I knew I was always going to love Slipways from the moment I first saw it. That's a fairly rare thing for me. Enough games have failed to deliver on their promises over the years that I've learnt to be cautious for the most part. But I let my guard down with Slipways, because the premise was so simple. Simple, and beautiful.
As November 25th heaves into view, it may be time to turn your attention too… nyuhhh, something you were literally already looking at. The best early Black Friday gaming monitor deals are growing in number, so if you’ve been squinting at blurry, dark approximations of what you think might be your PC games, it's prime time to look into discounted upgrades.
A jaded private investigator teams up with her 12-year-old kid detective self to solve a mystery in The Grown-Up Detective Agency, a lovely bit of free interactive fiction. Bell Park doesn't know how or why her perfectly precocious child self is here, now, but who better to help crack a case involving her former childhood best friend? And who better to offer fresh perspective on her adult life? It's a funny little buddy cop story, and it made my morning.
An official deep dive video has confirmed that FIFA 23's Ultimate Team will not get a dedicated World Cup mode during the tournament, which begins on November 20th. Starting with Season 2 on November 11th though, the international football competition is being represented in FUT with plenty of seasonal gubbins instead. The World Cup is, of course, also coming to the main game from November 9th in single-player and online Tournament mode. You can watch the FIFA 23 World Cup deep dive video below.
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Sometimes, I just want to wander around an aesthetically pleasing landscape with nice music doing menial tasks - and that’s exactly what I got from Paradise Marsh, a lovely little wildlife game from LazyEti. I’ve been playing some pretty intense games recently, throttling my game controller as I run away from literal waves of rats in A Plague Tale: Requiem and shifting my detective brain into overdrive grappling with the excellent mysteries in The Case of the Golden Idol.
I desperately need a game to sink into, basically Lo-fi Hip Hop Beats to Relax/Study To: The Game, or the equivalent of a deep body massage but directly onto my brain. Paradise Marsh has been the exact tonic I’ve needed, a chill bug-collectathon where you wander around pleasant, pastel landscapes discovering lots of fun little curiosities. It’s wonderful.
Frosty damage hero Mei has been removed from play in Overwatch 2 for the next fortnight while Blizzard address bugs affecting her ice wall ability. Unlike when Bastion was disabled because of his glitching ultimate, however, Mei does at least have a return date pencilled in. Blizzard are aiming to get her back in Overwatch 2 for November 15th, when the game’s next scheduled patch drops. That still might slip, though. What? I had to get an ice crack in.
Just over a week ago, we launched a new introductory offer for the RPS supporter programme that chops the price of our monthly Standard tier down to just £1 / $1 for your first month. This primarily gets you the ad-free version of the site (alongside some other small quality of life bonuses), but after listening to your feedback, it's clear that the thing you really want to sample is the exclusive Premium-tier supporter articles we write alongside our regular games coverage. So we're doing just that.
For the month of November, we'll be making a selection of supporter articles available to all Standard subscribers. We've also made a bunch of Sin Vega's indie-focused Scout Report posts available to all Standard subscribers right now, too, as a little extra thank you for signing up. And to all our existing Premium tier supporters, we've got something for you as well. As an even bigger thank you for all your continued support, we're doing a bumper crop of supporter articles this month, with the aim of publishing one each day of the week for the whole of November. But wait... there's more!
Avast your behind, hen, for a new month means a new lineup of PC Game Pass games. Microsoft today laid out the comings and goings for the first half of November, headlined by Return To Monkey Island. The revival of the revered point 'n' click adventure game series will hit Game Pass next week, and until then you can tide yourself over with modernistic adventures from more of Telltale's The Walking Dead. Read on for the rest of the games coming in the next fortnight, including some on their launch day, and those sadly leaving too.
Mount & Blade 2 Colon Bannerlord is disappointing. I'm not saying it's bad. In fact, it's overall pretty good, but too much of Bannerlord's design is exactly the same as it was in Warband, and the bulk of what's been added is extraneous strategy guff that doesn't meaningfully improve it at all.
In between leading your warband around its 2D map and stabbing dudes alongside your men in 3D battles, you can now make weapons by commandeering local workshops (I guess?) to break down and recombine spare swords. You can only do a few per day, so the pattern is to repeatedly click "make charcoal", then leave to rest your tired little arms and repeat. I could probably get a more ~optimal build~ by smithing a megasword, but the one I have already does what I need. You can’t equip your army, even though that was in the very ropey Freeman. The end result is another axe in a game where you'll discard hundreds of them. You can't do armour, a huge waste considering the variety available, and that you spend vastly more time seeing your outfits than looking at anyone's pommel.
The reworked version of fantasy world sim Dwarf Fortress finally arrives on Steam on December 6th, devs Bay 12 and publisher Kitfox Games have announced. The game’s also coming to Itch.io too. It will introduce pixel art graphics, tutorials, and new music and sound effects into the previously ASCII-only world of dwarven delving. You can watch the release date trailer below to see just how different this version actually is.
Myst developers Cyan have revealed they’re working on a “from-the-ground-up” remake of its sequel, Riven. The original puzzle adventure was released on PC on October 31st 1997, and Cyan made their remake announcement exactly 25 years later. The new version of Riven will adopt the Myst remake’s freely 3D movement, but there are very few details yet other than that. Watch the very short announcement teaser below.
At least two more Marvel superhero games are coming from EA as part of a long-term deal with Marvel. We already knew about Motive Studios’ single-player Iron Man action adventure game, announced in September, but the others are still just an amorphous blob of creativity that probably gives you the proportionate strength and speed of a badger on physical contact. The revelation that EA and Marvel are forging some kind of Marvel Gaming Universe may delight or frustrate you, depending on how fed up you are with the MCU.
The AMD Ryzen 7 5800X is a good gaming CPU with better content creation performance than the more expensive 5800X3D - even though it's slower than the X3D in gaming. Still, at its price point it hits a punch, and the boffins at HUKD have spotted a good deal for the 5800X at CCL. There, you can find the 5800X for £235 when you use code AFF15 with some nifty extras: a 64GB Micro SD card and a code for Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves.
The way it works is pretty simple - you need to get your total basket over £250 for the AFF15 code to work. So, pick anything on the store that's more than £5.51, like this Micro SD card, add it to your basket alongside the 5800X, then use the AFF15 code to bring the price down to the £235 we quoted. The game code will come with your order, no opt-in necessary, from what we understand.
Logitech makes some of the best mainstream racing wheels and pedals on the market, but the cost of entry is still fairly steep: £269 for the PC/PlayStation-compatible G29 and the same for the PC/Xbox G920 variant. Today though, Currys in the UK are offering £80 off on either model when you use code WHEEL80, dropping the price down to £189.
I guarantee you’ve never played a more elegant puzzle game than Gorogoa. This tile-based adventure is gorgeous with a capital G. Its story, puzzle mechanics, and visuals: Gorgeous. Gorgeous. Gorgeous.
The game is structured into four square panels in a two-by-two grid. Players can move around each of the squares to solve puzzles or click inside each square to interact with the scene. This is where it gets cool: Any object you see that has some sort of frame around it - doorways, paintings, windows, photographs - you can actually move through them and discover new areas to explore.
Canny Overwatch 2 players have reported more success in obtaining skins by grinding for in-game gold in Blizzard’s long-running fantasy MMO World Of Warcraft and converting that into Battle.net balance than by completing weekly challenges in the hero shooter itself. The trick involves trading gold farmed in WOW for tokens that convert to Battle.net balance, which can then be spent on Overwatch 2 cosmetics. It’s a cunning ploy that speaks volumes about player frustration with the multiplayer shooter’s new free to play mechanics, a situation that might still change if Blizzard listen to results of a recent survey.
A hugely impressive new mod launched on Saturday for Elite, as in the first Elite, from the eighties, for BBC Micro computers. As its name suggests, the Elite Universe Editor lets you create your own space in the seminal spaceship sim, placing planets and stars and stations and tweaking ships and such. For this to come after almost 40 years...! PC gaming is an endless delight.
Immortality developer Sam Barlow has spoken about being contacted by electric car manufacturer Tesla for the opportunity to put interactive movie Her Story into their vehicles for no compensation other than “exposure”. Barlow’s comments emerged on Twitter in response to Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s takeover of the social media platform, specifically, the suggestion that Twitter users may soon have to pay for blue tick verified status.
Overwatch 2’s lead hero designer has revealed Blizzard are working on new support heroes for the game as one of their “long-term focuses”. The admission came as part of a response to players asking for more support characters in Overwatch 2, as there are currently only eight of them to pick from right now, versus the ten tanks and whopping 16 damage characters in its overall roster. It's not just the number of supports Blizzard have been thinking about either. Over the weekend, it also emerged the Overwatch 2 devs are sending out a survey to current players, with emphasis on the game’s store and the divisive battle pass introduced when the series went free to play. The developments follow on from hero balance changes being brought forward from season two to mid-November.
Look, it's all well and good wanting to get scared on Halloween or whatever. But some of us live the horror life every day of the year. We seek out spooks even in the heat of summer, and know there's no better mid-winter warmer than a good ghost story. So what are we to do to make this occasion still feel special?
I know common wisdom considers Halloween to be "Goth Christmas", but in my experience goths bloody love Christmas as much as the next person. They are, however, far more likely to be agnostic on the subject of Valentine's Day. Yes, I have spent far too long thinking about this, but I'm determined to stand by my conclusions, thereby dubbing this holiday "Goth Valentine's". Which leads me neatly into the purpose of this feature: games that let you date the monster.
Putting together this list of the best early Black Friday SSD deals has proven trickier than expected, and not because Black Friday is still three weeks away. It’s because so many SSDs are subjected to dirty retailer tricks, mainly raising prices for the sole purpose of dropping them back down and calling it a “deal”. Naw, sir, not falling for that. What you’ll find here, then, are SSD offers with genuine discounts only – and with both lightspeed-fast NVMe SSDs and affordable SATA SSDs on early sales, there's something for all kinds of PC builds.
Putting together this list of the best early Black Friday SSD deals has proven trickier than expected, and not because Black Friday is still three weeks away. It’s because so many SSDs are subjected to dirty retailer tricks, mainly raising prices for the sole purpose of dropping them back down and calling it a “deal”. Naw, sir, not falling for that. What you’ll find here, then, are SSD offers with genuine discounts only – and with both lightspeed-fast NVMe SSDs and affordable SATA SSDs on early sales, there's something for all kinds of PC builds.
Horror games, you say? Feh, hardware can be scary too. One time I turned on a power supply and it literally went up in a cloud of smoke. Last year I cut my hand on a CPU cooler radiator. And did you see how dusty my PC was before I cleaned it? That’s basically body horror.
Apparently ignorant of their products’ ability to frighten and maim, PC gaming hardware makers sometimes try to manufacture an imposing aura by giving them big, bad names. You’ve probably seen these already: keyboards named after swords, laptops christened as mythical animals and the like. But some go full spooky, consulting the Halloween kids’ costume pantheon of creatures and creepers. Is an eerie moniker enough to strike fear, even before it has the chance to cause minor injuries or force you into a tedious warranty replacement process? Let’s find out.
Management at a hotel that appears in the Amsterdam missions of new Activision Blizzard military shooter Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 have said they regret the hotel's “unwanted involvement” in the game. The Conservatorium Hotel, a five-star gaff that describes itself as the “living room of Amsterdam” on its website, hasn’t taken too kindly to being shot to pieces in digital form. Despite a name change, it’s still recognisably the same establishment.
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's pick is a lot less comprehensive than usual because I'm having some Twitter troubles which I hope are tech issues and not policy changes, but I guess we'll see. Still! My eye was caught by some good and fancy things, including Halloweenie bits like an armed squirrel spooking people and lots of red fluids.
I am, generally speaking, a horror fan, but this year for Halloween I've niched down on a particular topic and it has sort of accidentally taken me away from horror. Hm. Too late now! Plus, witches are totally Halloween fodder - and they're one of my key trends for games at the moment. Video games are lousy with both current and upcoming witches these days.
It makes sense. They've already got brilliant marketing. Few Halloween-y sights are more iconic than a pointy hat, a black cat, and a sihouetted figure flying in front of the moon on a broomstick. The witches I've collected here are definitely going to get you in the pumpkin spirit, even if they manage to run through most other genres except horror... Look, Halloween is mostly about sweets and dressing up these days anyway (and by the way, I am livid that I've not got any parties to go to this year, because my hair is exactly the right length to do a perfect Carmy Berzatto costume).
As part of the game’s 1.05 patch, DC bad boy Black Adam finally joins the roster of fighters in Warner Bros. licensed brawler MultiVersus today. Adam is a bruiser and launches with an unlockable skin modelled after his classic comic book look, which nabs players extra candy during the Halloween event running through to the end of Multiversus’s first season on November 15th. Today’s 1.05 update sees an arcade mode added to the game too, along with a new casual Growth Spurt mode.
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The original Butterfly Soup is named for its ending monologue. Its four main characters, Diya, Min-seo, Noelle, and Akarsha, use the liquefaction of a caterpillar inside a cocoon as a metaphor for the awkward teenage growing phase they’re all in. In the sequel, set a few months later, they find a butterfly with a crumpled wing. It’s a victim of a false spring, having emerged from its cocoon too early due to unseasonably warm weather. One of them worries that they are like the injured insect; forever marked by their early life. And it’s this that Butterfly Soup 2 digs into much more deeply than its predecessor.
If you’re not familiar with the original, Butterfly Soup is a visual novel about four Asian girls navigating high school in the late 2000s, playing baseball, and falling in love. On replaying it to get ready for this review, it made me cry at least twice and laugh out loud a bunch more. It’s pay what you want with no minimum price, and takes about 2-3 hours. I’m also going to spoil parts of it, so go play it already.
Boo! Did I startle you? GOOD. I'm currently competing for the title of trickster-in-chief here at RPS, and I'm never going to have a chance of receiving this promotion unless I reach my daily scare quota. If only there was a way I could package together a collection of scary stories as told my colleagues and claim them all as my own.
Aha! I got you again! They don't call me the Merry Trickster Of UK PC Gaming Websites for nothing! You've been Halloween'd, my friends! To celebrate spooky season, I gathered seven members of the RPS treehouse to tell me about one moment from a PC game that scared them the most. The results were exactly as I expected. Some recounted events in classic horror games that shocked them senseless, whereas others told me anecdotes about games that most wouldn't consider scary at all. The result is seven tales of spooks that are sure to chill your bones this All Hallows' Eve.
Sundays are for moving forwards a bit, so your backpack doesn't get trapped as tube doors snap shut. Before you shuffle, let's read this week's best writing about games (and game related things).
The Witcher's third season hasn't yet released on Netflix, but the streaming service today confirmed that the show has been renewed for a fourth season. They also announced that Henry Cavill, who has played protagonist Geralt for the first three season, won't be returning. He's being replaced for season 4 by Liam Hemsworth.
The sequel to 2017 visual novel smash hit Butterfly Soup is out now. It's set a few months after the original game and continues to tell the story of "gay Asian-American teens playing baseball and falling in love". It's also, just like the first game, free to download and play - although you can also name your price and pay $5 for a digital artbook over on Itch.
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Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2's launch hasn't gone according to plan, with players reporting various crash bugs. Infinity Ward have already released a patch to address some of the issues, but at the time of writing the game has only 58% positive reviews on Steam.
Boo! Ha ha, don't worry, reader dear! That was just me, not any sort of goblin, boglin, or nilbog—this time...! I do always enjoy Halloweentime, and not just because I own a litre of movie-grade fake blood. It's nice to enjoy this sort of stuff as the days draw shorter, and after this we get to launch into Christmastime and 24/7 Hallmark Channel movies (pro tip: look for ones with Andrew W Walker or Cameron Mathison, they're usually good). But first, what are you playing this weekend? We do have some offbeat Halloween lists if you need inspiration. And here's what we're clicking on!
Overwatch 2 developers Blizzard previously said that players would need to wait until season two for balance changes, but they've now changed their minds. "There are some Hero balance adjustments we’d like to make sooner," and it includes tweaks to heroes D.va, Zarya, Genji, and Sombra.
Sega announced last year that they intended to create what they called a "super game", a huge project with global appeal which could cost as much as $1 billion to develop. In their latest company report, Sega offered an update, saying that they're targeting relese by March 2026 and hope the in-development project will appeal to streamers.
Welcome to the very first RPS 100: Reader Edition. You've already read our RPS 100 list of our favourite PC games of all time (and if you haven't, do go and read Part One and Part Two when you've got a mo), but now it's your turn. You've cast your votes, I've counted them all up, and here we are. These are your top 100 favourite video games of all time.
Halo Infinite's winter update will finally bring network co-op and the Forge Beta to the drips-and-drabs scifi shooter. While those are large, long-coveted features, a new trailer focuses on a couple of smaller additions: two new multiplayer maps, and a new mode, Covert One Flag. And one of the maps looks particularly lovely.
Yesterday, F1 Manager 2022 developers Frontier told the community that the game's next update "the last significant update that addresses player-reported feedback, or suggested changes and additions." Players were upset that updates addressing their concerns seemed to be coming to an end two months after F1 Manager 2022's release.
Today, Frontier called the situation "crossed wires", and said that there are "multiple updates currently in the pipeline, focused on addressing the most important topics raised by the community."
