Aska is a multiplayer survival game about building a settlement and farming, sailing and fighting giant monsters. So far, so Valheim. Aska's twist is that your settlement is also populated by a cadre of NPCs who you must protect and direct. There's an announcement trailer below ahead of closed alpha testing to begin at the end of the month.
Shadows Of Doubt invites skepticism. It's an open world mystery game set in a city in which every resident is simulated with daily schedules and routines, and it's developed largely by a single person. Shadows Of Doubt has also fought my skepticism so far with playable demos and, now, a new official trailer. It sure looks like it's doing the thing.
Following a nearly decade-long tradition, Dead Island 2 has been delayed. The co-op zombie smasher has slipped from its intended February 3rd 2023 release date and will now target release on April 28th 2023.
Hot on the heels of their Solium Infernum announcement at the end of September, the studio behind strategy RPG Armello have announced another new game they're working on during tonight's PC Gaming Show Preview stream. It's called Jumplight Odyssey (or "J-Lo" for short, as League Of Geeks studio director and co-founder Trent Kusters affectionately referred to it during an early preview presentation I attended last week), and it's a starship roguelite colony sim that has big 70s anime vibes. Specifically, Star Blazers, the English adaptation of Leiji Matsumoto's seminal Space Battleship Yamato, with which Jumplight shares a lot of its core visual DNA.
In it, you play as Princess Euphora, who's on a mission to save her people from the space conquering Zutopans, jumping from planet to planet in search of their Forever Star. It's not due to arrive in early access until sometime next year, but I've seen a sneak peek of it running in an early alpha build, and lemme tell ya. FTL, Rimworld and Two Point Hospital likers (bear with me on that last one) are going to want to take note of this.
I’m always amazed by the Minecraft building community. We’ve seen the likes of Tolkien’s Middle-earth, Breath Of The Wild, Disneyland, Game of Thrones' Westeros, and the Star Wars universe all built block by block - and that’s only a short list of what you can find online. The creations you can find are honestly kind of amazing, and Minecraft builders are constantly putting out new masterpieces for fellow Minecrafters and non-crafters to oggle at all year round.
Ever had a real-life experience where you’re something like 90% sure you’re actually in a horror film? Answers in the comments, please. Now, imagine that, but also someone asks you to pop your phone in a lockbox, you know, for safekeeping. Also, they say something like “You won’t need it where we’re going” and then do a murder wink at an imaginary camera. Something quite similar to this happens to our ill-fated documentary crew early in The Devil In Me. 'Aha!' I thought. Supermassive are being knowingly, playfully tropey again. Great. These games are best when they lean into the cheese like a drunk buffet guest, and I was pumped to watch it stumble around a schlocky murder party and get baked brie all over the elbows of its best tux.
For those yet to stick their snout into Supermassive’s truffle-trove of horror offerings, the basic premise of these narrative adventure games can best be summarised: What if shouting at the screen to try and stop idiot characters performing horror film no-nos actually worked? The formula was both invented and, miraculously, perfected in 2015’s Until Dawn. Since then, the studio have released three ‘episodic’ (although narratively independent) Dark Pictures titles, and The Quarry, all of which can best be summarised: Like Until Dawn, but not as good.
Look, we can all agree that Spore is not quite the game it could have been. In terms of the different eras that you coach your little creature species through, the game peaks early on in the cell stage. After that, everything goes a little downhill. But I'll tell you what: I've never, ever been so excited for a game to release, and I don't think I ever will again. I was losing sleep over it. And there's one simple reason: the Creature Creator.
If you’re going to go on the hunt for giant monsters then you'll need some serious technology to back you up. Upcoming hunting game Wild Hearts is packing plenty of what devs Omega Force are calling Karakuri, the magical flat-pack wooden kit the game’s warriors use to battle the various beasties in their fantasy take on medieval Japan. You can get a glimpse of some of the Karakuri battles that Wild Hearts contains in the trailer below, including a rather awesome looking monocycle and a furious monkey with a very nasty skin condition.
Tell me the phrase "exploring space in an interstellar gothic monastery" and honestly, I'm in. Sold. You've got me. That's the premise of The Banished Vault, an upcoming strategy game announced this week. You'll flee from solar system to solar system in a mobile monastery megacity, trying desperately to scavenge what you can before an all-annihilating pursuer catches up. The Banished Vault is the first game on the new indie publishing label of Bithell Games, but more interesting to me is that it's coming from the designer of Sun Dogs.
There’s some bad news for anyone who wants to prove themselves on the battlefield now Season 1 of multiplayer for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has begun, I’m afraid. Treyarch Studios have tweeted to announce that the Call Of Duty League Moshpit playlist mode is delayed due to some recently discovered issues. The Black Ops Cold War devs did say it would only be a “slight delay”, though, and that they’d provide an update on when the mode would be active as soon as they could.
As we leave the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness and plunge headlong into the seasons of frozen toes and unceasing rain, there aren't many good wistful staring days left in the calendar. But not to worry, because The Electronic Wireless Show podcast has collected some of the best games for having a virtual stare, so you can do it from the comfort of your own home.
This does necessitate us defining wistful first, although honestly I think I nail it out of the gate. Nate also provides this week's Cavern Of Lies mini-game, and a) he nearly beats me but b) he'd never heard of Thomas Was Alone, which is pretty funny.
Cloning isn’t the first thing that pops into my mind when I think about the sea. Crabs, oysters, and Captain Birdseye’s crispy fish fingers seem a bit more apt. Subaquatic sim Surviving The Abyss is diving straight into the human genepool when it enters early access on Steam on January 17th, though. The game’s coming from Rocket Flair Studios under the Paradox Arc label launched back in August.
There’ll be no more Overwatch 2 and World Of Warcraft in mainland China from January 23rd, 2023, Blizzard and NetEase have announced. Those are among the games that NetEase have handled publishing for within the country, but the two companies have failed to reach an agreement to extend their deal. To add insult to injury, NetEase’s president Simon Zhu has taken to LinkedIn to blame “a jerk” for the deal’s collapse.
We covered the LG C2 OLED recently, so I'll keep this brief: my personal favourite large-size gaming monitor stroke 4K 120Hz TV is down to £759 on Amazon, the lowest ever price we've seen on this model.
To get this price, you'll need to tick the £100 voucher box on the product page (or afterwards in the basket). This promotion is only possible for items shipped by Amazon direct, so check this if you don't see the voucher option!
A short teaser for the next horror game in Supermassive’s The Dark Pictures Anthology series has emerged on YouTube. Called Directive 8020, it seems like this one is going full sci-fi and heading all the way into outer space, Event Horizon style. The teaser video seems to have been taken from the end of an advance copy of its predecessor The Devil In Me, which is released tomorrow so keep your eyes peeled for our review. Supermassive will likely follow up with an official teaser after The Devil In Me's out. You can watch the leaked teaser below, if you’re not spooked by the possibility of spoilers.
The publishers of Doom Eternal have shared a strongly worded statement aimed at composer Mick Gordon, following Gordon’s recent outpouring on Medium. Bethesda tweeted their statement last night, calling Gordon’s lengthy post explaining his experience working on Doom Eternal’s soundtrack "a one-sided and unjust account of an irreparable professional relationship”. Gordon had replied to an open letter published on Reddit by id Software executive producer Marty Stratton, more than two years after Stratton’s letter was posted online.
Little or large? That's the choice you'll have to make between these two Dell monitor deals at Dell's US outlet, with Black Friday prices on a 24-in 1080p 240Hz monitor ideal for competitive gaming or a 32-in 4K 144Hz model with HDMI 2.1 that would suit a high-end gaming PC, PS5 or Series X. Both are incredibly good value after today's discounts, and well worth taking a look at if you're in the market for a monitor upgrade!
If you are among the rare unlucky people who don't experience pure exhilaration from attending virtual meetings on Microsoft Teams, good news: Microsoft have added a load of games to entertain you. From inside Teams, you can now play procrastination classics like Solitaire and Minesweeper as well as party games meant for oodles of people. You can even play co-op Minesweeper. And hey, if it happens inside Teams, no one can deny it's work. If anything, you're engaging with the business experience even harder. Be sure to mention that in your annual performance review.
Mechanical keyboards are brilliant. If you agree, you probably have one on your desk right now - and we have just the deal for you. SteelSeries' PrismCaps are an awesome upgrade over your stock keycaps, offering high-quality PBT construction, backlit legends and a beautiful two-tone 'pudding cup' design that looks great, especially with an RGB keyboard.
Normally a full keycap set of PrismCaps will cost you $30, but as an early Black Friday deal you can find these keycaps for 50% off - just $15. At that price, these are in impulse buy territory for me, as they'll provide an immediate uplift over your existing keycaps and last for decades.
Do you ever feel like multiplayer games would be better if other players were less abusive? Ubisoft and Riot Games are looking into training artificial intelligence to tackle bad behaviours within in-game chat, a research collaboration they’re calling Zero Harm In Comms. Ahead of their announcement today, I put some questions to Ubisoft La Forge’s executive director Yves Jacquier and Riot’s head of technology research Wesley Kerr to get some more insight on the joint project, and ask them exactly how their proposal will work.
Last time, you decided by a narrow margin that character creation building backstory is better than giant fungus. I understand why you made this decision, but I do not have to agree. This might become part of my own backstory. But we must continue, this week picking between something charmingly ever-changing and something perfectly static and reliable. What's better: dynamic music, or hex grids?
Final Fantasy 16’s producers have shared some more snippets about what to expect from Square Enix’s umpteenth outing in the JRPG series in an interview with Japanese site GameWatch. Nestling in among all the talk of Mother Crystals and summons is a comment from writer Kazutoyo Maehiro that players will get to control another character than just our boy Clive. It sounds like you’ll only get a short while to step into this other, as yet unnamed character’s shoes, however, as they’re only playable in the early game.
Cyberpunk 2077 may not live up to largely impossible expectations and promises, but I genuinely believe it's a great time. Now that Night City is playable, it's one of the most transportive video game cities out there, where cold calls from unknown numbers play into the fantasy of transforming from an upstart to a big shot who's name travels along its neon-lit back alleys.
So. Funny thing about our RTX 4080 review: I sort of don’t have time for it. We are amidst the busiest few weeks in PC gaming hardware for at least four years, with major product launches all round (from its rival Radeon RX 7900 XT to Intel’s 13th Gen CPUs) and a neverending stream of other components and peripherals that still need appraising. Also, I get the impression that if I don’t do more Black Friday stuff, senior ReedPop figures will show up at my flat and start taking my fingers with chisels.
Still, there will no doubt be potential graphics card upgrade-makers looking at the RTX 4080 to see if it’s more of a palatable purchase than the RTX 4090. That vanguard of Nvidia’s next-gen Ada Lovelace architecture is by far the most powerful GPU I’ve ever tested, and introduced a very cool new feature in DLSS 3, but with prices starting £1679 / $1599 it’s just not a sensible option. And since I did have an RTX 4080 show up at the last minute – Asus’ customised ROG Strix GeForce RTX 4080 OC Edition – I can at least provide some quick benchmarks and initial thoughts as to whether it’s a better deal.
One thing that I don't really talk about is how I am in fact a horrible little gremlin. I've never really graduated from storing my clothes on the floor like I did when I was 16 (every 12 weeks or so I tidy them all away and then start the process again). It is cold, so I have a pink blanket that is my work chair blanket, which I have had for at least five years and I cannot remember washing. I store things using a cunning system of my own devising i.e. the cellotape has been behind the left monitor on my desk for months, so by the transitive property that is now Where The Cellotape Goes. If I put the cellotape somewhere more logical, like in a drawer for keeping things like cellotape, then I would forget where the cellotape is.
The area in and around my desk is a nonsensical melange of things, a place that would probably deal you +12 psychological damage if you approached without the necessary preparation. But after playing A Little To The Left I can rebrand my desk as being a deliberate series of whimsical organising puzzles.
Two years ago I asked whether anyone had played retro FPS Chasm: The Rift and admitted that I’d never made it past the first level because I was roughly eight years old at the time, and it terrified me. Twenty years later I’ve returned to its re-release - and beaten the first level! And in the process, I’ve developed a particular appreciation for the old-school boomer shooter and its interesting quirks.
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In the Tom Waits song The Piano Has Been Drinking, the gravel-voiced pianist imitates a pissed-up lounge singer, slurring his way through nonsense lyrics, pounding on the keyboard, and occasionally hitting all of the wrong notes. Drinking too much wine and playing the piano badly and getting chased out of a hotel lobby is easy — most of us could do it — but it takes a degree of talent to sound entertainingly rubbish.
Likewise, Goat Simulator 3 is an expertly janky game about being a silly little goat and running around causing mischief. It’s a dumb, open-world simulator in which bugs have been promoted to features. Your goat is a horrible little kooky guy who mostly interacts with the environment through the medium of headbutts and licking. They’ll occasionally be catapulted into the sky by a spasmodic police car, or have their head irreversibly enlarged by a special machine, or bleat so hard at a beanstalk that it vanishes into thin air, but even during the most chaotic moments things feel entirely under control. As though the invisible hand of a very, very tired QA tester is always on the tiller.
A whole bunch of classic Civilization leaders are coming back for Civilization 6’s upcoming Leader Pass, devs Firaxis have confirmed. You can expect 18 more leaders spread out over six DLC pack releases between November 21st and March 2023, 12 of whom are new leaders. Another six will be “new takes” on existing leaders from previous games in the Civ series. The Leader Pass’ existence was leaked by accident last week when promo art for the DLC appeared on the mobile version of the Civ website, before it was removed.
Small form factor cases are very much in vogue, with some great options nowadays from the likes of Cooler Master, NZXT and Ssupd. Normally you're looking at around $50 to $150 for the case itself, with a further $70 to $100 for a matching SFX power supply, but today there's an excellent deal at Amazon US that offers a small form factor case and a 700W PSU for just $130 - after a sizeable $120 discount.
The case is the HYTE Revolt 3, and it's attracted rave reviews for its easy build qualities, great thermals and beautiful design, making it an easy recommendation at this discounted price.
Blizzard have postponed the release of a patch for Overwatch 2 so they can fix an undisclosed “critical issue” with the game. The patch had been scheduled for November 15th, and is meant to include hero balance adjustments for Zarya, Genji, Sombra, Kiriko, and D.va. The mid-season update should also see Mei return to the hero shooter after her two-week stint on the bench, Blizzard’s statement said, following issues with her icewall ability last month. You can now expect the patch to arrive tomorrow, November 17th, at 7pm GMT / 9pm CET / 11am PST. Not too long to wait, then.
Newly announced MMO shooter Project LLL is doing several unusual things. For one, it's set in a science fiction world in which post-apocalyptic South Korea, the 10th century Byzantine Empire, and a 23rd century future are all somehow colliding. For two, it was revealed yesterday not with a brief logo or a show-nothing cinematic trailer, but with a nine minute video comprehensively depicting the actual game. Watch it below.
Football has been banned and only one person can save it. No, it's not the self-important fantasy Cristiano Ronaldo dreams every night, it's the setup for adventure RPG Soccer Story. You need to travel around its colourful, Nintendo-inspired world, cajole people into kicking balls once more, and then defeat them on the pitch. Soccer Story also now has a release date: November 29th.
If you have a Game Pass subscription, I don't see why you would buy a game between now and the end of the year. Earlier this month, Football Manager 2023 came to the service, a game so all-consuming it barely leaves time to sleep. Now Microsoft have announced the remaining games to arrive in November, and as expected it includes the year's remaining big release, co-op shooter Warhammer 40K: Darktide, as well as several indie darlings.
Cyberpunk 2077's Phantom Liberty expansion will cost you real monies, CD Projekt Red have confirmed. Was there ever any doubt about this? I've no idea, but if you were previously living with the belief that substantial story additions to blockbuster games with voice acting by Keanu Reeves might be free, then I apologise for bursting your bubble.
Like so many games buried deep within my Steam library, I am unsure when I bought Painkiller: Black Edition or my exact reasons for doing so. I expect it was cheap in some kind of daily sale. Perhaps I was hungover, and hoped a small treat would ease my aching head. I vaguely recall booting it up once, perhaps a decade ago, and getting no further than its main menu. Painkiller was destined to rot in a digital purgatory of my own design forever, an unassuming icon that I would scroll past on my way to reinstall Destiny 2 for the 12th time without giving it a single thought. That is, until Valve finally sent me my Steam Deck.
Season 1 of Warner Bros. licensed brawler MultiVersus is over, and Season 2 has begun today with an update that adds more reward tiers to the battle pass. There’s also a new Big Head Mode for the game’s recently added Silly Queue, and an in-game store that brings all MultiVersus’ skins and characters into one place for the first time. Weirdly, but appropriately, the game now keeps score of baskets on the Space Jam map and tracks how far away you shoot from too, so have some fun netting three-pointers with that.
Just when I thought I had my top 10 games of 2022 sorted, Obsidian release Pentiment, forcing me to shred my former list and grab my quill and ink for a rewrite. It’s an odd pairing on paper - a detective thriller about a string of grisly murders set in the quaint countryside of 16th-century Bavaria - but, surprisingly, this coupling is a match made in heaven.
Its captivating story of conspiracy and murder is as rich and dense as its setting, and it's clearly made by a passionate team who have a deep love for the period. Playing Pentiment feels like riffling through the painterly pages of a medieval manuscript, but instead of finding the written gospel of saints and sinners, there are tales of angry farmers, greedy landowners, church scandals, religious turmoil, and murder. Fundamentally though, it's a historical tale about faith and truth, and the lengths that people are willing to go to preserve them.
After finishing the full version of Vampire Survivors, my fingers are limbered up for a livelier arcade walk-o-shooter. I've turned to Brotato, a game whose demo I enjoyed in the Steam Next Fest, and which launched into early access in September. I say with great affection: it feels (and looks) like it could have been a Flash game on Newgrounds. Plus it's only £4.
Jumpship are only just releasing their first game today, alien invasion dad-venture Somerville, but they’ve been snapped up by publishers Thunderful. The small studio based in Guildford will still be free to pursue its own creative projects, continuing to focus on story-driven games such as Somerville. Co-founder of Jumpship and former CEO of Playdead Dino Patti will become Thunderful’s Strategic Advisor, but remains with the studio.
We are witnessing a three-horse race to the death of Twitter. Will Twitter's technical infrastructure collapse after the staff who know how to maintain it are fired, leaving the would-be God Emperor of mankind rotting upon his failing Cobalt Throne? Will Twitter shut down due to financial collapse? Will people simply leave Twitter? All I know is, I'll miss the Twitter bots which go down to collateral damage, the automated machines which tirelessly post art, poetry, jokes, stories, and probably dog photos. Here are some of my favourites!