Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Heed my words, dear reader: Paranormasight: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo is best played if you go in knowing nothing about it. Zilch, zero, nada. Its twists and turns from the get-go have my brain doing mental gymnastics, not just in the game but in trying to figure out how to write around them for this review. I’m not going to spoil everything, but keeping your expectations completley wide open lets Paranormasight snake right on in and surprise you when you least expect it to.

Here’s a quick elevator pitch: Paranormasight is a Squeenix-developed horror mystery visual novel about deadly rituals, ghost stories, curses, and the occult. Its subversive approach to classic visual novel staples make its puzzles feel smart and its horror scares hit hard. If you’re a fan of the thrills found in the Danganronpa and Zero Escape games, Paranormasight is like a bite-sized version of those two behemoths. It’s short, smart, and will keep you on your toes until the end.

So yeah, if that sounds like your thing, then have at it. From here on in, I'm going to be gabbing abut it in-depth.

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Just last week, Alice0 wrote about Before The Green Moon, an endearing hybrid between slice-of-life adventure and farming sim that’s set at the base of a space elevator. It was cute and intriguing, and best of all it was coming from Turnfollow, the devs behind Little Party and Wide Ocean Big Jacket - two small, but awesome, story-centric indies. A mere week after being announced Before The Green Moon snuck past us and launched into full release. Just yesterday, in fact.

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When Tango GameWorks announced Hi-Fi Rush was getting a photo mode, I knew I was in trouble. You know I have a tendency to get emotionally invested in games with photo modes (one might say too invested, in the case of my Death Stranding BB Boys road trip diary), and yep, you couldn't have predicted a more likely turn of events if you tried. Because yes, instead of bopping along to its excellent, punchy rhythm action combat and, you know, actually playing the damn thing, I've spent most of my early hours with Hi-Fi Rush fiddling about with image sliders and lining up Chai and best video game cat bot 808 into daft, stupid poses for the sake of a good screenshot. But hot damn, what a great game it is all the same.

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I know you all like Hardspace: Shipbreaker, and I get that on paper it is very much my type of game. It is a manual job (slicing up spaceships for salvage) with an extra layer (unionism) to elevate it far beyond what it could have gotten away with. In this way it seems a lot like my beloved PowerWash Simulator (washing things; time travel).

The main thrust of the game I can really get behind - peeling apart big metal ships like clanky onions - but the more literal thrust, i.e. the moving around in zero gravity using a jetpack, is awful. I need you to give me a frame of reference for if you all felt this way at the start, because, genuinely, I am so bad at Hardspace: Shipbreaker that it makes me want to cry.

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Irish drama The Banshees Of Inisherin walked home empty-handed on Sunday after being nominated for nine Academy Awards at the Oscars show. But the film shouldn’t be too sad since it’s received the biggest prize of all: a Pac-Man-like video game adaptation as a free game in your web browser. “It was an interesting challenge,” says Cogs & Marvel’s creative director, Jon Hozier-Byrne. “How can you tell a complex story in the simplest narrative form?” The answer is Banshees: The Game, a short, hilarious, 8-bit game that you can play right here.

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In the latest edition of Ask RPS, our new mailbag feature where RPS supporters pose us questions that we then answer in public posts for everyone to enjoy, we're turning our gaze to that loved and loathed staple of the video gaming landscape: achievements. Ah, achievements. Never mind if they're good or bad. Today, we're remembering the terrible things we've done to actually get them.

The question comes courtesy of Fachewachewa, who asked: What's the worst thing you've done for an achievement? Or more generally, a time you were focused on a specific goal in a game, reached it (or gave up), and after, looked back and thought, "Why did I do that?"

Why, indeed. Come and find out which achievements have spawned our biggest gaming regrets, and why not tell us about your own gaming follies in the comments? We can all wallow in our foolishness together.

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Last summer, our Ed was lucky enough to see gameplay from Atlas Fallen, the upcoming action RPG from Deck13, the gang behind The Surge games. The game’s sandy dunes and over-the-top combat gave Ed chirpy AA vibes, whle the rest of us were relegated to the initial CG trailer and the hands-off preview. Until now. Publisher Focus Entertainment have now debuted a gameplay trailer for all of us, too - although it mostly consists of second-long combat snippets, sandwiched in between very grave and serious and important VO.

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Yesterday we covered a rather excellent US monitor deal from Monoprice - that unfortunately not everyone was able to snag in time. Today we're giving it another go, as we have another excellent deal using the same SAVE25 code, but this time for a higher-tier 1440p 180Hz IGZO-IPS monitor. With the code, this monitor costs just $179 shipped, an excellent price for this spec.

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Indie Soulslike Bleak Faith: Forsaken launched earlier this week on March 10th, and as expected, it shares lots of similarities with FromSoft games such as Elden Ring and Dark Souls: an interconnected world, big boss battles, animation-heavy combat, and so on. But comparisons began to surface online showcasing mirrored animations between Bleak Faith and FromSoft’s titles, leading to accusations of stolen assets, as reported by PC Gamer. Archangel have now responded to the allegations of plagiarism, pointing to the Epic Marketplace where the team purchased the assets.

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Crucial's X8 portable SSD offers excellent performance in a convenient, totable form factor - and now the 2TB model is down to £123.61 from Crucial's UK store, a new low price for this RPS-recommended external SSD.

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Since time immemorial (alright, 2 years ago), Alice0 has been on a grand journey to discover the best thing in videogames. She could've just come and asked me. The best thing in video games is clearly the maps. Interactive maps, to be specific. Or rather, our interactive maps.

Yes, glorious people. Rock Paper Shotgun and its sister sites within the network now do interactive maps. It's something that I've been after for years now, and it's finally here, and it's working, and it's beautiful. I'm giddy.

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Another 10,000 Meta employees will lose their jobs, Mark Zuckerberg has announced, and the company will close around 5,000 roles they were hiring for. The cuts come just months after Meta, Facebook's parent company, laid off 11,000 employees.

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Total War: Warhammer 3 is getting a new expansion on April 13th. The Forge Of The Chaos Dwarfs campaign pack adds, well, the Chaos Dwarfs, with three Legendary Lords - Astragoth Ironhand, Drazhoath the Ashen, and Zhatan the Black - and new campaign objectives and units to command. One of those units is a big, roaring daemon-machine-dinosaur hybrid.

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I have learned to be suspicious of the MMORTS genre, because experience suggests the blend is about cramming free-to-play energy limits and microtransactions into acts of base and army building. That could still be the case in NCSoft's Project G, but it looks like it's delivering the kind of massive-scale warfare that should be inherent to the genre.

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The Sims 4 has now birthed its free Infants update, which takes the runtiest part of your digital doll's lives and expands upon it. Sims during those pre-walking years now have full needs and wants, which means the Sims around them will need to spend more time caring for them lest they grow into maladjusted adults.

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Dystopian tabletop-ish RPG Citizen Sleeper is receiving its third and final DLC episode at the end of the month. DLC for Citizen Sleeper was first announced last summer through a post-launch content roadmap, and with Episode: Flux and Episode: Refuge out the door, it’s now time for Episode: Purge, free for all owners on March 30th. Purge is introducing a new narrative arc alongside more characters, locations, and lore.

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Last year, developer Heart Machine announced they were adapting the 2D pixelated action of Hyper Light Drifter for their 3D co-op sequel, Hyper Light Breaker. Earlier in January, we learned that Breaker’s roguelike structure would include procedurally generated open worlds, and we’ve now seen them in action thanks to its first gameplay trailer. Breaker doesn’t look as effortlessly stylish as its predecessor, but its bullet-hell action and fast-paced traversal have me eager to learn more when it launches into early access this Fall.

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Over the last 30 years, the classic adventure game Myst has been rereleased in countless forms, resurrected in 25th-anniversary boxsets, VR takes on the game, and even a full remake in 2021. But the power of the internet determines that nothing is sacred, and even the point-and-click Myst can be turned into the point-and-kill Myst FPS. Yes, developers Steven Nass and Peter Henningsen have released Myst FPS on itch.io, a free browser-based shooter that’s a good laugh, and an even better shitpost.

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As video game time loops go, The Wreck's endlessly repeating car crash has to be one of the worst fates to get stuck in. Sure, it's not quite as bad as 'death by exploding sun' in Outer Wilds, say, but when each crash is also accompanied by heroine Junon reliving a harrowing memory from her past that she'll need to sort through and analyse before she's able to (quite literally) move on with her life, I reckon that one-two punch of sudden physical trauma and deep, emotional soul-bearing is probably just about on par with having skin and muscle seared off your own bones by a honking great supernova. You know, figuratively speaking.

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Developer Nightdive Studios were hoping to release their System Shock remake by the end of March, but they’ve had to push the PC release to later this year, now locking in a May 30th release date. The immersive sim will release on consoles at a later date, but PC players can experience the classic this summer, complete with a facelift and a space station full of other changes.

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Whoa. Normally 240Hz monitors cost a steep premium over 144Hz options, but today you can pick up Monoprice's Dark Matter 27-in 240Hz monitor for just $104 using code SAVE25, down from an original price of $300. That's an awesome deal and well worth snapping up while stocks last.

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Right now you can pick up a 4K 144Hz monitor for only £450, thanks to a £150 discount at AWD-IT on their own-brand X= XRGB27UHD 27-inch monitor. I've actually tested this model for Eurogamer, and I was impressed with what you get for that original RRP - and now that it's £150 off, it's entered great value territory.

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The perfect video game crossover doesn't exi... Oh wait, what's that? Ink-based strategy indie Inkulinati is crossing over with who? The other game inspired by medieval manuscripts of course: Pentiment. This comes courtesy of Inkulinati’s first major content update, St. Francis And Friends (out now), and it’s beautiful enough to crack your repressed childhood excitement.

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Pokémon fans are likely well acquainted with the Nuzlocke challenge: a self-imposed, community-made ruleset designed to make playthroughs tougher. Nuzlocke playthroughs have been around for at least a decade, but they’ve never received official in-game support until now. Kinda. In a different game. Creature-collecting MMO Temtem has added three new challenge modes (including Nuzlocke) as part of its Season 3: Clash Of Tamers. Patch 1.3 is also bringing a new area, an island worth of balance changes, and much more.

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White PC builds seem to be on-trend these days, as brands finally get the memo that colour options are appreciated. If you like the sound of that, today's deal on a Corsair 4000X PC case and H100i Elite Capellix 240mm AiO from Ebuyer in the UK is ideal, providing the two most prominent components of your build in gleaming white - and at a considerable discount. Normally the case costs around £110 while the cooler is a further £135, so you're saving around £75 here by buying this bundle versus buying the items separately.

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Samsung's 2TB Shield T7 portable, armoured SSD has dropped to £148 on Amazon. That's a solid £40 off, but Samsung are also offering cashback for the same amount, dropping the price to £108 after all is said and done. That's an awesome price for a high-speed external SSD capable of read speeds of 1050MB/s and write speeds of 1000MB/s - and one that ranks among the fastest portable SSDs we've ever tested.

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To track the public understanding of modern-day indie gaming is to look at the small-scale independent development scene through an Anglo-centric lens. While it would be unfair to ignore the hobbyists programming experiences in BASIC on their ZX Spectrum or similar, it’s commonly accepted that indie gaming as we recognise it today has its roots in the early days of the internet and the Y2K boom, when Flash, Gamemaker Studio and similar tools allowed things like Cave Story and N to grow. With online distribution further helping games like Bastion, Journey and World Of Goo to flourish, the definition of the indie game became: a title with big ambitions and creativity grown from small budgets and teams.

It's not entirely wrong, but it has obscured decades of hobby development that was once at the forefront - not just the stories of BBC Micro solo-development stars, but similar ones of hobby development from around the world. In Japan, the doujin markets of Comiket and beyond serve as a home for hobbyists to make, sell and share their creations. It is the doujin gaming scene that helped major studios like Fate/ studio Type-Moon, and franchises like 07th Expansion and Touhou Project, flourish in a way that would never be possible otherwise.

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GSC Game World, the Ukrainian devs working on S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart Of Chernobyl, have claimed that one of their employees has been hacked by a "community from a Russian social network" and the studio threatened with blackmail.

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Lightyear Frontier, a sort of Stardew Valley but in space, in which you bring agriculture to an alien planet with a big multipurpose mechatractor suit, has been delayed. It was supposed to come out, well, sometime around now (Spring 2023) but developers Frame Break announced the delay with a statement on Twitter - including that they "can't commit to a launch window right now".

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Resident Evil 4's Chainsaw demo dropped last week, offering an early section of the game with zero time limit and lots of villagers who'd like to add your guts to their dinner. Modders have since taken to the demo, making it more in line with their, err, tastes. Turns out they like potassium served with spoons.

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You don't need a degree in rocket science to know that Kerbal Space Program 2 didn't exactly launch in the best of states last month. From its astronomically high PC requirements to the numerous bugs identified in our early access review, it's been a rough ride for developers Intercept Games, but hope is on the horizon. In a new development update, creative director Nate Simpson has announced the first major patch will be arriving on Thursday March 16th, primarily focusing on "performance improvements and bug squashing".

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I was going to do this as a sidebar in my larger article previewing Dead Island 2, but then I realised it would be a sidebar of about 800 words, which is not a sidebar Alice, for God's sake, pull yourself together. Dead Island 2 is set in LA, known as HellA as a little play on words, because it's full of zombies now. Your job is to smash a lot of them to pieces with a hammer, like so many sausages and balloons full of blood held together by sellotape. In the course of this, you find yourself merrily looting your way through the homes of the rich and famous, stuffing as many screws and bits of scrap metal into your pants as the elastic can handle (I assume; none of the player character options has a backpack). Notable among things I couldn't find when I went looking for them: the bastard keys.

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Homicidal All-Stars, the turn-based strategy game set inside a dystopian, Running Man-style TV show, has both a new name and a final release date, publishers Good Shepherd Entertainment have announced today. Releasing on May 2nd, Homicidal All-Stars will now be known as Showgunners, and... I dig it. It's much snappier than Homicidal All-Stars, and feels more in keeping with its deadly reality game show setting. And to really hammer home its reality show audience vibes, developers Artificer have released a new Steam demo today with a dedicated Twitch mode, letting streaming audiences vote and meddle with the game's action in real-time.

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Walking around the deserted streets of Los Angeles - and you can take your leisure, in Dead Island 2, because most zombies are quite shambly - I encountered many a rich-person decor. Last week, I was given a preview build of the upcoming first-person zombie-smasher and played about the first five hours of it in single-player, taking in sights like a community of gated millionaire mansions, a slightly less palacious but still ridiculous neighbourhood, and an upmarket hotel styled after the famous Beverly Hills Hotel. They're all full of weird stuff.

There's a panic room where a guy turned into a zombie mid-demo tape recording. Actress Emma, who you're battening down the hatches with, has a truly awful full-length Burt Reynoldsian portrait of herself. A shared house called the GOAT PEN, where a team of influencers all live together, has a set for a video series called LIT OR SH!T, and a whiteboard with the script for an apology video. I ask the game director David Stenton if it's low hanging fruit, or if there's no such thing with Hollywood rich people. "Of course, it's low hanging fruit!" he says, laughing. "And also, there's no such thing."

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Sundays are for saving a Steam Deck unboxing for when you get back from holiday, just to beat away those blues. Before you almost lose all willpower, let's read this week's best writing about games (and game related things).

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I have a soft spot for SimCity (2013). It was beautiful and it was fun, even if it was heavily compromised in its construction.

Cheery RPS fanzine PC Gamer recently spoke to some of its design team about those compromises, their causes, and the enormous series-killing backlash that followed.

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"It already seems inevitable that there will be stories two weeks from now about how Forspoken failed to meet Square Enix's sales expectations," I wrote as the demo for the Isekai romp arrived on PC. How wrong I was! It took six and a half weeks.

"Reviews of Forspoken... have been challenging," says Square Enix's latest financial report, and its sales have been "lackluster".

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Resident Evil 4's demo dropped on Thursday and in all likelihood its ganados-packed village is difficult and scary enough for me. If you're made of stronger stuff, you might be interested in the demo's secret ultra-hard "Mad Chainsaw Mode", though.

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Lemnis Gate is a multiplayer shooter trapped within a turn-based timeloop, in which players work across turns to support their past selves and stymy their opponents. If that were possible in reality, this would be the perfect moment for a new iteration to appear and throw a shield around Lemnis Gate, because its developers have announced that it will close down this summer.

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Honestly, no. Just no. Away with this snow. Anything less than 30 centimetres of snow is insufficient to justify this recurring winter. Please, give us spring. We need it. I can barely recall the feeling of sun on my arms, or digging my toes into warm sand, or the embrace of water which admittedly is still dangerously cold but at least is more refreshing than agony. Ah! Go on then, tell us what you're playing this weekend. Here's what we're clicking on!

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