Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Sundays are for brushing biscuit crumbs off your lap. Before you scatter, let's read this week's best writing about games (and game related things).

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Several games have been accused of being little more than spreadsheets, but few have decided to lean into the allegation. That's what EVE Online is doing later this year though, when developers CCP release their own Microsoft Excel plug-in.

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Cyberpunk 2077 launched in a sorry state, prompting rending of garments by gamers and a class action lawsuit from CD Projekt Red investors. That suit alleged that CDPR had "made materially false or misleading statements" regarding the game, particularly as related to the condition of its console release, and sought damages.

Now a proposed settlement has been approved by a federal judge in California's Central District. The settlement reached will see CDPR pay out $1.85 million USD (around £1.52m GBP), or roughly $0.49 per eligible share.

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In 2021, Arkane revealed Redfall, a co-op vampire slayer we immediately termed "Left 4 Red". It was one of several games seemingly aiming to follow in Left 4 Dead's swarming zombie footsteps - a trend we celebrated.

'Nuh uh', say Arkane, in a new interview with Games Radar. Redfall apparently has more in common with Far Cry than Valve's co-op classic.

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Before Hello Games began work on No Man's Sky, they made several games in the cute, colourful stunt racing Joe Danger series. Joe Danger and its sequel Joe Danger: The Movie remain available via Steam, but a mobile spin-off released in 2014, Joe Danger Infinity, never left iOS.

Until now. As of right yesterday, Joe Danger Infinity and a mobile port of the original, Joe Danger Touch, are playable in your browser and completely free.

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Hello again, reader dear! We have semi-returned from our Christmas break, though quite a few folks have been off this week too. But next week, then we'll properly be back. Still, even this ragtag skeleton crew have managed to reel off 101 games we're looking forward to in 2023 (admittedly some are likely/hopefully this year). I am delighted that so many of these are new to me. And heck, that's definitely missing a few too. Game on, games. While we wait for those, what are you playing this weekend? Here's what we're clicking on!

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Roguelike deckbuilders are everywhere, nowadays, which is just how I like it. Roguelike deckbuilders that carve out a path far afield of Slay The Spire are a little rarer, though, so I also like that Luck Be A Landlord just left Steam Early Access.

It's about adding symbols to a slot machine, rather than removing monsters from a dungeon. You emerge from each run with sentences less like 'damn, if only I'd picked more block cards' and more like 'damn, if only I hadn't invested so much in coal and instead focused on feeding milk to my cats'.

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Good news! Blizzard have fixed an Overwatch 2 Kiriko bug that let her teleport while holding the flag in Capture the Flag mode. Bad news! In doing so they seem to have broken the cleanse effect attached to her Swift Step ability, meaning she can no longer purge debuffs. The bug appeared after yesterday's update and isn't mentioned in the patch notes, so yep, it's a bug rather than a balance change. Hopefully she'll get back to cleansing soon.

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God bless the Team Fortress 2 voice actors, who continue to enrich the internet with their nonsense. We've seen them lark about on a ferry. We've seen them confuse bakery staff, and amuse the guy behind a counter at a convenience store. Now, we get to see them perform an ABBA parody celebrating sandwiches. The Sniper plays banjo, and the Pyro's contributions are soul warming. Enjoy.

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I'll try not to bang on about it, but in the interests of transparency, it's important to stress how much I loathe most soulslikes. Even the name, to be frank. So when I say that I don't love Asterigos Colon Curse of the Stars, it's not as damning as it may sound.

You're Hilda, a stabby lass who, for reasons, must investigate and lift a curse from a big ol' fantasy city. By exploring its districts and stabbing lots of weird dudes. Aiding you is a network of semi-suspicious locals, and the kind of immortality that makes death more annoying than anything. It's a hybrid, really, of a Souls-ish game and a more traditional hack and slash action RPG. Regular attacks don't consume stamina, and instead of finding or buying weapons, you start out with a complete set, and swap their movesets in and out as needed. I respect that it picks and chooses soulsy elements instead of tracing over the whole design.

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I knew Minecraft had an ending, but I didn't know that ending consists of an unskippable 9 minute long poem. I also didn't know that last month the author of that poem, Julian Gough, placed it into the public domain, which according to him he's legally entitled to do because nobody at Mojang or Microsoft ever successfully got him to sign a contract.

He now says Microsoft are stonewalling any attempts to contact them about whether or not they own the copyright, and that this silence killed a piece he'd written for an unnamed "global news organisation" because they didn't want to risk drawing the ire of Microsoft's 1700 strong lawer team. That piece was actually an edited version of Gough's blog post from last month, where he explained the situation and submitted the poem to the public domain - while making multiple references to the poem being written by the universe, and also how taking psychedelics lead him to conclude that not allowing himself to be compensated would be a "blockage of the flow of love". It's a trip.

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You know when someone says a magical combination of words to you and your instant reaction is, "Say no more. I'm in."? That's how I felt hearing about OPUS: Prism Peak this morning, the latest game from Taiwanese developer Sigono in their loosely-connected series of jaw-droppingly pretty visual novels. Described as a spiritual sibling to their most recent OPUS game, the brilliant Echo Of Starsong, the exact magic combo of words that made my eyes go all wide and saucer-like was "a cross between What Remains Of Edith Finch and Makoto Shinkai films", which just - you know what, I'm going to shut up now so you can watch the teaser trailer.

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Halo Infinite Forge mode users were already creating some wild maps on launch day, so it shouldn’t be surprising to see some Skyrim locales appear in-game too. If you’re unfamiliar, Forge is a long-time Halo mode that allows players to create their own custom maps and modes. In the past, players used Forge to remake classic maps or remix existing ones. But Infinite’s take on Forge is more robust, allowing forgers to create maps that don’t look like they belong in Halo. No, seriously, what is Whiterun doing in Infinite?

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The RPS Discord is hosting a live Q&A with video game composer and principal Game ON! concert conductor Andy Brick tomorrow, and you are all cordially invited to come and sit in on what's bound to be an insightful and interesting chat about video game music. Taking place at 7pm GMT on Saturday January 7th, Andy will be chatting to admin Cei about his 25 years in the video game music industry, as well as what's in store for Game ON!'s UK premiere concert with the Halle Orchestra in Manchester later this month. All participants will also receive a handy discount code for that Manchester concert, so if you live nearby and fancy coming along, make sure you head to the RPS Discord tomorrow evening.

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After a year and a half, strategy RPG We Are The Caretakers leaves early access today. Caretakers will receive a new patch at launch, adding in the fourth Era of the campaign. This closes out the game’s story with five more missions, an end-game, and other final improvements. If you haven’t checked in with Caretakers since its launch in 2021, a lot has changed through its 10+ patches.

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Every week I seem to hear about another battle royale I never knew existed. This week it's Deathverse: Let It Die, a free-to-play spin-off of Suda51’s free-to-play hack and slasher Let It Die. Alas, I won’t have much time to check this one out. Deathverse: Let It Die is suspending its servers indefinitely on July 18th while the devs work to redevelop the multiplayer brawler.

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Happy New Year, folks! Crikey, there are a lot of games coming out this year, aren't there? When I first asked the team to put together their most anticipated games for 2023, I was thinking we'd have a reasonably sensible number of things we were all looking forward to, you know, somewhere in the region of the 43 games we highlighted at the start of 2022. Very quickly, though, it became apparent that, actually, there are simply loads of games the RPS Treehouse is personally excited about this year, and cor, it would be rude not to include every last one of them. I'll be upfront: there are a fair number of TBA games on here that probably aren't going to come out in 2023, but as ever, we remain hopeful and optimistic all the same. So let's dive in.

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In a bizarre turn of events, it seems that Hidden Path's unannounced Dungeons & Dragons game is alive and well, after recent reports it had been cancelled. Earlier this week, Bloomberg reported that D&D owner Wizards Of The Coast had cancelled five unannounced projects, naming Otherside Entertainment and Hidden Path as two of the studios affected. In a Twitter post last night, Hidden Path emphasised "Our epic D&D project with Wizards is still happening!"; Bloomberg, meanwhile, stand by their reporting.

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Who among us hasn't wished to be a cool hacker from the movies, like Hugh Jackman in Swordfish (a classic)? In real life hacking things is apparently quite dangerous and hard, but in video games we can crack the system and mutter "I'm in" under our breath as often as we want. Naturally, there have been some fabulous hacking games on PC over the years, and we've collected what we think are the cream of the crop of the best hacking games to play on PC right now.

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Shadow Tactics is such a good real-time tactics stealth strategy game that it rejuvenated the genre. There's a chance you already own the sneaky samurai sim, however, and much less of a chance that you own its standalone expansion, Aiko's Choice. It's the latter that is currently being given away for free over on the Epic Games Store.

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Bloober Team's Silent Hill 2 remake will "stick close to the original" while applying adjustments like an over-the-shoulder camera. In an interview with DreadXP, Anna Jasińska from Bloober Team spoke about their approach to the remake.

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Dwarf Fortress released on Steam on December 6th and by the end of the month it had sold half a million copies. That's according to the monthly Bay 12 Games report, in which its developers traditionally share their revenue figures from player donations. Now they have Steam sales figures to share.

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Earlier today, Goose Goose Duck had 563,293 concurrent players on Steam. You'd be forgiven for not having heard of it, however. The social deduction game was released in 2021 and is easily described as "Among Us with ducks and geese", but its popularity has steadily grown since it was played by Kim Tae-hyung, a member of K-pop group BTS.

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Thermaltake's Toughpower GF1 Snow Edition 850W PSU is down to $115 at Newegg, a great price for a 80+ certified modular PSU in a colourway that's perfect for builds with other light-coloured components like motherboards, AIOs and graphics cards. The power supply normally costs $140, making this a neat $25 discount below the US MSRP.

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The Solidigm P41 Plus 2TB SSD is a top performer amongst QLC drives, and now it's down to $122 at Newegg in the US. That's nearly $25 cheaper than the next-lowest price, at Amazon, and a solid deal on a high-spec drive that can hit up to 4125MB/s reads and 3325MB/s writes.

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The developers behind text-based political sim Suzerain have announced their follow-up, a narrative RPG called The Conformist. It's set in the same universe and fictional country as Suzerain, although it takes place before the events of that game. Instead of leading the country of Sordland, this time players will guide the government propagandist Orwin through the city of Holsord, as you make tough decisions, befriend NPCs, and keep your family safe.

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The only game I played over Christmas was a touch of Apex Legends with some pals, but otherwise, all I did was watch an eclectic mix of anime and TV: Mob Psycho 100, Better Call Saul, and Somebody Feed Phil. Granted, my gaming tastes wax and wane over a year, with lengthy JRPG stints rolling inevitably into junk food like Assassin's Creed Valhalla. No matter what, my one constant is an FPS or 'competitive' game, I suppose. Games like Apex, or Warzone, or even Fortnite.

And yet, for whatever reason, I don't consider them as candidates for the Bestest Best games of any year. I might pour hundreds, possibly thousands of hours into them and they won't even make it into my personal list of absolute faves. That's reserved for games, not games.

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Persona fans are passionate about the series’ various party members. This is partly due to the dozens upon dozens of hours we spend with these schoolmates. Our digital anime friends. I carried Morgana the cat around my bag for a year, so he might as well be real. As expected, then, when Atlus released the results of a character popularity poll for Persona 5 recently, fans understandably had some strong reactions, particularly over the placing of best boy Ryuji.

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I’m sure Game Pass subscribers can relate to the pain of having a game leave the service, especially when you’re in the middle of a hefty playthrough. Your options are to binge the game in two weeks, buy the game outright, or cry. Unless you were playing Mortal Shell, in which case all you have to do is wait a month for the title to be re-added. The fantasy Soulslike had left the service on November 30th last year, but now it's back, this time with the Enhanced Edition.

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Overwatch 2's second season has been all about Greek mythology, with several characters receiving skins based on iconic Greek gods. But now that the festive winter event has wrapped up, Overwatch 2 is debuting its next limited-time event Battle for Olympus later today, and it’s reimagining seven characters’ abilities. The free-for-all deathmatch mode begins today and will be around until January 19th.

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The Gigabyte Aorus FO48U is one of the best-reviewed OLED monitors, with its 48-in LG OLED panel providing perfect blacks, gorgeous colours, near-instant pixel response times and fewer compromises than competing displays from the likes of LG, Dell and Samsung.

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The EVGA Z20 is part of a new breed of mechanical gaming keyboards that use optical switches, reducing the latency of inputs and raising longevity to seriously silly levels. It normally costs £130, but its price has been dropping steadily on Amazon UK - and now it's reached a new low-water mark of £52.79.

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Imagine a battle royale game, right, but instead of dropping into an arena with one life and no guns, you actually start with your loadout and can respawn as many times as you like while you fight over control points in 9v9 matches. Now stop imagining that, because it's exactly what you'll get to do when Control mode temporarily returns to Apex Legends next week as part of the Spellbound Collection Event. I think the idea's got legs.

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The problem with game of the year lists, if your feet are suitably submerged in the PC Gaming swamp, is that they don't tend to highlight anything you won't have already heard about. That's less true for ModDB's Mod of the Year Awards, which can shine a light on experiences that may have slipped under your radar.

This year's publicly voted for crop (as with most year's crops) was heavy on mods for old-school shooters, though mostly not too old-school for me to skip them. Second place was won by impressive S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call Of Pripyat overhaul Anomaly, while first place went to Half-Life 2 mod Entropy: Zero 2. Check 'em out below, along with the runner ups.

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Snazzy Stardew Valley-like town simulator My Time At Sandrock is running its first open beta for multiplayer next week, allowing owners of the game to hop into a separate multiplayer area set in a "semi-fictional" version of Sandrock's past that includes "compressed stories happening 50 years before single-player events". A pseudo prequel is an interesting form for a multiplayer mode to take, especially considering this is the pseudo sequel to My Time At Portia.

The beta will run from January 12th - January 20th, after which any progress you've made will be wiped.

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Before our Christmas break, I left you with a big winter decision, and I return to see that you have dynamic snow is better than seasonal events. Having hugely enjoyed recent real-world snow but not really done much in terms of seasonal events, yes, this feels correct. Well done. Now our hunt for the best thing resumes, with a choice between rill rill and cold steel. What's better: calling found phone numbers or giant swords?

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Robots! Flesh! Fleshy robots! Robo-worms! Swirly Big Hero 6 lookalikes! Upcoming sci-fi Soviet FPS Atomic Heart seems chock-full of weird, mostly robotic things that want to kill you, and its latest trailer shows off all the ray-traced reflections and particle effects you can admire as they do so. We've seen a lot of this before, but it doesn't half look pretty - and now at 4K, if you can handle that. I worry for my poor 1080p-tier GPU, though at least there's also freshly-announced DLSS 3 support.

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You can grab free games from every corner of the internet these days. Well, that's if you consider 'at no extra cost' free. One such place is Amazon Prime, where members can claim and keep six free games from now until the end of the month, with 2017 horror The Evil Within 2 leading the pack. The other freebies are Elsewhere, Breathedge, Beat Cop, Faraway 2, Lawn Mowing Simulator, and Chicken Police - Paint it RED!

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Steam's Winter Sale is still ongoing, with thousands of sales on games big and small. You only have ~24 hours left to nab yourself some good savings, so get at it! I've put down a handful of my own recommendations below, but I'm sure you can find other gems if you scroll for long enough. And of course, other giants like Elden Ring and the LEGO games are also heavily discounted.

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EA have dropped the ball. If you logged into Madden NFL 23 during at least a 22-hour period last week, there's a good chance your Connected Franchise Mode saves have been permanently corrupted. If that wasn't galling enough, the corrupting period (from Wednesday December 28th to Thursday 29th) came immediately after EA gave people the go ahead to log in.

EA have said they expect to recover 40% of the saves, the wallies.

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