Rock, Paper, Shotgun

If you loved Journey's shimmering deserts and fluid sand-surfing, then let me draw your attention to the newly announced Sword Of The Sea. Revealed during Sony's PlayStation Showcase, Sword Of The Sea comes from Giant Squid Studio, the folks behind 2016's Abzû and 2020's The Pathless, and sees you play as The Wraith, a lone explorer on a quest to restore submerged cities that have been buried beneath a sea of golden dunes. You're able to slickly travel across the sandy terrain thanks to a rad-as-heck hoversword, a traversal tool that's described on the PlayStation blog as a "snowboard, skateboard, and hoverboard all in one." You can witness some major sand-shredding and see what else Sword Of The Sea has in store by watching the lavish announcement trailer below.

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I see a game that looks anything remotely Soulslikey and I perk up, it's like a fight or flight response only I'm not fighting or flying, I'm just staring at a video game trailer in some sweatpants with my fingers curled into a Cadbury's Milk Tray. Hence why Phantom Blade Zero has perked me up to no end, as it's an action RPG announced at last night's PlayStation Showcase which marries Chinese martial arts with a steampunk aesthetic. I'm on board, if cautious! The action seems rad, but it's so fast, it's hard to tell how it actually plays.

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Along with confirming a shiny remake of Metal Gear Solid 3 at last night's PlayStation Showcase, Konami announced a collection of ye olde Metal Gears Solid 1-3. These sound like straightforward rereleases of the classic stealth games and I'm cool with that because I am deeply wary of Konami touching Metal Gear at all. I just want Snake Eater on PC at long last. Konami are vague about platforms, but I'm expecting/hoping we'll see this collection on PC? And more vintage Gears Solid might follow.

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Philosophical pondering and first-person puzzling returns this year with The Talos Principle 2. The sequel was discreetly announced many moons ago, but developers Croteam and publisher Devolver Digital debuted its first trailer at last night’s PlayStation Showcase. Come take a look below and maybe contemplate robo-sentience while you’re at it.

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Ubisoft’s Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time remake seems to be rewinding the clock on production since the game is still in the “conception” stage of development. The remake was originally supposed to come out four months after its reveal in 2021, tripped into 2022, and was then delayed indefinitely after switching developers. Essentially, this sounds like a Benjamin Button situation.

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I didn't get as deep into The Lord of the Rings: Gollum as our reviewist Rachel, but I do share her view that it is not A Good Game. In fact, I’ve had about as much fun with it as I would on a spa day in the Barad-dûr sulfur pits. Between the soulless platforming, undercooked stealth, tedious storytelling, and framerate stuttering so bad it’s got me killed twice, Gollum is perilously short on likeable qualities. Especially if you’re not into LOTR lore, or fine hattery.

In my unclad head, then, Gollum’s highlight so far has been DLSS 3. It’s one of just a few dozen games to support the newest, most artificially intelligent version of Nvidia’s deep learning-powered upscaler, and frankly makes a very compelling argument for switching it on. Graphics card allowing, obviously.

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I don’t like being mean about games, but I do like being honest about games, and, yeesh, is The Lord Of The Rings: Gollum putting me between a rock and a hard place. The bottom line here, folks, is that Gollum is not good. Just as the ring corrupted Sméagol, playing Gollum has made me a husk of a human being, a twisted and bitter shadow of what I used to be. Playing it for more than 30-minutes at a time would make me feel unsettled, prompting some kind of feral need to scoop my brain out of my skull.

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Alan Wake 2 would arrive in October, said a voice actor earlier this week. They were not wrong. Developers Remedy confirmed the news via a lengthy new trailer shown during tonight's PlayStation Showcase, and embedded below.

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Night In The Woods' developers announced their new game during tonight's PlayStation Showcase. Much like their previous game, Revenant Hill stars a cat, but despite the similar appearance this one isn't anthropomorphic. It's also set in 1919. Watch the first trailer below.

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Here was the biggest surprise of tonight's PlayStation Showcase: Bungie are rebooting Marathon, their first-person shooter series that first launched on Apple Macintosh in 1994. You can watch the first trailer below.

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Capcom announced Dragon's Dogma 2 last year, but they showed the game for the first time tonight during the PlayStation Showcase. Unlike a lot of the games on show, we got a proper look at in-game footage, too. Check it out below.

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Ghostrunner’s mix of wall-running and ninja-slashing made enough of a splash to warrant a sequel. Ghostrunner 2 was first teased two years ago, but tonight’s PlayStation Showcase gave us our first proper look at the follow-up. It has all the slicing, dodging, and parkour that you would expect from a sequel about a cyberpunk ninja, but this time some speedy vehicles join the party too.

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Last time, you decided that fighting your double is better than optional challenges giving rewards upfront. I am an impartial observer here but oops oh no I have accidentally copy/pasted a remark from commenter Oli Baba, who said "Rewards upfront is one of the coolest mechanics to grace gaming and seems to be losing only because so few people have come across it." Whoops, I really must fix those hotkeys. Next, I ask you to choose between cooly saying nothing, or being told how cool you are. What's better: a silent protagonist, or combat style ratings?

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Tonight is Sony's PlayStation Showcase stream, an event that promises to have plenty of cool news and announcements as only a big, early NotE3 presentation can. While I'm sure the majority of tonight's announcements won't have an immediate and direct impact on us over in PC town, it's well known that Sony have been stepping up their PC game recently, and so a lot of what you see here will probably make the jump eventually, even if it's several years down the line. So come and join us for an early glimpse of PC's possible future. I'll be liveblogging tonight's proceedings, which kick off at 9pm BST / 1pm PDT. See you there!

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Small form factor (SFF) PCs are definitely in right now. I've built my fair share over the past few years, but new models continue to come into the market offering impressive looks, thermals, buildability for their size. One recent release is the Asus AP201, a Micro ATX case that offers excellent cooling potential, a stylish, unshowy appearance and a very reasonable price - especially today, as the black and white versions of this SFF case have dropped to $70 on Newegg following a $15 discount.

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Logitech make some of the best peripherals in the business, including some of my favourite keyboards. I normally prefer mechanical fare here, but their MX Keys low profile scissor switch keyboard is the exception. It provides a full-size UK layout, pleasant typing experience and long battery life when connected via 2.4GHz wireless or Bluetooth. It's normally at its £120 RRP, or close to it, but today you can pick it up for £81 - the lowest we've seen it since January.

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Update: Ubisoft have confirmed that Assassin’s Creed Mirage’s will arrive on October 12th, with a lengthy new trailer shown during this evening's PlayStation Showcase. I've embedded the new trailer below.

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Well then. Mere minutes after Nvidia hit the launch button on the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti, AMD rocked up with a new 1080p graphics card of their own: the Radeon RX 7600. Though it’s likely more of an RTX 4060 rival, given the RX 7600 will go on sale tomorrow – May 25th – at £260 / $269, slightly less than the $299-tagged 4060.

Based on the same RDNA 3 architecture as the Radeon RX 7900 XT and RX 7900 XTX, the RX 7600 nonetheless targets a much more widely-used monitor resolution than those 4K-minded GPU hulks. Which makes a nice change, and means AMD will beat Nvidia’s RTX 40 series to the punch on a sub-£300 GPU, with the RTX 4060 not set for release until July.

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This month, Amazon were already giving away 15 games to all Amazon Prime subscribers, but they’ve now sweetened the pot with 8 more, including some real good indies up for keeps. The new additions are available to claim starting today, up until June 26th - giving you a little over a month to grab the lineup below.

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I’ve lost countless seconds, minutes, maybe even hours to those TikTok videos showing off ludicrous marble runs. Strangers decorate their houses with mini slopes and sliding paths, they record their marbles rolling down these elaborate courses, and then they’re posted online for strangers like me to mindlessly enjoy. I’ve now spent the last few nights building my own marble runs - not in real life, because I’m too lazy for the cleanup after - in Zen Marbles, a free playable prototype, out now.

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Update: Yep, the rumours are true. Konami have announced a remake of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, sorry, Metal Gear Solid Δ: Snake Eater, and it's coming to PC as well as consoles. Little else is known about it right now, but it will feature: "The same gripping story and engrossing world, but now with cutting-edge graphics and 3D audio, which bring the jungle to life," according to Konami's website. They also announced a rerelease collection of MGS 1, 2, and 3.

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I’m sure you’re all bored of reading about how about how expensive RTX 40 series graphics cards are; I’m certainly bored of writing about it. Thank the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 Ti for its mercy, then – assuming you can find one at RRP, it’s the first of its family not to plonk a price premium over the last-gen equivalent. And even though it’s only moderately faster than the RTX 3060 Ti in most games, its efficiency improvements and DLSS 3 support ensure the RTX 4060 Ti keeps some crowd pleasing potential.

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I always knew I would one day be tempted to return to Destiny 2. After three years and several thousands hours of playtime, last February I hit my limit on the garbage MMO that this phenomenal FPS is trapped inside and uninstalled. But I still adore parts, including its striking sci-fi landscapes. So when I heard the latest season was returning to the alien ocean moon of Titan, one of my favourite spots, I was tempted. Oh I was tempted! But now Season Of The Deep started yesterday and Titan is here and no, it's not enough.

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Sega have laid off 121 employees working at Relic Entertainment, the studio behind Age Of Empires 4 and the Company Of Heroes series. Today's news comes three months after the studio released Company Of Heroes 3, although Sega points to the “external factors [that] are challenging our industry” as one reason behind the job cuts.

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Swedish developers The Bearded Ladies certainly have a type. If you’ve played the memorably odd Mutant Year Zero or the largely forgettable Corruption 2029, you’ll know it by now – a blend of real-time stealth and turn-based tactics, where you quietly pick off stragglers from enemy squads before confronting the rest in a team scrap. Now here’s Miasma Chronicles, the Ladies’ third effort, and let’s just say they’re clearly happy to stick with what they know.

While the patterns of play are to a great extent the same, though, Miasma Chronicles is a more ambitious project. Addressing criticisms that those earlier games weren’t substantial enough, it’s a broader, denser beast, in which you could easily spend twice as long – 30 hours or so – seeing all the sights and shooting the nasties that populate them. That means there’s a lot more space available for this game to coax out varied strategies and introduce more elements, which is great. But it also means the weaker elements of the formula are left more exposed, which isn’t.

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WD's SN770 SSD is one of the very best value options on the market, combining a PCIe 4.0 interface, sequential read speeds up to 5150MB/s and an aggressive pricing strategy that makes it extremely affordable to add to your PC or PS5. Today this drive has dropped to a new low on Amazon UK, where a 1TB model will cost you £43.99 and the 2TB size is just £99.98. Either way, you're getting a great value SSD that performs impressively for gaming.

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Blue Protocol is an anime MMO with some gorgeous environment art. It looks like the kind of game I'd ignore right up until the moment when I wake up and discover it's the most popular game in the world. That day will have to wait a while longer, though. Developer Bandai Namco and publisher Amazon Games have announced that its western release has been delayed until 2024.

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Much maligned action-adventure Forspoken gets DLC this Friday. Before that, Square Enix have released a patch for the base game which, among other things, adjusts the "frequency and content of the banter" between Frey and her magical pal Cuff.

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F1 Manager 2023 will cross the finish line this summer. Frontier announced the motorsport simulation sequel earlier today, with a trailer and promises that the new game would feature "deeper management systems, more dramatic racing, and an even greater commitment to authenticity."

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Final Fantasy 14's patch 6.4 is out now. "The Dark Throne", as it's called, continues the MMO's main story, adds a new dungeon, raid and trials, and adds new furnishing to the Island Sanctuary.

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Intel's Arc series of GPUs has continued to improve following the launch of the A750 and A770 last year, and now these RTX 3060 competitors have hit a new low price point in the US: $199.99 at Newegg.

That's an awesome deal for an 8GB graphics card that delivers excellent RT performance for its tier, AV1 encoding/decoding and a solid upscaling solution in XeSS. If you're in the market for a GPU that can handle 1080p gaming with a relatively modern motherboard that supports the Resizeable BAR feature, this is an awesome pickup for the money.

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Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun is possibly one of the most perfectly named games in history. The first bit lets you know you’re playing a game set in the venerable Warhammer 40,000 tabletop universe, while the second bit tells you everything else you need to know. What kind of game is it? Boltgun. What’s the gameplay like? Boltgun! What’s the story? BOLTGUN! Okay, there is technically a story, but it’s a thin excuse to let you shoot crunchy Chaos things in 40k, and shooting things in 40k means BOLTGUN!!!

Boltgun is a retro-styled first-person shooter, or boomer shooter, to use the parlance of our times. Cast as a Space Marine, one of 40k’s genetically engineered fascist super soldiers, it’s your job to secure the Plot Device and prevent 40k’s already crappy Imperium from getting even crappier. As you can probably guess, this means running around at incredible speeds and shooting hordes of cultists, traitors and daemons in the face until they fall down, explode into chunks of bright red gore, or both.

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The next Total War game will be taking players to the Egyptian New Kingdom period, Sega and Creative Assembly have announced today, with the reveal of Total War: Pharaoh. Releasing in October 2023, Total War: Pharaoh will see the three great cultures of the people of Egypt, Canaan and Hittite battle it out as they determine who will be the next pharaoh. And it's all set against the backdrop of the Bronze Age collapsing in on itself, with natural disasters to plan for, foreign powers to defend against, and the general unravelling of society as we know it. Lovely stuff. Come watch the reveal trailer below.

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I've said it before, but I really keep meaning to play Ctrl Alt Ego. Released last year, it's a sci-fi immersive sim built all around classic abilities of the genre: remote control and possession. You bounce your digital consciousness between robots and devices and ach, I hear it's great. I've bought it. I've installed it. I've played the first part of the tutorial. And then, who knows. One day. One day very soon. But right now, for people who have played it, good news: a free update has added a Sandbox mode generating squillions of new levels.

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For whatever reason, I'm quite good at reading physical books, but when presented with a visual novel game my attention span slumps. "It's not you, it's me", rings true here, as it's definitely not the fault of the video games. I trust that Phoenix Wright or Paranormasight are brilliant, but the sudden act of having to read lots in a game has never worked out for me.

Then Citizen Sleeper came along for this month's RPS Game Club - and I think I'm a changed man? I think I now get why people are excited about static images and dialogue boxes. And I'm certain it's the game's cyclic nature that's managed to lasso my brain and keep it focused on the task at hand: help an AI trapped in a vending machine.

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After giving us an early glimpse of its unstoppable raptor hordes in a closed beta test last summer, Capcom recently let us loose with the opening hours of their upcoming dinosaur multiplayer shooter, Exoprimal. Its final release isn't far away now - its July 14th launch fast becoming the sole highlight of an otherwise desolate month - and I was excited to finally play the game that RPS vid bud Liam literally hasn't been able to stop talking about ever since he first clapped eyes (and his thumbs) on its somersaulting T-Rexes. (You should also read his excellent interview with the devs while you're at it, too).

It's no secret that Sony have been making increasing efforts to bring their exclusive PlayStation games to PC over the last couple of years, but one thing they've never quite been clear about is when we can expect to see them. They said a few years ago that we obviously shouldn't expect a simultaneous launch release, but some such as Death Stranding and The Last Of Us Part 1 have taken as little as six to eight months to come across, while others such as Spider-Man and Uncharted 4 have taken several years.

According to PlayStation boss Jim Ryan, though, data from fans seem to suggest that the only "acceptable" route from a player point of view is a wait of two to three years. Outrageous, I say, but also: surely that means the long-sought-after Bloodborne must be next in line, right? Surely. It's been eight years, come on now.

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Final Fantasy 16 producer Naoki Yoshida has said he thinks "Maybe it's time we removed the numbers" from Final Fantasy games. In an interview with GQ, he talked about the baggage that inevitably comes with having a 35-year-old series with soon to be 16 numbered mainline games in it (not including the sequels and spin-offs, I might add), and the confusion it continues to create with new players. "Every numbered title we release in the series, we have to go into it like, 'It's OK, you don't have to play the rest of them,'" he said, and removing them is "something that I've discussed with the higher-ups". It's an understandable problem, for sure, although I think I'd be quite sad to see the numerals go entirely. As long as they don't pull a Mortal Kombat and go back to 1, though, we're good.

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I bark and the humans obey, jumping, turning, floating into the great unknown. I am leading them toward something good, the orbs tell me. Something that grows stronger with every trial this endless parade of humanity completes.

Humanity is a VR-optional flowy puzzle platformer in which you, an ethereal shiba inu made of pure light, lead mindless hoards of “the people” into the light because a glowing orb told you to make it happen. Oh, and don’t worry if most of them end up marching off a ledge into the endless void below–those physical bodies are mere constructs and their minds will return to follow you again.

A̷̰͙̙͚͓̱̗n̮̲̣d̹͖͚̠ ̜̹a͏͇̱͙͈g͔̘͍̟a͍i̲͖̥̺͓n͘.̮̮͕̼̰ Ą͠͡nḑ̷҉ ̀͘à̧̛g̢͢ai̸͏n̡̛.̨͜͜

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Last july I was given the opportunity to play an early beta for Exoprimal, Capcom’s upcoming multiplayer shooter that pits you and a bunch of your mech suit-wearing buddies against unstoppable raptor hordes. In the nine months since I took command of a T-Rex and did a sick backflip, my life has not known peace. “I’m really excited to play Exoprimal” I’ll say to colleagues, unprompted, in important meetings unrelated to anything prehistoric in nature. “From what I've played, it blends PvE and PvP gameplay into a single multiplayer mode that feels very unique and hugely entertaining”. My tax return was voided because I drew a big stegosaurus on it. I have renamed the cat “Sniper Neosaur”, and I am disappointed that she has yet to emerge from a gooey purple orb.

It was my delight, then, to be given the opportunity to sit down with key members of the game’s development team to discuss Exoprimal’s inspirations, its inevitable comparisons to Dino Crisis and how Capcom plans to use it as a template for their live-service games moving forward. Alongside a fresh opportunity to check out the game, I hopped onto a Zoom call with Exoprimal’s director Takuro Hiraoka, technical director Kazuki Abe and art director Takuro Fuse.

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