Rock, Paper, Shotgun

If there’s a secret to how Apex Legends has endured the past five years, an era marked by as many FPS failures as successes, then it might be this: there are no sacred cows in live service. Since its surprise launch in February 2019, developers Respawn Entertainment have chopped and changed everything from hitbox-shrinking Naruto run animations to entire character designs and ability kits, gutting and reworking gear and class mechanics along the way. The incoming Season 20 update, titled Breakout, represents the latest large-scale rejig, adding upgradeable skill tress for its playable Legends that promise MOBA-esque progression and the maddest fights yet.

Naughty Dog's grand panjandrum (co-president) Neil Druckmann has a concept in mind for The Last Of Us: Part 3, following on from the original PlayStation 3 action-adventure's tale of parental love and the PS4 game's theme of "justice at any cost". This isn't confirmation that a third single player Last Of Us game is in development, with Druckmann reiterating comments from this time last year that Naughty Dog feel no obligation to continue the tale. Nonetheless, "it does feel like there's probably one more chapter to this story." Will we ever really see the last of The Last Of Us?

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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. We're a bit short this week because of the rolling technical disaster that is modern Twitter, but I've still enjoyed ogling everything from a must-have immersive sim feature and a very unpleasant nighttime drive to lovely simulated water and strange spaceship shenanigans. Check out all these attractive and interesting indie games!

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The clouds over London have settled into the shapes of loading icons. The birds are singing old Celtic ditties. There are extinct species of fern growing through the vents of my i7 12700F. All these troubling signs point to but one, dire outcome: it's time for another week of new videogame releases, and another week of feeding videogame gossip and reportage to the Maw, our weekly news liveblog.

Here are a few games we're aiming the ol' scrying crystals at this week: alchemy-themed puzzle adventure CLeM (6th Feb); 1980s-styled "Tetris + flying car" puzzler Space Garbage (6th Feb); Coven-building "4X card game" WitchHand (7th Feb); spoofy sci-fascist shooter Helldivers 2 (8th Feb); alt-theological dark fantasy The Inquisitor (8th Feb). Mind you, this week it's all about the demos. That's right, it's time for another Steam Next Fest - have you had a chance to play any demos so far? Participating developers have taken to stuffing them up a few days in advance to beat the rush.

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Sundays are for watching yet another episode of Catfish. Let's feign surprise as we read the week's best writing about games and game-related things.

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If you pay attention to industry layoffs, you'll know the news media - media in general, really - is in a bad spot right now. I can't remember the last time it wasn't in a bad spot. Perhaps in the 1930's, which is the setting for News Tower, a newspaper management sim in which you attempt to construct your empire in New York from 1929 onwards.

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Final Factory seems expansive as far as factory builders go, given that it features not just the sprawling bases you expect but also spaceship construction, interstellar exploration and fleet combat. On the other hand, as far as 2D, topdown space games go, it seems much more approachable than most.

There's a demo available right now.

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Starfield's next update to appear on the Steam beta branch will add support for AMD's FSR 3, the magic frame-boosting tech that makes games run smoother without extra strain on your hardware. It should arrive in beta next week and in a final release later this month, Bethesda say.

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Palworld's servers have so far cost 70.53 million Japanese yen to run (around £376,276/$475,349). This is according to a tweet from Pocketpair CEO Takuro Mizobe. "Wait, maybe they'll go bankrupt due to server fees?" Mizobe joked.

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February's Steam Next Fest is still not here, though plenty of games have jumped the gun with demos to get extra attention. Goodness me. Before a second surge hits, what are you playing this weekend? Here's what we're clicking on!

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Wave goodbye to every moment of spare time - and probably quite a bit of time you probably intended to spend doing other things - next week, as modern-day puzzle masterpiece Threes! comes to Steam. It’ll have Steam Deck support too, so there’s truly no escaping its irresistible charms.

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In these turbulent times, we could all do with a little more lo-fi in our lives. Delivering said remedy to the tickling of gentle piano and soft sunset palette hues is Tranquil Isle, a lovely-looking combination of city-builder and resource-management roguelite drifting in on the waves later this year. (Or you can just make pretty islands, if you prefer.)

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Persona developers Atlus have promised there are no plans to follow up Persona 3 remake Reload with an expanded re-release like Persona 5 Royal, giving us all a welcome break from the tyranny of the letter R.

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The early access release of Paradox's big rival to The Sims has been delayed by another three months, the publisher has announced. Life By You was originally set to launch next month on March 5th, but will now enter early access on June 4th, which developers Paradox Tectonic say will allow them "to refine the visuals for its human characters and further improve gameplay".

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Can you believe it’s been almost half a decade since Satisfactory unleashed its gloriously pleasing factory-building hijinks into early access? And that, five years on, it’s still yet to hit 1.0? Well, you best believe it, as devs Coffee Stain Studios have confirmed that Satisfactory will finally reach the end of the early access conveyer belt sometime in 2024.

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Readers, I must confess. I was watching Sony's State Of Play stream on Wednesday with a mind divided. I'd arranged with some pals to play an online board game with them that evening, and when news hit that it might actually be a reasonably big deal for us PC folks, I ambitiously thought: I can proooobably do both at the same time??? Reader, I was wrong, at least for the most part. The first 30 minutes of it was arguably fine, but then the 10-minute trailer for Death Stranding 2 arrived and I simply had to throw my hands up in defeat. I honestly did not understand what I was watching, and even several re-watches later, I'm still not 100% sure what Kojima thinks he's playing at.

But hot damn, do I love it anyway.

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Steam Next Fest doesn't officially start until next Monday, February 5th, but what the heck, everyone's putting their demos live early this year, it seems, and another one that's just popped the cork ahead of time is Pepper Grinder, the excellent-looking pixel platformer where you're burrowing through bedrock with a heckin' great drill in your hands as you attempt to steal back your treasure from some pesky pirates. I was instantly smitten with this one when it was first unveiled at the end of 2022, and the more I've seen of it, the more it's risen into becoming one of my most anticipated games of 2024. Happily, its Next Fest demo doesn't disappoint, as it not only feels wonderful in the hands, but ooof, it really knows how to do a good plinky plink coin jostle. My word.

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Oh my god, yes. I was a little hesitant to put this in the shortlist so soon after another stabby swordy duelling game (“Wait, five months? Really?” - Actually Looked It Up While Editing Sin) but goddamn. First Cut Colon Samurai Duel is great. You know those little, simple games that you try out on a whim and find yourself going, "I will absolutely play this all day unless someone stops me"? Yeah.

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When we published our most anticipated games of 2024 list last month, eagle-eyed readers may have noticed that there was one notable absence: Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector. Don't get me wrong - I'm still very much looking forward to continuing my journey through the Helion System in the follow-up to 2022's exquisite sci-fi RPG, but when developer Jump Over The Age first announced it last June, I got the sense it would take quite a bit longer than the next 12 months to come out. Now, Jump Over The Age has confirmed that, yep, "there's around a year left of development" to go on the game, putting its release firmly into 2025 territory.

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Devolver Digital have confirmed they're cutting 28 people's jobs at Artificer, the Polish studio behind Showgunners, the turn-based tactics game about a dystopian murderous gameshow. Most are gone immediately, while some will stay on until Artificer release their yet-unannounced next game. Artificer were previously owned by Good Shepherd Entertainment, a publisher Devolver bought in 2021.

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The Crucial T500 is our current recommendation for the 'best high-end PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD for gaming', a title it earns through exceptional performance and a more reasonable price than competitors like the Samsung 990 Pro and WD SN850x - no mean feat!

Right now there's a great deal on the 2TB version of the T500 at Amazon UK, where you can get this size for just £130 when you use a £10 voucher. This price also includes one month's worth of access to all Adobe Creative Cloud apps, like Photoshop, Lightroom and Premiere Pro (worth £34).

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It was just yesterday that I was espousing the benefits of the newly released Ryzen 7 5700X3D processor - a cutback version of legendary 5800X3D that breathes new life and exceptional gaming performance into classic Ryzen 1000, 2000, 3000 and 5000 systems. I was thrilled to see the 5700X3D debut at £233 at Amazon - before stocks were exhausted and it went back up to £240, anyway.

Now though, the faster 5800X3D has dropped to nearly the same price, just £234 - an even better deal given its higher clock speeds and (very marginally) faster performance. If you're still running an older Ryzen processor and your motherboard can be updated to support the 5800X3D, then I highly recommend this processor, especially if you're using a comparatively low-res 1080p or 1440p display as you're more likely to be CPU-limited at these resolutions!

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Dig back far enough into the history of any word and you'll find something sinister. Take "cute". Nowadays it means pretty, lovable or charming, albeit perhaps with an undertone of mistrust or contempt, as in the phrase "that's a cute observation, Edwin". But the word originally evolved from "acute", which very broadly means sharp or intense. "Acute" was once a Middle English word for a short-lived fever - it's related to "ague", a word you've likely come across in a medieval fantasy RPG somewhere, which refers to fits of sweating and shivering. The word "cute", then, is secretly diseased, and so, perhaps, is the experience of cuteness. There's a psychological phenomenon called "cute aggression" which refers to the desire to physically envelop, dominate and even abuse the thing you find cute - "I just want to squeeze you till you pop".

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Confession time, folks. Of all the games shown off during The Game Awards last December, Tales Of Kenzera: Zau was the one I glossed over the most. Listen, it was very early in the morning at the time, and it must have come at a peak eyes-glazing-over moment for me. However, having now played the first 30 minutes of Tales Of Kenzera thanks to its just-released early Steam Next Fest demo, I have seen the error of my ways. The demo might only cover the game's opening, but this 2.5D Metroidvania already looks to be quite the promising newcomer in this ever-crowded genre - so much so that it may even be able to go toe to toe with Ubisoft's Prince Of Persia: The Lost Crown. Yep, I went there.

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Right after exploring Scottish peaks and glens in A Highland Song, indie studio Inkle are now sending us into an ever-shifting labyrinth full of art in a free new game. Made for Google's Arts & Culture initiative, The Forever Vault is an adventure game where you search the labyrinth's many attics, mines, gardens, server rooms, rooftops, treehouses, wine cellars, and such for your missing pal not only by passing through doorways and stairways but by connecting ideas and concepts contained within artwork. Having played (and failed) one attempt to crack it, I'm keen for a return.

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There's life in the ol' Alan Wake 2 yet. Last year's multimedia horror extravaganza game has a new patch, and of note is that it includes chapter select but, interestingly, also the "much-requested option to tune down the horror flashes", according to the notes here. What is a horror flash, you ask? It's that thing where a horror game or film or TV show suddenly flashes up a semi-transparent image of like, a monster, or a screaming woman, or a big weird eye. A jump scare meets the Kuleshov effect.

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Not that Yakuza (or Like A Dragon as it's now called) hasn't felt comfortable in its skin over the years, but Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth feels particularly confident. I think that's down to a lot of little improvements to its RPG systems that I mention in my review, but also two other things: a radio and trolleys.

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Tencent Holdings - the biggest videogame company in the world - are looking to buy Dungeons & Dragons off Hasbro, with Baldur's Gate 3 creators Larian serving as an intermediary. Or maybe not. The above claim surfaced yesterday, while everybody was going nuts about Hideo Kojima's latest shenanigans, and has swiftly been shot down by Hasbro subsidiary Wizards of the Coast, originator of all things D&D that haven't been created by D&D's vast and imaginative modding, fanshipping and spin-off-making communities. Curious.

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Here at the Electronic Wireless Show podcast we like indie games (inasmuch as "indie" can ever really be a helpful term; as the "good" doctor Peterson would no doubt say, what do words even mean? It's bloody complicated!) and thus are using the news that Day Of The Devs is a non-profit (what does non-profit even mean? What does profit mean? It's bloody complicated!) as a flimsy excuse to talk about indie games. Plus: Steam Next Fest kicks off next week, and there were indie game demos a-plenty, so we talk about some favourites of those, too. Plus: we've been playing JRPGs! And I was wrong, it's episode 4. Please ignore every time I say it's episode 5. I told you my notes aren't to be trusted.

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They say ammo scarcity is an artform in FPS games, but I'd argue no game makes a single sniper bullet work harder than the freshly announced Children Of The Sun. I mean, why waste them when you're a young telekinetic hellbent on getting your revenge on the cult that raised you and held you hostage for your entire life? One bullet goes a long way when you can alter the path of its trajectory with each fresh kill you land - as long as they're visible in your immediate eyeline, that is. There are no swoopy swerves going on here, and the thrill of each level is working out the best (and quite literal) angle of attack to take down every last target. I've been playing the first handful of levels of Children Of The Sun over the last week or so, and no word of a lie, this murderous mix of Hitman, Holedown and Sniper Elite has shot straight into my gooey, beating heart.

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Surprise, miners. Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor, the Vampire Survivors-like spinoff that puts a bullet heaven twist on one of the PC's best co-op games, is launching into early access just a couple of weeks from now. It’ll be out on Steam from February 14th, incidentially gifting the possibility for all kinds of cheap Valentine’s Day slogan gags. You are my Rock and Stone? My Ommoran Heartstone belongs to you? Drill you be Mine? Hilarious. Also, there’s a trailer.

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A great 3D platformer seems to be a rare and special thing these days. I think Psychonauts 2 was the last one that really took my breath away, but outside of that (as well as obviously every 3D Nintendo platformer), I often struggle to think of many games that could be considered its equal. There's always something holding them back, isn't there? Whether it's a wonky camera, slightly unwieldly controls, or the platforming itself is just a little too pedestrian to ignite the imagination.

So where does Penny's Big Breakaway fit into the equation? This is the next game from former Sonia Mania dev Christian Whitehead's new studio, Evening Star, and yep, you can definitely tell this was made by some real Sonic heads. Penny and her (strangely toothy) sentient yo-yo, err, Yo-Yo, feel like a ball of energy just waiting to bust out across the colourful scenery of their home world of Macaroon, and golly, they sure can fly with just a couple of timely button presses. Alas, there is a but. For me at least, Penny and Yo-Yo are perhaps a bit too energetic for my platforming tastes, and having spent a few hours with an early preview build, I often found them quite a rambunctious pairing to keep under control.

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You know what game I've been secretly hankering for after playing so much Palworld recently? It's Lightyear Frontier, the upcoming farming/crafting mech adventure game from Frame Break and Amplifier Studios, and happily, we now know when it's finally coming out. Lightyear Frontier will be launching into early access on both Steam and Game Pass on March 19th, and you can go and play a demo of it right now, too. The demo is technically part of Steam Next Fest next week, but it's live now for all to enjoy (just like every other Steam Next Fest demo, it seems).

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RPS Game Club is back in action for 2024 today, and our first pick of the year is the exceedingly good Cobalt Core, a spaceship roguelike deckbuilder where you're slipping and sliding out the way of incoming missiles to get to the bottom of why you and the rest of your animal pals seem to be stuck in a pesky timeloop. I had an absolute blast with it when it came out at the end of last year, and really, this is just the perfect excuse to shove it back in front of your faces again.

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Palworld, the survival game filled with legally distinct Pokémon and numerous Glock-19s, has received its first major patch. Straight off the production line are fixes to crashes, as well as enemy pals getting stuck in walls. And if you've been plagued by other players stealing your flock, then worry no longer, as pal spheres chucked at your low-HP pals won't capture them anymore. Breeding also becomes easier, with the removal of some annoying flourishes. There's a lot more and it gets progressively sillier.

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Sega of America will lay off 61 people in March, according to the state of California and the Sega of America AEGIS union. The layoffs are allegedly aimed at the company's QA and localisation departments, and represent around 13% of Sega of America's workforce.

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Well, they're finally doing it. They're making free Godzilla DLC for Dave The Diver, Mintrocket's hitherto laidback restaurant management/ocean exploration game. The kaiju of kaijus will invade the celebrated "indie" title in May, shortly after the PS5 release. How would Godzilla himself react, if he were writing this news post? I suspect he would say: RRRRRARRRARRGH.

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PlayStation's January State Of Play stream was chock full of big game announcements, including deep dives on Death Stranding 2, two Silent Hill games, Rise Of The Ronin and loads more stuff that will almost certainly be heading to PC at some point down the line. Because let's face it. Everything PlayStation comes to PC eventually. We just have a wait a couple of years for it. Just look at former exclusive Horizon Forbidden West, which is hitting PC on March 21st. That wasn't in tonight's showcase, of course, so let's take a look at everything that was. Start those PC countdown timers now, folks, because it's only a matter of time.

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Well look at that, a new trailer for Rise of the Rōnin - the fancy samurai action-RPG from Ninja Gaiden household Team Ninja. Set in 19th century Japan's Bakumatsu era, the game is a mixture of open-ended exploration, sneaking and agile traversal that puts me heavily in mind of Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed series. Unlike most Assassin's Creeds, however, this one has a pretty in-depth, rigorous melee combat system, with bosses that look like they're going to grind my gears no end. Will it be as vicious as Nioh 2? I'd better start stocking up on comfort food.

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It’s been a good few years since we last saw the Metro series in Metro Exodus. Its reappearance during tonight’s PlayStation State of Play showcase combined the surprise of its return with the surprise that the next Metro game will be exclusive to virtual reality.

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