The immersive sim has seen a revival in recent years. Not only from larger studios like Arkane, keeping the faith alive with their time loops and space stations, but also from a bunch of smaller developers bravely exploring a typically ambitious genre. RPS has always had an affinity for these systemically luxuriant simulations, historically lauding the likes of the original Deus Ex as the best game ever made. But given everything that has come since, is that still the case? Only one way to find out: make a big list.
]]>Head over to the Epic Games Store on April 4th and you'll be able to grab The Outer Worlds: Spacer's Choice Edition and Thief (2014) for free and to keep forever. Like a thief!
]]>The Epic Games Store's spring sale is underway, from today until March 28th. That makes it twice as long as Steam's spring sale, which also started today. I'm not sure if that makes it twice as exciting, but here's what does: Deus Ex Mankind Divided is free to keep for the next week.
]]>[audience makes "wohhhhh" controversial noise]
I know, I know! Some might argue that Human Revolution is the best Deus Ex game, but they're wrong, it's clearly Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. The last, new Deus Ex game to be made will be free to keep from the Epic Games Store for a week starting March 14th.
]]>Elias Toufexis, voice actor for Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Mankind Divided's cyborg protagonist Adam Jensen, has bid a formal "goodbye, but hopefully not farewell" to the character, expressing hopes that somebody with a lot of money will buy the license and restore poor moody Adam to our screens. Toufexis also shared a few parting speculations about the unannounced Deus Ex sequel from Eidos Montreal that was reported cancelled last week. Toufexis wasn't involved with this one, and according to him, it likely wasn't a continuation of Jensen's story from Mankind Divided.
]]>The latest Embracer studio to suffer under the megacorp’s ongoing restructuring efforts are Eidos Montreal, with a new Deus Ex title two years into development reportedly cancelled and dozens of staff confirmed to be laid off.
]]>Marvel's Guardians Of The Galaxy was one of 2021's biggest surprises, succeeding where Square Enix's Avengers game failed by finding an identity beyond its movie counterpart thanks to strong writing. Alas, it didn't meet Square Enix's sales expectations.
Now it's free via the Epic Games Store.
]]>Marvel’s Avengers, Crystal Dynamics’ live service take on the comic-book superhero squad, is being pulled from sale at the end of the month. With just under two weeks left before it’s delisted, the game’s devs have knocked its price down to less than the price of a coffee.
]]>We’ve just passed the middle of the month (and the year?), which means it’s time for another wave of Game Pass games to come. For starters, we have a tasty indie trio coming to the service today. Then to cap off July, one of the best platformers in recent memory Celeste rejoins the fun, while Marvel's Avengers waves goodbye.
]]>Lara Croft has seen her fair share of live-action adaptations, but this time she’s raiding the small screen with a Tomb Raider TV series and a film in development at Amazon. THR reported that the Emmy-winning Fleabag writer Pheobe Waller-Bridge is set to pen (and executive produce) the upcoming show, though there's no word on who's attached with the film. THR states that Amazon is looking to "build out a connected world of Tomb Raider, with the video game, TV series and film." This sounds a little ambitious, considering that Crytal Dynamics' game is already in production, so we'll have to wait and see how the adaptations interact with the games.
]]>A return to the cyberpunk world of Deus Ex is coming courtesy of Human Revolution and Mankind Divided developers Eidos Montreal, it’s been claimed. The snippet of info that the new Deus Ex game is in the very, very early stages was reported by Bloomberg following yesterday’s revelation that sister studio Onoma is closing down. Eidos Montreal are also alleged to be working on a completely new game, as well as helping out with some co-development on some Microsoft-owned series, including the new Fable.
]]>Eidos Montreal, the studio behind recent Thief and Deus Ex games, say they are "now the owner of the games [we] developed, like the Deus Ex and Thief games." Likewise, Crystal Dynamics say they have taken "control" of its Tomb Raider and Legacy Of Kain games from their previous owner, Square Enix.
Which sounds like a big deal, but really both studios are just reporting a change to their terms of service and privacy notices since they were bought by Embracer Group last month.
]]>Swedish media buyer-uppers Embracer Group have completed their $300 million (£253 million) acquisition of former Square Enix studios, begun in May this year. The deal sees Crystal Dynamics, Eidol Montréal and Square Enix Montréal become part of a 12th operating group within Embracer. Square Enix Montréal will now change their name.
]]>Mary DeMarle, narrative designer and lead writer on Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Mankind Divided, and on the more recent Guardians Of The Galaxy, is now senior narrative director at BioWare. The switch comes just a couple of months after Embracer Group bought Eidos Montreal and said they saw potential for Deus Ex spin-offs, sequels and remakes.
]]>Earlier this month, Embracer Group announced their intent to buy Crystal Dynamics, Eidos Montreal and Square Enix Montreal from Square Enix in a $300 million (around £240m) deal. The acquisition includes the original IP associated with those studios, including Deus Ex, Thief, Legacy Of Kain and Tomb Raider.
In their quarterly earnings report, Embracer now say they see "great potential" in leveraging the heck out of that IP with sequels, remakes and more.
]]>Square Enix are to sell most of their Western studios and intellectual property such as Tomb Raider, Deux Ex, Thief and Legacy Of Kain to Sweden’s Embracer Group for $300 million (£240 million) in cash, it has been announced. The studios being sold to Embracer include Crystal Dynamics, Eidos-Montréal and Square Enix Montréal, but not the UK-based Square Enix Collective. This means Square will retain publishing rights to IP including Life Is Strange, Just Cause and Outriders.
]]>Guardians Of The Galaxy will be coming to Xbox Game Pass on March 10. Star-Lord for the cost of your subscription only. There are a handful of other games being added too.
]]>Despite being a critical hit and one of our favourite games of last year, Marvel's Guardians Of The Galaxy hasn't met publisher Square Enix's sales expectations. Just like Marvel's Avengers before it.
]]>There’s an old chestnut from gaming mythology - you surely know the one - about the movement in Mario’s 3D ventures being perfected by Shigeru Miyamoto at their very start with Super Mario 64. Core Design managed the same thing with the original Tomb Raider back in 1996, too. Nobody really talks about it now, while the Mario story endures. Possibly because Nintendo didn’t make umpteen identikit sequels over the following decade or splash Mario’s stretchy mug on the cover of The Face.
Really though, the Italian plumber and English graverobber were equally confident that if all their moves were available right from the start with no unlocking needed then that was enough. Both games were – are still, after a quarter of a century – the Platonic ideal of their characters. And they had bloody good swimming sections.
]]>Want to know whether to pay the fine or not in Guardians Of The Galaxy? After talking to the Worldmind in chapter 9, you will have the option to pay the Nova Corps fine that you incurred after escaping the Quarantine Zone and running into the Hala’s Hope in Chapter 2. Some decisions can have large and unexpected consequences in Guardians Of The Galaxy, so a bit of foresight is worth having if you want the best outcome when deciding whether to pay the Nova Corps fine or not.
]]>Want to know whether to sell Groot or Rocket in Guardians Of The Galaxy? After a rather disappointing attempt to capture a monster from the Quarantine Zone, the Guardians Of The Galaxy will incur a large fine from the Nova Corps. In a dire attempt to scrape together some units, you must travel to Seknarf Nine to meet Lady Hellbender, the Monster Queen. When you arrive, you must choose whether to sell Rocket or Groot. The choice you make majorly impacts the next mission of your adventure, so we’ll walk you through the differences between the two.
]]>Want to know whether you should buy the Disabler in Guardians Of The Galaxy? Whilst on Knowhere during Chapter 6, you can look around and partake in a bit of shopping. Whilst looking between the various stalls, you will find a merchant who offers to sell you a disabler that will supposedly remove the Nova Corps tracker from your ship. This would mean you don’t need to pay the Nova Corps fine that you incurred earlier in Chapter 2. However, Knowhere is a seedy place, and it’s hard to be certain whether you might get conned.
This guide will explain whether you should buy the disabler on Knowhere in Guardians Of The Galaxy, so that you can avoid any scams.
]]>Want to know how to get all of the Guardians Of The Galaxy game collectibles? On your journey to save the galaxy, you can find lots of trinkets and collectibles which are often hidden slightly off the main path. If you find these collectibles, you can take them back to the Milano and unlock new conversations with the other Guardians, which reveal details about their past, as well as other lore from across the Marvel universe.
This guide will cover how to find all Guardians Of The Galaxy game collectibles, so that you can stop worrying about missing something important on your playthrough.
]]>Want to know how to escape the foggy cave in Guardians Of The Galaxy? After trying to convince the Worldmind to fight Raker and proceeding into chapter 10, Mantis will join the team to help you save Drax, who has fallen victim to Grand Unifier Raker’s Promise. She will lead you into a mysterious cave that tries to trap any who enter. As you explore, you’ll discover two particular puzzles that require some out of the box thinking to proceed.
This guide will cover everything you need to know to escape the foggy cave in Guardians Of The Galaxy.
]]>Want to know how to get every outfit in Guardians Of The Galaxy? Star-Lord loves to look stylish, so there are plenty of outfits to collect in Guardians Of The Galaxy. Each Guardian has their own set of outfits, each taken from different Guardians storylines from the comics and movies. They're often hidden in secret passages, just like collectibles, so you might struggle to find them if you're focusing on the main story.
This guide will cover where to get every outfit in Guardians Of The Galaxy, so that you can relax and enjoy the story whilst knowing that you won't miss any costumes. You won't find outfits in every chapter, so don't panic when you notice some are missing. Below, we've listed every chapter in which you can find outfits.
]]>Spooky season might be behind us now, but man, it’s still pretty scary out there. My inbox sits at 576 unread emails, and in another tab I’m browsing heated clothes airers; things that I now realise are frighteningly expensive. But it’s not just mundane things in real life that give me goosebumps, it now extends to virtual white goods as well.
Right, so, there’s this fridge in Marvel’s Guardians Of The Galaxy and no matter how many times I close it, it won’t stay shut. At first it was funny, but it’s since morphed from a sly chuckle to a howl of agony. My relationship with the game is like that thing Yoda from Star Wars says, “Fear leads to the Dark Side”. Well, I’m almost there, let me tell you.
]]>Want to know how to convince the Worldmind in Guardians Of The Galaxy? The adventure to save the galaxy doesn’t just involve shooting Chitauri and cracking jokes. Throughout Guardians Of The Galaxy, you engage in conversations with various characters, in which you can make decisions that will alter the course of the game. Most of these have small, fairly insignificant consequences. However, the conversation with the Worldmind in Chapter 9 could help you get some crucial help in a difficult fight later in the game.
This guide will show you the correct choices to make to convince the Worldmind that Raker can be defeated in Guardians Of The Galaxy.
]]>Want to know how many chapters there are in Guardians Of The Galaxy? This planet-hopping adventure takes you on the cosmic ride of your life in an original Guardians Of The Galaxy story, involving plenty of punching, shooting, and generally jumping around with jet boots. Throughout the adventure, you'll come across many classic characters, such as Cosmo the spacedog, Adam Warlock, Mantis, Fin Fang Foom, and Lady Hellbender. However, since it isn't based directly on a certain comic storyline or movie, it can be hard to judge how long you'll actually spend playing Marvel's Guardians Of The Galaxy.
This guide will break down how many chapters there are in Guardians Of The Galaxy, and explain how long it will take to beat the game.
]]>Want to know some tips and tricks for Guardians Of The Galaxy? The adventure will take you across the vast galaxy in search of fortune, fun, and a whole lot of kicking ass, but you won’t make it far without a solid grasp of the mechanics in Guardians Of The Galaxy.
This guide will offer some tips and tricks that you’ll need to get familiar with if you want to turn your rag-tag group of misfits into a heroic team to be feared. We'll cover tips for all of the main aspects of the game, including combat, exploring, and all of the chats that you'll have with your teammates during your adventure.
]]>In a video game landscape that's pocked with millions of map markers and vast open worlds, Marvel's Guardians Of The Galaxy is a linear action adventure game with a clear beginning, middle and an end. It's an approach that feels refreshingly old-school, in the way it guides you smoothly from one story bit to another. But this doesn't mean it's one big flatline without any peaks, troughs, or surprises.
If anything, the game as a whole is a wonderful surprise. Planet-hopping as Star Lord is great fun, made even better by his colourful compatriots and the genuinely funny craic they share. Marvel fan or clueless layman? Doesn't matter, you're in for a good time no matter where you sit on the MCU scale.
]]>While Marvel's Guardians Of The Galaxy doesn't launch for another fortnight, the superhero game's launch trailer arrived today. That's a long run-up, that. If I'm running up for a launch for two weeks straight, I'm either leaping directly into the sun or falling asleep half-way. Presumably Square Enix are hoping for the former, given the ehhhh reaction to their Avengers game. Here, have a watch below.
]]>The studio behind the Deus Ex prequels, Guardians Of The Galaxy, and Shadow Of The Tomb Raider are taking a bold step in an industry known for overworking, and switching to a four-day workweek. Eidos Montreal say salaries and working conditions will remain the same, they'll just close the office on Fridays as everyone goes from 40-hour weeks to 32-hour weeks. The idea is that with more downtime to unwind and live their lives, people will work better during those reduced hours. Alright, everyone else do this too, thanks.
]]>I went hands-on with roughly an hour's worth of Marvel's Guardians Of The Galaxy last week, and I have come away pleasantly surprised. I'll admit, I judged a book by its cover on this one, thinking it would be an action adventure game only Marvel stans with decades worth of MCU facts beamed into their brains could rally behind. But no, even I, who's watched precisely three Marvel films in the last ten years, had a lot of fun with it. Good fun, at that.
Mainly, I liked how the game's combat takes cues from JRPGs, of all things, cribbing off the likes of Final Fantasy XV and Tales Of Arise so your fellow guardians feel just as - if not more - important than yourself.
]]>Ten years ago, we were whizzed forward to the year 2027, where the light is golden, the corps are mega, and the first keycode is 0451. Deus Ex: Human Revolution came out on this day in 2011, with new developers reviving Ion Storm's immersive sim series eight years after the second game. Thinking about it again today, yeah, I do fancy a replay. Today is also five years since the launch of its sequel, Mankind Divided. How do you feel about the revival now?
]]>Revealed during Square Enix's not-E3 stream back in June, Marvel's Guardians Of The Galaxy will be the next blockbuster Marvel game to grace our screens. It's taking a different direction from Marvel's Avengers, focusing on a single-player story where you play as Peter "Star-Lord" Quill, rather than some huge multiplayer experience (and hopefully will do better for it). It's being developed by Eidos Montreal, the folks who made Deus Ex: Human Revolution, and I had a chance to chat with them about what it's like working with Marvel, and how it felt moving from their own games to this huge superhero franchise.
]]>There’s some new Guardians Of The Galaxy footage for us to have mixed feelings about. We liked the action of the previous trailer, but felt it was trying a bit too hard to reflect the effortless silly coolness of the movies.
The new trailer has no action. Instead, it shows a meeting between the team and the very buff Lady Hellbender. Like a lot of people standing off in the side-quest spiral of the Marvel universe, she collects things. Monsters, in fact (someone should invent a CCG for the Marvel characters to focus on, it would save a lot of kidnappings). The GotGs need money to keep their ship and plan to con Lady Hellbender by "selling" Groot or Rocket to her. It won't work, and it doesn't look like the player had much say in the matter.
]]>You know, I've never been massively into Square Enix's games, but this time, I have to hand it to them. In an E3 week that's otherwise been a fairly tame affair, it took some real chutzpah to announce not just a big-budget original property, but one that's a direct lampoon of one of the biggest licenses in Hollywood. Gordon Galaxy And His Funny Space Mates is the sort of genius you might usually expect to come from the very fringes of the indie market. A whipcrack satire, thrown together by a lone hobbyist with nothing to lose, and looking to get a few laughs before the cease and desist orders come in. But no: this is a full-on, big budget, triple-A endeavour - and crikey, are Squeenix ever playing with fire here.
]]>Today at Square Enix's E3 2021 stream we got a first look at the upcoming Marvel's Guardians Of The Galaxy game. It's a third person action game where you play as Peter "Star-Lord" Quill. There's rootin', shootin' and jet bootin', and friends? I am stoked for the surprisingly close October 26th release date.
]]>Do you dare to dream? Square Enix announced that their E3 conference, Square Enix Presents, would take place on June 13th at 8:15pm BST/3:15pm EST/12:15pm PST. Alongside an update on Platinum Games Babylon's Fall and more on Life Is Strange: True Colors and the next Marvel's Avengers expansion, we can expect the "world premioere of a new game" from Eidos Montreal.
Eidos Montreal, if you don't know, are the studio previously responsible for Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Deus Ex: Mankind Divided.
]]>Ah, randomiser mods. They're truly some of the most fun you can have with a game you've completed hundreds of times, swapping out enemies, weapons and all sorts of things to make a game feel new - or incredibly chaotic. That's exactly what you'll find in the Deus Ex Randomiser. It's a most that shuffles everything around, and can even add some weird and wonderful effects to the game. The modder recently made the randomiser playable with Crowd Control too, which allows Twitch viewers to decide what interesting and downright unhelpful effects appear in a streamer's game.
]]>Marvel's Avengers seemed to come out to the mildest of shrugs from players, but there's still new DLC on the way in Operation: Hawkeye - Future Imperfect. Ahead of its arrival on March 18th, the developers have detailed some changes coming to the base game - including substantial reworks to how it dishes out XP and cosmetics. In brief: levelling is going to take longer.
]]>Earth's mightiest heroes today come crawling down your Internet pipe, offering everyone a free slice of Marvel's Avengers in an open beta weekend. The idea of a superhero game that's some sort of live service action-RPG with loot is a bit weird, so I'm curious. The beta start is staggered across the world, opening up at 9pm local time, so we here in the UK have a few hours to go but it is already live in easternmost parts of the world. You can preload the beta client while you wait.
]]>RPS threw Deus Ex a 20th anniversary birthday bash earlier in the week with a superb oral history of the game’s creation. Did you know that there was going to be a pirate island at one point? That and many other gems await you. To continue the ‘fun’, the RPS vid buds thought we’d revisit the game in a stream. If that earlier feature was the main party, then I guess we are handling the morning after clean-up. Sponging the wine out of the carpet. Unspooling the cat from streamers. Trying to work out where we put Warren Spector’s coat. It’ll be fun.
]]>Deus Ex is the king of the immersive sims - the blueprint from which an entire genre of ideas has been pilfered. If you’ve loved a Dishonored game, you’ve enjoyed Deus Ex by proxy; its design, and even some of its developers, can be found at the very centre of Arkane’s DNA.
For those who played it 20 years ago, Deus Ex set expectations for how malleable game worlds could be, and new standards for reactivity that the rest of the industry failed to match in the decade that followed. Deus Ex was ultimately so influential that, as one of our interviewees points out, its innovations now seem normal.
Here’s the story of how it was made, as told by the people who made it. The story begins in 1997, at a time when testosterone-fuelled first-person shooters still dominate PC gaming. Thief and System Shock developer Looking Glass has closed its Austin studio to save the ailing company, leaving Warren Spector and a team of crack simulation nerds without a project.
]]>Stuck for things to play this weekend? After offering their exhaustive JRPG lineup at a pittance last week, Square Enix have this week gutted the price of their Eidos Anthology bundle on Steam as part of their "Stay Home & Play" campaign - offering 54 PC classics, contemporary bangers and bizarre curiosities for just under 30 quid, in aid of charities affected by the Covid-19 pandemic.
]]>A defining part of Deus Ex: Human Revolution's look is a golden haze over everything, a flourish that some mocked it for. I don't know if Eidos changed their minds about the golden wash or just got sick of the jokes, but either way it was wiped away as part of the Director's Cut a few years later. Bit of a shame, really. Purists and goldlovers, rejoice: an enterprising modder has faithfully restored that filter in DXHR Director's Cut. It took a lot more effort than you might expect.
]]>My agenda: I really wanted to return to 2014's hated Thief and prove that it never deserved the vitriol it received. My reality: before the game even started I was bombarded by a barrage of pop-up windows informing me which new heists and levels were available to me as DLC, and I started to hate it a bit already.
So why this desire to defend it? Well, it's partly because I remember reviewing it six years back, and finding qualified enjoyment - trying to recognise it for the game it is, rather than measuring it against the games it foolishly tried to link itself to. And partly because I wondered if Dishonored had been called Thief: Dishonored, would it too have been so harshly judged? Maybe in 2020 Thief could be, if not amazing, a decent game in its own rights? Maybe?
]]>Everyone loves a good action game. It's the driving force behind so many of our favourite PC games, but only a few can lay claim to being the best action games of all time. That's why we've compiled this list - to sort the pulled punches from the bestest biffs that PC has to offer. Whether it's the joy of pulling off a perfect combo, riding the wave of an explosive set-piece or the hair-raising thrill of dodging enemy attacks in slow-motion that gets you going, there's an action game here for you.
]]>Marvel’s Avengers is a rare-earth neodymium snark magnet. It’s based on the most recognisable heroes on Earth, but starring what looks like their stunt-doubles. Though it meant Nate got to do this, it’s also made everyone a bit wary of what’s coming down our game tubes.
I imagine that Crystal Dynamics felt the best way to get ahead of that is let everyone take an extensive look at the game, which we have below. It’s splashy, swoopy, and restless, but it also adds another element of questionable authenticity: the quips are bloody awful.
]]>Earth's most lucrative heroes will reassemble in May 2020 with Marvel's Avengers, Square Enix announced today, to kick off a story that'll unfold over several years of updates. Unlike everything else to do with Marvel's marvelous moneymakers, story additions with new places and characters will be free to all players. Most importantly, yes, it will let you play superheroes with your pals and duff up baddies together in co-op. Come watch the announcement trailer.
]]>The original Thief is one of the first games I remember playing. I was at my mate’s house, because he had a proper computer (and one of those old school mice with the little ball in that you had to take out and blow on if it got stuck). I remember doing the tutorial; being taught to hide in shadows and avoid the light. I was eight, and didn’t get much further than that until years later.
]]>We've all seen Lara Croft's origin story a hundred times: bitten by a radioactive tomb, she gained great power and unslakeable bloodthirst, but when her father was killed in an alley by a cursed string of pearls she had herself raided, she realised she had a great responsibility to do errands for the indigenous peoples she's robbing. If you wish to once again discover how Lara Croft became The Tomb Raider, however, you're in luck as a demo for Shadow Of The Tomb Raider is out now. It offers the game's opening.
]]>In the best possible way, the Hitman series is ridiculous. Its protagonist, Agent 47, is the single most conspicuous person in any crowd. He’s big and bald and white with a bar code prominently tattooed to the back of his head, and not once does this fact deter him from his preferred method of infiltration: wearing a disguise.
These aren’t disguises in the elaborate, Mission: Impossible, we’ll give you an entire fake head sense. No, 47 simply throws on the clothes of whatever guard or unfortunate bystander he’s subdued. And this actually works. In the franchise’s fiction, he’s considered one of the most dangerous people in the entire world, the best of the best. This imposing figure who scarcely bothers to alter his body language, let alone his voice, is a master of disguise. Like its 2016 predecessor, Hitman 2 is quite aware that this concept is absolute nonsense.
]]>If there's one thing better than looting the artefacts of ancient, forgotten civilisations for personal gain, it's doing it with a friend. Today, the first of seven planned DLC tombs for Shadow Of The Tomb Raider was released. The Forge is a lava-filled, puzzle-heavy delve, and designed for play either solo or in the newly introduced online co-op mode. Lara can now tag along with a pal and solve problems in fun tag-team ways, further building on the back-to-basics tomb raiding approach of the game. Below, Eidos Montreal show off some of the quirks of multiplayer.
]]>The great thing about Lara Croft finishing her origin arc is that she can get back to raiding tombs full-time, and The Forge - the first DLC for Shadow Of The Tomb Raider - looks looks like a spicy one. Available next month separately or as part of the season pass, it's the first of seven monthly releases of new tombs to raid in new side-stories, plus the option to explore them with a friend online. The Forge launches on November 13th, and you can see another screenshot and a lovely bit of concept art below.
]]>Much like other Tomb Raider games of late, the open world nature of Shadow of the Tomb Raider allows for players to explore a lot of side objectives. Missions allow for Lara to attempt to help the locals with their plights to get items, while challenges reward you with extra experience to complete certain set objectives in each area. This guide will go over how to finish the side quests, and the steps for completing the challenges.
]]>The whole point of Tomb Raider is that Lara Croft was to pillage tombs. As the rebooted series has progressed, there have been more tombs added to the main story, but the optional tombs are where the real challenge is. Our guide will take you through where to find the challenge tombs in Shadow of the Tomb Raider and how to solve the puzzles found within.
]]>Lara Croft's latest adventure, the third in the latest trilogy, sees her seemingly causing the apocalypse. Racked with guilt she heads to deepest, darkest Peru to locate a lost civilisation in the heart of the Andes to recover an artefact from Trinity. This guide will give you some beginner's tips and tricks for Shadow of the Tomb Raider, as well as explain how skill points work.
]]>Have you been checking in on the Rock Paper Shotgun Video Department? It has its very own video corner on the site where everything is collected. But in case you missed it, I'm going to round up our moving picture delights from the last week. From life-consuming RPGs to fish prisons, we covered a lot of bases.
]]>With Shadow Of The Tomb Raider, Lara has now completed another trilogy, probably by falling through its roof and shooting it in the face. This would be the second set of three games from Crystal Dynamics (with help from other parts of Eidos), following on from the six titles created by Core (if you don't count the Game Boy ones). She's twelve main games old, twenty-ish if you count the mobile and off-brand ones, and 22 years old if you count in linear time. I'm here to argue it's time for Lara to go.
]]>Lara Croft is back. But the world she inhabits in Shadow of the Tomb Raider is darker, a fierce jungle full of dense, gloomy shapes. They pass beneath the player like a ghost, or perhaps whip away into the trees. Tomb Raider has always had this uneasy affection for the supernatural, an appreciation of the dark. And although Lara has come a long way since her caving days, she is always followed by a certain dimness.
]]>The latest Tomb Raider reboot games have always been big technical showcases on PC, and Shadow of the Tomb Raider is no exception. After a slightly rocky pre-release build that's thankfully been ironed out in time for today's release (have a read of John's newly updated Shadow of the Tomb Raider review if you're still unsure), this is easily one of the most demanding games I've played all year, so I decided to chuck a load of today's best graphics cards at it to see how they all hold up.
]]>Update: We've made some substantial changes to this review to reflect the dramatic technical improvements made by the day one patch released on the 12th.
Shadow Of The Tomb Raider is, we're told, the final entry in the latest trilogy of Lara Croft adventures. And is, I'm pleased to report, by far the best of the three.
It remains a muddled affair, never quite sure what it wants to be, never certain what it wants to say. But there's plenty of fun to be had. Here's wot I think:
]]>I often wonder what freakish individuals were enlisted into focus testing to give publishers the idea that everyone wants things mean and moody. Had they invited me, there would be more games set in cheery pubs where you win by having the best bit of nostalgia about early noughties television. Also, the health system would be built entirely on the consumption of floral gums. There is none of that stuff in Shadow of the Tomb Raider, but for a game that is touted as a brutalising hell slog, I’m surprised by how much fun I had with its first five hours. It’s a tropical paradise full of unmarked platforming and preposterous animal attacks; it is, in other words, classic Tomb Raider. Further thoughts in this video.
]]>If you wish to turn off all the objective markers, glowing item highlights, and even guiding paint splashes in Shadow Of The Tomb Raider, you will be able to. Leap and puzzle without any obvious assistance, if you please. Or if you find those handy and want all the help you can get, hey, the game will let you do that too. The game's makers have detailed its difficulty and accessibility options, and it all sounds pretty great.
]]>Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the climbing stuff and stealing stuff and pushing giant stone cogwheels water, here comes another shark with 'EXTREMELY SERIOUS ORIGIN STORY' carved into its hide. Shadow Of The Tomb Raider threatens to complete a birth-of-badass-Lara tale we've already heard twice over, but there's good news for those of us for whom there was never any mystery around why someone would want to be like Indiana Jones. SOTTR introduces a hub city to Tomb Raider for the first time, a den of shops and sidequests and secrets and time-lost Mayan civilians who immediately look to the ever-so-clever Englishwoman to resolve their every crisis.
What's jumping out to me most, however, are new difficulty settings, which include the option to remove those immersion-breaking paint marks that show you exactly which rocks to climb up.
]]>Has it really been six months? 2018 is passing in a blur of frozen architects, drug-pushing prophets and accordion duets. Hell, six months ago the RPS Video Department was but a glint in Graham’s eye. You may also recall a gathering of the most exciting games of 2018, a rundown of the year as it looked back in January. With E3 done there’s a clearer picture of what the rest of 2018 looks like. Many games have slipped to February 2019 - the stampeding bandits of Red Dead Redemption 2 have them running for the hills - but we’ve rustled up 15 of the remaining games that fellow video person Noa and I are looking forward to.
]]>When Eidos Montreal say that Shadow Of The Tomb Raider takes us through the journey where Lara Croft "becomes the Tomb Raider that she's destined to be", I think they mean becoming a stone-cold mass murderer. They blasted a few minutes of gameplay footage during Square Enix's E3 press conference today, and it shows Lara's stealthy murdermoves from camouflaging herself in mud to firing rope arrows into mercs so she can swing down as the counterweight hauling them up and hanging them from branches. Goodness me. I reckon she's a real fan of Predator. See the vid below.
]]>Lara Croft will be sticking her toffee nose into the Mayans' business to prevent their apocalypse in Shadow Of The Tomb Raider, Square Enix confirmed today as they started showing more of the game. Typical colonial invaders: thinking they know best, that they can and should solve everything. Hey, pal, that's not your apocalypse. Butt out. And don't think I didn't notice you slip that crypt jewellery into your little backpack.
Ahhh to heck with it. Here, watch Lara fighting dirty in the fancy new cinematic trailer:
]]>The CEO of Square Enix, Yosuke Matsuda, has spoken out about the future of Deus Ex. At the start of this year, Eurogamer reported that we shouldn't expect a new Deus Ex game anytime soon - and they're right, though we should get one eventually. It simply isn't Deus Ex's turn yet, with the studio first focusing on other projects such as the next Tomb Raider and an Avengers game.
Matsuda explained all this in an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, where he also talked about Final Fantasy's anime spin off, the studio's approach to the Eastern and Western markets, as well as augmented and virtual reality.
]]>Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, the story of a robo-boy who never loses his sunglasses, is free on Steam at the moment. You can play without spending a dime until tomorrow evening. If you decide that you can’t part with it after taking it home and introducing it to your family, then you can also buy it at a discount of 75% from the usual price.
]]>A big Deus Ex: Breach [official site] today is bringing daily runs to the Mankind Divided side-game. Each day, hackers jacking into the datanet will get to run new randomly-generated server networks. The update, the first since Breach launched a free-to-play standalone version, also brings new weapons, items, and maps. Breach may not be my jam but ooh I am a sucker for daily runs; I do enjoy my Isaac daily every afternoon.
]]>Yesterday, Square Enix announced that they'd be announcing something today, as that's how marketing works now. Yesterday, Marvel also announced that they'd be announcing something today, but no-one knew if they meant a film, a comic, a TV series or that Ike Perlmutter had ordered that Captain America was henceforth to be depicted as an outspoken climate change denier.
Different companies announce different stuff on the same day all the time, but there was something even more needlessly vague than usual about these two, and so a few souls put two and two together and speculated that it could be same announcement - Square Enix publishing a Marvel game. Whaddaya know, true believers? They were right. Except it's games, plural. And both Crystal Dynamics and Eidos Montreal are on the case.
]]>Adam Jensen is off to the cyberslammer next month in the second story DLC for Deus Ex: Mankind Divided [official site]. Square Enix yesterday announced the 'Criminal Past' DLC, a prequel mission which will send Adman undercover into a prison for robomen. That's why they call it Criminal Past, see: it's set in the past (of the future), and there are criminals. The marketing droids must feel chuffed with that wordplay but tch, they missed such great names as The Gig House, Rigbrig, Spring Spring, and The Clank.
]]>The pre-order virtuaguff of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided [official site], which includes an extra story mission, is now free for all players. A patch on Friday whopped it in. The 'Desperate Measures' mission isn't big but it does poke into that train station bombing which drives a fair chunk of the game so, er, good that it's finally available to everyone. This blob of freebies also includes some new skins to dress up Adam Jensen, though don't get your hopes up for more than different coats and body armour - no casual slacks and polo necks for this mopey cyberman.
]]>What was the best city videogames allowed us to visit in 2016? The RPS Advent Calendar highlights our favourite games of the year, daily, and behind today’s door is...
]]>Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.
When I first played Gangsters: Organized Crime [Wikipedia page] in the late 90s I didn’t really play strategy games. This one predated The Sopranos, so my grasp of epic gangster stories stemmed from Scarface, Once Upon A Time in America and The Godfather trilogy - all of which weaved deep and intricate tales over the course of just a few hours.
Gangsters: Organized Crime taught me that out you can’t assassinate a mayor on your first day on the job.
]]>Surly cyberman Adam Jensen is teaming up with the pop star Sia and some wazzock to rob a data bank. That's the premise of the first Deus Ex: Mankind Divided [official site] story DLC, System Rift, which launched today. A little caper and a bit of banks might even put a smile on his cyberface. Here, check out the launch trailer:
]]>Following the release of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided In Unsubtle Ways [official site] many players have been struggling with stuttering, freezing, crashing and general technical problems. But Squeenix and co have been patching away, trying to exterminate all the problems and get the thing looking as shiny as a pair of edgy 90s sunglasses. The latest patch does some more of that. Perhaps more importantly, the developers are also introducing support for DirectX 12, which may or may not fix all your problems. It’s only a preview build though, so come with me to find out how to apply the update.
]]>Deux Ex: Mankind Divided [official site] will get its first story DLC just one month after launching. Titled "Shadow Rift", this new story content will welcome back... well, obviously don't read on if you don't want to know who's been absent.
]]>Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is a beautiful game, but it doesn't deal in sweeping vistas and natural beauty. Its visual currency is instead invested in ornamental stag heads, tree statuery, fluorescent lighting, swooping electrical cables and complicated ceilings and stairwells. I took 18,000 screenshots while playing the game and I've collected the best inside. Beware: here lie spoilers for environments, locations and, probably, with some plot details embedded within.
]]>A second PC patch has been released for Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, hopefully leaving fewer players divided (do you see, because "divided" is in the title of the game) over the annoying mouse issues, as well as other tidying up.
]]>Deus Ex: Mankind Divided [official site] has received its first patch-me-do, now ready to be added via Steam. It's not a biggun by any means, but should stop some of the more immediately annoying crashes people have experienced. They've also made some suggestions about improving performance by, well, telling you to switch off MSAA altogether.
]]>If you've played Deus Ex: Mankind Divided [official site] yet, you'll already know that the game has an astonishing seven unskippable intro videos before you get to the main menu. You'll likely know it because you'll have seen all seven of them at least three or four times while you fiddled with graphics settings to get the ludicrously bloated game to work on your rig. You'll likely want to poke a stick in the eye of the person who decided to make them unskippable. Below we'll save you the expense of that stick.
]]>Gosh oh golly, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided [official site] is out in less than 24 hours! Square Enix have confirmed Steam unlock times and I'm mighty excited. The cyberpunk FPS-RPG is pretty great, our Graham thinks - the lucky dog! Luckily for me and my overexcitement, publishers Square Enix have also poured a cool glass of cyberwater over my cyberhead to make me calm down and instead ask "Why would you do that now?" They've detailed the contents of Mankind Divided's DLC Season Pass, y'see. Nothing cools that launch giddiness like DLC announcements!
]]>Adam Jensen has blades sheathed inside his wrists, skin that lets him turn invisible, and robotic thigh muscles that enable him to walk in an almost permanent crouch. It's surprising that his real superpower then is the ability to turn on a visual overlay which reveals the locations of vents in the environment.
Deus Ex Mankind Divided is the sequel to Human Revolution, set two years after the events of that game caused the world's augs - humans who have had machines implanted in their bodies and brains - to momentarily lapse into a violent mania. Now distrust of augs has caused mass panic and various secretive groups are working to either heal society's divisions, incite further panic, or oppress the augmented further. It's your job as Jensen to pick your way through those secretive groups - via a lot of crouching through vents.
]]>"You can kill dreams," Adam Jensen growls, "you can kill innocence, you can kill freedom, but you can't kill progress." A serious lad, that one. While Deus Ex: Mankind Divided [official site] doesn't launch until Tuesday, the cyberpunk FPS-RPG's launch trailer is already here. Very gruff. Very growly. Pretty flipping cool and all. Have a gander:
]]>Shower scenes seldom Make You Think, unless it's about what exactly you're getting for that Premium Netflix subscription, but if anything sticks out for me about the impressive yet oddly unexciting Deus Ex: Mankind Divided [official site], it's the sight of Adam Jensen washing his hair. Eidos Montreal's latest presentation begins in Jensen's new Prague apartment - a casually affluent man-den where you can phone other characters, watch newscasts that track your decisions through the story, answer emails, tinker with crafting resources, and generally get acquainted with the sleek, cadaverous sort-of-human in your charge.
]]>I have never played more than five minutes of a Deus Ex [official site] game, but I do find the transhumanism and the artwork fascinating. I also had a dream pretty recently about Adam Jensen where it turned out that instead of being a modified human he was actually a secret bee with all these insecty body mods.
His sunglasses were actually his compound eyes and he had a weird stabbing wing that he could shoot out of his arm and pin people to walls with what was inspired by the foreleg of a praying mantis. I think he might actually have one of them in the real game but not from a mantis, more from some kind of galactic hypertriangle or something. He also slept in a hive and was often covered in honey. LOOK IT WAS A DREAM I DON'T KNOW.
Anyway, I feel like that's as decent a set of qualifications as you need for writing a post explaining that you can watch the Deus Ex Universe pre-E3 livestream thingummy here from 4.30pm BST.
]]>A new live-action trailer for Deus Ex: Mankind Divided [official site] tells a little story of how the futureworld goes from the "Huzzah hooray, cyborgs are the future!" optimism in Human Revolution to "Cyborgs want to eat my baby, please lock them away" panic. I think I just enjoyed a live-action trailer...? Not only because of swish cybertech and dark megacities either. What times we live in!
]]>I have only three questions about Deus Ex: Mankind Divided [official site]. 1) Can I get a dollhouse-scale recreation of that tree sculpture? 2) Does Adam Jensen take showers or baths? 3) Have Eidos Montreal spoken to Billy Idol yet?
A new trailer answers that second question for me, but if you have any more you might find them answered in the six-minute overview of Eidos Montreal's cyberpunk FPS-RPG sequel. It gets into the plot, looks at Adam's cool new powers and pals, teases more consequences to decisions, and shows lots of pretty shots of cybercities.
]]>"Alice! Cara! Alice! What have you been listening to at your office Christmas party?" you beg. "Tell us, please!" Well, obviously the Rogue Warrior credits theme a whole lot, plus SomaFM's Christmas stream and... when she was napping, a song from Billy Idol's reviled 1993 concept album Cyberpunk. God help me, it's stuck in my head and I must write this to get his leering face out. So: after a day of festive cheer, I'm convinced that Eidos Montreal should bring in Billy Idol to 'do a Mass Effect' and provide a rockin' song for the end credits of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided [official site].
]]>Everything looked rosy when I traveled to Montreal to take a look at Deus Ex: Mankind Divided [official site] earlier this year. The areas I played improved on Human Revolution in every way that matters and Adam Jensen controlled better than ever. All was well and I was looking forward to playing the game in February, right around my birthday. Moments ago, word arrived of a six month delay - the game will now be coming out on August 23rd.
]]>Have You Played? is an endless stream of game recommendations. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.
Write about any iteration of Championship Manager and Football Manager and you'll hear people bring up a particular version of the game. Hint: it's also the only one to appear in our list of the best 50 strategy games. It's Season 01/02.
]]>Disappointing endings are a staple of Deus Ex games, aren't they? That's fine, though, because almost everything leading up to those final two minutes when you choose which button to press is pretty great. Unsurprisingly, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided [official site] will be continuing the series's sequel tradition of openings which kinda ignore which button you picked, but the ending this time will be more than a mere button-press. So its lead writer say, anyway.
]]>I've played Deus Ex: Mankind Divided [official site] and I liked what I saw. A brief visit to just two areas suggested a more confident and open approach to first-person stealth-action. My preview focused on the level design because that's where most of the improvements seemed to be but Eidos Montreal are also determined to improve player character Adam Jensen. That's already evident in the improved control scheme, particularly as it relates to use of cover, but it'll also be felt in his new augmented abilities. You can see some of those in the new trailer below.
]]>Deus Ex: Mankind Divided [official site] is already looking like a worthy follow-up to Human Revolution as well as an inventive prequel to Ion Storm's original cyberpunk classic. When we visited the studio to play the game earlier this month, we also spent time talking to two of the brains behind the game about the inspirations and processes that go into this bleak vision of the future.
First up, here's Jonathan Jacques-Belletête, executive art director at the studio. We spoke to him about collaborative storytelling, fashion, architecture and graphic design. Along the way we learned about content cut from Human Revolution, the places that Deus Ex is going next and why Jacques-Belletête believes that India could be a perfect cyberpunk setting.
]]>Deus Ex: Revision [official site] is a project that overhauls "the environments and soundtrack" of Ion Storm's classic, and it's out now on Steam. The release has the backing of Deus Ex's current publishers and developers (Square Enix and Eidos Montreal), and is designed to work exclusively with the Steam release of the original.
]]>I’m in the camp that thought Deus Ex: Human Revolution was a hell of a good starting point. The level design ran up against apparent technical limitations, chopped into distinct sections rather than flowing naturally from streets to interiors and back again, and the stealthy approach sometimes felt more difficult than it should have been thanks to sticky cover and too-rigid AI.
During a day of hands-on experience with follow-up Mankind Divided, it became apparent that Eidos Montreal felt similarly about their first stab at their cyberpunk revival. Moving from the tech renaissance of Human Revolution, the sequel steps into a fractured world of corporate feudalism. It’s looking superb.
]]>"Never pre-order," we say, which is shorthand for "Pre-ordering is a gamble, so do be careful when placing bets and don't be swayed by the free shrimp buffet that is bonus DLC." Pre-order bonuses are usually harmless enough, but Deus Ex: Mankind Divided [official site] publishers Square Enix had the awful idea of saying they'd release the game early - only if enough people pre-ordered.
Following loads of folks telling them it was an awful idea, Squeenix have now scrapped the 'Augment Your Pre-order' plan and stuck the game with its original, unaugmented release date of February 23rd, 2016.
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