Rock, Paper, Shotgun

I was a little worried about Left 4 Dead-alike Rainbow Six: Extraction. You know, after it was announced as Rainbow Six: Quarantine, changed its name, dipped under the radar for ages, then re-emerged with news it was being delayed. Signs pointed to a shaky spin-off from Rainbow Six: Siege's popular Outbreak mode. But no, I was totally wrong! After an early hands on with the game, I’m now at ease, at least when I’m at a safe distance. You see, the zombies here may be fewer in number, but they don’t mess about. This makes for a tactical spin on zombie-slaying that truly rewards teamwork, and it’s wonderful as a result.

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2022 is finally here and that can only mean one thing. We've got another year of hip new video games to look forward to, and we've been busy rustling up the ones we're most excited about. In truth, there are tons of games on the horizon that could easily sit on this list, and some of them are so close to release we can practically already see the pixels on our screens morphing into their lush, polygonal landscapes. Games like Monster Hunter Rise, God Of War and Rainbow Six Extraction. You won't find them here, but trust us, you'll be seeing a lot of them over the coming weeks.

There are always more games coming out than we have fingers to write about them, but the 2022 games we've listed below are the ones the RPS team are personally most looking forward to playing. We've got games big and small here, and they're all listed in alphabetical order. After all, release dates are increasingly slippery beasts these days. Think we've missed something? Why not take to the comments below and tell us all about it. You might just convince us to put it on our radars. But enough from me. Here are our 43 most anticipated games of 2022.

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Last September, Studio Pixel Punk released Unsighted, a top-down action RPG with a unique time limit on the life of its NPCs. It quickly garnered high praise from critics, including RPS' own Katharine Castle who named it one of the Best Games You Missed in 2021. To find out more about this indie gem, I got in touch with Studio Pixel Punk's pair of developers Fernanda Dias and Tiani Pixel to talk to them about its inspirations, turning off its timer, and the true meaning behind the game's name.

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Developers Might And Delight call Book Of Travels a TMORPG, a "tiny" MMO that's focused on fleeting interactions with other players, as opposed to lots of them. It’s a lovely looking adventure with a neat concept, so it was sad to hear that they'd been hit with layoffs after a difficult launch. However, some heartening news! More levels are on the way, as well as new character customisation tools. They also reaffirmed that despite being a much smaller team than before, they're committed to working on the game for the foreseeable.

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Unsurprisingly, E3 will once again not happen as an in-person event this year, what with the whole global pandemic and all. The Entertainment Software Association, who organise E3, had hoped that the main event on the video games industry's marketing calendar would return properly this year, after skipping 2019 and going online in 2020, but nope. While they haven't yet confirmed whether or not they'll arrange an online E3 in its stead, they seem to be considering it. But even if not, the industry will doubltess manage to host its own advert-o-ramas without the E3 banner.

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The justice system is stupid. You can go to jail for setting a plant on fire and putting it in your mouth. Shut up, the police. Be smart for once. Maybe people would stop trying to escape from prison if you did something sensible like, I don't know, cease being a militarised gang of dirtbag predators. Stop watching everyone through video cameras, you absolute creeps. What? Oh right, video games. Here's 9 of the best jailbreaks in PC games.

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If you listed, ooh, the top ten trends in games over the past year or two, I think you'd probably include "photo modes" and "petting the dog" on the list. So here comes Pupperazzi, nailing the zeitgeist as a game specifically about taking photos of dogs - who, of course, you can also pet. It's now just two weeks away from release, with a January 20th release date.

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You might have noticed the internet being peppered by little green, white and yellow squares over the past week. They're from Wordle, a free once-a-day word puzzle where everyone is trying to guess the same five letter word. I've been hooked on it since Christmas - and you should be playing it, too.

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While ligament and bone were still knitting together in our Christmas vats, Valve popped out some end-of-year Steam material. That includes lists of the top selling and most played games of 2021, and the results of the user-voted Steam Awards.

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I'm not a huge fan of anime character art, but I could soak in the environment art of Genshin Impact all day long. There are plenty of pretty sights to see in the trailer for version 2.4, the latest update to add a new area, new characters and new weapons to the action-adventure gacha game.

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I have a strange relationship with Dead Cells. I picked it up in 2019 and played it for a while, by which point I'd clearly had my fill. No DLCs to my name, nothing. I'd done a big run and put the game down.

Fast forward to now. Suddenly I own the latest expansion The Queen And The Sea, plus all the DLCs that came before it. I'm nonchalant, thinking that I dropped the game for a reason. Surely I can't be won almost three years later? Well, nope. I was wrong. The DLCs have opened my eyes to the game in ways I hadn’t anticipated. The combat is crunchy, the challenge is thrilling, and Dead Cells more than holds its own next to more modern darlings of the genre like Hades.

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If you prefer Earth be but a blue marble alone in the void, two of the latest Game Pass additions might tickle your spacefancy. Microsoft's subscription service today adds BioWare's remastered Mass Effect Legendary Edition trilogy as well as the beautiful clockwork mystery Outer Wilds, which was our favourite game of 2019. The cooperative and chaotic first-person firefighting game Embr hit Game Pass today too but that has, like, gravity? So passé.

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If you’ve been hankering for more Dead Cells, then you’re in luck. The game’s next paid expansion is out now and has you dive into some nautical newness. It's called The Queen And The Sea and is home to shipwrecks and lighthouses infested with monsters, mainly. And a throwable shark. That’s me sold.

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If we’re talking wishlists for 2022, “a sense of goddamn normalcy” has got to be up there. In all likelihood, though, that’s not going to happen, so instead let’s put our chins in our palms, angle our heads slightly and gaze off into the sky while picturing all the neat PC hardware that’s launching this year.

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Konami, the Japanese company best known for squandering every shred of goodwill they built through series like Castlevania and Metal Gear Solid, are getting into NFTs. Of course they are. Should've guessed. While publishers like Square Enix, EA, and Take-Two are still contemplating NFTs, I am not remotely surprised that Konami are one of the first notable names to actually start selling useless digital junk. Next week, they will hold an auction for NFTs of videos, artwork, and music from early Castlevania games. Konami, man.

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Following the colourful luchador metroidvania violence of the Guacamelee! series, developers Drinkbox Studios are returning to punch up fantasy in an action-RPG. Today they announced a release date of January 18th for Nobody Saves The World, a top-down ARPG with where players can transform into everything from a rogue to a rat, and customise them to be even weirder. It will be on Game Pass, too.

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Ubisoft today announced a surprising upcoming addition to Game Pass: Rainbow Six Extraction will be available on Microsoft's subscription service right from the start when it launches later this month. The monster-mashing spin-off from R6 Siege isn't one of their full-price games, coming at a slightly cheaper £34, but still, damn, that's a good get. And exactly the sort of game I likely wouldn't buy new but would try on Game Pass.

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In a serious of coordinated raids, Turkish police have detained 40 people suspected of involvement with a money laundering ring which allegedly used Twitch for money laundering. Supposedly they were using stolen credit card info to buy Bits (Twitch's virtuacurrency), which they would then donate to Twitch streamers who had agreed to give money in return in exchange for keeping a portion for themselves. This first came to light following Twitch's big data leak last year.

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MMO EVE Online has players form roving bands of cartels and moon-rock mining operations. Corporations thrive and wars are waged. It's a space-opera filled with twists in many tales. Here's another twist for you. The game's getting a Doctor Who crossover and the Daleks are ready to roll in and yell "EXTERMINATE!" lots.

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Following a PlayStation debut in September, Death Stranding Director's Cut is now confirmed to be headed to PC this spring. The expanded version of the Kojima Productions stumbling simulator whacks in new items, missions, and oddities, ranging from a robot you can ride to a racetrack. It'll also be one of the few games to support Intel's new XeSS upscaling fanciness.

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Steam has existed in a grey area in China, technically not following rules which require all games be approved yet never drawing the ire of authorities. Many have long expected it to eventually be banned, though, especially after Valve partnered with Perfect World to launch the limited Steam China. This might now be happening. Maybe. Or it's possibly being hindered, at least. This all started with a big stink on Christmas Day that led some to declare Steam had been banned by the Great Firewall which restricts access to many sites outside China, but the reality is not so clear cut.

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The vanguard of Intel’s 12th Gen Alder Lake CPUs had some seriously good chips in it – including two of the best CPUs for gaming overall – though there weren’t many models for aspiring PC builders on tight budgets. Now, though, Intel has used CES 2022 to launch the rest of the 12th Gen desktop lineup, adding loads of more affordable Core i5 and Core i3 processors on top of new Core i7 and Core i9 options. Intel also unveiled its new H-series, 12th Gen gaming laptop chips, which use the same hybrid architecture (combining powerful P-cores with smaller, less energy-intensive E-cores) as their Alder Lake desktop cousins.

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Before it pivoted to talking about self-driving cars, something I can’t even put into a PCIe slot, Nvidia’s CES 2022 showcase went both high and low with its graphics card reveals. The high: the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti, as new top-of-the-line CPU with 24GB of upgraded, 21Gbit/s GDDR6X VRAM. The low: the GeForce RTX 3050, Nvidia’s first XX50 GPU in a donkey’s age.

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It’s the first week of 2022 and that means – yes! – all the big PC hardware movers and shakers are hosting their CES 2022 events. On the same day. Within a couple of hours of each other. But my stress is your gain, as there are and will be some major announcements on new kit, starting with AMD. Their freshly-announced hardware includes an assortment of new CPUs, desktop and mobile graphics cards and even some laptop APUs – APUs that sound a lot more useful for gaming that what current integrated graphics can offer. There’s even an Nvidia Image Scaling rival in the upcoming, driver-level Radeon Super Resolution feature.

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Christmas came and went, a fat goose is waddling around honking a muted honk, and people have put so many coins into the old man's hat that he gets a mild concussion every time he walks the dog. So, not to be crass, but did you get anything good? Rare new hardware? Handy stocking stuffers? A good game in the sales? Hell, I'm just using this as a way to start a chat: how was your Winterval in general? Do anything nice? Eat anything good?

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Nightingale certainly isn't the sort of game I was expecting from a former BioWare developer, but I'm well excited to give it a go. Announced at The Game Awards 2021, Nightingale is a survival craft 'em up set in a fantastical, alt-history world. It's being made by Inflexion Games, a studio lead by Aaryn Flynn, former programmer and general manager at the Dragon Age and Mass Effect developers.

But don't go in expecting the sort of huge, arcing plotlines of BioWare's recent games. While Nightingale will have an over-arching narrative, it's being designed to offer up adventures that let you make your own stories. I spoke to Flynn at the end of last year to find out a little bit more about what that entails.

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Square Enix have ushered in the new year with a joyous message for those who play games to "have fun”. Sorry, but those who "play to earn” are key to their business model going forwards. NFTs, blockchain, and the 'metaverse' are the future of fun. Whatever that means.

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Happy New Year, folks! 2021 may be behind us now, but before we start looking ahead to all the hip new video games coming our way this year, we thought it was as good a time as any to look back at all of our favourites from the last twelve months. If you kept up to date with our hale and healthy Advent Calendar over the course of December, then you'll already know our game of the year selections for 2021, but this post gathers all those lovely words and entries together into one handy list.

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Riot Games, the makers of Valorant and League Of Legends, have agreed to pay out $100 million (£74m) as part of a proposed settlement to a class-action suit brought against them for "systemic sex discrimination and harassment". Money will go to current and former female employees and contract workers. The suit started in 2018 following widespread allegations of a festering workplace culture, and was originally due to be settled for $10 million (£7m) until California state authorities raised objections that it wasn't enough.

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The first rule of video game club (apart from not talking about video game club) usually involves saving the world somehow. We do our best to rescue others from harm, to avert world-ending disasters, and give everyone around us the happy ending they deserve. But if there's one thing I've learned about myself in 2021, it's that I'm a cruel, heartless robot who will happily toss others under the bus if they don't provide any material benefit to me. Or at least I am when I'm playing Unsighted, the gorgeous and criminally underrated action RPG from Studio Pixel Punk that puts a ticking time-bomb inside each of its characters' metallic chests which, if left unchecked, will remove them from the game entirely, preventing you from gaining some potentially very handy upgrades to help you in your quest to fight back against your human oppressors.

It's an ingenious system, as you're not only fighting against the hordes of enemies that appear onscreen, but your own ineptitude.

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If you're anything like me, when you start a game you will almost invariably try to run off into the woods or swamp and aggressively ignore anything even passably resembling a main story. After hours of feeling like a brave rebel by doing this in Vagrus - The Riven Realms, I realised it's how you're supposed to play it. This is not a game about some Epic Quest or grand campaign. It's a game about running a caravan in a world that just happens to have a cool history.

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Every year our clone forms degrade, and Katharine spends the winter break copying each consciousness into a new body. Don't worry: we can't feel a thing! Since our new forms are still coming online from their time spent in the primordial flesh soup vat of the RPS Treehouse, we can't post over Christmas, so we've prepared some Christmas Cracker jokes instead! You can help fund the research into longer-lasting clone bodies with the RPS supporter program.

Now, time to enjoy your nice joke!

Q: What medical procedure is taught to all Vikings upon entry to Valhalla?

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2021 was hot boy summer for detectives. Well, not summer. Hot boy autumn? Is that a thing? Anyway, I not only played Sherlock Holmes Chapter One, but also an incarnation of Hercule Poirot as a bright young thing in Agatha Christie - Hercule Poirot: The First Cases. And yes, that name is a bit of a nightmare, but the game itself is very sweet. There's 'orrible murder, conspiracy, blackmail, union busting, and a cast of Cluedo-esque characters trapped inside a snowy manor. And yes, I am reusing the shoddy Love Island promo photo composite I made for a header picture, because it deserves the mileage.

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Every year our clone forms degrade, and Katharine spends the winter break copying each consciousness into a new body. Don't worry: we can't feel a thing! Since our new forms are still coming online from their time spent in the primordial flesh soup vat of the RPS Treehouse, we can't post over Christmas, so we've prepared some Christmas Cracker jokes instead! You can help fund the research into longer-lasting clone bodies with the RPS supporter program.

Now, time to enjoy your nice joke!

Q: What kind of colourful legume is the main ingredient for rainbow humous?

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Ghost Time Games’ Tux And Fanny, from co-developers Albert Birney and Gabriel Koenig, is not only the game I think you may have missed this year, but it is also my Game Of The Year for 2021. This game sends two best friends (alongside a courageous flea and a mischievous cat) through adventures great, small, and absurd to stunning effect – and you owe it to yourself to give this little marvel a play before the year is well and truly out.

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Every year our clone forms degrade, and Katharine spends the winter break copying each consciousness into a new body. Don't worry: we can't feel a thing! Since our new forms are still coming online from their time spent in the primordial flesh soup vat of the RPS Treehouse, we can't post over Christmas, so we've prepared some Christmas Cracker jokes instead! You can help fund the research into longer-lasting clone bodies with the RPS supporter program.

Now, time to enjoy your nice joke!

Q: What roguelite takes place solely within the confines of a French archipelago in the Caribbean?

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It’s pretty difficult to quantify which games actually whip ass, mostly because it’s a little subjective. That being said, if barrelling through the streets of a futuristic, neon-glazed Detroit, hopping over pursuing cop cars and racing through business offices and factories to the tune of an engrossing soundtrack doesn’t whip ass, I don’t know what does.

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Every year our clone forms degrade, and Katharine spends the winter break copying each consciousness into a new body. Don't worry: we can't feel a thing! Since our new forms are still coming online from their time spent in the primordial flesh soup vat of the RPS Treehouse, we can't post over Christmas, so we've prepared some Christmas Cracker jokes instead! You can help fund the research into longer-lasting clone bodies with the RPS supporter program.

Now, time to enjoy your nice joke!

Q: What horrible smell travels around corners really fast?

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Immersive sims are tricky games to get right. The spaces need to have incredibly tight design so they feel fun to explore, and lots of ways to get around them. And one of the best games of the year just happens to be one that does that expertly. Hang on, Deathloop? What are you talking about? No, no, the real best immersive sim this year is co-open by lowpolis, obviously!

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Every year our clone forms degrade, and Katharine spends the winter break copying each consciousness into a new body. Don't worry: we can't feel a thing! Since our new forms are still coming online from their time spent in the primordial flesh soup vat of the RPS Treehouse, we can't post over Christmas, so we've prepared some Christmas Cracker jokes instead! You can help fund the research into longer-lasting clone bodies with the RPS supporter program.

Now, time to enjoy your nice joke!

Q: Which game involves taking a spirit-guide on a magical journey to find a whole grain with excellent health benefits?

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