Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Last night, I caught up with a dear old friend the classic way: over a round of Left 4 Dead 2. Valve's cooperative FPS is still a great hangout game after 13 years but while waiting for my pal to log on, I did think I might refresh it by browsing the Steam Workshop and installing some popular mods. Turns out, modders have made lots of anime girls and VTuber avatars to replace friends, enemies, and even guns. What an experience! It is startling to discover that the blue-haired anime approaching you is not a teammate but, in fact, a vomit-filled Boomer.

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In typically British, self-deprecating fashion, I’m happy to admit I’m not very good at Soulslike games, the massively successful Elden Ring included. That’s why I raised an intrigued eyebrow while sipping my seventeenth cup of tea today, after I saw Twitch streamer Luality playing FromSoftware’s latest with just a drawing tablet. Taking on the challenge with admirable confidence, Luality used a virtual keyboard on the tablet’s left side for movement, and bound strokes of the stylus to attack its enormous monsters.

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There's a particular battle in the first chapter of Tactics Ogre: Reborn that I've been banging my head against all week. It's an uphill fort siege where you're facing off against an evil necromancer who's shooting down powerful, magical fireballs at you from above, alongside his never-ending army of undead skelly archers. The challenging terrain alone would be a test of anyone's mettle in this tough, turn-based strategy game, especially when trying to parse all the different heights of its grid-based map. But having every enemy unit resurrect themselves after three turns unless you exorcise them with a single-use item or the lone Priest you've just recruited (who you may or may not have neglected to bring into battle with you) on top of all that? That smacks of the kind of late-game tomfoolery that more modern games of this ilk would normally save until their final acts.

Tactics Ogre: Reborn, on the other hand, likes to make its players sweat early. It was, after all, forged in the fires of the mid-90s SNES era, and looking back at old GameFAQ guides from 2010 (when it was remade for the PSP), it's clear this fight was just as much of a roadblock back in the day as it is now. Think of it as what yer lad Genichiro was to Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice - a hard, and often gruelling endurance test of everything you'd learned so far, but one that would ultimately set you up for the rest of the game upon claiming victory. I'm still not quite there yet, but having spent six hours noodling around the rest of Reborn's opening chapter, this granddaddy of Japanese strategy RPGs sure does hold up in the cold light of 2022.

Another day, another handy update for Valve’s Steam Deck handheld PC. This time, it’s a beta update that lets you peek inside your Deck without busting the device open. So if you were thinking of hanging your Steam Deck up like a piñata today and whacking it with a big stick to see what goodies are hiding in there, just grab the client beta update instead. You can opt in by heading to Settings, selecting System, and then the Steam Update Channel.

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Frosty survival game The Long Dark is releasing the first part of its paid expansion, Tales From The Far Territory, in December. The expansion is part of devs Hinterland Studio’s efforts to make further improvements to the game’s Survival Mode, and will be split into multiple releases over twelve months. I’m getting a Stranger Things season four vibe from what’s been shown so far. You can see for yourself by watching the short, and quite dark, teaser trailer below.

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Starting today, anyone who signs up for a Standard Rock Paper Shotgun subscription can get their first month for £1 / $1. This gets you ad-free browsing, access to our (sort of) monthly Letter From The Editor (that's me), as well as discounts on RPS merch and a lovely purple Supporter flair when you comment on an article. It also means videos won't auto-play when you open a new page. It's nice and peaceful this side of the fence, so why not give it a go and see what you think?

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Today marks the start of Overwatch 2’s first double XP weekend, one of three lined up for the hero shooter before the end of season one. You’ll be able to net your heroes twice the match XP until October 24th, starting at 7pm BST/8pm CEST/11am PDT today and ending the same time on Monday, but the bonus doesn’t apply to daily and weekly challenges. Blizzard have also revealed that Overwatch 2’s first seasonal event, Halloween Terror, begins on October 25th.

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Resident Evil Re:Verse was meant to launch in May 2021 and had its first beta in April of that year. The multiplayer mode for owners of Resident Evil Village then slipped and slipped again. It's now due for release on October 28th, and during this evening's Resident Evil Showcase developers Capcom announced an early access beta for the game that will start on Monday, October 24th.

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About three years after I graduated, I returned to the city where I went to University. Immediately after arriving, I embarked on an early-evening pilgrimage of sorts, my only goal to wander once familiar paths in an attempt to capture a spark of the life I no longer lived. As I ambled past houses that used to be homes, local haunts and darkened lecture halls, it was the differences that stood out the most. Pubs with names I didn’t recognise. Shops in locations that were more convenient than the ones I used to rely upon. Huge buildings that had seemingly sprung out of deserted scrubland. The city felt intimate yet alien. I was both a stranger and a local, a foreigner in a place I’d once adored.

I was thinking about this experience a lot when I was invited to play a short hands-on demo of Capcom’s upcoming Resident Evil 4 remake. Here is a remake of my favourite game ever made, a title I have replayed countless times in the 17 years since its original debut, and all I can do is think about the little things. Tiny alterations that feel much larger when surrounded by something so immediately recognisable. This was the same Resident Evil 4 I’ve always known, but one that feels bigger, better and more dynamic. I left my session excited to play more, cautiously optimistic that Capcom may be in the process of crafting their best remake to date.

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Resident Evil Village's Winters' Expansion includes the Shadow Of Rose DLC, a new story in which Ethan Winters' now-teenage daughter returns to Lady Dimitrescu's castle. It also includes a new third-person mode for the base game, and it's this for which there is now a demo.

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'Tis the season to add zombies to your video game. Two Point Campus is the latest to get into the Halloween action with a new update, out now, which adds pumpkins, shambling undead, and a new challenge mode.

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Street Fighter 6's beta ran from October 7th until the 10th - or at least it was meant to. Some cheeky players found a way to keep playing the beta after it ended, prompting Capcom to release a new update earlier today to delete it from player's hard drives.

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Football Manager 2023's early access beta is live now. As per usual, pre-ordering the latest iteration of the long-running management sim gives you access to the beta, which is nearly-final version of the full game. It's 20% cheaper than the full game will be when it releases on November 8th, and it's available from Steam and the Epic Game Store.

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A while back I wrote about Codenames, an excellent board game with a free browser-based version that made for some great long-distance family time during lockdown. Now, dear reader, I return once again with a free browser-based game that's perfect for long-distance fun. But this time, it's just about the funniest game I can remember playing. It's called Gartic Phone.

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Square Enix have released a new cinematic (with a teeny sliver of gameplay) trailer for Final Fantasy 16 today, and crikey, there's a heck of a lot of summons action in there. Technically, the summons are called Eikons in this version of Squeenix's long-running JRPG series, and from the looks of the trailer, you'll be battling as them directly in big, dramatic battle sequences. A bit like in Final Fantasy X, just with an infinitely higher number of enormous explosions. Let's take a look, shall we?

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It’s that time of week again, as the Epic Games Store rotates its free games and grants us two fresh things to play for nowt. If we don’t own them already, that is. There’s a strong chance that you might have already picked up either or both of this week’s freebies. One is Bethesda’s first instalment of their take on the retro-futuristic post-apocalypse in Fallout 3. There’s also Shiro Games’ ode to classic console RPGs, the Evoland series.

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As a James who’s always forgetting things, I’m probably the main target audience of the Silent Hill 2 remake – one of yesterday’s many Silent Hill game and film announcements. Nevertheless, I wouldn’t have expected such high demands from its PC system requirements, which have appeared on Steam.

Highlights include the AMD Radeon RX 5700 and Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 – a former flagship! – listed among the minimum specs, alongside a 12GB RAM requirement, and Windows 11 as the recommended OS. Those with a GeForce RTX graphics card could get some performance help, though, as the requirements’ notes say that meeting the recommended spec will allow for 4K resolution “using DLSS or similar technology”. That’s not quite a formal confirmation of Nvidia DLSS support, but strongly indicates it, maybe along with similar upscaling systems like AMD FSR or Intel XeSS.

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Overwatch 2 hero Bastion has been missing-in-action for over a week now, but Blizzard have now set a date for his return, alongside fellow missing hero Torbjorn. In an update on the Overwatch forums, Blizzard confirmed that the missing characters should be returning to the game on October 25th, alongside the Junkertown map, which has also recently been disabled due to graphical performance bugs. Their return coincides with the game’s next planned update.

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The Intel Core i5-13600K fills a familiar role in the latest 13th Gen/Raptor Lake series of CPUs. There are chips in this family with many more cores and even higher clock speeds, like the £700 Core i9-13900K, but this is the one most upgrade-seekers will probably look to first: a mid-range champion to take over from the Core i5-12600K.

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Valve have updated their Steamworks documentation for developers with a commitment to refresh their suggestions for regional pricing more often. This change in frequency is an effort to reflect global and local economic conditions affecting regions. While the company reminds developers that they are free to set their own prices in different regions, Steam provides regional pricing suggestions based on the price of a game in US dollars. Those recommendations should be updated more regularly, Valve said.

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I watched a badminton match where one player was so dominant, his opponent looked like he'd largely given up. The commentator said, "Yep, the belief has all but vanished", as it panned over a guy who simply wanted to be anywhere but that court. At the time, I'd already sunk some hours into Gotham Knights and taken a quick break from the action to keep tabs on a tournament and collect my thoughts. But as I turned away from the telly to dive back in for another session, I couldn't help but think that if the same commentator had been in the room with me too, they would've repeated themselves. I'd simply had enough.

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In every story where a wish is granted - whether by some primary-coloured goon sticking out a lamp, a creepy piece of fairground entertainment, or a piece of cursed bushmeat - there's always an ironical sting in the tale. You wish for health and it turns out you can't die. You wish for a personal chef, but it turns out he only does offal. You wish everything you touch to turn to gold, then it'll turn out there's no way to turn it off - or it kicks in just as you go to the toilet, that kind of thing. You should, as the saying goes, be careful what you wish for.

I'm sorry I wished for New Tales From the Borderlands, everyone.

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As we reported earlier this week, alongside The Sims 4 officially becoming a free-to-play game, Maxis also gave a sneak peek of Project Rene, the next incarnation of the Sims franchise. We're all calling it The Sims 5, but the vagueness of the reveal means it could be some kind of... platform? MMO? And personally I think 4 being free-to-play means bets could be off on it being a new standalone. But what do I know? It's very early for Maxis to be showing it off, a point hammered home by VP of franchise creative Lyndsay Pearson as she talked about it. And the fact that it is so early makes it look even more like a bid to stop player eyes wandering over to newer pastures...

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Genshin-alike gacha MMO Tower Of Fantasy hops onto Steam today, and brings the new realm of Vera to the game. This desert area holds a floating pyramid that’s home to a bustling cyberpunk metropolis known as Mirroria, and the new flame-powered character Ruby. You can check out more of what’s coming with the Vera update by watching the trailer below.

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Hello folks. Sorry to have to start another Letter From The Editor with an apology about how terribly late it is, but honestly, I'm not entirely sure where the time has gone. One minute it was June, and then suddenly... almost November!? I'm sorry everyone, truly. It has, in part, been another period of almost being able to announce some things, but also not quite. We're still working to get our proposed RPS Game Club off the ground, for example, but finding a good quality source of regular game keys for it has proven to be an elusive endeavour, to say the least. I'd imagine this will probably be a project for 2023 now (a delay, how quaint!), given how close we are to the end of the year, but I'll keep you posted as soon as we've got more to share on it.

Things that are happening though, is the return of The RPS 100, which you may have seen us post about earlier in the week. This is our annual countdown of our favourite PC games of all time, as voted for by the RPS Treehouse. This year's list is quite different to the one we did last year - we do, after all, have pretty much a brand-new team in place now - and I'm looking forward to sharing that with you all next week. We even got our art team to make a special fancy header image for it this year and everything! Plus, if you were one of the people put out by our (accidental) glossing over of a certain immersive sim last year, you really won't want to miss it.

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After years of rumours and leaks, including by Konami themselves earlier today, we finally have official confirmation of future Silent Hill games. The Silent Hill 2 remake from Bloober Team is real! The developers of Observation are making a new Silent Hill game! There's a third new game called Silent Hill f! Step below for the full list of what's kicking off in that foggy town.

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Released seven years ago, Warhammer 40,000: Regicide offers a kind of far future murder-chess. Although really that should be "offered". Earlier today, Regicide's developers announced on Steam that the game had been taken off sale and its servers closed down. In the brief announcement, developers Hammerfall Publishing say only that they "will be venturing into new and exciting projects in the future."

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The Crysis Remastered Trilogy is heading to Steam next month, a little over a year after it first launched via the Epic Games Store. The pack does what you'd expect it to: takes Crytek's three scifi shooters and spruces them up with modern rendering trickery.

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QA testers at Blizzard Albany have won the right to vote on whether to form a union. The decision comes after arguments were made to the US National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). The employees, organising under the name GWA Albany, tweeted that the vote would take place a month from today.

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Deep Rock Galactic is a game about going to work, assuming your job is to extract space minerals from a shattered planet occupied by trillions of giant, murderous bugs. If it isn’t, it’s not too hard to pretend, and DRG’s another-day-at-the-office wit lends it a likeable levity that’s partly why I’ve played it almost every week for a year and a half.

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The last time we saw Amicia and Hugo de Rune in A Plague Tale: Innocence, the two homeless orphans were escaping the clutches of the Inquisition, trying desperately to find a cure for the cursed Prima Macula in Hugo’s blood. They were also fighting for their lives against thousands of bloodthirsty rats eager to devour them. These two have lived through more danger and trauma than anyone should have in a thousand lifetimes, and after the first game’s sort-of happy-ish ending, it got me thinking: when will these kids ever catch a break?

Turns out the answer is never. Asobo’s follow-up A Plague Tale: Requiem is just as gory and bleak as its predecessor and as the siblings continue to battle through a violent world that wants them dead, they'll both face difficult moral decisions in the name of survival. Oh, and there are more rats. Like, a lot more rats.

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Konami might have just accidentally leaked the reveal of one of the new Silent Hill games due to be announced later this evening. Earlier this week, the publisher announced there would be a Silent Hill Transmission stream taking place today, October 19th, which would provide "the latest updates" on the series. At the time, there were no streaming links available, but in setting their YouTube page live this morning, Konami jumped the gun and included some of the game names being revealed. And it's the big one, folks. Spoilers within, obvs.

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Activision Blizzard have confirmed the pre-load times for Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, detailing when pre-order folks can start downloading the game's campaign as part of its early access period, as well as when the rest of us mortals can start pre-loading in time for its release next week. Modern Warfare 2 doesn't release in full until Friday October 28th, but folks who pre-ordered the game can start playing the campaign as early as tomorrow, October 20th - and pre-loading begins this evening.

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Last time, you decided that a game within the game just for funsies is better than temporarily piloting an enemy. It was another close result but ultimately you couldn't resist larking about, and I can't fault you for that (though if I could hop up on your shoulders and Ratatouille you into voting otherwise, maybe I would). This week, I'm asking you to pick between two very different types of movement. What's better: slide kicks or relocatable buildings?

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The Sims series has always had a vibrant modding community, but for the first time Maxis are taking steps to make it easier. In today's Sims Summit stream, they announced that they were partnering with CurseForge to create a "moderated, curated space" for The Sims 4 players to download mods and custom content.

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It's the middle of the month, which means it's time for another batch of Game Pass games to be detailed. For a start, today sees the day one release of A Plague Tale: Requiem, the followup to everyone's favourite Middle Ages ratventure. There are similarly big games to come before the end of the month, however, including Persona 5 Royal.

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I used to think Ghostbusters was a fantasy about having a cool car and a slidey pole in your house. Now that I'm an adult I realise it's actually a fantasy about having ample free time to hang out with your friends in New York. But I suppose it's also about bustin' ghosts, which is what Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed's asymmetric multiplayer replicates. It's out today.

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The Sims 4 is now a free-to-play game - and yet somehow this isn't today's biggest The Sims news. That's because, during today's Sims Summit livestream, Maxis also announced that the next The Sims is in-development. Currently codenamed Project Rene, it's a few years away, although we saw some early footage of its creative tools in action.

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Robot damage hero Bastion has been unplayable in Overwatch 2 for the past week due to some unfortunate shenanigans with his artillery ultimate. It was only meant to be temporary, Blizzard said. Yet this increasingly lengthy absence from the game's resulted in some players treating the poor droid as though he'd passed away rather than becoming glitched out for a little while.

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My initial instinct when playing Payday 2 was to be sneaky. If I could creep through banks, jewellery stores, and all the rest without being detected, surely that’d be awesome. Only, the pursuit of that was anything but awesome. It was a gruelling slog of planning and restarts with rarely a sliver of success. So, I chucked my silencer away and donned the biggest suit of armour I could find. Unsurprisingly, the biggest joy in Payday 2 is going loud, and it turns out I’m a big fan of playing stealth games that allow you to skip stealth entirely.

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