Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Devs seem to think that Epic Games' whirlwind of pop cultural cross-pollination Fortnite is the game best positioned to deliver the vision of the metaverse to us, the Game Developers Conference have revealed. The results of the GDC’s 11th annual State Of The Industry survey were released this week. The survey checked in with more than 2,300 developers to pick their brains on contentious issues facing gaming, ranging from unionisation and harassment to, erm, blockchain.

Read more

An adorable family of furry mammals traversing a dystopian urban environment; snapshots of joy and intimacy (playful hunts, mutual grooming, snuggling together for a nap) already infused with the melancholy of impending catastrophe; the terrible, life-altering moment when a young cub loses its footing and plunges into unknown depths, separated from the pack. Our fledgling protagonist, alone for the first time, has to fend for itself and find its way among the perilous mega-city ruins.

If you engaged at all with the indie-game sphere in 2022, chances are this introduction rings a bell. Only it’s not a description of last year’s breakaway hit and multi-award winner, BlueTwelve Studio’s Stray, but an older and much more brutal feline saga, Videocult’s grim survival action game Rain World. The thematic overlap of these games, coupled with their contrasting design philosophies, provides an excellent springboard to reassess the latter – one of the most opaque, challenging, and underappreciated titles in recent memory, just in time for the arrival of its first official DLC, Rain World: Downpour.

Read more

Deadpool will break the fourth wall and probably your face on January 26th, when the wise-cracking, chimichanga-loving mercenary arrives as DLC for Marvel’s Midnight Suns. Judging from the new trailer showing him in action that Firaxis have released, they seem to have struck a fine balance between comic book Deadpool and his movie counterpart. You can see Midnight Suns’ take on Wade Wilson in the trailer below.

Read more

Rockstar have brought Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - Definitive Edition to Steam more than a year after its disastrous launch. GTA Trilogy was originally released as a Rockstar Store exclusive, and packages together GTA III (the first 3D one), GTA: Vice City (the best one), and GTA: San Andreas (the one with CJ in it). The collection’s arrival on Steam replaces the original versions of each game on the storefront, and coincides with a publisher sale that ends February 2nd.

Read more

Endless Dungeon is set within Amplitude's Endless universe, but it's neither a 4X strategy game like Endless Space nor a turn-based tactics game like sorta-predecessor Dungeon Of The Endless. It's instead a co-op action roguelike, which takes the spaceship exploration and wave defense of Of The and makes it real-time, frantic, explosive.

It now has a release date, too: May 18th.

Read more

I already spend a sizeable portion of my gaming time dying in roguelike platformers, and the Steam Deck has only made things worse. Now here comes DIG - Deep In Galaxies, a roguelike platformer that looks like a cross between Noita, Caveblazers and Broforce, with cosmic scale, destructible levels, double jump, a grappling hook and co-op. I'm powerless to resist.

Read more

Blizzard's 14 year relationship with Chinese publisher NetEase will come to an end on January 23rd, at which time World Of Warcraft will go offline for millions of Chinese players. As the date approaches, NetEase have livestreamed staff dismantling a giant WoW axe statue at their offices with hammers, and called Blizzard's actions "brash, unseemly and commercially illogical."

Read more

Riot Games have confirmed that they have laid off 46 staff. The news leaked out earlier today via esports report Jacob Wolf, who said that sources said cuts had been made across recruiting, human resources, support and esports teams. Riot then confirmed the cuts, saying that they had made "implemented strategic shifts within a few teams to sharpen our focus in a number of areas."

Read more

Ubisoft's Project Q was revealed in April 2022 after several leaks. At the time, it was described as a "team battle arena" game with "a variety of PvP modes" that was in "early development."

Now Ubisoft say that they have cancelled it.

Read more

Magic’s making a comeback when fantasy strategy sequel Age Of Wonders 4 arrives on Steam on May 2nd, devs Triumph Studios have revealed. The 4X game was announced during a livestream today hosted by publishers Paradox Interactive. It’ll be the first Age Of Wonders in nine years that hasn't veered into sci-fi territory, and introduces a new custom faction system. You can watch a short teaser video for Age Of Wonders 4 below.

Read more

Agent Max Payne hit the zeitgeist square in the forehead at the turn of the Millennium. I was only sixteen when Remedy's monologuing undercover DEA operative dropped into my life like a... well, a man diving sideways in slow motion with twin pistols blazing. It was that kind of time. The Wachowskis had, not too long before, left an indelible mark on cinema, and pop culture at large, with their stylish countercultural smash hit The Matrix. Dressing in a leather jacket while falling over and openly wielding automatic weaponry was legitimately cool, and not at all creepy. Why are you frowning like that, it's almost like you don't believe me.

Read more

Sea Of Thieves is getting a mid-season update today, bringing the chance to catch up on all the pirate gossip with a trusty pet rock pal. The pocket pebble is only an emote that you can buy from the Sea Of Thieves store, but the company might help you keep it together on the long, lonely journeys across the game’s seas. The update also introduces a new time-limited event, The Secret Wilds, and some matchmaking improvements for PvP. Watch the video below for more on what’s coming in the latest Sea Of Thieves update.

Read more

Sudsy business sim PowerWash Simulator is heading to the familiar, and apparently very mucky, surroundings of Tomb Raider’s Croft Manor in a free expansion releasing on January 31st. The Tomb Raider Special Pack will go live at 5pm GMT/6pm CET/9am ET, and you’ll be able to take on the Croft Manor job from the new Specials area in the main menu. You can watch Lara’s gaff being cleaned down in the trailer below.

Read more

There’s a lot I’m excited for in Tchia. Revealed at the Game Awards back in 2020, the trailer boasted a whole load of activities: sailing, climbing, ukelele playing, swimming, tree-hopping, slingshot sharpshooting, totem carving, gliding - the list is never ending - and all set on a beautiful island with characters to talk to, quests to complete, and enemies to fight. And on top of all that, you also have the ability to "soul-jump" letting you control any animal or object.

It sounds too good to be true, right? But two years after Awaceb's trailer debut, I’ve gotten my hands on a preview build to see whether a nine-person dev team’s tropical island exploration game is pie in the sky. Turns out, it’s the opposite; my hands on time suggests Tchia will deliver on everything it promised and more.

Read more

The CEO of Ubisoft has apologised to staff for comments he made in an email last week, which appeared to blame employees for cuts and delays at the publisher. Kotaku report that Yves Guillemot began a Q&A meeting with an apology for his suggestion that sorting out issues at Ubisoft was the responsibility of lower-level staff, summarised by the phrase “the ball is in your court”. Guillemot had come under fire from Ubisoft staff following his comments, which prompted calls from one French union for Ubisoft Paris staff to strike later this month.

Read more

I thought my love affair with Like A Dragon: Ishin's teasers had peaked, but no, my heart still swells at an alarming rate. And that's thanks to a new trailer where Kiryu/Ryoma drop (kicks) his bruising samurai lifestyle to the side for a simpler, purer existence: chopping spring onions to a rhythm in what looks to be an in-depth farming side activity. Game Of The Year.

Read more

Microsoft has announced mass layoffs that will affect the developers behind Starfield, Halo Infinite, and Gears Of War. Bloomberg report that it’s not yet known what the scale of the job losses at Bethesda and 343 Industries will be, and Kotaku has also confirmed that The Coalition will also lose staff. Sources claim that some of the staff who’d lost their jobs at the affected studios were veterans who’d been with Microsoft for more than a decade. This layoff announcement from Microsoft has been made exactly a year after the company revealed they were buying Activision Blizzard.

Read more

AMD recently announced that certain Ryzen 5000 processors come with free copies of Company of Heroes 3, so if you're looking forward to the rather promising WW2 RTS, due to debut on February 23rd, this is a sneaky way of getting the game (normally £50) and a ~£100 processor for less than £100.

• Get the Ryzen 5 5500 - £98 w/ shipping (was £107)

Read more

DDR5 RAM is steadily getting more affordable these days, and even surprisingly high-end 6000MT/s kits are going on sale. That's the case today with this deal on a 32GB dual-channel kit of DDR5-6000 from TeamGroup, specifically their T-Force Delta RGB RAM. It's been reduced from its ridiculous launch MSRP of $339.99 down to $149.99, a great price for this spec and especially for a kit that comes equipped with RGB lighting.

(If you'd prefer the same kit without RGB, then it can be yours for $133.)

Read more

You may be able to hack your way across the Lands Between, but do you really know them? Can you tell your Nokrons from your Nokstellas? How about your Sanctums from your Catacombs? Can you distinguish between the Ainsel River and the Ainsel River Main? Look me in the eye and tell me you can pinpoint the Cathedral of Manus Celes, I dare you.

Alternatively, you can try out this fan-made Elden Ring Geoguessr-inspired game that plonks you into a random bit of the map and scores you based on how close you can drop a pin to your true location. If Rings aren't your thing LostGamer.io has maps from other games, too, including Skyrim and Fortnite. It's a lovely idea.

Read more

I still say the Hylics games are some of the prettiest around, with their striking mix of claymation and video capture. So I'm delighted to realise that, unbeknowst to me, creator Mason Lindroth occasionally give behind-the-scenes peeks at props and animations on Twitter. It is very interesting to see those original handcrafted figures. And it is very funny to discover that the process of animating one character's hands involved wearing a little cardboard green screen like a shroud while waggling a sexy gloved arm through the hole.

Read more

At last! Returnal, the hit bullet-hell roguelike that set PS5 owners hearts' a flutter back in 2021, is launching on PC on February 15th. It'll be prettier and ray-tracier too, if this new PC features trailer is to be believed.

I played Returnal last year and can confirm that it is splendid, and also that you will grow to hate the kamikaze squid in the final area with every fibre of your being. Presuming you get that far.

Read more

Crap, it's an attack ship on fire off the shoulder of... no wait, it's the upcoming full release of Blade Runner-inspired city builder Industries of Titan, from Crypt Of The Necromancer developers Brace Yourself Games. They've announced Titan will be out for realsies on January 31st, when it will unshackle itself from its early access chains while forcing thousands more workers into indentured labour.

It's more than just a slick sci-fi city builder, boasting battleship combat and the ability to tinker with what goes on inside your buildings.

Read more

You may have seen I was dead excited about The Pale Beyond in our most anticipated games list the other week, and now we finally know when it's coming out. Publisher Fellow Traveller have announced this Arctic naval expedition gone wrong will be setting sail on February 24th, so ready your blankets and hot cuppas, folks. This icy, story-driven survival 'em up will chill you the bone.

Read more

Far Cry 2 is a lot of things, based on the memories I have from playing it a decade ago. First and foremost, I recall Far Cry 2: Parasitic Pain, which tasks you with running around begging for pills to stave off a growing infection. Next comes Far Cry 2: Buddy Bonanza, which lets you make lots of lovely AI friends, charge into battles together, and then hide while they die. Then, there’s Far Cry 2: Firewatch, which is all about watching fire. It's the best.

Read more

The EU have voted to push for reform in the videogame industry, backing a report that takes aim at everything from loot boxes to human rights violations tied up with gold-farming. The report includes calls for better parental control options, "harmonised rules" compelling sellers to show more information about game content, and a clamp down on third-party skin gambling.

Those are all laudable goals, but time will tell how much change this actually amounts to.

Read more

Something you could never accuse A Plague Tale: Requiem of is a lack of eye candy. As grim, gory, and engulfed in rats as this medieval stealth adventure is, mon dieu is it a looker on PC. For those among us with one of the brawnier graphics cards on the market, it’s just become even prettier too, via the slightly delayed implementation of ray tracing.

Read more

I've been holding something in for 5 years. It first started as a deep joy, like a ray of sunshine in the palm of my hand. Then it became a deep sense of longing for something I'd lost, like a cascade of sand that fell from my palm as I wept gently on an empty beach. The "it" is a mobile and Nintendo Switch game called Pokémon Quest (don't laugh), which was the first - and only - mobile game I've actively obsessed over.

The game's an auto-battler where you gather a small trio from the original 150 Pokéfolks, level them up, and then tackle trickier and trickier stages. After a frankly disgusting number of hours, I'd finished all the stages. So, I thought, "Yes, of course they will add the 2nd generation of Pokéfolks with a bunch of new stages. This is its natural evolution, if you will". It still hasn't happened and probably never will. And I hate that I can't find anything else that'll replace it.

Read more

Thunderful Games have announced they're going to be holding a special SteamWorld stream next Monday January 23rd, where they'll be unveiling what's next for the series. Taking place at 9.30am PST / 5.30pm GMT, it's not clear what the SteamWorld Telegraph: Special Broadcast will entail just yet, but given we already know several SteamWorld games are in development at the moment, here's a rough guess-timate of what to expect.

Read more

Indonesian studio Mojiken have been making games for years. Most of them are less than an hour long. They're short, punchy adventures and cover everything from digital fortune tellers, violin-playing owl-men, and poetic folktales about potato-shaped forest creatures.

A Space For The Unbound is Mojiken’s first 'big' release in that sense, clocking in at around nine-ish hours. What begins as a YA coming-of-age tale about a small-town romance quickly gains remarkable momentum, and suddenly you’re dealing with supernatural teens trying to desperately stop a world-ending calamity. Part sci-fi drama, part high school romance, A Space For The Unbound manages to have incredible weight and grandeur while also being poignant, sweet, and honest at the same time. It's a triumph.

Read more

Last time, you decided that programmable party members are better than optional grinding. I can respect that. Yeah, it's sometimes fun to turn your brain off and grind out a bit, but there's a lot to say for doing the work up front to get your party and builds running correctly then just watch them go. This week, I ask you to choose between one thing which speaks to my inner teenager, and one thing which speaks to my inner child. What's better: big engines rising from the bonnet, or knocking folks over edges?

Read more

Coffee Talk is one of my favourite visual novels from the last couple of years, and when developers Toge Productions announced they were making a second episode back in 2021, I raised a steaming hot mug of tea in celebration. Now, it's time to brew up another one, as they've just announced its official release date of April 20th.

Read more

In games it's often a delight to be proven wrong. Such as, for example, my longstanding belief that Dwarf Fortress would never make the biggest and most important change it possibly could, and fit itself with an interface fit for purpose.

Bay 12 Games have, of course, gone further than that, and released it for general sale on the biggest shop in the business after sixteen years as freeware. There's even a charming new graphics overhaul to replace the famous ASCII symbols which, depending on who you ask, might not have technically counted as "graphics" at all.

I'm not here to discuss the relative merits of this shiny new version and the "classic" version. Both will be updated in future, the latter still free, and neither expected to reach a full 1.0 release inside 20 years. All this chips around the edges of what I've been pondering, which is this: What exactly is Dwarf Fortress's place within our culture now, after a decade replete with games that looked to it for ideas?

Read more

In 2021 I reviewed Backbone, a masterpiece of 2D pixelart that was partly a point 'n' click detective noir game, and mostly a grim story-focused fever dream about collectivism. At the time I described it as "like The Good Place with more depression, or Disco Elysium with raccoons." Backbone has an ending so bizarre on a literal level that it defies description even if I wanted to spoil it. A while back developers Eggnut teased that they were working on a new game, and it turns out that game is Tails: The Backbone Preludes, a prequel that probably won't answer any questions you might've had about the ending of Backbone. It's also out very soon, on February 2nd.

Read more

Part of RPS’s goal is to shine a spotlight on every corner of the gaming peninsula, and a BIG part of that includes the incredible realm of indie games. In additional to our written work about the wonderful world of indie games, starting from now we'll also be doing that across the audio waves in the form of our brand new podcast, Indiescovery!

Indiescovery is the new sibling in the RPS podcast family and will sit snuggly next to Ultimate Audio Bang, and The Electronic Wireless Show, but our focus is strictly on the wonderful world of indie games. It’s best to think of the podcast as an extension of our Indiescovery tag on the site - although we've got the Indiescovery Podcast tag just for the pod, if you ever want to check all the episodes. Every episode video bud Liam, guides lass Rebecca and myself (reviews ranger Rachel) will highlight a bunch of cool indies and talk about why we love them. We'll be gabbing about the latest indie darlings, exciting upcoming releases, hidden gems lost to space and time, and more.

Read more

The WD SN850x is one of the very fastest NVMe SSDs in the world, with its PCIe 4.0 connection, super-fast TLC NAND flash memory and high-speed controller offering some frankly astonishing speeds - up to 7300MB/s reads and 6300MB/s writes, not to mention random read and write speeds of 800K IOPS and 1.1M IOPS respectively. This puts it within the top echelon of SSDs - perhaps why we named it the best PCIe 4.0 SSD for gaming!

Read more

The JAN10 10% off Ebay code that featured in two of our previous deals posts this week has popped up again, this time offering excellent prices on not one but two top-spec 2TB SSDs. You have the choice of the Crucial P3 at £104 (vs £120 on Amazon) or the faster Kingston KC3000 at £155 (vs £202 at Amazon). Both are great drives for the money, so if you're in the market for a storage upgrade you've just got to decide whether you can benefit from the faster speeds and better components of the KC3000, or whether you prefer the lower price of the P3.

Read more

Our review of the Command & Conquer Remastered Collection, which bundles and shines the first C&C and Red Alert, called it "as close to a perfect restoration of two genre-defining real-time strategy games as you’ll get." It included all three expansions, it made everything look great at 4K resolution, it revived the multiplayer, it remastered the beloved music...

And now it's 85% off this week on Steam, meaning you can pick it up for £2.69/$3.

Read more

I tend to play citybuilders in order to design my own little world of bucolic hills or crisp modern architecture. Surviving The Abyss, meanwhile, is about building a habitat in a terrifying, inhospitable place: the deep sea. It's out in early access today.

Read more

Steam's most recent hardware survey says that 65% of PC players use 1080p, but you wouldn't know it to look at Forspoken's system requirements which benchmark the game against 720p 30fps (minimum), 1440p 30fps (recommended) and 2160p 60fps (ultra).

Regardless of what kind of performance you're aiming for, you'll need a pretty beefy machine, with 24GB of RAM and an RTX 3070 required to hit those recommended specs.

Read more