Sad news, folks. Our news reporter CJ is leaving for pastures new today, making this his last day at RPS. Please come and join me in wishing him a fond farewell.
Dead Space returns today with just a few tweaks from devs Motive Studio, and among these are a bevy of accessibility options. One noticeable standout is the option to receive a warning when something potentially sensitive or disturbing is about to happen during Isaac Clarke’s Necromorph-filled trek around the derelict, deadly USG Ishimura. Players are even able to hide any disturbing scenes, if they want. It’s an interesting option to provide in a full-on horror game.
I'm one of those people who thinks there should be National Service, but only for making everyone work in a customer facing position in retail before they're 25. You might think "Alice, it seems like you're making the time a guy shouted at you and threw jeans on the floor because they were too long for him everyone else's problem, do you think you have some lingering resentment?", and my response is that you've made a really specific assumption there, I have no idea what you're talking about. Anyway, if working in retail was like running the shop in Kardboard Kings, then everyone would love it.
You know what’s guaranteed to make me laugh every single time? A good visual gag in a cartoon. A little freak reading a newspaper, for instance. A hyper-realistic close-up of a character’s face. A weird rat, perhaps. Maybe it’s smoking a cigarette? Whimsical. I love it. This is the main reason why I keep returning to Pizza Tower, a 2D platformer by Tour De Pizza that released on Steam yesterday. It’s a bizarre homage to Nintendo’s lesser-known Wario Land series (specifically its fourth entry) that's jam-packed with goofy little drawings that make me laugh. It’s good, but not without its issues.
Ubisoft are working on two new Far Cry games, according to a new report, including the next mainline entry, Far Cry 7, and a standalone multiplayer offshoot from the series. Sources told Insider Gaming that the pair of games were originally just one project, but have since been split into separate single-player and multiplayer games. What could become Far Cry 7 is reportedly being referred to as Project Blackbird internally at Ubisoft, with the multiplayer game going by the moniker of Project Maverick. Both games are being developed with input from veteran Far Cry series developers Ubisoft Montréal.
It turns out Forspoken has bigger problems than some badly-landing bantz. The PC version absolutely brutalises low-end hardware, an issue compounded by its high yet often unhelpful system requirements, and framerate drops and stuttering remain common even on some of the best graphics cards around. Your best chance of a smooth ride in Forspoken lies in lowering some graphics options, so I’ve been trying them all out to see which are the best settings to cut down – as well as which ones you can afford to keep high.
We kick off 2023's inaugural episode of the Ultimate Audio Bang, by doing some - rare - forward thinking. That's right, Hayden gets genuinely excited over a couple of his most anticipated FPS games of the year, and I realise that I'm less "excited" and more "intrigued" by what's on offer. The consensus? We hope there are some strong surprises.
And we've started two new things! We're breaking the pod into two segments for the foreseeable future, with one half focused on current FPS stuff, and the other on games less-travelled in the space. Our first target? Deer in theHunter: Call Of The Wild.
Ooh, I'm glad this made it to a full release. Power of Ten has rattled around my PC since ... I want to say "a year ago", but that could turn out to be any time in the last three years if I actually check. It didn't quite push me over the "Article Threshold" back then, but having given it a proper go now it's out of early access, it's time.
You're a little spaceship, with a simple but intriguing backstory, who's appeared near an inhabited planet. A transmission asks you to repair their defensive shield before "the Deadeye" arrives to genocide them, which, uh, okay I think I know whose side I'm on here, game.
Our Dead Space remake review and the associated excitement has me wanting to check out the sci-fi survival horror again, but not quite enough to pay £50 for a new version of a game I already own. So I reinstalled the game I already own. Turns out, after a few vital (yet easy) tweaks and fixes, the 2008 game is still perfectly playable. If you too wish to once again to CUT OFF THEIR LIMBS and are uncertain about ponying up £50, here's how to get the original working well on PC.
Spooky indie pinball hit Demon’s Tilt passed me by in 2019, so I’m pleased the devs have decided to build on their bumper success with a sci-fi-flavoured sequel. Xenotilt transports the silver sphere action from the occult cathedral surroundings of Demon’s Tilt to a floating space hulk called the Samaritan. Forget any thoughts of friendly assistance to rack up a high score though, because this game’s subtitle is Hostile Pinball Action. You can see just how hostile Xenotilt can get by watching the trailer below.
Above the Berlin Samurai Museum's gift shop and flanked by ornate helmets of fearsome warriors of a bygone era, I played a few hours of Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio's remake of historical Yakuza spin-off Like A Dragon: Ishin this week. The original was a Japanese-only release back in 2014 on the PlayStation 3, but what a fever dream it was to be dropped into Chapter 3 of the story and let loose on an Edo period Kyoto as none other than Ryoma Sakamoto (multiverse Kiryu). I almost cried, I raced chickens, I caught a big eel, and I've come away with a warm fuzzy feeling inside.
From what I've played of the game's earliest portions, it's Yakuza through and through, to both its benefit and detriment. I don't expect it to convert those who dislike the series, but if you're a fan or a newcomer, it's looking like it'll both be a celebration of its cast, and a remake that feels like an old-school spin on the excellent Yakuza 0. In other words, the perfect introduction point to this mad, but beautiful action series.
Cast your mind back to December's The Game Awards and you may remember post-apocalyptic FPS Meet Your Maker giving us a closer look at its intriguing combo of raiding and building. Now, developers Behaviour Interactive have announced the FPS will see an open beta from February 6th to February 13th on Steam, ahead of its release in April. You’ll need to construct your own outpost to ward off other intrepid players who’re after your genes to splice, and set off on your own incursions to try the same yourself.
HBO’s take on Naughty Dog’s shroomocalyptic game series The Last Of Us has been praised by critics as the best video game adaptation ever, but the show’s co-creator doesn’t think both games can be squeezed into a single season each. Craig Mazin discussed his hopes for the TV version of The Last Of Us while guesting on an upcoming episode of The Playlist Podcast. Mazin seems to think the second game would have to spread out across multiple seasons, like the tendrils of an infected.
Dead Space’s Isaac Clarke is clearly a man of many talents. He’s a systems engineer by trade, so he knows his way around the dense innards of space vessels. He’s also handy around a toolbox and is more than familiar with high-risk equipment like the Plasma Cutter. Oh, and he’s remarkably good at slicing and dicing necromorphs into juicy squelchy lumps. What a resume!
But did you know that our favourite space engineer also has lots of secret talents too? When Dead Space originally came out in the back end of 2008, his corporate overseers at EA sent Mr. Clarke to do all sorts of odd jobs before he popped off on the believeable, but bleak USG Ishimiura. Golf caddy, professional skateboarder, even a part-time dragon slayer. Heck, he's recently been back on the second gig train with his stint in Fortnite just earlier this week. The poor dude is in desperate need of a vacation. Until then, though, come and marvel at Isaac's many talents and see what a hard worker he is.
Co-founders of the studio developing Steam wishlist hit The Day Before have rejected claims the game is a scam. The post-apocalyptic survival MMO was delayed from March to November this week as it turned out the devs hadn't actually got the game trademarked, prompting accusations from within the game’s Discord and Reddit communities that it might not exist at all. Talking to IGN, Eduard and Aisen Gotovtsev insisted that the delay was necessary and had been planned before the game’s Steam store page was removed.
The AMD Ryzen 7 5800X has dropped again on Amazon UK, this time to £200 when you buy stock from Amazon EU. That's £20 below the next-best price and a fair deal for a strong eight-core 16-thread CPU for gaming and content creation.
Amazon US is running a Lightning Deal today that's worth knowing about: just $180 for a 27-in 1440p 144Hz gaming monitor from Innocn. This brand is one I've covered before - my colleague John Linneman was impressed with both a portable OLED and a 40-inch ultrawide from the Chinese company - so it's definitely worth trying in my view.
I am fond of Cook, Serve, Delicious!, a trilogy of cooking games which became increasingly ambitious until the third was about operating a food truck on a post-apocalyptic road trip.
Cook Serve Forever looks more ambitious again. It's a new game from the same developers with similar combo-tapping food prep at its core, but set in a new solarpunk city. As of today, there's a demo you can play and an early access release date set for April.
Hitman 3's long-awaited Freelancer mode is finally out, letting you play missions from across the trilogy with randomised objectives and other roguelike elements. Hitman 3 is also now called Hitman: World Of Assassination and its multitude of editions, bundles and DLCs have been combined and simplified. As a result, every Hitman 3 owner now has access to all the levels from Hitman 1 and 2, if they didn't already.
Road 96 was a road trip where your journey was assembled from parts and each attempt to reach the border of a fictional USA-alike played out differently. Now it's getting a prequel. Road 96: Mile 0 stars Zoe, one of the hitchhikers who could join you in the original, and her best friend Kaito, and features "psychadelic musical rides."
Dishonored: Death Of The Outsider, Arkane's wonderful standalone expansion following on from Dishonored 2, will be free to keep from the Epic Games Store next week. It could be your chance to complete the series, given that the giveaway follows on from Dishonored 1 and its expansions being given away via Epic at the start of the year, and Dishonored 2 being given free to Amazon Prime subscribers at the same time.
After twelve cheap 'n' cheerful hidden object games about finding bees in pretty pictures, the developer behind the I Commissioned Some Bees series has moved onto concealing a new animal: rabbits. Today they launched I Commissioned Some Bunnies, where once again they have commissioned artists to draw pictures with hidden animals to find. Still a big fan of that casual descriptive naming scheme. And yup, the pictures are nice, and the rabbits are hidden, and I'm happy to have spent £3 on it.
Snow leopards are my absolute favourite animals in the world. I would die happy if I ever got the chance to see one in real life (from a great distance of course, lest it de-grundle me). Alas, the closest that most of us will get in our lives is to play Planet Zoo - easily the best zoo simulator out there right now.
Shoulders Of Giants is out today on the Epic Games Store. When we first saw the trailer for Shoulders Of Giants, a few people on team responded with murmurings of "What the hell is this?", which increased in frequency and volume as more bizarre things appeared on screen. I sort of did what the Goonies do when they first find the map to One Eyed Willie's treasure, or what anyone in Pulp Fiction does when they open the briefcase: "Wooooaaaah."
Consider the progress of information. It's a sci-fi roguelike best played, I think, in 4-player online co-op. You play a sword-wielding combat mech. You also control a small frog standing on the mech. You drop onto proc-gen planets overrun by a kind of magical accelerated entropy, that turns everything black and pink and grey. By destroying totemic altars orbited by floating eyeball robots, you start to re-energise the planet, so areas have grass and butterflies. Eventually you will destroy enough totems to get to a planetary boss fight, which might be against, for example, a giant ghost samurai or a floating purple hand with an eyeball in it. It's mad, but I sure do wish more games were like this.
One dev who worked on The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt had a good think about their most useless piece of video game knowledge in response to a Twitter stumper, but still came up with something interesting anyway. Patrick Mills was a quest designer on The Witcher 3 and senior quest designer on Cyberpunk 2077 for CD Projekt RED, and shared a neat bit of trivia about The Witcher 3’s wandering merchants on his own account this week. Mills revealed that the script for these lads would dish out fixes whatever stage you were at in the game.
Well. They certainly remade Dead Space. With some small but welcome exceptions, Dead Space is a one-to-one remake of the 2008 original.
Your opinion on whether that is a good thing or not will depend on how you feel about the endeavour of remaking games from fifteen years ago in the first place. As far as I’m concerned, this remake allowed me to replay one of my all-time favourite games in a lavish new form, and in that sense, Dead Space is extraordinary.
February might be the shortest month, but this year it’s jam-packed with free games for anyone with an Amazon Prime membership. There’s nine games up for keepsies over the course of the month, with The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind GOTY Edition standing out at the front of the pack from February 2nd. Members will also get to claim the bathhouse management game Onsen Master, futuristic 3D runner Aerial_Knight's Never Yield, and chibi god-brawler Divine Knockout in the first half of the month.
After a mysterious delay from December, arcade racing game Hot Wheels Unleashed will finally arrive on PC Game Pass in early February. I hear it's pretty good! It's one of the small handful of games Microsoft have confirmed as coming to PC Game Pass in the next fortnight, which also include the JoJo's Bizarre Adventure fighting game and a return to the subscription service for Darkest Dungeon. Alas, games coming mean games going. Do check out Donut County before it's swallowed by the abyss.
Season: A Letter To The Future begins with a goodbye. You wander around your home for the last time, choosing five objects which inspire deep memories that spur each of the five senses. You then place them into a cauldron one by one, your mother keeping a watchful eye. The ritual comes to an end and the result is a small glowing pendant that will protect you from the dangers of the outside world. “You must promise me never to take the pendant off,” your mother says. The Goodbye ritual is finished, and you leave, knowing you’ll never see your mother or your hometown ever again, all as the prophecy foretold.
It’s a fantastic - if sad - start to Season, and gets straight to the heart of the adventure ahead of you. This is a world where prayers, rituals, and prophecies hold great weight, and where you'll be exploring the fragility and fickleness of memory. Underpinning everything is a deeply profound sense of melancholy - and here I was expecting some relaxing two-wheeling through lovely-looking landscapes. Well, turns out Season is a lot more than a pretty travelogue.
Hello folks. You may have noticed that you've started getting email notifications when somoene likes or replies to a comment you've made on an RPS article. Here's a bit about why we've started doing that, and how you can set your notification preferences if they get too annoying.
Sony-owned developer Naughty Dog’s brand of story-packed action is relatively new to the world of PC gaming, but it sounds like we could miss out on more of their Uncharted and The Last Of Us games in the future. Naughty Dog’s co-president Neil Druckmann commented in a Buzzfeed interview that the company is “moving on” from the Uncharted series, and that they’re not feeling pressured into making The Last Of Us Part III.
EA Motive’s Dead Space remake stalks onto PC tomorrow, nearly a decade and a half after the original made us collectively need to buy new pants. Earlier this week, I reported on the possibility of this new take on Dead Space getting an alternate ending. The Reunion ending was leaked by an achievements list for the remake, but now the Dead Space Twitter account has confirmed that the game does indeed feature a secret ending. That’s not all, either.
Call Of Duty: Warzone 2 and Modern Warfare 2 multiplayer both begin Season 02 on February 15th, and the battle royale will see the return of the first Warzone’s 1v1 Gulag. Raven Software and Infinity Ward have shared details about how that’s going to work in a new blog post, along with some info about more changes to battle royale, DMZ, and Modern Warfare 2 multiplayer. The post doesn’t go over incoming maps, modes, and features that players can expect to see in Season 02, but the devs say they’ll be sharing more on those nearer to the new season’s kick-off time.
A roadmap for what’s coming to Animal Crossing-alike Disney Dreamlight Valley has revealed the life sim will be going multiplayer this year. Along with the option to drag your mates into bothering popular Disney characters and creating a magical kingdom of your very own, Dreamlight Valley’s roadmap shows that Encanto’s Mirabel, Frozen’s Olaf, and Simba from animated classic The Lion King will be coming to the game in free updates over the next few months. The roadmap also promised more new characters, realms, and gubbins such as clothing and furniture to stuff your house full of.
I'm a sucker for mechanical keyboards, but I don't discriminate against high-end membrane or scissor switch boards either. One of the best non-mechs I've tried over the last few years has been the Logitech MX Keys, which is available in a compact MX Keys Mini model or as the full-size MX Keys. Today, the full-size UK model is discounted on Amazon UK, where it's down from £120 to £80 - a nice 33% or 40 quid off.
Minecraft Legends is an action strategy game, which means you view the world from above and command armies of mobs. But there's still plenty that's familiar from traditional Minecraft, if tonight's presentation during the Xbox developer showcase is any indication.
They also announced a release date: April 18th.
Beijing-based outfit Edifier have been making some of the best value computer speakers for a while now; in fact my roundup over at Digital Foundry dedicates two of the seven slots to their designs. One that doesn't feature on that list but has attracted strong reviews elsewhere is the Edifier R1280T, a 2.0 studio speaker set that delivers excellent sound for the money. These speakers are normally normally around £100, but today on Overclockers you can grab a pair for £84 - lower than they've ever been before.
While Tango Gameworks' Hi-Fi Rush was the big surprise of tonight's Xbox developer showcase, there was other news, too. For example: Redfall, the open world co-op vampire shooter from Arkane, now has a release date. You'll be able to find out exactly how much like Far Cry it is on May 2nd.
So those Tango Gameworks leaks turned out to be true. After repeatedly stating that this evening's Xbox Developer Direct would feature just four games, it turned out to contain four. Hi-Fi Rush is a new third-person rhythm action brawler from the makers of Evil Within and Ghostwhire: Tokyo. It's a substantial departure from their previous games in terms of style - although there's an even bigger surprse.
The bigger surprise is it's out now, so you can play it via Game Pass right away.
The original Pharaoh, released in 1999, was a lot of people's first citybuilder. In part because it was exactly the kind of game that could be found in the software section of your local supermarket, and in part because it appealed to dads, who would buy it and then their bored kids would play it in lieu of any other options.
Well, I'm the dad now, and the "full remake" Pharaoh: A New Era has a release date of February 15th.