September 2023

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: demons, hugs and skin-tight battle suits.

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

I've finally done it - I've saved Sanctuary. I even got an email from Blizzard to say well done. "Your unwavering determination has triumphed over the malevolent presence of Lilith and restored hope to the mortal realm," it said. "This victory is a true testament to your mastery of demon-slaying, crowning you the Savior of Sanctuary."

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After the Steam Deck and the Asus ROG Ally, it’s Lenovo’s turn to have a go at handheld gaming PCs with the newly-announced, Windows 11-powered Legion Go. It’s a chunky lad compared to its peers, weighing 854g and packing an 8.8in display, but promises a bigger battery and – most interestingly – a pair of Nintendo Switch-style detachable controllers.

These are partly intended to simply give your wrists a rest, setting the Legion Go down on its (also Switch-esque) integrated kickstand while you play with the loose controllers. The right pad, mind, also includes an optical sensor on the bottom, so you can swish it around a desk like a vertical mouse. Potentially a difference-maker for FPS games? We won’t need to wait long to find out, as the Legion Go is launching on October 31st. It’ll cost a surprisingly un-spooky £699 / $699.

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Hello folks. If you've been wondering whether to take the plunge on an RPS Premium subscription, I have some excellent news for you. This September, we're running a free month trial for our Premium supporter tier, which means no more ads, extra exclusive articles every week, free game keys and more.

All you need to do is use the promotion code RPSFreeMonth when you sign up for a monthly Premium subscription. You should give it a try! It's nice here.

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Starfield has only been out in early access for a matter of hours, but fans are already taking matters into their own hands to alter the game's FOV.

While Bethesda may yet provide an official option in future, there's no way currently to alter Starfield's FOV for yourself within the game.

But, already, there are a number of downloads available on NexusMods for players to tinker with the FOV, via a new text file added to the game's folder on your PC.

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Lots of games this week!

Starfield for starters, and we hope to have more of that for you once Chris has finished playing it. But elsewhere space was very well taken care of in The Banished Vault, a game that fills me with delight and fear in equal measure. There's delight that such a beautiful, unlikely concept is allowed to exist and flourish and become everything it's meant to be - space monks, I gather, exploring a Durer-sketched silverpoint universe - and then there's fear that all this richness is simply beyond me, because I'm a bit too dim, too prone to giving up. I'll check it out one day, I promise. It looks spectacular.

Elsewhere again, Finity is wonderful too. This is a puzzler which almost defeated me, not because it's hard, although it is, but because its beauty is distinctly wordless, as all the best puzzlers' beauty is. How to put into sentences the pure joy that erupts when things go your way and the whole board cascades into sudden clearances? I think in this case you'll just have to play it.

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Starfield may be Microsoft's big Xbox console exclusive for the year, but it's already off to an impressive start on Steam.

The game released overnight for those who purchase its pricey £85.99 premium edition, which allows access ahead of the release on 6th September.

Already, Starfield has reached a peak of 234,502 concurrent players, according to SteamDB. At the time of writing it's the sixth most played game on the platform, behind only heavy hitters like CS:GO, Dota 2, and Baldur's Gate 3.

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Last year, Bethesda described Starfield as having a "NASA-Punk" aesthetic. This term was coined by the development team to describe "a sci-fi universe that's a little more grounded and relatable". Essentially, Bethesda wants its game to have a sense of realism meets grit, and it is doing this by combining the practicality of real-life space technology with the aesthetics of Punk culture.

Now, this design decision has got the European Space Agency's approval, with its head of branding and partnerships Emmet Fletcher telling me he believes Starfield's NASA-Punk aesthetic "humanises" the game.

"This is the aesthetic where you basically have worn and loved futuretech? Actually, if you look at some of the things we have, it's a little bit like that already," he told me from his office in Paris earlier this week. "We have things that if it works, it carries on working. And there's no need to change it. It's about reliability, and if it's reliable, it carries on."

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A quick heads-up for those of you hopping aboard the Starfield interstellar express today: there is a non-zero possibility that one of the game's elevators has a shark in it. That's according to Bethesda's head of publishing Pete Hines, who encountered the displaced piscine trouble-maker while playing the game before release. He's "almost positive" the shark isn't there any more - and just like that, my understanding of Starfield has been transformed. This isn't a 150 hour RPG treadmill of resource extraction, artefact investigation and base-building, wherein you give spaceship tours and put +5% on your accuracy, or what-have-you. It's an extremely slowburn horror game, with every innocent elevator potentially housing a Great White jumpscare. All of which, Hines feels, is true to how Bethesda "embraces chaos" in their games, though he does feel the company's popular association with jank and bugs isn't "particularly fair".

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They say that visiting Ikea and building flatpack furniture is one of the greatest tests of any relationship.

Now that experience has been adapted into video game form.

The aptly named KallaX, developed by French indie studio Unexpected, is a new co-op game that sees 2 - 6 players building furniture together - in space, no less.

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The NES released in Japan 40 years ago, but a new Rugrats game is on the way to Nintendo's old console next year.

Rugrats: Adventures in Gameland is a classic mascot platformer based on the 90s Nickelodeon TV series coming to PC, consoles, and the NES.

The game is presented in retro 8-bit graphics, though modern versions will also include a HD graphics option to toggle on a smooth hand-drawn look.

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Hello, welcome to September, and welcome back to our new recurring series, What to Play This Month, a roundup of the best games from the last one and the things we're most excited to play from the month ahead - plus, any other suggestions for what might complement it.

As a reminder, the goal for us with this series is simple enough: there are more games releasing than ever, so we're aiming to narrow things down and help you cut through the noise.

Dust off your autumn jacket - or, let's not kid ourselves, keep wearing the autumn jacket you already had on from August - and let's dive in! Here's What To Play This September.

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Konami updated its annual Tokyo Game Show webpage with the 2023 edition. It revealed that the Konami TGS 2023 booth will feature a large number of demos from games from both the company itself and other partner companies. The booth will also host Falcom jdk Band's Ys X live concerts.

Konami will bring in demos of its highlighted games like Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 1 and Momotaro Dentetsu World. Other companies will also place their demos at Konami's booth, such as Nihon Falcom with Ys X -Nordics-, Bushiroad with Macross -Shooting Insight-, and Yu Suzuki's Ys Net with Air Twister.

Here is the full list of game demos that will be available at Konami's TGS 2023 booth:

Borderlands 3 is coming to Switch, four years after the game's original launch on PlayStation, Xbox, and PC, and it's hitting the Nintendo console next month. Fans of the series have been asking for it for years now, especially since all the other mainline Borderlands games are playable on the console. Developer Gearbox Software is finally delivering and it's doing so on October 6. 

It's not just Borderlands 3 that's coming to Switch. Gearbox says it is specifically the Ultimate Edition of the game, which features all six content add-ons and a collection of bonus cosmetic packs. 

Here's what you get in the Ultimate Edition of Borderlands 3:

I wasn't too hot on Lies Of P when I played its first demo way back when. I felt it was so close, too close, to Bloodborne in everything from the cadence of the Chalamet puppet's jog, to the "duhhnng" noise of pickups, and the gothic sheen of its streets. At the time I thought it was a bit of a duff pretender, honestly.

But a good chunk of time with it at this year's Gamescom has swivelled my head back in its direction. Having clacked through some dingy streets, fired blue gloop from my arm, and fought the literal King Of Puppets, I've come to realise it has the potential to be a magnificent Soulslike in its own right.

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Since joining the good ship RPS I've had to readjust to the daily reality of a corporate inbox, overflowing with internal Reedpop messages about Best Practices, expense claim guidance and other fiendish gambits designed to keep me from the holy labour of finding new games and telling you about them. On absent-mindedly firing up one such new game this morning, Heretic's Fork, there was a terrible moment when I thought Reedpop had outsourced its middle management to Pandemonium.

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You know when you want to do a spot of time travelling, but you get to your DeLorean and it is just caked top to bottom in all sorts of gunk and grime? No, you don't? Well, PowerWash Simulator developer FuturLab certainly does.

Today, the jet-loving team announced the Back to the Future collaboration for its beloved clean-it-up game (which is a bit of a Eurogamer favourite). FuturLab has said this DLC pack, which will retail at £6.49/$7.99/€7.99, will be a faithful homage to Marty and Doc's time travelling escapades.

So, what can you expect to clean on this DLC's release? Well, of course, you will have to get your watery-jets into every nook and cranny of the series' Time Machine. It really wouldn't be a Back to the Future collaboration without it. Additionally, Doc's van, Hill Valley Clock Tower, the Holomax Theatre and Doc's Time Train will all need to be sprayed to perfection.

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Charles Cecil is showing me some holiday snaps from the South of France. But these aren't your typical family photos; instead these are pictures of unexplored caverns, occult people, a ruined Cathar fortress, and even an undiscovered trebuchet projectile.

Then he makes two stones bleed.

You certainly can't fault Cecil for his dedication to history and factual accuracy, but that's been evident since he created the first Broken Sword game.

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Fall days are nearly upon us, and with that a whole calendar month of new game releases to check out. Yes, there’s one particularly large big spacey game that’s likely to be sopping up yours and everyone else’s time, but this month is about so much more than just shooting off to the stars.

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Japanese game developer Imagineer revealed that Fitness Boxing feat Hatsune Miku is the next entry in the series. A short teaser trailer of popular virtual idol Hatsune Miku preparing to coach in this new entry also appeared. The game doesn’t have a definitive release date yet. More information will appear at a later date.

The Japanese title of the game is Fit Boxing feat Hatsune Miku – Miku to Issho ni Exercise. The main theme for the game will be composed by famous Vocaloid composers and producer cosMo@Bousou-P. Additionally, other popular composers will collaborate to create original Vocaloid songs for the game.

Here is the teaser trailer for the next Hatsune Miku game:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-R2qf6iotdU

The official social media account for the game also revealed the full key visual of Hatsune Miku in her training clothes. You can take a better look at the artwork here:

https://twitter.com/FitBoxingMiku/status/1697414468001480778

The Fitness Boxing franchise is not a stranger to colorful crossovers. In March 2023, Fitness Boxing: Fist of the North Star appeared for the Nintendo Switch.

The Resident Evil Village 2021 April Fool’s plush puppets are going to appear as prizes in select Capcom amusement stores throughout Japan. The puppets will be available as plushies. There will be four puppet plush available, each one featuring the leaders of the Four Houses: Lady Dimitrescu, Heisenberg, Angie, and Moreau. Each plush is approximately 25 cm (or about 9.8 inches) tall. The plushies are set to release in Japan on September 9, 2023.

You can take a look at the new Resident Evil Village hand puppet plush of the Four Lords here:
[gallery columns="1" size="full" ids="981825" link="file"]

Additionally, Capcom is planning a giveaway of the puppets in Japan. Following the @capcom_amuse account on social media and reposting a select tweet before September 10, 2023 will qualify someone for the giveaway. Capcom will contact the winners via direct message. This is only available in Japan.

The puppets first appeared in the 2021 April Fool’s video series titled "Let's play at the RE Village" (Bio-Mura De Asobo in Japanese). Capcom released the series of videos to promote the release of Resident Evil Village, with the twist of depicting the game as an innocent and non-scary title.

Gunbrella is exactly what it sounds like; you shoot enemies with a gun that’s also an umbrella. It’s the second action title from Gato Roboto developer Donksoft and we now know it’s coming on September 13. 

A new trailer provides a new look at Gunbrella’s explosive, retro-inspired action. Players control a woodsman seeking revenge for the death of his wife, with players using their weaponized umbrella to blast apart foes or as a platforming tool. For example, you can use the umbrella to glide, swing, or slide around levels, among other uses.

We went hands-on with Gunbrella’s Steam demo and walked away impressed. You can watch us give it a spin in this episode of New Gameplay Today. 

Gunbrella will be available on Switch and PC.

We've covered Arc A770 deals a few times as of late, as Intel's aggressive pricing makes these 1080p/1440p graphics cards often a better value than alternatives from AMD and Nvidia. So too is it today, where you can pick up an Asrock Arc A770 8GB card for just $240 when you use code SSCV2886 at Newegg. That's a $50 reduction from its normal price and a great value for the level of performance on offer.

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Earlier this week I attended a hands-off preview for Owlcat's forthcoming CRPG Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader, which is shaping up nicely, inasmuch as there's anything "nice" about a Warhammer 40,000 game. Rogue Trader is a party-based affair in which you play a sort of Warhammer East India Company, tasked with flipping outlying worlds to the Imperium. In order to carry out this goal, you're granted a lot more individual license than most human residents of the 40K universe. You can, for instance, recruit ungodly xenos to your grimdark troupe, operate a private armada, and even colonise planets and turn them into your own personal piggybank. Just watch you don't push the whole "heresy" thing too far.

I'll have more for you on the subject soonish, but here's an interesting advance snippet from my interview with Owlcat's creative director Alexander Mishulin, in which we discussed what really distinguishes a CRPG from other kinds of role-playing game. According to Mishulin, it's all about designing for choices with consequences that genuinely run the entire length of the game, without (somehow) getting lost in the narrative undergrowth.

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Having scrubbed everything from Bikini Bottom and Croft Manor to Midgar and the grimdark future, PowerWash Simulator is putting ‘80s nostalgia in the sights of its heavily-equipped hosepipe with an upcoming Back to the Future crossover DLC.

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Towering system requirements aside, I’ve had a relatively smooth time benchmarking Starfield on PC, enough so that I’ve got a full set of performance results and best settings suggestions to share ahead of schedule. But! Putting together the usual full-length guide (like this one or that one) would take hours, which would mean finishing it on Monday, which is ages away, and... I just have all these figures right now, y'know?

Here’s the abridged version, then: all off the most important technical details and recommended tweaks, just in fewer words than usual.

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Having spent around 45 minutes in a three-player Payday 3 sesh at this year's Gamescom, I can confirm it's very… Payday. You slap on some masks, choose your loadout, then get to robbing banks or stealing things from crates. Often, it ends in absolute chaos as you mow through waves of coppers and rush to a getaway van. The number three might not signal a sweeping change to the formula, then, but that's arguably a good thing. It's a better-looking version of its predecessors that doesn't lose sight of the co-op silliness.

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The Leftfield Collection is always one of my favourite areas to visit at EGX. Partly because it's regularly stuffed full of interesting indie games with often very neat and unusual controllers attached to them (which in previous years have included actual paper shredders and full-on Morse code machines), but also because they're often so new and hot off the digital presses that I've never even heard of them before, which is very, very exciting to me. It's a great little space to discover what will be the next talking points of video games-to-be, and this year's line-up looks to be no exception. Here are all the games you'll be able to play at this year's Leftfield Collection at EGX 2023.

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Throne of Bone has a name that just rolls off the tongue and, from the look of it, this roguelike-cum-deckbuilder-cum-autobattler will roll off the ol’ mouse-clicking finger plenty nicely when it releases into Early Access next month, too.

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Following the release of last week's splendid Echoes update, No Man's Sky has now launched its latest limited-time expedition, Voyagers, giving players approximately eight weeks to complete its objectives and secure some very nifty rewards - including an adorable HoverDroid companion, looking very much like a flying Roomba with eyes.

Voyagers - which, like all previous expeditions, starts players afresh on a completely new save - begins aboard a freighter in No Man's Sky's Oishida system, where Travelers will embark on a journey to complete exploration-focused objectives, discovering new creatures, braving extreme planets, digging up ancient treasures, and more along the way.

If you're new to all this, expeditions are something like No Man's Sky's stab at live-service-style seasonal content, serving up limited-time, curated experiences that condense and reshuffle the exploratory space sim's various systems into a series of progression-based milestone challenges. Completing all objectives within a tier unlocks a new reward exclusive to the expedition and completing all tiers awards one final prize.

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Happinet opened its TGS 2023 website and revealed that it will have one of the largest presences at the physical event. The company will set up four booths at different locations within the Makuhari Messe venue. Its Main Booth in Hall 6 will feature over forty games, ranging from Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes and Neptunia Game Maker R:Evolution to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III.

Happinet will also include a few Sony IPs in its booths as another highlight. PlayStation VR2 demos of games like Gran Turismo 7 will be available at its Main Booth. Happinet will also sell merchandise based on Doko Demo Issyo characters, such as Toro and Kuro. Sony Interactive Entertainment used to set up its own large booth in prior years, but it will only have a focus on the Indie Game Area at Tokyo Game Show 2023.

Here is the full list of titles that Happinet will feature in its TGS 2023 booth:

Jazwares announced the next two Squishmallow Pokemon plush will be Clefairy and Teddiursa. It made the reveal on social media. However, the announcement is still early on. There are no prototypes for the characters or release dates. All the company showed off was concept art for both characters.

Here's the Squishmallow Clefairy and Teddiursa reveal. As with past entries in this line, the characters' front arms or paws are shown on their stomachs. Each one has their familiar faces and eyes, as opposed to normal Squishmallow black dots. They both will also have their oversized ears and distinctive accents. However, we only see concept art from the front, so we don't know what their tails will look like on the back.

The stars have aligned for Clefairy and Teddiursa to join the Squad soon! @Pokemon#SquishmallowsxPokemon #Squishmallows #SquishmallowsSquad pic.twitter.com/e76hcD27f0

— Squishmallows (@squishmallows) August 31, 2023

The latest batch of Final Fantasy VII Ever Crisis screenshots recreate some of the scenes from FFVII Remake. Only four images appeared. However, some of them specifically recreate moments found in the rerelease and that didn't show up in the same way in the original game. In particular, Aerith and Tifa beating up enemies in Don Corneo's mansion in Wall Market is highlighted.

There are four Final Fantasy VII Remake moments recreated in the FFVII Ever Crisis screenshots. First, we can see Cloud, Barret, and Tifa on the Mako Reactor 5 mission. After that, we see Aerith and Tifa ready to fight Don Corneo’s minions. After that, Aerith, Cloud, Tifa, Barret, and Red XIII are detained after the events in the end of the one game. Finally, the last screenshot shows the five as they’re about to leave Midgar.

Introducing the stories of #FF7EC

FINAL FANTASY VII

Enjoy playing through the story of the original FINAL FANTASY VII with unique dialogue between nostalgic stylized characters in this title!

Pre-register Now: https://t.co/k7x3hnUBgF #FF7EverCrisis pic.twitter.com/6FI3ORHERW

Square Enix and Pokelabo announced the end of service for the SINoALICE global version. It will be shut down on November 15, 2023. Service will continue for the Japanese version of the game. SINoALICE initially released in Japan in 2017 on Android and iOS devices, then eventually came out worldwide on July 1, 2020.

This is the second such announcement. Square Enix decided to end SINoALICE service in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau on November 10, 2022, and it featured a special ending for the main story created by director Yoko Taro. Once players would reach the ending, the game would permanently lock players out of the game. There is no word if a special ending will be created for the end of service for the global version of the mobile game.

Players with unused Paid Twilight Crystals on iOS and Android will be able to request refunds. Paid Twilight Crystals will not be refunded if they have already been used. Likewise, there will be no refund for items that have been purchased using the Paid Twilight Crystals. Players will need to make the request for a refund through the SINoALICE app, and it is not recommended that players delete the app until the refund has been processed.

Below is the schedule for SINoALICE Global's end of service:

The second season of Netflix’s popular League of Legends animated series, Arcane, is reportedly expected to release sometime towards the end of next year.

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Starfield is out on PC as part of its Deluxe Edition September 1 early access perk, and players have confirmed that it doesn’t support Nvidia’s DLSS upscaling technology for better resolution and performance. Many had suspected as much when Bethesda announced an exclusive partnership with rival chip maker AMD, but…

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I did not expect Starfield to have so many useless items lying about that I could pick up and do absolutely nothing with. A few hours into the sprawling sci-fi blockbuster and my first ship is already full of junk I’m just dumping on the floor, unsure where to place it, and apparently I’m not alone. Starfield players…

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