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Looking like the dark rhythm game Thumper doused in a pop music-flavored sheep dip, Invector: Rhythm Galaxy is launching on PC on July 14. As a fan of both rhythm games and top-shelf pop music, this is very good news.

Working with Warner Music Group to offer hits from Charlie Puth, PinkPantheress, Charli XCX, and more, Invector: Rhythm Galaxy tours celestial space and sci-fi cities to the beat. 

Honestly, given the rise of dystopian fiction, it’s possible that living in these neon-soaked scenes is awful. But, the lights on the skyscrapers shimmer every time the tiny space shuttle strikes the right note, so it’s difficult to say whether it’s good or bad. 

If you’re unfamiliar with Invector, the series has roots that go back to 2013, when Hello There Games released Gravity to coincide with Swedish DJ AVICII’s album True. The game hit the top of the App Store charts across 60 countries and spawned a series of sequels. The most recent, AVICII Invector released in 2019 following the musician’s death. The game went on to win the NYX Game Awards for Best Experience and Best Rhythm/Music Game on PC. 

The big new …

Four years into Sony’s big PlayStation PC initiative, you’d think the novelty of launching one of its huge tentpole action games from my Steam library would’ve worn off by now, but I still get a kick out watching the publisher’s once-closely guarded exclusives emerge from their walled garden. Something about seeing Xbox button prompts on Kratos’ axe or fiddling with a full suite of graphical settings before I even select “New Game” brings Ragnarök down to earth, shedding a layer of artificial importance that platform owners like to muster.

Sometimes that works against Ragnarök, as playing it on the same platform where the most ambitious and unconventional videogames regularly blossom can highlight how safe and conventional the Sony blueprint has become. It also highlights how rarely we get accessible action games produced at such a high level of craft, scale, and beauty. Kratos and Atreus’ second lap around the realms isn’t as special or clean as the first, but Ragnarök is the kind of sequel that goes down smooth.

As does this PC port, for the most part. Jetpack Interactive, the same outfit that handled the great 2022 God of War port, is back for the…

AI is undoubtedly the biggest technology topic of the last decade, with mind-bogglingly vast resources from companies including Google, OpenAI and Microsoft being poured into the field. Despite that the results so far are somewhat mixed. Google’s AI answers are often just straight-up dumb (and incidentally are behind a 50% increase in the company’s greenhouse gas emissions over the last five years), AI imagery and videos are filled with obvious errors, and the chatbots… well, they’re a bit better, but they’re still chatbots. 

One man, however, both predicted this level of interest and certain elements of how AI is developing. The Guardian has a new interview with Ray Kurzweil, a futurist and computer scientist best-known for his 2005 book The Singularity is Near, with the “Singularity” being the melding of human consciousness and AI. Kurzweil is an authority on AI, and his current job title is remarkable: he is “principal researcher and AI visionary” at Google. 

The Singularity is Near predicted that AI would reach the level of human intelligence by 2029, while the great merging of our brains with AI will occur around 2045. Now he’s back with …

It’s been a long time since the final instalment of The Banner Saga released back in 2018, and I, for one, sometimes find myself pondering what Stoic have been working on all this time. Turns out it’s Towerborne, a co-op party-based adventure that looks in a somewhat similar vein to For the King. You and a group of friends form a party and fight to resettle a post-apocalyptic fantasy world.

You see, things are bad in Towerborne, and humanity has been driven to the edge of extinction, presumably by the colourful array of monsters the trailer shows getting smacked around. This sorry state of affairs has led everyone to live in a giant windmill called the Belfry—apparently this was the only way to survive, but I have questions. This lofty structure seems to serve as your base of sorts as you set out to reclaim lost territory and discover why the world’s gone bad.

There’s not all that much to go on right now, but from the looks of it, Towerborne is broken up into two main parts. You plan your adventures via a hex-based overworld from the Belfry, and fight side-scrolling battles with your party through a variety of verdant and colourful fields, forests, and caves. T…

Remedy will self-publish Control 2 as part of a new “strategic cooperation agreement” with Annapurna. A press release accompanying the announcement says Annapurna will provide half of Control 2’s development budget, and in return gains the rights to adapt Control and Alan Wake for film and television.

Remedy’s last game, Alan Wake 2, was published through an exclusivity agreement with Epic Games. Despite Alan Wake 2 being good enough to earn our Best Story of 2023 award alongside a pile of other accolades, it seems like the exclusivity deal kept the game from achieving its full sales potential: By May of this year, it hadn’t yet sold enough copies to recoup development costs. Considering Epic’s own CEO recently said most of its exclusivity deals “were not good investments,” I’m sure Remedy’s welcoming the opportunity to get its next big game on Steam from day one.

According to the press release, Remedy will get a greater chunk of the revenue share from game sales “after the initial investments have been recouped, proportional to the amounts invested,” while Annapurna will receive a higher share of the profits from eventual TV and film adaptations. “Remedy will retain…