Hades News

Hades and Last of Us Part II lead the Game Awards 2020 nominees

The Game Awards returns for 2020 on December 10, and in addition to the new reveals for upcoming PC games, there's a whole award show there, too. The nominees for The Game Awards have just been announced across all the major categories, and it's looking like an especially strong year for PlayStation - but there are plenty of PC games in the mix too.

Game of the year nominees available on PC include Hades and Doom Eternal - but yes, consoles are good too. Nintendo's Animal Crossing: New Horizons is also up for GotY, but PlayStation 4 has the most popular exclusives: Final Fantasy VII Remake, Ghost of Tsushima, and The Last of Us Part II are all up for the big award this year.

Nominees for The Game Awards are decided on by a panel of 95 media and influencer outlets - yes, including your friends here at PCGamesN. The nomination process is open to any game, and the panel will soon vote on the final winners in each category. Fan votes also count in deciding the winners, so you can head over to the official site for more on how to cast your own ballot.

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The rich history of violent vendors in roguelike games

If you look through the past year of videogame releases, you'll notice a trend: roguelikes are everywhere. From Hades and Noita to Risk of Rain 2 and Going Under, a genre that was once dismissed as convoluted is now thriving with new ideas. But one tradition from the old school has withstood the passing of time: merchants and shopkeepers aren't as harmless as they seem. Before we break down this curious roguelike tradition, we should let you know that there are minor Hades spoilers below, so continue with caution.

"I'd say my first encounter with 'fighting NPCs that you shouldn't normally fight' was Ultima 1," Crypt of the NecroDancer designer Ryan Clark tells PCGamesN, recalling the '80s CRPG classic. "In these games you can generally fight anyone, including the developer Richard Garriott (known as 'Lord British') himself, and I remember being surprised by this when I was a kid."

During his first time at GDC, Clark had the opportunity to meet Garriott, who was at the conference to receive a lifetime achievement award. Clark was up for an award for his first game, Professor Fizzwizzle, and the two got to mingling. "He was kind enough to speak to me for quite a while, and even told me of various ways to kill Lord British in the Ultima games. He talked about how players always found creative new ways to do it that they hadn't been expecting, and how much they, as developers, enjoyed that. I guess it stuck with me!"

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Steam Global Top Sellers for the Week ending 8 November 2020

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Hades, Left 4 Dead 2, Warcraft 3, and more hit the AGDQ 2021 schedule

A new year is coming around the bend, and while it still remains to be seen if the new calendar's symbolic light of hope is justified, we do have at least one unequivocal positive for January: the return of Awesome Games Done Quick, the annual charity speedrunning event. The organisers of GDQ have unveiled the full list of games for January's event, and as always there's some very fun stuff.

AGDQ 2021 will start on January 3 and run through January 10, and as always will support the Prevent Cancer Foundation. As with SGDQ 2020, this will be an online event hosted remotely, as each runner broadcasts their streams from home. Despite the format change, SGDQ 2020 was still quite successful - the second-biggest funding number in the summer event's history - so hopefully AGDQ will follow suit.

The current games list includes things like an all weapons run of Hades, Last Stand and main campaign runs of Left 4 Dead 2, and a Night Elf run through proper, original Warcraft 3: Reign of Chaos. We're also going to get a full co-op run of Diablo 3, which should be great at making the wait for the Diablo 4 release date even more insufferable.

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Steam Global Top Sellers for the Week ending 1 November 2020

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