Rock, Paper, Shotgun

There’s a touch of poetry to the way Wild Hearts carves so liberally from Monster Hunter. After all, Monster Hunter is a series about an unknown newcomer toppling ancient beasts, chopping up their best bits to create weapons and armour. Forget sleeves, Wild Hearts wears its inspirations as a complete set of clothing crafted from the bones, fur, and teeth of Capcom’s increasingly popular series. Inevitably these materials may feel lesser than the whole from which they were harvested, but they are worn proudly and with confidence nevertheless.

Besides, as a rare challenger to Monster Hunter, Wild Hearts is clearly aware of the difficulties involved in trying to pull off something new. Perhaps this is why Omega Force’s monster battler is so welcoming to newcomers. Finally, here is a game that is willing to teach a player why this long-running genre is held in such high regard. Wild Hearts is the perfect entry point for anyone who has ever dreamed of being a Monster Hunter Liker. A bombastic, brilliant good time that’s held back by frequent, frustrating performance issues on PC.

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You know it’s a great turn in The Pale Beyond when only five of your crew are freezing, two have frostbite, and one has scurvy. After all the struggles and dangers I’ve been through trying to keep my ship’s crew alive in the bone-biting cold of the arctic tundra, that’s definitely a success in my book.

It’s easy to describe Bellular Studio’s survival sim as just ‘Frostpunk on a ship’, but in some ways that’s pretty accurate: you’re the leader of a group trying to survive in a harsh frozen wasteland. But it’s also a comparison that falls short in plenty of other ways. Sure, the engine of this survival sim might run the same as Frostpunk’s, but it’s buried deep in a handcrafted hull. With an overarching story that deals with the drama and despair of survival, together with a cast of underdog characters whose personalities and flaws fuel your determination to keep them alive, The Pale Beyond is much more human than its steampunk counterpart.

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The devs behind Command & Conquer Remaster are releasing their The Great War: Western Front on March 30th, but for now they’re showing off exactly how the WW1 RTS works in a new developer diary. The ‘Commanding The Western Front’ video has several leads devs from Petroglyph walking us through aspects of the campaign, from the macro decisions of Field Commander Mode, to the tactical RTS skirmishes in Theatre Mode.

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This week on The Electronic Wireless Show podcast our interest was piqued by new trailers for a Jesus simulator and a politics in hell strategy game. We ask ourselves: why are there so many hell-themed games and so few heavenly ones? Is it blasphemy? What would our pitch for a game set in heaven be? (Spoilers for that last one: there's a lot of admin involved). We also chat about what we've been playing this week, and Nate orchestrates a mini-game pitchathon that goes at least somewhat off the rails.

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My backlog is practically overflowing at this point, hence my New Year's resolution to avoid buying a game until I’d actually play it. But, every now and then, an especially deep discount will catch my eye, my bad impulses wake up, and I spend a few quid on something I won’t touch for six months (seriously, Abzu has been floating on my hard drive for years.) My New Year's resolution won’t hold out for much longer, as Valve have announced their schedule for all of 2023’s Steam Fests and sales events.

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Warhammer 40k: Darktide seemed like a recipe for certain success when it launched late last year. Developers Fatshark were taking the formula established in their co-op horde shooters Vermintide, throwing in some beefy melee, and moving it over to the 40k universe. Fans were less than happy with the end result, pointing toward technical issues, randomness in the endgame, and a lack of crafting systems, which Fatshark are hoping to fix in today’s update.

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A new month is on the horizon which can mean only one thing: more gaming freebies. Amazon Prime members can snag seven free games throughout March, with 90s RPG Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition leading the pack, followed by the cute puzzler (and undercover horror game) I Am Fish. New games are available every Thursday, so scribble that day into your calendars.

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A lot of folks, including our Liam, have been having a grand old time hunting Japanese fantasy beasts in Wild Hearts. Great! Less great is that it still runs like concrete on PC, even after a performance-focused patch that developers Omega Force had detailed even before the game had formally released.

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When it comes to ultrawide gaming monitors, curved VA panels are very much the standard - but despite their benefits in terms of immersiveness, not everyone prefers them. Therefore, I thought I'd highlight this deal on Gigabte's M34WQ, a flat 34-in monitor that hits the popular 3440x144 144Hz spec and is today $20 off with a coupon code at Newegg to hit its lowest ever price.

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Honor has heavily discounted one of its MagicBook 16 laptops at its UK store, with a Ryzen 5 5600H model with 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD and a 16-in 1080p 144Hz screen going for £499.99. That's the best laptop I've seen at this price as of late, and while this laptop is designed more for work than play, its integrated RX Vega graphics are still capable of playing older titles.

The MagicBook 16 initially debuted at £849.99 (and still costs that much on Amazon UK), and has since dropped to £549.99. To get today's £499.99 price, use code AGOBEYOND50 at the checkout.

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UPDATE: Bethesda have now confirmed the news in a statement posted on Twitter, saying, "We thank him for his work as a creative mentor to young developers." They continued to say, "We wish Mikami-san well in the future and are excited by what lies ahead fpr the talented developers of Tango."

Original story: Tango GameWork’s co-founder and studio head Shinji Mikami is reportedly leaving the Evil Within company “in the coming months.” This comes courtesy of TrueAchievements who saw and verified a company-wide email sent to employees by Bethesda’s VP of development Todd Vaughn. "I am writing today to let you know that studio head Shinji Mikami has decided to leave Tango Gameworks in the coming months," Vaughn said. "Mikami-san has been a creative leader and supportive mentor to young developers at Tango for 12 years through his work.”

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Another day, another drop on AMD graphics cards. This time is special though, as it's one of the best value points on the current Team Red GPU hierarchy, the RX 6700 XT, and it's also a top-rated Asus Dual design. It was previously retailing for around £400, but now it's dropped at Amazon to £372.54, a very reasonable price for this level of performance.

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AOC make some of the best value gaming monitors in the business, especially in the mid-range where you can get some truly impressive specs and solid build quality at surprisingly low prices. Case in point is this deal on a 27-in 1440p 165Hz gaming monitor for just £230 after a solid £135 reduction. That's an awesome deal for this spec, which looks great and offers a competitive advantage over 60Hz alternatives.

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A few weeks ago, I talked about a number of new features coming to RPS in 2023, and here we are with our very first edition of Ask RPS! This is a new mailbag feature where RPS supporters get to pose questions to the RPS Treehouse team (mostly video games-related, though not necessarily always), and we then answer those questions in public posts for everyone to get involved with. Easy peasy.

To kick us off, our first question comes courtesy of Old_Man_Gaming, who asked: "What was the first game that really grabbed you and dominated your life?"

Come and find out which games had us trapped in the throes of childhood mania below, and why not tell us about your own gaming obsessions in the comments? You might just find a surprise kindred spirit.

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Universe-spanning survival sim No Man’s Sky is releasing its 4.1 Fractal Update today, bringing along a new Expedition, tons of accessibility options, a VR overhaul, and much more. Developers Hello Games have updated the game so consistently their launch woes are a distant memory, sent to a faraway galaxy. Since then, No Man’s Sky has become a not just a space exploration game, but a city management sim and a generally nice place to chill with your odd alien pets, all in one package.

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Even after a decade marked by the abandonware crowd being proven right, there are old games that remain lost between the cracks of digital distribution. Instead of waxing lyrical about that though, I'm here today with good news: My favourite open world 3D spaceflight/trading sim Hardwar is back.

It's been back for over a year, in fact, via Zoom Platform, who've just made the interesting choice to publish it on Steam too, promising that their own store will remain resolutely DRM-free, and that this aims "to help fund additional signings and improvements for our DRM-Free preservation efforts". I'll brush aside analysing this strategy, because the immediate upshot is that, hopefully, Hardwar might finally get its due. In a better world, we'd already be playing its modern descendants.

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Atomic Heart continues to dominate both my professional time and my personal brainspace; it really is a fascinating game, for reasons good and terrible alike. Its most recent twist came in the complete lack of ray tracing at launch, despite various pre-release builds having been held up by Nvidia themselves as the technology’s exemplars. Crispy critters, indeed.

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For Magic Week, I wrote about Team Lazerbeam's upcoming dating sim Wrestling With Emotions: New Kid On The Block (WWE) and how you're able to romance a beefcake composed entirely of green ooze. There is, of course, far more to it than that. I asked Team Lazerbeam's Ben Rausch about how it tackles themes of queer identity and diversity in a kickass way, which I highlighted in my post, but wanted to highlight even more here. Their answers were too good not to share.

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Amazon Games have announced that they’re bringing NCSOFT’s South Korean MMORPG Throne And Liberty to the Americas, Europe, and Japan. NCSOFT has a history of publishing their own games worldwide, as they have done with Guild Wars in the past, so their agreement with Amazon is somewhat unique. Amazon haven’t given a release window for Throne And Liberty, but they’ll be publishing the game on PC and consoles with cross-play enabled.

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Documentaries chronicling game development are great. With so much marketing fluff surrounding games, it can be nice to hear directly from the devs about their inspirations, struggles, and creative intentions. Hearing them chat candidly, making jokes and getting excited, is a good reminder that real-life people are at the heart of every game - what a crazy concept. Luckily, these types of documentaries seem to be increasingly common, evidenced by the Yakuza (or Like A Dragon) docuseries that just debuted on YouTube.

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Roguelike dungeon crawler Backpack Hero has been in early access for under a year, and it’s now getting a full 1.0 launch on PC and consoles in May. Backpack Hero has been successful for its three-person dev team and stood apart from other roguelikes with its Tetris-inspired inventory management. You see, success in Backpack Hero is determined by how you organise your bag rather than what you’re actually carrying, as you shuffle items around a grid to create synergies and mod your playstyle.

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It’s episode four of RPS’ indie podcast Indiescovery and this week the team got into the Valentine's Day spirit and had a long chat about our favourite indie game romances (any excuse to gush about how hot the characters are in Hades, really). We get gabbing about our favourite game OTPs, the fabulous representation of queer romances in indies, and then finish with a cursed (not horny) Cosmo-style dating quiz.

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Paradox’s grand spacefaring strategy Stellaris is getting its fifth story pack First Contact on March 14th, following on from the previously released Leviathans, Synthetic Dawn, Distant Stars, and Ancient Relics. Story packs are mid-sized expansions that flesh out Stellaris’s universe and this time First Contact is focusing on pre-FTL civilisations, taking a step back from the stars. The expansion was officially revealed back in January after a series of SteamDB leaks outed the project.

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Introversion Software are, we can infer, at home in simulation games by now, what with their most famous game Prison Architect having a bajillion DLCs that, at this point, can add zombies, rehabilitation, or the jungle to your prison. Their new one is called The Last Starship, a layered spaceship simulator that's less friendly than their prison. I am not sure if it's because the early access is still largely without any tutorial markers, or because I am very bad at the game.

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I often think about Infested Planet, a nearly 10-year-old topdown tactical shooter about holding off hordes of alien critters with turrets and careful expansion. I thought of it again while watching the trailer for Lumencraft, which seems to marry all of the above to a fully destructible world and lots more resource gathering. It'll leave early access on February 28th.

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Wild Hearts is apparently a pretty good lower-case monster hunter game, albeit one with some substantial performance issues its developers pledged to fix. Maybe now they have: a performance patch was released earlier today, promising to address frame rates, unintentionally capped high-end CPUs, and more.

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Forza Horizon 5 is getting a new expansion, and it will be revealed this Thursday, February 23rd, during a livestream. It'll be the first expansion since last year's Hot Wheels extravaganza.

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Logitech make some great keyboards and mice, and now you can get their K400 Plus wireless keyboard/trackpad combo for £25. That's £20 less than its normal price, and a great value for one of the most convenient peripherals for Steam Deck, media PCs, Raspberry Pis and other systems that occasionally need keyboard/mouse input but don't require a full keyboard and mouse setup.

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Samsung's high-end 980 Pro PCIe 4.0 SSD has dropped in price on Amazon UK, and now costs £91.82 for a 1TB model with preinstalled heatsink rather than the £125+ it normally costs. This is an awesome price for one of the fastest SSDs on the market, with the advent of the even faster (but significantly more expensive) 990 Pro pushing the previous flagship to nearly bargain basement territory.

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A hearing took place at the European Commission in Brussels today related to Microsoft's proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard. Afterwards, Microsoft held a press conference and announced that they've signed a deal to bring all Xbox PC games to Nvidia's cloud service GeForce Now. The deal includes Call Of Duty, if Microsoft come to own it.

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You’ve likely seen Blumhouse’s logo in front of horror films like Halloween and Get Out, and now you’re going to see that blue-tinged dirty wall at the start of some horror games. The film production company is launching Blumhouse Games, a division that will fund, publish, and produce horror games primarily by indie devs. The company say they’re looking for “original” content, so don’t expect any M3GAN spin-offs for a while.

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Time is flying by a little too fast in 2023, although it’s not all bad news as a new month means new Game Pass additions. Microsoft have announced the next four games hitting the service before March 3rd, alongside Atomic Heart which releases today. I was interested in the steely Soviet shooter until I read James’ review and saw that the protagonist yells “Crispy critters,” more than once - I think I’ll skip.

Here are the next batch of Game Pass titles:

• Merge & Blade (Feb 28th)
• Soul Hackers 2 (Feb 28th)
• F1 22 (March 2nd)
• Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty (March 3rd)

This is my first time hearing of Merge & Blade, not to be confused with Mount & Blade which is also on Game Pass. Merge & Blade is a hybrid between puzzle games and auto-battlers. Rounds will start with a Tetris-like mini-game, but instead of shapes, you’re guiding different unit types and merging them together. You then use your completed party to raid castles and kill monsters. Mixing - or merging - Tetris into a new genre is a recipe for success, so I’ll definitely be downloading this one.

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Survival sequel Sons Of The Forest is only a few days away as it launches into early access on February 23rd, and the team is celebrating with a final pre-release trailer, exposing us to some nasty sights. Sons Of The Forest was originally going to launch into a full 1.0 release this month, but the team ultimately decided on an early access release since it worked so well for the game’s predecessor The Forest.

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I see the question, "What order should I play the Yakuza games in?" pop up on the reg. Like clockwork, it happens whenever a new Yakuza (or Like A Dragon, as it's now known) game arrives. And you know what? It gets to me. To experience the series in the richest way possible, there's an obvious answer. But if you're someone who hasn't got the time to do so, or you're a bit unsure whether Yakuza is for you, then there's another way in. Now pick up that bike and walk with me.

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The Steam Mystery Fest is well underway, discounting countless games about detectives, murder mysteries, or generally strange occurrences. Lots of heavy hitters have big sales like Return Of The Obra Dinn and Pentiment, but as always, you’ll need to do quite a bit of scrolling to find the hidden gems. The sales last until February 27th, so you have a week to grab some cheap games, and if you’re struggling with recommendations, here are some good’uns.

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Terra Nil is a reverse city-builder where you work to rejuvenate natural ecosystems by planting greenery, purifying water supplies, and reintroducing wildlife - rather than building an industrial empire. Terra Nil has released a few demos over the last year, taking Steam by storm and impressing players with its ecological twist on the genre. All those demogoers should be pleased to hear that Terra Nil is finally launching onto PC and mobile (through Netflix) on March 28th.

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Blue's legendary Snowball Ice USB mic is a popular way to get started with streaming, VO and YouTube video production, and now it's 30% off at Amazon UK. That brings it to just £38.99, the lowest price we've seen in months and a good value for the level of quality provided.

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The ultimate Steam Deck Micro SD card just went on sale. SanDisk's Extreme Pro lineup offers pretty much the best performance you can find in the UHS-1 Micro SD category, with read speeds up to 200MB/s and write speeds of 140MB/s, and now the massive 1TB model is down to £122 at Amazon - that's significantly cheaper than upgrading from the base-level Steam Deck to the top-level 512GB option, yet provides double the storage, an awesome deal.

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After the mud and forests of Normandy, and the grim, snowy climes of the Eastern Front, Company Of Heroes 3 feels like World War II on its summer holiday. With two campaigns spanning each side of the sunny Mediterranean, this is arguably Relic's breeziest and most colourful theatre of war yet, evoking the same kind of swagger and gung ho optimism as a Hollywood action flick. It's a feeling that might seem out of place given the current climate, especially now, just days away from the first anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. But while your main objective is always one of domination, gradually turning the map from red to blue on both a micro and macro scale, this is ultimately a game about searing comebacks - of beating back seemingly impossible aggressors, and finding hope where previously there was only despair. I think we could all do with a bit of that in this day and age, even if the battles before you end up feeling like nothing more than the digital equivalent of plonking down a big box of toy soldiers on your living room floor and going daka-daka-daka as they all fall over.

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Solo dev Madison Karrh’s point-and-click puzzler Birth really caught me off-guard. From the look of the screenshots, I was expecting a creepy story in the vein of Little Misfortune or Fran Bow, but instead Birth is infinitely more introspective. Sure, it’s a game about death, decay, and loneliness, but it’s told in the most gentle and genuine way possible. Its themes are heavy, but the game could not be more light-hearted. I have no idea how it does it, but Birth is weirdly the most wholesome yet creepy game I've ever played.

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