Rock, Paper, Shotgun

The great thing about traditions is: you can just make them up. While some traditions feel more real because they're embedded deeper in our culture, you can start your own whenever you want, and jettison any you don't care for. Anything can be imbued with special meaning and, over time, grow into a tradition you cherish and come to anticipate. So here I am, approaching Christmas, so ready for my annual play of Skeal. Join me, reader dear.

Read more

There’s no single, solitary reason why it’s been so hard to buy certain PC components over the past year and a bit – it’s more like a perfect storm of multiple circumstances, unfortunate coincidences and unforseen annoyances. That said, one of the biggest underlying causes of MIA CPU and graphics card stock has been a shortage of the chips needed to make them, and it’s a shortage that Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger has warned could likely continue into 2023.

Read more

Household object handling hitmen rejoice! Video maker "Kommander Karl" is at your service to demonstrate, just how your everyday objects can be held like a deadly weapon. If you have ever held the urge to scoop up your cat and cock them like a hand cannon, or the desire to pop saucy meat bullets in their mouth and pretend to open fire across the kitchen, then Karl has the reload videos for you.

Read more

Oslain Brante tried to be a decent guy. Kind to his relatives except the one who murdered him. Resolutely loyal to his friends, even dying for one. Willing to die once again rather than betray his revolutionary allies. But it just kept going wrong for reasons that felt utterly artificial and sometimes deeply dissatisfying.

I'd have given up on the game if it weren't so interesting. For one thing, none of those deaths were final. He died as a child and came back. He died as a teenager and came back. These were not saved games, but ordinary occurrences. It's an interesting world made infuriating by awkward design choices.

Read more

A new Cyberpunk 2077 mod makes the dystopian RPG's decorative monorails functional, adding a metro system with cute wee trains you can ride. For all the game's flaws, I did greatly enjoy wondering Night City's streets, cooing at giant buildings and bright colours, and today I was glad to continue that tourism on rail. How lovely to see the megacity from a new perspective, looking down on rooftops and being buzzed by hovercars. See a wee bit of my journey in a video below.

Read more

Valve are working to upgrade a number of their more popular games for the Steam Deck, optimising controls and interfaces to play better on their upcoming portable powerhouse, the Steam Deck. The Half-Life series, Dota 2, and Counter Strike: Global Offensive, either already have or will receive upgrades designed to make them "better experiences".

Read more

I’m rubbish at the building component of Minecraft; it’s much easier to simply download a map and wander around in the splendour of someone else’s creation. And if you’ve got the ray tracing beta version of Minecraft for Windows installed, I can heartily recommend you too take a wander through the Nvidia RTX Winter World: a vast, Christmassy and very, very pretty custom map that has you helping Santa throw a festive shindig while you trade sweets with his elves.

Read more

The twentieth door on the RPS Advent Calendar this year is very small. In fact, it almost looks small enough to attach to someone's head, if you were the kind of weirdo who'd do that kind of thing.

Read more

Supergiant Games' gay, Greek gallivant, Hades, is the first video game to receive a Hugo Award. The awards which celebrate literary works in the science-fiction and fantasy genres, added a special one-off 'Best Video Game' category this year, which is where old Zagreus picked up his accolade. Our short king's battle out of the underworld beat out its closest competition, cosy escapism simulator, Animal Crossing: New Horizons in the polls by almost fourfold.

Read more

Have you ever wanted to use your friends as literal pawns to help you solve puzzles? Well now you can! Superliminal has added co-op, letting four of you jump into the world-bending puzzler together. The update dropped on Friday, and it seems that even your pals aren't safe from the game's forced perspective. They'll appear in the world as little chess pieces, and from the looks of things you can pick them up to use as puzzle solving items.

Read more

Once the most prestigious of luxury tech, VR headsets have become both cheaper and more popular over the last few years. A combination of competitive pricing, more user-friendly devices, and more fleshed-out VR games like Half-Life Alyx has seen headsets push deeper into the mainstream within the last 12 to 24 months.

Read more

As you go to open today's door on the RPS Advent Calendar, you realise it's locked, and you'll need to get the keycard from somewhere. Plus you won't be allowed through unless you're dressed like a waiter, and even then you'll get frisked by a security guard, who would be none too pleased to find the poison in your pocket.

Read more

Sundays are for unknowingly watering a plastic plant. Before you pour, let's read this week's best writing about games.

Read more

Valve have launched another Steam Labs Experiment, this time focused on "Store Hubs". If you join Steam Labs Experiment 13, Steam's category and tag pages will be updated to more clearly highlight personalised game recommendedations with richer information about each game.

Read more

I had some fun with the Wargame series of real-time strategy games, although past a certain point I couldn't tell the difference between its umpteen historical tanks. Now developers Eugen Systems are making a spiritual successor called WARNO, which is coming to Steam Early Access next month.

Read more

The second season of Netflix's The Witcher series is out now, launching worldwide yesterday on December 17th. This second series arrives almost exactly two years since the first, but work is already underway on the third. Showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich says that season three's scripts are "almost done."

Read more

The new trailer for Dead Cells' next DLC The Queen And The Sea features a shark being both swung like a sword and launched like an arrow. It's almost enough to trick me into thinking I should play it, when deep down I know I'm not good enough to get anywhere with it. For those of you more skilled than me, the trailer comes alongside the news that the DLC will launch January 6th.

Read more

Chinese game developer-gobbler Tencent have acquired Slamfire, the parent company of Back 4 Blood developers Turtle Rock Studios. In a statement about the acquisition, Turtle Rock say that "the Back 4 Blood franchise is here to stay and we will be working on it well into the future."

Read more

The court date for the eighteenth door of the RPS Advent Calendar 2021 has arrived. Now listen, I know it's normal to get nervous before a big trial - it's only our sense of taste on the line, after all - but trust me, I've got the best and most experienced defence team lined up for this one and - wait, what's that? They've only been in training for three months? And they're not even properly qualified? Oh no, what have we done...

Read more

I'm writing this on my last day at work before I get to go on my Christmas holidays. I'm going to take this opportunity to say something I've always wanted to, but never had the chance. I hate you, reader.

Only kidding! I mean, statistically speaking I probably wouldn't get on with all of you, but I actually really appreciate that you're taking the time to read this and check out what games we'll be playing this weekend. In fact, we'll probably play loads of games over our breaks, but we'll tell you about those later. Until I see you again, have a lovely time celebrating the end of the year, however you do it.

Read more

If you're looking to upgrade your monitor and want something that'll give you an edge in competitive multiplayer, the AOC C27G2ZU is currently down from £250 to £200 over at Amazon - a discount of 20%. This 27in, 1080p screen is notable for its blistering 240Hz max refresh rate, and is our pick for the best 240Hz gaming monitor.

Read more

Walking through the smoggy jerktown that is London a while back, the thought occurred that for all the building games I've played, I'd never seen one about remodelling an existing city. The closest I knew was NIMBY Rails, which isn't even close.

It turns out I was miles behind the curve, as The Architect Colon Paris already exists.

Read more

Earlier this year, Black Isle Studios and Interplay Entertainment announced they were porting the old 2001 hack and slash Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance to PC and consoles. It came out on PlayStation back in summer, alas they didn't give a date for PC. But, surprise! It's today! PC folks can finally try out the Baldur's Gate that console users first experienced 20 years ago. I did a full playthrough this summer and had a lovely time, at the expense of my partner, who I made sit through one of the jankiest couch co-op games in existence.

Read more

This week's episode of the Ultimate Audio Bang is both festive, but tinged with sadness. It's Imogen's final run of the pod and I'm very sad about it. But we (I) gather ourselves and chat FPS news, like how PUBG is going free to play, Overwatch actually has something new, and lots of Halo Infinite stuff. We also get one final update on Imogen's Apex Legends rank. I'd love to say it's positive, but it's actually quite crushing. Merry Christmas.

Read more

Don’t be shy about opening this next door – everyone behind it is friendly. Real friendly. Kind of surprisingly friendly, for people running a motorsports festival.

Read more

Remember when the Devotion developers Red Candle showed off a tiny snippet of a pretty 2D game they'd been working on earlier this year? They didn't have much to say about it at the time, but last night they announced it properly. Named Nine Sols, it's an action platformer with combat inspired by Sekiro. Honestly, they still don't have much to say about it beyond that, but they have released a gorgeous poster featuring a cat-like character that you can see in full below.

Read more

You know what Christmas was missing? The unmatched fear of being chased by terrifying killer robots through a shopping mall. Five Nights At Freddy's: Security Breach launched last night, inviting players to fend off a whole new crew of animatronics. This is the eighth mainline game in the long-running pizzeria-based horror series (I know, there are loads of spin-offs too), and for the first time it will let players properly roam free, rather than be tied to a desk monitoring cameras.

Read more

Look outside. Is it snowing? Well, it's snowing in video games, where it matters. The winter months are here to lay frosty waste to the Northern hemisphere, which is where list goblins like me originate.

To celebrate the first flakes of glimmering ice wafting out of the sky like God's own sub-zero dandruff, here's a list of the best snow in PC games. Put on a hat, for heaven's sake.

Read more

They say the best things come in small packages, which is clearly nonsense in a world where giant novelty cheques exist but giant novelty bills don't. When it comes to price tags, however, the smaller the better rings true, especially when it's a full 50% off a quality gaming keyboard like the Corsair K65 RGB Mini.

Read more

Expeditions: Rome got a release date of January 20th, 2022 just last week. From tomorrow, you'll be able to play four hours of the RPG campaign in a demo that lets you conquer Lesbos.

Read more

Dota 2 has a new event mode and battle pass. Aghanim from last year's Aghanim's Labyrinth event has returned, and this time a "multiverse-melding mishap" has split him into several doppelgängers players must rescue. The event mode is free, but it arrives alongside a new battle pass that'll cost money to enter.

More strangely, today's update also introduces experimental gamepad support.

Read more

Diablo 2's last patch to make changes to class balance was 1.13c, released on March 23rd, 2010. Now Diablo 2: Resurrected is getting new tweaks to class balance, as explained in a Blizzard blog post. Ladder rank play is also on the way in early 2022.

Read more

Update: GSC Game World have announced on Twitter that they're cancelling plans for NFTs in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2.

"Based on feedback we received, we've made a decision to cancel anything NFT-related in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2," reads the post. "The interests of our fans and players are the top priority for the team. We're making this game for you to enjoy - whatever the cost is. If you care, we care too."

Read more

The makers of Arma and DayZ have revealed Enfusion, the new cross-platform game engine they plan to build future games on. No, Bohemia Interactive haven't announced Arma 4, but they do say they would use Enfusion for "any potential new Arma game", so maybe that's something to bear in mind while looking at its screenshots of vast landscapes. While they don't have much more than screenshots and a wee video to show right now (sorry, engine enthusiasts), they do hint that they'll release some sort of "playable demonstration of its features" at some point "soon".

Read more

The Epic Games Store Holiday Sale started today, with lots of discounts and that but more importantly: 15 days of free video games. They're starting with one that I'm certainly curious enough to play for free but not buy: Shenmue 3. Yeah gwan, I'll grab that. Epic are also going wild with coupons again, giving a £10 (or $10) coupon on every game you buy which costs at least £13.99 (or $14.99). Given Epic's habit of paying for timed exclusives, they do have discounts on some games you'll not get elsewhere, or at least not with those vouchers.

Read more

Let me slap you with the caveat up front. Halo Infinite's best place is its open world, through which you can swing like a honking metal Tarzan and do sweet Warthog jumps from cliffs. But its best level, the most satisfying A-to-B gun boulevard, comes late in the campaign (spoilers ahead). The House Of Reckoning is a series of rooms where contrived artificial battlefields have been constructed inside an alien fortress. They are abstractly human structures surrounded by sand, as if your extraterrestrial enemies have been playing house but believe a homo sapiens' house looked exactly like a chunk of Normandy beach circa 1944. The narrative reasoning behind this level is absurd. But the fights that occur within are excellent.

Read more

God rest ye merry listener, let nothing you dismay - for today, for one night only, EWS stands for Electronic Wrestling Show. Yes, our podcast's wrestling promotion has rolled into your town for a showstopping tag team match. Each of your pod hosts fields a three-game tag team of our favourite games of the year, and fields them in a spectacular(ly described) ladder match. The victor will claim the GOTY In The Bank briefcase and win the chance to compete next year as well.

Before we get to that, though, we must first discuss (at length) whether 200 t-shirts is a lot of t-shirts, what Nate is having for his Christmas dinner, what kind of cop duo would be named Halloumi & Date, and also what our favourite Christmas songs are. Nate also does a really good Mankind pun. Plus: which wrestler would be the best hugger?

Read more

If your PC's drive space is fuller than Mr. Creosote, it might be time to call in some external backup. You can currently grab the WD Black P10 external hard drive in its vast 5TB configuration for a very reasonable £97 - it won't be able to hold any wafer thin mints, but 5TB makes room for an awful lot of game installs.

Read more

I’m beginning to think I need a dreamcatcher. The Lynx Africa on my bedroom shelf simply doesn’t have the same level of nightmare suction. In fact, I bet it attracts bad sleeps. Anyway, I’m considering the installation of a feathery net because DokeV’s music video from the latest Geoff Awards has infiltrated the darkest recesses of my brain again. I thought I’d shaken off the trailer song, but it’s back with full force and haunts me more than ever.

Read more

Final Fantasy VII Remake certainly knows how to make a good first impression. The original's bombing mission sequence, which sees Cloud and co. blow up a planet-killing mako reactor in the industrialised hellhole of Midgar's city centre, was already one of the Final Fantasy series' best openers, but here we get to really luxuriate in every last detail of its twenty-four-year glow-up. Director Tetsuya Nomura may have a reputation for excess in JRPG circles (both in his tangled storylines and his passion for buckles and belts), but in FF7R that tendency toward indulgence has been applied with deadly, laser-like precision.

Read more