The Sunday Papers

Sundays are for sticking the fan on. Before you feel the breeze, let's read this week's best writing about games (and game related things).

Over on Waypoint, Patrick Klepek wrote about kids trying to play games on school laptops. A longread which brought back some great memories of playing games after school on the school computers, a pal and I teaming up on one keyboard tackling Bubble Trouble 2. The best of times.

“One kid kept opening up game sites” said one high school teacher who asked to stay anonymous, to protect the identities of their students. “I would wait for them to open one, add it to my list of blocked websites, refresh my settings, and then they would get locked out of it. Then they would open a new tab, find a new game site, and the cycle would repeat. This happened over and over over the course of about half an hour. At that point, I watched as they opened a new tab and searched ‘how to get a teacher fired.’ It gave me a good laugh.”

Ty Galiz-Rowe wrote about why Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom succeeds in portraying a world worth saving. Galiz-Rowe contrasts Hyrule with Elden Ring's The Land Between, and finds Hyrule seems far worthier of saving than The Land Between's dire spots.

When you arrive at Rito Village, for example, Link finds that the region is being locked down by a huge blizzard. The bridge leading to the village is broken and the weather has kept anyone from fixing it, leaving the villagers in dire straits for food and other supplies. Despite the standard goofing around expected within any Breath of the Wild successor with a wacky new building mechanic, the stakes in this instance – and the others you encounter while investigating abnormal environmental phenomena – feel high here. If Link and the young Rito Tulin can’t bring an end to the devastating blizzard, the rest of the trapped villagers will die. Meanwhile, when you arrive at the Village of Albinaurics in Elden Ring, it is already entirely too late to save anyone. All the residents but one are dead by the hands of hired butchers. We as players gain an important quest item here, but it certainly feels like we walk away with the world in an even worse state than before. The first generation albinaurics who lived here – already shunned and persecuted by members of the Golden Order – wiped from existence, and Nepheli Loux’s (and likely ours as well) trust in Ofnir completely shattered after seeing his true colors.

For PC Gamer, Mollie Taylor rounded up the RPS Cheery Fanzine's favourite Steam Next Fest demos. There's a touch of overlap, but it's interesting to see another site's picks.

What if you were a witcher, but instead of actually schlepping out to people's homes to battle monsters you just gave them advice about what to do over the phone and hoped for the best? Also, what if it was the 90s and you had to work using a garish CRT monitor attached to a charming but inefficient dial-up connection? These are the questions Home Safety Hotline dares to ask. This is a short demo—only about 20 minutes all told—but the vibes are impeccable.

Chris Tapsell wrote a quick preview of Dungeons Of Hinterberg. Guided by the devs, Tapsell checks out ARPG/social sim Dungeons Of Hinterberg, which was shown off at the recent Xbox Showcase. I hadn't paid too much attention to it, admittedly, but I'll certainly take note now.

They're right, but also, gosh, are they underselling it. People want it because they want to be in this place, a world of pointillist comic-book colour and immediately human character and subtly comical, unserious people. They want to holiday in the alps and thwack weird little gremlins with their sword called Supercut 2.0, to poke around and glide through desperately pretty landscapes and come back to their sleepy mountain holiday home to look at a lake and… exhale. In just a short demo, Dungeons of Hinterberg has captured my heart, and stolen it away to the mountains.

Music this week is Dirty Harry by Gorillaz. Here's the Spotify link and YouTube link. Rediscovered this recently! The synth will alter your brain chemistry in a good way.

That's it for this week folks, take care of yourselves and see you next week!