Month: October 2024

I absolutely love Amnesia: The Bunker⁠—it’s gotten lost in the tangle of one of the best years for gaming in a long time, but The Bunker is quietly one of the best horror games I’ve ever played. Now Frictional Games is augmenting that already mondo-stressful experience with a surprise Halloween update and harder-than-hard “Shell Shock” mode.

Shell Shock strikes out every bit of refuge players have in The Bunker. You now have to collect fuses to restore electricity and turn on the lights in each of the bunker’s sub-levels, with only a lone, random area powered on to start the game. That means any preconceived “optimal” routes you might have come up with go out the window⁠—you’re only safe when the lights are on (and the monster can still find you even then!) .

Other aspects of the game are randomized in Shell Shock as well, with lockers containing precious survival tools (and their corresponding lock combinations) scattered to the sublevels. Mutant rat-attracting corpses are scattered about willy nilly, the already hard-to-reach fuel storage room gets locked with a random combination, and just saving the game costs fuel now. You don’t even star…

Game designer Laralyn McWilliams, known for her work as lead designer of Full Spectrum Warrior and creative director on the Sony Online Entertainment MMO Free Realms, has died at the age of 58.

McWilliams’ career began in the mid ’90s as a beta tester on games including Daggerfall, Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri, and Pirates! She served as lead designer on the real-time tactics game Full Spectrum Warrior, and then as game designer on Over the Hedge and creative director of Free Realms. She also has credits on Disney’s Stitch: Experiment 626, Gears of War 4, Archangel, and The Walking Dead: Saints and Sinners.

In 2008 McWilliams was cited by Gamasutra (now Game Developer) in its list of “the 20 most vital women working in games today,” and in 2021 she earned a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Game Developers Choice Awards, in recognition of “the career and achievements of a developer who has made an indelible impact on the craft of game development and games as a whole.” The award recognized McWilliams’ work on “award-winning adventure, social, strategy, simulation, platform, brawler, FPS, and massively multiplayer online games,” as well as her regular appearances at…

World Drivers’ Champion Max Verstappen described the 24 Hours of Le Mans Virtual event that took place this past weekend as “a clown show” after technical issues caused multiple red flags and disconnections that eventually led him to retire from the race.

The 24 Hours of Le Mans Virtual was launched in 2020 after the Covid-19 pandemic forced the postponement of the real-world Le Mans. The online race, run on the rFactor 2 platform and featuring drivers from around the world all competing remotely, was designed to be as close to the physical event as possible. It has very strict rules and requirements: Among other things, at least two of the drivers on each four-person team have to be FIA-licensed (or equivalent) professional drivers. Verstappen actually raced in that debut event in 2020, as did fellow F1 driver Lando Norris.

Verstappen has since returned for subsequent Le Mans Virtual events: As a Formula 1 driver and reigning world champ, he doesn’t have a whole lot of time to dedicate to sims, but he told the Washington Post last week that the 24 Hours of Le Mans Virtual “is very important to me and the team—and we’re hoping for a great weekend to bring…