With QuakeCon 2021 set to take place in a virtual fashion next week - and already being in the headlines thanks to an errant schedule listed a 'revitalized' Quake - GOG are offering some deep discounts on some of the best-known ZeniMax franchises including Fallout, Dishonored, The Elder Scrolls, Doom, Quake and Wolfenstein.
It's a great chance to pick up some fantastic shooters and roleplaying games at bargain basement prices, from recent releases to all-time classics. Here are my personal highlights, plus a big link to the sale itself.
]]>Co-op Nazi-mangling spinoff Wolfenstein: Youngblood launches on July 26th, just before my birthday. It looks to be a gift that literally keeps giving, too; the Deluxe edition comes with a 'Buddy Pass', so you can invite a special someone to join you on your power-armoured rampage. Set some years after Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus, it casts one or two players as BJ Blazkowicz and Anya's twin daughters, now old enough to hunt Nazis for themselves with the aid of matching super-suits. Check out the debut trailer below, featuring Carpenter Brut's appropriately titled Turbo Killer.
]]>They live in compounds deep in the mountains, sharing conspiracies about who really runs things while cleaning their illegal firearms and awaiting the end of the world. One, channelling Donald Trump, is running for the Montana legislature and asks you to suppress disproportionately black voters opposed to his far-right agenda by murdering them. His ex-wife kills “flag burning socialists” from a helicopter with the efficiency of a South American military junta.
They are somehow the best anti-fascist heroes Ubisoft could come up with for Far Cry 5.
]]>This article contains major spoilers for Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus (and Jacob’s Ladder).
Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus was one of the critical darlings of last year. A first person shooter that moves at a blistering pace, in Wolfenstein 2 you step once more into the big stompy shoes of William Blazkowicz and mow down armies of Nazis. But Wolfenstein 2’s easiest-to-miss scene has a chilling implication, which calls into question the reality of the game’s entire second half. It’s this:
]]>After decades of banning swastikas and such symbols of Nazis and other "unconstitutional organisations" from games, German authorities will now potentially allow them - if they serve an artistic or educational purpose. This "social adequacy" clause has allowed these symbols to be used in other artistic mediums but wasn't previously applied to video games (which only became art, as we all know, through BioShock Infinite in 2013), requiring developers to replace or otherwise remove the iconography to get a German release. This change isn't a green light for swastikas galore, as laws controlling the symbols still apply, but the German ratings board are now willing to consider their artistic merit in games.
]]>Not satisfied with bringing snow trolls and hellspawn to expensive cyber goggles, Bethesda are bringing two more of their games to VR – Prey and Wolfenstein. Wolfenstein: Cyberpilot and Prey: Typhon Hunter are set in their respective universes and, of the two, Typhon Hunter seems the most interesting. It’s a prop hunt-like bit of multiplayer hide and seek, in which five players are mimics pretending to be everyday objects, and one player is Morgan Yu, trying to find and kill them. "Typhon Hunter is a deadly game of cat and mouse," say Bethesda, "except in this instance the cat is sometimes a trashcan or a bottle of cleaning supplies and the mouse has a shotgun."
]]>The splendid new line of Wolfenstein first-person shooters from MachineGames will continue next year with Wolfenstein: Youngblood, a cooperative game starring BJ Blazkowicz's twin daughters. It's set in 1980, see, 19 years after Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus. Would you be surprised to hear that the twins are also very keen on shooting Nazis? Meet 'em in the game's announcement trailer.
]]>For a series built around the deconstruction of Aryan bodies, it’s taken a long time for players to take the hint that Wolfenstein’s ubermensch William Blazkowicz is Jewish.
That hesitation betrays our definitions of Jewish identity as old-fashioned, and also reflects that the few prominent Jewish characters in games play into and reinforce stereotypes. While Blazkowicz is the most high profile character to break the mold, what does it say about games that the most diverse representation of a Jew we’ve seen is simply whiter than most?
]]>Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus's story-led DLC to date has been big - well, medium - on character but low on novelty, recycling chunks of the main game into vignettes starring new characters with borrowed Blazcowiz powers. I've looked at three out of four of 'em, and wound up wearing my 'disappointed, but not bitterly so' face, much like the one I sported when taken to the legendarily underwhelming Flintstones theme park on a US holiday in the early 90s. The final chunk of the season pass DLC lands today, and, like before, tells a new micro-tale from the wider Wolfenverse, this time with a pulpy war comics vibe.
]]>Note - this piece presumes familiarity with Wolfenstein 2's entire plot, and as such contains some spoilers, though no specific character fates are discussed.
Out this week is part two of 'The Freedom Chronicles', a triptych of story-led DLC for last year's pretty decent singleplayer shooter Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus, giving us a pretty clear sense of what's on offer from the season pass. (You can buy the episodes separately, but it ends up being 30% more expensive if you end up getting all of 'em that way). To whit, is it worth forking out for? In short: ehhhhhhhh.
]]>We've already seen which games sold best on Steam last year, but a perhaps more meaningful insight into movin' and a-shakin' in PC-land is the games that people feel warmest and snuggliest about. To that end, Valve have announced the winners of the 2017 Steam Awards, a fully community-voted affair which names the most-loved games across categories including best post-launch support, most player agency, exceeding pre-release expectations and most head-messing-with. Vintage cartoon-themed reflex-tester Cuphead leads the charge with two gongs, but ol' Plunkbat and The Witcher series also do rather well - as do a host of other games from 2017's great and good.
Full winners and runners-up below, with links to our previous coverage of each game if you're so-minded. Plus: I reveal which game I'd have gone for in each category.
]]>Another year over, a new one just begun, which means, impossibly, even more games. But what about last year? Which were the games that most people were buying and, more importantly, playing? As is now something of a tradition, Valve have let slip a big ol' breakdown of the most successful titles released on Steam over the past twelve months.
Below is the full, hundred-strong roster, complete with links to our coverage if you want to find out more about any of the games, or simply to marvel at how much seemed to happen in the space of 52 short weeks.
]]>Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus is a shooter that often feels at odds with its own protagonist, the worn-out vanilla action hero who is somehow the heart of a neurodiverse, multi-ethnic cast of socialist firebrands, civil rights campaigners, pacifists, lapsed jazz maestros and rabid UFO chasers. At first glance, it has a lot to say in spite of BJ Blazkowicz rather than through him, its levels and intermissions thick with references to feminist activism and race rights movements that risk being swallowed up in the bloodshed. Many of the allusions are very timely, for all the retro silliness of Wolfenstein’s Nazis - it’s hard not to draw a line between in-game propaganda about the “cancerous” press and Donald Trump’s frequent denunciations of the US media, for example.
MachineGames has downplayed these parallels in conversation, but Bethesda’s marketing teams have latched onto them rather opportunistically, going so far as to parody Trump’s infamous #MakeAmericaGreatAgain slogan on social media and subtweet his defence of rightwing marchers following the murder of Heather Heyer. Ultimately, however, The New Colossus offers no straightforward rejection of the bigotry Trump and his followers have tacitly and not-so-tacitly endorsed. Rather, the game's achievement is to show how BJ's story of white heroism risks echoing that chauvinism, and how it and toxic social archetypes at large may become instruments of resistance. With spoilers right up to the final moments, let’s look at how all that holds together.
]]>The calendar's doors have been opened and the games inside have been eaten. But fear not, latecomer - we've reconstructed the list in this single post for easy re-consumption. Click on to discover the best games of 2017.
]]>Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus has been out for nearly two months, which means it's Wolfentime for the first proper episode of DLC. Episode 1 of The Freedom Chronicles launched overnight, and follows the exploits of Gunslinger Joe. He's a former American football quarterback who's mad at the Nazis for making him play proper football, which seems like a pretty tame origin story by Wolfenstein standards.
]]>Seeing as Steam reviews are not entirely fairly arguing that the recent Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus is too perfunctory a sequel, let's look back to a time when that really did happen. The Old Blood, a game that straddled the line between sequel and expansion pack to the excellent Wolfenstein: The New Order, was the very model of going through the motions. Paradoxically, it was also an attempt to give fans exactly what they wanted.
]]>The prophecies were true - demos are back. This time it’s Nazi-bludgeoning romp Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus that’s offering a morsel of its shoots and boots (we've mentioned it before, but here's a reminder). The demo only lets you play through the first level, so it really is a teeny tiny taste. “Should you choose to upgrade to the full version of the game,” enthuses this faceless Bethesda announcement, “all of your save data will carry over.” Right so.
]]>Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus is, for better or worse, very much BJ Blazkowicz's story, and outside a few shocking shots of the wider world, isn't entirely interested in showing us how Nazi rule in the 1960s affects the individual lives of others. We already knew that story-based DLC was on its way, but now we have dates on the four-part season pass that aims to make fascist-occupied America more than the tale of one man and his special submarine friends.
Say hullo to Joseph Stallion, Jessica Valiant and their chum who must be eternally resentful that he did not also win the amazingly ridiculous surname lottery, Gerald Wilkins. Joseph Stallion! Good lord.
]]>What created some of the stranger sounds in the Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus soundtrack? Big sonic sculptures of glass and sheet metal, composer Martin Stig Andersen explains over on Gamasutra. He got to play with the creations of French brothers François and Bernard Baschet, delightfully odd beasts largely played by rubbing crystal rods with wetted hands and amplified through big metal horns, and explains the process as well as how he combined those sounds with other musical elements. The post has many good pictures and things to listen to. Oh, and you might remember Anderson for recording Inside's music through an actual human skull.
]]>It's taking me a long, long time to play through Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus. The reason for that is because I'm playing it as a stealth game - a claim about a Wolfenstein game that would have sounded absurd a couple of years ago, but is now taken for granted as a result of 2014's The New Order offering a limited sneaky-stabby path. Both of the latter-day Wolfs are designed primarily to be played as spray'n'play mass murder sims, and they've got a ton of wonderful toys with which to achieve that, but, for my part, I've been there, done that far too many times, and so the idea of treating W2TNC's missions as a quieter, tenser, almost puzzle-like affair is far more appealing.
Thing is, Wolf 2's stealth is all kinds of messed up. There are entirely legitimate reasons to despise it. Me, though? I can't resist it.
]]>In a week in which Assassin's Creed Origins has managed to break the charts to such a degree that it somehow not only appears three times, but also stopped Feedly from being able to display the rest of the games in the correct order, we also see a few other new entries. But absolutely no new names.
]]>Alice is on holiday and she's taken all the games with her. Luckily some developers released new games after she'd left, so the rest of us still have something to play. Our choices are below, but we want to know from you: what are you playing in this weekend of plenty?
]]>It’s Bash-the-Fash Friday in the corridors of RPS today. Some of us are celebrating by playing Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, which is out now in case you didn’t notice. Our Adam liked the dystopian shooter , enough to say it was “a hair’s breadth away from being one of my favourite singleplayer action games of all time”. Crikey.
]]>Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus does not pull its punches. Early in the game a returning villain asks, “is this what a hero looks like?” She's mocking and threatening a wounded, degraded and broken woman. She's about to execute that woman.
Wolfenstein's answer is a defiant “yes”. Its heroes don't look like any one thing because they are many and they are diverse. They are survivors and fighters and thinkers, black, white, American Jewish, British, German, male, female, disabled, disfigured and powerful. They're also flawed – sometimes too angry, sometimes too selfish, sometimes too afraid to face up to reality – but they are the kind of people you'd want in your corner if the world went wrong.
They're also the game's greatest asset and its most potent weapons.
]]>With us living in the age of ‘games as service’, there’s been a bit of hand-wringing about the death of single-player games. Of course, there are still plenty of single-player games in development, and in the case of Machine Games’ Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus, the studio say they've made a concerted effort to not let anything detract from that solo experience.
]]>Popular nazi-killer B.J. Blazkowicz will be back to his old shooty-shooty ways this Friday with Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus. Today publisher Bethesda have taken a break from their piggy-backing marketing long enough to post the PC system requirements along with details of uncapped framerates and aspect ratios. Here they are.
]]>Though Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus [official site] will not launch until next Friday, October 27th, the launch trailer has arrived today to stake a claim on the next fortnight. As you'd expect, the trailer is full of Nazis being murdered and oh, I guess Hitler is back now too - in non-mecha form. Presumably he gets his face shot off later. Watch:
]]>In the surprisingly, refreshingly excellent 2014 shooter reboot-o-sequel Wolfenstein: The New Order, it was the eyes that captivated me. The sad, aged eyes of BJ Blazkowicz, a war-weary he-man forced to take up arms yet again - tirelessly heroic, sure, but those windows to his haunted soul revealed his longing for an end to all this suffering. I could not look away from those eyes, even as he battled Mecha-Nazis and Moon-Nazis and Soul-Transplanted Ultra-Nazis and whatever else this unrepentantly preposterous game threw at him.
In Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus [official site], a sequel which continues the alt-history, steampunk Nazi occupation of America tale, it's BJ's sports jacket that I can't stop staring at.
]]>You can now watch almost an hour of Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus, if you'd like, across three newly-released gameplay videos. One shows BJ 'Sad Eyes' Blazkowicz murdering a great many Nazis from his wheelchair, as our Adam already told you about in his E3 preview. Another wanders through the city of Roswell, where Nazis and Ku Klux Klan members rule (until 'Puppy Dog' Blazkowicz starts murdering). Lastly, you can watch him blast through a boss battle and ride away in style. That's a lot of action before thine very own eyes, if you're happy to spoil surprises and watch it now.
]]>Wolfenstein: The New Colossus [official site] is a tale of corrupted icons and waylaid motifs, as Hitler's propaganda machinery sinks its teeth into the pop memorabilia of 1960s America, and there's no more wicked instance of that than “Elite Hans” - the Nazi action hero who glares from book stalls, toystores and pinball machines in the game's Roswell level, which I had a little play of earlier this month. Elite Hans is returning protagonist BJ Blazkowicz's carnival mirror image: the artwork on one comic even mimics the original cover art for Wolfenstein 3D. Machine Games' choice of period notwithstanding, I wouldn't be surprised if there were some kind of throwback Nazified shooter to unlock in The New Colossus – a bit of old-fashioned ray-casting to wash down all that glistening high definition viscera.
]]>The early stages of Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus [official site] show the same blood, guts and heart that were key to the first game's success. Described by Bethesda's Pete Hines as “fucking bananas”, it's a game of extremes, but it's the care that it shows for its characters and setting that stand out as unique in the field of alt-history Nazi war-shooters. Alongside the silliness, the gore and the pulp fiction roots, there's a core concern for humanity and its loss.
]]>Oh my lord, somebody needs to defeat this notorious E3 war machine once and for all. The RPS podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show, have gathered their forces to take on the monster. We'll be tackling all the big news: Beyond Good and Evil 2, Wolfenstein 2, Sea of Thieves, Anthem, Life Is Strange: Before the Storm and lots more. We've so much news to talk about that we've recruited news editor Alice O'Connor to come help us. We've also sent Adam behind enemy lines to Los Angeles, but have only been able to recover a handful of his communiques.
This week's special extra-long episode also features some chat about Alice's murderous efficiency in PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, Pip's floundering in Football Manager 2017 and my doomed piloting in Everspace. We also discuss the origin of the name "E3" and discover a patchwork quilt of possible etymologies.
]]>Each year E3 rolls around like a giant evil worm, crushing all that's good and pure. BUT that worm also announces lots of exciting gaming news as it wreaks its carnage upon the Earth. Here we have gathered every announcement, reveal, and exciting new trailer that emerged from the barrage of screamed press conferences over the last few days. And lots of it looks rather spiffy.
A rather enormous 47 PC games were either announced, revealed, or updated upon, with new trailers, information, and released dates that will all be missed by at least three months. We've collected the lot, with trailers, in alphabetical order, into one neat place, just for you.
]]>Good morning! While we were all sleeping (and Adam was fighting terrible conference wifi), Bethesda's press conference happen. With came announcements of new games, including Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus [official site]. There's an 8 minute trailer below, which includes live action sequences, cutscene vignettes and lots and lots of killing Nazis and robots and robot Nazis.
]]>Bethesda's E3 2016 showcase brought with it news of Quake Champions, new Prey, Dishonored 2 and a few other things. What wasn't there was any word on what Wolfenstein developers Machine Games were doing - or at least, no explicit news. There was one hint at what might be next for BJ Blazkowicz: "The New Colossus."
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