Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Metal Gear Solid creator Hideo Kojima is working on a brand new action-espionage game “that is also a movie”

2 months 3 weeks ago

Almost 10 years after Hideo Kojima left the Metal Gear Solid series behind to start his indie studio, the celebrated developer and Instagram film influencer is planning to return to the genre that made his name with a brand new action-espionage game. And in true Kojima fashion, the video game is said to be just as much a movie as it is a game.

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Author
Matt Jarvis

Action RPG Stellar Blade has respectable Devil May Cry energy in latest trailer

2 months 3 weeks ago

Sony has shared footage of swanky action-RPG Stellar Blade at the publisher's latest State of Play event. It’s launching on April 26th for PS5 – there’s no PC release date just yet, and I do hope developer Shift Up make the effort, because some rather cheesecakey female character models notwithstanding, this looks pretty decent.

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Author
Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

Death Stranding 2 On The Beach gets a trailer and 2025 release window, still absolutely bonkers

2 months 3 weeks ago

Sony and Hideo Kojima have released a new Death Stranding 2 trailer alongside the game's full title - Death Stranding 2 On The Beach. It's out in 2025 on PS5, with a PC release date still to be revealed, and appears to be as free-wheeling and self-serious yet whimsical as you'd expect from a Kojima joint. I got as far as the pet anime dragon before my brain squirmed out through my ear.

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Author
Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

New Silent Hill 2 remake trailer released alongside surprise free Silent Hill game

2 months 3 weeks ago

Sony have released a new trailer for Konami and Bloober's Silent Hill 2 remake at today's State of Play showcase, showing off a few of the horror reboot's redesigned environments and enemies. They've also surprise-released an all-new free-to-play Silent Hill game, Silent Hill: The Short Message, though it's only available on PS5 for the minute.

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Author
Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

Get this brilliant Ducky UK mechanical keyboard for 40% off

2 months 3 weeks ago

Ducky and Varmilo make some of the best keyboards in the scene, and the Miya 69 Pro is a brilliant keyboard that they've each played a part in. This 65% size mechanical retailed at £100 - a fair price for a reasonably high-end model like this - but today it's down to £59.99 at Overclockers, a sweet £40 discount.

This particular model comes with Cherry MX Brown switches, white backlighting and a snazzy 'Holy Flame' colourway that shifts from black to white with thick, premium PBT keycaps arranged in an ISO UK layout. I think it looks great, so if it catches your fancy, the affiliate link below has your name on it:

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Author
Will Judd

Grab the brand new AMD Ryzen 7 5700X3D CPU to upgrade your old Ryzen PC for $249/£233

2 months 3 weeks ago

Do you want to build a PC? Not ready to give up your older Ryzen motherboard but still want great gaming performance? Previously your only option was the (superb) 5800X3D, which uses a 3D V-Cache to massively boost gaming performance, but now the cheaper 5700X3D is also available.

Made from silicon that wasn't quite good enough to turn into the 5800X3D, these processors boost slightly lower but come with the same complement of extra L3 cache, making them still head and shoulders above models like the 5600X, 5800X, 5900X and even 5950X - not to mention older Ryzen 1000, 2000 and 3000 models.

Following its launch this month, the brand new Ryzen 7 5700X3D is now available from B&H Photo and Amazon in the US for $249 or Amazon UK for £233, a great price that undercuts the $308 5800X3D significantly. Here's some links:

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Author
Will Judd

What's better: Vampires or werewolves?

2 months 3 weeks ago

Last time, you decided that different puzzles on different difficulty levels is better than or bullet grazing. While longtime pontificators will know that that the foundation of our scientific method is a tightly controlled series of like-for-like comparisons, what the hey, let's go wild for once. Having just watched that new Bloodlines 2 gameplay video, let's consider vampires and, oh, I don't know, what would be a wacky pairing, oh, werewolves? I know, I know, no connection between the two, but please, indulge this novel field trip.

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Author
Alice O'Connor

Watch PlayStation's State of Play January 2024 game showcase here

2 months 3 weeks ago

Tonight's the night of Sony's latest State of Play gaming showcase, a recurring round-up of PlayStation videogame announcements, trailers, celebrity developer cameos, and assorted high jinks. It kicks off at 2pm PT, 5pm ET and 10pm GMT. The show will be focussed on console games, as you'd expect, but many of the PS5 and PSVR2 projects in question will also be coming to PC, and you can watch the whole event right here.

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Author
Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 looks pretty Dishonored in this 14-minutes gameplay trailer

2 months 3 weeks ago

Following a string of wee teasers for Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2, Paradox have released an "extended gameplay reveal" trailer. This is the most we've seen of Bloodlines 2 since Paradox took the RPG from original developers Hardsuit Labs and handed it to The Chinese Room, the studio behind Dear Esther and Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs. The trailer shows 14 minutes of our vamp creeping about a warehouse with a pretty Dishonored-y combination of stealth and magical violence, showing very much why the sequel is now described as an "action RPG" rather than just "RPG".

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Author
Alice O'Connor

Granblue Fantasy: Relink keeps crashing, but I've enjoyed the 9 hours I've managed so far

2 months 3 weeks ago

The review embargo for fantastical sky-pirates JRPG Granblue Fantasy: Relink just lifted, ahead of its release tomorrow, and I was on review duty. Alas, I have no review to lay at your feet, because the game booted once as soon as I got it, then didn't work for about five days, and for the rest of this week has booted at a ratio of about 1:8 of successful boot to attempts to boot. It has also crashed twice during cutscenes. It's a shame, because I've quite enjoyed the bits that I have played (which amount to about half of the campaign, in single player). As a cross section of the three of us who have the game, one hasn't been able to boot it at all, and it works apparently perfectly for the other - and we tested both the retail build and the review build. I can't speak to what your odds will be if you get it, but sure, if it works, you'll have a fun enough time, probably?

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Author
Alice Bell

Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 Super review: new price, familiar performance

2 months 3 weeks ago

If the RTX 4070 Super was all about addressing its predecessor’s so-so performance gains, the RTX 4080 Super’s course correction is more deeply rooted in issues of cold, hard coinage. For better and worse, it turns out – while this Super-fied GPU knocks hundreds off the RTX 4080’s starting price, any excitement for a potential new 4K champion is quickly muted by it barely moving the dial on straight FPS output. If, indeed, it’s not somehow running slower.

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Author
James Archer

Rocksteady gift early Suicide Squad players in-game cash to apologise for game finishing itself

2 months 3 weeks ago

Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League released into early access for owners of the Deluxe preorder edition earlier this week, granting armchair supervillains prepared to shell out £100 or $100 a headstart on players buying the regular edition, which launches this Friday 2nd February. Or at least, that was the idea.

Like many an online-required live service game before, Suicide Squad's premium access release has been marred by technical bugs and glitches, the most severe of which saw players logging in to discover the main storyline already completed. I guess Rocksteady were serious about not wanting people to treat it like a "life commitment".

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Author
Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

Palworld early access review: base building junk food

2 months 3 weeks ago

The greatest compliment I can give to Palworld is that it lights up my brain in the same way a modern Assassin's Creed game does. It taps into the same checklist clearing compulsion that saw me spend over 100 hours in both Odyssey's Ancient Greek archipelago and the Viking open world of Valhalla - only instead of chasing map icons that take you down weird sidequest rabbit holes that riff on Fenton the (sheep)dog, or gobbling up story events just so you can make googly eyes at every warm-blooded human in a ten mile radius, Palworld hooks you in with its enormous catalogue of base building tasks. Not catching the 100+ Pal monsters roaming around its mysterious islands, but crafting the perfect sweatshop to put them to work in. It's one of those, "I'll just add this furnace so I can craft some ingots that will let me make a cooking pot to level up my base, but wait, now I need some ore to make those ingots, and oh god, I've just spent seven hours doing not very much at all, have I?"

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Author
Katharine Castle

At long last, the Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster series on PC gets classic font and music options

2 months 3 weeks ago

When Square Enix announced the Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster collection for Final Fantasies 1 through 6 back in 2021, I was overjoyed. For too long had PC folks had to 'make do' with the quite nasty mobile ports of these games, and the Pixel Remasters looked set to finally rectify that with proper versions replete with their original artwork. But one thing was missing. Well, several things were missing it turns out, but chief among them were, of course, its damn fonts - a point of contention that's plagued many a Square Enix PC port in recent years, and one that fans quickly set about trying to fix with mods. Extra salt was then added to the wound when Square Enix said that last year's Switch and PS4 versions of the Pixel Remaster series would have two different font options straight out of the box - and it's only now that the PC versions have finally caught up.

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Author
Katharine Castle

New Enshrouded update targets lost save and progress bugs

2 months 3 weeks ago

Across the foggy realm of Enshrouded's Embervale, innocent Flameborn players have been signing in to find their recent progress unkept, their greatest feats reverted, due to problems with the save data system. Despair no more, for developers Keen Games have released an update for the fantasy survival game that takes aim at save data stability specifically.

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Author
Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

Speed Crew is an Overcooked-like that swaps out kitchens for pit stops

2 months 3 weeks ago

If I'm over at someone's place with a bunch of people and they say, "Let's play Overcooked!" I will always visibly recoil. The game is bad for my blood pressure and for the solidity of my friendships. So, I am terrified by the prospect of Speed Crew, an Overcooked-like set in racing pit stops as opposed to kitchens. I gave it a whirl and it has promise! Even if I now need a big lie down. I am not cut out for jobs involving manual labour, nor games where I play as someone who needs to perform manual labour.

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Author
Ed Thorn

Nightingale accessibility options turn innocent giant spiders into angry balloons

2 months 3 weeks ago

Inflexion Games have announced accessibility options for Nightingale, the Victorian "gaslamp fantasy" survival game in which you wander the Fae Realms in bowler hat and ballgown, building houses and murdering eldritch wildlife. Among the wildlife you'll murder are giant spiders, which might be a dealbreaker for some people, so it's just as well Nightingale comes with an arachnophobia mode which transforms those spiders into... large, winged balloons with teeth. It also replaces decorative, non-interactive, smaller spiders and scorpions found in the game's environments with ant models. If you have a phobia for ants or menacing balloons, you're out of luck, I guess.

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Author
Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

The original Warcraft and Diablo are now available from Battle.net

2 months 3 weeks ago

Blizzard tend to do a good job maintaining even their oldest games, releasing patches sometimes decades after their original release. I therefore assumed that 1994's Warcraft: Orcs And Humans and 1997's Diablo were available via the studio's store and launcher, Battle.net.

Not so, it turns out, because Blizzard have just announced they've added them today, and with working multiplayer for both.

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Author
Graham Smith

This RX 7800 XT is going for just $480 in the US with a free copy of Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora

2 months 3 weeks ago

AMD's best value graphics card is the RX 7800 XT - stop me if you've heard this one before. Today American customers have a great chance to pick up a powerful Gigabyte Gaming OC model of this card for just $480 thanks to a discount code at Newegg.

For the reduced price use BYJDN2823 at the checkout. As well as the graphics card, you'll also pick up a complimentary copy of Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, which is nice too.

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Author
Will Judd

Pick up the elegant Asus AP201 Micro ATX case for just $65

2 months 3 weeks ago

The Asus Prime AP201 Micro ATX case is down to $65 on Amazon US, a great price for a SFF case that's attracted warm reviews since launching in 2022.

The AP201 offers excellent compatibility with a wide range of cooling hardware and graphics cards, plus excellent thermals and easy buildability. It even has a classy, understated look that's the polar opposite of Asus' ROG designs. That's pretty much the full set when it comes to small form factor PC cases, so consider jumping on this one while you can!

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Author
Will Judd

I'm stoked for this immersive sim about escaping a town in the shadow of a colossal policeman

2 months 3 weeks ago

I was instantly taken with the idea of Militsioner when I first saw it in 2021. The upcoming "Kafkaesque" immersive sim gives you the simple goal of escaping a town within a few days, a task which is somewhat complicated by the fact that a Leviathan-sized Russian cop towers over the city, watching you. In a new dev blog, developers TallBoys explain more of how you might court the giant's approval (the term "fully fleshed dating-sim mechanic" features) or avoid it by sneaking about while he sleeps. You might even—gasp!—do crimes. This also drew my attention to a ten-minute gameplay video they released last month and oh, yes, please.

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Author
Alice O'Connor

Former Cyberpunk and Bioshock devs reveal eerie post-apocalyptic open world shooter Hornet

2 months 3 weeks ago

Antistatic Studios, a new outfit made up of former Cyberpunk 2077, Bioshock and Borderlands developers, have announced their debut title, a PvE co-op tactical shooter set on a haunted, post-apocalyptic continent. They're codenaming it Hornet. The announcement trailer is sort of Lethal Company meets STALKER with a bodycam found footage perspective. It's quite the cocktail of tropes, though I'll take this over another "Soulslike roguelite deckbuilder" or similar.

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Author
Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

No, you can't outsmart Call Of Duty's skill-based matchmaking by restarting it, Activision reveal

2 months 3 weeks ago

I've always been convinced there's a way to speed up a multiplayer matchmaking system that's appeared to stall. Back in the Xbox 360 era, my friends and I held the X button one time and miraculously found a game in Gears Of War, having waited for ages. We grew superstitious. Later in our Call Of Duty sessions we'd hit matchmaking with reverse psychological techniques, saying stuff like "I bet we WON'T find a match", to in fact, find a match. Well, thanks to an official COD blog post, my heady beliefs have been hit with the equivalent of a precision air strike. Matchmaking cannot be gamed. It is all-seeing and all, sadly, science.

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Author
Ed Thorn

20 Small Mazes is an extremely good game made of, er, 20 small mazes - and it's free!

2 months 3 weeks ago

Do you like puzzles? Do you like free games? Do you like free puzzle games that are charming and idiosyncratic? Then you'll love 20 Small Mazes, a game that is just 20 small mazes. As the Steam store page says, they're good mazes, though. It's out on February the 16th from FLEB, which seems to be just one guy who really likes puzzles and making puzzles. I wholly support him.

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Author
Alice Bell

Coridden is an action RPG with shapeshifters in which you can ride your friends

2 months 3 weeks ago

The one great weapon in my arsenal as mercurial uncle and cousin to several infant humans is the timeless game of Horsey. You know - when you get down all fours and offer to give the kid a ride around the sitting room. It's murder on the old kneecaps, but as any shrewd parental tactician knows, Horsey is a game with a sting in its tail (making this a kind of scorpion Horsey, I guess). The horse in the game of Horsey is free to choose the direction of travel, even if it's somewhere the rider would rather not go. Towards the bath or dinner table, for instance. Towards the dentist, if needed.

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Author
Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

Persona 3 Reload review: a high school reunion better left in the history books

2 months 3 weeks ago

On the 23rd of May, I strode out of the exam hall with my head held high. Not only had we cleared out the 42nd floor of the cursed extra-dimensional horror house that was our school’s midnight alter-ego, I’d also just aced my midterms. I spent the afternoon helping my french foreign exchange friend sew a kimono for his estranged uncle, then killed some time before bed by consoling the small child I’d been hanging out with lately about her parent’s divorce.

So goes an average day in one of the very, very many days stuffed into Persona 3 Reload’s year long taste of demon-slaying high school life. A charming fantasy? Perhaps! There's plenty here for fans who don’t mind an old-school approach to grinding while exploring heartfelt, albeit cheesy, friendships. Those who don't get on with anime tropes, though, might find it exhaustingly written and repetitive.

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Author
Matt Cox

Nebulous: Fleet Command is the hardcore version of Homeworld I didn't know I wanted

2 months 3 weeks ago

Every "incoming missile" alert in Nebulous: Fleet Command spawns a host of questions, scattering through your brain pan like chaff. The most important of those questions is: "which missiles, exactly?" There are many species of self-propelled ordnance in this dangerously engrossing space sim from Eriadanus Industries - you can design your very own in the fleet editor - and while all are bad news, some are far worse than others.

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Author
Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

Here's a free N64-style version of Celeste from Extremely OK Games

2 months 3 weeks ago

Celeste celebrated its sixth anniversary this month, and developers Extremely OK Games have marked the occasion by releasing a free Nintendo 64 homage to their excellent platforming game over on Itch. Made in just "a week(ish)", Celeste 64: Fragments Of The Mountain channels the spirits of Super Mario 64 and Banjo Kazooie as it tasks players with collecting dozens of strawberrys hidden around its snowy 3D landscape. It's well worth checking out if you've got a spare minute or so, though given how rock hard it is you may want to put aside a good hour or so if you want to truly master its controls and uncover every last secret.

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Author
Katharine Castle

Sapphire's excellent RX 7800 XT 16GB Pulse card is down to £480

2 months 3 weeks ago

AMD's RX 7800 XT is arguably Team Red's best value graphics card from this generation, offering great performance for 1080p and 1440p gaming with the ability to stretch to 4K in titles that offer FSR 2 upscaling.

Relatively few cards have been available at the launch RRP of £479, but today you can pick up the excellent Sapphire Pulse 16GB model for exactly that much rather than the £519.99 it debuted at. Is that a deal worthy of an RPS deals post? Sure, why not?

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Author
Will Judd

This 2TB NVMe SSD is a great Steam Deck upgrade for £155

2 months 3 weeks ago

Corsair's MP600 Core Mini SSD is a solid option for upgrading a PC handheld - devices like the Steam Deck, ROG Ally and Legion Go and so on. It's a PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD, so it offers slightly faster speeds on the latter two devices than on the Steam Deck, but it's compatible with all three major options. It originally retailed at £230 for the 2TB model, but now it's at a much more reasonable price: £155.

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Author
Will Judd

There are almost 20,000 Palworld breeding combos, and now players want to breed Pals with humans

2 months 3 weeks ago

Palworld isn't just about capturing non-copyright-infringing Poke-fied wildlife, slaughtering the poor creatures and/or setting them to work in terrible gun factories. There's also the frightful question of Pal breeding. Every Pal in the game can be bred with every other Pal to produce a Pal subspecies with a chance of inheriting traits from its parents.

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Author
Edwin Evans-Thirlwell