Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Wildfrost review: cute, compelling, and chaotic card battling

1 year 2 months ago

Wildfrost is excellent at creating moments of triumph. Early on in my playthrough while I was still getting to grips with the game, I came face-to-face with a boss who got stronger when hit. Its card art had become bigger, juicier, more tauntingly malevolent, and easily could have taken out any of my team with a single hit. Thankfully, three of my team members were due to act one turn before it. The first chipped away a little of its health (its job was mostly healing) but the next doubled a stacked debuff that I had set up and turned the goliath into a giant bomb, and the effect of my two cards combined was just enough to trigger it. BOOM! My backline leader didn't even need to lift a single finger.

Playing with turn order and setting up synergies is a key part of how Wildfrost plays as a roguelike deck builder. Each individual card on the stage is part of a counter system, with both delaying and advancing them on the playing field being strategic choices. Some actions are free, like moving your cards around the stage or withdrawing them for healing, but playing cards out of your hand or shuffling your deck will pass the turn.

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Author
Ruth Cassidy

The joy of feeling like a guitar-thrashing rockstar in Hi-Fi Rush

1 year 2 months ago

Man, do I love the feeling of jamming out a guitar riff in games. Sure, in reality, I’m slumped on my couch in a position that my body will give me payback for when I’m thirty, but in my fantasy, I’m a musical prodigy whose guitar licks are so epic it would make Slash cry. My joy for virtual jamming came as a direct result of playing hours and hours of Guitar Hero. Harmonix held my music taste in its death grip, and almost breaking my fingers on those flimsy plastic buttons trying to conquer Through The Fire And Flames is a precious memory of mine.

So yeah, I love a good guitar sesh, so when I saw that Hi-Fi Rush was about a wannabe rockstar that smacks evil megacorp robots with his guitar to a catchy rock OST, Tango Gameworks had my attention.

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Author
Rachel Watts

Ten years on, Owlboy developers are remastering their first shoot-em-up

1 year 2 months ago

Owlboy developers D-Pad Studio are swooping back in time to revisit their very first game, Savant - Ascent, originally released ten years ago. Savant - Ascent Anniversary Edition is remastering the shoot-em-up platformer in which you control Savant - avatar of Norwegian music producer Aleksander Vinter - with new stages, bosses, powerups, and a revamped soundtrack by Vinter himself. The remaster will launch on PC and other platforms later this summer.

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Author
Kaan Serin

The Last Worker review: this dystopian satire on automated jobs rather labours its point

1 year 2 months ago

A short animated sequence kicks The Last Worker into gear, reeling off the game’s backstory with breezy efficiency. It’s an apt start for this first-person satire set in a fully-automated dystopia, in that it underlines a very human aptitude for artistic communication. It’s surprising, then, that as The Last Worker continues its story, it takes less graceful turns, electing for verbosity over economy. For a game that takes critical aim at the future of work, frankly, it’s all a bit laboured.

So what does happen in that opening animation? First, we see everyman hero Kurt among thousands of recruits arriving at the gigantic distribution centre of megacorp Jüngle (like Amazon, get it?), to spend their working lives plucking products off shelves to order. Before long, though, any drop in output sees the employees themselves plucked off and given the boot, to be replaced by robots. As the numbers dwindle, top-performer Kurt remains steadfast, and even finds love among the boxes with a fellow product picker. But when she gets pregnant and quits, he stays behind, living full-time in the warehouse. Years pass. Jüngle smothers the entire retail market, and Kurt becomes, well, the last worker.

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Author
Jon Bailes

Wintry deckbuilder Wildfrost gets release date of April 12th

1 year 2 months ago

Layer up with your thickest snow coat and a pack of cards because Wildfrost is coming to PC soon, on April 12th. One of the standout games we played at last year's EGX, this roguelike deckbuilder has a healthy dose of Slay The Spire about it as you venture out to defrost an eternal winter, battle baddies, and expand your card collection with elemental items stronger, cuter companions and elemental items.

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Author
Kaan Serin

RPG classic Live A Live hops to PC on April 27th

1 year 2 months ago

Fans of Octopath Traveler have likely had their eye on Live A Live for some time now. Last year, it came to the Nintendo Switch as an exclusive remake of the 1994 RPG. Bu that exclusivity period has been brought to a surprising end as Square Enix have announced Live A Live is hitting PC and PlayStation consoles on April 27th. A demo is available now for PS owners and later today for those on Steam, if you want a preview of the first three stories from the time and genre-hopping adventure.

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Author
Kaan Serin

A trio of Corsair peripherals are 50% off at their US store

1 year 2 months ago

A trio of Corsair peripherals has gone on flash sale at the company's US web store, making it a nice time to pick up a matching all-Corsair setup for about 50% off. There are three items included; the HS65 headset, the Sabre RGB Pro Champion Series mouse and the K70 Mini Wireless 60% mechanical keyboard. I've tested all but the keyboard, and they're fantastic pieces of kit - and now at surprisingly low prices.

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Author
Will Judd

What's better: time loops, or resuming interrupted reloads?

1 year 2 months ago

Last time, you decided that ground pound attacks are better than reloads dumping unspent ammo. 60% against 40%, that one, which is a satisfying outcome. Chunky disagreement but a clear outcome. This week, I ask you to think carefully about two quite different cycles, one repeating and one resuming. What's better: time loops, or resuming interrupted reloads?

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Author
Alice O'Connor

Razer's Naga Trinity, your favourite MMO mouse, is down to £45 (from £100)

1 year 2 months ago

The Razer Naga Trinity is the RPS MMO mouse of choice, or at least it was the highest-ranking MMO option the last time we did some Reader's Choice polls, so I thought you might like to know that this popular rodent is more than half-off on Amazon at present as part of the firm's Spring Sale. That makes it a great time to pick up a mouse that's like three models in one...

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Author
Will Judd

Toasters, pulleys, wheels and giant hats: the coolest Alt Ctrl games at GDC 2023

1 year 2 months ago

Alt.Ctrl.GDC is a regular fixture at the Game Developers Conference, and this year I spotted some properly incredible creations from its largely student-led group of exhibitors. There was a big focus on co-op games and time trial demos in this year's cohort, with nearly every stand having some sort of whiteboard pinned up that was constantly being scrubbed out with new fastest lap times and corresponding visitor names. There was also lots of friendly hooting emanating from them as well, as mates and strangers attempted to co-ordinate their gaggles of limbs to steer various game characters in the right direction.

It was excellent fun, and I sampled a bunch of games that used toasters, intricate pulley systems, papier-mache tree stumps, bike wheels and more in place of your typical controllers and mice and keyboard. There were also plenty more I didn't get to try out, mainly due to time, and you can see the full list over on GDC's website. For now, though, here are some personal highlights of what I saw, including the largest bowler hat I think I've ever seen in my life.

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Author
Katharine Castle

Monster-taming RPG Cassette Beasts is launching on PC and Game Pass next month

1 year 2 months ago

Are you a fan of RPGs where you make friends with adorable critters? Not a fan of trapping said friends into small balls, only letting them out to fight gangs and other Godlike creatures? Well, Cassette Beasts might be the game for you. It's a Pokémon-like where you’ll still be beating up wildlife creatures in turn-based combat, but rather than capturing them, you record their likeness on the titular tapes and then transform into those same street cone-wearing crabs and metal-clad wolves. It looks like an energetic, nostalgic romp, and it’s coming to PC and Game Pass on April 26th.

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Author
Kaan Serin

Silent Hill 2 remake is not "ready for release", Bloober Team confirm after week of rumours

1 year 2 months ago

Bloober Team have issued a statement about their upcoming Silent Hill 2 remake, clarifying rumours about the project’s release schedule and sales expectations. Last week, Polish site Bankier spoke with Bloober Team’s CEO Pitor Babieno in an interview that was mistranslated and began to circulate online. The mistranslations mentioned the remake was “technically ready” for launch, but Bloober Team have clarified these “statements have been taken out of context, due to inaccurate translations.”

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Author
Kaan Serin

How the Gulf War, Apple's drag-select and "cheesed together" FMVs gave us Command & Conquer

1 year 2 months ago

There’s always been something quaintly practical about the name Command & Conquer. Sure, there’s a touch of Julius Caesar’s ‘veni, vidi, vici’ in there. But less romantically, the title evokes Internet Explorer or Acrobat Reader - sitting comfortably alongside the clearly and sensibly labelled Windows software of the mid-90s. It’s a reminder of just how early Westwood happened upon the blueprint for real-time strategy, right as many PC users were buying their first trackball mice.

Back then, the developer was fresh from Dune II, its unlikely David Lynch adaptation and progenitor of the RTS genre as we know it today. Inspired by the house politics and struggle for resources that consumed the desert planet Arrakis, Westwood had come up with an addictive formula for harvesting spice and converting that wealth into military power, which in turn could be used in the battle to secure more spice. The team was, quite frankly, surprised by how much fun that formula had turned out to be.

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Author
Jeremy Peel

The Tartarus Key looks like a fabulous PS1 version of Saw

1 year 2 months ago

Waking up in a room you don't recognise with a camera trained on you: the result of a heavy Saturday night, or the opening salvo in an inexplicable kidnapping? In The Tartarus Key, a PS1-style thriller/puzzle/horror game, it's definitely the latter. The free demo is out now, and throws you into the first couple of puzzles for the game as Alex, whose last memory is of being at home in her apartment. Now she finds herself locked in a weird study in a poorly lit mansion, with only a stranger on the end of a walkie-talkie for company. It was enough to staple this game right into the middle of my disorganised Charlie Day conspiracy board of games I'm interested in, I'll tell you that much.

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Author
Alice Bell

Australian government cracks down on loot boxes and in-game gambling with new age rating proposals

1 year 2 months ago

The federal government in Australia have today proposed a number of changes to their National Classification Scheme as they seek to crack down on digital gambling and video games that promote it. The proposed changes would apply an R18+ (over 18s) rating to any game with simulated gambling, and an M for “mature” (over 15s) rating to any games with paid loot boxes, potentially changing the classification for games such as FIFA which were previously G-rated (for everyone).

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Author
Kaan Serin

Minecraft is getting an ambitious Dungeons & Dragons crossover

1 year 2 months ago

Just in time for the upcoming film, Mojang announced that Minecraft is getting an ambitious Dungeons & Dragons crossover. Like any D&D campaign, the crossover begins around a blocky table with an open pizza box, and then it escalates into a roughly ten-hour, action-RPG take on Minecraft as you trek through the classic tabletop’s fantasy world.

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Author
Kaan Serin

Kerbal Space Program creator is relaunching his physics sandbox followup with a new name

1 year 2 months ago

Balsa Model Flight Simulator launched into Steam Early Access last year, to positive reviews and few sales. It is, like its developer's previous game Kerbal Space Program, about building a machine designed to fly, crashing it back to earth, then constructing something better.

Now its developer has announced they're doing something similar with the game itself. Balsa Model Flight Sim will relaunch later this year with a new name, Kitbash Model Club, a more ambitious physics construction sandbox, and a plan to release as a complete game rather than into early access. Existing owners of Balsa Model Flight Simulator will get Kitbash Model Club for free.

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Author
Graham Smith

Company Of Heroes 3's first major update brings bug fixes and cosmetics

1 year 2 months ago

Company Of Heroes 3 had rough beach landing, garnering mostly positive reviews from critics (like us) and mixed-to-negative reviews from players on Steam. Today's release of its first major update, titled Operation Sapphire Jackal, may help address that disparity given that it promises to fix "hundreds" of bugs in the base game. On the other hand, it also adds cosmetics - both those that can be unlocked for free and via spending real money.

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Author
Graham Smith

This 4K monitor is down to £181 for Amazon's Spring Sale after an £80 discount

1 year 2 months ago

Whoa, these Amazon Spring Sale deals keep rolling in. This one is a cracker though - you can now pick up a 28-inch 4K monitor for just £181, a great choice for anyone that plays slower-paced PC or console games, or wants a high-quality 4K monitor for content creation and consumption. This Lenovo IPS monitor normally costs £260, so to get it for nearly £80 less is quite a scoop.

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Author
Will Judd

This Lenovo Legion 5 RTX 3060 laptop is down to £730

1 year 2 months ago

The Lenovo Legion 5 is a laptop that I've recommended here at RPS on several occasions, as it gets excellent reviews online yet still provides much better specs and build quality than you'd expect for the money.

Today though, the Legion 5 is the best deal I've ever seen on an RTX gaming laptop, with this spec including a Ryzen 5 5600H and RTX 3060 Laptop graphics card for just £730.98 when you use code CATCH20 at CCL's web store on Ebay. That's an exceptional price for a brand new laptop that's still selling for £1100 at Amazon - Spring Sale or no.

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Author
Will Judd

You can save £70 on the excellent HyperX Cloud Alpha Wireless gaming headset in Amazon’s Spring Sale

1 year 2 months ago

One last Amazon Spring Sale highlight from me today, readers, and I’m happy to say it’s a very personal recommendation. I’ve been using the HyperX Cloud Alpha Wireless almost every day since putting them on our best gaming headsets list – that was in June last year, and today, it’s a solid £70 off in the UK.

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Author
James Archer

Bingeing CS:GO won't get you into Counter-Strike 2's test faster, Valve say

1 year 2 months ago

After weeks of teases and rumours, Counter-Strike 2 invaded the internet to confirm that, yes, it was a real thing and not a figment of the community's shared imagination. It’s fully launching this summer, and Valve have been holding a limited access test since the pseudo-sequel's announcement. They’ve been inviting select players based on factors that are important to the dev team, such as trust factor, Steam account standing, and recent playtime on Valve servers. But last night, Valve shook their finger like a stern parent, informing fans that playing more Counter-Strike: Global Offensive wouldn’t get them into the CS2 test any faster.

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Author
Kaan Serin

Final Fantasy 14 is giving away its Stormblood expansion for free

1 year 2 months ago

From now until May 8th, Square Enix are giving away Final Fantasy 14’s Stormblood expansion for free to all new and existing owners of the MMORPG’s Standard Edition. The offer ends at 7am PDT/ 3pm BST, so you still have over a month to grab and keep the second expansion on Steam, the PlayStation store, or any other storefront that’s participating in the promotion. Squeenix have an FAQ page for more information, too.

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Author
Kaan Serin

The Amazon Spring Sale cuts 56% off the legendary Logitech G502 Hero gaming mouse

1 year 2 months ago

The Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson claimed that "the mark of a good action is that it appears inevitable in retrospect." Had he not died in 1894, he might’ve said the same thing about the Logitech G502 Hero showing up in Amazon sales events, although maybe it wouldn’t have sounded as profound.

That’s right, the G502 Hero – beloved by RPS readers, a longtime resident in our best gaming mouse list, and precursor to an inferior new model – is once again going cheap. A predictable development, albeit an entirely welcome one. This time it’s in the Amazon Spring Sale, with a better-than-half-price discount bringing it down to £35.

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Author
James Archer

Crime Boss: Rockay City review: a baffling and incoherent Paydaylike

1 year 2 months ago

I was trying to explain the vibe of Crime Boss: Rockay City - a new Payday-like whose main USP is it's full of aging 90s-era-ish stars whose unifying trait is that they should not have been hired to do voice work for this game - to Graham as I was playing over the weekend. "You know how police procedurals all have at least one episode that's about gamers, so they have to make up a game for it? This feels like that. It's like a fake game made up by a Hollywood television producer."

A few hours later, after numerous short cutscenes in which Michael Rooker has to shout nonsensical American Football metaphors every so often, to justify the fact that his character is called Touchdown, and Michael Madsen growls about "candy" in a hard-living 65-year-old's voice coming out of an uncanny-vallyy 35-year-old's face, I text him an update: "It's also like that tweet that goes 'Bames Nond's having a stronk, call a bondulance'."

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Author
Alice Bell

Tax Heaven 3000 launches a week early and its Collector's Edition has already sold out

1 year 2 months ago

Tax Heaven 3000 changed its release date a couple of times, moving from a March 31st date that was suspiciously close to April Fools' Day, to April 4th after its removal from Steam, to yesterday, March 27th. For the uninitiated, Tax Heaven 3000 is the anime dating sim that claims to do your taxes and asks you for identifying info such as your email and Social Security Number. It’s likely a joke app, partly because of its waifu Iris (like, the IRS) and partly because it’s from MSCHF, the art collective behind Lil Nas X’s Satan Shoes and other viral drops.

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Author
Kaan Serin

Two of the best Steam Deck microSD cards are going cheap in the Amazon Spring Sale

1 year 2 months ago

Good timing if you recently picked up a Steam Deck on discount, as now you could also save a few quid on one of the best microSD cards for the Valve-made handheld. Two, in fact, as the Amazon Spring Sale is currently cutting prices on the super speedy SanDisk Extreme Pro and the more budget-oriented, but still quick, SanDisk Ultra.

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Author
James Archer

Steam is ending support for Windows 7 and 8 next year

1 year 2 months ago

Steam will no longer support Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 8.1 operating systems starting from January 1st, 2024, Valve have announced. To continue playing games or using apps through Steam, you’ll need to update to a more recent version of Windows. After that date, the Steam Client will no longer run on older versions of the Windows OS. The reason? It’s Google Chrome.

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Author
Kaan Serin

The Lamplighters League pilfers from the finest strategy games around, and it's utterly thrilling

1 year 2 months ago

As is so often the case in systemic turn-based tactics games, things started to go wrong in my preview session for The Lamplighters League when a nearby torch met a cunningly placed oil slick and erupted into flames. A load of enemies were instantly enveloped in its hot sea of death, as intended, but one of our heroes - the tank-like bruiser Fedir - also ended up getting burned by mistake. As an ex-mob enforcer, he's certainly built to take a few punches, and his abilities are all focused on making him the centre of attention, his attacks growing more powerful as his rage levels continue to grow. "You want him to get attacked," game director Chris Rogers tells me, calling on the phrase 'you wouldn't like him when he's angry' as the basis for Fedir's ability set. But with that extra fire damage he receives, it's just a little too much all at once. He gets knocked down, and the tide of battle quickly goes south.

In truth, I played no part in this downfall. Rogers was in the control cockpit for this one, showing me exactly how Harebrained Schemes' latest game actually works. It's quite a different proposition from their last game, Battletech, and in this quite literal trial by fire, studio head and co-founder Mitch Gitelman actually pulled a dollar out of his pocket at one point and put a bet on whether Rogers would make it out alive. He certainly had his work cut out for him. Rogers won that dollar, and here's how the game's emphasis on deep, customisable character builds set him up for success.

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Author
Katharine Castle

The Nintendo GameCube and Wii emulator Dolphin is coming to Steam

1 year 2 months ago

Rejoice, fellow Nintendoers! Dolphin Emulator - the open-source emulator for Nintendo GameCube and Wii games - is coming to Steam in Q2 2023. The Steam page is quick to note, for probably legal reasons, that “this app does not come with games” and “you must own an original copy of any game” you want to emulate. Dolphin allows you to emulate retro games with 4k support, modern controllers, and it’s totally free.

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Author
Kaan Serin

MultiVersus "Open Beta" shutting down in June, relaunching in 2024

1 year 2 months ago

Warner Bros. crossover brawler MultiVersus is disabling online services on June 25th until the game’s full launch in early 2024, developer Play First Games have announced. Two seasons deep, the studio say they’re taking MultiVersus offline because it’s been in Open Beta this whole time (I know, shocker), so an extended break will give them time to prepare for their proper launch.

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Author
Kaan Serin