Rock, Paper, Shotgun

As our resident walking simulator enthusiast, I was instantly onboard when Alice Bee asked me to play a new game exploring a forest. I'm always up for a wander in the woods. I am a bit of a genre purist so with a name like Sons Of The Forest, I was concerned it might be another of those so-called walking sims that are more concerned with making you listen to a Radio 4 dramatic monologue. Thankfully, no, this is simply a pretty walking simulator exploring an island bustling with wildlife. Here, enjoy this video with some sights from my peaceful strolls.

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One of the best things games can do is bring you an appreciation of something you've never thought about before. You'll probably start out Zellige thinking "oh, it's making some shapes and they turn into a pattern, whatever". But within ten minutes you'll be actively saying things like "does the empty space over here feel like purity or desolation" and "what does the contrasting colour of these triangles say about their relationship with the central star?".

It's been a while since I played a game about creating art that felt effortless even as I put in a lot of effort. Zellige: The Tilemaker Of Granada is humble but delightful. It's about designing tiles. And why something that straightforward is also rich and complicated.

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Last Halloween, developer Red Barrel ran a closed beta for their co-op horror prequel The Outlast Trials, letting players share their traumatic getaways in up to four-player co-op, or suffer the ordeal alone. After a successful beta and tons of fan feedback, Red Barrel are ready to unleash Outlast Trials into early access with a new release date of May 18th.

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We all love a bit of a headscratch sometimes - something to challenge the old noodle and vexate the little grey cells. Luckily, puzzle is a mainstay genre in video games, from classic point 'n' click adventures to weirdo physics puzzles and aliens in space. Puzzle games can also be RPGs or adventure games; they can have horror or hacking. There are so many, in fact, that curating a list of the best puzzle games is something of a puzzle in itself. But at RPS we like a challenge, so we've brought you a new and improved list of the 25 best puzzle games on PC that out there today, in 2023.

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Until recently, the story of Intel’s Arc GPUs has been a litany of mild disappointments. After years of it being easier to buy an original O’Keefe than a reasonably priced graphics card, the Arc series brought hope that it might actually be possible to get a decent PC upgrade for less than £500. Then they were repeatedly delayed, confirmed to possess some unwelcome technical quirks (like wanting Resizable BAR on at all times), and ultimately released with merely decent-ish performance. Nothing awful, but nowhere near as special as they once seemed like they could be.

In 2023, however, Intel Arc may be on a redemption... arc. A series of driver updates, Intel claims, have improved average FPS performance by up to 87% since launch, with major gains in frame times (the time between each new rendered frame) as well. The specific model we have here, the Arc A750 Limited Edition, has also had its price cut from £330 / $289 to £250 / $250. More power for less money? I’d say that’s worth a fresh evaluation.

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Paranormal puzzler Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective has waited a long time for a revival, but Capcom have finally landed on a date for their remaster: June 30th. The game was previously leaked via an age rating last year, before an official confirmation in last month’s surprisingly PC-centric Nintendo Direct. Now, after a long wait, fans can look forward to bloody crimes and ghostly possessions this summer.

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TT Games - the studio behind Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga and a bunch of other Lego spin-offs - have cancelled several games featuring high-profile IP, according to a report from Nintendo Life. Up to five games have apparently been shelved due to various reasons including a “Diablo-like” Disney crossover, a Lego Guardians Of The Galaxy game, and a non-Lego shooter featuring various Warner Bros. characters.

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Sons Of The Forest has been a big success - so popular it may have crashed Steam - but players have had some quibbles about the survival sequel since its early access launch. Developer Endnight Games are looking to fix many of these problems, and add a bunch of new features, in the newest patch. Yesterday’s patch added a mid-game boss, a bucket of balance tweaks, multiple fixes for everyone’s absolute best friend Kelvin, plus much more. You can read the full list of changes in the developer’s Steam blog.

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Fatal Frame: Mask Of The Lunar Eclipse plunges players into the dreadful past of Rougetsu Island as three (Young women? Girls? I have no idea how old they are supposed to be and for some reason that’s not surprising.) survivors and a stalwart detective revisit the ruins of a hospital that was once home to a haunting ceremony. They all have amnesia, of course, because that’s a low-effort way to generate an air of mystery. Well, except the detective, who is just confused because he never really figured out what was going on in the first place.

Overall, it’s a thoroughly okay game from 2008 that’s been papered over with some hazy lofi graphics to justify selling it at full price in 2023. It’s up to you if you think that’s worth it – I bought the Mass Effect remaster, so I’m hardly one to judge – but while the graphics have been thoroughly airbrushed, that’s no cure for Fatal Frame’s dated gameplay and undead pacing.

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Looks like we won’t need to wait until Exoprimal’s 2040 setting to play the game, as Capcom’s live service dino-hunter is releasing on July 14th, now with a day one Game Pass launch. If that still seems like too long a wait, Capcom are holding an open beta test next weekend starting from March 17th at 00:00 GMT until March 19th 23:59 GMT. Capcom announced the news during their Spotlight livestream, where they showcased many upcoming games including Resident Evil 4’s remake and its brand-new demo.

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Resident Evil 4's remake launches in just a couple of weeks on March 24th. If even that is too long to wait, you're now in luck: Capcom just released a demo. It features an early section of the game and no time limit.

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RoboCop is a gloriously entertaining action movie and satire which like many '80s movies has spawned several lesser sequels and several lesser video game adaptations. RoboCop: Rogue City is the latest to try. Last year's Nacon Connect stream featured an underwhelming "gameplay reveal"; this year's Nacon Connect features a "gameplay overview". Step below to judge its whelm.

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The Lord Of The Rings: Gollum has been on a long road, which I suppose is fitting given the source material. It now has a story trailer, as of this evening's Nacon Connect, but the third-person stealth 'em up once again impresses mostly in terms of its headgear.

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Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League was recently shown in some detail, in a presentation that made clear it was a floaty live service looter shooter with purchasable cosmetics. Then it was confirmed that the third-person supervillain adventure required an always online internet connection. The response to both these reveals was not great.

Now a report by Bloomberg cites an anonymous source who says Suicide Squad has been delayed until later in the year.

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After more than 18 months of closed beta testing, Epic's self-publishing tools for developers are now available for all to use on the Epic Games Store. Previously, Epic had their own internal curation process for publishing to the store, but this changes from today, with developers now having much more control over getting their games onto the EGS. Well, almost.

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I really enjoyed the first Figment when it released back in 2017. An action-platformer with a musical theatre twist using the human mind as its stage? Very creative! Bedtime Studios’ follow-up Figment 2: Creed Valley keeps very close to the beat of the first one. You don’t need to have played Figment 1 to enjoy this sequel, but I almost feel like you’d be missing you if you didn’t (especially as it’s free on Steam right now, for today only).

Figment 2 has all the visual flair and catchy sing-songs of the first, but it feels weirdly smaller. Both games will run you about 5 hours each, but Figment 2 is a little less punchy, a little less diverse, and feels more like an encore rather than a dazzling comeback album. That’s not necessarily bad; I love an encore, and I enjoyed seeing more of Figment's surreal, subconscious mind-world. But, yeah, it’s very much the same as the first game, but with less scope and fewer fart clouds.

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I really enjoyed the first Figment when it released back in 2017. An action-platformer with a musical theatre twist using the human mind as its stage? Very creative! Bedtime Studios’ follow-up Figment 2: Creed Valley keeps very close to the beat of the first one. You don’t need to have played Figment 1 to enjoy this sequel, but I almost feel like you’d be missing you if you didn’t (especially as it’s free on Steam right now, for today only).

Figment 2 has all the visual flair and catchy sing-songs of the first, but it feels weirdly smaller. Both games will run you about 5 hours each, but Figment 2 is a little less punchy, a little less diverse, and feels more like an encore rather than a dazzling comeback album. That’s not necessarily bad; I love an encore, and I enjoyed seeing more of Figment's surreal, subconscious mind-world. But, yeah, it’s very much the same as the first game, but with less scope and fewer fart clouds.

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Surprise RPG remaster The Outer Worlds: Spacer’s Choice Edition has turned out to be even more of a PC wilter than its raised system requirements would suggest. I’ve only been bumbling around the starting planet of Terra-2 so far, and thus haven’t seen every single weather system upgrade and character model touch-up that the Spacer’s Choice Edition has to offer, but it’s made a worrying first impression in the performance department.

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In a thrilling follow up to last week's episode, The Electronic Wireless Show podcast today discusses sequels and serieseseses, in light of some surprise announcements of sequels over the last week (Nate isn't here today, but maybe he'll return in the next entry? You'll have to listen to find out). In games we seem to accept that a series running for decades, over many, many sequels, is just kind of normal. What's the deal with that? Would games be better without sequels? Who knows? Us. We do. We talk about it today.

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When Capcom showed off their latest Resident Evil 4 remake trailer the other week, they promised a playable demo would be coming ahead of the game's launch on March 24th. At the time, no date was given for when the demo might be arriving, but thanks to some seemingly early Twitch ads doing the rounds today, it would appear that Resi 4 demo will be coming later today - presumably once Capcom's Spotlight Showcase stream has wrapped up this evening. Here's hoping it will also be available on PC, and not just PlayStation this time.

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The London Games Festival is back for 2023, and today they've announced the Official Selection of games they'll be showcasing across the event. There are 32 games in the line-up this year, which will be highlighted in a series of online and in-person events running from March 29th to April 8th. I'm particualrly pleased to see some of our own most anticipated games make the Selection, including Black Salt Games' eldritch fishing sim Dredge and Necrosoft Games' Demonschool.

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Far be it from me to get excited about games that have just been announced, but the reveal trailer for Galacticare has slapped this management game right onto the old radar. An intergalactic radar, in fact, because this is a hospital management game - in spaaaaace! - coming later this year. It's from a Brighton-based indie studio called Brightrock Games, and it sort of looks like Theme Hospital with a space skin, or Startopia with a hospital sim. Neither option is a bad thing, in my opinion.

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Coinciding with International Women's Day on March 8th, Humble has put together a Humble Heroines bundle that offers eight games with female protagonists for £12.45 (~$15) - including Control, Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice, Dreamscaper and Sable.

Proceeds go in part to the charities Girls Make Games Scholarship Fund and Girls Who Code, and you can adjust the mix between the game publishers, the charities and Humble itself using the 'adjust donation' section of the bundle page.

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I will take to my grave the belief that building your own PC is a worthwhile, even pleasurable, endeavour. Besides the fact that it’s cheaper than buying an equivalent, prebuilt gaming rig, the DIY PC approach gives you more control over its components, teaches you skills you can later apply when upgrading or troubleshooting, and perhaps most importantly, isn’t anywhere near as difficult as it looks. Especially if you have a convenient, step-by-step guide to building a PC to hand. Incidentally…

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The WD Black SN770 is one of our top gaming SSD recommendations, so I thought I'd let you know that this high-speed PCIe 4.0 SSD has reached a new low price at Ebuyer in the UK. The 2TB model is now £124.99, a solid £35 below its normal price and a great deal for a drive that can reach up to 5150MB/s sequential reads and 4850MB/s sequential writes.

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Clash: Artifacts Of Chaos is nails, mate. And that's coming from someone who recently reviewed Team Ninja's Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty, a game that's mighty good at grinding people into paste. I'm not trying brag; I'm being vulnerable with you. I have a case of the Ben Affleck blues, where most sessions of Clash's third-person action-adventuring have me veering from elation to being slumped against a wall with Affleck's signature grimace on my face.

Aside from being really difficult, I'm a bit undecided on how I feel about Clash in the portions I've played so far. It looks fantastic and puts some brilliant spins on combat, but levelling is a bore and exploration has a confusing edge. It's at once both a grand time and an annoying one. The surreal lands of Zenozoik, it turns out, aren't all sunshine and turkey men. There are a lot of turkey men, though.

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The Crucial MX500 is one of the best gaming SSDs in the SATA category in my books, right alongside the legendary Samsung 870 Evo. That's because the SSD offers excellent performance while working within the confines of the SATA interface, with straightforward TLC NAND flash and a DRAM-equipped design that ensures strong sustained performance - something lacking in QLC DRAM-less designs.

Today, the Crucial MX500 in its 2TB capacity is down to $102.99 at Amazon US, making it nearly 50% off its MSRP and the lowest price we've ever recorded.

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Dell's Alienware division makes some of the most ostentatious and powerful gaming laptops around, and today we've got a discount on the Alienware m15 R7. This RTX 3070 Ti gaming laptop with a Ryzen 9 6900HX normally retails for £1749, but this drops to £1399 when you use code ALIEN20 at the checkout - with the possibility of a further discount if you qualify for a student or employee program discount.

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Last time, you decided that Quake 2's railgun is better than the currency 'Gold'. I take this as a solid sign that we can trust in the process, that we know we are on the right path, that we will find our way to the single best thing in video games. This week, I ask you to choose between dropping things in very different ways. What's better: ground pound attacks or reloads dumping unspent ammo?

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Starfield's release date has been a subject of much debate since its unfortunate delay last year, but now Bethesda have finally committed to a new date: September 6th 2023. The news was announced via a two-minute video, where director Todd Howard also revealed Bethesda will be holding a special Starfield Direct in June, just ahead of E3.

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As promised last year, Halo Infinite’s season 3 update has arrived with a new ray tracing option for us PC folks. Although it was announced as part of a promo event for AMD’s Radeon RX 7000 GPUs, Infinite’s ray tracing works on any graphics card that can usually handle RT effects; all you need to do is download the update and flick it on in the display settings.

Granted, it’s not the most visually sumptuous form of ray tracing I’ve clapped a visor on. Reflections and global illumination are unchanged, as it’s only sun shadows – shadows cast using a simulated sun as the light source – that get the RT treatment.

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Wargroove was a surprise hit when it launched in 2019, and thankfully, we’re now getting more nostalgic tactical battles in a coastal oriented sequel. Publisher Chucklefish today announced Wargroove 2 in partnership with Pathway devs Robotality. There’s no date set for Wargroove 2’s release, but it’ll launch on PC and Switch whenever it’s ready.

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The first time I glimpsed The Finals' bonkers environmental destruction (some might say "levelutions") last August, I couldn’t quite believe it was real. But it is real, and you can play it today. Following its closed alpha last September, the first-person shooter is now having a closed beta test for the next two weeks, and you can join the mayhem simply by requesting access on Steam.

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"Have a go of Sons Of The Forest," my compatriots at RPS told me. "It's a great new survival game, with cannibals who live on an island!" And I was like, "wait, so until you turned up to they just eat each other? How do they have a sustainable population? What's going on here?"

Thus, in a spirit of pure scientific enquiry, I booted up Sons Of The Forest and immediately discovered that everyone has been lying to me, because Sons Of The Forest is not a survival game. Sons Of The Forest is very clearly an early 00s b-movie action thriller. The script was left in a filing cabinet in Slough in an empty office until the office was repurposed into a call centre, at which point it was found by a middle-manager whose paintball team thought it was awesome, and somehow he sent it to a game developer by mistake. This is what happened, and you cannot convince me otherwise.

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Wayfinder, an upcoming action RPG with light MMO touches, is being developed by Airship Syndicate, the folks behind Darksiders Genesis and Ruined King: A League Of Legends Story. I've spent some time with the closed beta, poking and prodding at the game's live service cogs to determine whether it's running a smooth operation or a clunky one that may not be worth your time.

And you know what? The game took me by surprise. So far, it's a decent time that's perhaps more along the lines of a Destiny, than say, World Of Warcraft. I genuinely believe it could garner a big community and have a bright future ahead of it - but when it comes to such a saturated space, I worry that Wayfinder may struggle to stand out, and won't attract players who are done with the usual rise 'n grind demands of these sorts of games.

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Last month, Riot Forge announced their latest spin-off would launch sometime this Spring. We now have an April 18th release date for The Mageseeker: A League Of Legends Story, alongside an snazzy trailer that’s bursting with sick 2D pixel art, outrageous magical abilities, and a few lore teases. The action RPG comes from developer Digital Sun, the folks behind Moonlighter, the roguelike shopkeeping-sim hybrid.

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It’s episode five of Indiescovery and we'd like our listeners to get to know us a little better, so this week we picked our ultimate favourite indie games and then had a big old natter about them. Talking about all our favourite games would take us into 3023, so we’ve kept it to two games per person, which actually wasn’t as hard as we thought it would be.

As always, you can also listen and subscribe via your podcast provider of choice! Find us on RSS feed, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Pocket Casts, Amazon Music, TuneIn, and Deezer.

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Upcoming farm-o-life sim game Before The Green Moon has an interesting setting: a small community round the base of a space elevator, set in the lead-up to you leaving for the moon. Even more interesting is that it's coming from Turnfollow, an indie team best known for wonderful little story games like Little Party and Wide Ocean Big Jacket. Huh! Life sims are not my genre but I really like Turnfollow's games, so I'm in. Check out the announcement trailer below for a small taste of this sci-fi life.

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Grand Theft Auto publisher Take-Two have confirmed layoffs at the company, primarily affecting their corporate and publishing efforts. The news originally spilled yesterday via a Tweet from Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier, who claimed the cuts would impact Private Division - the publishing label behind The Outer Worlds and Kerbal Space Program 2 - and other unnamed divisions. Take-Two later confirmed the news in a statement to PC Gamer, saying the layoffs would affect “corporate operations and label publishing.” Take-Two haven’t clarified the number of employees that have been laid off, but the cuts to development teams would be “minimal.”

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Cities: Skylines 2 was announced yesterday, with a CG trailer and scant details aside from it being in some way "revolutionary". If you hunger for something more concrete about how it might differ from its predecessor, as I do, then you might be interested in an apparently leaked list of achievements that contains details of disasters, weather, embiggened map sizes and more.

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