I gave up on the very last misssion of Marvel's Midnight Suns because I found the finale too gruelling, but all you clever eggs who finished it might be interested in today's update. Along with some fixes and quality of life updates that apply to the whole game, you can now tweak your New Game+ settings to customise what progress you bring into your next stab at Lilith. Want to not be friends with anyone anymore? Now you can!
]]>The widely admired studio behind XCOM and Civilization, Firaxis Games, have undergone a round of layoffs affecting around 30 employees, according to a report from Axios. Publisher 2K Games later confirmed the news and said the job cuts were due to a “sharpening of focus, enhancements of efficiencies, and an alignment of our talent against our highest priorities."
]]>Over the last week and a bit, we've been steadily releasing a bunch of stories from our big, hour-long chat with XCOM and Marvel's Midnight Suns director Jake Solomon that took place at this year's GDC. It was a wide-ranging interview, looking at what Solomon plans to do next now that he's left Firaxis, and how he feels about his 20+ year career there. You can read the condensed version of that interview here, but as a treat for RPS supporters, I thought you might like to read our chat in full. There's still a lot I couldn't quite squeeze into separate news stories here, and I think (and hope) you'll find it interesting to read as a whole. So here it is. All 8760-odd words of it. Enjoy.
]]>As you might expect from a roster of 12 Marvel superheroes (or 17, if you count the four extra DLC supes and its original, player-designed protagonist The Hunter), the lycra-clad buds of Marvel's Midnight Suns all look and feel substantially different from one another when it comes to combat. When Firaxis were designing the moveset for each hero, creative director Jake Solomon says he and fellow lead game designer Joe Weinhoffer would take turns being "point designers" for certain characters. "Joe was point designer on one hero, I was point designer on another hero," Solomon says, highlighting Magic and Iron Man as two of his own favourite heroes that he designed.
Both are what I'd call quite technical heroes, with Magic relying on careful battlefield placement to boot enemies into nifty magical portals, while Iron Man's most powerful abilities often only come from discarding other cards. But when I ask Solomon at GDC if he thinks he has a particular design 'style' that unites his crop of Marvel heroes, he says he loves being "bombastic".
]]>Marvel’s Midnight Suns ends its post-launch tour with the long-time X-Men leader Storm, who’s joining the roster on May 11th. The weather-controlling mutant will be available as part of the Blood Storm DLC pack, which also includes new missions, hero outfits, and upgrades to The Abbey.
]]>Marvel's Midnight Suns may be a turn-based tactics game first and foremost, but it also has a substantial RPG element that drives both the story and the interpersonal dramas of its superhero teams between missions. When you and your squad head back to your Abbey HQ, there are side stories and quests to investigate around the Abbey grounds, items to find, and more. It's a sizable part of the game, but at one point it was even bigger, creative director Jake Solomon tells me at GDC.
"It's crazy, if you go online, you can see all the Midnight Suns cutscenes and they're three hours long. That's as long as a movie," he says. But during the last year of development Solomon reveals "we cut 30 conversations from the game, like 30 scenes. We cut a ton, because we realised this is just simply too much."
]]>When Firaxis first unveiled their new tactical superhero RPG Marvel's Midnight Suns in August of 2021, its card-based battle system proved to be a point of contention among its audience, so much so that when the game was delayed a short while later, rumours started flying that the studio was going back to the drawing board on the game's combat and dropping the cards entirely.
"Hah, that was wishful thinking for some people!" laughs creative director Jake Solomon when I ask him at GDC how he felt about those rumours at the time. It's well-known now that the delay was simply about polishing the game rather than anything more drastic, but to Solomon's credit he does also concede that he was perhaps "a little naïve" at the time for thinking it would go down without question.
]]>When I meet Jake Solomon at GDC, it's his third day of unemployment. The XCOM and Marvel's Midnight Suns director and designer announced he was leaving Firaxis back in February, but his final day at the studio where he made his name and worked for more than twenty years was still very fresh in his memory. "It's surreal," he says. "For probably the next ten years, I'll refer to it as 'we' when we talk about Firaxis, and it's sad to think it's not the right pronoun anymore. It's exciting, but a little terrifying."
On the face of it, that panic might seem unfounded. Over the last decade, Solomon has become one of the most revered names in turn-based strategy games. Having cut his teeth on many of Sid Meier's Civilization games in his early years at Firaxis, he went on to become the designer who spearheaded the revival of XCOM with Enemy Unknown in 2012, before going on to direct its even more beloved sequel XCOM 2 and its War Of The Chosen expansion a few years later. Most recently, he was creative director on Marvel's Midnight Suns, which allowed him to marry his life-long love of Marvel comic books with the thrilling tactical combat he's so well known for.
Solomon's next adventure, though, won't have the certainty of Midnight Suns' supercharged attack cards, or even the tease of an XCOM hit percentage backing him up. For not only is it Solomon's third day of unemployment when we speak; it's also the day after he revealed his plans to leave turn-based tactics games behind altogether. Instead, his sights are now set on the life simulation genre, a move that, at first glance, seems at odds with his career as a strategy designer. But over the course of our hour-long chat, it becomes increasingly clear that life sims have been a life-long obsession for Solomon, and he might have even made one by now had the development of XCOM 2 gone a little differently.
]]>Director Jake Solomon is leaving Firaxis after two decades of work on Marvel’s Midnight Suns, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, and XCOM 2. This comes amid a studio shakeup with multiple senior roles sliding around the corporate conveyor belt. Firaxis also revealed that they’re in early development on the next Civilization game.
]]>Spidey’s occasional rival and everyone’s favourite symbiote Venom is swinging into Marvel’s Midnight Suns as DLC on February 23rd. Venom was a villain in the base game, but he’s now transitioning into a playable antihero for the fight against Mephisto. To celebrate, the deckbuilding strategy game is free to try on Steam for the entire weekend.
]]>There’s a new Nvidia GeForce Game Ready Driver out, and for once it sounds pretty interesting – especially if you’re lucky/rich/unhinged enough to have dropped megabucks on one of Nvidia’s megabucks RTX 40 series GPUs.
The 528.24 WHQL driver is mainly aimed at tuning up GeForce graphics cards for imminent PC releases Forspoken, the Dead Space remake, and Deliver Us Mars. All three will include DLSS support, which might come in handy for Forspoken in particular, given its slightly bananas system requirements. But 528.24 will also get Hitman 3 and Marvel’s Midnight Suns ready for DLSS 3 upgrades, with both games set to gain support for the overhauled upscaler in forthcoming patches.
]]>Deadpool will break the fourth wall and probably your face on January 26th, when the wise-cracking, chimichanga-loving mercenary arrives as DLC for Marvel’s Midnight Suns. Judging from the new trailer showing him in action that Firaxis have released, they seem to have struck a fine balance between comic book Deadpool and his movie counterpart. You can see Midnight Suns’ take on Wade Wilson in the trailer below.
]]>Last time, you decided that programmable party members are better than optional grinding. I can respect that. Yeah, it's sometimes fun to turn your brain off and grind out a bit, but there's a lot to say for doing the work up front to get your party and builds running correctly then just watch them go. This week, I ask you to choose between one thing which speaks to my inner teenager, and one thing which speaks to my inner child. What's better: big engines rising from the bonnet, or knocking folks over edges?
]]>It's a well-documented fact here at RPS that I love a good spreadsheet. Specifically, my spreadsheet that lists all the lovely games I manage to play each year. I've been looking at that spreadsheet a lot in recent weeks, and I'm pleased to report that most of my top game picks from this year have successfully made their way into the RPS Advent Calendar. There were plenty that didn't, of course (pouring one out for you, Dorfromantik, Flat Eye, Dome Keeper and Lost In Play), but such is the way of things when your current list of completed games for the year is teetering on the verge of 50.
No word of a lie, I would probably be here all day if I laid out my entire long list of honourable mentions for 2022 (additional shoutouts to Railbound, Cursed To Golf, God Of War, Weird West, Jack Move, Hard West 2 and The Kids We Were), but for the sake of all involved (and poor Alice Bee's editing pencil), I've narrowed it down to a shortlist of three. (Do still go and check out those other games, though. They're all absolutely rad).
]]>I've been looking back over an entire year of RPS reviews and, well, we've written a lot. Over the past twelve months, the RPS treehouse and our merry band of freelancers have reviewed 168 games in total - and that includes early access reviews, PC-port reviews, group reviews, reviews-in-progresses, and your common or garden fully-fledged reviews. 168! Damn. Even though game releases are still suffering from pandemic pushbacks, 2022 has been a busy year for games. There wasn't a huge number of big name releases - although the ones that did come out were plenty big enough - but, as always, we've had a wealth of wonderful indies releasing all year round, and we scooped up as many of them as we could.
Out of all the games we’ve given any kind of review treatment throughout the year, only a handful of them recieved RPS’s coveted Bestest Best badge; just 23, to be exact. I've gathered them all in one big round-up bundle below (there are round-ups of our favourite bits from other sections of the site, too), and they make a great collection of games. Have a scroll and click on any that take your fancy for the full review. Enjoy!
]]>The strategic superheroics of Marvel’s Midnight Suns might make it a Bestest Bests winner, but tragically, it does come yoked to the dreadful 2K Launcher. A few months breaking the BioShock series on the Steam Deck, this pernicious piece of software now appears to be a major cause of Midnight Suns' stuttering issues, while seriously hobbling performance more generally.
If you're playing via Steam, I strongly suggest following the lead of the, uh, thousands of people who’ve discovered this before me by disabling the 2K Launcher entirely. I’ve just tried this out and not only did the majority of the stuttering vanish, but my average frames per second shot up by nearly 62%. 62% better performance! From nixing a launcher that serves absolutely no purpose when you’re launching from Steam anyway! Madness.
]]>For the last ten years, the XCOM designers at Firaxis have traded in 'if's and 'maybe's. If this shot lands, then maybe I can pull off this carefully calculated plan I’m brewing. It's exactly the kind of taut, knife-edge tension we've come to love and expect from their turn-based strategy games, but Marvel's Midnight Suns takes a different approach. As the titular demon hunters join forces with some famous Avengers faces to take down the evil sorceress Lilith and Marvel mega villain Chthon, there's never any question about whether your moves will or won't work here. You're playing as the world's most powerful superheroes. Of course, they’re going to work. And forget about cowering behind knee-high cover walls, too, because if you're not already bulletproof, you've certainly got the reflexes and supercharged muscle mass to soak up anything Lilith’s Hydra minions are going to chuck at you.
Question is, by tipping the power scales in your favour like this, do you risk destroying that delicate balance of risk and reward? At first glance, it's easy to think a more reliable set of heroes would end up dulling what made Firaxis' XCOM games so special, but the result is something equally thrilling. Given how the Marvel machine has drawn in and chewed up so much singular creative talent in the wider MCUniverse, Firaxis emerging with their cred intact is nothing short of extraordinary. Not only have they endured their radioactive spider bite, they've come out bigger and better for it, creating not only the best Marvel game I've played, but one of the best superhero games full stop.
]]>For the past week, Marvel anti-hero Deadpool has been taking over the social media accounts for Firaxis' upcoming turn-based tactics game Marvel’s Midnight Suns’, leading many to believe he was going to be a playable character when it launches on December 2nd. Now, Firaxis have confirmed that, yep, Deadpool will be coming to Marvel's Midnight Suns, but only as part of its newly unveiled season pass.
]]>After several delays, Marvel's Midnight Suns has a new release date. The new strategy game from XCOM developers Firaxis will launch on December 2nd, as announced during this evening's Disney/Marvel games showcase.
]]>Some details from Skydance New Media’s in-development Marvel game appear to have leaked, ahead of the game’s debut at Disney D23's games showcase later today. The game is alleged to star national superheroes Captain America and Wakanda’s Black Panther, and take place during World War 2. Skydance’s project is being headed up by former Uncharted director Amy Hennig, helmer of such unfortunately cancelled projects as Visceral's Star Wars action-adventure.
]]>Disney and Marvel have revealed they’ll be hosting a joint games showcase for the first time during this year’s D23 Expo. The in-person and digital showcase starts at 1pm PST/4pm EST/9pm BST on September 9th. Have a watch of the very concise trailer below to get an idea of what’s being shown at the event.
]]>Tactical superhero 'em up Marvel's Midnight Suns has been delayed for the second time. Pushed back once before, it's now nebulously due "later this fiscal year."
]]>I've been experiencing Marvel fatigue for, oh, around seven years now. To compensate, I decided to watch Marvel's Midnight Suns latest trailer while pretending it wasn't about Marvel superheroes, but just a Firaxis-made tactics game with character classes who have wildly divergent skillsets. The video focuses on the spider-powered class - and heck, it does look pretty cool.
]]>Anyone who's played one of Firaxis' XCOM games in the last ten years will have a story about missed shots. Shots that, even with a 90% chance of hitting their target, still end up going wide and punching a hole in your carefully laid plans. In the moment, they induce feelings of white hot injustice, but for many, they're an integral part of what makes XCOM, well, XCOM. Looking back on his time making XCOM 2, however, Firaxis' creative director Jake Solomon tells me that he, too, now feels the pain players have felt for close to a decade.
"It was really interesting for me to return back and play XCOM a couple of years ago, and man, when I missed shots, I was unbelievably frustrated. I felt the ghosts of everybody everywhere looking over my shoulder," he says.
]]>Chance has always been an integral part of Firaxis’ turn-based tactics games. Just ask the many thousands of players who missed a shot with a 90% success chance in one of their XCOM reboots. Marvel’s Midnight Suns, however, could be the Civilization studio’s biggest gamble yet. Not only is it their first game to mix substantial RPG elements into its tactical combat, but there’s nary a hit percentage in sight. In the four hours I spent playing the opening of Midnight Suns last week, I saw precisely one scenario that had any kind of per cent number attached to it – and that was booting a goon (100%) or Venom, one of the newly confirmed villains of the game (0%), off a rooftop. All your other attacks, represented here as a deck of cards, are guaranteed hits.
It’s a strategic evolution I’ll talk about in a second, but this switch-up in approach isn’t the only part of Midnight Suns story that’s been subject to the whims of (mis)fortune. No sooner had Firaxis announced the game it was delayed in the snap of Thanos' fingers (from March to the second half of 2022, now confirmed as October 7th at tonight’s Summer Game Fest). But speaking to creative director Jake Solomon, the extra polishing time they set aside gave them an unexpected benefit. And it’s all down to a fish witch called Wanda.
]]>The final heroes and villains of Marvel's Midnight Suns have been revealed at tonight's Summer Game Fest bonanza. Spider-Man and Scarlet Witch will be joining previously announced goodies such as Iron Man, Blade and Captain Marvel, while err... Scarlet Witch, Hulk and Venom will repping the game's big bad demon mother Lilith. Man, if there's one Avenger I wouldn't want going all evil on me, it's Hulk. And Scarlet Witch, to be fair. Why have these heroes joined the dark side in Firaxis' new tactics RPG? Well, we'll be able to find out when the game launches on October 7th. Here's a new trailer to celebrate.
]]>2022 is finally here and that can only mean one thing. We've got another year of hip new video games to look forward to, and we've been busy rustling up the ones we're most excited about. In truth, there are tons of games on the horizon that could easily sit on this list, and some of them are so close to release we can practically already see the pixels on our screens morphing into their lush, polygonal landscapes. Games like Monster Hunter Rise, God Of War and Rainbow Six Extraction. You won't find them here, but trust us, you'll be seeing a lot of them over the coming weeks.
There are always more games coming out than we have fingers to write about them, but the 2022 games we've listed below are the ones the RPS team are personally most looking forward to playing. We've got games big and small here, and they're all listed in alphabetical order. After all, release dates are increasingly slippery beasts these days. Think we've missed something? Why not take to the comments below and tell us all about it. You might just convince us to put it on our radars. But enough from me. Here are our 43 most anticipated games of 2022.
]]>XCOM studio Firaxis have announced a delay for Marvel's Midnight Suns, their turn-based tactics game in the BAM! BIF! POW! world of Marvel superheroes. Previously due in March 2022, it's now pushed back into the second half of 2022. I say "previously"; the game was only announced two months ago. Sounds like someone had a serious rethink about the state of the project. But if it needs the time, it's good that it's getting the time.
]]>After announcing their new tactical RPG at Gamescom the other week, Firaxis held a 20 minute livestream for Marvel’s Midnight Suns yesterday, giving us a brand-new look at the game’s card-based combat system, its RPG elements and a deep-dive on how Wolverine, Sabretooth and big bad Lilith will play in-game. And from the looks of things, it's all shaping up very nicely indeed.
]]>Marvel may often be an action-based universe full of heroes with long legacies that you know and love. Upcoming Marvel's Midnight Suns is a little of both of those things but somehow a little the opposite. We already know that Midnight Suns is introducing a new, customisable hero called Hunter and that it's a tactical game by the folks behind XCOM. It's not exactly Marvel's XCOM though. A new gameplay reveal for Midnight Suns shows off its card-based battle system, a bit more of its story, and some friendly hangout time with your favorite supers.
]]>Following rumours in June, XCOM and Civilization studio Firaxis have confirmed that they are indeed making a tactical game set in the world of Marvel superheroes. Announced today, the "tactics RPG" Marvel's Midnight Suns will see heroes including Iron Man, Wolverine, Blade, Ghost Rider, and Doctor Strange teaming up to battle Lilith, the mother of demons.
]]>Strategy games is an enormous genre in PC gaming, with real-time, turn-based, 4X and tactics games all flying the same flag to stake their claim as the one true best strategy game. Our list of the best strategy games on PC covers the lot of them. We like to take a broad view here at RPS, and every game listed below is something we firmly believe that you could love and play today. You'll find 30-year-old classics nestled right up against recent favourites here, so whether you're to the genre or want to dig deep for some hidden gems, we've got you covered. Here are our 50 best strategy games for 2023.
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