The dark gods of survival horror smile on you this day, child. Resident Evil Village is out now, beckoning you into its township like a big church bell. But wait, before you go tip-toeing through the disturbing cabbage patches of these zombievamp wolfpeople, or whatever they are, please come this way. I have a map for you. An itinerary of other small settlements. Here are the 8 creepiest villages in PC games.
]]>Ultrawide gaming monitors can seem excessive compared to regular 16:9 gaming screens, especially when their demanding resolutions often require powerful and expensive graphics cards to make the most of them. Once you try one, though, there's no going back. I've been a big fan of ultrawide gaming monitors for years now, as their extra screen space not only makes them great for juggling multiple desktop windows, but supported PC games also look uttery fantastic on them - and to prove it, I've put together this list of the best ultrawide games on PC.
]]>I did not expect that I would ever Google something like "will Big Ben bong?" in service to an article for RPS, and yet here we are - and it turns out it will not. The big B day has arrived, not with a bong but a whimper. It's a sore subject for a lot of us (stuff disappearing off of Netflix; my partner is European and won't have to queue as long at airports), a genuinely frightening one for others (unknown economic impact; forced repatriation).
As in most times of stress, I turn to video games for both a distraction from and mirror to life. I don't even mean obviously Brexit-y things like Not Tonight or Spinnortality. There are many games notionally unrelated to today that nonetheless feel apposite to play. Here are a few that I thought of.
]]>Put the 9mm down, for crying out loud. Not every game is about shooting your enemies in the shin bones. Honestly. Give me that, here, take this trowel. Now, follow me, through this tranquil landscape of blooming daffodils and perfectly arranged stone paths covered in happy moss. Yes, that’s it, you want a turn around the garden. A bit of soil on your fingers. And there's more where this came from. Here you go, 8 peaceful gardens in which to calm your trigger-happy soul. Breathe it in, shooter. Breathe it in.
]]>BBC Radio 3 are getting stuck in to the world of video game music beginning today, with composer Jessica Curry (whose work you’ll hear in Dear Esther and Everybody’s Gone To The Rapture) beginning her new show Sound Of Gaming. It’s good listening, particularly if you, like me, can’t stand to have lyrics on while putting words to paper (or internet) lest it become a tangled mess.
]]>Congratulations, videogames. You're high culture now. Jessica Curry, the composer behind Dear Esther and Everybody's Gone To The Rapture, is bringing gaming to BBC Radio 3 with Sound Of Gaming, entering indie bops and orchestral jams into the station's very-quite-serious musical collection later this month.
]]>Another month, another big video game publisher puts a great big dollop of video game music online for zero pennies. This time, it's Bandai Namco, who have just uploaded every single Tekken soundtrack onto Spotify because, well, apparently everyone loves Tekken. I've never partaken in a Tekken, but with track names like "Massive Stunner" and "Lonesome City Jazz Party 1st", I'm already 100% convinced the music must be great.
However, given my rather lacking expertise in all things Tekken-related, I thought that instead of doing a big Tekken musical breakdown like I did for Capcom and all the Final Fantasy games, I'd take this opportunity to celebrate some of the other great gaming soundtracks you can currently listen to for free right now, because boy howdy are there loads of 'em. So bang on those headphones and turn up the volume, folks. It's head-banging time.
]]>What’s that on the horizon? It’s glowing, and it’s emanating a faint noise. Like three people talking about videogames on some sort of audio record. Hoist the sails, listeners, we’re going over there on a voyage of discovery. And if this turns out to be another damn Electronic Wireless Show about sport you are entirely at liberty to mutiny. Heave!
]]>The Chinese Room, the studio behind Everybody's Gone to the Rapture and Dear Esther as well as Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, have laid off their development team and are "going dark" for a bit while they figure out "what happens next". Financial and personal pressures were too much, see, so they're taking a break. When they come back, they say, it won't be to make walking sims. I don't know why they mention walk 'em ups after Pip and I settled once and for all that Dear Esther and Rapture are not walking simulators, but there you go.
]]>Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day, perhaps for all time.
I've a love/not-hate-but-something-gentler-in-the-general-ballpark-of-disappointment relationship with Everybody's Gone To The Rapture, The Chinese Room's follow-up to Dear Esther.
]]>Navigate the gallery by clicking on the left and right arrows or use the left and right cursor keys on your keyboard!
Real life is rubbish sometimes, and there’s nothing that video games can do about that. But I know that if I’ve had a particularly tough day at work, then sitting down at my PC and visiting a different world can often be exactly what I need to unwind.
]]>35MM is a less fantastical, more sedate STALKER. It is tempting to call it Everybody's Gone To The Rapture meets Russian post-apocalyptic fiction, but it is not a walking simulator: it has action and horror and much more besides. I beseech you to play it.
]]>I was hoping to finish Everybody's Gone to the Rapture [official site] on Friday so that I could share my thoughts with the bold members of the RPS Supporter Program. Friday night turned into Saturday morning and I was still playing, however, and I only managed to finish very late last night. In an extension of observations I shared with Supporters last night, here are some personal reflections on the game and how it provoked memories of childhood holidays and class-based anxieties.
]]>Everybody's Gone to the Rapture [official site] is The Chinese Room's newly-on-PC game about exploring an English village in the hopes of finding out where everyone's get to. I played it when it came out on PS4 a while back but I've just worked my way through the PC version and can now tell you Wot I Think:
]]>The Chinese Room's Bafta-winning game, Everybody's Gone to the Rapture [official site], is coming to Steam on 14 April. That's tomorrow, if you're reading this on the day of publication. So I guess at the moment it's Everybody Will Have Gone To The Rapture. Everybody's Going To Have Gone To The Rapture? Everybody's Fine Where They Are Right Now But Maybe Not So Much In The Near Future?
I played it on PS4 when it first came out – it's perhaps best described as an interactive radio play with a peculiarly British sci-fi bent and a beautiful soundtrack. I remember I wasn't mad keen on the interaction mechanisms but I'll definitely go through it again and offer up current opinions (and probably take a millionty thousand screenshots).
]]>The next game from the creators of Everybody's Gone to the Rapture, Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs and Dear Esther will be a systems-driven isometric adventure, inspired by tabletop RPGs and wargames. I spoke to The Chinese Room's studio director Dan Pinchbeck about the game, Total Dark, and he explained that he's wanted to make a game driven by RPG-style mechanics for a long time.
As well as providing us with some of the first details about Total Dark, he discussed the continuing influence of Esther, and the ways in which 'walking simulators' are returning to their first-person adventure roots.
]]>Everybody's Gone to the Rapture [official site], the latest from Dear Esther and Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs developers The Chinese Room, is finally heading to PC. I spoke to studio head Dan Pinchbeck earlier this week and he told me that the completed PC port has now been delivered to Sony, who will be acting as publishers. Sony's role means they'll be responsible for selecting a release date and marketing the game, as they did with Helldivers when it came to PC late last year.
But it's coming. The rapture is coming.
]]>It always seemed likely that The Chinese Room's The-Archers-Do-The-Apocalypse follow up to Dear Esther would get a PC release eventually, both given that it was originally planned to before Sony waved a bunch of cash at them and because PC is surely its most natural home. However, the extent of Sony's involvement created a great deal of doubt about whether they'd possibly de-exclusify it.
Earlier rumours that Everybody's Gone to the Rapture [official site] had showed up in the Steam database are now being compounded by more apparent evidence, though absolutely nothing is for certain until there's an official announcement. I really, really hope it's true, though.
]]>Warning: in this piece I'm primarily talking about Everybody's Gone To The Rapture, which isn't out on PC as yet, though I'll willingly devour at least one item of clothing if it doesn't walk this way eventually. Anyway, I talk about STALKER and Dear Esther too, so everything's OK.
Playing The Chinese Room's new game, Everybody's Gone To The Rapture, what strikes me almost immediately is not the mystery, the science fiction trappings or even the extreme prettiness. It's that I'm in England. A very particular England.
]]>Once a week most weeks, team RPS gathers, eyes itself warily across the table then debates. Sometimes it's about SCANDAL, like slow-motion Batman or No Man's Sky hype, other times it's about perennials, like best levels ever or if Early Access means the end times.
This week, we're discussing the pitfalls and merits of platform exclusives, in the wake of Everybody's Gone To The Rapture being PS4-only, despite its devs making their name with the PC-only Dear Esther. In recent months similar has happened with Tomb Raider, and of course there's a long history of this sort of thing, from your Marios to your Halos. Is this right? Is it sensible? And what about the other side of the coin, with XCOM 2 being PC-only? Not so grumbly then, are we? Let's see if we can figure this one out, eh?
]]>Hello, everyone. I come bearing some extremely depressing news. The rapture's happening soon, but not to us. Hm, well jeez, when I phrase it that way, it doesn't sound terrible at all. What I mean to say is, Dear Esther developer thechineseroom's next non-Amnesia game, the super fascinating Everybody's Gone To The Rapture, is no longer coming to PC - at all, for the foreseeable future. Sony's nabbed it for its burgeoning army of indie exclusives, so I guess that means it's not allowed to love us anymore. I reached out to thechineseroom's Dan Pinchbeck, and he confirmed the bad news.
]]>Dear Esther's brilliantly amorphous plot made me feel like I'd hit my head and - for the same reason that television's left me deathly afraid of light flicks on the forehead or especially hard rainfall - acquired horribly debilitating amnesia. That, however, is probably where the similarities between Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs and Dear Esther end, so thechineseroom's also giving its more experimental spirit room to breathe with Everybody's Gone To The Rapture. It is, of course, about the end of the world - as these things so often are. But this is far from typical videogame pre/post/postmodern apocalypse fare.
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