Rock, Paper, Shotgun

At last we’ve gotten our first look at Baldur’s Gate 3 and I—liker of both Baldur’s Gate and Divinity: Original Sin 2—am feeling quite swell about what we’ve seen, but RPS have even more interview goodies yet. In the gameplay reveal this week, Larian CEO Swen Vincke takes off his character’s boots and throws them at an enemy as a last-ditch escape manoeuvre. During an interview with RPS folk Matthew and Alice Bee, Vincke let on that, in Larian’s signature permissive dungeon master style, that’s far from the only thing you can chuck across the battlefield.

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Big ol’ kingdom manager Crusader Kings 3 has put out another development update and it’s a chunky one. This month, Paradox Interactive developers take a really deep dive on all of the Lifestyles—like classes, but for your management self, not combat self. There are five different Lifestyles that your ruler can specialize in, all with different perk trees and focuses that let you decide how you’ll keep an iron grip on your land and lords and all.

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Eve Online‘s big fan event in Iceland is now the latest to be cancelled over public health concerns surrounding spread of the new coronavirus (COVID-19). CCP announced today that in order to prioritise the safety of attendees, staff, and the local community, Eve Fanfest 2020 is being cancelled. The event was scheduled for April 2-4 in Reykjavik, Iceland.

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This Saturday, hundreds of classic EverQuest players plan on flooding one of the game’s servers in protest of the lack of a vintage PvP server. The 21-year-old MMO still has a pretty thriving community, including several servers running older versions, but the game currently has just one official PvP server and it’s on modern EverQuest. This means anyone who wants a classic PvP experience needs to use private community-run servers. But these players have had enough, they want their old PvP back, and they’re rising up as ogres to get the developers’ attention. I spoke to one of the ringleaders ahead of the protest.

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“Where is it?!” I holler, rooting through game tags searching for any mention of Garden Story on RPS. “It must be here somewhere!” Alas, it is not. So I shall break the ice. Garden Story, currently in development, will be one of the current crop of very sweet town-sim type games following in the wake that Stardew Valley has cleared on PC. It’s being shown off at PAX East but you can load up a free demo from home all weekend.

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There’s no denying that Luna: The Shadow Dust is exceptionally easy on the eyes. It’s a sumptuous point and click puzzler that sees you move from one lovingly hand-drawn room to the next, as you work your way up a strange and mysterious tower. You’re never explicitly sure why you’re heading skyward, since the game prides itself on its wordless storytelling. Instead of bombarding you with dozens of text boxes, it conveys its narrative through ancient-looking murals adorning the tower walls, and occasionally through the puzzles themselves. It works to an extent, but I’d say that most of the game’s pull comes from simply wanting to know what gorgeous-looking delight awaits through the next door. And without the ability to retrace your steps at any point, the only way, as they say, is up.

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If you’ve not heard, those folks who done underwater horror game Soma and haunted house horror game Amnesia: The Dark Descent are working on another thing that is almost certainly a horror game. And look, it’s a scary desert game this time around. Probably. We don’t know for sure yet because so far they’ve led players on an ARG—that’s alternate reality game—looking for clues about what their next proper video game might be. Today them super sleuths have uncovered another hidden video and this one looks like an actual game (teaser) trailer.

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Salutations, deals hunters. It’s another beautiful day in the land of the best PC gaming deals, with loads of big savings to be had as far as the eye can see. Seriously, I actually can’t move for deals this week. In our immediate vicinity, you’ll find huge discounts in both the leafy suburbs of The Sims 4 and the rainy streets of Conglomerate 451, before encountering yet more deals out on the plains and field of Total War. Then, in the next city over (but don’t get too close), there’s 29% off to be found on the likes of Resident Evil 3, and there are even deals to be found all the way down in hell, with Bethesda’s big, web-wide Doom sale. So let’s go forth into this week’s finest deals country, because boy howdy, there’s a lot to get through.

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Stardew Valley may be a wonderful game, but there’s no denying it imposes excessive limits upon the player. Every item has prerequisites, and the productivity of each day is dictated by your energy and the inevitable march of time. But our Stardew Valley cheats guide will walk you through how to break down all these limitations, from pausing time to spawning items, from insta-completing quests to giving yourself unlimited money – and much, much more.

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My latest big brain critic realisation is that dystopian sci-fi settings are a clever way to make basic (and possibly tedious) elements of interacting with your game, suddenly thematic. “Hmmm, I’ve been clicking on this menu for a while,” You think. “This isn’t very interesting.” And then the screen goes all crackly or whatever, and a disembodied voice materialises and says: “The year is 2483, and all humans do is click on menus. Corporations did this.”

And that’s you, sucked into a charybdis-level whirlpool of immersion. Eyes glued to the screen as you watch a text crawl tell the terrifying story of corporate goons going around with big buckets of glue and sticking everyone’s eyes to screens….forever. Cyberpunk, eh? Cyberpunk indeed, says Conglomerate 451. It sits somewhere between the Ultima Underworld homage of Legend of Grimrock, the debuff-firing turn based combat of Darkest Dungeon, and the base and squad management of Alien Defence Squad Trouser And Hairdo Customisation Adventure 2012, which I believe you proles call XCOM.

It’s been VR headset deals galore this week. On Monday, HTC slashed the price of its Vive Pro starter kit by £220, no doubt in preparation for the launch of the upcoming Vive Cosmos Elite, and now Overclockers UK are offering £120 off a regular Vive Cosmos as part of their big 20th birthday bash. Normally £699, this takes the headset down to a rather tasty £579. If you’re still thinking about buying a VR headset for the launch of Half-Life: Alyx, this could be just the ticket.

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Paradox have announced a launch date of March 17th for the next Stellaris expansions, Federations. As the name suggests, it focuses on expanding options for spacefriends in the 4X strategy game, including new types of federation and a sort of galactic United Nations. It’ll bring new origins for civilisations too, including some novel ones like starting on a fragment of a Ring World or on a doomed planet that will explore in 64 years. And as is the Paradox way, it’ll be accompanied by a free update overhauling parts of the game for all players.

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Much like the previous season change, Teamfight Tactics Set 3 changes the entire roster of champions in the game. This time every champion is themed around the space theme, with some champions taking inspiration from established concepts from within the League of Legends universe. So expect to see cybernetic variants of Fiora, or the “Star Guardians” that have an uncanny resemblance to the Sailor Moon team.

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So you’ve played a little bit of Wolcen, now that it’s properly fixed, and are now staring into the abyss that is the skill tree. Where do you even start? Luckily, there are some builds out there for new players looking for a bit of direction that cater to all types. From bloodthirsty warriors that spin axes repeatedly, to mages that want to see things explode. We’ve got a collection of the best builds right here for you to use, including one that we’ve found to be very handy indeed that we made.

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Let’s get the important stuff out of the way first. Taur has nothing to do with bulls. I don’t know how many of you may have thought that, but I figured I’d clear it up anyway. It does have a lot to do with towers, which is how I assume the title is supposed to be pronounced. I quite admire the brass of it. It’s like calling your strategy game “Bayse” or your FPS “Guhn.”

Taur attempts to refine your typical tower defence scenario, borrowing ideas from strategy games like Total Annihilation and XCOM and reducing it down so individual matches last minutes rather than hours. It’s a spectacular and surprisingly clever little game, although sadly its best ideas are also the least successful.

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There’s nothing worse than spending lots of money on a fancy gaming monitor and find it’s not very good, so to help you make sure you get the best price on today’s [cms-block]s, I’ve rounded up all the best gaming monitor deals I’ve seen over the last seven days. After all, your gaming monitor is one of the most important (and often most expensive) parts of your entire PC, so why pay over the odds when you can get a great one on the cheap? Updated every Friday with all of the best gaming monitor deals of the week, I’ll be using this page to keep a watchful eye over price hikes and price cuts to make sure you’re getting the best monitor price possible.

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Roman thinks you’re ready for Rithmetic Foxers. Below are three equations disguised as picture sequences. Each pic represents a number (For example a photo of The Flying Scotsman might signify 4472, 462, or 3). It’s your job to identify the mathematical operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication or division) indicated by the lettered squares. The BIDMAS rule applies. No brackets or indices are involved. (more…)

If your hometown is full of Pilsner-swilling Schützen at the moment, if you can’t pass a pub without hearing strains of ‘Lili Marlene’, or walk down a tram aisle without tripping over a Karabiner 98k butt, blame the makers of Broken Lines. Realising that the Wehrmacht was desperately in need of some time off, thoughtful Danish developer PortaPlay has left them out of the £20 “WW2” tactical RPG that has been effortlessly monopolising my monitor for the past few days. (more…)

Graphics cards prices are largely stable at the moment, but there are some great GPU deals to be had on Nvidia’s RTX 2060 and RTX 2060 Super cards at the moment, as prices have fallen quite considerably since last week. To help you bag one of today’s [cms-block]s on the cheap, I’ve rounded up all the best graphics card deals of the week below, comparing how they’ve changed since last week and whether they’re currently a good buy. It’s bad news for RTX 2080 buyers, for example, as prices have risen so high over the last seven days that it now costs as much as an RTX 2080 Super.

Elsewhere, though, this week’s best graphics card deals are largely the same as last week. No one likes paying over the odds for their graphics card, after all, so let us help you get the best deal on your new GPU. Whether you’re upgrading your PC or building a new PC from scratch, there’s a best graphics card deal for you below.

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This weekend, the ESL Pro Tour Masters Championship stops at Poland’s Spodek arena for three days of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and StarCraft II matches in the Intel Extreme Masters Katowice 2020. The arena can hold 11,500 spectators but while IEM Katowice sold out, it has no crowd. Last night, barely 15 hours before the event started, Polish authorities revoked its mass event license due to concerns about that there coronavirus. The matches are still going ahead, just with no spectators. ESL say they will refund IEM tickets but can’t refund travel and accommodation costs.

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The list of developers and tech companies dropping out of GDC is growing, as Microsoft, Epic Games and Unity confirm they’re pulling out due to health risks presented by coronavirus (COVID-19). This is a big blow for the physical conference, but both Microsoft and Unity have mentioned sharing their GDC presentations digitally, so we’ll still have a chance to see the behind-the-scenes info they had prepared.

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If you’re in the market for some new storage, then you’ll find the best prices for today’s best SSDs right here in our regularly updated best SSD deals of the week guide. Below, I’ve gathered together all the best prices for nearly all of my [cms-block] recommendations that I’ve been able to find this week, although quite a few have seen some unfortunate price rises since last Friday. Only by a couple of quid, mind, but you may want to wait another couple of days to see if prices get any better. If you’re in desperate need of a new SSD right now, though, I’ve got you covered. Whether you’re after a deal on the best SATA SSDs or mega discounts on super fast NVMe SSDs and portable SSDs, you’ll find all the best SSD deals right here.

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It’s no secret that I like pretty fighting games like The King Of Fighters XIII. While I’ve never been as into SNK’s style of fighting as I have Capcom’s Street Fighter, the genre’s shift away from hand-drawn sprites to 3D models has never appealed to me. It made Ken’s hair look like a bunch of bananas, and that’s a cardinal sin. It’s sad, then, that KoF XIII was the last sprite-based game before SNK followed with its own crude 3D models.

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Ah, religion. I know this is a topic we all have trouble agreeing on. But fear not, humble practitioner of a good pray, I am not here to squint angrily at your favourite book of life advice. I’m only here for the videogame religions. The ones that are very, very, very, very bad. You know, the gun-loving cults and the xenophobic people-burners. The (mostly) fictional religions that involve an uncommon volume of murder. Step this way, sprinkle yourself with some of my 100% genuine oil of the almighty, and peruse the 9 most dodgy religions in games.

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Baldur’s Gate 3 looks like it might be Larian Studios’ most ambitious game yet – and if you’ve played Divinity: Origin Sin 2, you’ll know that’s saying something. Below we’ve answered the biggest questions about the upcoming RPG, from the Baldur’s Gate 3 release date to our knowledge of the game’s setting, companions, system requirements, and more.

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Packed enough shield batteries, champ? Apex Legends is going all robotic with its next Collection Event, System Override. As usual, that means two weeks of themed get-ups for the arena’s characters, weapons and intangible banners. But respawn are also taking this chance to experiment with the ApeLegs format by introducing a power-hungry new shield and removing the randomness from their battle royale.

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A maquette, Wikipedia tells me, is a “scale model or rough draft of an unfinished sculpture”. Maquette is also a beautiful new game from Graceful Decay and publishers Annapurna. Fittingly, those two definitions aren’t as separate as they might seem. Releasing sometime later this year, Maquette is a recursive first-person puzzle box about models within models, where small-scale adjustments can have a massive impact on the world at large.

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If you play tabletop games like Dungeons & Dragons – heck, if you play a lot of video games like Hitman or XCOM where you rely on a blend of skill and luck – you’ll know that it’s more fun when everything goes wrong but you manage to make it through anyway. Things going according to plan are boring. This is why it was great that, when a handful of journalists were shown a hands-off demo of Baldur’s Gate III, founder of Larian and director of BG3 Swen Vincke failed almost every dice roll, every passive skill check, and every attempt at sneaking he made.

The Epic Games Store exclusivity of Borderlands 3 will end on March 13th with a Steam launch, developers Gearbox Software announced today. They had previously said the looter-shooter’s exile would end in April 2020 so apparently the Steam launch has been bumped up a bit, now coming exactly six months after the Epic debut. Steamers will be able to join Epiceers in multiplayer to burst monsters together, though some multiplayer features won’t be enabled for crossplay at launch.

Gearbox also today announced the second story expansion, a stag do gone monstrously wrong named Guns, Love, And Tentacles: The Marriage Of Wainwright & Hammerlock.

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Sludge Life is a damn good name for anything, honestly. But it’s an even better moniker for Devolver Digital’s latest reveal. A slimey lo-fi open world riot, Sludge Life is a filthy collaboration between developer Terri Vellman and music man Doseone, the folks behind supernatural shootout High Hell. Tag your way to the top, tear down your corporate overlords, or kick back and grab a light with the cats at the docks – who the hell cares when you’re stuck on a planet made of goo?

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It would be so easy to call Corruption 2029 “Mutant Year Zero without mutants”. That is, after all, the first impression it gives to probably anyone familiar with the same developers’ irradiated manduck tales.

MYZ had personality and atmosphere, and that helped carry it through its weaker parts. And here I once again come up against the question of how fair it is to judge a game only in relation to another. Because Corruption 2029 plays very much the same way for the most part, for good and ill.

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A legally-distinct series of races which are definitely not Formula One featuring no official F1 vehicles arrived in GTA Online, and it’s as messy as you’d expect from an open-world murder simulator. Up to 16 murderers can compete in the new Open Wheel Races, whipping around at tight tracks at 120mph while fighting their honed instincts which scream to ram and kill everyone. At least, that’s what I imagine other players are experiencing when I see six cars pile up at the first corner. While you can buy an F1 car for keepsies, the races will provide one so all are welcome. Ish. Welcome-ish. Unless you get in my way.

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Congratulations, if you’re reading this, you’ve beaten the main campaign of Wolcen. From now on, it’s up to you to rebuild the city of Stormfall. It’s going to take a lot of money and a lot of primordial affinity to construct all of the facilities on offer. I warn you now, this is going to take a long time to complete, so get ready for the long haul. (more…)

Perhaps understandably, given that it’s my job to attempt to stay up to date with PC games these days, I don’t get to play all my favourites with quite the same regularity. Usually, that’s fine – Civilization VI, for example, is always gonna be Civilization VI. Sometimes, it’s even a bit of a boon – I’ll return to something like Rimworld after a few months away, only to find it’s sprouted a game-changing update. But there are some games where even a couple of weeks away can make you feel like you’ve missed out on years, and Hearthstone is really giving me a hard time on that front right now.

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GOG.com have gone and updated their refund policy, and it’s a doozy. This week, the DRM-free storefront announced that their 30-day refund window is expanding, no longer limited to games that have sat unplayed and undownloaded in your library. Now, you can spend a whole month plugging in the hours, working out whether you want to keep your new toy before the clock runs down. It’s a generous move – twice as long as comparable policies, with none of the playtime restrictions. But it’s one places a lot of faith in their customers not to take advantage of that generosity.

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While the skill tree in Wolcen is nowhere near as big as some other action RPGs, it is one of the more interesting to navigate. It allows you to customise your character into the type of character you want them to be. You could be a dedicated warrior that specialises in tanking damage and cleaving through enemy ranks, or a mixture of an assassin class with a bit of poison magic.

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After a string of slightly disappointing 1440p gaming monitors last year, the last couple of screens that have crossed my desk have really knocked it out of the park. AOC’s Agon AG273QX currently stands at the top of the pile with its superb picture quality and hassle-free FreeSync 2 HDR support (wot AMD are now calling FreeSync Premium Pro, in case you’ve forgotten), and now there’s MSI’s Optix MAG272CQR, another 27in, 2560×1440, 165Hz gaming screen that comes in at a very similar price to its AOC rival. Does it have what it takes to knock it off its best gaming monitor perch? Here’s wot I think.

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Temtem can’t get enough of their Pokémon inspired features – it shouldn’t be a surprise really, it’s a Pokémon-inspired MMO after all. Crema have released yet another roadmap through early access and beyond, this time telling us about some of the lovely new things we can expect to start arriving in the game from this winter, including a good old fashioned Nuzlocke game mode. They’ve also provided some details on an upcoming battle pass-style system, as well as something called Dojo Wars.

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Wolcen’s final boss was for the longest time more than a bit broken. It was impossible to beat him if  damaged him while he was transforming in the second or third phase. Now the game has been patched, he is able to be killed with ease, well, if you have the right build of course. (more…)

The official “World Gameplay Reveal” of Baldur’s Gate 3 is due to happen live on stage and stream tonight buuut some website has jumped the gun and leaked a load of screenshots early. They confirm that, as you might expect from the coming-together of Baldur’s Gate and the studio behind Divinity: Original Sin, it’s a top-down RPG with a cinematic conversation view and an air of Divinity about it. Specifics will have to wait for tonight but you can pore over these dozen screenshots now for hints of story, setting, systems, and such.

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