Praise the Sun! FromSoftware have announced that Dark Souls Remastered’s long dormant PvP servers have been reactivated at last. The fantasy action RPG’s multiplayer was scuppered earlier this year when a security vulnerability that could harm anyone playing online was discovered all the way back in January. PC servers for Remastered were taken offline until a fix could be found, along with every other Dark Souls game.
]]>As if Dark Souls wasn't dangerous enough already, Bandai Namco have temporarily taken every Dark Souls PC server offline following the discovery of a Dark Souls 3 security vulnerability that could harm anyone playing in online mode. A malevolent string of code threatens the many kingdoms of ash, so to speak.
]]>So, thought you’d take all your great Lordran chums out for a drink to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Dark Souls, did you? Bad times, pal. Sure, they’ll take care of any everlasting dragons you happen to have hanging around on your lawn, but when it comes to a night on the bevvies, they might well be the sorriest bunch of cheapskates since Final Fantasy VIII’s GFs. Consider this your one and only warning before these fantasy grifters clear you out for the month.
]]>All dogs go to heaven, we have heard it said. But what about videogame dogs? By the virtue of their non-existence you may suspect they are refused entry. However, after contemplating the issue for some time, our finest minds in the listicle archives have concluded that, yes, even videogame dogs go to heaven. What a relief. Here are the 10 goodest boys in PC games, all approved for divine ascendence.
]]>It's easy to overemphasise the importance of difficulty to Dark Souls, but I'd still argue it's integral. From Software's gruelling RPGs do loads else that's cool, but part of the appeal is bound up with the same satisfaction you get from climbing a mountain. You want that tension, and the blessed relief of finally beating a boss after chucking yourself betwixt its jaws for the 38th time. That's why I have mixed feelings about this mod for Dark Souls: Remastered that turns the first game into a roguelike with randomised weapons, enemies and levels, and only gives you five lives to reach the end.
I love it. It scares me. It's made by "Grimrukh", the same bloke that made the popular Daughters Of Ash mod.
]]>The human race evolved the facial expression known as the “smile” because we needed a way to silently communicate satisfaction to other members of our species. So we decided to bare our teeth at one another and squint. This stuck, and now even the characters of your favourite digital storyderby are doing it. It’s sort of disgusting, and yet… you know what, I like it. Here are the 11 best smiles in PC games.
]]>Dark Souls modders are forged in the flames of adversity. While mostly limited to technical improvements (such as Durante's fixes for the wonky original PC port) and small texture packs, the past few years have brought about a whole new genre of Souls mods for all three games. While limited in what can be added to the trilogy (though breakthroughs are being made on that front, too), it turns out that by creatively rearranging what's already there, you can get what feels almost like a new game. Today, we take a peek at a bundle of B-Side adventures across the entire series.
]]>It's been an eventful decade for PC games, and it would be hard for you to summarise everything that's happened in the medium across the past ten years. Hard for you, but a day's work for us. Below you'll find our picks for the 50 greatest games released on PC across the past decade.
]]>I was homeless when I discovered Minecraft -- not homeless in the street-sleeping sense, thankfully. Only in the sofa-surfing sense. I had a bed, even. The creaking cabin bed of two friends who took pity on me and let me crash for a few months in their house, while I sullied my fingertips with sambuca in a dank Yorkshire nightclub for part-time pound coins. My chin-scratching uni days had just ended, but I stubbornly refused to go back to my family house in Northern Ireland. I could do this, I reasoned, I just needed time.
Then my friend showed me how to punch a tree, and I found a new home.
]]>Sorry, definition nerds. 'Soulslike' is a word now. Disgusting, I know, but this is how genres are made. Along comes a giant like Dark Souls that everybody won't stop bleating about and soon it has copycats. Before you know it, a swarm of games like Dark Souls with sparse checkpoints and lethal attacks are scuttling around, leaving slime trails and biting your ankles for surprisingly massive damage. Ugh, Soulslikes. But stoop low to appreciate these little monsters, and among them you'll find some very good games about dying.
]]>The Japanese games industry is truly huge, and boasts some of the biggest and best titles under its' belt. PC gamers have been reaping the rewards of its renaissance. It took some time for Japanese developers and publishers to get on board, especially with consoles and smartphones remaining the dominant gaming platforms in their native country. Classic console franchises finally made their Steam debuts, with better-late-than-never ports coming with full-fat optimisation options to give you the definitive experience, there really has been never a pbetter time to be a Japanese-loving PC player.
]]>We've just passed the half-way point of 2018, so Ian Gatekeeper and all his fabulously wealthy chums over at Valve have revealed which hundred games have sold best on Steam over the past six months. It's a list dominated by pre-2018 names, to be frank, a great many of which you'll be expected, but there are a few surprises in there.
2018 releases Jurassic World Evolution, Far Cry 5 Kingdom Come: Deliverance and Warhammer: Vermintide II are wearing some spectacular money-hats, for example, while the relatively lesser-known likes of Raft, Eco and Deep Rock Galactic have made themselves heard above the din of triple-A marketing budgets.
]]>Pain and purgatory simulator Dark Souls: Remastered was released a couple of weeks ago, and within hours it was already the playground of a well-known hacker. Malcolm Reynolds, who is known to players from his exploits in other Dark Souls games, was invading players and throwing an accursed, hacked fireball at them, which inflicts diseases and a curse that makes the game even more difficult. He also has a history of getting people “softbanned”, which means their save file is flagged and they can only play with a small pool of other players (others who’ve been softbanned). I spoke to Malcolm Reynolds about why he does all this.
“I always say this to people that ask,” he tells me, “but every time they release a game I honestly wish they would have good anti-cheat.”
]]>A new-ish Twitter account is collecting the save rooms, bases, shops, quiet zones, and other "safe rooms" from games (well, safe-ish) - places which I'm always happy to visit while playing, and glad to see pop up in my Twitter feed. The Safe Room is almost a safe room itself, a pleasant moment on that punishment of a website. Who doesn't hear the calming Resident Evil 4 shop music when they see a screenshot, or remember Firelink Shrine as a homely hostel? Curated by Dillon Rogers, who's currently making Gloomwood, it's well worth a follow.
]]>Thank goodness you're here! If you weren't to read the Steam Charts today, you would DIE.
]]>Please sit down. Make sure you have a friend with you, or available on the telephone. Plunkbat isn't at number one. Somehow, it's something even more boring. But the rest of the charts are a splendid sight! No GTA, no CS:GO, no Witcher 3, no Skyrim!
]]>Crack open a nice cold soul, fans of permanently holding up a shield while you walk. Dark Souls: Remastered has been released on Steam today, a day earlier than we’d believed. The original Prepare to Die Edition was pulled from sale two weeks ago, so if you didn’t buy it then, this is now your only PC doorway to popular resort town Undead Burg. The Remastered edition is half-price for those who already own the old version. But the changes are minor, and there's a more unnerving problem. Players are under attack from a notorious hacker, a dark spirit who invades worlds and corrupts the save files of innocent undeads.
]]>The PC's original 'Prepare To Die' edition of Dark Souls will be removed from sale on STeam tomorrow, ahead of the launch of the mildly fancier Remastered edition, so buy now if you want it for posterity. Folks who own Prepare To Die will get a 50% discount on Remastered, but that'll still work out more expensive, so the reason to buy now would be to have the old version. Why might you want that if you've gone almost six years without it? Ah, well, y'know, I don't know the mysteries of your mind. Perhaps this is the final prod you need to check out some weird mod you saw. Or perhaps you collect delisted Steam games? People.
]]>Folks who have the original Dark Souls on Steam will be offered a 50% discount on the upcoming Dark Souls: Remastered, Bandai Namco confirmed today. The revisions and additions in the Remastered edition aren't huge but if you fancy returning to a fancier Lordran, that beats paying full price.
Remastered will be the only way to buy Dark Souls on PC, as Bamco also announced that they'll remove ye olde Prepare To Die Edition from sale on Steam in a few weeks.
]]>Welcome to the freshly relaunched RPS podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show! You might think this is episode 31, but actually it’s episode 1 again. We’re rebooting it, even though we just did that last year. We’ve started by making it more accessible. Instead of three of us chatting about videogames between snippets of jaunty music, there’s just a sad man saying “Sonic the Hedgehog” over and over. We’re confident you’ll like it.
]]>Whatever Dark Souls maestros From Software have planned for their next game proper is an only slightly-teased mystery, but here's some fine news to make our own souls ache less during that wait. Dark Souls, the original and greatest in the series (Bloodborne excepted) and also one of the best PC games ever, sez us, is getting a remastered edition.
Update: confirmed for PC on May 25 via Steam, with 60FPS 4K support. Hurrah!
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