Latest Articles
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Bungie seek to reassure everyone that Marathon is still alive... by saying almost nothing about it
There's a character called "Thief"
Bungie have been fairly quiet about Marathon, the upcoming extraction shooter they announced in 2023. Yesterday they released a devlog in which game director Joe Ziegler seemed to want to reassure fans of the studio that the game was still in development. He talked around a lot of the game features, without actually saying much about it. As yet, there's still no footage of the game in action, making its previous release window of 2025 appear even more tenuous.
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Spider dislikers, your concerns have been noted. At least by Capcom, anyway. The developers of Monster Hunter Wilds are including an option in the upcoming beast-skinning action RPG that will turn all arachnid style monsters into something much less creepy and/or crawly.
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The older code is full of "strange demons", it seems
Path Of Exile 2's early access release has been shoved back three weeks from 15th November to 6th December 2024, game director Jonathan Rogers has announced in a brief Youtube video. The action-RPG itself will seemingly be ready in time for the original launch date, but there's a load of "server-side infrastructure work" that needs doing.
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"Disturbing but also fascinating", hints Giant Sparrow founder
What Remains Of Edith Finch is a very upsetting collection of interactive short stories about the brief, tragic lives of a cursed family who live in a monstrous treehouse. It's also a wonderful show of experimentation, switching genres from story to story - one minute you're a playable bestiary on shuffle, the next you're beheading fish in a cannery as the worktable disappears beneath your scrolling daydreams. The developer's next project seems to be pursuing a similar balance of whimsy and darkness. It's another anthology experience, which casts you as a field biologist studying "the strangeness of organic life". Also, chicken-legged houses.
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Jumping Jazz Cats mashes the multiplayer minigames of Fall Guys with Disney's Aristocats
Picking up on that feline beat
We've seen beans racing, and penguins racing, but we have not yet seen cats racing. That is because cats will not stoop to such frivolities, where it can be reasonably avoided. Cats are too self-respecting to get caught up in silly online multiplayer party games. Please. Don't insult their intelligence, their divinity, their mastery of the environment and of your emotions. Cats don't need 2-9 player scrambles across the rooms of an eccentric manor house, with customisable outfits and various minigames. What? Jumping Jazz Cats? No. I won't recognise it. This is a work of impossible sedition. Impossible, cute sedition. Pay no attention to the trailer below.
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Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 performs well on PC – shame about the launcher
Running in the 90s
It’s always nice to say that a big, look-how-much-we-spent-on-pore-rendering AAA game actually runs quite well on PC, as Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 does. Unfortunately for Bl6ps, and for us, that technical success is balanced on the knife tip of some seriously overwrought infrastructure. Mainly in the form the UX nightmare that is the Call of Duty HQ launcher, as well as a meddlesome always-online requirement, itself serving a feature that doesn’t even work that well.
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Review: Life Is Strange Double Exposure review: be still my irritated heart
Mad at Max
You can feel two ways about something at the same time. The feuding academics of Life Is Strange: Double Exposure might call this "emotional superposition". But the word "ambivalent" already exists. So let's say I'm ambivalent about this new adventure featuring Max Caulfield, the returning hero of Life Is Strange, and time-travelling photographer whose powers have resurfaced after years of off-screen atrophy. I've been deeply moved by individual scenes in this sequel. By the end I was sorry to leave its characters behind. At the same time (please now imagine my face is splitting into a second, colour-washed expression with wobbly VFX) I am relieved it's over, so I don't have to deal with the inconsistent behaviour of those characters, the flimsy plot, and a convoluted approach to murder mystery.
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Review: Dragon Age: The Veilguard review: A reluctant RPG, but a compelling, heartfelt action adventure
You couldn't make Dragon Age: Origins today! (because there's been several sequels already)
If there’s one thing I’d like to get across about my time with Dragon Age: The Veilguard - perhaps a surprise given Bioware’s recent history, Anthem, and some of the early marketing for this game - it’s that in my 50 hour return to Thedas, I very rarely felt I was playing something cynical.
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In Foddian hell-platformer Ascending Inferno, Orpheus is a footballer and Eurydice is a football
"Kick your sibling's soul out of Hell"
In case you don't know the headline reference, Orpheus was a mythical Greek musician who famously descended to the underworld to rescue his snake-bitten lover, Eurydice. The underworld's rulers, Hades and Persephone, were massively bummed out by Orpheus's emo lyre-playing, and swiftly agreed to let him lead Eurydice's soul upward to the waking world, with the extremely simple proviso that he not look back at her till they're both on the surface.
Being a love-drunk spannerhead, however, Orpheus couldn't resist a quick peek at Eurydice after crossing the threshold - and the result is a timeless moral about human frailty and the specific truism that you should absolutely never date musicians, which Australian developers Oppolyon Studios appear to have totally ignored in their otherwise-redolent game about kicking your brother's soul out of hell.
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Static Dread is Papers, Please but you're a lighthouse keeper besieged by Lovecraftian monsters
"Gosh..."
I've often thought lighthouse keeping would make a fine second career, albeit mostly because in my head, it would give me endless time to write (and finish Baldur's Gate 3). You won't have much time to write in Static Dread, sadly. The world has ended, the oceans teem with squirmy, extra-dimensional lifeforms, and it's your job as the apparent sole surviving lighthouse keeper to distinguish vessels loaded with eldritch horrors from vessels loaded with people who need saving from eldritch horrors.
Going by the teaser trailer, below, this appears to be comparable to playing border guard in Papers, Please, but it's less political and more tentacular. You field queries over the radio, run your finger down a clipboard, and decide whether to kindle the lamps or beg the coastguard to blast that ship back to hell. There's a dialogue line in the trailer which I, personally, would consider highly untrustworthy. "It's consuming my team!" screams a self-described ship captain. "Please, send help! Gosh..." Look, "friend", no genuine human being says "gosh" in an emergency situation. Not even British human beings say "gosh" in an emergency situation. That's what you say when somebody tells you the pizza-flavoured crisps are back on sale at Aldis.
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Create multiple futures from a doomed past
One of my biggest challenges as a writer has been tempering my love of vague gestures at metaphysical concepts with the revelation that the people who read my articles also, apparently, can’t read my mind. Pah. A skill issue if I ever saw one, honestly. Decade is a fascinating adventure game that drew me in with its apparent vagueness but then, like some sort of considerate, sensible coward, went on to explain itself well in on its Steam page.
It’s the end of the world, and you’re not too happy about it, so you’ll be shoving children in a time machine with little more than a rotting Lunchly and some instructions to help you figure out exactly what went wrong.
What are you dressing as for Halloween? Me, I’m dressing as someone trying to bring back “tray-tray” in an effort to give Edwin a seizure. Here’s the tray-tray:
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Current circumstances force researchers “to explore extra-legal methods” say the VGHF
Back in April, I wrote about a hearing that took place between representatives Video Game History Foundation, the Rhizome project, and the Software Preservation Network, in which they argued the case for a DMCA exemption that would allow researchers to remotely access out-of-print games in libraries and archives. Representatives from the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) and the AACS were in opposition, with ESA legal representative Steve Englund at one point fretting about some sort of hellish "online arcade that (he’d) been warning about for the last several proceedings".
Last Friday, as per a statement released by the VGHF and spotted by PC Gamer, the US Copyright Office officially denied the exemption.
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The Maw: what's new in PC games this week?
Highlights include Dragon Age, Life Is Strange, goblin murders and literally trashy cooking
LiveThis week is the week of Halloween, a period bountiful in horror games, but I write about horror games all the time anyway. Even when I'm writing about happy, upbeat games, I'm actually writing about horror games. I'm worried that if I double-down further on morbidity I might foul the Maw's humours and give it jaundice. So let's see if we can satiate the creature with some nice, breezy open worlders and RPGs instead. I'll throw in a single horror game just to keep up appearances.
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Hello reader who is also a reader, and welcome back to Booked For The Week - our regular Sunday chat with a selection of cool industry folks about books! Most of us know about the novel, the novella, and the rare novito, but did you know that Penguin briefly tried to market the ‘big nov’ - single sentences of much larger works, bizarrely serialised into hardbacks weighty enough to club the equally rare giga-seal? Some things are best left forgotten, but not Dragon Age! It’s Dragon Age month, and here’s Dragon Age veteran and good YouTuber, Mark Darrah! Cheers Mark! Mind if we have a nose at your bookshelf?
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Read more
Sundays are for doing things you haven't done in a long time, like a long stretch after years trapped in a languorous hunch.
Former Edge designer Andrew Hind has launched On, a premium print magazine in which he and editor-in-chief Nathan Brown invite writers to produce their dream article.
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Ys X: Nordics launched in Japan last year to some critical acclaim, and it has now made its way both west and onto PC. The PC version has a bunch of graphical upgrades and keyboard support, but also - unlike predecessor Ys IX: Monstrum Nox which got co-op as a cheeky post-launch bonus on PC - Ys X: Nordics has local co-op from day one.
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Cities: Skylines latest DLC came out this week, 18 months after its "final" DLC came out last year
It's about building mountain villages
Cities: Skylines received its final piece of DLC last May, as developers Colossal Order shifted their focus to its sequel, Cities: Skylines 2. Eighteen months and the release of Cities: Skylines 2 later... Cities: Skylines 1 is getting new DLC again.
The "Mountain Village" creator pack add 45 new buildings designed to help you construct quaint and picturesque destinations.
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It's out now and it's free
Babbdi was one of our favourite games from 2023. STRAFTAT is a multiplayer shooter from the same developers and it's exactly as transportive as its singleplayer cousin; not transportive to an unknowable brutalist city, but to the year 2000 - in the best possible way. It's out now.
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What are we all playing this weekend?
Well? Do tell!
Weekends are for walks in the woods, washing your whites, wolfing down waffles, and other domestic pursuits that start with "w" - please, continue the list. Alternatively, play some video games. I will not insist that you alliterate your video game picks, but I won't tell you not to, either. Here's what the Treehouse are up to.
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Gothic platformer Love Eternal turns Celeste into a full-bore psychological horror game
Gris but grislier
The precision-platformer is a torturous genre at the best of times, and now developers Brlka and publishers Ysbryd Games have seen fit to combine it with Silent Hill. Their forthcoming Love Eternal is the story of Maya, a girl whisked off to a "castle built of bitter memories" by a weird, lonely god, and obliged to make her way "through over 100 screens filled with spikes, lasers, switches, and traps".
When not getting spiked or lasered, Maya appears to spend her days in a kind of metaphorical suburban household. Here, she will contend with things like people crawling on the ceiling and coming over all Babadook. Maya does have one major advantage: the ability to reverse gravity. Watch her put that ability to use in the new trailer.
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Early players on reddit hit by disconnects
Rock Paper Shotgun has a fuzzy conception of "news", in that we regard the "new" element of news as overrated, more of a guideline than an obligation. The trick to selling this mindset is to overclock your obnoxious narcissism until it levels up into stylish solipsism. "It's news to me," I sternly insist, while announcing a game you might pedantically observe was announced in 2019. "I can obtain no reliable empirical evidence that this existed prior to my noticing it," I declare, writing about my discovery that Call Of Duty: Black Ops 6 requires a permanent internet connection, even when you're playing the campaign.
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Supporters only: Object-ive review: Dark Souls’ Transient Curse
Handy
This here Object-ive Review is the first in what I aim to make a supporters-only series in which I take a look at small, unique, or specific game objects, and talk about them in more detail than is likely sensible or interesting. Or, at least, use those objects as a springboard to write about personal experiences with games in ways that might not otherwise occur to me.
Much like the danger of continuing to take ecstasy at the weekends well into your late thirties in a vain attempt to recapture the euphoric bliss of the single, spectacular night in which you once accidentally enjoyed yourself multiple decades ago, my own Soulsian undead curse is an eternal, fruitless odyssey to reignite the same cold flames of dreadful trepidation I felt when first taking the elevator from Dark Souls’ Firelink Shrine down to the mournful grief-pit that is the New Londo Ruins.
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Coo-dn't believe it
Rebecca Jones (RPS in peace) really liked 10 Dead Doves when she wrote about it back in 2022, saying it reminded her of why she “loves weird low-budget spooks so much”. Discovering such an interesting project speaks to curiosity and taste on her part, but me? I am simply a pun enjoying buffon who got an email promising that “Dovecraftian horrors await”. The thrust of said electronic mail was that the game now has a release date of this December, but it looked neat, so I doved right in. I coo-dn’t resist. I too love weird low-budget horror. I have been pigeonholed.
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Supporters only: We should review video games like scent reviewers rate fragrances
Like Brian Blessed's gaping maw ejected 1000 bumblebees onto your dinner table
I've been nose-ing up a fragrance for a while now. I've owned some cheaper smellies in the past (they can be brilliant, no hate to the budget options), but I find those I've owned don't really linger for longer than, like, a couple of hours. I'm after a more expensive whiffo, something that I can pop on for special occasions (when a new Yakuza launches) and feel more confident while simultaneously perking up people's nasal cavities.
Having recently fallen down the YouTube and general research rabbithole, I've come to realise that video game review formats are all wrong. We should treat them just like scent reviewers treat bottles of Y'ur Momme De Intense. The new Assassin's Creed Shadows? Like a walk through a mossy forest, except there's a bit of pine cone stuck in your shoe and it's jabbing you in the heel.
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You can now turn your Factorio Space Age empires into constellations via the Galaxy of Fame
Wube add a shared star map for completed saves
Complete Factorio's Space Age DLC and - feelings of acute megalomania aside - you will be able to upload a snapshot of your game to the "Galaxy of Fame", this being a digital night sky from which your cataclysmic industrial exploits shall gaze down eternally, for the instruction and/or disillusionment of tomorrow's factory builders.
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Review: Shadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered review: a creative underworld romp marred by misogyny
Still very much a product of its time
Look up major events in 2011 and there's some world-changing stuff... and some not so world-changing stuff. Shadows Of The Damned's Xbox 360/PS3 release may slip into either camp, depending on whether you liked it back in the day or not. It's a third-person action adventure where two famous video game folks joined forces: No More Heroes' Suda51 and Resident Evil's Shinji Mikami. And to my knowledge, it's considered a bit of a cult classic.
So, having played Shadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered after never experiencing the original, do I think it's any good? If you were a fan of the OG, there's no doubt you'll like it. If you're coming in as a newbie, I think it's refreshing in the sense it's a trim throwback with some interesting ideas and middling-to-good execution. But its whole schtick isn't only a product of its time - it's actually downright yucky.
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But they need funds
The creators of "beautifully designed yet imprecise platforming adventure" Tales Of Kenzera: Zau are working on an Afrofuturist gothic-horror RPG with isometric visuals and a body-sharing dual character premise. Currently known as Project Uso - the Swahili word for 'face', 'appearance' or 'surface' - it'll take place in the same world as Kenzera, and will take inspiration from Surgent Studio founder Abubakar Salim's experiences of parenthood. Providing, that is, the developers can find enough money to make it.
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Former Bioshock devs once worked on an XCOM game that played like Shadow Of The Colossus
"The whole game would be about the scale disparity, that you were little human soldiers"
Real ones know that the only XCOM spin off worth its salt is Hasbro’s 1999 play-by-mail banger First Alien Invasion, although that didn’t stop System Shock 2 studio Irrational from getting to work on an FPS set in the strategy series’ universe after being acquired by 2K in 2006. If your sentiments are anything like I remember a lot of the internet feeling at the time, you may get nightmarish flashbacks to the trailer below, first shown at E3 2010. The project was eventually canceled and adapted into 2013’s The Bureau: XCOM Declassified, but Irrational co-founder and current Wild Bastards studio Blue Manchu founder Jon Chey has shed some light on the FPS’s development, and it sounds like it was once a far more ambitious project. Kaiju ambitious.
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I played Balatro for an hour, had a pleasant time, then uninstalled it. I know a trap when I see one. Perhaps you are made of stronger stuff than I am, however. Perhaps you like that monkey on your back. For you, there's a new free update, which adds a second set of themed card art to the game inspired by the games Binding Of Isaac, Cyberpunk 2077, Stardew Valley and Slay The Spire.
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Windblown, the new co-op hack-and-slasher from Dead Cells' developers, is out in Early Access now
First draft
Windblown looks rad. It's an action-roguelite for 1-3 players in which you dash-and-slash in rapid combat on floating islands, and I am extremely interested in feeling its game-feel for myself. Good news! I can get my game-feelers on it now because it's out in Early Access today.
If you watch its launch trailer below out of context however, you might be fooled into thinking it's actually the emo second half of an Isekai anime series.
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