Despite proclaiming Journey’s End as the last major update for Terraria, Re-Logic is working on the sizable update 1.4.5. It features a crossover with Motion Twin’s Dead Cells, including the option to hang flasks from the ceiling, a Beheaded vanity outfit, weapons like the Killing Deck and the Flint, and a health fountain.

Several themed weapons are also inbound, including one that drops from the Moon Lord. It’s also implementing the Heroicis Set as part of a fan’s Make-A-Wish request. The outfit accompanies a new Film Noir shader, which turns everything monochrome. Update 1.4.5 is out later this year, so stay tuned for more details.

Parting Shade is the final free DLC for the 2D Metroidvania and sees players venturing to a hidden path at the top of the Weeping Cavity. Described as GRIME’s take on the Path of Pain area from Hollow Knight, it will require utilizing every ability available to succeed. Further details have yet to be revealed, but it should offer a hefty challenge for experienced players.

GRIME is available for Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, PS5 and PC. Following the launch of Parting Shade, the team will focus on GRIME 2, currently announced for PC. Players will venture to a new realm as the Formless and battle new threats. Head here for more details.

Even the store page’s description indicates very little, though there are five “packages” which are still untranslated. Perhaps these will become more discernible over time. It’s worth noting that Gearbox Software is the developer instead of Hopoo Games, which makes sense since it purchased the Risk of Rain IP and also co-developed the previous expansion, Survivors of the Void.

Stay tuned for more details in the meantime. Risk of Rain 2 is available for PS4, PC, Nintendo Switch and Xbox One and has sold over four million copies on Steam as of 2021. Check out our review here. As for Risk of Rain Returns, a remaster of the original developed by Hopoo, it’s coming to PC and Nintendo Switch.

Released back in November 2019, according to developer Tequila Works, Gylt is quite inspired by classic survival horror game Silent Hill, and indie horror side-scroller Inside. Featuring a cartoonish aesthetic, Gylt puts players in the shoes of a young girl as she traverses an eerie town in Maine.

Gameplay in Gylt revolves around exploration as you try and avoid strange creatures, and puzzle solving. Players can also figure out other ways to deal with the creatures, with the idea of facing your own fears being a strong thematic throughline for the title.

The PC requirements for Gylt are relatively modest. You can check out the full list of minimum and recommended specs below.

Minimum specs:

• OS: Windows 10 64-bit
• Processor: i7-2600K
• Memory: 16 GB RAM
• Graphics: GTX 1070
• Storage: 6 GB available space

Recommended specs:

• OS: Windows 10 64-bit
• Processor: i7-4790K
• Memory: 32 GB RAM
• Graphics: GTX 2070

Talking about emerging technologies like ChatGPT, Zelnick stated that he doesn’t believe that AI will impact the overall costs of developing a game. According to Zelnick, if development becomes easier, developers will likely want to add more to a game.

“The belief among college students [is] that ChatGPT is now going to allow them to make a query and send their homework,” said Zelnick. “The problem is if the question is, ‘Describe what actually happened on the night of Paul Revere’s ride’, and everyone gets the same question, which you do in class, and everyone uses ChatGPT, oops, everyone’s going to submit the same essay, last time I checked.”

Zelnick compares the rise of ChatGPT with that of the historic rise of hand calculators in an era before computing was commonplace.

“ChatGPT is today’s hand calculator. When I was a kid, there was no such thing, I hate to admit, but it’s true, so I had to do math longhand. And then hand calculators came along and parents were up in arms and thought, ‘Oh kids won’t have to learn math anymore,’ and the answer is yes, you still have to learn math, turns out, you absolutely have to learn math, but you have a tool that makes it easier to do. And ChatGPT is the same thing.”

“We are ushering in a very exciting era of new tools and they’re going to allow our teams and our competitors’ teams to do really interesting things more efficiently, so we’re going to want to do more, we’re going to want to be even more creative. And no, it’s not going to allow someone to say, ‘Please develop the competitor to Grand Theft Auto that’s better than Grand Theft Auto‘, and then they just send it out and ship it digitally and that will be that. People will try, but that won’t happen.”

Zelnick also spoke about the current status of cloud gaming in the wake of Google shutting down its Stadia platform earlier this year. Speaking at the earnings call, Zelnick states that he never felt like cloud gaming platform would be a big change for the industry.

“That said, I’ve never felt like cloud gaming would represent a seismic change, because I think if you’re prepared to pay $60 or $70 for a frontline title, you’re also prepared to buy a console, and I think Stadia found that out,” said Zelnick. “So bringing high quality titles to consumers that don’t have consoles will probably have an effect around the edges but I don’t think it’ll be a revolution in the business. I think it will be more an evolution in the business. And there are still technical challenges to be addressed.”

Rollback netcode will be coming to Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PS4 and PC players (via Steam and the Epic Games Store) in the future. The weapons-based fighter launched in June 2019 for PS4 and Xbox One and made its way to Stadia in November and Nintendo Switch in December. It would eventually arrive for PC in 2020 on the Epic Games Store but wouldn’t become available on Steam until a year later.

You can check out our review of the game here. It’s received several new characters via DLC over the years, including guest characters like Baiken from Guilty Gear and Hibiki Takane from The Last Blade 2. Stay tuned for more details on rollback netcode in the coming months.

【SAMURAI SHODOWN】
The Steam rollback community beta test will take place from Feb 10th to the 17th (JST)!

All DLC characters can be used, so hop on and play if you own a copy of SAMURAI SHODOWN!#SNK #SamSho pic.twitter.com/w94HuMaYMb

— SNK GLOBAL (@SNKPofficial) January 26, 2023

Having released the update, Google has updated its help pages for the Stadia Controller with details on how players can pair the controller with a PC through the use of Bluetooth. According to the official website, the update will be available to users until December 31.

The Stadia Controller’s Bluetooth mode comes with a few caveats, however. Since it uses Bluetooth Low Energy mode for its connections, its 3.5mm audio jack doesn’t allow for pass-through audio wirelessly. On the other hand, the controller allows for remapping the Google Assistant and Capture buttons.

Google announced the update for the Stadia Controller just last week. Google Stadia is slated to go offline today at 11:59pm PT. When announcing the closure, the company announced that everyone who had made a Stadia purchase would be refunded.

Google made the announcement through a Twitter post, where it revealed that the update for the Stadia Controller will be coming some time next week. The company hasn’t yet given a release date.

Google Stadia is slated to go offline on January 18, at 11:59pm PT. Since first announcing the service’s closure, the company also revealed that it would be refunding everyone who had made a purchase for the platform directly through Google.

Developers that have games on Stadia have started the process of migrating players on to other platforms, with companies like Ubisoft providing free copies of the games for owners on Stadia through its Ubisoft Connect software on PC, and a transfer of progress and save data.

https://twitter.com/GoogleStadia/status/1613999717519605760

While those who bought games on Stadia are set to get complete refunds on any games they may have purchased, several studios are offering ways for players to get their progression and save data from Stadia on to other platforms.

Destiny 2 players, for example, can enable cross-save and link their account from another platform with Destiny 2 to get their progression transferred. Ubisoft, on the other hand, is offering free copies of its games on PC.

Google Stadia’s shutdown was announced back in September 2022. Unfortunately, the platform’s closure was considered to be a long time coming owing to a lack of faith in Google brought on by the company shutting down first-party studios following a poor launch that had trouble getting more users on to the platform.

Colors of Rot adds a large new area, bosses, abilities, Traits, weapons, and enemies. New music and NPC interactions have also been added along with the new Cinematic and Achievements. Backtracking to previous areas will reveal hidden challenges, and upon beating the final boss, you can also fight endgame variants of the other bosses.

Other quality-of-life features include reworks for Grieving Rockgiant and Artisan of Flesh. Furthermore, it’s now possible to equip any weapon (with a damage penalty), and the map now tracks your steps back to the Beacon. Warp is also moved to the new bosses and is available mid-game. Check out the full patch notes below.

As for the Nintendo Switch version, a release date is still pending, so stay tuned for further updates.

Colors of Rot DLC – Patch Notes

• A new, massive area.
• New Bosses.
• New Abilities.
• New Traits.
• New Enemies.
• New Weapons.
• New Music.
• New NPC interactions.
• A New Cinematic.
• Hidden backtracking challenges, as a reward for re-visiting previously explored areas.
• Refreshable Healing that can be collected from chasing runners.
• The ability to refight endgame variations of bosses after defeating the final boss.
• New Achievements.

Quality-of-life Changes & Adjustments:

• Game optimization resulting in much better game performance & more graphical options to better control how the game runs.
• Reworked Minibosses: Grieving Rockgiant & Artisan of Flesh. (Both bosses have felt somewhat underwhelming. Grieving being too much of a rehash of Harmless, now has all new attacks. Artisan will now teleport to melee attack you, giving you a chance to parry them as well.)
• You can now equip any weapon at any time, but with a major damage penalty. (Being able to test weapon move sets before committing to their stat requirement has been one of the most highly requested changes. Done!)
• The Map now tracks your steps before finding the area Beacon. (While we are not getting rid of the Beacon system, I’ve still wanted to look for a way to mitigate some of the frustrations of players who ended up getting lost for more than they should. The map will now track your steps without revealing the area, similarly to Code Vein.)
• The Warp ability has been moved to one of these new bosses, and can be gained around the mid game.
  (Another highly requested change. The ability to Warp can now be gained far earlier into the game, depending on player exploration and skill.)
• Fall damage nerfed significantly across the various height tiers. (While we can’t rid of Fall damage all-together, it is too integral to the level design, we can mitigate it farther.)
• Added the option to increase NPC speech bubble text size.
  (Especially useful for you Steamdeck players!)
• Alternative controls to Pull.
  (No longer limited to use pull with Mouse alone. Can now aim using directional keys.)
• Garden enemies have been replaced with new types. (The Flower Foe’s have been one of the most frustrating mob enemies in the game. They’ve been reduced in numbers and tweaked to make Garden less intense than The Carven Palace.)
• Large shell lurker drop rate significantly increased for bloodmetal Chunks. (If you’re going to farm, may as well make it less tedious.)
• Climbing and platforming feel has been tightened up.
• Heavy weapons Force cost reduction.
• Added arrow indicators to the pullable moving platforms in Carven Palace, to better indicate which direction they can be pulled to.

Balancing:

• Slow & Very Slow weapons buffed with lower Force costs.
• Fledgling Yr and Tonguebrute traits have been nerfed.
• Bloodmetal Scythe air special damage nerfed.
• Minor Nerf to Chisel Nails Duration and Higher Force Cost for the special.
• Piercer Trait changed and replaced with a new DLC enemy type.
• Slight increase to Force regen.