing Dr. Randhir Thakur who announced his departure from the company last year. Pann has been serving as Senior VP, Chief Business Transformation Officer, and General Manager of the company's Corporate Planning Group.
Raja Koduri, who made the surprising move of leaving AMD for Intel in 2017, is leaving his position of Chief Architect for Intel's GPU and accelerator businesses for a new software start-up focused on generative AI. Though Intel's Arc graphics might not be the most impressive when held up against AMD's and NVIDIA's offerings, Intel was still able to bring up its own GPUs and supporting oneAPI software stack quite rapidly and provides an alternative to the duopoly in both the consumer and datacenter spaces. Exactly how his departure will impact the GPU and accelerator efforts at Intel is hard to predict just now, but we will certainly find out. Koduri said we can expect to learn more about his new venture in the coming weeks.
Source: Anandtech (Intel Leadership Changes) and Phoronix (Raja Koduri Leaving Intel)