Latest Articles
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Narrative driving adventure Heading Out is out
Fork in the road
Heading Out is a driving game not about finishing first or delivering freight. Instead, you're on a road trip across America's highways in which your collisions, detours, and police chases shape your story and the characters you meet along the road. It's out now.
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Remedy and Tencent's co-op multiplayer game Kestrel has been cancelled
Remedy to focus on "existing franchises"
Remedy have called it quits on the project codenamed Kestrel. The co-op multiplayer game was an original IP being made with the backing of Tencent, but now Remedy say they've cancelled it to allow them to focus on "other games in our portfolio", all of which are based on "existing franchises".
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The Witcher 3's REDkit mod tools launch May 21st, enabling a new era of ambitious overhauls
Someone will stick Hatsune Miku in it, and why not you
After a month or so of testing, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt's offiical mod tools REDkit will launch on May 21st. It'll make it easier for players to make new quests, items, weapons and so on for the nearly nine-year-old RPG.
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Microsoft are shutting down multiple game studios including Redfall developers Arkane Austin and the creators of Hi-Fi Rush, Tango Gameworks. The news was delivered via an email to staff from Xbox boss Matt Booty which has since been seen by IGN. Booty calls the decision a "consolidation of our Bethesda studio teams, so that we can invest more deeply in our portfolio of games and new IP."
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How multiplayer horror Killer Klowns From Outer Space: The Game does away with downtime
Kno Klowning around
Upon learning of the existence of asymmetrical multiplayer horror Killer Klowns From Outer Space: The Game, from Friday the 13th and Predator Hunting Grounds’ Illfonic and Teravision Games, you’d be forgiven for having, well, questions. The first of which, understandably if you don’t happen to carry a burning penchant for cultishly adored but undeniably niche 80’s schlock, is simple: Why? First, why get invested in another asymmetrical multiplayer game from a studio that has a bit of a history with limited shelf lives? And why, of all the licenses, have they chosen one so relatively forgotten, at least in comparison to Predator, Ghostbusters, and Friday the 13th?
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Review: V Rising 1.0 review: one of the slickest survival games gets even slicker
I'd bat for this one
You won't be surprised to know that after two years in early access, V Rising's 1.0 launch hasn't seen Stunlock Studios drastically change the V for "Vampire" to V for "Venetian Blinds" or "Vienna Sausage". From a top-down view, you still play as a newly awakened vampire on PVE, PVP, or private servers, and you're still tasked with becoming the most powerful bloodsucker around. It has, however, streamlined some things and added in an endgame zone. All of this combines to form a survival game that was great back then and is even better now, with thrilling MOBA-esque fights and little in the way of faff.
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Gray Zone Warfare is deploying hotfixes, but performance remains grim
Surprise Steam hit is still stutters galore, even on lowered settings
Hardcore tactical FPS Gray Zone Warfare is proving to be yet another of 2024’s unexpected successes, shifting over half a million copies when it launched into early access last week. Unfortunately, in its attempt to eat Escape from Tarkov’s lunch – a timely one, given that game’s self-inflicted DLC misery – it’s currently choking on the wishbone of some truly dire performance issues. Even players with tip-top graphics cards are seeing heavy stuttering while out in the field, and none of the updates released thus far, including today’s Hotfix #3, have done much to soothe it.
Said hotfix does include some fixes for other widespread problems, including a second attempt at preventing players from becoming headless when rejoining a server (an amusing though resilient glitch, given a previous hotfix had also tried to nix it). But having played a bit of this third patch on a usually reliable RTX 4060, there’s clearly an awful lot of work left to do before Gray Zone Warfare performs acceptably.
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Metaphor: ReFantazio features seven party members, a giant sandworm, and a high difficulty
My excitement only builds
A little while back we were graced by 25-minutes of Metaphor: ReFantazio footage, from which I gleaned some chunks of info. Honestly, a new press release doesn't unveil a whole lot of hotness we didn't catch a glimpse of before, but it does give us a better idea of how the battle system works in Atlus's upcoming JRPG.
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A bunch of us at RPS have been blattering our way through the underworld of Hades 2, which came out in early access yesterday. Naturally, our favourite gods and goddesses are emerging from our evenings of hacking and/or slashing. For me, Nemesis provides a lot of chuckles. Not because she's bright and jokey (she is frownier than a wet bulldog). But because she's determined to put the player in their place and to beat you at your own roguelike. Narratively, she fulfills a role similar to Meg in the first Hades, that of closest frenemy. But in gameplay terms, Nemesis won't stoop to something as trite as a boss battle. Oh no. She's out to mess with your build.
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Leila is a dreamy puzzle adventure with shades of Gorogoa
The unmapped mind
I'm not sure how to classify Leila, a hand drawn, sort of point and click, sort of puzzle adventure out this summer. I'd say it's maybe a Gorogoa-like, but the demo is also a series of little vignettes that sort of reminded me of Edith Finch, but way less in depth. It's about a middle aged woman navigating her past and present by taking a closer at her mind, which means sorting through a load of magical realist meldings of memories. It's very pretty, and I liked the demo a lot.
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This bodycam mech shooter has a slick rainy day look and Zelda-like vehicle construction
Like tears (of the Kingdom) in the rain
Got some nice rain for you today. Second-Loop is an upcoming sci-fi shooter featuring mechs, physics puzzles, and at least one freaky umbilical-corded being struggling against the confines of a horrific laboratory womb. Video games! All of that sounds interesting. But it's the moody reflections on the rain-slick surfaces and the game's bodycam-style presentation that's really got me going "oooooo". Don't you want to say "oooooo" too? C'mere and see.
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This week's most scintillating game releases, plus our weekly newsblog
LiveIt's a short week 'cos we all had a Bank Holiday yesterday, and Edwin isn't here today, which means I have donned some thick leather gloves and am standing well back to throw some sticky gobbets at The Maw. The gobbets in question? Some tasty game releases this week! Plus whatever else we think might be interesting enough in PC gaming news to appease it - and you.
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Hades 2 is another Steam Deck banger, early access or no
Going to hell in a handheld
I’ve been sampling Hades 2’s early access build on the Steam Deck, and my only complaint – besides the smooching frog having eluded me for hours – is that it’s giving me very little to write about, performance analysis-wise. Honestly, it fits the dinky PC so well you’d have thought Supergiant had decided to make this roguelike sequel a Steam Deck game that just happened to run on desktops by accident.
Hades the first was much the same, taking to the Deck like Hercules to Augean shit, but Hades 2 barely even gives away that fact that it’s unfinished. It doesn’t crash, stutter, or hang, and there’s no point in talking about settings when it runs at a practically perfect 60fps on max quality. Make that 90fps on the Steam Deck OLED, too. It’s just a fabulous game for handhelds, even in its earliest of early access days.
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You will need one to jump into its co-op multiplayer, mind
After the backlash and subsequent U-turn on Helldivers 2 requiring players to link their Steam account to a PlayStation Network account, the next PlayStation flagship headed to PC has sought to reassure players that you won’t need a PSN account to play its single-player campaign. Multiplayer’s a different case, though.
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Review: Hades 2 early access review: a roguelike of witchy crowd control with a sparkling new cast
What fresh hell this is
Scylla and the Sirens are a rock band of mythical boat wreckers who insist they have tons of fans. (They do not.) As a boss battle in Hades 2 they are a deadly trio that has bested me more times in the last few hours than I care to admit. But as a sign of things to come for this early access roguelike sequel, they are an encouraging bunch of characterful malcontents. The harbingers of a confident, slash-happy action game, and another poppy adaptation of classic Greek japes.
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Plenty of bug fixes, earlier housing access, expanded control options and more quality-of-life additions, too
After a bit of a bumpy landing on PC, it looks like No Rest for the Wicked is finally finding its feet. The early access action-RPG launched with notable performance problems that developers Moon Studios promised they’d address, starting with several hotfixes over the last few weeks that managed to claw back some frames. The game’s first big patch goes a step further, seemingly boosting the game’s performance to a degree that its minimum and recommended hardware specs have been lowered as a result.
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It looks like Space Marine 2 will let you go head-to-head in PvP multiplayer
Just Marine-on-Chaos matchups for now, it seems
Gears of Warhammer sequel Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 will feature some kind of PvP multiplayer mode, similar to the first Warhammer 40k game, going by an early look at an art book for the upcoming third-person shooter.
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Helldivers 2 drops PSN account linking requirement for Steam players after widespread backlash
“We’re still learning what is best for PC players and your feedback has been invaluable,” say PlayStation
It’s been a tumultuous few days for Helldivers 2, as one of this year’s most beloved runaway hits managed to seemingly undo all of its goodwill and earn the ire of thousands of players in the blink of an eye.
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What's on your bookshelf?: Borderlands, Life Is Strange, and Horizon Zero Dawn actor Ashly Burch
read-only
Hello reader who is also a reader, and welcome to Booked For The Week - our new Sunday feature where we ask a selection of cool industry folks questions about books! The very first book was famously written in the 1200's by notable scholar and six-time wrestling world champion Booker T, a fact you'd know if you simply read more books. This week, it's voice of Horizon Zero Dawn's Aloy and many others, writer, singer, and endless other cool stuff, Ashly Burch! Cheers Ashly! Mind if we have a nose at your bookshelf?
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Star Wars arrives in Fall Guys this week, alongside major changes to bean physics
Less ragdolling, more air control
I need to take all the opportunities to write about Fall Guys that I can get, given how much time I spend playing it with my son. This is a pretty good opportunity, too: a set of Star Wars skins are coming to the bean battle royale, as announced yesterday on May 4th, and they coincide with some major changes to Fall Guys' platforming physics.
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Read More
Sundays are for sorting the tangle of busted pipes under my sink out so I don’t have to change my socks twice a day after forgetting to wear my designated Kitchen Crocs. Before I remember this time and instantly become a style icon, let’s read this week’s best writing about games (and game-related things!)
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Prompted by the closure of The Crew
The UK government has responded to a petition asking for "government intervention" to force the industry to keep video games "in a reasonably working state when support ends", rather than allowing them to become unplayable such as when online servers are shut down. The petition was prompted by the closure in March of ten-year-old Ubisoft racing game The Crew.
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Earlier this week, Helldivers 2 players on PC were told that they'd soon need to link their Steam account to a PlayStation Network (PSN) account. Two days later and the game has received 100,000 new negative reviews on Steam.
What's more, developers at Arrowhead have made several statements to say that they're on the players' side.
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What are we all playing this weekend?
It's a long weekend here
How like Ollie to volunteer to take over Playing This Weekend and then go on holiday, or whatever it is he's done that means he isn't here today - I don't know, he's a law unto himself. What am I, his mother? Thus it falls to me to ask the other staff what they're playing, and thence communicate that to you. Jeeze, why can't you just text each other or something, why all this middleman-ing. What am I, your mothers? But we're playing a bunch of different stuff, so have at it.
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There’ll be a paid Classic Mode II expansion after that
Almost a decade after it set crowdfunding records on Kickstarter, and five years after its release, Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night’s developers have announced the final free update for the Castlevania: Symphony of the Night successor.
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Plus, rattly robot skeletons!
The original SteamWorld Heist was an absolute treat, slamming the charming robotic world of the SteamWorld series together with a 2D take on the turn-based strategy of your XCOMs and Valkyria Chronicles and such. With SteamWorld Heist 2 recently revealed for an August release on PC, developers Thunderful have teased some more details on the sequel’s shiny new job system.
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Better stay friendly with the prophets, then
"Nosophobia" is the fear of disease, "bathophobia" is the fear of depths, and "devlogphobia" is a mixture of nosophobia and bathophobia produced by reading Steam posts about Norland, a systems-rich and plague-ridden medieval colony sim from developers Long Jaunt and Hooded Horse, publisher of Manor Lords. Norland is sort of The Sims meets Dwarf Fortress meets RimWorld. It gives you charge of several new kingdoms that have sprouted from the corpse of a fallen Empire and are now feuding for supremacy.
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Offer reassurance that Vanguard doesn’t take screenshots of anything except the game itself
The already controversial decision to add the anti-cheat tool used in shooter Valorant to League of Legends has seemingly caused developers Riot Games even more of a headache. The studio have issued a lengthy assurance that - at least as far as they know - the new anti-cheat software isn’t causing players’ hardware to end up bricked, despite various reports of major issues after its introduction.
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Total Warhammer 3 without touching grass: Noctilus accidentally looks up 'avast' in the dictionary
Zombies love me, fish fear me.
Well, swaggle me horns and fasten me timbers so they stop shivering like that, because the noise is quite irritating. Welcome back to another edition of Plundertales - my quest to conquer strategy game Total War: Warhammer 3 without ever stepping foot on dry land. If you don’t know the other rules by now, I can only assume you’ve been living under an extremely specific type of rock that changes nothing about your life except preventing you from reading the previous two editions of this column. Who would carve such a rock? How would it even work? These are lubber-tier queries and shall remain unanswered, because it’s plundering time. Avast!
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Some non-bricky bits have been added to Battle Royale, Rocket Racing and Fortnite Festival, too
In its continuing quest to become Everything to Everyone, Fortnite has shapeshifted, The Thing-like, into a new Lego Star Wars game. The Lego Fortnite survival mode has been expanded with a new, permanent Star Wars world, with this weekend - which includes May the Fourth, don’tcha know - also kicking off a new battle pass and bringing additions to every other part of Fortnite: whether you’re playing it as a battle royale shooter (remember that?), racing game or music-rhythm successor to Guitar Hero.