Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Last time, you decided that an AI-controlled friend just running about helping me fight is better than air control. We're blowing up entire genres of video game, but at least we won't be alone. This week, we continue to whittle down all of the things with a question of intrinsic or extrinsic rewards. What's better: boss battles as skill checks, or secrets behind waterfalls?

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Aside from the many indies and Sonic Frontiers and this breakfast sandwich I got from Birdies, I must say that Street Fighter 6 was a major highlight of my time in LA for Summer Geoff Fest. Honestly, I went into my hands-on slot expecting to plaster a big "meh" on the game in my notepad. But the inclusion of a "modern" control scheme flipped this on its head. I'm telling you, it's an absolute game changer.

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Blizzard is buying the development studio responsible for magical battle royale Spellbreak, Proletariat, and moving their staff over to work on World Of Warcraft. The purveyors of all things Azeroth confirmed the buyout in a statement to VentureBeat. News of the acquisition comes just a day after Spellbreak’s imminent demise was revealed by Proletariat on the game’s website.

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Survival horror slash ‘em up Dead By Daylight’s progression and perks systems are being overhauled to dramatically reduce the amount of grind, developers Behaviour Interactive have announced. The changes to Dead By Daylight’s progression and perks were first touted during the grindhouse game’s sixth anniversary broadcast back in May, but are finally arriving in the mid-chapter update for the current ‘Roots Of Dread’ storyline in July.

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When action-adventure game Hell Is Us was first announced a couple of months ago, we thought it had Annihilation vibes and appreciated the team's attempts to invoke Annihilation... and its vibes. Developers Rogue Factor didn't provide many other details, besides a few buzz words: "semi-open world", "true adventure", "third person".

So, I sat down with the game's creative director Jonathan Jacques-Belletête in the hopes he could shed some light on the aforementioned vibes, perhaps even turning them from ethereal gusts of Annihilation-ness to concrete info on just how the game aims to be a "true adventure". Lo and behold, I think it worked!

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Fntastic, the studio developing Steam’s most wishlisted game The Day Before, have issued a statement to RPS explaining their policy of using paid and unpaid volunteers to make up their dev team. Metaphorical alarm bells began ringing earlier this week when it emerged that Fntastic are composed entirely of “volunteers” – although full-time volunteers, kindly dubbed "employees" in the statement, do receive salaries.

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I loved Monster Hunter: Rise when I first played it on Switch last year, but I’ll admit that I sort of sleep-walked through its entirety, dreamily kicking the tails off a couple of raptors before making them into a fashionable pair of hot pants. This wasn’t a bad thing, mind. Far from it. I found Rise to be a substantially better-paced MonHunt entry compared to its predecessors, the series’ steep barrier to entry readjusted to a gentle incline that was more palatable for newcomers like me. Monster Hunter’s particular flavour of RPG design has always felt like trying to find a fork in a friend’s kitchen while they’re in another room. Nothing is where you expect it to be and there are a lot of things here you just don’t understand. Admittedly Rise wasn’t much better, stuffed as it was with endless text-based tutorials, but at the very least it pointed out the right drawer this time around.

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Amazon’s upcoming TV adaptation of post-apocalyptic RPG series Fallout has cast veteran sci-fi actor Kyle MacLachlan in an undisclosed role as a series regular. You may remember him from such roles as future emperor of the universe Paul Atriedes in David Lynch’s Dune, cafficionado Special Agent Dale Cooper in David Lynch’s Twin Peaks, and for his turn in David Lynch's Oscar-nominated Blue Velvet. Please tell me David Lynch will at least direct the pilot.

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Pop-punk is not my musical (brand new) bag but I can't resist a coming-of-age story about a teenager who finds their place in the world by picking up a guitar. Give me Pugwall, give me Ladies And Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains, give me Loud. Announced yesterday, the rhythm game will tell the tale of teen girl who goes from playing air guitar on a broom to wailing on the world stage. Loud looks cute, somewhere between Life Is Strange and Guitar Hero, and you can see a bit in the trailer below.

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PlayStation masterminds Sony have made an unexpected jump into PC gaming hardware, announcing their InZone range of desktop-focused gaming monitors and headsets. It’s Sony’s first big attempt at PC kit, in any form, since mothballing their Vaio laptop and all-in-one brand way back in 2014.

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The super-comfy HyperX Cloud 2 gaming headset, beloved by esports pros and casual gamers alike, is going cheap at HP's US store. Today, you can pick up this legendary headset in a stylish pink/white colourway for $60 after a $40 drop.

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Adata's Premium SSD for PS5 might be the most misleadingly titled storage device on the market. Okay, it is a high-spec SSD suitable for the PS5, but it's also a really good value PCIe 4.0 SSD for PCs too. Today, it's down to $185 at Adata's official Ebay store when you use the code FREEDOM15 - an unbelievable price for the level of performance on offer.

That's some $145 below MSRP and way cheaper than similarly-specced 2TB PCIe 4.0 SSDs like the Samsung 980 Pro ($260) or Crucial P5 Plus ($244).

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I think of Disney as a company that will protect their image by working on something until it's both good and finished, which is frankly stupid of me given I just finished watching Obi-Wan Kenobi. Still, I found myself surprised when I learned that Disney Dreamlight Valley will be an early access game when it launches on September 6th. Watch the latest trailer for the Disney-themed Animal Crossing 'em up below.

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It's been a good few years for relaxing, sandbox building games, and Islands & Trains looks to fit right in. Its name also does most of my job for me: this is a game about constructing islands, right? And then you build trains on them, yeah? It's "coming soon" and it looks delightful in GIFs the developer has been posting on Twitter.

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Simogo are perhaps best known now for power pop rhythm game Sayonara Wild Hearts, but their next game, Lorelei And The Laser Eyes, looks like something of a return to their roots. It's a mystery game, a puzzle game, set in a baroque manor and - as per everything they make - dripping with style. Check out the announcement trailer below.

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Harvestella is Square Enix's spin on the life simulation RPG, in which you'll plant crops, befriend townspeople, and attempt to thrive across the seasons: winter, spring, summer, autumn, and Bloodborne. It was just announced today, but it's also launching this November.

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Terrible Toybox have shared more of point’n’click adventure threequel reboot Return To Monkey Island today. It’s the first time we’ve got a good look at the third Monkey Island captained by Ron Gilbert in motion, but it had the weird honour of appearing during a Nintendo Direct. Have a watch of the trailer below.

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Mojang Studios announced Minecraft Legends during this month's Summer Geoff Fest, dubbing it an "action strategy" Minecraft spin-off that's being made in collaboration with Blackbird Interactive, the folks behind Homeworld 3 and Hardspace Shipbreaker. And that was the extent of our knowledge at the time. Well, thanks to Nintendo's latest Direct Mini, we got the briefest slice of new gameplay which expands our knowledge just a smidge further. Seems fun? I think?

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Overwatch 2 sees the start of its second closed beta test today, which runs until July 18th. You’ll need to wait for 7pm BST/11am PST to arrive before you can jump into the beta though. It’s also the first proper opportunity to play as the new tank Junker Queen, revealed at the Xbox & Bethesda Games Showcase earlier this month.

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I thought Sonic Frontiers was less Breath Of The Wild and more Super Mario Odyssey after I'd given it whirl in LA at Summer Geoff Fest. Despite its rough edges, Frontier's open-ish world was a joy to blitz around as a hedgehog renowned for going particularly fast. But there was one thing I couldn't talk about – Cyberspace stages: Bite-sized levels à la classic Sonic. And here's why it might've been one of the best bits of the demo.

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Fantasy CCG Hearthstone is asking players to solve a macabre mystery in its next expansion, Murder At Castle Nathria, due out on August 2nd. Prepare to venture once again into Warcraft’s home of the afterlife, the Shadowlands. Just remember to grab your rhyming dictionary and your fanciest deerstalker before you watch the trailer below.

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Every month I throw half a dozen broken shovels at the sleeping forms lying around the RPS treehouse floor. I demand they dig a new hole for the monthly RPS Time Capsule of games we'd like to save from a certain year, and usually it isn't a problem. This time, however, the staff complained a lot about the year choice: it's 2005, baby, and they struggled. I'm okay with it though, because we ended up with a lot of cool abandonware and interesting choices I couldn't have predicted. Especially because, since I got to the Time Capsule first, I got to stuff in the most obvious choice.

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Also in Steam Deck news, Valve’s Lawrence Yang – a designer who worked on the on the handheld PC – has weighed in on a widely shared mod that replaces the pre-installed SSD with a larger, faster model. His advice: don’t do it.

The mod, by Twitter user Belly Jelly, swaps out the dinky default M.2 2230 SSD for a slightly longer M.2 2242 drive. It seems to mostly work fine except for making “the heat spreader bow a bit.” It was subsequently shared by PC Gamer, GameSpot and others before Yang tweeted a warning that such a change would “significantly shorten the life of your Deck” by moving thermal pads vital to cooling the charger IC (integrated circuit).

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Word from the Steam Deck foundries is that Valve are significantly stepping up the number of handhelds they ship out to reservation holders. A missive from the official Steam Deck Twitter account claimed they’ll “more than double” the total of weekly shipments, and confirmed that those with order availability estimates in Q3 2022 will start receiving emails to confirm and claim their orders from June 30th.

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A strong entry-level gaming laptop is down to a bargain basement price today. The Dell G15 offers an RTX 3050 Ti graphics card, Core i5 10200H processor, 512GB SSD, 120Hz screen and normally costs £849 - but today you can use code VOUCHERCODES8 to get this 1080p gaming laptop for £532.

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Lenovo's G27q-20 G-Sync/FreeSync gaming monitor is down to £200, a fantastic deal for a 1440p 165Hz model in a 27-in screen size. Here's why we rate it.

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Back in the depths of February, we began our search for a section editor to take on our growing reviews section and bring their expert editing skills to every part of the site. Today, at long last, I'm happy to say we've found that person, and we've also given them the proper job title they deserve. Please say hello to Rachel Watts, our brand-new reviews editor.

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Post-apocalyptic mod Fallout: London will arrive next year, the development team have announced with a new video released as part of the Fallout For Hope charity initiative. It’s a DLC-sized mod for Fallout 4 that’s bringing the unchanging nuclear war across the pond. Doff your bowler hat out of respect for all the nuked chippies, and watch the trailer below.

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Nvidia DLAA (Deep Learning Anti-Aliasing) is more of a niche prospect than its upscaler cousin DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling), though it shares the same ultimate goal of making your PC games look sharper. Like DLSS, DLAA uses a dash of AI brainpower to stitch together frames with more detail than conventional anti-aliasing techniques like TAA and MSAA – only with DLAA, there’s no upscaling involved. That means no performance gains, but for those with sufficiently powerful Nvidia RTX GPUs, potentially superior image quality at all resolutions. Even better than DLSS, mayhaps.

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The most wishlisted game on Steam, The Day Before, is being developed entirely by volunteers according to its developer’s website. Fntastic say they accept full-time and part-time volunteers to work on their games. Watch a video about volunteering that’s featured on the company’s website below.

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First announced last year, Endless Dungeon is a top-down, tactical roguelite hero-shooter set in Amplitude's Endless universe - yer Endless Legend and Endless Space types. Lots of things with no end, basically. It's also a sort of sequel to Dungeon Of The Endless, a turn-based game from 2014 that laid a lot of the groundwork for Endless Dungeon's core loop of dungeon runs and wave survival. I got to sample one of its earliest levels with three different heroes in a recent hour long preview session, but came away with mixed feelings. If you can get a foothold in a run it's fantastic, but getting that foothold can be frustrating in its current state.

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One of the developers behind the component games of Sega’s Sonic Origins collection has spoken out on Twitter to defend their team in light of the collection’s numerous alleged bugs. Headcannon founder Simon Thornley, also known as Stealth, took responsibility for some of the collection’s issues in a lengthy series of tweets, but said that “a lot was beyond our control”.

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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, we have cute trainline-building, ghost violence, surreal things both intentional and unintentional, and a cyberpunk New York City.

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Charity speedrun fest Summer Games Done Quick is staging its first in-person event since 2019, and there are shedloads of PC games to gawp at. SGDQ is one of the highlights of the year’s speedrunning calendar, and this year’s event runs until July 3rd. Doctors Without Borders is once again the charity SGDQ is raising money for, an NGO that helps people caught in warzones, disasters and outbreaks of disease. Last year’s event managed to raise $2.9 million (around £2.4 million). To get you in the right frame of mind, here’s a PC run of Tomb Raider: Anniversary from SGDQ 2021.

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Sundays are for putting in your contact lenses on the first try. Before you hold back the blink, let's read this week's best writing about games (and game related things).

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Space Bob vs. The Replicons is an ambitious 2D game about flying your spaceship onto a procedurally generated planet surface, gathering resources and tethering them to your ship, then blasting back into orbit to explore more of outerspace. There's a new trailer for it below, but it's not a new game. Space Bob launched in 2018, sold poorly, and then its developer left the games industry. That developer is returning now to take a second swing at the game and released a major update earlier this week.

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I don't buy every iteration of FIFA, but I do want to give each entry a whirl to see how it has rebalanced the balls, tweaked the kicks, and polished the grass. Xbox Game Pass now helps me in my tests by, eventually, adding each iteration, and FIFA 22 is now available through the subscription service as part of June's haul of new games.

Also added this past week: the Shadowrun Trilogy, Total War: Three Kingdoms, Naraka: Bladepoint. And Far Cry 5 will arrive on July 1st.

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Blade Runner: Enhanced Edition launched this week, upping the resolution and increasing the framerate of Westwood's ancient adventure game in ways that make it look consistently worse than the original. If you bought the game on GOG, you could at least switch over to the superior ScummVM release, but not on Steam... Until earlier today, when Blade Runner Classic was added to the Steam version, too.

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Summer has arrived and honestly, it's a bit much. If you can maintain your corporeal form this weekend, somehow not needing to melt into a bucket and recuperate, what are you playing? Here's what we're clicking on!

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The old school FPS revival has largely left me cold, if I'm honest. Even the ones I've enjoyed tend to get old within an hour. Most of the things that get recreated aren't the things I miss about 90s games, and if they were... Doom still exists, you know? So does Blood, and Strife, and Quake was never that good anyway.

Extraneum is good, though. I think it's precisely because it's not doing a big song and dance about its influences, although those are very clear. It's not big or brash, nor overly stripped down or obnoxious about difficulty. Clean blasty strafey fun, with a tiniest hint of horror. In an odd way, it's all the more faithful for that.

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