July 2023

It’s been about an hour since Evelyn Mansell - one of the lead art directors on the System Shock remake - and I started talking about guns. Specifically the big, daft chunky guns that she worked on, but also about videogame guns in general - what makes them tick. What separates a good one from a bad one. Whether or not Doom 3’s shotgun is one of the good ones (it is).

If there’s one area where all of the remake’s ideas truly come together and shine, it’s in the weapons. There wasn’t much to see in the original - nothing beyond the tip of a barrel. Here, the weapons are very much the star of the show. Heavy, industrial things covered in thumb-print smeared LCD screens and superfluous greeblies. NERF guns that've been painted by a 12-year-old and covered in spaceship parts. These are the toy guns you would have wanted for Christmas, and I wanted to know more about them.

Read more

As Indiescovery listeners may have also heard by now, our guides writer Rebecca is departing RPS in a couple of weeks, which means we're now on the hunt for a new guides writer to fill her shoes. Applications are open now, and you can find everything you need to know about it below.

Read more

I'm not someone who usually likes little puzzles or point-and-click games as I'm far too impatient. I'd much rather solve the puzzle by battering it with my fist so the pieces go flying everywhere, or turn my pointer into a fist so I can batter the dialogue out of the dialogue box and watch the wizard's words spill onto the dirt like I've just shaken an open can of spaghettios.

Unpacking, a game where you click on items and shelve them nicely, has somehow tamed my urge to punch the boxes open. Except it's done one thing to personally attack me, and that's by not allowing me to unpack stuff and leave it on the floor. It's a fight I simply can't win.

Read more

Having been absent for the majority of the last few pods, I'm back! At least for a bit, and just in time for Six Ages: Ride Like The Wind (a spiritual successor to King Of Dragon Pass) to to get a depressing-sounding sequel and Myst to get a Humble Bundle featuring its sequels, both official and spiritual. So that got us to thinking: what in the darn heck is a spiritual successor anyway? Are there standard parameters? We have a definitional argument, as is our wont.

Plus: we've been playing a clutch of games that are both fun to talk about and current, James instigates a discussion about whether SSDs should be considered the default over mechanical hard drives, and Nate does a mini-game contest that is literally just about fish and has no relation to games whatsoever.

Read more

Next month is absolutely packed with games big and small, but hopefully your hard drive has space for another fantastic-looking one because Jumplight Odyssey is zooming into early access on August 21st. It’s a mix between starship management and roguelike planet hopping from developer League Of Geeks, the studio behind strategy gem Armello. Check out its pretty ‘70s anime-inspired trailer below.

Read more

Lords Of The Fallen - previously The Lords Of The Fallen - sits in the no man’s land between sequel and reboot, but either way, publisher CI Games are looking to revamp everything from 2014’s action RPG Soulslike (also confusingly called Lords Of The Fallen). The newest 18-minute deep dive shows off some deliciously devilish bosses, gorgeous dark fantasy environments, and the cool dual-world feature. Take a look below.

Read more

As listeners of our Indiscovery podcast will probably know by now, our Rachel is sadly leaving RPS this week for pastures new. There will be a separate goodbye post for her tomorrow so you can say your farewells, but as that old saying goes: where one door closes, another one opens. Reviewing the best and most interesting games on PC is still a critical part of what RPS stands for, and we're now looking for a new Reviews Editor to carry that work forward. Applications are open now, and you can find more details below.

Read more

The Honkai: Star Rail Where are You, Mystery Trotter event is about to begin, and HoYoVerse offered details about how to get started. As usual, the requirements aren’t too strenuous. However, it’s one of the easier events to begin due to it also not being locked behind any Trailblaze Missions. It all begins on July 28, 2023.

How to start Honkai: Star Rail’s Where are You, Mystery Trotter event

All you need to do is hit Trailblaze Level 21 to begin Where are You, Mystery Trotter. This can be accomplished by going through the main Trailblaze Mission story quests, taking on story quests, and going through optional activities like Simulated Universe and Calcyx challenges. Presumably, you’ll also have accessed Belobog by then, as starting things involves going there.

If you met that level requirement, then head to the Goethe Hotel in Belobog after accessing the event from the menus in Honkai: Star Rail. The NPC Regin will be there. Throughout the 17 days the event will be available, eventually seven hunts for the Warp Trotters will appear. Each day for the first seven days, a new one will appear.

While exact numbers for rewards weren’t mentioned, HoYoVerse did list the rewards that will appear. People will be able to get the following items for participating in the event.

A new Guilty Gear Strive Tower Records pop-up shop will appear throughout August 11-20, 2023 in Japan. Ahead of the opening of the shop, some merchandise will be sold in advance. The new event will be held at several Tower Record stores throughout Japan, including the Shinjuku, Nagoya Kintetsu Pass'e, Umeda NU Chayamachi locations, and at the Tower Records online store. At a later date, these Guilty Gear Strive character items will be sold at the Amnibus online store.

Online sales of the Guilty Gear goods start on August 11, 2023. The original Tower Records pop-up shop was held back in March 2022. The new store will offer goods with newly drawn illustrations of Guilty Gear Strive characters wearing Japanese summer festival clothes.

Here is the full list of items available as part of the new pop up shop:

Haruhi Suzumiya, Mikuru Asahina, and Yuki Nagato from The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya will join the playable roster of KonoSuba Fantastic Days as crossover characters. This information came out during the thirty-eighth KonoFan Live stream, which aired on July 27, 2023 in Japan. The “God’s Blessing on the SOS Brigade” will start from July 31, 2023 and end on August 10, 2023. A worldwide date hasn't been set. [Thanks, Dengeki Online!]

The three female characters from The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya aren’t the only ones who’ll enter the world of KonoSuba Fantastic Days. If you defeat the event boss three times, you’ll be able to get the four-star character “SOS Brigade’s Ordinary Person: Kyon.” The limited gacha for the Haruhi Suzumiya event will feature the three SOS Brigade members, as well as Aqua and Megumin. They’re wearing the same North High uniforms that the SOS Brigade characters wear. Since Haruhi's goal was to found fantastical beings, she will probably enjoy her stay in the KonoSuba world.

[gallery columns="5" link="file" ids="974810,974809,974808,974807,974806"]

You can watch the trailer for the KonoSuba Fantastic Days "The God's Blessing on the SOS Brigade" event from the time stamp here. The trailer uses "Hare Hare Yukai," which was the ending of the anime.

An Earthbound/Mother pop-up store with merchandise will appear around Japan throughout August and September 2023. This pop-up shop first appeared in Shibuya earlier this year. It’s free to enter, which means you can also go inside and check out the themed items or decor. It’s unknown whether or not you’ll be allowed to take pictures. [Thanks, PR Times!]

The dates and cities for the Earthbound/Mother pop-up store tour are as follows:

Back in 2016, the Funko company gave away just a handful of Golden Ticket Funko Pop 2-Packs, which contained gilded figures of Willy Wonka and an Oompa Loompa, at its annual San Diego Comic-Con event. In July, one of them sold for a whopping $210,000, over double what the owner had purchased it for just a year…

Read more...

If you scroll toward the bottom of Twitch’s homepage, you’ll see a curious carousel: “Probably Artificial, Hopefully Intelligent,” a subsection of livestreams dedicated to and powered by AI. It’s weird, as you’d expect, but tucked in there is something weirder. There’s an AI version of megastar Félix “xQc” Lengyel.…

Read more...

Follow us on social media: Marcus Stewart (@MarcusStewart7), Kyle Hilliard (@KyleMHilliard), Brian Shea (@brianpshea.bsky.social)

A new Genshin Impact Conch Reminiscences web event is here. This calls back to some of the in-game events that would involve finding conches on islands for rewards. This time, it’s part of activities in honor of the 3.0 soundtracks that appeared. As usual, Primogems are the reward for taking part.

How to complete the Genshin Impact Conch Reminiscences web event

So how it works is you send your avatar around a map during Conch Reminiscences to find three different kinds of conches for Genshin Impact rewards. There are 10 total. Two are Phantasmal Conches, three are Imaging Conches, and five are Echoing Conches. In order to find them though, you might need to use the Waverider to reach certain spots or place different kinds of slimes or collected items to find others.

Here’s the full map for the event. I circled the Phantasmal and Imaging Conches you need for the 40 Primogems in black and the highlighted the Echoing ones you need for the two Hero’s Wits in red boxes. To get the Echoing Conch in the middle of the map, you will need to pick up the Sea Bass highlighted at the area with a yellow star when in the Wave Rider heading to the Phantasmal Conch in the upper leftmost corner.
[gallery columns="1" size="full" ids="974863" link="file"]

Visual Arts announced Tencent bought the company. It stated that the acquisition will allow it greater global reach due to Tencent’s size and presence in many countries around the world. The Japanese publisher is best known for their work with Key, the developers of visual novels such as Air and Clannad. One of its more recent releases is the Switch port of Kanon, which released in April 2023 in Japan. Loopers, also from Key, appeared worldwide as well.

Tencent’s acquisition comes at the same time as a management shake-up at the top of Visual Arts. CEO Takahiro Baba is stepping down from his position. Baba’s departure saw him transferring his shares in the company to Tencent, giving them a controlling stake. He is set to be replaced by Genki Tenkumo, who worked as writer, producer and director on several of the company’s projects.

SanDisk are well known for their Micro SD cards these days, but they've actually been making flash USB drives for even longer. Case in point is their SanDisk Ultra Flair, a metal-shod USB drive that's available in capacities up to 512GB - and it's this size that sees a nice 69% reduction on Amazon UK today.

Read more

I enjoy cracking video games open like an egg so I can fry, scramble, poach or, uh, omelette their insides. Modding and tapping in console commands are a core part of why I like PC games.

Alas, Diablo 4 is not to be tinkered with. In a post on the game's forums, Blizzard's global community development director Adam Fletcher says that "any game-modifying software" is prohibited and may lead to accounts being permanently banned.

Read more

Want a massive 32-inch 4K gaming monitor? Good news, because today you can pick one up for only £210 at Laptops Direct in the UK. That's a £144 savings versus its original price, and £139 cheaper than the same model is on Amazon right now.

Read more

A handful of games have tried to take a bite of Smash Bros' slice of the fighting game pie. Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl, released in 2021, was one of the more successful - although criticism seemed to focus on its high price and relative paucity of characters and stages.

Does that make it a good or a bad thing that Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2 is in development, then? It'll feature new stages and new characters, while revamping the look and layouts from the original. Among the new characters is Spongebob's perma-frustrated neighbour Squidward, who you can see in the announcement trailer below.

Read more

Read more...

After weeks of rumors, Call of Duty has announced that it’s adding a Nicki Minaj operator to Warzone and Modern Warfare II. Nicki will join Snoop Dogg (who first became a playable Call of Duty character last year) and 21 Savage as part of an in-game celebration of the 50th anniversary of hip-hop. The operators will be…

Read more...

Falcom released more information on the side characters who’ll be in Ys X: Nordics. These characters are the crew of the Sandras. As well, it shared details on mini-games such as fishing and tuna fishing, which you can enjoy in between your adventures. [Thanks, Game Watch and 4Gamer!]

The side characters on the Sandras in Ys X: Nordics are:

Thieving co-op revival Payday 3 is due for release in September, but it'll enter closed beta next week. From August 2nd until August 7th, players accepted into the beta will be able to play a single heist so that developers Starbreeze can test their servers and the game's stability.

Read more

Baldur's Gate 3 launches next week, but already people are wondering what developers Larian might turn to next. Mainly, they're curious whether the studio will return to their own long-running RPG series, Divinity.

"Definitely," is the answer from CEO Swen Vincke - but not until after the studio has had a break.

Read more

Team Fortress 2 has now been with us for over 15 years, and for some reason, developer Valve just decided to jack the maximum number of players who can join a server at once up to 100. Valve doesn’t actually recommend you play with that many people, and warns that the game doesn’t properly support that many players,…

Read more...

You won't get bored in Remnant 2: you're never with a world or enemy long enough to tire of it. By the time you think you're starting to get sick of the sinewy strata of Yaesha, you'll be thrown into a Labyrinth where the stone is sentient, and the cool portal pools belie the fact they may be about to catapult you to your death. And when you think you've had enough of those, you can explore the back alleys of Losomn, where gun-touting cockneys and werewolves - well, I think they're werewolves; the real life and otherworldly walk side by side here - stalk cobbled streets, faces half-hidden by the flickering torchlight. Later, you'll be chased across an alien sandscape by lumbering robots and petite UFOs, and visit a grey, ashen world where the only colour is the blood that's spilt - be it yours or theirs.

It's a far cry from the broken, and chronically over-used, post-apocalyptic backdrop you kick off in, and came as quite the surprise given I'd missed the original Remnant and had no idea what I was getting myself into.

I can't tell you how your game will begin because every playthrough is unique, kicking off in one of the three distinct planes detailed above, and each of those are procedurally generated. No, not all set-pieces are individualised - if you replay a dungeon, for instance, you may find more similarities than differences - but it's enough; enough to make it feel as though this world is uniquely yours to explore.

Read more

Need to scratch an RPG itch while waiting for Baldur's Gate 3? There's a fresh Humble Bundle offer featuring the Baldur's Gate franchise and other similar role-players which may be worth your time.

The RPG Legends: Baldur's Gate and Beyond Humble Bundle launched yesterday and contains the Enhanced Editions of both Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, alongside various other bits and pieces.

Neverwinter Nights: Complete Adventures and Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous are also included.

Read more

Tragedy strikes twice this month, as Christian Donlan is once again away from his desk and has left Eurogamer's Game of the Week column in my undeserving mitts (he's just on holiday, don't worry - I haven't locked him in a cupboard somewhere). I'm devoting this one to the act of being Player 2 in a two-player game, and why being Player 2 is kind of a game in itself.

My inspiration here is Ed Nightingale's review of the "expansive, characterful" but not quite unmissable Disney Illusion Island, a side-scrolling Metroidvania that is actually harder with a co-op buddy, because the perspective centres on the first player, zooming out when you move apart. As Ed explains, this messes with the flow of the experience because the guest player risks falling off-screen if the host gallops ahead. You can make your characters hug to say sorry and replenish some hearts, but I imagine these unexpected tumbles will lead to a few ragequits - metroidvanias can be unforgiving enough without playing tug-of-war over the camera.

Falling off screen, tho! That takes me back. All the way back to Sonic 2, which I used to play on a friend's MegaDrive. Sonic 2 had a splitscreen mode, but you could also have the second player control Tails in the single player mode, and for some reason, we favoured this approach - possibly because the game was so sluggish in splitscreen? Feel free to comment and reminisce, Dave. Anyway, being a spineless push-over I generally let my friend play the Blue Blur while I assumed the role of foxy accomplice.

Read more

Microsoft has announced its last ever round of Xbox Games with Gold additions.

Users will be able to get their hands on Blue Fire and Inertial Drift from 1st August, with both games available until 31st August.

Blue Fire is an adventure game set in the world of Penumbra. The game promises temples to explore, puzzles to solve and "wild enemies" to overcome.

Read more

Pikmin 4 has launched with a strong start in Japan, with sales of 401k boxed copies over its first week on sale.

To put that into context, this is better than the total boxed sales of Pikmin's three previous Japanese launch weeks combined: with 101k sales for Pikmin 1 and 161k first week sales of Pikmin 2 - both on the GameCube - and 92k first week sales of Pikmin 3 on Wii U.

These numbers from Japanese sales company Famitsu (via VGC) paint a rosy picture, although the comparisons here come with caveats - for instance, that Switch has a far higher userbase than either GameCube or Wii U - and this game has seen heavy promotion in Japan in particular.

Read more

Hello! Welcome back to our regular feature where we write a little bit about some of the games we've found ourselves playing over the last few days. This time: spooky oil rigs, Tokyo highways, and inquisitions.

If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We've Been Playing, here's our archive.

If there's ever such a thing as an Unwholesome Showcase, expect the point-and-click Stasis series to feature prominently. I've only dipped a toe in the latest, Stasis: Bone Totem, and have already been exposed to, in this order, a hideous robot teddy-bear, a flayed man with his guts strung to the plumbing, and a game-over scene in which a major character has their face melted off. I haven't even encountered the actual monsters yet.

Read more

Nicki Minaj and Lara Croft are coming to Call of Duty, and will be playable in Modern Warfare 2 and Warzone Season 05. This new season goes live on 2nd August, and looks to be pretty packed.

Along with all the expected accoutrements such as new maps and weapons, the team also revealed its lineup of upcoming operators. These include Snoop Dogg, Nicki Minaj and 21 Savage, who all join Call of Duty as part of a 50-year celebration of Hip Hop over the course of the season.

Snoop Dog has previously appeared in Call of Duty, and keeping with tradition is set to be "ready for any operation, whether it's going under Deep Cover or going in guns blazin'..." After all, as the Call of Duty team explained: "At the end of the day, it's a Doggy Dogg World, and we're living in it."

Read more