Rock, Paper, Shotgun

There’s big news in the draw pile for Hearthstone, apparently. The collectible card game’s three-a-year expansion cycle tends to run from April to April, and if last year’s timings are anything to go by, we can expect a reveal of the next year’s theme, plus an idea of upcoming content, in the next week or so. What’s making this a bigger deal than usual is the small army of streamers and the like Blizzard called to their big castle in Stormwind this week, for a “community summit” that left some big names – and some other chumps – tweeting serious hype. A certain amount of “this will blow your mind” is to expected from such events, but it certainly seems more intense than usual this time around.

CD Projekt say The Witcher 3 has now sold enough on Steam to qualify for the biggest sales cut available on Valve’s platform. Hitting $50 million (£38m) means Valve will only take 20% – which is still more than Epic take from all and any sales from any game. Congratulations to The Witcher for reaching that 80% cut, but it is wild that even a game this big has taken so long to score Steam’s best deal.

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A is for Alphabetised wargame and sim news. Every four weeks or so I hang up a streamer of industrial strength fly paper in The Flare Path water closet and see what wargame and simulation news items stick to it. Below is this month’s bag – 25 stories involving virtual vehicles and surrogate slaughter. If you know what the G stands for in TGV, or can put these three battles – Guam, Goose Green, Guadalajara – in chronological order, you should probably click where it says… (more…)

To fully defox the following enlargeable geofoxer, identify all twelve locations plus the theme that links them. (more…)

This week, Sea Of Thieves introduced some very angry treasure chests – appropriately named Chests Of Rage. These chests are pretty needy, if you don’t pay attention to them they blow up, engulfing everything around them in fire, and letting out a hearty scream as they do so. As it turns out, that scream is the voice of none-other than the game’s award-winning composer, Robin Beanland, and he’s treated us Sea Of Thieves fans to a lovely video of one of his recording sessions.

It’s literally just a recording of a dude yelling his head off.

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The greasy realm of the videogame is not always the best place to look for good writing. For every Disco Elysium there are roughly 800 Detroit: Beyond Humans. But it is a good place to look for wondrous, over-the-top nonsense. I’m talking about character dialogue so flamboyant and exaggerated, you could insert some line breaks and it would instantly become a verse in a glam rock anthem. Here are the 12 most extravagant, exuberant, and intense lines of dialogue. In games, subtext is just whatever’s written on the side of the nuclear submarine.

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Castle Crashers was, like predecessor Alien Hominid, a beautifully animated, arcady, 2D scrolling beat ‘em up by The Behemoth. It eventually made it to PCs in 2012, although it was out on console in 2008. Curiously, however, I know for sure that I played it in 2007 – I guess it must have been a demo, or something. But good grief, what a vivid memory I have of playing it. Yep, that’s right – prepare for another wild swerve off the road of talking about the actual game, and into the rugged backcountry of soul-rummaging reflection.

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A series of Formula 1-y races are coming to GTA Online on February 27th, Rockstar announced today. I say ‘Formula 1’ because that’s the one I know, but I suppose the upcoming Open Wheel Race Series could be inspired by F2, or IndyCar, or… look, it’s those weird cars shaped like fighter jets, okay. While those races don’t start until next Thursday, crimepeople do have the opportunity to win one of its new cars now. The Progen PR4 is the grand prize on the Diamond Casino’s free-to-spin prize wheel this week, see, and that’s the only official way to get it before the launch.

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Just when you thought it was safe to take the plunge on a VR headset in time for Half-Life: Alyx, HTC have just gone and announced three new Vive Cosmos headsets to spice up your virtual window shopping. Dubbed the Vive Cosmos Elite, Vive Cosmos XR and Vive Cosmos Play, all three headsets will have the same 2880×1700 resolution display and overall design as the original Cosmos, but their level of tracking capability will vary depending on which headset you go for – presumably to make them more competitive against the Cosmos’ cheaper, lower-end Oculus and more expensive, higher-end Index rivals. Here’s everything you need to know.

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The long-forgotten Borderlands film might actually be making some headway, as Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford tweeted that Eli Roth has joined the team to direct it. Roth is known for making a fair few horror flicks (as well as that one weird family film where Jack Black plays a warlock that saves the world), so, yeah, no idea what his link is with Borderlands really.

Pitchford deleted the tweet announcing all the new film stuff this almost immediately – but the internet never forgets, Randy.

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There’s nothing quite as unsettling as being shot at in Apex Legends by a character that’s just a gun and a floating head. As someone who plays Mirage, seeing a character essentially steal my abilities is bang out of order. Bangalore-out of order, actually, because she’s the character that whose body was kind of… disappearing when wearing certain skins.

This attempt to usurp Mirage players is nearly over though, as Respawn are working on a fix to make Bangalore fully visible again.

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For wizards who wish to accumulate numbers boasting of their League Of Legends prowess, Riot Games have returned with a second crack at Eternals, the stat-tracking doodads whose planned launch was aborted last year. Similar to Dota 2’s Inscribed Gems and CS’s StatTrak guns, Eternals will track and show off numbers like kills and high-skill plays. It’s a common idea but when Eternals hit the test servers in August 2019, players weren’t best pleased with Riot’s implementation. After taking some time to tinker, Riot this week reproposed Eternals, now looking more interesting stats and no longer costing big chunks of real money.

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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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Minecraft‘s upcoming 1.16 update is going to give the Nether – the game’s weirdo hell dimension – a long overdue glow-up. As of this month, Mojang have started trickling 1.16 content into the game via weekly ‘snapshot’ builds, which can be played in parallel to your main Minecraft installation. Now there’s a couple of these available, featuring oddball megamushrooms, eerie blue lights and unappealing pig-goblins, I thought I’d load the latest snapshot, and have a play with the new blocks. Here’s what I came up with by playing around in creative mode, using only blocks from Minecraft 1.16.

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AOC make great gaming monitors. You might even say they make some of the very best gaming monitors around. Indeed, their excellent AOC 24G2U is currently our RPS Rig-approved gaming monitor and one of the best budget screens you can buy today. Did you also know, though, that they now make their own AGON-branded peripherals? I certainly didn’t, but if my brief hands on with their upcoming AGON-branded keyboard and mouse is anything to go by, they could be on to another set of winners. After all, what’s the point of having a bunch of LEDs on the back of your monitor if you can’t have matching rainbow patterns across the rest of your PC?

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Cyberpunk 2077 may have been delayed, but when we finally get our hands on it in September we’ll be able to play through it at launch on GeForce Now.

GeForce Now is Nvidia’s cloud gaming service which will let you stream games you already own, rather than having to buy them on a new platform. If you pay for GeForce Now membership, it also means you’ll be able to play Cyberpunk 2077 using their fancy ray tracing from day one.

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Fortnite Season 2 Chapter 2 starts today, and Epic have released a couple of trailers to show what’s waiting for us on the island when we drop into the new update. One of those things is a top secret base with a disturbingly buff cat man and a tuxedo-clad Peely residing inside, as the new season is all about secret spy stuff. You’ll find new spy bases defended by security systems and NPC agents, new spy gadgets, the plenty of new outfits. That old cameo favourite, Deadpool even sneaks in.

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Seven years after its announcement, Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord is almost here. TaleWorlds Entertainment have announced an early access release date of March 31st for their feudal sandbox. Mount & Blade is a strange series, a big open-world and open-ended sandbox combining bits of empire-building strategy, political manoeuvring, roleplaying, and getting your hands dirty on the battlefield yourself fighting alongside your army. It’s also historically a bit janky and old-looking, so I’m stoked for a shiny new one. The full launch will come after about a year but if you refuse to wait any longer, March 31st is the date.

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We don’t really get the chance to write about Animal Crossing here in the PC gaming wasteland, even though several members of the team are avowed fans of Nintendo’s build a lovely village and make friends ’em up. Happily, the somewhat unlikely crossover between Animal Crossing’s fans and those of gory demonslaying FPS Doom has given me a valid reason.

Doom Eternal’s release was delayed to March 20th, y’see, which happens to be the same day as Animal Crossing: New Horizons arrives for the Switch. The internet thus reasonably decided that Doomguy (supersoldier; gun wielder) and Isabelle (secretary; dog) were best friends who shared common interests. Now, with just a month to go, fans of both are wishing each other good luck and good health for their shared launch day with extremely wholesome fan art. I am, as the kids say, here for it.

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Good news, tabletop fans. Humble have brought back their Digital Tabletop bundle for another outing, this time offering up such delights as Slay The Spire, Armello, For The King and both Reigns games for just £7.50 / $10. If you play your cards right, you might just bag yourself a bargain. Here’s how it works.

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It took me a couple dozen attempts to escape hell in Supergiant Games’ early access roguelite Hades. Once I succeeded I thought I might give it a break; return when there were new updates. But it absolutely has its claws in me, which is how I found out that mucking about and losing is actually way better than trying to win.

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Kung-fu animal action RPG Biomutant has been in the works for quite a while. Biomutant was announced back in 2017 and was then planning for a release the following year in 2018. Both of those years have come and gone and mum’s been the word but Experiment 101 spoke up today to assure folks that the pretty apocalypse is still coming. “We’ve never been working on it harder and more focused than now!” they said.

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Things have been quiet out of the Desperados 3 corner for several months, ever since the closed beta in 2019. Sometimes a cowboy’s got a feeling though and I had a good feeling we’d see Mimimi Productions’ next tactical game in 2020. Looks like it’s time to put another news in the chamber and cock it because Desperados 3 has a new trailer today and a release window of “Summer 2020.” There’s lots of real-time death-dealin’ and party management shown off for the deadly Doctor McCoy.

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Sea Of Thieves‘ monthly content update has dropped anchor and it’s a hot one. We already got a look at some of the changes from Rare’s Crews Of Rage preview and now it’s all officially live. There are hot potato chests that explode, sizzling skeletons, and a lot of other stuff that’s too hot to handle.

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No Man’s Sky continues to grow and now it’s grown something properly alive. It’s an egg that hatches into a sentient ship. Sorry, am I reading that right? Yup, the spacefaring crafting simulation game now has ships that are alive and you pilot them from inside their apparently spacious cockpit heads. Where’s the brain at, though? The Living Ship update is adding some other organic stuff to the universe and NPCs that can hail you from space.

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The world is crying out for Diablikes, or at least it seems that way from the rampant success of Wolcen: Lords Of Mayhem, a hacking, slashing, dungeon crawling action RPG that went into the top ten on Steam as soon as it released. It’s only climbed higher since, despite the fact that it’s only just left early access and is not issue-free. Also despite the fact that I have played it for several hours and have yet to identify who or what is Wolcen.

Wolcen: Lords Of Mayhem (which is, impressively, the game’s second crack at a title) is very derivative. If I didn’t know any better I’d say even the dialogue was procedurally generated by digitally pulping together Tolkien’s collected works with all three previous Diablo games, a recent D&D rulebook and the entire contents of one (1) Games Workshop store. But that’s okay. Nothing exists that is original, as they say. And, even as I write this, I want to play it again, because it is amazing.

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The latest Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds patch went live today, introducing a classic Team Deathmatch game mode. It’s being added as part of a new Arcade section in the game, which will start introducing more varied ways to play PUBG aside from the usual battle royale stuff. There’s some updates to that battle royale stuff too, though, including a few alterations to the new map Karakin, as well as some changes to how grenades and throwables work.

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Microsoft’s subscription-based stable of games just keeps growing like some cursed alien creature in a sci-fi show. It won’t stop till its giant, gelatinous self fills every corner of the ship, captain! Microsoft are adding five more games to the Xbox Game Pass on PC in the near future. Yakuza 0 and Two Point Hospital are on deck along with Wasteland Remastered, Reigns: Game Of Thrones, and Indivisible.

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So you’ve played a little bit of Wolcen 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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Blackbird Interactive, the makers of Homeworld: Deserts Of Kharak and the upcoming Homeworld 3, today announced another game they have on the go. Hardspace: Shipbreaker is a first-person salvager that will send us into spaceships to carve them up so we can sell the parts for scrap. I thought it sounded like nice, careful, methodical destruction until I saw hazards like fires, engine cores, and our old friend, explosive decompression. Have a look in the announcement trailer below.

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Back in the day, you really had to work hard to pull pranks in Google search results by planting Google Bombs and such. These days, now that the Internet is run by deranged robots made of clouds, it seems Google will happily prank itself. Case in point: today, searching for Steam on Google could return a listing describing Valve’s digital store with the words “FUCK EPIC GAMES STORE” and fragments of broken ASCII art. It doesn’t seem to be the result of a hack, prank, or corporate warfare, just some robot seeing a Steam user’s review of Metro Exodus and thinking “Yeah gwan that’s probably important” in its vaporous little brain.

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I’m Alice0 and I’m here to say, some great Bethesda games are out in a DRM-free way. GOG this week added the Dishonored games and two of the new Wolfensteins. That’s some lovely gaming right there, so I’m just briefly highlighting it for people who prefer their games without DRM. They’ve got hefty discounts for one week to celebrate the launches too.

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Last week, after a lifetime of timidity, I finally bit the bullet and played my first competitive ranked game of Age Of Empires 2. Needless to say, I got battered. A big medieval boot stomped my fingers from the first rung of the ranked ladder, and I splashed back into the mire where I belonged. But after a week licking my wounds, practising build orders, doing maths with 14 wiki tabs open, and archer-rushing my way through endless 1v1 comp stomps, I came back for another go.

This time, my arrow-spamming, catapult-happy Ethiopians were facing off against the Japanese, on the map known as GOLD RUSH. As its name suggests, this map is all about fighting for control of gold deposits, almost all of which spawn on a massive hill in the middle. A massive hill… covered in tigers. Aggressive map control would be even more crucial here than it had been in the Black Forest, while tigers would become suddenly, and drastically, relevant. But had I learned my lessons from my first defeat – and could I seize my first win on the back of it? Draw your reading swords, armchair knights, and charge on to find out:

Yesterday, Kickstarter became the first tech company to unionise in the US. In a vote that ended up with 46 employees voting for, and 37 voting against, the staff will now join over 100,000 other workers represented by the Office And Professional Employees International Union (OPEIU).

The crowdfunding site has helped loads of games get the funding they need to get their feet off the ground, making this wonderful news for both the tech and the games industry alike.

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After disabling the option to buy Grand Theft Auto IV in January, Rockstar now say 2008’s open-world murder simulator will return to sale in March with a few changes. Microsoft’s awful Games For Windows Live technogubbins is being removed because it caused the trouble in the first place, and that’s great news. It seems some folks will also receive the expansions or base game for free too. Unfortunately, Rockstar are also removing GTA IV’s multiplayer mode and will temporarily disable several radio stations. A mixed crimebag.

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Combat in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is a beast of two natures. At its best, it is elegant and satisfying, and rewards careful preparation. At its worst, it’s like banging your head against a wall. Good thing we’ve compiled the below The Witcher 3 combat tips then, to help you achieve the former and steer clear of the latter!

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The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt has cross-save now! Yesterday, a brand new update for the Nintendo Switch version dropped, and it’s a very welcome one for us PC players. CD Projekt Red have introduced save file integration with Steam and GOG, so you can continue your adventures with Geralt at your PC or on the go (or docked at your telly if that’s how you prefer to play Switch).

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Alice L. was the person who really encouraged me to dive headlong into the pool of long build projects that is my fandom of The Sims 4. She is both one third of the Council Of Alices and one third of the RPS VidBud team on YouTube, and she’s just started a new Sims 4-themed video series. In Can We Build It?, Alice L. attempts to build an iconic room from another game but in The Sims 4’s build mode.

In this first one she’s had a crack at the twins’ room in What Remains Of Edith Finch, which should count as doing two rooms, really. Calvin and Sam shared a bedroom, but they had very different design sensibilities. Alice has done a really astounding job recreating it, as you’ll see via the screenshots and comparisons in the video, embedded below.

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THQ Nordic are going ahead with their Gothic Remake, a do-over of the 2001 fantasy RPG. They released a public playable prototype in December and, having surveyed players, today announced reactions were positive enough for them to think it worthwhile. They did note that they’re aware that not all the Gothic Playable Teaser’s new design decisions and artistic changes were popular, and say they’ll have a think about all that before getting stuck right into the remake.

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Legends of Runeterra is a card game and that means there’s a lot of cards that are all sorted into different groups. Here they’re called “regions”, which are like the colours in Magic the Gathering, or similar ways to categorise decks in other collectable card games. There are a ton of cards for each region, so we’ve put together a full list of cards that are found in the open beta.

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