Supporters

Colony sims can be a little tricky to write about. Whether or not they grab me seems to come down to some unusual design details, or a vague sense of vibes. Goblin Camp has a bit of the first, but mostly I like it because it feels effortless. Not in a hollow or trivial sense, but in its lack of annoyances or hostility.

It's instantly familiar. Your mythical creatures build houses, catch fish, make tools and plant seeds. Animals and monsters occasionally pop in for a spirited debate on the merits of being eaten. You attract more residents, you don't bother to build a graveyard, you want to make nice clothes but it takes too many steps and feels like a waste of space. But I like it. I had to figure things out, but there were obvious possibilities, and room to be imperfect without everything collapsing. And there are hints of something more.

Oh, you like horrible metal do you. Oh, there are demons are there. Oh there's lots of gore and sadism is there. Yeah that's definitely why Doom was good, and also I can't just play Doom today for free very easily.

I usually scroll past this type of game. Caesar's Revenge is gory, sprinty Doom-style FPS with a metal soundtrack, but the premise was just silly enough to get me. Caesar probably had it coming, but so did the senators, and it turns out that resurrecting to kill them one by one is a pretty good laugh. Two wrongs make a right, probably.

Gorbad Ironclaw, the new orc warboss in Total War: Warhammer III Omens Of Destruction, has three unique skill tree buffs, which are named as follows: ’boyz to da front, ‘shootaz to da back’, and ‘riderz on da flanks’.

I love this, because it suggests this most renowned of Orcish tacticians is at tip two of a Ten Total War Tips For Beginners video, and he’s already a legend among his kind for it.

I support his fame. Game director Rich Aldridge told me that designing for roleplaying potential had been a priority recently, and it’s something I’ve definitely noticed in the past few expansions. There’s been an uptick in hero and lord traits that reward themed army composition rather than just stacking the biggest monster you can get your hands on. It’s an approach to game design in general that I can get behind, similar to the aging wisdom about reframing punishments as rewards - World Of Warcraft’s rested bonus being the primo example. Twarhammer hasn’t nerfed Doomstacks, it’s just focused on offering lots of more exciting options.

I often like to think of the winds of magic in Total War Warhammer 3, in terms of its more mundane strategic application, as 'mistake juice'. It’s not really a liquid, although it is contained inside a glass ball. So, juice it is. More juice should be sold in orbs, also. Maybe in pubs, too. “Just popping down the Sheep And Cabbage for a swift orb” has a nice ring to it. Is an orb still an orb if there’s a drinking hole in it? Does that shatter the sanctity of the orb? Will this incur the wrath of the orb police? So many questions. Nothing can be simple, least of all orbs.

A pirate must acquire gold to become a pirate worth the name, and so there’s nothing so perfectly Guybrush Threepwood as the first real treasure he acquires being a gold tooth stolen from an aging chicken restaurant owner. My vague awareness of The Curse Of Monkey Island’s place in history tells me it’s generally not as well regarded as its predecessors, but it holds a special place in my wooden heart, and this one puzzle always sticks with me. It’s very colorful, for one, and it’s also the first real bastard when you play the game again in the harder ‘Mega Monkey’ mode.

9-Bit Armies: A Bit Too Far is, I fear, one of those games I'll have to figure out exactly how I feel about by writing about it and seeing what happens. You can tell just by looking that it's visually striking, all high definition yet tiny, colourful buildings and units that people use the word "voxel" about when we're pretending anyone knows what those are. It's a Good Thing.

It's also a deliberate throwback to the original RTS days, with harvesters effectively collecting cash from fixed map points, and a very Command & Conquer building/training panel with unit portraits and spinning progress dials. It's pretty faithful, and stops short of slavishly cloning. This is, I suppose, a good thing. Still, I'm not sure whether my lukewarm feelings are because it's doing something wrong, or I'm just not that interested in doing all that mid-late 90s stuff again.

I have the small luxury of a chaotic brain and access to enough games that I can install a heap, then weeks later start playing them with no idea what they are. It's the best way of approaching Minds Beneath Us, as it adds further uncertainty and intrigue to its already compelling mysteries.

It is, I suppose, interactive fiction. With little context and no specific goal, you're thrust into control of a man in a near-future city, and must get through his daily life while figuring out what exactly you are and what to do about it.

It's very, very good.

Here is a take on The Matrix that may be controversial or not. I don’t know, because I’ve never heard anyone complain about it but me: Neo looks stupid when he flies. There is probably something to be said about pop culture archetypes and the collective unconscious and why it’s actually good and clever that Neo flies like Superman, but I do not care. Consider me a pioneer of petty gripes about 20 year old films. Even in a movie awash with trench coats and sunglasses, it is too much cool.

It took me a while to work out why, of all the overly cool, deliberately stupid things that happen in The Matrix, Neo flying is the one that takes me out of the films. My conclusion is this: it is not just cool, it is slick. Slick like crude oil is slick. Frictionless. Lacking any physical relation to the world around it. I do not know the exact thought process behind why Control’s hero Jesse flies the way she does upon discovering the altered Benicoff TV item, but I would not be surprised if someone pulled up a video of Neo flying in the Matrix and just said: “Not like that. Do the exact opposite of whatever he’s doing”.

Admittedly, I haven't played as much Windblown as I'd like. It's a new roguelike by the folks at Motion Twin, where you play as a chubby animal with a sword and you bash machines on slices of earth suspended in the sky. I'm basically waiting for a friend of mine to get a copy and then we can hop into online co-op together, which is the way it's meant to be played.

This slight meander is to say that my limited time with Windblown has produced a powerful thought: the dash is sublime. Or rather, the dash is sublime because it's basically a blink, not a dash. Or rather, the dash is sublime because you can just spam it like nothing else.

Scarcely does a single game object carry the torch for one of the fundamental pillars of entire genre both as parabolically and literally as Leon’s knife in Resident 4 Remake, and never has there been an object that so entirely represents its game's reinvention of said genre.

To wit: Leon’s knife is uniquely Resident Evil because it translates survival horror’s resource scarcity into a single, pocket-friendly weapon, and it is uniquely Resident Evil 4 because it is fucking stupid.

As the year slowly draws to a close, I recently contemplated what my game of the year candidates might be. What's happened, dear reader, is something rather unexpected: I've struggled. Normally it's easy! Inscryption and Vampire Survivors were up there immediately over the last however many years. This year? This year feels like a weird one.

Ultimately, a lot of the games I thought might be up there, like Dragon's Dogma 2 and Metaphor: ReFantazio, haven't burrowed into my subconscious like I'd envisaged. Instead, my candidates (besides the obvious LAD: Infinite Wealth because, well, you know me) are those I've found aren't particularly Edders. Some of them have frustrated and one of them is, currently, a broken mess.

If I could choose how you consume Rock Paper Shotgun, I'd say that you should visit the homepage or /latest and then open each individual story in a new tab. Then, as you read each story, you should open every other internal link you see, and keep going, travelling further and further into our labyrinthine archive, stopping only occasionally to sleep. Your pageviews, they sustain us.

Second best would be that you use an RSS reader and plug our RSS feed into it.

In an episode of the sadly defunct Ideas Channel entitled “A History of Pizza in 8 slices”, host Mike Rugnetta makes two devastatingly potent observations about pizza that have stuck with me since. The first of these is the idea that takeaway pizza, pre-sliced in its grease-freckled box, is pizza at its most ontologically ‘real’; while we may rightfully scorn the Large Mac as a simulacrum of a homemade burger, even the lowliest of “Papa” John Schnatter’s pepperoni n’ racism pies represents a more authentic pizza experience than a considerably more delicious DIY alternative.

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.

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.

Hello. Long time, no write. Last time we published a 'Letter From The Editor', I was RPS's gnarled grandad, my attention split across several websites. As of a couple of weeks ago, that's no longer the case. I am once again solely focused on Rock Paper Shotgun, in a way I haven't been since 2021.

So what does this mean?

I…don’t know how this happened. Really, I don’t. The last pvp game I spent more than a few casual hours on was, without exaggeration, Halo 3. I have spent almost 20 in strategy autobattler Mechabellum since Sunday, exclusively 1v1-ing strangers. What’s scarier is that I even win sometimes. I'm vaguely aware that autobattlers have been a thing for a minute already, but I think this might be the evolution of the RTS I’ve been waiting for? It certainly feels like everything I’ve ever wanted from competitive RTS, minus needing to have any sort of reaction speed whatsoever. It is turbo crack, I tell you. Nay, it a thousand flame mechs laying waste to turbo crack city.

One thing I didn't touch on much in my Metaphor: ReFantazio review was its real-time combat: your ability to deck monsters out in the field without having to enter into a turn-based affair. So here I am, with some more thoughts on it. Namely, that I'd rather it arrives in the inevitable Persona 6, or otherwise in a renewed state. I don't think it's all that good, really.

Take any Tim Rogers clip, and they'll be at least one quote there that has helped me understand games in new and exciting ways, but one I think about often is from his Final Fantasy 7 Remake review that goes something along the lines of “we weren’t JRPG fans - we were fans of games with more". For console players in the 90’s, JRPGs were where the big stories and big places lived. If you wanted to explore worlds that felt like worlds and meet huge casts of excellent weirdos, you were almost a JRPG fan by accident.

Many of what I’d nostalgically describe as my favourite games are JRPGs, but with the exception of Valkyria Chronicles and Ichiban’s Like A Dragon games, none of them are newer than 25 years old. This suggests to me that at least one of things I want from a game is an experience that I could once only get from JRPGs, but is now more democratised, either through design nous or technology or just more writers that feel able to tell more ambitious stories to audiences they’re confident will be receptive.

Every month, I receive a paycheck for writing about games on the internet, and while it is has never been stated outright, I must assume that this acts as implicit confirmation that all my takes about videogames are bulletproof. I wrote about Space Marine 2 a few weeks ago, and while my opinions were correct at the time, they have since changed. Again: this is not contradiction. I was 100% correct at the time of writing - I’m simply more correct now.

Never question whether I am a real gamer again, you prying, needling hounds. I have The Gamer Browser, you see. I downloaded it because the RAM and CPU limiter widgets sounded useful. In reality, tuning them down by any noticeable degree just makes the browser unusable. Could this be because I have around 30 pinned tabs at all times? No. That is my inventory. What good is the gamer browser if it can’t handle my inventory?

Is there anything more satisfying in Total War: Warhammer 3 than watching a tide of rats, so numerous to be previously inconceivable outside of a world-spanning alley filled with old yoghurt pots and Dairlylea Dunkers, break against a beardy phalanx?

This is a fairly broad generalisation, but I think there are two types of armies in the game: those you win with on the battlefield with micromanagement, and those you win before the battle has even started, through composition and arrangement. The former may be more tactically gratifying and exciting, but the latter is so cinematically enjoyable to me that it’s something I can’t get anywhere else. It also perfectly suits the Dwarfs, who not only excel at defence, but I imagine are deeply unwilling to admit to their plans are anything but perfect, even upon making contact with the enemy. It’s the same joy I imagine players of sims like Factorio and Satisfactory get when setting up a bit of perfect automation.

As you can perhaps tell from the slightly disdainful quotation marks, I am not a "shipping" person. I find it kind of annoying, in fact, if anything tending to un-ship fictional couples who clearly have no chemistry and are just doing it for the script.

It's fair to say then that Love, Ghostie isn't made for me. It's so specific that shipping might even be its genre, since it doesn't really fit into puzzle or interactive fiction. You're a ghostie, and you run a shared house full of humans unaware that ghosts exist, and that their culture is apparently based on pairing up the living. I guess... circle of life?

“When the plebeian kneels to the monarch, he is offering his neck,” writes Gene Wolfe in The Sword Of The Lictor. I read that this morning over coffee. Thanks Gene! I was literally just thinking about bowing - and more specifically, thinking about just how many stories that centre the monarch would be made more interesting from the perspective of those forced to bow.

When James, Edwin and myself played the preview level of Space Marine 2 together, I remarked on how the Imperial Guard worked as a good reference point for just how massive the space marines themselves are. Having played around three hours of the full game now - and having it found it wear very thin in about half that time - I’m realising that putting the player on the other side of that power imbalance would have made for a far more interesting game.

This week’s supporters was originally going to involve documenting a highly scientific experiment I did involving my cat and a series of numbered treats in which she ranked all the mainline Yakuza games. Alas, upon checking the photos, most of them simply depicted a ravenous orange blur. Still, I did at least get conclusive evidence that she does not care for the original Yakuza at all. No taste, I tell ya.

Casually reducing a genre to more easily slag it off, I propose that there are fighting games that are a memory test, and fighting games that are fun. This leads naturally into saying with confidence that Five Gods of Kung Fu is fun, and getting an intro I'm struggling with out of the way. Phew.

It's structured in a testy sort of way, though, with training scenes teaching the button prompts for the new moves you'll need to defeat the next opponent. But those scenes are also montages, because FGOKF is also a playful thing where you're then attacked by a gang of mooks purely for a few moments of miniature power fantasy where a single blow can take out the entire line at once. Your new fighting technique is unstoppable.

At least once a year since Game Of Thrones started, whether there’s something related on telly or not, I suddenly get all obsessed with Westeros again and start falling asleep to lore videos for a couple of months. It’s obviously coincided with a new season of House Of The Dragon this year - a season I really enjoyed, even if the consensus seems to be “we didn’t get the finale battle we were expecting so we’re going to retroactively decide the show is bad now.” It had problems, sure. Daemon’s weirwood-ex-machina vision made his entire season arc redundant. And, sure, the cinematic framing of Rhaenyra using her obsession with prophecy to justify the mass bloodshed she’s willing to inflict to, effectively, gain power is a little too noble. Still, very entertaining telly.

This has all lead me to ask the titular question: What would a good George RR Martin videogame actually look?

"Trash Bandits" is too good a name to ignore, and a slick enough platformer that I pretty much have to recommend it, even though I'm pretty bad at it...

Except! I'm always just a little bit better at it than I think. Or I get better, and want to keep playing enough to try things a few more times until I get it right. That's pretty rare for me, when there are hundreds of other games a quick alt+F4 away.

In one of his routinely excellent newsletters a good while back, Nathan Brown quoted RPS’s own blame-eater Graham Smith saying the following: "People say they want good AI in shooters, but they don’t. If FPS AI was perfect then it would be just like playing online against the people at the top of the leaderboard. It would be awful. When people say they want good AI, what they mean is they want to fight enemies that make them feel smart when they beat them."

Well, I’ve never seen the top of an FPS leaderboard, Graham, so I’m just going to stick with the opinion that The Last Of Us Part 2’s AI is very good. Oh, alright. Apparently my job is "contingent on caring about what words mean." Fine. What I actually mean is that TLOU 2’s AI has been doing a great job of making me feel deeply unsafe at pretty much all times. The fact that only a really smart cookie like me can deal with that level of pressure is irrelevant. I’ve been playing it over the last week or so, partly to knock it off the pile, and partly to chip away at the mount of karmic debt I hold with the spunked cost pantheon for buying a PS5 solely to play two Final Fantasy games.

An odd side effect of mid 30’s life is trying to find a balance between tasteful, neutral home decor and wanting to cover every inch of my space in odd, niche objects that I personally enjoy but might, say, confuse the little old lady at the cat shelter if they come do a home check.

Maybe I’m just being judgemental? She might actually secretly love this print of Mr Blobby devouring his son that I got with Frisson Comic’s Blobby Horror anthology: