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A news aggregator from various RSS feeds, like technology, gaming, development and general news sites.
If you've given up on Civilization 7, Civ 6 is free with all DLC expansions for a limited time on Epic Games Store
Conveniently, you can currently get Civilization 6 for free on the Epic Games Store - the giveaway runs till 24th July.But the freebie does include access to all of the game's DLC and expansions, so might be worth bagging if you only ever bought the base game from a different store.For clarity, you do not need to stick two fingers up at Civ 7 while downloading the free version of Civ 6.
FromSoftware are reportedly working on an unannounced game alongside The Duskbloods that could release next year
Alongside working on The Duskbloods and Elden Ring Nightreign's post-launch bits, FromSoftware are reportedly deep in development on an unannounced game that could release next year.That's according to MP1st (via VGC), which claims said game is codenamed FMC, multiplatform and - based on "the nature of the source these details come from" - at an advanced stage of development.Read more
The Necromancer's Tale is the most I've enjoyed creating an RPG character in a while, and no I don't mean the walking corpses
I've only dipped my distal index fingerbone in The Necromancer's Tale, a just-released historical fantasy tactics RPG from Psychic Software, but I can at least report back that the character creator is a gentle joy, to the point that I was disappointed to reach the end of it.True to the promise/threat of "400,000 words of hand-written narrative and lore", it's a hearty choose-your-own-adventure prologue that follows the protagonist's infancy and early adulthood.Read more
Elden Ring Nightreign's next enhanced boss wave crashes against the shores of frustration at the end of this month
Elden Ring Nightreign's next wave of enhanced bosses have now successfully RSVPed to the big darkness party.They'll be arriving when the next cycle begins on July 31st.Though, for whatever reason, FromSoft haven't fully committed to a date until now.
Engineering puzzle designer Zach Barth almost made a Factorio-like automation game, but "got really bored really quickly"
The creators of Opus Magnum and Infinifactory may have dissolved their old studio Zachtronics and chemically regenerated as Coincidence Games, but there are still large traces of a Zach present.I caught up with designer Zach Barth to ask about perfectionism, the Factorio-like automation game he gave up on out of boredom, and how the team managed to make a story about factories in 1980s Japan feel human.Read more
Rockbeasts is about managing an animal band in a BoJack-style world, but it'll need to do more than horse around
There was a good thing that had once been and a horse man who was now years removed from it, but still clung on to the idea that the magic was still there.He was a bitter, selfish, washed-up star who so often looked back, rather than looking forwards.It was to his detriment.
Helldivers 3 is "hopefully many years away" says Arrowhead's CEO, who did not vote for gun
That said, the studio's bigwigs have provided a couple of hints at what the future might hold for them, with the latest being that Helldivers 3 is "hopefully many years away".Also, they aren't fans of players voting to rename a city on Super Earth 'Gun', which is a thing that's been going on in Helldiverland lately.Read more
4X strategy game Entrotria is in theory Galactic Civilizations but looks like a Jackson Pollock painting
Entrotria looks like a geode full of maggots, or the inside of a prehistoric fridge.Here's a trailer.Read more
Breath Of The Wild meets Banjo-Kazooie golem adventure Tall Trails is just plain nice
If you don't have anything else on this morning, perhaps you'd like to fill the life of a small clay golem up with purpose.It reminds me of playing old N64 3D platformers round my mate Liam's house between watching VHS recordings of Keenan and Kel, which is a nice place to be.It's also got Breath Of The Wild's stamina wheel and freeform clamouring, although you don't need to worry about that too much because you can stuff chilli peppers into your boot and use it like a jetpack.
Oblivion Remastered modder splices Fallout 3's level-by-questing into Cyrodiil, and my virtual knees are glad
Oblivion Remastered's devs knew that, and so opted to keep the classic "level up by doing the abilities you picked" approach, with some minor tweaks to make it less frustrating.If, however, you long to ding by being handed boatloads of XP simply from completing quests and killing NPCs by any means, a modder's got you covered.While working on fleshing out a full Fallout 4-esque settlement system for Oblivin' after midnight, MadAbormodding's decided to double down on the rads and bring Fallout 3's levelling system to Cyrodiil.
Valve are now removing a bunch of sex games from Steam to keep banks and card companies happy
Valve have begun removing a variety of sex games from Steam in line with their recent updating of the platform's rules and regulations to allow banks and credit card companies to essentially forbid certain kinds of "adult content".In a statement to RPS, a company representative confirmed that games are being delisted as a result of the rules change, adding that the developers in question are being given Steam app credits as compensation.The alternative, Valve suggest, is that banks and card companies might pull the plug on all transactions, and users in general would lose the ability to buy stuff on Steam.
The Dark Queen Of Mortholme is a reverse Elden Ring where you play the final boss
FromSoftware's RPGs have done much to explore the cycle of death and resurrection that games have historically taken for granted, but ask comparatively few questions on how the bosses feel about all this.What I'm saying is, when people talk about Dark Souls being about "overcoming adversity", they are lying to themselves. Read more
Mixtape is a suave and syrupy retro music love-in with a useful undertow of hustle
Mixtape isn't entirely the retro 90s nostalgia piece you might be expecting from trailers - it's also a playable job application.Protagonist Stacy Rockford is enjoying one last night in their east US hometown with childhood friends Slater and Cassandra, before Rockford sets off to chase a music supervisor gig in New York City.Mixtape is both a going-away celebration and, on some level, Rockford's portfolio project, edited together from teenage flashbacks and waiting to be thrust into the hands of a distant producer.
Pass Man: My doomed attempt to play Rematch as a support class
Specifically, no-one is doing it.It sounds to me, then, that Rematch is suffering from the same issue you get in low-ranked Dota 2 lobbies: everyone wants to be the superstar, the one who ends the match with the biggest numbers next to their name, oblivious to how few instances of the letter 'I' occur in the word 'Team'.Clearly, what’s needed is someone willing to do the dirty work as a passing-focused support character, and today, that would be me.
The Drifter review
The Drifter is sometimes quite silly in ways I don't think are intentional, and it managed to yank me right out of the experience more than once.It's stylish, moody, and pulls off the point n' click adventure game two-for-one: characters worth caring about, and also characters worth irritating by fiddling with their stuff.Mostly though, it's just got a great eye for an arresting scene or setpiece.
Paying the Subnautica 2 team their promised bonus would be "embarrassing", Krafton's CEO allegedly told the game's chief over lunch
The dramatic dismissal of three senior developers at Subnautica 2 studio Unknown Worlds gets messier by the day.In a publicly filed lawsuit, the three fired heads of the studio have accused publishers Krafton of all sorts of dirty tactics, ploys, and shenanigans to purposefully delay the game until 2026, all in an intentional effort to avoid paying a maximum $250 million earnout bonus to the studio.In one bizarre episode alleged in the lawsuit, Unknown Worlds co-founder Charlie Cleveland went to lunch with Krafton CEO, Kim Chang-han, who told him via translator that having to pay such an earnout would be "disastrous financially and hugely embarrassing" for the publisher.
Deals for today: The best of Alienware's Black Friday in July sale
Alienware is running Black Friday in July, dropping a bunch of desktops and laptops down to some of the lowest prices I’ve seen all summer.Doesn’t matter if you’re after a decked-out Area‑51 tower with an RTX 5090 or just looking for a leaner Aurora machine for everyday gaming, there’s something on offer.A handful of 16 and 18-inch gaming laptops are trimmed down by hundreds, which is rare for models packing things like 5070 Ti or 5080 graphics Read more
Former Elder Scrolls developer Julian Lefay steps away from his Daggerfall-esque The Wayward Realms as cancer worsens
OnceLost Games, the studio LeFay's been working with for the past few years, say they've been informed by his doctors that "his time with us is limited".The developer's best known for his work on the first two Elder Scrolls games, Arena and Daggerfall, alongside The Wayward Realms creative director Ted Peterson.Read more
Oblivion Remastered developers Virtuos are reportedly planning layoffs, with 300 workers at risk
That's according to reporting posted to Bluesky by Gauthier Andres of French outlet Origami.Andres' post dropped same day Virtuos lead game designer Adrien Jouannet appeared on a Cyberpunk 2077 livestream to talk about the studio's work with CD Projekt on the futuristic RPG's latest update.Read more
James Bond's license holders let IO be "a lot more daring" than the Hitman studio thought
Brendan and I once had a podcast conversation about Hitman in which we predicted that IO Interactive would be limited by James Bond's license holders MGM to a maximum of three toilet drownings, one fish spearing, and absolutely no duck explosions.While we can't yet confirm specifics, IO's franchise director Jonathan Lacaille has said that MGM were "a lot more daring than (the studio) thought" in a recent chat with Very Gary Computing.Lacaille actually credits Hitman's, um, restraint in helping them secure the license in the first place.
Bird-bashing soulslike Wuchang: Fallen Feathers has some PC system specs, and they are not brutal
Chinese action-RPG Wuchang: Fallen Feathers is out in a week, and it's high time we heard about the system requirements, which don't seem that high for a game in which you can lob lightning at supersized peacocks and leave a delicate furrow through new-fallen snow.An Intel Core i5-8400, an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060, 16GB of RAM and 60GB's worth of SSD are all they're asking for the chance to become an amnesiac pirate swordswoman during the age of the Ming dynasty, tasked with murdering a whole lot of bird people before she becomes a bird person herself. Read more
R.I.P Total War: Warhammer's arse ladders (2016-2025)
Time, of course, muddies the clear waters of specifics, but I'm basically sure he was talking about the ability for each of his men to keep a thirty foot ladder snuggled safely away in their rectal passage just in case they encountered any massive walls.Since launch, The Total War: Warhammer series has given each troop, from the lowliest Chaos Chosen to the bravest and most beautiful ratman, the ability to magic a ladder from nowhere during sieges.There's a mod for Total War: Warhammer 3 that removes them, but now the end of arse ladders is getting official support, including tweaks to hopefully teach the AI how to behave without them.
Come slide with me through loopy shooter maps in this homage to Counter-Strike's beloved Source engine surfing
Counter-Strike surfing is a modded game mode for Valve's bomb defusal FPS in which players skate through obstacle courses by means of a Source engine physics glitch.It has a proud history dating back to 2004, when modder Charles "Mariowned" Joyce discovered that it was far more enjoyable to slide off roofs than shoot people in his custom map Killbox.Now here comes SurfsUp, a free-to-play surfing game in the Godot Engine.
Cyberpunk 2077 update 2.3 motors into your life this week with new cars, auto-driving, a taxi service and more
It's mostly about giving you more options in terms of traversing the world, because adding in a whole metro system post-launch didn't do enough in that regard.The studio will not stop, even though they're now making Cyberpunk 2.They've worked with fellow developers Virtuos to add-in some new cars, a taxi system, self-driving cars, and other stuff not related to getting from A to B.
Civilization 7 is getting auto-explore for scouts, reminding me that I both hate and love auto-explore
The next major Sid Meier's Civilization VII update will make some fairly significant tweaks to Firaxis' latest and not, so far, greatest 4X strategy sim.We can expect a new commander, too - Trưng Nhị, sister to existing Vietnamese leader Trưng Trắc.Perhaps most significantly, the feature will re-introduce auto-explore mechanics for scouts.
Free shooter Straftat gets a 2v2 update and if my maths are correct this makes it twice as intense 1v1
Anyway, the update that adds these modes arrived yesterday and it also adds - surprise!- a ton of new maps.Which brings the game's total number of killing arenas to over 300.
"You can short a baby" in the sequel to Space Warlord Organ Trading Simulator
But it means Strange Scaffold's sci-fi stockbroker sim was, at the very least, 2021's second best organ trading sim.Nice to see it's getting a sequel then, called...You aren't going to be trading babies," says head of studio, Xalavier Nelson Jr. "You're going to be trading stocks based on babies, which means you can short a baby."
This new co-op horror is like if the chefs of Overcooked got together for a night of R.E.P.O
Co-op Kaiju Horror Cooking is essentially the four-player hangout horror of R.E.P.O but instead of ghost hunting you are collecting ingredients to feed a big monster its favourite dish."This isn't a place of honour," says studio head of Strange Scaffold, Xalavier Nelson Jr. "You aren't going to be making fancy Overcooked-style dishes.You will be beating a giant rat or a minotaur with a rolling pin, taking an object from their corpse, throwing it onto a grill on a beach, and then firing it into a kaiju's jaws with a catapult or a manganel."
Put Big Butt Skinner in Frostpunk 2, win $10,000 maybe
Frostpunk 2 developers 11 Bit are holding a modding competition in collaboration with mod.io, with $10,000 for the one that shows "the best in creativity and overall technical polish", which I assume is code for "If you send us another Thomas The Tank Engine we will come to your house and spit in your fruit bowl".There are also custom GPUs and "goodie packs" for runners-up.The competition is open until August 22nd, with the winner announced September 1st. Cheers, PC Gamer.
Best deals for PC gamers today: Over 10% off prebuilt gaming PCs and massive savings on M.2 SSDs
Plenty on the list today, not just graphics cards or SSDs but full prebuilt rigs, cooling gear, and network kit as well.There are some chunky savings on newer PCIe 5.0 drives, plus high-end gaming cases and power supplies that usually don’t budge on price.Read more
Officially licenced Like a Dragon spin-offs made by Roblox creators may be coming, and will have to stick to the karaoke lad lore
Enter Roblox, which is very much the terrifying user-generated everything platform's terrifying user-generated everything platform.The company that oversees it, Roblox Corp, have just announced a new "Roblox License Manager" that'll allow fellow corps to let Roblox players submit to build games based on stuff like Squid Game, Saw, and Twilight, then split the Robux revenue these games generate between the two parties.Sega have signed up and are offering the Like A Dragon series, but not to just anybody.
Subnautica 2 studio will get their bonus, says Krafton, but it's not the $250 million promised
In other words, they've been given an extension to hit their targets.After worker concerns and fan outrage, now the corp says "don't worry, we'll pay!"Although it's not the huge $250 million they were originally supposed to.
Valve change Steam's rules to let banks and credit card firms prohibit "certain kinds of adult only content"
And in particular, "certain kinds of adult only content".In other words, they are giving banks, ISPs and credit card companies some degree of control over Steam's definition of acceptable "adult only content".All of which potentially has rather dramatic ramifications, given that banks and payment companies have a track record for pressuring platform holders to nuke what they deem to be NSFW material.
Killing Floor 3’s next stress test launches today, and won’t share the last one’s five-year NDA
Cooperative monsterman shooter Killing Floor 3 found out this past Sunday, as players of its closed online stress test were asked to agree to a nondisclosure agreement (shared on Reddit) that would stay in effect for five years.Or four years, three hundred and fifty-four days after KF3 is supposed to launch, on July 24th.In a forum post, developers Tripwire Interactive have since declared that they stopped bothering to enforce within the test’s first hour, and apologised for making such a mad demand in the first place.
Avowed's summer update revamps fighter and ranger skills so those pesky wizards aren't having all the fun
This patch is the second of three seasonal updates Obsidian outlined that the game'd be getting over the course of this year.It's brought a substantial rework of fighter and ranger skills, some extra unique weapons for you to get your mitts on, Steam Deck verification, plus a bunch of other tweaks and fixes.Read more
Dark fantasy Frosthaven is a DM-free Dungeons And Dragons campaign in a box, and it's coming to Steam this month
Frosthaven digital is launching in early access on Epic and Steam at the end of the month, July 31st.The dark fantasy RPG will be £33.50, and it's Julian Gollop's Snapshot Games handling the adaption.Here's a trailer.
I just discovered a Dwarf Fortress cave diving roguelite
We are straining Rock Paper Shotgun's innovative "News To Me, Anyway" subcategory to breaking point with Anoxic Depths: Caves Of The Yendori, a turn-based spelunking roguelite from Studio Tectorum.The scurvy bean-counters among you might protest that it came out 10 years ago, possibly before some of you were old enough to read, operate video games, or count beans.Read more
I've found the best PC gaming deals in the Black Friday in July sale at Dell - save up to $750
We’ve covered the Dell Black Friday in July deals a few times in recent days, and they’re still coming.In fact, there are now so many offers that we’ve got a whole list of them here.Read more
There's a bunch of discounted AMD and Nvidia graphics cards now up to 50% off at Amazon today
I don't really need a new graphics card, but seeing prices drop by almost half gets my curiosity going.It’s not even just the big names like the RTX 5090 or the Radeon RX 7900 XT, even refurbished cards look tempting when they’re going for hundreds less.Here's the best deals I can find for your latest rig upgrade: Read more
Amazon still has a saving on Samsung 990 Pro SSDs even after Prime Day is over
Just when you thought Prime Day was over, we’ve mentioned it again and triggered all those flashbacks. Read more
Grab this 2TB WD Black mini SSD for Steam Deck at its lowest price so far this year
I recently ripped out my Steam Deck’s SSD and enthusiastically slapped in a WD Black SN770M 2TB mini SSD, and it's easily the smartest thing I’ve done with it that didn’t involve tinkering around in desktop mode. Read more
Tales of the Shire's system requirements have me considering grafting a graphics card to a Hobbit's bum
Its system requirements have just dropped, and they're pretty reasonable.In fact, its needs are so modest and homely that I'm wondering whether you might be able to run it on a Hobbit, provided you could find one in real life and staple some Nvidia - or AMD- branded plastic into the surface of its flesh.Read more
Helldivers 2's latest patch lets you impale baddies with flags, as the bots take aim at the Democracy Space Station
This one's patch 01.003.200, and it brings the latest in pointy flag tip technology, in addition to another round of weapon balancing.You'll need that flag stabbiness too, as the latest Galactic War twist has seen the Automatons try to wrestle control of Super Earth's space station.Read more
I'm travelling this week, and I wish I'd ordered one of these power banks for my Steam Deck
One of the best things about my job is that I get to fly around the world and go to events, and while I’m off to Warframe’s TennoCon this week (and very excited about it) there’s always a bit of a panic about what to pack to keep oneself sane on a long flight. Read more
ZeniMax Union say they're fighting for staff left in limbo by Microsoft cancelling MMO as part of mass layoffs
Now, the union that represents a number of devs left in limbo by that game's canning have issued an update about the process of fighting for their futures.ZOS' MMO, codenamed Project Blackbird, wasn't the only game Microsoft pulled the plug on as they let go of around 9k people.Read more
Finally, a game about a boy who thinks he's a tomb searching for a dead body to bury inside of him
You play as Kofun, a boy shaped like a keyhole tomb who is also sort of an actual keyhole tomb but also a boy who wants to fulfill his destiny as a keyhole tomb, namely by finding a dead body to bury inside of himself.He lives in a park with his mate Haniwa, who is a Haniwa.Haniwa's secret is that he's very good at calligraphy.
This Alienware Aurora 16 5060 gaming laptop for $1,100 is the best budget gaming laptop deal right now
Dell’s Black Friday in July sale has knocked the price of an Alienware 16 laptop down to $1,099.99, and while it’s not the perfect machine, it’s a decent price for a reasonably affordable mid-range gaming setup. Read more
Open world wuxia RPG Where Winds Meet is having a city-sized playtest this month
If you don't, you can watch the below trailer or read Ed Thorn's (RPS in peace) preview from 2023, in which he commented "I'm both excited to see more and a tad worried it could end up being a disjointed, overstretched mash".Then you can consider signing up to the game's next playtest, which runs from July 25th to July 30th.Read more
In bullet hell mining game Astro Prospector the real enemy is sleep
I'm writing up Astro Prospector for a couple of reasons: firstly, it reminds me of two childhood favourites, Atari's Asteroids and the less-known Crystal Quest for the Macintosh.And secondly, there's something appealingly perverse about a bullet hell of all gametypes that is always simulating the player nodding off at the keyboard. Read more
AMD's Ryzen Prime Day deals are somehow still live, here's the top discounts at Amazon
There’s still time to snag big discounts.We're seeing up to 39% off, which is rare for these processors.Amazon’s free 30-day Prime trial still applies, so there’s really no excuse to miss these while they’re hot.
Helldivers 2 players are pushing to rename one of Super Earth's cities 'Gun'
HD2 players aren't happy for it to end there though.They've been asked for their input in renaming the single city on Super Earth they've so far succeeded in rebuilding since all of that Illuminate invasion business, and they're voting for Gun.Read more
Master Of Command is a strategy game of crunchy musketry and Total War-style battles that tells the story of an army, not an empire
I know that because they emailed RPS saying that our "strategy features often spotlight smart, unforgiving systems".And what better way to show that than by covering this game, completely of my own volition and with no outside influence from cleverly worded PR emails playing on my sense of strategy-knower's pride.It looks suitably grand, and I really dig the idea of a strategy where the management isn't about empires, but the personal journey of your army on campaign.
Ancient Aliens vs Predator game briefly resurrected by Steam player thirst for Six Packs
Deep beneath the smog of a plausibly denied planetoid, there lurks a space hulk full of dessicated hand monsters, shorn dreadlocks and long-emptied Pulse Rifles.The vessel mostly lies silent, but every so often, an ancient server deep within the core crackles awake, beaming an ominous signal far out into the void, and the chitinous corridors come alive with flamethrowers and squelchy stabbing noises and oh, so much screaming.Also, the coveted chirping of Steam achievements.
Kaizen: A Factory Story review
"Fine" is a funny word.It can mean something is sublimely crafted, but it can also be used in a withering sense.Kaizen: A Factory Story is a fine game.
Whether you love stealth games or hate them, Eriksholm isn't worth your time
If you love stealth, you've likely got a library full of such games you've been meaning to get back to at some point.If you don't, you've likely been put off somewhere along the line by the sort of tired and punishing design tropes Eriksholm: The Stolen Dream is full of.Naturally, I don't think it's worth your time either way.
Subnautica 2 leak is "authentic" say publishers who benefit the most from that leak
A battle between three former Subnautica 2 developers and their publishers at Krafton intensified over the weekend, after an internal document appeared online showing how the scope of the survival game has reduced during development.The source of this document remains unknown.Nevertheless, Krafton have since leapt at the chance to confirm its authenticity.
European Parliament vice president throws his support behind Stop Killing Games campaign
One of the European Parliament's vice presidents has voiced his support for the Stop Killing Games campaign, and said he's signed the group's petition to the European Commission to stop publishers rendering online games unplayable by shutting down their servers.The petition surpassed a million signatures recently, though there are concerns that some of the signatories are fake.Read more
This week in PC games: Stronghold, Destiny and Neverwinter Nights lead a host of drifters, necromancers and Pac-Monsters
The working week once again looms above us like a bulldozer driven by raucous and somehow loveable sheepdogs in top hats and cufflinks.Quickly now, lob a few new PC game releases under the caterpillar treads to slow its passage.Read more
Elden Ring Nightreign's inevitable randomiser mod is here to spice up your runs with extra funky map scrambling
Elden Ring Nightreign's gotten a randomiser mod, just in case the base game isn't quite maxing out your unexpected chaos-per-run meter at this point, despite its revamped bosses.While FromSoft's roguelike-ish twist on the established souls formula already switches things up in a manner that's a bit like a randomiser mod makeover of one of the series' traditional entries, modder thefifthmatt has still found ways to tinker with it.Read more
Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War – Definitive Edition gets an August release date, with a chunky discount for Anniversary owners
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War - Definitive Edition is out August 14th, with a 30% discount off the $30 label price for owners of the Anniversary Edition.That discount applies to both Steam and GOG, and will be available for the "foreseeable future" (Fateweaver noises).Read more
What are we all playing this weekend?
You wouldn't believe how close I was to forgetting to poll everyone today for Playing This Weekend.In fairness, no one reminded me or sent me their paragraphs.Anyway, right on time as usual, here are the games we're clicking on this weekend!
Top city builder Against The Storm gets a grumpy bat faction and giant pooping birds in its next DLC this July
On the whole, I think I prefer the Fear and Loathing variety.Anyway, here's the trailer for Against the Storm's second DLC expansion, Nightwatchers, which will release on PC via Steam, GOG, Epic Games Store and the Microsoft Store on July 31st.Read more
Sea of Thieves is getting paid custom servers next year, and Rare are switching up their approach to seasons
Big piratey thing Sea of Thieves will be getting custom servers as part of a paid subscription service in "early 2026", developers Rare have announced during a first-ever community direct for the game.That's far from all of the studio's plans, with wider shakeups also in the pipeline.It follows Rare being one of the studios affected by Microsoft's mass layoffs earlier this month, with Everwild being among the number of in-development games cancelled as part of the cuts.
New Jurassic World Evolution 3 breeding trailer explains the fine art of dinosaur bonestorming
Having taken a Dilophosaurus to their Dennis Nedry-esque plans for AI-generated scientist portraits in Jurassic World Evolution 3, Frontier are back to talking about a more wholesome form of generation - dinosaur sex.The game's latest trailer is a brief glimpse at the new breeding features, which allow you "to synthesise male and female variants, each with visible dimorphism" and have them do the ole horizontal tango "to shape the traits and markings of future generations."Read more
Latest Monster Hunter Wilds update aims to rally the Steam reviews and slay the wildest monster of all - FOMO
Capcom are fine-tuning the live service of livestock-murdering game Monster Hunter Wilds by making the Arch-tempered monster hunts a permanent fixture, rather than time-limited seasonal content quests.It's a bid to address the FOMO element that has dragged the game down to an Overwhelmingly Negative Steam user review consensus, though there are other things to blame for that, such as dodgy performance.Read more
Leading Total War: Warhammer 3's peasants to victory with an irresponsible number of trebuchets (French for 'very bucket')
The peasant infantry is basically just there to squishily hold the enemy in place for charges.However, I'm feeling revolutionary today, so we're staging a serf uprising.Conquer the entirety of Bretonnia.
Morsels is my game of the summer, a stinking collage of Nuclear Throne and Pokemon
A roguelike pixelart shooter from Furcula and Annapurna Interactive, its world is a relentlessly aberrant waste dump in which it often feels like the only sure way to differentiate objects is to pop them in your mouth, and hope they don't rupture, ignite or wriggle down your throat.Video game science has yet to devise and normalise control devices that are operated with your tongue, despite notable efforts, so during my hands-on, I'm forced to fall back on my untrustworthy eyeballs.Developer Toby Dixon has to step in frequently to point out that some of the game's oozing anomalies are there to empower me, not harm me.
Today's the last chance to upgrade your gaming headset with these Amazon Prime Day deals
Amazon’s throwing out some serious gaming headset deals for Prime Day 2025, but today is the last chance to grab one.Discounts are hitting as high as 45% on top-tier brands like Corsair, Logitech, Razer, and SteelSeries.Even if you’re not a Prime member, you can still snag the best prices by jumping on Amazon’s free 30-day Prime trial.
Subnautica 2 publishers Krafton accuse ousted bosses of abandoning duties, and now those ex-leads are suing
Subnautica 2 publishers Krafton have accused three recently ousted leads of "abandoning" their duties on the game, suggesting that this is to blame for it being delayed.That statement was almost immediately followed by one of the former Unknown Worlds bosses, co-founder Charlie Cleveland, writing in a Reddit post that a lawsuit's been filed by the trio against the company.That kicked off a war of words between the two sides, punctuated by a report from Bloomberg which alleged Krafton's call to delay the game was made just before a $250 million bonus was set to be paid to Unknown Worlds staff.
Shark Dentist is about operating on a fool's idea of a shark
The Jaws Effect is a reasonably well known phenomenon coined in a paper that explores the impact the 1975 film had on Australian policy response to shark bites, although the term is now used a bit more broadly to refer to how sharks are villainised in pop culture - villainisation obviously being an absurdly human and dramatic concept to apply to a hungry or scared fish.Jaws did actually result in an increase in shark culls, but its lasting legacy has also been argued to be more insididous.Depending on whether you're looking at stats from the UN or from conservation charities, the number of sharks killed or mutilated and harvested each year for fins and other parts ranges between about 10 and 100 million, and it's been argued this continues with relatively little pushback as compared to similar wildlife atrocities due to wide-reaching perception that ranges from apathy to vilification.
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3+4 drops in full today, so of course a modder already has Mary Poppins poppin' kickflips
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3+4, the latest nostalgia-fest about avian athletes artfully acing acrobatic boardiness, drops in full today, July 11th.Though, thanks to pre-order early access meaning the game sort of released three days ago, its modding community is already off and running.If you've spent the past few months watching old X Games reruns and thinking to yourself that all the shreddage might be better if Bob Burnqvist were an Edwardian nanny, a train chaser, or a gabagool enthusiast, I've got some good news.
Total War: Warhammer 3 gets the best bad news yet about future updates
Tides Of Torment, the next DLC for Total War: Warhammer 3, has been pushed back from its original Summer release window to later in the year, with September onwards sounding the likeliest from a new blog post.Ah, yes: Sea Elves are confirmed now, led by Sea Lord Aislinn.Expect more details from a new video in August, by the sound of it.
Don't miss these last chance deals on Steam Deck docks before Prime Day 2025 ends
Amazon’s dropped a ton of Prime Day deals on Steam Deck docks, but today is the last day to grab these exclusive discounts.Most of these are 20% to 45% off, with solid options for everything from budget setups to full desktop replacements.If you’re not a Prime member, Amazon’s offering a 30-day free trial so you can grab these deals without spending extra.
I've found some awesome last minute prebuilt gaming PC Prime Day Deals that are cheaper than building one
There’s a strong mix of Prime Day deals and direct offers from HP, Dell, MSI, and others, covering everything from compact gaming laptops to top-tier RTX 5090 desktops.It's the last day of Amazon Prime deals, so you can guarantee other retailers will put their prices back up after today too.Some builds are priced well below what it would cost to build yourself, and a few include extra savings with codes like LEVELUP20.
Helldivers 2's next warbond is full of funky alien tech, including a "(somewhat) stable wormhole" teleportation pack
Or, at least that's premise of Helldivers 2's latest warbond.Dubbed Control Group, it'll give you access to a bunch of experimental gear Super Earth's scientists have cobbled together from captured Illuminate tech if you opt to pick it up when it drops on June 17th.Read more
Owlcat welcome Mass Effect comparisons with their Expanse RPG, but say they're approaching choice and consequence "differently"
Not least from developers Owlcat themselves, who've namechecked the "iconic" RPGs as inspirations.In a recent interview with Polygon, creative director Alexander Mishulin said he's humbled, but that Osiris Reborn also has its own approach to choice, consequence, and storytelling that's a bit different from Bioware's sci-fi trilogy and also the other one (Andromeda was actually pretty solid though).Read more
Manor Lords publisher's time loop tactics RPG Every Day We Fight is out today in early access
Huge warehouses, bases, and ruins so stuffed with cover and walkways as to suggest the dominant species on the game's pre-alien invasion earth were sandbag piles.The city is explorable between battles with your gang of resistance members, letting you poke around and scavenge before sneaking into optimal positions for the next scrap against invading aliens.Read more
Attention, massive Baldur's Gate 3 tadpole hypocrites, this mod'll let you get stompy for the first time since 2023
Especially in a game like Baldur's Gate 3 that generally rewards you for embracing the chaos and behaving a manner that'd leave onlookers scratching their heads and slightly afraid.Sadly, there's one immensely satisfying bit of action those who play the the RPG as a tadpole-slupring hypocrite have, to the best of my knowledge, been unable to get in on since November 2023.Read more
The best last minute gaming mouse deals in Amazon's Prime Day sale
Was: $149.99, Now: $79.99, 47% off Read more
Fancy snooping around The Witcher 3 palace from Blood and Wine? Well, this mod gives it a book-accurate interior
It's been years, Gerry from the Riviera, but you can finally stop knocking on a certain Duchess' door in the hopes she'll let you see whether some Elven staircases are as spirally as you remember.A Witcher 3 modder has used REDKit to open those doors and had a crack at making a lore-accurate interior for Beauclair Palace, the posh setting of the fantasy game's Blood and Wine expansion.Read more
Krafton plan to delay Subnautica 2 and deny the studio a $250 million bonus
Subnautica 2 is being delayed into 2026 by its publishers Krafton, which would lead to the survival game's studio missing out on a previously agreed $250 million bonus, meant to be shared among employees.The revelation comes via a report from Bloomberg, and could finally explain why Krafton ousted the studio's most senior figures last week.Read more
The video game voice actor strike is over, with new AI agreements reached over 'digital replicas'
A new contract has been approved, "effective immediately".with 95% of participating union members voting in favour, with 5% opposed.The terms of the Interactive Media Agreement include increased performer compensation, including overtime rates, and "guardrails" against AI - "including consent and disclosure requirements for A.I. digital replica use and the ability for performers to suspend consent for the generation of new material during a strike".
Space Scum is a sci-fi strategy RPG take on Battle Brothers
So, here's a trailer.There's also a Steam demo from next month, although you can sign up for a playtest now.Read more
I've built Nvidia RTX 5070 and AMD Radeon 9070XT gaming PCs using last chance deals from Amazon's Prime Day
It's a goldmine for gamers this year, and I couldn’t resist weighing up a PC build.I dove into the discounts (Don't forget that free 30-day Prime trial) and built two monster gaming rigs.One powered by Nvidia’s brand-new RTX 5070 and another fueled by AMD’s scorching Radeon 9070XT.
You'll have to move quickly to save a third on this HP Omen 35L with an RTX 4080 Super
Just hours after we shared a huge deal on the HP Omen 45L with an RTX 4090, the manufacturer surprised us again with another deal that’s not likely to last long. Read more
The end is nigh, for Balatro and Wordle have had a terrible avian child
Of all the "what if Balatro, but" projects on offer, there are surely none so atrocious and indecent, so utterly irresponsible of conception and offensive to human dignity as Birdigo, which bills itself as "what if Balatro, but Wordle".For the uninitiated, Balatro is the rad poker roguelite that took the games industry by storm in 2024, while Wordle is what the New York Times do now instead of articles.Read more
Time Flies is about a bug finding god or learning guitar in something like 76.4 seconds, and it's got a release date
You live for a matter of seconds every playthrough, and in that time, you've got a bug bucket list of stuff you can do.Either way, this cool cousin/sibling to the equally bizarre Kids and My Exercise is coming out on PC July 31st.Read more
Oblivion Remastered performance improvements emerge through the gates with update 1.2, plus difficulty tweaks
This one's update 1.2, and it's headlined by the sorts of performance improvements folks have been begging for, plus some difficulty setting tweaks.In case you missed it, The Elder Scrolls 4.something's last update did many things, but by fair the most noteworthy was stopping a vampire from succumbing to the urge all men get.Read more
New charity game bundle raises funds to defend US immigrants against ICE
Back in June, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests of alleged undocumented migrants in Los Angeles provoked a wave of protests.The Trump administration attempted to make hay from the situation, dispatching federal military troops to the city in a show of toughness, against the objections of California's own governor.Despite this cynical cultivation of a pressure-cooker atmosphere, the majority of protesters were peaceful, albeit justifiably loud and angry at having their neighbours seized and imprisoned by random thugs at the behest of a dime store Palpatine.
Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag Steam update sparks more remake speculation, but hold fire, sailor
Update: Ubisoft have confirmed that these updates to Black Flag et al were just rejigging of Steam pages "to reflect each game's accessibility options" in line with the new accessibility tags Steam introduced in June.Sadly, the publisher didn't explain what makes cameras comfortable.With folks keener for new info than they are booty, an update to the original Black Flag's Steam backend is the latest thing to fan the Remake speculation flames, but before you get excited about it, it's worth bearing in mind that a bunch of other Assassin's Creed games got similar tweaks yesterday.
I Don't Want To Be A Good Woman is a "museum of resilience" that explores sexism and repression in Iran
I Don't Want To Be A Good Woman is an abstract walking simulator that depicts the experience of being a young girl in Iran - a country that, as characterised by UN human rights investigators in September 2024, operates "a system, both in law and in practice, that fundamentally discriminates on the grounds of gender".It takes the form of a molten grey landscape strewn with faceless figures, floating symbols and text.Read more
Mortality Decomp. Killers is a free Post Void-like that scores you on how many doors you've "killed'
MDK is also Mortality Decomp.After each level, your score breakdown includes how many doors you've "killed".Read more
I've found the best last chance gaming keyboard deals in Amazon's Prime Day sale
there’s something in this Prime Day sale with your name on it.I’ve rounded up the best deals I could find—everything from custom-ready beasts to wireless wonders with serious discounts.Scroll through, see what catches your eye, and don't forget to activate that 30-day free trial of Prime.
Steel Hunters, the mech shooter from World of Tanks' devs, gets a shutdown date just three months after releasing in early access
Steel Hunters, a free-to-play mech shooter from World of Tanks devs Wargaming, was only revealed last December.An early access release in April this year followed that Keighley Awards cameo, and just three months on, the game's been given a shutdown date.Read more
Lo-Fi Games know you've spent a billion hours with Kenshi, so they're working on making the sequel's discoveries even less predictable
Chris Hunt and Natalie Mikkelson of Lo-Fi Games recently put out a video chatting about Kenshi 2, their approach to design and, uh, their shared hatred for fondue.It's a lovely, unadorned look at game development, with Hunt and Mikkelson talking through how they basically learned to do everything on the fly, from Kenshi's beginnings to Lo-Fi Games's current size of 30 people.Read more
The Last Of Us Part 2 gets new mode nobody asked for
Naughty Dog have released a new mode for The Last Of Us Part 2 Remastered that lets you play out the events of the story in chronological order.Nobody who has ever read a single book can understand why.Read more
Dune: Awakening devs are reimbursing players for a Deep Desert patch mistake that lost folks bases and gear
If so, you may be entitled to in-game compensation from developers Funcom, who've said sorry for a Deep Desert patch "oversight" that wiped out "an unfortunate amount" of bases and gear.You won't even have to enlist the services of a friendly neighbourhood Lionel Hutz or Saul Goodman either, DA's devs are already working to send out replacement stuff to affected folks.They've also pledged to tackle the cheating and item loss due to bugs that've been plaguing the game since launch.
Gorgeous Alien-style space horror Routine is finally nearing "the finish line", despite a key departure
Routine is still alive, baby!Development team Lunar Software have finally posted an update about their first-person 80s-themed space horror, which had Craig Pearson rhapsodising about Kubrickian smoothies back in 2012.Let's all celebrate by re-watching the last trailer.
I've tested these brilliant Steam Deck cases, and it's the last day to grab one in the Amazon Prime Day sales
Amazon Prime Day is ending today at midnight, which means it's also one of the best (and final) times to grab a case for your Steam Deck.From sleek travel bags to custom shells and heavy-duty protection, I reckon I've covered every form of case Steam Deck owners could possibly want.Plus, if you're not already a member, Amazon is offering a 30-day free trial of Prime, which gives you instant access to these last chance exclusive discounts.
HP is quietly clearing out its Omen RTX 4090 PCs, and at this price, it’s at least worth a look
Sure, Prime Day is here, but in its efforts to combat Amazon’s deals, HP is offering a gaming PC deal that’s better than you’ll find on any rival store. Read more
GeForce RTX 5060 Ti graphics cards are getting Prime Day price cuts, and yes, I mean the 16GB version
The RTX 5060 Ti is easily one of the standout GPUs from Nvidia’s troubled Blackwell generation.Stick with the 16GB edition (rather than the afterthought 8GB) and it’ll comfortably handle high quality settings on 1080p and 1440p, helped along by DLSS 4 and, if you fancy it, Multi Frame Generation.It also accounted for many of the better-priced RTX 50 graphics cards at launch, and as part of Amazon Prime Day, we’re finally starting to see some further cost cutting – including to one model at Amazon UK that’s dropped below £400.
I've found some great last chance Steam Deck power banks that are discounted in the Amazon Prime Day sales
The final day to snag some epic Amazon Prime Day 2025 deals, meaning after today these power bank deals are history.These Amazon Prime Day power bank deals are all packing serious power and will last long enough to play your Steam Deck on a long journey without worrying about a low battery.I’ve rounded up the best ones for the Steam Deck and similar handhelds, and they all bring serious wattage, smart features, and enough capacity to keep you gaming through flights, commutes, or couch marathons.
My favorite microSD cards for Steam Deck have been heavily discounted in last chance Amazon Prime Day deals
This is the last day to save a small fortune on these Steam Deck-ready microSD card Amazon Prime Day 2025 deals.They're rocking serious speed, capacity, and reliability without wrecking your wallet.From our favorite Micro SD card for Steam Deck Samsung Sonic editions to rugged all-rounders from Lexar, SanDisk, and Gigastone, each card here is a beast.
Cheap gaming mouse needers: may I suggest the Logitech G305 Lightspeed, down to £28 / $28 on Prime Day
Just for a change, I’ve decided to go through a whole deal day without mentioning the Logitech G502 Hero.Okay, how about this: I go through one without actively recommending the Logitech G502 Hero, and will instead scratch the mouse advice itch by noting how its wireless cousin, the Logitech G305 Lightspeed, is down a mere £28 / $28 as part of Prime Day 2025.Read more
Valve say controversial Mount & Blade: Warband mod accused of historical revisionism was taken down by creator
The mod, reported on by Automaton yesterday, was called "Gwangju Running Man" and was a total conversion that turned Mount and Blade's medieval warfare into an apparently warped depiction of 1980's student-led protests against the military coup of Chun Doo-hwan, which were violently supressed by the country's army.Around 200 people are estimated to have been killed during the uprising.Read more
Lord Of The Rings Online players finally complete the Great Hobbit Run by incinerating themselves in Mount Doom
It's an annual event hosted by Twitch streamer BurkeBlack in which hobbit players of Standing Stone and Daybreak's absolutely ancient The Lord Of The Rings Online try to walk all the way to Mount Doom, without taking on any quests.This year is the first year the community have made it to Sauron's hellmouth, and what better way to celebrate than by throwing themselves immediately into the lava.Read more
Eve Online has changed how pilots buy and sell its fancy golden space ticket known as Plex
The change affects Plex, a shiny type of trade good you can use to re-up your subscription to the game.From now on, the ethereal digigood will be sold on a magical "global" market across the entirety of space, as opposed to being sold locally from region to region.Read more
WD’s Prime Day deals include their two fastest gaming SSDs, at up to $110 off
Yet more of our best SSDs list is turning up in the Amazon Prime Day sales, and these are some bigguns: the WD Black SN850X, for my money the best NVMe drive around, and the WD Black 8100, a newer model that’s just parked its svelte metal bum on the throne of PCIe 5.0 SSDs.It’s still worth weighing them up against the Samsung SSD deals from earlier, as some of the drives are a tiny bit cheaper for an equivalent capacity, but past testing in the RPS labs (my desk) has proven both these WD Blacks as superlative all-rounders.Read more
In this austerely beautiful moonbase management game, "your only choices will be impossible ones"
If you dream of playing a game set inside a diagram of a spacebase from an Usborne Cutaway book published in the 1990s, Kuu is probably for you.If you dream of being very sad on the Moon, tending sickly plants for 30 days by Earthlight, then Kuu is also, probably, for you.If you enjoyed Citizen Sleeper but wish it was as depressing as, say, Anoxia Station, Kuu is also also, probably, for you.
Peak modders are delivering peak modding: here's one that fills your game with the skeletons of dead players
It's called Everest, and it fills your game with other players' dead bodies.That's more bones that you'll find at Crufts, and it looks to turn the co-op climbing game from Another Crab's Treasure devs Aggro Crab and Content Warning devs Landfall into the sort of morbid fun you can usually only have by chucking a frisbee around the garden of a crematorium.Read more
I've found the best Steam Deck accessory deals during Amazon Prime Day 2025
Amazon Prime Day 2025 is delivering big savings across Steam Deck accessories, and I’ve rounded up the best of the bunch.If you fancy upgrading your storage looking for a dock to plug into your setup, or grabbing a power bank that keeps the Deck running on the move, this list covers it.Everything here is discounted, but you'll need to be an Amazon Prime member to access the best discounts.
Prime Day sees the enduringly capable AMD Ryzen 5 7600X CPU fall to its lowest prices yet
Prime Days aren’t typically a good source of gaming CPU bargains – that’s more Black Friday’s thing.Present company excluded, however, as it turns out the oldie-but-goodie AMD Ryzen 5 7600X is currently hitting all-time lows with snipped tags of £128 on Amazon UK and $161 on Amazon US.Read more
The 4K, 144Hz gaming monitor I use is £135 off for Prime Day – and $200 off in the US with no Amazon required
Because I am currently using the LG UltraGear 27GR93U to highlight some savings on the LG UltraGear 27GR93U, a very affordable yet very tidy 4K gaming monitor that I bought for myself back in March.Still for a fair bit more, annoyingly, than you can now get it during Amazon Prime Day.Read more
With Need for Speed devs working on Battlefield, EA's beloved car culture site Speedhunters seems to have shut off its engine
Now, though, it looks like the EA-owned car culture site has gone dormant, with reports claiming it might have been shut down.This news comes as development of NFS at EA is on a hiatus, with devs at Criterion having been drafted in to help deliver the next Battlefield, though exec Vince Zampella has hinted that there are still plans for the racing series going forwards.Read more
The SteelSeries Arctis Gamebuds, gaming earbuds done properly, are 26% off for Prime Day
If RPS is going to wave around Amazon Prime Day recommendations, they might as well be for hardware we’d actually use, and ideally for kit that at least one of us owns ourselves.So it is with the SteelSeries Arctis Gamebuds, true wireless earbuds that have supplanted my Sennheisers as my pocketable sound providers of choice – and are currently 26% off at both Amazons UK and US.Read more
Very good strategy sim Shapez 2 hits 1.0 release in November, including a "permanent factory" mode
Throwing caution to the winds, he suggested that it had "turned the holy trinity of factory games (Factorio, Satisfactory, Dyson Sphere Program) into a holy quartet."They've just announced that they hope to release the automation strategy sim into 1.0 this November, together with a new mode, proper modding support, and Steam achievements.Read more
Two of Samsung’s best gaming SSDs are on sale for Prime Day, and also it’s Prime Day I guess
At this current rate of expansion, it will therefore be just seven short years before the entire solar calendar is engulfed, with even hours being replaced as a unit of measurement by the duration of Lightning Deals.My small act of civil resistance against this temporally disrespectful future is to uh, have unknowingly booked three of the four days off before Amazon announced the dates.But while I’m here, I’m still on cog-in-machine duty, which is why I’m now informing you that a couple of (actually good) Samsung NVMe SSDs are going cheap.
Best deals for PC gamers today: Early Prime Day deals include AMD Ryzen and LG 1ms gaming monitor
Ryzen 5 5500 is a killer budget CPU with 6 cores and 12 threads, which is more than enough for gaming and multitasking.Pair that with the LG 32” curved QHD monitor at 180Hz for under $200 and you're basically upgrading your setup at half price.Toss in a Samsung microSD for storage expansion for your Steamdeck or Rog Ally X, a beefy 4TB Crucial SSD for speed and space, or even the HP Victus laptop with a solid CPU-GPU combo.
Call Of Duty: WW2 pulled offline amid hacking claims after it starts messing with PCs and citing random lawyers
If you had been planning to play Call Of Duty: WW2 - an FPS widely agreed by critics to be among the games released in 2017 - maybe do not do that, for the moment, because certain versions of Call Of Duty: WW2 may randomly show you pornography, send you insulting notepad messages and, at worst, fill your computer with ransomware. Read more
Vintage Story's devs are trying to save some of cancelled Hytale's soul by turning it into an adventure mode
Well, in the case of Hytale, it looks like one of the answers is going to be a new mode in another Minecrafty sandbox game.Yep, amid much chatter about potential Hytale revivals since the news of its cancellation and Hypixel Studios' impeding closure broke last month, the devs of Vintage Story are trying to make sure that at least some of the game's spirit lives on.Read more
Dying Light: The Beast wants to make you afraid of the dark again
Dying Light: The Beast is billed as a return to horror for the undead freerunning series, which took a tumble into Ubisoft icon-farming territory with Dying Light 2: Stay Human.I can’t remember enough about either previous game to make forensic comparisons, but I can say that I spent 15 minutes of my Beast hands-on being chased by what felt like a zombie decathlon team, and it was, on the whole, quite jolly. Read more
Lenovo Legion Go S SteamOS review: Windows get ye gone
Lenovo already have, launching a new version of their Legion Go S that swaps Windows 11 for the more naturally portable-minded, as-seen-on-Steam-Deck SteamOS, and instantly becomes a better handheld for it.Better doesn’t mean excellent – the Steam Deck OLED is quieter, longer-lasting, and generally easier to handle.But between its wiser choice of operating system and relatively affordable pricing, the Legion Go S SteamOS is at least a refreshing change from the succession of fiddly, expensive devices that seemingly every non-Valve manufacturer has been siccing on each other.
Stop Killing Games' proposals would make online-only games "prohibitively expensive to create", argue EU lobby group
The Stop Killing Games campaign's petition to the European Commission surpassed a million signatures last week, meaning EU policymakers may soon be debating whether developers and publishers should have the option to render online games unplayable by shutting down their servers.Video Games Europe, a trade association who represent publishers and devs, have responded by outlining why they think that choice should stay on the table.It'll be interesting to see how any proper debates on the topic go, but the response is worth reading if you're still trying to decide where exactly you stand on the issue YouTuber Ross Scott and Stop Killing Games have been campaigning about since Ubisoft pulled The Crew offline.
Dune: Awakening's latest patch takes aim at PvP border campers, and dishes out some extra Landsraad rewards
It's also added some extra rewards to the Landsraad and switched up how goodies are distributed to PvE players.This patch comes as Funcom continue to respond to player feedback about the endgame loop, having already moved to split the Deep Desert between PvP and PvE in order to placate folks who aren't a fan of the latter.Read more
Subnautica 2 is "ready" for early access says co-founder ousted from studio, but the publishers seem to disagree
One of the co-founders of Subnautica 2 studio Unknown Worlds has made a statement about the dramatic reshuffle of management at the studio, saying that it "stings" to have the game and company taken away from him by publishing overlords Krafton.He also asserts that the game is "ready for early access", but that Krafton may disagree.Read more
Game Pass will "either kill everyone else, or give up", says Dishonored and Prey dev Arkane founder
Microsoft's subscription service is "an unsustainable model that has been increasingly damaging the industry for a decade," Colantonio wrote, "subsidised by MS's 'infinite money'.I don't think GP can co-exist with other models, they’ll either kill everyone else, or give up". Read more
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2 gets its first teaser, and you'd better "be prepared for sadness"
Well, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2, the follow-up to that Cyberpunk 2077 Netflix anime, will make you nice and miserable when it arrives.CD Projekt revealed this past weekend that the upcoming series, which'll deliver a fresh standalone tale set in Night City, is currently in production.Animation studio Trigger have returned to work on Edgerunners 2, with Kai Ikarashi directing and Bartosz Sztybor wearing many hats as writer/showrunner/producer.
This week in PC games: Tony Hawk, eerie cat miners and all the speedrunning you can eat
Did you hear about the femme fatale who had to phone tech support?True enough, all of these witticisms are an offence against nature and you should write better ones in the comments.But first, let us speak of new PC games - and PC gaming news.
Romero Games have "completely" closed doors, but there's still hope for the Doom creator's new FPS
In short, the studio say they haven't closed doors, contradicting statements made by an anonymous employee that spoke to The Journal.They confirm that the funding for the game was pulled, although they're "currently evaluating" opportunities from "several publishers" to bring the FPS "across the finish line".According to one employee who spoke to Irish outlet The Journal (the studio is based in Galway), Romero Games have now closed, via PC Gamer.
What are we all playing this weekend?
And now I want more games about (or at least prominently featuring) owls to exist.Where's the owl MOBA, damn you?In lieu of that, here are the games we're all allegedly clicking on this weekend.
Best deals for PC gamers today: Epic gaming monitors, rapid M.2 drives and a handy accessory
There’s good value across the board, from fast storage and memory upgrades to dependable gear for your setup.A few of these are steeply discounted and won’t hang around long.If you’ve been thinking about upgrading or just need reliable hardware, now’s a good time to jump in.
Create sacred, obscene or cringey medieval art in the playtest for Scriptorium, an illuminated manuscript sim
Now, you can crap on their efforts by slapping together rad illuminated pages in seconds in a video game editor.That game is Scriptorium: Master of Manuscripts, a book-adorning sim from the creators of pen-and-paper (hah!)It's got a playtest running till 10th July.
Mecha Break review
In Mecha Break you play as a booby anime statuette.She is the one driving the mech.Somewhere in Mecha Break is a good game, but you have to peel away the plastic tits and pushy sales screens to find it.
Oblivion Remastered modder delivering Fallout 4-style settlement building reckons the game can still "usher in a modding renaissance"
"It felt like a blank slate, just waiting to be experimented with," MadAborModding tells me.The modder, who’s currently working on expanding an impressive proof of concept for Fallout 4-style house building into a full-blown Cyrodiilic settlement system, says that Oblivion Remastered’s behind-the-scenes differences to other Bethesda games are what drew him to it. Read more
A hero for our times: Elden Ring Nightreign boss becomes unbeatable by refusing to show up
"I am going to screw on my happy cap and try to find some upbeat/quirky news, because I feel like we could do with a bit," I declared to the RPS Slack just now, after writing our eighth layoff/cancellation post this week."Amnesia flying meat orb!No seriously, I think Animus, Ascendant Light is really onto something, here.
The Elder Scrolls Online studio's canned Blackbird game was a nimble, high-flying shooter, claims report
The new MMO from the Elder Scrolls Online developers would reportedly have been a sci-fi noir affair in which players swing around tall buildings on grappling lines, and do aerial dashes while shooting and looting.Call it Destiny 2077.Call it whatever you like, frankly, because it has been abandoned as part of wider layoffs at parent company Microsoft, the outfit that made tens of billions of dollars in profit this past financial quarter, yet has decided to jettison thousands of staff in the name of "discipline" and "continued success".
Heist game Relooted takes playful, political revenge on both museums and looting sims
Room 17 of the British Museum contains an entire tomb - a two-thousand-year-old burial site framed by featureless lavenderbox walls, like an asset conjured up in a video game editor.Known as the "Nereid Monument" for the presence of sea nymphs among the pillars, it is thought to have been constructed for the Xanthian ruler Arbinas in what is now Türkiye, and appears in the Museum care of the 19th century British archaeologist Charles Fellows, who, in the Museum's words, "brought many antiquities back to England with the full permission of the Ottoman Turkish authorities".Modern-day Turkish repatriation organisations dispute this framing, naturally, and are campaigning for the monument's return to the lands on which it once stood.
Stop Killing Games' EU petition hits a million signatures, but "a significant number" could be fake
The Stop Killing Games campaign's petition to the European Commission has hit a major milestone, surpassing a million signatures.However, the YouTuber behind this effort to stop companies from rendering games unplayable by shutting down their servers is still asking for more folks to get their pens out and sign, due to concerns about fakery.If you're out of the loop, Ross Scott originally launched Stop Killing Games back in 2024, after Ubisoft pulled racing game The Crew offline.
Subnautica 2 creators offer no explanation for sudden regime change, instead promise "no loot boxes"
The game is still planned to be a single player survival adventure with optional co-op."It will remain a single-player first experience, with optional co-operative multiplayer.No battle pass. No microtransactions."
Leading Total War: Warhammer 3's peasants to freedom from their equine oppressors
However, I'm feeling revolutionary today, so we're staging a serf uprising.Conquer the entirety of Bretonnia.Indeed, the serfs of Carcassonne had suffered too long under feudalism's gussied-up protection racket, and the battle fought for their freedom had been long and bloody.
The best handheld PCs
A few years ago this would have just been a vaguely-ranked list of whatever portables were available, but after Valve demonstrated that the palm-resting format could not just work, but actually be good, handhelds have arguably become the most interesting and rapidly-changing thing in all of PC hardware.Even Microsoft are having a go, slapping their branding on the upcoming Asus ROG Xbox Ally – though here, I’m sticking strictly to the finest handhelds that I’ve tested and that you can buy.Read more
The spirit of Zachtronics lives on in Kaizen: A Factory Story
Kaizen: A Factory Story is the next mechanical puzzler from the people who made Opus Magnum and Exapunks.A demo hit Steam a few weeks ago, but it fell down the wrong side of a conveyor belt here at RPS and we all forgot about it until it jammed up our meticulous assembly line of articles and I had to jimmy it out with a big salad fork.Nobody has played this excellent developer's new game yet."
Age Of Empires-style RTS Game Of Thrones: War For Westeros wants to be as vicious as the best boardgames
Playside are pitching Game Of Thrones: War For Westeros as an RTS for Age of Empires lovers, but it may also hook your fancy if you’re into vicious bastard boardgames.Speaking to me shortly after the new strategy project’s announcement at this year’s Summer Game Fest, game director Ryan McMahon explored how the requisite filthy traitor element of this latest George R.R. Martin adaptation will percolate through the project’s main “sandbox” mode, in which four players vie for supremacy over the Seven Kingdoms.Read more
What's on your bookshelf: The Quiet Year and Monsterhearts designer Avery Alder
Hello reader who is also a reader, and welcome back to Booked For The Week - our regular Sunday chat with a selection of cool industry folks about books!Every week we stray further from videogames, and every week we regain feeling in body parts we'd forgotten we had.Read more
The Sunday Papers
Sunday! What more do you need to know? "AI is here to stay" is a common refrain. Mike Cook tackles the meaning and limits of that phrase, with apt comparisons to asbestos. Read more
What are we all playing this weekend?
For every so-called RPS staff member who doesn't respond to my increasingly angry messages, I will punish them by likening them to a particular alcoholic beverage.It's a punishment because I know nothing about alcohol, and so my reasoning will be entirely askew, I'm sure.Here's what we're all clicking on this weekend.
The PowerWash clean ‘em up genre is dead, long live the sci-fi undertaker sim
You'd think there'd be more video games that are explicitly about clearing away corpses, given how many corpses players produce.Getting rid of bodies is a routine problem for developers, with a variety of crafty or cursory solutions.Dead bodies in games absorb computing resources that are needed for the next enemies along.
RTX 5090 vs RTX 5080 vs RTX 5070 Ti: Which laptop GPU best deserves to top your lap?
And, more importantly, which amongst them is worth buying.This time, let us consider the three most frame-abundant laptop GPUs in Nvidia’s current stable: the GeForce RTX 5090, RTX 5080, and RTX 5070 Ti, all namesakes of their variably desirable desktop counterparts, and very likely the graphics chips du jour if you’re looking at the speedier end of the notebook market.Read more
Battle Prose: The finale, for-now-le
The warming wool of fire and brimstone and an end to all that is and will ever be, pulled up over arrogant fools, shivering from just having come to terms with their own mortality, afeared they'd miss out on the important parts.It is the ultimate comfort, he always said, to believe that you'll tie with creation at the finish line, celestial mechanisms sputtering out in time with your own squishy innards.And yet, he could not help himself sensing finality on the wind.
Modded Cyberpunk 2077's 1000mph flying car reverse bungee jumping should be the world’s glitchiest olympic sport
There’s a little loading bar in the top right hand corner, and occasionally the darkness gives way to momentary visions of a chrome body shell floating in limbo, accompanied by a low robotic whirr.Suddenly my view of the car comes back.It’s jiggling about, blurrily textured as though it’s travelling at the speed of light, between an empty void of sky and a featureless brown-ish disc.
Sword Of The Sea is an enveloping, but not cutting meditation on "flow", Journey and vintage Tony Hawk
Back when Matt Nava was art director for glistering mountain pilgrimage Journey, he and his colleagues at thatgamescompany took a research expedition to California's Pismo beach, a swathe of desert that rolls right up to the Pacific Ocean.The spectacle of land and ocean overlapping did a number on Nava."But it's a beach, and so the ocean is right there.
Darktide’s new Arbites class is overrunning the far future with exploding, immortal dogs
The Adeptus Arbites are – in direct contrast to the frazzled convicts you normally play as – shiny-helmeted space cops, and the fact that they cost a tenner to unlock has done little to slow their near-complete takeover of the average mission lobby.Them and their dogs, the AI-controlled Cyber-Mastiffs that very slightly elevate the Arbites’ design above a naked Judge Dredd pastiche.Read more
What's on your bookshelf?: here's to 52 more edition
Hello reader who is also a reader, and welcome back to Booked For The Week - our regular Sunday chat with a selection of cool industry folks about books!The RPS content management system tells me that I have used the 'Booked For The Week' tag….52 times!I have forgotten to post a few times and there was a brief hiatus, but in terms of volume at least, I'm declaring this the column's official one year anniversary.
The Sunday Papers
Last week I mentioned that I was reading Tokyo These Days, a manga about the production of a manga magazine.Ever wonder if the oversaturated trailer showcases of not-E3 and demos of Steam Next Fest actually produce a return for developers?Simon Carless's always interesting newsletter GameDiscoverCo dug into the numbers to discover the top announcements of not-E3 and who won Next Fest.
What are we all playing this weekend?
Hehe. Hohoho. Ollie couldn't dream of such devious placement. This is my column now. Videogames? Yes, several. Here's what we're playing this weekend. Read more
I saw her in MindsEye
I saw her in minds, aye.I don’t know, but in MindsEye, I can’t stop seeing her.“Could have been worse,” Robin Hood says to me, hours after I saw her, “At least she wasn’t naked, on the toilet, or naked on the toilet.”
Samsung’s no-glasses 3D monitor could rise above gimmickry, but needs stronger game support to do it
Maybe a bit of both, but in any case, Samsung is having another go with its new Odyssey 3D gaming monitor.Outwardly resembling just another 4K IPS screen, its three-dimensification of select games involves collaborations with their original developers, with the final effect being delivered without the need for any glasses or headwear at all.A combination of eye-tracking cameras and an internal array of lenticular lenses produces the 3D effect, maintains it as long as your head stays roughly centred, and at least for me, manages to avoid inflicting agony of the eyes or brain.
In case you were wondering, no, the Nintendo Switch 2’s microSD Express cards aren’t good for the Steam Deck
I swear I don’t actually have anything against the Nintendo Switch 2, other than its suspect attempt at Zoom Meetings But Games and some slight jealousy that it got DLSS support before a PC handheld did.Even so, I do feel obliged to warn Steam Deck owners – and, in fact, anyone who has any current portable PC – away from microSD Express cards, support for which is one of the Switch 2’s key storage upgrades.Read more
See you in Hell, graphics cards, as Doom: The Dark Ages' path tracing update is out today
Today’s update for the meaty shooter sequel adds a selection of path-traced lighting, shadow, and reflection options, and while that all comes with Nvidia’s mildly performance-aiding DLSS Ray Reconstruction, my testing suggests even the most framerate-rich GPUs will pay a heavy price for its shinier hellscapes.Read more
Walkable Neocities: A website about potatoes, and a thing that is happening now
As of March 2025, free web revival host Neocities has over 1,000,000 websites.There is much more internet here than any one person will ever read, and simultaneously much less internet than is needed to even begin to challenge the quanti-dominance of the lumbering, needle proboscis'd mecha Moloch sometimes referred to as the hostile internet.Not all of it is good, but much of it is real and interesting or tells a story about the person who made it.
No-one told me Battle Brothers had gladiatorial arenas and this can only end excellently
"What do you mean the game didn't save?!", Thilmann had not so much asked Slackbladder as stowed the question in a sack of rocks, spat on the sack until no moisture remained in his body, then swung the sack at Slackbladder's forehead, leaving the thief dazed and more than a little soggy."What in Odin's gammy eye flap does that even mean?!". Read more
End Of Abyss is a Dark Soulsy shooter spawned from the bowels of Little Nightmares
I myself was surprised - perhaps even appalled - to hear that other journalists had been neglecting it.End Of Abyss, you see, takes place in an underground plate-metal labyrinth where every corner is a huddle of waiting shadows, every doorway a mystery, and every ventilation fan a web of fungal grot.This is a world that feels like it's holding its breath.
What's on your bookshelf?: dispassionate analysis of the eldritch runes edition
Hello reader who is also a reader, and welcome back to Booked For The Week - our regular Sunday chat with a selection of cool industry folks about books!No cool industry person this week.And I have eaten nothing but cabbage-wrapped beans for a week.
The Sunday Papers
The weather is supposed to be pretty nice by Sunday afternoon, according to the forecast as I write this, which means that Sundays are for going to the park to read.I'm making my way through Tokyo These Days, a short manga series by Tekkonkinkreet and Ping Pong author Taiyō Matsumoto, about a manga editor who quits his job at a publisher after his magazine folds, but decides to enlist the creators he admires to launch something of his own.If you don't understand the Switch 2, you won't understand the modern world, argues Stephen Bush in the Financial Times.
What are we all playing this weekend?
What's that? Sorry, mate. Can't hear you over all the sighs of relief now that Summer Game Fest is over and done with. You'd better write it down instead. Here's what we're all playing this weekend! Read more
Jump Ship’s demo grants a taste of its cheerfully shambolic space raids
My personal pick of this week’s Steam Next Fest demos is Jump Ship, which you might already know as that co-operative, 'Left 4 Dead meets FTL meets Sea of Thieves' space crew shooter previously known as Hyperspace.All our previous looks at Jump Ship, including Edwin’s GDC 2024 preview, have seen it in varying states of unreadiness, with more missing parts than the game’s own spaceship after one of its many 1 vs. Loads dogfights.This public demo, however, looks and feels fairly polished, allowing it to serve as a rather moreish showcase of its mission loops.
Baby Steps isn’t about humiliation, but the joy of disobedient flesh
I felt a sense of para-Wordsworthian abandon and intimacy with rocks and stones and trees, that I haven't ever felt since.I caught a trace of that feeling in Baby Steps, the new open world fail 'em up from a team led by Bennett Foddy, in which you move each leg of a body subject to believable physics, and the challenge is therefore to walk more than two paces without keeling over. Read more
Familiar choppiness makes Dune: Awakening’s PC performance less of a smooth wormride
And yet, Awakening has turned out alright, hoisting desert exploration and ominous sci-fi atmospherics above the tedious 24/7 resource gathering that has choked out certain peers.PC performance is workable too, with enough concessions towards low-end rigs, though it’s not crysknife-sharp either: some technical mishaps need a prompt patching, while Unreal Engine 5 is up to its usual stuttering nonsense.Read more
Resident Evil: Requiem has its own version of Lady Dimitrescu, but I doubt you'll be thirsting for this hag
Resident Evil: Requiem's first trailer tied it unambiguously to the wider Resiverse, with sweeping footage of a nuked and abandoned Raccoon City, but the slice of zombie survival I saw at this year’s Summer Game Fest felt like a pocket horror experiment in the vein of P.T. and Amnesia: The Bunker.I hope it’s not a one-off.I hope the whole game is like this.
Onimusha: Way Of The Sword is a moody demon parry fest, but Sekiro can sleep easy for the moment
Towards the end of my hands-off demo for Onimusha: Way Of The Sword, Capcom introduced me to a bunch of ragamuffin ninjas who moult their injured selves when struck.That's the kind of freak factor I want from an action-horror series whose last major instalment released in 2006.A generous pinch of vicious little weasels who won't fight fair, to lift this Edo-era yokai hunt above the ranks of action games that just want you to combo and parry ad nauseum.
Capcom's Pragmata is a clean and pleasant lunar shooter with a touch of God Of War
Still, the game I played at this year’s Summer Game Fest didn’t seem greatly the worse for its long spell in cryostasis.It’s a slick thinking girl’s shooter and a gratifyingly bright and clicky piece of lunar set dressing, with shattering robot enemies that put me wistfully in mind of Binary Domain.Read more
I am enthralled by Dune: Awakening's in-game radio drama and bad sitcoms
They play chiptuney classics from the original, 1992 Dune games that will drive you slightly mad even without huffing spice.But they also include full-blown radios drama based on various backstory events which unfolded before you arrived on-planet.It is like listening to a really intense episode of The Archers on BBC Radio Arrakis.
Crimson Desert is a dork ass enormity of an open world action-RPG
Some game demos, you write up after the expo because they need a bit of reflection;some game demos, you write up immediately because they are easy to digest, even through a droning fugue of jetlag;Read more
Skyblivion project lead and GOG chat about partnering up to release the massive Elder Scrolls mod following Fallout: London's troubled success
The massive modding project that’s remaking The Elder Scrolls 4 in Skyrim’s engine has been in the works for over a decade.Having not had their hard work torpedoed by Bethesda and Virtuos’ own Oblivion remaster, its team are currently grafting hard to ensure they’re ready when the time comes to pull the release trigger.With the mod now confirmed by GOG to be arriving on the PC storefront in 2025, assuming it makes its current release goal, I reached out to Skyblivion project lead Kyle 'Rebelzize' Rebel and GOG themselves.
What's on your bookshelf?: you are safe to lick the green books again edition
Hello reader who is also a reader, and welcome back to Booked For The Week - our regular Sunday chat with a selection of cool industry folks about books!No cool industry person this week.Instead, fantastic news: thanks to a new device that identifies trace levels of the arsenic once used to make book covers green, you can go back to laying fat St. Bernards on every sour lime flavoured tome you see, safe in the knowledge that the ones liable to give you the rare nosebleeding condition known as the 'hungry librarian' have been safely quarantined.
The Sunday Papers
Sundays are for playing around with the Nintendo Switch 2, of course.Jon Hicks, the former fifth Beatle of RPS and current co-host of Alice Bell's post-RPS podcast Total Playtime, has launched a newsletter.It's called Screen Grab and he's beginning it with a series of missives about the not-E3 showcases.
Pondering Geoff’s orbs
Partly in the absence of real surprises, and partly because the auditorium bass notes were making me feel queasy and dissociative, I spent a lot of this year’s Summer Games Fest showcase transfixed by Geoff Keighley’s balls.I am, of course, referring to the show’s animated backdrops, in which glutinous, gleaming orbs floated like nitrogen bubbles in a cosmic brain - sometimes tossed upon a tide of marbled petro-vomit, sometimes drifting over a scree of lava lamp effluence, sometimes hovering against sherbety silver Bermudas of arches and plinths. Read more
What are we all playing this weekend?
But we can at least aspire to embody its temperament on the inside.Probably best that way - a Dualshock controller doesn't have the same oomph on a quartet of cloven hooves.So, fellow ungulates - here's what we're all clicking on this weekend!
Rally Point: An immense frustration test almost overshadows Burden of Command's narrative success
Burden Of Command is a lot like me, in that it deserves a lot of love but it's too frustrating and annoying to get it for long.The concept is promising: tactical battles with a small batch of soldiers, but as a "leadership RPG" instead of a regular wargame.But wow, did this game get me yelling for a while.
Could The Witcher 4's Kelpie be the best video game horse yet? We asked an expert
Still, however excited you were about that horse, I'd wager you weren't quite as happy as Alice Ruppert - consultant on the upcoming Windstorm: The Legend of Khiimori, and owner of the very best website about video game horses on the internet.Ruppert's initial reaction?"Tears of joy in my eyes when they showed the slow mo horse movement".
I Just Want To Be Single!! is an aromantic dating sim that’s rewriting the rulebook
"I Just Want To Be Single!" they yell.Tsundere Studio's debut, I Just Want To Be Single!!Billed as 'aromantic, asexual, and nonbinary', I Just Want To Be Single!!'
What's on your bookshelf?: Fallen London, Pathologic 2 and Skin Deep's Bruno Dias
Did you know that adopting language altered the position of the human larynx, making us more susceptible to choking on food?Proof, then, that the only truly fitting way to leave this world is to die choking on a book.Perhaps this week's guest can recommend a good one?
What are we all playing this weekend?
The fairy lights flicker, though they have not been plugged in since January.The screens in the corner where we all pretend to work lie cracked and cold.Here's what some of us - those who remain - are clicking on.
Elden Ring Nightreign’s faster, fightier Elden Ringing still works a treat on the Steam Deck
Elden Ring Nightreign might replace its source material’s sprawling RPG exploration with a mad dash around tightly-nestled hotspots, but under the bonnet, this is still essentially just Elden Ring with a quicker sprint and character models of hitherto-unseen birdpeople.Even the system requirements are, save for a minor CPU bump, a copy and paste job, confirming the feathers aren’t even that high-poly.As a result, this spinoff runs equally well on the Steam Deck, even appearing to take advantage of the same SteamOS/Proton tweak that made Elden Ring less stutter-prone on Valve’s handheld specifically.
How space strategy sim Nebulous channels eight years in the US Navy
"Greebling" is George Lucas's term for the decoration of spacecraft models with showy, superfluous details - clumps of antennae, bulky rivets, bulging pipes, anything that whiffs of function.Speaking as the human grown from the ashes of a child who once built the Death Star out of LEGO, I do enjoy a good greeble now and then, but it very easily becomes a parody of itself - like turning a machine inside out, but none of the exposed parts are meaningfully connected.Liliana, founder of Eridanus Industries and lead developer of space tactics sim Nebulous: Fleet Command, has more practical objections to greebling, based on her eight years in the US Navy: excess surface details are an absolute dust trap for radar waves.
My Battle Brothers have resorted to stealing ham from children
There exists in this world much which, if stripped of even one of its components, would be rendered naught but a frail illusion.An insult to god and man alike.It was going to be a long day.
This week in PC games: Elden Ring Nightreign and a giantess dating sim
Today, that squirrel is dead, and it is time to work again.Here's a hissing tide of PC games slithering their way out of non-existence this week.Read more
What's on your bookshelf?: Civilization, Old World, and Offworld Trading Company's Soren Johnson
Hello reader who is also a reader, and welcome back to Booked For The Week - our regular Sunday chat with a selection of cool industry folks about books!I am still cross-referencing my way through Blood Meridian, both incredibly vivid prose-poetic alchemy of the profound and harrowingly mundane, and also a bit like if a bible ate a pulp paperback then shat out a second, stupider bible with at least twice the people getting severed dicks shoved in their mouths.Read more
The Sunday Papers
Criticism is cruelty, writes game developer Oma Keeling.This isn't an argument against criticism, but a plea for a more honest embrace of why we write and enjoy writing critically.As someone who, through The Sunday Papers, seems to forever be arguing for a more ruthless games press, I appreciated this.
What are we all playing this weekend?
I, on the other hand, like to start my days off by soliciting opinions from some total barmpots to remind me that I'm pretty normal, actually.On which note, it's time to talk about our weekend gaming activities.Read more
The city of Eriksholm looks captivating, but I wish it'd sneak in some new ideas
It's an upcoming adventure game about some sneaky urchins from a fictional Scandilike country in the 1900s.We've previously described it as "a bit Dunwall and a bit Desperadoes".But, well, its approach to stealth veers bland and predictable.
Anno 117: Pax Romana is aiming to be a more flexible, distinctly Roman management game
New leaders to barter and play diplomacy with.Most of all though, it allows me to discover hitherto unknown depths of petty jealously, as I realise how much nicer everyone else's city layout is compared to mine.Read more
What's on your bookshelf?: why does crispbread exist and how can I stop this state of affairs edition
Hello reader who is also a reader, and welcome back to Booked For The Week - our regular Sunday chat with a selection of cool industry folks about books!No cool industry person this week (I'd like requests though.No Classical Gas), but I want to get back into the habit of posting the column regularly regardless, since the comments are always a medium good time, which is the maximum amount of good time allowed on a Sunday.
The Sunday Papers
I don't know what Sundays are for, or indeed any other moment of spare time.Listlessly re-watching YouTube videos and refreshing BlueSky then feeling bad that I'm wasting my time rather than playing the games I want to play or reading the books I want to read?For 404 Media, Nicole Carpenter - former Polygon reporter - wrote about how videogame sex scenes are made.
What are we all playing this weekend?
Somebody or something keeps digging holes in the notionally shared lawn outside my block, and the neighbours who actually own their flats are mounting a witchhunt.As far as I’m concerned, all this is divine vengeance on the building owner for having somebody mow the grass twice a month.The holes are an improvement.
I keep forgetting I'm supposed to actually pay my Battle Brothers
Four from a company of ten.There may be a time, I think, when the land our descendants travel over runs small despite its vastness; when the night that now belongs to wolves and animate dead becomes as commonplace as draped tapestry.the dead, sepulchral torches in a gravecold pit.
FBC: Firebreak is a great time, for a shooter with terrible guns
Power over the control of information.The institutional power of the Federal Bureau Of Control itself, in whose brutalist, labyrinthe HQ the game is set.The power of the archetypal ideas that give the altered objects their strength.
James and Nic kick a thing: Doom: The Dark Ages edition
Along with various punches, flail strikes, and shield thrusts, most of which aren't even allowed in football.The Dark Ages notably replaces the lavishly animated glory kills of recent Dooms with faster, simpler melee strikes, so reviewer Nic and I sat down for a gentle argument over whether this was a change for a better.Read more
A last-minute SteamOS update has saved Doom: The Dark Ages on Steam Deck, and it runs surprisingly okay-ish
Over the weekend, however, a purpose-built SteamOS Preview update stepped in, making the brawly sci-fantasy shooter playable on the handheld.Just in time for its launch on the 15th, no less.My main complaint with how The Dark Ages runs on desktops is the mandatory ray tracing effects that have, compared to the hardly much uglier Doom Eternal, slowed it right down.
The Fremen are the missing link in Dune: Awakening's efforts to be more than a survival game
But what if you could place your own moisture seals, rather than just tearing open the ones left by NPCs?I'd love to play a game in which you are constantly reading the barren landscape for the shallowest of shady depressions that can be plugged and converted into shelters.Think of the attentiveness it might teach, the sensitivity to the geometry of a world that can drain your O2 bar dry in moments.
What's on your bookshelf?: Game urbanist and author Konstantinos Dimopoulos
Hello reader who is also a reader, and welcome back to Booked For The Week - our regular Sunday chat with a selection of cool industry folks about books!I'm currently reading Dorothy Parker, who did more for the language than I'd previously though.This week it's game city design expert and author of Virtual Cities, Konstantinos Dimopoulos!
The Sunday Papers
Sundays are for enjoying the second heatwave of the year, but what are you going to do outside if not read?Aftermath interviewed video game trailer maker Derek Lieu for his take on the Grand Theft Auto 6 trailer and why it's not very good.Read more
What are we all playing this weekend?
I bought a new electric toothbrush and it oscillates so fast it does that thing where my whole mouth feels unbearably itchy.Balancing this experience against the existence of hundreds of thousands of videogames to play, and I reckon the universe comes out of it with a roughly neutral standing.here's what we're all playing this weekend!
Doom: The Dark Ages doesn’t run badly on PC, but enforced ray tracing slows the pace
I’m liking Doom: The Dark Ages more than local reviewist Nic does, possibly because spending most of 2024 remoulding my brain to learn Elden Ring has unduly engorged the part that appreciates a good parry-and-riposte.C'est la vie demons, and colleague.There is one issue that bothers me, though: why, of all the games on Bethesda’s production lines, was this chosen to be the next game that follows Indiana Jones and the Great Circle in making ray tracing effects compulsory?
Europa Universalis 5 is so complex its developers will let you automate half the game
Europa Universalis 5 was announced yesterday, the official unveiling of a grand strategy game that has been an open secret since April last year, thanks to a long-running dev diary.I got some hands-on time with an early build of the map-happy historical simulation, and I'm delighted to report that the kingdom of Korea is struggling.He died of the common cold.
Everything we know about Europa Universalis 5
Europa Universalis 5 is posturing itself as the next grandaddy of grand strategy.It follows 12 years of updates and expansions to Europa Universalis 4, so it has some catching up to do.Like its predecessors, Europa Universalis 5 will be a deeply complex game.
The anti-heroes of Grand Theft Auto 6 look sexy and dull
The open world crime 'em up looks as flashy and expensive as you might expect from a Rockstar game, and we now know more about the game's story, particularly the two sexy reprobates you'll be playing as in the streets of Vice City and the swampy countryside beyond.They are horny, jacked, thicc, and pretty as a picture of your prettiest purple petticoat.Read more
The Sunday Papers
A one-week Sunday Papers break turned into three, prompted by the seemingly endless school holiday at Easter.Polygon, one of the last video game outlets with a reputation for long form reporting and feature writing, was sold to Valnet, a content farm best known for paying writers terribly and being founded by porn peddlers.Most of the staff were immediately fired.
What are we all playing this weekend?
For me, it's the first map in The Cycle: Frontier.Something about its bright look and thick alien atmosphere, and the many hours I inhabited it, has left its fingerprints on my mind.Surely you have such a game setting too;
Apex Legends Season 25 introduces Sparrow, who will definitely kill you
His debut is scheduled for May 6th, barely enough time for EA’s ink to dry on their mass laying-off of the people that made him (fifth most played game on Steam, y’know, maybe tells you something).He’s Space-Italian, has a folding bow on his arm, and - fittingly for how I feel about this game right now - is a massive bastard.Read more
Oh no, Battle Brothers is actually incredibly unforgiving of minor mistakes
and that, I'm sure you'll understand, is why I haven't washed my codpiece in fifteen years," concluded Rumjugs with a flourish, downing the last of the gutrot in a single guzzle.Just vastly preferred having recently consumed alcohol at all times and was prepared to sacrifice a range of basic necessities and niceties to achieve it.We were all a little shaken after watching Terry barely survive the last fight, although Rick Nipples' constant sobbing over his permanently disfigured face was keeping the boys in relatively good cheer.
What's on your bookshelf?: Magic: The Gathering creator Richard Garfield
Hello reader who is also a reader, and welcome back to Booked For The Week - our regular Sunday chat with a selection of cool industry folks about books!Laziness is, in it's own way, the greatest form of charity.This week, it's Magic: The Gathering, Vanguard Exiles, and many, many more's Richard Garfield!
What are we all playing this weekend?
How am I supposed to have my favourite Saturday treat (triple milk milk bowl) without milk!There's nothing on this website about milk at all, it's all video games!I can't make a triple milk milk bowl with that!
Oblivion Remastered’s modern makeover comes with modern performance snags
It’s more or less exactly what I’d have asked from a modern take, with refreshed visuals and UX improvements bolted directly onto Oblivion’s original, famously bent chassis.This hybrid engine approach, similar to that of Ninja Gaiden 2 Black, hands off the graphical rendering gubbins to an Unreal Engine 5 layer while keeping all the game logic to a modified version of what is otherwise just the 2006 backend.Still, the performance impact of Oblivion Remastered’s new look is not to be trifled with.
With the right settings, Oblivion Remastered won’t sacrifice Steam Deck support to the graphics gods
As a Steam Deck game, I already prefer The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered to the original Oblivion, and for reasons mirroring why the Deck itself still beats newer, faster handhelds: the performance might be lower but everything, as Toddy H himself would say, just works.That said, its 2025-ified visuals do present a relatively distinct challenge.But, drop the graphics settings to their lowest, and Oblivion Remastered simply looks like bum, to the point of undermining the point of the whole 'Remastered' thing.
RPS asks: please tell me your stupidest Oblivion Remastered anecdotes so far
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered, I'm delighted to report, is still incredibly stupid.I first noticed its stupidity in the starting dungeon, where one of the emperor's guards got shunted around floatily trying to contend with a jug I'd placed in his path.It might be even stupider than the original RPG, because it all looks so modern that its mush brain is thrown into sharp contrast.
Onimusha 2: Samurai's Destiny is a crisp remaster of a charming relic
I'm a lifelong Resi fan but relatively late-coming Capcom devotee, so I find Onimusha 2: Samurai's Destiny's amalgam of more famed series hallmarks fun to think about - sitting as it does at the intersection of Devil May Cry's orb-sucking fighting game combat and Resident Evil's deliberate spatial awareness, fixed camera exploration and puzzles.But I've also got some second-hand nostalgia for this 2002 action game.Read more
What are we all playing this weekend?
Edwin had the lovely idea of increasing everyone's workload this week, by suggesting that we add a bit more meat to the bones of our responses this weekend, given that it's Easter here and we've got Friday and Monday off work.Which means more time to fill with games, in theory!Read more
Endless legends: how Amplitude bought their independence back from Sega
Sega are among the big games publishers who are currently feeding large swathes of their business to the flames of profit growth.In September 2023, they cancelled Creative Assembly’s looter shooter Hyenas and announced plans to cut costs across Sega Europe.Amplitude’s co-founder and CEO Romain de Waubert de Genlis tells me, however, that the Amplitude buyout wasn’t an emergency response to Sega’s restructuring.
Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound will set your village on fire, as is only proper
But in the upcoming Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound, it's going back to 2D, largely without Ryu.Your village will be burnt to the ground anyway."Because what would be a Ninja Gaiden game without it?" jokes game director David Jaumandreu of The Game Kitchen, who've been hired by Team Ninja to render those flames in old-school pixel art.
I want to film The Lord Of The Rings in Hollywood Animal, but my writers keep trying to make porn instead
When I inherited - pardon me, founded Endless Bear Studios at the flickering end of the Roaring Twenties, I had a dream.And that dream was to film Peter Jackson's The Lord Of The Rings trilogy 30 years before Peter Jackson was born.Its one of many will-be classics I hope to "pre-make", as it were.
I got my least favourite Battle Brother immediately mutilated and I feel great about it
It was always going to end badly for Thillmann The Braggart. 30 gold, he told the brigands.Seconds after he raised the first reeking spoon of what he suspected was mostly reindeer shit to his lips, he projectile vomited straight in the face of their leader, and they jumped him.Death comes quickly in the turn-based tactics and open-world merc work of Battle Brothers, and victory comes hard.
What's on your bookshelf?: Mouthwashing's Johanna Kasurinen
While cleaning under my bed recently, I once again discovered my copy of the smallest physical book I have ever owned.It's a tiny handheld edition of the I Ching.I mean, I haven't actually read it, but wisdom is owning at least one very small book, is what I assume the gist is.
The Sunday Papers
Here's a roundup of some good writing from the internet last week.This list of Games Writing Words I Hate by Riley MacLeod at Aftermath sets out some words games journalists would do well to avoid.I wrote a similar list over ten years ago, and it's interesting to see many of the examples ("immersive", "IP", "franchise") are still used by enough writers to merit continuing complaints from professional editors like MacLeod.
What are we all playing this weekend?
Lots of good newsies this week from Triple-I, weren't there?Catching up on it all after the fact, I was making lots of appreciative rumbles.Here's what we're all clicking on this weekend!
James and Nic kick a thing: Sloclap's Rematch edition
Sifu and Absolver team Sloclap stuck a release date on their multiplayer footie game Rematch today - June 19th.Meanwhile, we've been shouting at each other in joy and defeat - sometimes both in the same six seconds - in the open beta.I'm leaving the article name open to sequels in case James and I ever kick a different thing together.
Endless Legend 2 is everything I love about 2014's best 4X, but on a map that's constantly changing
The legend goes that in the 12th century, King Canute plonked his throne down on the seashore and commanded the tide to go out, thereby empirically demonstrating to all the toadies at court that he was not, in fact, God Almighty.You don’t need to order the ocean to piss off in Endless Legend 2: it’s already in headlong retreat.Read more
The Sunday Papers
Sundays are for being on holiday, but that doesn't mean we can't produce a roundup of some links before we depart.For The Guardian, Sarah Thwaites spoke to developers of indie game hits about the freedoms of success and the pressure to repeat it.Read more
What are we all playing this weekend?
In addition to the excellent tales of game-playing and cat-contentedness we always get, I'd like anyone who's interested in partaking to tell me: what's the very best thing about that genre you don't like?What is it that always draws you back in before you remember that these aren't your sorts of games?While you ponder, here's what we're all clicking on this weekend!
The UK games industry has a class problem - here's how one organisation is trying to fix it
"Last year we ran a big games careers festival in Downham, on the border of Lewisham and Bromley in London, in a leisure center in the heart of a very deprived community that hasn't seen anything like this in that space," Into Games CEO Declan Cassidy tells me over a call.A UK-based non-profit focused on enhancing social mobility in the UK games sector, Into Games reported last year that, in terms of socioeconomic access, game development has one of the worst records "of any creative or technical sector".Read more
Open worlds can afford to be small, as long as they feel vast
Last year Assassin's Creed Shadows associate game director Simon Lemay-Comtois made headlines by revealing that Ubisoft's latest open world game had a "smaller" map than its predecessor, Assassin's Creed: Valhalla.He compared it instead to Assassin's Creed Origins, which recreates roughly 80 square kilometres of ancient Egypt, next to Valhalla's exhausting 250 square kilometre expanse of land and sea.And secondly, the realisation that I don't really know what "bigger" and "smaller" mean in a video game, and I'm not sure anybody else does either.