"Oh, and one last thing..." teased the narration for yesterday's Like A Dragon Direct showcase on Like A Dragon: Pirate Yakuza In Hawaii, before announcing that the RPG will be getting New Game+ mode as part of a free post-launch update. It then cut to Majima and his crew making celebratory noises on deck. This follows last year's Infinite Wealth catching some backlash for the decision to lock the mode behind a £15/€15/$15 edition upgrade.
Unrelated, but I've decided to stop putting angry spiders through your letterbox every morning. I know, I know. Come on now. Hero is such a strong word.
]]>Over the Christmas break, I took a brief hiatus from reporting on every time a Total War developer breathes or spills tea on their shirt. The year ended, the world did not, and no Thanquol DLC was announced, but I did miss what I reckon is the strongest hint they’ve yet freely given that strategy game Total War: Warhammer 40,000 is both real and due an announcement very soon. Here’s the skinny.
]]>Terrible news! Santa ignored all my letters asking for 2025 to be a year when no new videogames came out so I could catch up on everything I missed from the past several years. In fact, it seems like maybe someone else might have sent him a letter asking for there to be more big games coming than ever.
]]>What difficulty are you on, Doom CAPTCHA? I want to know because I need to know how bad to feel about myself. Six times I’ve tried to pass your FPS test by killing three monsters to prove I’m human. Six times I’ve failed. For thousands of years, people have asked what it means to be human. It turns out it was never a philosophical issue after all. It was, I’m gutted to report, a skill issue all along.
]]>If pushed, I’d describe my 2024 gaming habits as eclectic, but that would actually be a lie. All my favourite games for the year are actually very similar: they are all the best. Unfortunately, the realities of sharing website space with several less-correctos means they didn’t all make this year’s advent calender.
]]>Ahhh, the lap of the ocean is calming isn't it? And it's really warm here, too. What's interesting is that the sounds of the sea are occasionally masked by the sounds of multiple segways. Weird.
]]>I'm a big fan of Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed, which pit Sonic and pals against a stable of characters from Sega's other games, including Total War and Football Manager. I'm less of a fan of Sonic's other kart racing exploits, but I'm still cautiously interested to learn he's getting back behind the wheel. Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds was just announced.
]]>In more ways than one, today’s Total War: Warhammer 3 expansion marks a milestone for game director Rich Aldridge and his team at Creative Assembly. Omens Of Destruction’s three headline legendary lords each bring new campaigns and units for their respective factions, but it’s the fourth lord - a Khorne champion free to all players - that I imagine Aldridge will end up remembering the most fondly.
When Total War: Warhammer released back in 2016, it shipped with eight legendary lords - famous characters from Games Workshop’s fantasy setting that here act as faction leaders. The number grew steadily and, in terms of announcement order at least, today’s addition of Arbaal The Undefeated marks the series’ 100th. That's a hundred campaigns, a hundred joint efforts of game design, animation, art, writing and voice work.
Aldridge has never been shy about the team’s ambition for the series to eventually offer up each unit from every Fantasy Battle 6th edition army book ("The goal is to do everything, right?"). But ambition is one thing, and considering the fraught conditions at Creative Assembly and parent company Sega over the past few years, it’s not just the addition of the 100th lord that feels like something to celebrate. It’s taken time, effort, and a siesmic shift in update frequency, but Total War: Warhammer III is in the best place it's ever been.
]]>Here are some orc names I quite like. Haters will tell you these “aren’t real orcs”, but those fools are forever trapped in a stifling prison forged from the failures of their own imaginations. Suck it, haters:
]]>If the surprising number of you brought scurrying out of the woodwork by the announcement of Redwall-style survival game Hawthorn is anything to go by, the medieval rodent fanatic to RPS reader pipeline is a sturdy one, despite being constantly nibbled at. Here’s some more delicious bait for you, then. Mossflower TW is a campaign mod for Medieval II: Total War expansion Kingdoms that lets ranks of mace-wielding mice, helmeted hedgehogs, and ornery otters skitter wildly all over the venerable strategy game. It’s been about since Summer, and the team have been working on patching since. It seems very playable, if the footage of people playing it is anything to go by. Here’s a video by YouTuber Tharshey so you can see it in action:
]]>Amplitude Studios, developers of many a game with "Endless" in the name, have split with publisher Sega to become independent again, with ownership of the studio reverting to its original founders and "other members of the team". The developers say everyone is parting "on good terms" and that the last eight years of getting published under Sega has been "amazing". But there are other businessy reasons, of course. Namely, Sega have been trying to trim down their European studios for the past year, and Amplitude is just the latest bunch of devs affected by that.
]]>Sega are delisting several bundles of 'classic' games from digital stores, along with "select individual" games. On Steam specifically, this adds up to over 60 games in total, including several actual classics including the original Streets Of Rage trilogy, Crazy Taxi, and Jet Set Radio.
The games will be removed on December 6th but will remain playable to those who already own them.
]]>Ogres, Orcs, and Khorne are all on the way in the upcoming expansion for strategy game Total War: Warhammer 3, and Creative Assembly have just released their latest dev vlog with a few more details on what to expect. There’s still no word on the exact title, although given the established naming convention (Shadows Of Change, Thrones Of Decay), I’m tentatively calling it “Sniffers Of Glue” in honour of the No Think, Only Krump faction selection.
You’ll find the vlog in its full glory below. What’s interesting about this one is that vlog mainstay director Rich Alridge has brought along some new faces: battle designer Josh King and audio director Chris Goldsmith. And, yes, so no-one can accuse me of burying the lede: that audio design involved the enthusiastic, deeply disgusting slurping of porridge and yoghurt, and the jangling of real bones. The source of the bones is not revealed.
]]>Looking for the best Archetypes in Metaphor ReFantazio? There are a whopping total of 46 Archetypes in Metaphor ReFantazio and 7 playable characters who can wield them. This means you may have a tough time narrowing down your options and choosing the best Archetypes for each character.
Archetypes are essentially forms that your party can transform into during battle in order to unlock unique magic skills and attacks. Archetypes also have access to 'Synthesis skills' depending on your party loadout.
Below we'll go through the best Archetypes for each playable character in the game as well as Synthesis options so you can build the perfect party for your adventures. If you want a broader list of all 46 Archetypes and how to unlock them all, as well as a rundown of Royal Archetypes, see our comprehensive Archetype list.
]]>Looking for a list of all Archetypes in Metaphor ReFantazio? There is a huge roster of Archetypes in Metaphor ReFantazio to choose from - a total of 46 altogether. This includes standard Archetypes and more advanced Royal Archetypes, which you can unlock as you progress through the game.
To plan your Archetypes ahead, or to simply see what's on offer, we've gathered a list of all Metaphor ReFantazio Archetypes in one conclusive list. We've also included steps for unlocking every one and go into further detail on how to unlock all Royal Archetypes and the ultimate Prince Archetype.
]]>Looking for all Metaphor ReFantazio cooking answers? Once you progress through Metaphor ReFantazio enough to take up residence at Grand Trad, you may encounter a Young Nidia Man on Sunlumeo Street who asks for information about the cooking at the Hushed Honeybee Inn.
What follows is the 'Help the Hushed Honeybee' quest wherein you must help Fabienne cook for the customers at night. To successfully pull off the quest and earn all Tolerance points with Fabienne, you must answer several cooking questions correctly. If you want to get the most out of these two tasks, we have all cooking answers listed below.
]]>Looking for all ingredients needed to make Redgrass Roasted Bidou in Metaphor ReFantazio? As you progress through Metaphor ReFantazio you'll gain the option to help Fabienne cook at the Hushed Honeybee Inn at Grand Trad.
She'll offer to teach you how to cook Redgrass Roasted Bidou, but you'll need to bring her the ingredients first. For all Redgrass Roasted Bidou ingredient locations, see our full guide below.
]]>A new PlayStation blog (thanks cheery fanzine PCGamer for the spot) has provided some illuminating info on the upcoming Like A Dragon: Pirate Yakuza In Hawaii, and in many ways, the LAD series as a whole. The biggest takeaway: the fact pirate Yakuza was, at one point, going to be a fishing game called Like A Dragon: Tuna.
]]>Why yes, that was a micro change in air density you just noticed on your motion tracker. Ten years since the release of horror adaptation Alien Isolation, Creative Assembly have announced that they're making a sequel.
]]>The Football Manager series has been around for decades, each of its yearly entries gradually building upon its core systems until it became the mixture of deep simulation and banal press conference screens it is today. Football Manager 2025 is different: a fresh start for the series, built upon a new engine, which Sports Interactive are at pains to say will not immediately be as rich or robust as its predecessor.
It now has a release date: November 26th.
]]>There's a new trailer out for that there Like A Dragon: Yakuza TV show that Amazon's spinning up. And being one of RPS' foremost Yakuza sickos, I can say that I remain cautious about it, with perhaps a hint of optimism. It doesn't look like it's going for goofy, but instead opting for largely gritty and serious and almost entirely unrelated to the Yakuza games. Still, though, I do know how the show ends. It's really obvious, actually, when you think about it.
]]>I don’t like to brag, but it turns out that running a museum is actually well easy. Within an hour of sitting down to play Two Point Museum at Gamescom last month, I was running a modest monthly profit, educating the masses about one-fifth of a dinosaur skeleton, and most importantly, had not ordered a single staff member to their death.
]]>Having played the opening hour of Altus’ Metaphor: ReFantazio – now mere weeks away from its October 11th launch – I think it’s high time to correct a games previewing injustice. Namely, that the majority of its pre-release buzz has centred around its proximity to Persona, and not its far more entertaining quality of having the most gleefully bizarre RPG enemy design this side of Elden Ring’s horn-tooting orbpeople.
]]>Death and taxes remain constant, the sun rises and sets each day, and I must write about every bit of Total War: Warhammer 3 news until the end of time. No-one is making me, I must add. I simply cannot help myself. Every addition is one step closer to us getting an official Clan Skurvy. Creative Assembly just put out a new video going into more details about what to expect from the strategy game’s next DLC. Here’s a roundup of the last one to get you up to speed before I start frothing like a pint of Bugman’s. That was a Warhammer reference! From Warhammer!
]]>Oh, hey, would you look at that? Total War: Warhammer 3's patch 5.2.0 (arriving later today) has some new orcs and goblins in it.
Look at 'em! They've got swords and shields now!
]]>Any gags I could make about an update that lets Total War: Warhammer 3’s dawi play tall are far too obvious for the discerning comedic palette that brought you such bangers as that time I just wrote “(penis)” a bunch so the Overkill’s Walking Dead page wouldn’t quote me out of context, so let’s just dive right in to the details. The strategy game’s 5.2 update is on the horizon, and tagging along with it are the first of the “extra bits” the team teased in June. I’m very excited about them. They sit somewhere between the usual patch fare of stat tweaks and errata, and the weightier faction facelifts that come alongside paid DLC. They’re also focused right where Immortal Empires needs them the most: depth, rather than width. In the dawi’s case, quite literally.
]]>Among the many, Gigery beauties of 2014's Alien: Isolation is that you save using an in-game, wall-mounted Emergency Phone - a maddeningly analog process of slotting a keycard into the machine and waiting for three beeps. Doing this requires you to stand upright in full view, with your back turned upon an entire space station's worth of shiny domed technology and guttural industrial noises. Delightful!
Amongst the players harrowed and compelled by this fixture is Fede Álvarez, director of the 2013 Evil Dead remake, 2016's Don't Breathe and, most recently Alien: Romulus - the seventh and avowedly "back to basics" Alien movie. Isolation is the Alien experience that convinced Álvarez the Alien could still be scary, after decades of milking the creature's dugs for spin-off movies and making it share a screen with the Predator, the Pepsi Max to Alien's Dom Pérignon 1921. In possibly self-defeating homage to Creative Assembly's work, he's filled the movie with Emergency Telephones, turning them into a straightforward-sounding form of foreshadowing.
]]>Last week, Bethesda released a remastered edition of Doom and Doom II on Steam, with lots of extra episodes and improvements. One of these new features is a built-in browser for mods, and support for many existing mods that previously required a different version of the game. Basically, lots of good fan-made mods are now playable on the Steam version of ye olde Doom. That's neat! Ah, but there is some demon excrement on the health pack, so to speak. The mod browser lacks moderation and lets people upload the work of others with their own name pinned as the author. That's prompted one level designer to call it "a massive breach of trust and violation of norms the Doom community has done its best to hold to for those 30 years."
]]>Back in June, strategy bods Creative Assembly put out a chunky, chatty video discussing the next expansion for Total War: Warhammer 3. Aside from a not-so-subtle hint that the orcs, ogres, and Khorne pack would feature at least one colossal squig, it also ended with a tease at smaller bits of new content coming alongside regular patches. As of the game’s latest hotfix blog, we’ve now got a better idea when we’ll start seeing some of these “smaller bits and pieces.” Bits and pieces? In this economy? Yes, and this month in fact. “Late August” to be precise by quoting a vague statement precisely.
]]>Every so often, the fine folk of Resetera take a break from their usual schedule of complaining that video games journalists get all their news from Resetera, and post a Thing Of Beauty. For example: it's thanks to Resetera member AstralSphere that I know about Alistair Aitcheson's Magic Box and BizHawk retro emulation tools, which - amongst other things - allow you to play old Sonic the Hedgehog games in giddy parallel, shuffling between them whenever you collect a ring.
]]>As reported by Gematsu yesterday, SEGA have filed a trademark in Japan for the term “Yakuza Wars”. This happened on July 26th, and while Gematsu speculate this might be related to the next game in the Yakuza: Like A Dragon series, I have other plans. For the imaginary game. That I have nothing to do with.
]]>If there’s one series that can be relied upon to dole out 80-hour helpings of joy straight into my eager face at regularly scheduled intervals, it’s the RPG brawler stylings of Yakuza/Like A Dragon. One could, I believe, make a convincing argument for Yakuza 0 being - if not the best videogame ever made - then at least the most videogame. While this coming October’s Amazon series won’t be the first live action adaption of Yakuza, I am hopeful its episodic format will give its characters a bit more room to breathe. Or, according to Kiryu actor Ryoma Takeuchi in an interview with IGN, to find the love they’ve always longed for.
]]>Creative Assembly and Sega have slapped a release date on Total War: Pharaoh’s free Dynasties expansion, which outfits the historical strategy colossus with new Aegean and Mesopotamian regions and maps, new factions such as Troy and Babylon, and a glittering, bellowing host of new or reworked units, new mechanics, and new quality-of-life updates. That release date is 25th July 2024. Come stamp your feet and brandish your shields vigorously at the overview trailer below.
]]>You can't purchase Outrun 2006: Coast 2 Coast digitally on PC anymore, because the Ferrari license expired and it was removed from sale back in 2010. We live in a cruel universe. The excellent, stylish racing game is still playable if you do own a copy, however, and it just received a fan update that'll make it run better on modern machines.
]]>The Total War: Warhammer series is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. Luckily, coming up with completely original quotes is not my only skill. I’ve also become very adept at pouring hundreds of hours into this series of strategy games. The aim of this guide is to save you some time, and give some tips on what they’re all about.
For my money, they’re the best Total War games available, but they’re also very dense and a bit complicated to get started with. I’m hoping this will stand as a comprehensive one-stop beginner’s guide for anyone looking to jump into the series for the first time, without getting too bogged down with the details. Included is an exhaustive list of which DLC to buy depending on what faction you like the look of the most, since navigating the expansions can sometimes feel more complicated than the game itself. Onward!
]]>Can you believe we didn't have a best JRPG list until now? Baffling. To be fair we did once tackle this topic with a preliminary blast of recommendations for those completely new to the genre. We also have a few familiar fantasys in our list of the 50 best RPGs on PC. But until now we haven't addressed the genre in its own right. In an act of contrition, we offer you this: our list of the best JRPGs you can play on PC this year, according to our own tastes.
]]>We've all seen it. The little spinning symbol cautioning players against impatient acts of powering down. "Don't turn off your system when this symbol is displayed," goes the message seen often while booting up a game (or some other version of these words). The implication is clear. The saving process is delicate and if you interrupt this invisible ritual the data that's being written to some folder deep in your PC's innards will become corrupted, wrecked, banjaxed. You will lose all your progress, all your precious swords and accomplishments.
But is this true? How likely are you to really suffer a catastrophic loss of shotgun shells? To find out, I decided to spend a very annoying afternoon of turning my gaming rig off and on again during multiple games. Was this a good idea? I don't know. I'm a gamer, not an ideas man.
]]>Alpha Protocol disappeared from digital store shelves back in 2019 due to expiring music licenses. Back in March, some four years later, it returned via GOG. Now it's once again also available via Steam.
]]>The Total War Warhammer 3 team at Creative Assembly just put out a new video, shedding some light on what to expect for the strategy game’s next DLC and the game in general going forward. Upcoming expansions will focus heavily on the Immortal Empires megamap campaign, and there were lord and unit reveals for the Ogres, Greenskins, and Khorne factions that headline the next DLC - slated for the "back end of the year". Certain party poopers among you will be pleased to know that I cannot accurately refer to the 17 minute video below as a “tray-tray”.
]]>A corn dog is something I’ve never eaten, because they’re not really a thing in UK. I am morbidly curious about them, although I cannot ascertain their texture just by looking, which worries me. A Khorne dog, however, is a texturally simpler proposition. You can tell just by looking at today’s new legendary hero for strategy game Total War Warhammer 3 that he’d be quite difficult to chew, should you get to that point. Either way, the price is definitely easy to swallow - he’s completely free as part of today’s patch 5.1.0, which also brings substantial changes to multiplayer.
]]>A former developer at Total War studio Creative Assembly has written a lengthy personal account of his time at the studio, in which he details development troubles on strategy game Total War: Rome 2 and Total War: Attila, and alleges that these issues were exacerbated by an inflexible and counterproductive leadership structure and “chronic mismanagement,” sometimes resulting in what he calls a “toxic work environment.”
]]>Chaos and comedy. Death and rebirth. Luck and, uh, running out of luck. A good roguelike doesn't treat the player like other games do. Roguelikes won't guide you helpfully along a path, or let you cinematically snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. They're more likely to dangle you deep between the jaws of defeat and fumble the rope until you go sliding down defeat's hungry gullet. This is their beauty, and it's a part of why we keep coming back for another go. Next time everything will go right. Next time you'll find the right pair of poison-proof loafers, the perfect co-pilot for your spaceship, a stash of stronger, better ropes. Next time.
Here's our list of the 19 best roguelikes on PC you can play in 2024.
]]>The orcs and goblins of the Greenskins, the sizeable gourmands of the Ogre Kingdoms, and the angry Christmas ornaments of Khorne are the next three factions to get new units, lords, and campaigns as part of strategy game Total War: Warhammer 3’s next DLC. The news comes via official posts by developer Creative Assembly on both Reddit and X.
]]>Amazon will air a live-action TV series based on Sega's Yakuza games in October this year, says the streaming service. Like A Dragon: Yakuza will be a six-part series following characters in the criminal underbelly of Kamurocho, set to straddle between two time periods: 1995 and 2005. The series "showcases modern Japan and the dramatic stories of these intense characters, such as the legendary Kazuma Kiryu, that games in the past have not been able to explore,” said Amazon, who are releasing it through Prime Video, just like their Fallout series.
]]>Skulls! You’ve got one. I’ve got one. Everybody has a lovely skull keeping their lovely face right where it should be. Warhammer is big, so it needs must have multiple of them, hence their yearly event Skulls, which collates a bunch of Games Workshop related announcements into a sort of bizzaro world Nintendo Direct if Yoshi was actually a parasitic corpse emperor. There’s usually at least a few game announcements in there, and this year was a bumper. The headline announcement being an upcoming sequel to well-loved space-pope turn-based strategy Warhammer 40,000: Mechanicus. Yes, yes. I’m getting to the dog.
]]>Creative Assembly, the studio best known for their strategy Total War series, are rumoured to be working on a licensed Star Wars title. ‘Rumoured’ is the key word here, mind. Dualshockers credit “a reliable source” with the information that “three new Total War games are currently in development,” and that “one of the three new projects is expected to be a Star Wars-themed Total War game.” There’s currently no further information beyond that, I’m afraid, although I’ve reached out to Creative Assembly for comment.
]]>Thrones of Decay - the expansion for strategy game Total War: Warhammer 3 that finally made it viable to steamroll the old world with a doomstack of 20 tanks, just as Franz intended - just released around three weeks ago, but developers Creative Assembly are already on their third hotfix. This one is mainly aimed at re-balancing an overly demanding new grudge system for the Dwarfs that punished players for stopping to enjoy a swift pint of Bugman’s instead of constantly being on the offensive, but also includes so many other fixes it’s veering into larger patch territory.
]]>Well, swaggle me horns and fasten me timbers so they stop shivering like that, because the noise is quite irritating. Welcome back to another edition of Plundertales - my quest to conquer strategy game Total War: Warhammer 3 without ever stepping foot on dry land. If you don’t know the other rules by now, I can only assume you’ve been living under an extremely specific type of rock that changes nothing about your life except preventing you from reading the previous two editions of this column. Who would carve such a rock? How would it even work? These are lubber-tier queries and shall remain unanswered, because it’s plundering time. Avast!
]]>For someone who’s spent an embarrassing amount of my life staring at virtual maps, I am a downright directionless dunce when it comes to geography. Not ‘the country of Africa’ bad, but certainly not good enough that you’d want me on your pub quiz team. Also, I still do the Shredded Wheat rhyme internally when I have to follow directions. However, I do enjoy making maps turn a different colour in strategy games, Total War chiefly among them. Well, one such map is expanding before my confused idiot eyes, that being Total War: Pharaoh’s. It’s getting a new, distinctly Mesopotamia and Aegea-shaped bit. I believe that’s just south of Eastopotamia and Wegea.
]]>Yesterday, coinciding with the release of the Thrones of Decay DLC, Total War: Warhammer 3 jumped 90 places in the Steam charts, trailed closely by the three lord packs that make up the strategy game's latest expansion. Those lord packs are now the three top rated expansions in the series’ history, and the base game itself saw a huge uptick in positive reviews. The last day also saw a peak player count of around 66,000, putting it ahead of giants like Palworld, Rimworld, and Fallout 76. None of this would be especially notable, however, if this wasn’t a complete turnaround from how things have been for the best part of a year now.
]]>Well, this was unexpected. Malakai Makaisson is the single best campaign experience I’ve had since strategy game Total War: Warhammer 3 launched, and might just be up there with some of the best in the series’ history. That’s over ninety lords he’s given both barrels to getting here and, honestly, I wasn't sure Creative Assembly still had it in them. Not the talent, mind, just the passion. And nothing says passion like the amber mohawk of a furious dwarf quivering in the wake of a shakily-built zeppelin's explosive payload. Warhammer!
]]>I can feel some kind of sore throat bug coming on. It must be the baleful influence of Creative Assembly's latest free update for bellowing strategy bonanza Total War: Warhammer 3. Out 30th April, the update introduces Epidemius, Proctor of Pestilence - a new Nurgle Legendary Lord who gains rewards based on how many ickle diseases you’ve spread to other factions (already my favourite aspect of playing Nurgle in the game). Does Epidemius also get buffs if the player is infected by something? I hope so. It would be a consolation to know that my ailing trachea is contributing to the Nurgle cause.
That’s not the only new addition in TWW3 patch 5. They’re also bringing a Gold Wizard hero, who is sort of Magneto but blingier, and a cursed crown that will make everybody hate you. Let’s dig in.
]]>I've been watching this year's ostensible "major" news developments - the launch of a Fallout TV show, the impending release of Shadow Of The Erdtree, to pick a couple - with a sense of zealous disapproval and weary resignation as to the hubris of human beings. Do these brazen publishers and developers not know that this, the year 2024, is the Year of Shadow the Hedgehog?
Sega said as much only a few days ago. They've announced a series of fan celebrations for Sonic Adventure 2's Ultimate Lifeform, beginning in the traditional style with a Shadow-themed MotoGP bike and an associated LEGO tie-in. And now, the earth quakes underfoot as we learn via The Hollywood Reporter that Keanu Reeves, forgotten star of 90s romantic drama A Walk in the Clouds and also those recent John Wick films, will play Shadow in the forthcoming movie adaptation Sonic 3.
]]>Avast, me hearty bowls of soup! Welcome back to Plundertales, a chronicling of my journey to best strategy game Total War: Warhammer 3 as vampire pirate Count Noctilus without ever touching grass. When we last saw Noctilus, he’d just received a challenge from his ancient rival Gentlemen Jenkins, crudely scrawled on the rear of a carrier pigeon (I had to google ‘do birds have buttocks?’ to write that.) I say ancient rival, it’s been about 15 turns, but Horace said the column needed more drama and that Noctilus’ ongoing battle with the weevils to reclaim his biscuit tin ‘wasn’t testing well’ with the Treehouse’ preview audience. Avast, Jenkins! (I really should find out what avast actually means.)
]]>Sega and Creative Assembly have released the first proper trailer for Total War: Warhammer 3's forthcoming Thrones of Decay expansion, which pits the human Empire, Chaos Nurgle faction and industrious Dwarfs against each other in what the press release terms "a showdown of mohawks, maggots and machines". Alliteration, is it? Well, two can play at that (strategy) game: the new expansion explodes upon the extensive environments of this elaborate ex-tabletop experience with an eccentric... ensemble of new legendary lords, battle units and campaign features, plus various free bits for owners of the base game.
9-3 to me, Creative Assembly! Find the Thrones of Decay trailer below - sorry, I just need a few minutes to massage my temples.
]]>Relic Entertainment, the freshly-independent developers of Company of Heroes, Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War and Age of Empires IV, have confirmed a number of job losses. The layoffs come just a week after the studio announced their sale from former owners Sega, returning them to independence after two decades.
]]>In the dingy portside taverns that pop up, seemingly unbidden, like roiling blisters along the coastal towns of the Old World, the name Count Noctilus is spoken only in hushed whispers by those blasted enough on grog to forget themselves. They are sure to be swiftly rebuked by their fellows for playing dice with fate, those still of sound mind rightly afeared that the name may echo through the brine and tickle the ears of the dread captain himself. On the seas he calls kingdom, Noctilus is without equal, without mercy, and utterly without hesitation. For what has a dead man left to fear?
He has but one fatal flaw; he is deathly afraid of ever leaving his comfortable ship to touch ‘pon the verdant grass of land. I intend to honour this. Do you hear me, lubbers? I will show my strategy game mastery by conquering Total War: Warhammer 3’s world, and I will never touch grass.
]]>Thrones of Decay, the upcoming expansion for strategy game Total War: Warhammer 3, will now be available to purchase as either three separate faction packs, or as a bundle at a discount. So, if you don’t fancy shelling out the full £19.10 for all three factions, you can grab new bits for either Nurgle, the Empire, or the Dwarfs for £7.49. If you do buy just one to start off with - say, to get a feel for the quality of Thrones of Decay as a package - you’ll get a 15% discount on the remaining two packs in the future.
]]>You wouldn't believe how long I've been bumping Command & Conquer Generals down the list because "but it's abandonware and a pain in the hole to run" makes for a more frustrating read than "and it's available here".
Ever the afterthought, Generals has shimmered between abandonware and temporarily available in some obscure place with no fanfare (I think? I honestly lost track) for years, but it's now available in a bundle on Steam as part of whatever needlessly awkward thing EA are doing this month. There's suddenly an opportunity to get into why its design and atmosphere make it probably my favourite of the whole collection, and why I wish I could say that without adding that it indulges in a lot of boring early-00s racism.
]]>Sonic Dream Team developer Hardlight and Total War studio Creative Assembly have been hit with a round of layoffs by publisher SEGA Europe, affecting around 240 roles across Creative Assembly, SEGA Europe, and Hardlight, via IGN.
Staff were notified by an email sent around this morning from SEGA Europe’s managing director Jurgen Post, alongside the news that Relic Entertainment, makers of Company of Heroes and Dawn of War, would be sold. As IGN point out, SEGA Europe studios Sports Interactive and Two Point Studios, makers of Football Manager and Two Point Hospital respectively, were not mentioned in the email.
]]>It's deeply frustrating and disappointing when games get pulled from store shelves due to licenses expiring, and too few ever return. So it's great news that almost four years after Sega stopped selling Obsidian's fascinating spy thriller RPG Alpha Protocol on Steam due to music rights expiring, it has returned to sale on GOG. I'm always surprised that Alpha Protocol hasn't reached serious cult classic status because, as much as parts are distinctly wonky, the globetrotting sneak-o-shooter fizzes with ideas for intense dialogue, branching plot, and reputation systems with consequences. You do feel like a spy going up against the world, backed up only by shifty allies and a ridiculous pair of giant sunglasses.
]]>If you wanted to buy any of the games in the Command & Conquer Ultimate Collection, Dungeon Keeper, or Sim City 3000 - but didn't want to do it on GOG where they were already on sale - then rejoice! EA has made these classics and more, and for some reason The Saboteur, available on Steam for the first time. You can see the full list of games here. I don't have anything specific against The Saboteur, but I do think it's very funny that the list goes, like, "beloved game from the 90s, beloved game from the 90s, 7/10 action game from 2009, beloved game from the 90s". Also, I can take the opportunity to make fun of Graham and James, the tallest wrongest boys at RPS, who apparently both liked it.
]]>It turns out that Persona 3 Reload will get previously missing expansion The Answer after all, as Atlus announce that the epilogue chapter included in past re-release Persona 3 FES will be added as DLC this September.
]]>Your most commonly visible bones are your teeth, so what better way to worship at the fleshy altar of Doom than by polishing those bones with an electric toothbrush whose little LCD screen is running Id Software's seminal satanic shooter? The latest delightfully weird device rising to the eternal question "Can it run Doom?" is a WiFi-enabled 'smart toothbrush', which is juuust powerful enough to run a version of Doom. You can even control it with your mouse. Here, check this out.
]]>“Ever since the very first Yakuza on PS2, the Like A Dragon series has always tried to capture the cultural zeitgeist of Japan, reflecting and satirising whatever’s trending around when the game comes out. This means that the way people speak in Like A Dragon is constantly evolving to match the times,” says Dan Sunstrum, senior translator at Ryu Ga Gotoku’s localisation team. Keeping things current is, says Sunstrum, “a challenge in some ways but also means we’re justified in using modern English slang to match, whereas such modernisms might feel out of place in a game set in a completely fictional world.”
Sunstrum uses an example from the studio’s latest, RPS Bestest Best winning RPG Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth, where permed protagonist Ichiban Kasuga meets a dating app designer. “The app’s creator goes on a mini-rant about ungrateful, entitled users, complaining how when anything goes wrong they’re quick to demand wabi-ishi,” slang for free premium currency. “This would have been a tricky word to localise, but it was made easy by the fact that fans of gacha games had already done it for us: they refer to them as ‘apologems’, and that’s what we ended up using in the game.”
]]>When dramatic parents panicked over the satanic influence of Doom in the 90s, maybe they had a point. Doom has burned through people's souls and minds, filling them with a desire to play Id Software's seminal shooter on every device they can. The question "Can it run Doom?" has driven these demonic vassals to make it playable on everything from tractors to teletext. These hellbound hearts are even daring to corrupt the totemic device of American liberty: the lawnmower. Come April, you will be able to play Doom on the Husqvarna Nera line of robotic automowers. Is nothing sacred?
]]>Shin Megami Tensei 5 is getting the Persona 5 Royal treatment, with an all-new Shin Megami Tensei 5: Vengeance edition that's out in June. It features a new story path, an improved battle system, new areas, and more, as you'd expect from Atlus' history of definitive editions. What's more, while SMT 5 was a Switch exclusive when it came out in 2021, the new Vengeance edition will be heading to PC and other consoles, too. Do I have time for another enormous JRPG? Probably not, but I'll admit that it's got me very interested indeed.
]]>Sega’s upcoming reboot of ‘90s arcade classic Crazy Taxi will be a “triple-A” game, according to the head of one of the Japanese studios working on the driving game’s return.
]]>Johnsto's Law states: if a game has a level editor, someone will recreate de_dust2. The iconic Counter-Strike map is, I have argued, "one of the fundamental shapes of video games". Recreating levels from other games is a mapping tradition as old as creating your house (not to be confused with MyHouse). I am delighted to see this done en masse, with a twist. A new player-made map pack for Quake offers 30 new singleplayer levels based on multiplayer levels from other games including Unreal Tournament, Valorant, Perfect Dark, and Mario Kart 64. Yes, of course it has a de_dust2.
]]>Persona developers Atlus have promised there are no plans to follow up Persona 3 remake Reload with an expanded re-release like Persona 5 Royal, giving us all a welcome break from the tyranny of the letter R.
]]>Here at the Electronic Wireless Show podcast we like indie games (inasmuch as "indie" can ever really be a helpful term; as the "good" doctor Peterson would no doubt say, what do words even mean? It's bloody complicated!) and thus are using the news that Day Of The Devs is a non-profit (what does non-profit even mean? What does profit mean? It's bloody complicated!) as a flimsy excuse to talk about indie games. Plus: Steam Next Fest kicks off next week, and there were indie game demos a-plenty, so we talk about some favourites of those, too. Plus: we've been playing JRPGs! And I was wrong, it's episode 4. Please ignore every time I say it's episode 5. I told you my notes aren't to be trusted.
]]>PlayStation's January State Of Play stream was chock full of big game announcements, including deep dives on Death Stranding 2, two Silent Hill games, Rise Of The Ronin and loads more stuff that will almost certainly be heading to PC at some point down the line. Because let's face it. Everything PlayStation comes to PC eventually. We just have a wait a couple of years for it. Just look at former exclusive Horizon Forbidden West, which is hitting PC on March 21st. That wasn't in tonight's showcase, of course, so let's take a look at everything that was. Start those PC countdown timers now, folks, because it's only a matter of time.
]]>Sonic Generations, which mixed the series’ old-school 2D and modern 3D platforming into a single game, is returning in a remaster later this year - and Sonic’s edgy cousin Shadow the Hedgehog is along for the ride.
]]>On the 23rd of May, I strode out of the exam hall with my head held high. Not only had we cleared out the 42nd floor of the cursed extra-dimensional horror house that was our school’s midnight alter-ego, I’d also just aced my midterms. I spent the afternoon helping my french foreign exchange friend sew a kimono for his estranged uncle, then killed some time before bed by consoling the small child I’d been hanging out with lately about her parent’s divorce.
So goes an average day in one of the very, very many days stuffed into Persona 3 Reload’s year long taste of demon-slaying high school life. A charming fantasy? Perhaps! There's plenty here for fans who don’t mind an old-school approach to grinding while exploring heartfelt, albeit cheesy, friendships. Those who don't get on with anime tropes, though, might find it exhaustingly written and repetitive.
]]>Is there any greater scientific endeavour than the unending quest to get Doom to run on everything? From teletext to pregnancy tests to tractors to literal rat brains in a jar, every time you think that we’ve exhausted the possibilities, someone finds a new way to play the seminal 30-year-old shooter on something new.
]]>Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth isn’t exactly spawned from the most hardware-bothering of game series. Most previous LADs, be they Kiryu’s Adventures in Punching or the more turn-based reboot have all been technically gentle affairs, and Infinite Wealth is ultimately another one. At the same time, it shares with Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name a newfound interest in PC-specific tricks. That means a full selection of DLSS, FSR and XeSS upscalers, plus DLSS 3 frame generation. Real yakuza might use a gamepad, but it seems real fuzz-haired RPG fantasists use graphics cards.
Let’s take a closer look, then, at how RGG’s latest crime caper performs on PC. We’ll also work out its best settings, to keep it running smoother than a legally distinct Segway.
]]>Before Doom became the lean, mean murdermachine we know and love, Id Software had far bigger plans for their seminal satanic FPS. Ideas dropped during development include a big focus on story, four playable characters, elemental shields, demonic weapons, and more. The mod Doom Delta brings to life many such ideas from sources including an old design document and leaked alpha builds, which I think makes it fanfic? A new version of Doom Delta launched last week, offering a curious vision of the many Dooms Id didn't make.
]]>Yakuza: Like A Dragon was a brilliant foray into turn-based chaos, but some of its RPG elements didn't quite lead anywhere. Well, in swaggers the frankly ginormous Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth to tie off the loose ends and give us a follow-up that links all the best bits of Yakuza into a far more satisfying reward loop. Some of the refinements make for superb silliness, while others are a bit eh - not everything is perfect. But spending time with Ichiban and his pals in the sun-soaked Hawaii and beyond is the real treat. It's a wonderful, happy JRPG and it will never fail to brighten my day. Thank goodness for Yakuza.
]]>For such a ma-bloody-hoosive RPG, it turns out Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth can fit rather snugly in the diminutive Steam Deck. Developers RGG Studio revealed, a full two weeks before launch, that Valve had awarded it coveted Verified status – a mark of honour for games that run, control, and generally operate well on the handheld.
What that golden sticker doesn’t explain is that to keep above a suitable 30fps, Infinite Wealth does demand that you swing the stolen bicycle of quality reductions directly into the soft skull of its graphical settings. It’s perfectly doable, mind, so if LADding around Hawaii sounds like as much fun to you as Ed’s review makes it seem, read on to find out how Infinite Wealth gets on with the Steam Deck and Steam Deck OLED.
]]>Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth releases this coming week and takes the series' best boy protagonists to the new shores of Hawaii. It's one of our most anticipated games of 2024. There's a slight snag though: New Game+ mode, a staple of both the genre and the series, is this time locked away within the more expensive Deluxe and Ultimate Editions.
]]>What's the most 90s way you can market your retro-styled prequel to a 90s mech shooter? Other than an Acclaim-style stunt where you offer people £500 to tattoo their baby's face with the game logo, I'd say perhaps releasing a Quake mod. So here's Episode Enyo, a prequel to upcoming "biopunk" hack 'n' slasher Slave Zero X, now available as a Bethesda-approved free add-on inside Quake.
]]>Back in December, Creative Assembly posted a lengthy apology to players for their recent handling of the Total War strategy series, in particular Total War: Warhammer 3 and Total War: Pharoah. Seeking to smooth down feathers ruffled by overpricing and buggy launches, to pick out two of the biggest fan complaints, the developers offered to - amongst other things - make Pharoah’s first paid DLC pack a free update.
That free update is now upon us, miladies and milords. Available January 25th, it's called High Tides, and introduces two new playable factions with their own units and gods and some additional campaign mechanics. Here’s a trailer.
]]>Having spent what feels like an entire lifetime in JRPG Persona 5 Royal, going back to the original Persona 3 is pretty jarring. It's unsurprising given it came out 18 years ago, but exploration is more akin to a slideshow and dungeon-running to a well-rehearsed routine.
But with an hour of Persona 3 Reload under my belt, P3's remake felt immediately familiar. It's absolutely built for a seamless transition for P5-likers and takes away some of P5 Royal's learnings, too. Unless something disastrous happens when Reload fully releases, I can't ever see myself returning to the original.
]]>Persona is one of the most stylish video game series around, which means it's a pleasure just to watch the games in action whether in one of its lushly animated cutscenes or during its in-game combat and dialogue. Persona 3 was no exception and its imminent remake Persona 3 Reload seems only to be pushing it into the modern era.
As proof, Atlus have released the opening movie for Reload - that is, the two-minute intro sequence that'll play at the start of the game.
]]>Happy New Year, folks! Have you recovered from the all the 100+ hour RPGs that came out last year? Well, I have good news and bad news for you. The good news is that everyone seems to be taking a bit of a breather in 2024, because (at time of writing at least) the official "big'uns" calendar is looking remarkably slim at the moment. There are still some heavy-hitters coming our way this year, such as Avowed, Star Wars Outlaws and Path Of Exile 2, but 2024 looks like another year where it will be the smaller, independent games that shine the brightest. They certainly make up the bulk of our most anticipated games list for 2024, which the RPS Treehouse has been feverishly putting together over the last few days. The bad news is that there are still loads of great games coming out. So come, join us, and see what's on our personal wishlists for 2024.
]]>Having spent some time in Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth's Hawaii, I've come to realise that it's a wonderful place, home to trams that'll let you see the sights and soak in the warm breeze. But moreso than that, it's home to the previous game's Pokémon parody, Sujimon, which has now kicked into overdrive. From what I can tell, Infinite Wealth is as much a Pokémon trainers paradise as it is a game about the Japanese criminal underworld. I'm sold.
]]>We got our first look at Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth's Dondoko Island at last year's Xbox Partner showcase. Right as it dropped, I was in New York giving the Animal Crossing-esque minigame a go myself, albeit for a quickfire half hour of bashing rubbish bags with a baseball bat and plonking a urinal on the dirt to satisfy a tutorial. Still, in that brief time I've come away thinking I could lose much of my life to the promise of converting a polluted island into an idyll with the power of abs and friendship. There is the strong possibility of a grind. But hey, it's optional!
]]>Cor, there's been a lot of games this year, haven't there? While I've only slapped one Bestest Best badge down in 2023 (woe is me), our lovely freelancers, current RPSers, and former RPSers have done a whole lot more badge-slapping. A grand total of 26 Bestest Bests have graced our monitors this year, which makes it three more than last year's Bestest Best round-up. And I'd say it's a nice mixture of big budget open worlders, puzzle gems, and indie delights that make up our roster for 2023, too.
So yeah, I'd encourage you to have a flick through the list below and see if there's anything you can add to the wishlist. Even as the person with "Reviews" in their job title, I can confirm I literally have loads of these Bestest Bests in my backlog. I will endeavour to play a handful over this Christmas break on my Steam Deck, maybe combining the experience with a nibble on a mince pie. Anyway, enjoy! And Merry Reviewsmas!
]]>The reboot of noughties gem Jet Set Radio teased with ruthless efficiency during The Game Awards has had a smidge of new information revealed. For being such a small detail, though, it’s a very intriguing - if perhaps a tad predictable - one indeed.
]]>To celebrate Doom's 30th birthday we had a discussion about the (understandably) vaunted FPS's influence, and what games would look like without it. It seems particularly interesting today in light of the recent resurgence of Doom-style shooters, often known as "boomer shooters" because of their deliberately retro style and singular focus on shootin' stuff and bein' cool, much like Doom. And then the obvious solution was to just ask the devs making these games about what they think of Doom and its impact on their work.
I reached out to developers who've worked on Turbo Overkill, Prodeus, Forgive Me Father (and Forgive Me Father 2) and almost the whole stable working at New Blood Interactive to ask them some annoyingly specific questions about Doom in the hope of getting the sort of idiosyncratic answers you get from interesting devs - and they delivered! In fact, they delivered in such quantity and quality that I've elected to just present their answers to you, rather than try to weave them together as if we were all sitting together at dinner exchanging bon mots, both for clarity and to include as much as possible in their own words. It's a fascinating and entertaining collection of thoughts.
]]>There are as many Doom mods as there are stars in the sky: jillions of accursed celestial bodies orbiting the supermassive black hole that is id Software, each infested with its own local flavours of cacodemons and keycards and shotguns. I've played just a handful - certainly, far from enough to pronounce myself any kind of expert - but I do feel like I've played one of the best in the shape of Siren, a Doom II total conversion from Dithered Output, the first episode of which can be downloaded free from Itch.io.
The mod's overall vibe is encapsulated, I think, by the sentient vending machine you meet a short way in, just round the corner from a rec room that contains a disembodied head on tentacles, and down the corridor from a tiered canteen full of ghouls and unsympathetic men with shotguns. You ask the machine if it has any clue what's going on. It tells you that its job is to keep its mouth shut and dispense soda. Can I have a soda, then? "No."
]]>I haven’t been keeping up with player reaction to the latest Twar and Twarhammer games, but it seems players are none too pleased with Creative Assembly right now. In a rather dramatic open letter, the company's vice president Roger Collum has acknowledged that Total War: Warhammer 3’s Shadows of Change add-on and the recent historical strategy outing Total War: Pharaoh did not ship in a desirable state, with complaints ranging from wobbly execution to overpricing. The studio will try to make things right by offering partial refunds to Pharaoh owners and giving away DLC on top of the usual updates.
]]>The first mod I ever downloaded was for Skyrim. It replaced NPCs with Shrek. The second was a texture pack for Dark Souls: Remastered. I believe that these two examples form a representative sample of what mods are: quality of life improvements, and Shrek. Doom’s modding community, known by its file package WAD, is the Ur modding community. Thanks to John Carmack’s lightning-fast engine, creating levels and content for Doom has been accessible for 30 years. WAD devs have gone on to become fully-fledged game designers, and some WADs have been released commercially. The breadth and depth of this community formed the bedrock of game developers. And yet even with this pedigree, MyHouse.WAD is a miracle.
]]>Video game openings have always been a source of fascination for me. As a player, you're excited by the prospect of the game to come - the sights you'll see, the challenges you'll face - and first impressions can make or break your entire perception of what a game is versus the one you had stored in your head before switching it on. For video game creators, however, a new beginning is often racked with questions. What, exactly, do you choose to show players first? How will you introduce them to something they've never seen before? And if that game is successful, how do you keep reinventing that first impression across what could be several decades?
In revisiting every mainline Doom game to celebrate its 30th anniversary this month, it's clear that even id's iconic shooter has wrestled with how to answer these question, and the ways it's tried to reinvent itself over the years paints a captivating portrait of a series trying to move with the times. Nowhere is this more apparent than in its opening levels. Played in close succession, crushing 30 years into not even quite three hours, what emerges isn't just the evolution of one of the all-time great PC games, but also a potted history of the FPS. So join me as we chart Doom's rise, fall and rebirth through the lens of its first stages.
]]>Confession time, readers. Before a couple of weeks ago, I had never played the original Doom. As a child, my family didn't have much money and I didn't get my first laptop until I was 16. Thus, I missed out on a lot of what are now considered PC staples. With dread, I'm often met with the accursed exclamation, "You've not played insert game before?" followed by a good dose of judgment. But what do you do when you need to play through a backlog of games all while keeping up-to-date with new releases for work? With games now stretching out at 100+ hours apiece, where is the time for old classics like Doom?
For me, approaching Doom was cathartic. Playing a game that's older than myself was certainly an experience, but I was shocked at how well it holds up.
]]>Last time, you decided that ricochet attacks are better than blue shadows on dodges and dashes. I expected this outcome but am still glad to see a good quarter of you favoured cool essence over cool effort. We continue. This week, in honour of Doom's 30th birthday (we've already written about John Romero's memories, motion sickness, and inviting monsters to a birthday party, with more to come), I ask perhaps an impossible question. How could anyone ask you to pick between two iconic tools of ultraviolence. What kind of monster would. Yet we must. What's better: Doom's shotgun or Doom 2's super shotgun?
]]>The party poppers are out, the finger food is ready and waiting to be served, and the guest list for Doom's 30th birthday party is well and truly set. Well, it would be if Doomguy ever lowered the drawbridge to his flying space castle high above the Earth's orbit. I did try and get a radio signal out earlier, but the grumpy sod never responded. Probably too busy organising his trophy case in his man cave, to be honest. But let's face it. Doomguy wouldn't be much fun at a birthday party anyway. He'd be too busy ripping and tearing into his presents to give anyone the time of day, let alone a polite thank you, and then he'd be working on ripping and tearing apart said presents in a display of strength and machismo.
So Doom's hellspawn have got together to throw their own party for the occasion, and let me tell you, they're having a riotous good time all by themselves. Well, most of them are, anyway, as there are some demons here that wouldn't know how to have fun even if was seared across their skulls with the beam of a BFG9000. Here's every classic Doom enemy ranked on a scale of the most miserable wallflowers to the life and (undead) soul of the party.
]]>Doom turns 30 this year, and that's a cause for celebration. There are many reasons to commemorate id Software's 1993 jaunt through the demon-infested corridors of Mars, from the fact that you can play it on every device known to man to its undying modding scene that even lets you pet Cacodemons. But I have a personal connection with Doom that's a bit special. It's the first game that made me so sick I wanted to puke.
]]>“When people read anything, no matter the source, they will believe it.” So says Doom designer John Romero on the subject of his relationship with John Carmack. Together, the pair built id Software and the FPS genre as we know it - before the cracks started to show during the difficult development of Quake, ending their professional partnership.
Yet any lasting acrimony has now dissipated. That became apparent when Romero’s new autobiography, ‘Doom Guy: Life In First Person’, showed up on shelves with a glowing back cover quote from Carmack. The latter praised Romero’s “remarkable memory”, and waxed wistfully about their shared impact on the gaming medium. “For years, I thought that I had been born too late and missed out on participating in the heroic eras of computing,” Carmack wrote. “Only much later did I realise that Romero and I were at the nexus of a new era - the 3D game hackers.”
]]>I don't want to encourage more publishers to create irrelevant, self-indulgent trailers for Geoff Keighley's Advertganza, but I'll cut Sega a break for their one. Sure, the first 52 seconds are some live-action skit, but the following 41 seconds announce no less than five games. Sega are returning to their glory days once again, with new games coming based on Jet Set Radio, Crazy Taxi, Streets Of Rage, Golden Axe, Shinobi, "and more." You can get a few tiny glimpses at those in the trailer below.
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