Rock, Paper, Shotgun

I'm playing Assassin's Creed Valhalla right now, and it's too bloody big. This is my second stint, jumping back in after playing for 14 hours when it came out in 2020 then abandoning it - and I'm beginning to remember why. It's a pretty but largely empty-feeling time, with woefully repetitive mission design and characters I only have a passive interest in. It's good, therefore, to see Assassin's Creed Mirage creative director Stéphane Boudon make more noises about how the next Creed game will be smaller and "more intimate".

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When you think of object-gathering game Katamari Damacy the first things that spring to mind are usually balls, and the rolling thereof. Computer scientist and custom controller kitbashing experimenter Dr Tom Tilley had the same thought and, erm, rolled with it. In a case of life imitating art, Tilley repurposed a trackball he’d made from roll-on deodorant and a soccer ball to play the game with (thanks, Time Extension). You can watch Tilley mucking about with the trackball to control an emulated version of the PS2-era Katamari Damacy in the video below.

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What makes a good platformer? Christ, I don't know. Why would you open an article with that. Calling Kandria a platformer feels a little reductive, so there's a need to clarify why it works. You play as an android revived several decades after an apocalypse, by a tiny camp of survivors who inevitably need your help. A lot of this help involves, well, platforming. To the point of having nonsensical areas of pure platforming in between you and a destination or secret area. You'll climb, jump, do the little dash thing that recharges when you touch the ground or pick up a hovering lamp thingy. You'll land on a lot of thorny instakill spikes.

So yeh, lots of the old platforming, but it feels more like an exploration and scavenging game, with a side order of light-light-heavy-dodge combat too. And a plot with varied dialogue options and mysteries about the world and its history. It's immediately and consistently fun, but I'm not sure exactly how to recommend it. Hmm.

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I've learned to love Apex Legends, having bounced off it hard multiple times. The pace is high, the movement tricky, the guns have like, 18 bullets in a clip and it's really easy to buzz them all into thin-air. But once a few friends held my hand and taught me to be patient and position myself properly, rather than charge into battle at any given opportunity, the game began to click. And what a battle royale it is.

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Horror movie maestro John Carpenter has ‘fessed up that he’s not directing a movie version of Dead Space, but suggests there’s another director attached to a possible big-screen adaptation. Talking to Variety about his career ahead of his 75th birthday, Carpenter was asked about rumours he could be helming a non-interactive take on Dead Space. Considering Carpenter hasn’t made a film in 13 years it does seem a bit of a wild idea, but then the director is both a horror auteur and video game fan.

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A huge Valve leak from last week already gave us a peek at the Counter-Strike Source map that lead to Left 4 Dead, but there are plenty more old-school Valve assets where those came from. Fans are currently sorting through 60 gbs of unused Team Fortress 2 assets, including 20 maps, 40 man vs machine maps, and assorted intriguing models. I do kind of wish we'd got to play the version of TF2 with mechs that resemble three-footed Star Wars Walkers.

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Writing up our big guide on all the upcoming PC games of 2023, I was introduced to a number of smaller games in development I hadn't heard about before. One of them was Broken Roads, an isometric RPG set in a post-apocalypse Australia. The gorgeous artwork was enough for me to click on the Steam page and read more, and while scrolling through the screenshots something strange caught my eye.

It was a screenshot of a fairly traditional RPG dialogue scene, with a panel at the bottom displaying all the possible dialogue options for the player. But what caught my eye was an unusual radial graphic on the right-hand side of the options. Reading on, I discovered that Broken Roads uses a rather unique Moral Compass, one which plots your overall moral stance towards the world and its people with a golden arc. Different decisions may rotate the arc, expand it, contract it, lengthen it, or shorten it. And in so doing, you'll unlock various traits dotted about the Compass, which only remain in effect for as long as that golden arc covers those traits within the wheel.

I can see a dozen different ways in which this Moral Compass may end up being a bad idea in practice. But I don't care. I adore it. And I'm going to play Broken Roads solely so I can see the consequences of my actions in satisfying radial form.

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As I scale the sides of apartment blocks with climbing axes and pole-vault through windows, I often feel like I'm breaking Babbdi. I feel I've done something particularly clever or busted outside the boundaries of its little brutalist city. I haven't, but I'm delighted to explore with this feeling. Oh sure, my objective in this splendid free indie game is to find a way out of the terrible city, but I'll enjoy my final hour here. You might too.

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A mod for the original Final Fantasy 7 that adds full voice acting to the game is set to release today after seven years of work. Tsunamods’ Echo-S 7 mod has actors from around the world voicing every character in Final Fantasy 7, including the battle barks. You can see a trailer of the mod in action below, but if you’re watching in the office on your lunch break then be aware that there’s a fair few cuss words in it.

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GOG has decided to scrap their GOG Connect service, which allowed users to claim a limited selection of games they already owned on Steam for free. The service was quietly killed off at the beginning of this year and removed from GOG’s site, which didn’t go unnoticed by frequenters of the GOG subreddit. GOG confirmed the closure of Connect to RPS fan site PC Gamer, saying “for a long time nothing really happened there, so we've decided to shut it down”. Fair enough.

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You know that bit in The Matrix where Neo says he needs lots of guns, and racks of them pop out of nowhere? Well, Grand Theft Auto Online’s latest addition is the Gun Van, and it’s going for a similar vibe. You can flag down the entrepreneurial van driver to buy pieces from a weekly rotating selection of what Rockstar calls “top-of-the-line weapons, ammunition, and armor”. It’s pretty much just the GTA equivalent of an ice cream truck, but for guns. Witness a short snippet of the Gun Van in action below.

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Justin Roiland, the co-creator of Rick and Morty and the founder of High On Life developers Squanch Games, has been charged with domestic violence. The charges relate to a 2020 incident, according to a criminal complaint filed in May 2020 and obtained by NBC News. Roiland pled not guilty to the charges in October 2020.

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A new single player MechWarrior game is in development at Piranha Games, the developers of MechWarrior 5 and MechWarrior Online. The news was shared by Piranha CEO Russ Bullock in an interview with the podcast No Guts No Galaxy, as reported by VGC.

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Several games have attempted to successfully marry first-person shooting with real-time strateging, and to my mind none have quite succeeded. Outpost: Infinity Siege, at the very least, understands why the ambition its worthwhile. First revealed during last year's E3, its newest trailer shows more massive scale combat - as well as confirming its name and a release window.

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Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot once said that Tom Clancy's The Division 2 being absent from Steam was "a long-term positive". Perhaps he meant that only in the sense that, long-term, the game would come to Steam anyway. That's what has happened now. As announced late last year, the open world cover shooter is now available on Steam after a period of Epic and Ubisoft store exclusivity.

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Back in my day, we had to pay hundreds of dollars for a high-end gaming display - but nowadays, you youngsters get them for almost nothing! Look at this $280 Acer Nitro gaming monitor on Newegg. It came out at $600 - and not even that long ago! And now it's $320 off, for a 27-in 1440p 240Hz monitor. It's got a cool curved screen, a VA panel for great contrast, absolutely incredible. When I were a lad, we'd have killed for a display with more than sixteen colours!

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The official Valve Steam Deck Docking Station looks great, with DisplayPort and HDMI, ethernet, three USB ports and a design that perfectly fits the Steam Deck for £79. However, delivery times are 1-2 weeks, and you can now get a functionally identical alternative for half the price.

It's the iVoler Steam Deck Dock, which normally costs £49.99/$55.99 but is now down to £37.59 in the UK or $44.99 in the US. I've been testing this model for the past few days; here's why I rate it.

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The latest free offerings from the Epic Games Store are futuristic RPG Gamedec - Definitive Edition, space-based party game First Class Trouble, and godly 3D brawler Divine Knockout. All of them are free for the next week, so you can pick them up for precisely zero outlay right now wherever you are in the world. The three games are a canny mix of genres, so there could well be something of interest there even if you’re not bothered about jacking into things or whacking chibi deities with a comically large mallet.

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I can’t even remember how my family came upon The Incredible Machine now, only that I spent many hours as a child happily fiddling about with mice, pipes, and a surprising variety of sporting balls. I’m pretty sure it was my first real encounter with a game that concentrated on a combination of physics and engineering to complete a puzzle, rather than ignorantly bouncing on an enemy, or trying to combine random items from an inventory with characters’ faces. Looking at you, rubber chicken with a pulley in the middle.

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Wadjet Eye Games are behind some of the greatest point and click adventures of the last two decades, and if you've been looking for an excuse to catch up on their back catalogue, Humble have put together a rather excellent bundle celebrating the developer's 16 years of operation - all for a very agreeable sum of just over £8 in the UK, and $10 in the US.

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The long-awaited Freelancer mode for Hitman 3 goes live later this month, tasking the world’s blandest professional killer with taking down nefarious organisations one target at a time. To prepare for Freelancer’s launch on January 26th, devs IO Interactive have shared a new trailer that’s essentially just the mission briefing your Agent 47 will see when he begins his bloodthirsty roguelike quest. You can watch the mission briefing below, if you’re feeling suitably assassinatey.

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Cosy photographic biking adventure Season: A Letter To The Future is out on January 31st, and a new trailer reveals a little more about the game’s story and the people you’ll meet on your journey. Season puts you in the loafers of Estelle, a young woman from an isolated village who sets off on a two-wheeled trek to capture and preserve memories from her home valley before a soggy disaster wipes them off the map. You can watch the trailer below for a glimpse of Season’s very pretty, but doomed, world.

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I've completed my first play through of Chop Goblins, a "microshooter" from Dusk and Gloomwood developer David Szymanski. All in all, it took me just under an hour to choppa' da goblins and I'm all up for more of the same, to be honest. I liked time-travelling between Dracula's abode and ancient greece, chopping a variety of killer goblins that squawked, "NICE TO MEET YOU!", in varying octaves.

While another FPS of the "micro" variety would be grand, I'd love a "microracer". Much in the same vein as my beloved Screamer, I'm desperate for a – linear or otherwise – arcade racer whose only concern is to burn rubber through all manner of world stages.

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Linda Tiger's career in gaming started two decades ago, in a test house in Glasgow. “I started in QA back in 2002. I worked on functionality and localisation testing. Eventually, I became a lead and then a QA manager at a studio,” she tells me, as we talk at India Game Developers Conference in Hyderabad, India. Now, Tiger is at Paradox Development Studio as the studio manager of Studio Black, and the former lead producer for Crusader Kings 3. She even stood in front of a suit of armor to drop the game's first tease.

An RPG-esque lifestyle system and neat backstab choices that deal with information round out Crusader Kings 3's host of improvements over its excellent predecessor. A court-themed expansion and a revamp of the game’s culture system after launch are a testament to Paradox’s resolve to deliver a refined plotting experience. Holy wars and illicit affairs go hand in hand in the world of Crusader Kings and the third iteration is no different. Weaving together systems to consistently deliver emergent gameplay is no simple feat, and it turns out that production also covers all manner of small but essential, and practical things. As the lead producer on a game as complex as Crusader Kings 3, Tiger had her work cut out for her.

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Grab your specialist gaming cassock, because historical 4X strategy Old World is doubling down on religion for its second wave of DLC on January 16th. The Sacred And The Profane pack bundles in more than 350 fresh events, mostly themed around worshipping things. There’s also six new figures from the past to encounter, including the Christian apostle Saint Paul and ancient poet Sappho, all bringing their own events. You can see some of the new characters in a teaser for the DLC below.

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Achievements are now part and parcel of the video gaming landscape, but that doesn't mean we have to like them. Indeed, the debate over whether the little reward messages add anything to games or not has been reignited today on Twitter by developers, with Ubisoft Massive's lead gameplay designer Fredrik Thylander saying they've been actively "bad for gaming". So we thought we'd put the question to you, readers. Do you agree and think achievements have been a blight on the industry, or do you think they're actually good way of getting more out of a game? Come and tell us in the comments.

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Microsoft were hoping to complete their takeover of Activision Blizzard by the end of their financial year in June. That’s looking less likely now that the US Federal Trade Commission have published a schedule that sets dates for final hearings to decide on the merger, and they're going to begin on August 2nd. As this is just the kick off for hearings about the case, it’s likely that any FTC decision on whether the $68.7 billion (£56 billion) deal can go ahead will take some time to emerge.

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The AMD Radeon RX 6950 XT is the flagship graphics card in the Radeon RX 6000 series, and one of the most powerful graphics cards on the market even after the release of the first Radeon RX 7000 series cards. It is designed for gaming enthusiasts, content creators, and professionals who demand the highest levels of performance from their graphics card - and now that the next gen is out, this bleeding-edge card has been heavily reduced. In fact, you can now pick this up on Amazon for $730, a $370 reduction from the $1100 price this XFX Speedster Merc319 card launched at in August last year.

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If you go down to the woods today, you're in for a big surprise. Spoilers: the surprise is an ambush from Combine soldiers and antlions, sent to welcome you after your helicopter crashes in Half-Life 2 mod Evacuation. There are zombies, too. Maybe today was not the best day to go down to the woods.

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Platforming adventure Animal Well has been picked up by Bigmode, the indie publishing company set up last year by YouTuber Videogamedunkey. The Metroidvania is being developed by Shared Memories, another name for solo dev Billy Basso. Basso is crafting a multi-layered puzzle horror platformer that he hopes will keep people playing the game for years, and collaborating to solve its mysteries. You can see a bit more of what to expect from Animal Well in the preview video below.

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Tiny Echo by Shelter developers Might and Delight is a real hidden gem. It’s very in line with what the studio is known for - creating beautiful handcrafted worlds complete with stories about nature - but with Tiny Echo, instead of making an animal game featuring a group of cute critters trying to survive the brutal wilderness (and that most likely made you cry), the Stockholm team went completely left-field and created a bite-sized ethereal puzzler that deals with ghosts and spirits.

Playing as a one-eyed sprite named Emi, your job is to deliver post to different creatures and spirits that hide within the nooks and crannies of a lush forest. As you join Emi on her rounds, you get to meet the various members of the community as they go about their lives and daily routines in a peaceful, unearthly realm. It's a point-and-click puzzle adventure but in the breeziest of terms. The focus isn't really on brain teasers but exploring this strange world and getting to know its spirit folk.

My main reason for hyping up Tiny Echo is that the vibes are immaculate. It's gorgeous but also eerie, and I'd almost call it spooky, but not in a horror kinda way. With no spoken dialogue or words, Tiny Echo's world is strange and dreamlike, the crisp sound design and Twin Peaks-esque soundtrack adding a slightly surreal and ethereal feel to everything. There's also a lot of emphasis on smoke and shadows, which make the entire world seem like it's about to dissipate with one gust of wind.

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There’s only a few weeks until EA Motive’s reimagining of the original Dead Space stalks onto PC, but anyone pre-ordering the game on Steam will also nab a copy of Dead Space 2. This seems to be exclusive to Valve’s storefront, as the Epic Games Store isn’t listing the offer on their pre-order page for the Dead Space remake. Oh, and even though Dead Space 2’s been available for more than a decade you’ll have to wait until the Dead Space remake goes live to play your complimentary copy.

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Amidst the fanciful flying cars and smart dog collars of CES 2023, Sony used their time at the Las Vegas technology show to announce Project Leonardo: a highly adaptive PS5 controller kit designed, much like the Xbox Adaptive Controller, to make it easier for people with disabilities to play games. Unlike the standard PS5 DualSense controller, however, Project Leonardo won’t be compatible with the PC when it eventually launches.

In a response to tech site Digital Trends, Sony Interactive Entertainment confirmed that the kit – which allows for extensive customisation of button layouts and joystick positioning – will be built exclusivly for the PS5, with no native support for the PC or older consoles like the PS4.

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Last week I talked about how I spent my week off at Christmas playing PowerWash Simulator like it was my job. When I wrote that, I was about two thirds of the way through the story in Career mode, which turns out to be just before PowerWash Simulator goes as bananas as everyone's home baking in the summer of 2020. I can't believe I need to say this but: this article contains spoilers for the PowerWash Sim story.

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A team of researchers at Microsoft have published a paper on VALL-E, their new AI that can generate realistic impersonations of human speech based on just 3-second samples. It's a concerning development for voice actors, as well as anyone who could be duped into thinking they're on the phone with a relative who desperately needs their card details. I'm usually struck by the impressiveness of new AI tricks before I think about their negative implications, but I found this unsettling from the off.

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The game I play most frequently is free-to-play auto-battler Super Auto Pets. A round or two at my PC at lunch, a couple battles on my phone on the sofa after work, maybe a bash on the bus if I've nothing interesting to read. Lovely game. Now it's all fresh and confusing again with the launch of its latest paid expansion today, adding a whole new lineup of pets to recruit. This here Golden Pack is another pleasant escalation of complexity across the game's life, a pack for professional petpeople.

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We’ve known for a few years that Gearbox’s sci-fi shooter Borderlands is being adapted for the silver screen, but shooting on the movie is now almost finished. Director Eli Roth, known for grisly stuff such as Cabin Fever, has jumped off the project ahead of schedule though. Deadline report that Roth has handed Borderlands over to his friend Tim Miller, the director of Deadpool. Miller will oversee a few weeks of reshoots for Borderlands while Roth begins work on a horror movie called Thanksgiving.

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A big batch of maps for Counter-Strike: Source has been leaked, and among it is what’s believed to be an early prototype of what would one day become Left 4 Dead. Mod developer WolfCl0ck has made some adjustments to the map, called Zombie_City, and uploaded it online for people to play. WolfCl0ck claims this map is related to the prototype of Left 4 Dead, back when Turtle Rock was calling the project Terror Strike. You can watch the Zombie City mod in action below.

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Every weekend, indie devs show off current work on Twitter's #screenshotsaturday tag. And every Monday, I bring you a selection of these snaps and clips. This week, my eye has been caught by chill frogs, moody forests, a surfing FPS, intense 2D ultraviolence, a surreal stealth game, and plenty more. Come see!

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The founder of speedrunning institution Games Done Quick is heading off to find new horizons following more than a decade of helping organise epic runs for charity. GDQ announced that Mike Uyama will leave the organisation when Awesome Games Done Quick 2023, which began on January 8th, concludes. Uyama’s replacement as owner and managing director of GDQ is Matt Merkle, the organisation’s current director of operations.

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