Hitting pause in a video game is like dropping a wall across it. On one side of the wall lies what is called the diegetic space of the game, aka the fictitious world, which is generally the aspect that receives the most interest, the aspect that tends to attract the weasel word "immersive". On the other side of the wall lie menus, settings and other features that form a non-diegetic layer of bald operator functions - technical conveniences and lists of things to tweak or customise, from graphics modes to character inventory, that are cut adrift in a vacuum outside of time.
In theory, the pause screen and its contents are not truly part of the game. There is no temporality, no sense of place, no threat, no possibility of play, no character or narrative, no save the princess, no press X to Jason or pay respects, no gather your party before travelling forth. As the scholar Madison Schmalzer points out in the paper I'm wonkily paraphrasing here, "the language of the menu itself emphasizes the menu's position as outside of gameplay by labeling the option to continue as 'resume game.' The game world is always privileged as the site that gameplay happens."
]]>Liam and I have been playing looter shooter Remnant 2 in our spare time, as we realised we both couldn't stop thinking about it. Having been burned out of Destiny 2 and most live service games, we discovered Remnant 2 delivers all the benefits of blasting gangly creatures for skill points without all the live service baggage. What a refreshing thing.
Thing is, if two out of the three major bosses we've faced so far took us to court for cheesing them, we'd lose. And it brings us no greater pleasure, knowing we've carved powerful new weapons out of their remains. God, it feels good to be totally undeserving of any credit whatsoever.
]]>Alright, sure, so we technically assassinated your leader, and detonated a populated planet, and wiped out the first clan we ever met. But that was all self defence and we're not here to cause trouble. We just... have a lot going on okay.
The Pegasus Expedition is one of my favourite kinds of game. I'm not sure if it quite comes together enough, but it's trying something so original that even its partial success is worth celebrating. You're leading a 4X-ish effort to establish a power base in an unfamiliar galaxy. But you're not doing it to conquer everyone or win victory points. You're doing it so you can go back home and save Earth from annihilation.
]]>A decent name is one thing, but one like To Hell With The Ugly plain demands to be looked up. That's when you see the striking art style, and yeah okay, I'm already on on board.
Based on a French novel by Boris Vian, this tells a strange and surprisingly dark story about a famously handsome young himbo who gets caught up in a sinister plot in 1950s Los Angeles and has to adventure, talk, fight, and - horrors - reason his way to the truth. It's an adventure game with quick-time event bits, and a 50s America setting, all of which could put me off it entirely, but I can't bring myself to say anything bad about it at all.
]]>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.
]]>Most RPGs set you off on some kind of grand quest, a hero's journey filled with danger and peril as you track down some legendary sword to defeat a world-ending evil. Boots Quest DX, however, has much humbler aspirations. You are a mere boot enthusiast on an adventure to find the very bestest best boots known to man (or blobs, I genuinely can't tell what provenance these rotund creatures hail from), and nothing else will deter you from achieving your lifelong goal. Find a honking great sword on the beach? Trash. A pirate's cutlass? Get in the sea, literally. If it's not a pair of boots, you're not interested - and it all makes for a brisk, anti-RPG adventure that's incredibly refreshing.
]]>Last week I talked about how I spent my week off at Christmas playing PowerWash Simulator like it was my job. When I wrote that, I was about two thirds of the way through the story in Career mode, which turns out to be just before PowerWash Simulator goes as bananas as everyone's home baking in the summer of 2020. I can't believe I need to say this but: this article contains spoilers for the PowerWash Sim story.
]]>Some games are just December games. When the air turns biting, I hear their siren song in my bones. They Are Billions. Frostpunk. Phoenix Point. Factorio. None of them are exactly what you would call a Christmas-y game. In fact, they're all pretty bleak and threatening in tone. But they're also amazingly comforting.
Just imagine: sitting down in your favourite chair, electric heat pad on your back, cat on your lap, mug of hot chocolate or coffee by your side. Legions of undead roiling at the gates, trying to break through your cosy little town's defences. Ahhhhh. It's Christmas.
]]>It’s getting to the time in winter when we reflect on the year, and pick our Bestest Best games that we’ve played over the past twelve months (okay eleven months, but December is always kinda quiet). We recently had this chat in the RPS hive-mind, and going through each month and making note of my favourite releases completely shocked me with how many fantastic mystery games have come out this year. It’s honestly awesome.
I’m a huge fan of mysteries in games, with some of my all-time favouites being Kentucky Route Zero, The Return Of The Obra Dinn, and Disco Elysium. I just like getting wrapped up in a good story that will kick my brain into gear. Strange murders, devious disappearances, and just general strange happenings - I love all of it.
]]>Dave the Diver (character) is a bit out of practice, but he's an easygoing sort and it doesn't take much to convince him to get back in his flippers to look into the local anomaly at the behest of his arms dealer "friend", who would be clearly bad news even if his name wasn't Cobra.
Said anomaly fills with new sea creatures from all over the world every time it's visited, and possibly building-sized terror beasts and ancient merfolk, but Cobra's sure it'll all be fine, so in you go, mate. It's certainly pretty down there if nothing else, and Dave the Diver (game) is, if nothing else, a rare game that makes the usually tedious water level a bit of a treat to wander round in.
]]>I toyed around with this intro a lot, because I didn’t want to start with a super pessimistic bang. But, for lack of a nicer way to put it, I’ll simply say things are looking pretty scary out there, huh? Capitalism is failing, the economy is crumbling, and normal people have nothing left to give. It’s something I've been thinking about a lot lately, but I don’t really talk about it. I keep it all inside, like a microwave holding a ball of tin foil while it spins on full power.
At least, that was the case until I played Citizen Sleeper. It’s a rather simple RPG inspired by tabletop roleplaying games, giving you a limited number of action dice that you can spend each day to receive consequences. Mechanically, it doesn’t stretch much further than those actions and consequences, meaning I can instead focus on connecting with characters. In its simplicity, I found a cathartic way to process my thoughts on lots of scary stuff happening in our actual world. I also realised that Starfield, the big space game looming on the horizon which I was previously pretty excited about, just doesn’t seem appealing anymore.
]]>The other week I played a short demo for the upcoming Resident Evil 4 remake. You’d think being lucky enough to actually play the damn thing would have numbed my hyper-fixation about it a touch, but, nope. I’m afraid not. It turns out the guy who owns eight physical copies (and four digital) of the original Resident Evil 4 is still pretty excited to play the remake. Who ever could have predicted this?
The day my preview went live, Capcom showed off a couple of additional bits as part of a hefty Resident Evil showcase. Alongside a fresh story trailer the company also discussed the various gubbins you’ll receive if you fork out for the game's special edition as well as a short gameplay demonstration. Surprising no one, I’ve watched these clips so many times I now have a load of thoughts that are not only completely useless but are taking up vital brain space I usually reserve for things like pin numbers and dates. If I don’t vent all of this garbage out of my skull there’s a chance I’ll forget my Mam’s birthday again, something that genuinely happened once when I was 17 and I haven’t stopped feeling guilty about it since. I bought her a plant from a Tesco Express three days later thinking that would help. It didn’t. This event haunts me more than any Resident Evil jumpscare ever could.
]]>I have now received most (but not quite all) of my stuff after moving, so I have a TV and two (2) consoles to play games on. One thing I've been playing recently is Ghostwire: Tokyo, a ghost huntin' action game that's a bit less weird and a bit more "kind of like an Ubisoft game" than I was expecting. But I like Ubisoft games just fine, so I'm having a blast - plus there are still some clutch ghost fights to be hand when I run out of finger-ammo for my magic hands.
I am extra delighted by the animals, though. For whatever reason, they are unaffected by the evil fog that has swept through Tokyo and turned everyone into spirits, so there are a few dogs and cats just sitting around and (and this is the good bit) you can read their thoughts.
]]>Last year, Ed wrote about how he wished Ian Hitman could skip in IO Interactive's big shiny assassin sim. Well, Agent 47 clearly needs to make the next stop on his international mission list a nice, relaxing retreat on the Mediterranean island of Pinar del Mar. Not to murder anyone, of course. But to hang out with Alba for some all important frolicking lessons. She's a pro at this skipping marlarkey. If she's not throwing her arms out like an aeroplane when she's running up and down the yellowing hills of this sleepy little island village, she's doing a jolly little skip that is probably the most delightful thing I've ever seen in a video game. In fairness, the whole game is just pure joy distilled into a chill wildlife photography adventure, but man alive, the skipping is something else. More of this please, developers.
]]>Through an entirely unplanned sequence of events, I'm currently playing two big action adventure games that couldn't be less alike. One is God Of War, a big, serious dadventure epic about an emotionally distant father trying his darnedest to connect with his (at times very irritating) son. The other is Kena: Bridge Of Spirits, an altogether more wholesome adventure about a young girl cleansing a lush, forested mountainside from a serious case of bad vibes and helping lost ghosts pass on to the other side.
About the only thing they have in common is that they both have what one might call 'cute' NPC companions. Dad Of War is joined by his eager archer "BOY!" Atreus, while Kena has her gaggle of black, fluffy Rot friends (above, right). According to the widely accepted law of big googly-eyes, I should find the Rot absolutely adorable and thus beyond reproach. Atreus does not have big googly-eyes (they are merely wide and naive), but he is certainly a lot cuter than God Of War's other main companion, a talking disembodied head. And yet. Even though Atreus has now reached that stage where he's doing all his adolescent whining and rebellion and "I know you are, but what am I?" nonsense in the space of about two hours, I would much rather have this sulky pre-teen by my side than the interminable Rot. Let me explain.
]]>There were a lot of games I played last year that could have been on our Best Games You Missed list at the end of 2021. I ended up going with Studio Pixel Punk's Unsighted in the end, but it was very nearly OPUS: Echo Of Starsong, a stunning visual novel adventure game from Taiwanese studio Sigono Inc. I'd seen a few other games journalists raving about it when it came out on Steam last September, and hey, over 3000 overwhelmingly positive Steam reviews can't be wrong either, so I took the plunge, and golly, it sure is something special.
]]>On a stretch of futuristic tarmac, something clicked. Yellow quest markers hadn't built my relationships in Cyberpunk 2077. When a job needed doing, then they'd steer me in the right direction. But for those initial sparks of story, my cellphone had been key. Chats and texts buzzed into my brain at all hours. "Hey V", "V, got a minute?", "V!"
Characters would get in contact with me, not the other way around. And I liked that. In fact, I'd say it helped build a living, breathing world more than Night City's towering skyscrapers and moving billboards. More than, perhaps, any other big RPG I've played over the last couple of years.
]]>Brinkmanship doesn't get explored all that much in games. Precipice is almost certainly derived from Balance of Power, a political strategy simulation from 1985 about the Cold War powers and their winner-armageddons-all staring contest. It was impressively original, complex, and completely unplayable. Happily, Precipice has kept most of what made that game interesting to begin with, and dumped the baggage.
]]>Happy 10th anniversary Dark Souls! Here's to you, Sin the Slumbering Dragon. And to you, Crossbreed Priscilla. Chin-chin! Oi, not to you Ornstein, or to you, Smough. How did you even get in, anyway? This is an invitation only event for bosses who have cuttable tails.
There's a tinge of sadness to this celebration, though. Cuttable tails were all the rage back in the original Dark Souls but now they're lost to time, never to be seen again, just like the tails you cut off themselves. Although a part of me hopes that the cycle will renew (like the sort of tails that grow back after you cut them off). And just like skinny jeans are slowly going out of fashion in favour of the 90s wide leg, I'm hoping FromSoftware's bosses won't cling so closely to their tails in Elden Ring and maybe, just maybe, they'll let us lop them off again.
]]>It was 3am and Hucks the cellar spider was finally surrounded by, instead of carrying, her wee hatchlings. Clarice, her slightly dim neighbour, was resting after another hour spent fruitlessly stumbling around after an even dafter flying thingy that would eventually blunder right into her face.
Playing Webbed seemed inevitable for someone who watches her ceiling spiders when she can't sleep or finish an article. But within about a minute of playing, it became clear that it's the kind of game that will bring joy to almost anyone. Webbed is immediately brilliant.
]]>Rejoice, JRPG fans. Bravely Default 2 has finally arrived on PC, and cor, you're in for a treat. Previously confined to Nintendo-only consoles, first on the 3DS and later the Switch, the Bravely series is simultaneously a love letter to the classics and - in my eyes, at least - one of the genre's best modern advocates. We've seen plenty of games try to reinterpret Final Fantasy's four heroes of light and elemental crystal schtick over the years, but Bravely Default is the one that really gets it, scratching that retro itch while also bringing something new to the table in the form of its fantastic risk and reward battle system, compelling job classes and absolute chefkiss.gif soundtrack (which also plays a surprisingly big role in combat, too). It's legit one of my favourite JRPG series to date, and I'm so pleased it's finally made its way to PC.
]]>During Geoff's Gamescom MegaMix earlier this week, we got another extended peek at Death Stranding's upcoming Director's Cut, which adds loads of new features, modes, story missions and ways to transport your cargo to Kojima's esoteric postal hiking sim. Personally, I couldn't care less about the bum-warming jet pack or the mountain-scaling catapult. Instead, I'm ALL about Sam's Buddy Bot, and I 100% plan to use its strong, muscly robot calves to carry me all the way across America when I inevitably end up playing it all over again. Watch out, BB Boys. I think we might have a BBBB Boys road trip on our hands, too.
]]>Old school shooters are still in vogue and that's basically a good thing. But I wonder where it'll lead.
G String might offer a clue. As well as having possibly the worst name in history, it's a strange sort of throwback to the early/mid 2000s, an era you might, if you had to say these things for a living, call "middle school". I'm surprised at how refreshing I found that.
]]>Continuing my recent trend of "Ed tries an indie game and realises he quite likes it", I have another one for you. It's called Dreamscaper and it's a bit like if Hades and Life Is Strange had a child that's both murderous and heartfelt. So if you're up for adopting a new roguelike, then this might be worth taking a look at.
]]>I spent some time this weekend wallowing happily in Back 4 Blood, the co-op zombie smasher positioned as a "spiritual successor" to Left 4 Dead. Had a great time; got covered in blood. Genuinely, I favour melee quite a lot, and one of the people I played with kept saying "You are covered in so much blood!" in a tone I took to be one of admiration.
Back 4 Blood does have a whole rich story (including that the Ridden are technically mutants and not zombies, but potayto, potarto. There's also some lovely set dressing, particularly in safe houses. One is a flat that has a calendar with a picture of a snapping turtle. Ed really liked that. My favourite bits, though, are the graffiti and post-it notes.
]]>Managing the climate is usually an afterthought in colony building games, if it's included at all. It tends to be a non-issue until the game’s basically over, and its effects are usually underwhelming.
Imagine Earth isn't entirely about the environment. And it needn’t be, given that you're working for a business colonising one of countless worlds. Who cares if you destroy a planet when you can easily skip over to another one? You can do that. You can be pretty rapacious. But I find it more fun to be the oceanic aliens, because they start out with lots of seabase technology, so when your rivals accidentally melt the ice caps you can mostly just laugh at them.
]]>I am not a train person. I like travelling on trains. Or at least I would, if I was rich, or lived in a country where all train companies weren't contemptible thieves actively draining the blood of society. But games about trains always passed me by. Not even the classics of the genre nor acclaimed descendants like openTTD have ever grabbed me.
So I started playing NIMBY Rails almost as a joke. Then I coughed, and two hours had passed. It is dangerously engrossing.
]]>Going Medieval will be huge. I had an eye on it, but didn't expect it to land quite so well as it already has, and now that I've had time to try it out, hoboy. What a delight.
It is, in a word, the leading contender for the next Rimworld. I try not to be so reductive, but denying Rimworld's influence here is pointless. It has a less colourful setting but aside from that it copies pretty much everything. And that’s okay.
]]>Ever since I reminisced about Screamer, I've been on a car game kick. By this I mean that I gave WRC 9 a go, then swiftly rage quit as I realised I wasn't cut out for "Dark Souls on gravel". So ever since that fateful night, I've fled to YouTube, where I now watch people play rally games beautifully. And I can't seem to stop.
]]>Monster Hunter Rise isn't due to arrive on PC until early next year, but I've been playing the Switch version over the last week after getting the game for my birthday - and I actually can't stop. Over the last couple of weeks, I've been slicing up its oversized lizards with my beloved Dual Blades like nobody's business, gutting their scales, pelts, fangs and goodness knows what else to make even stronger pairs of dino pants so I can get back out there and take on ever-larger beasties and make ever more fashionable trousers. It's a familiar rhythm to Monster Hunter games of yore, but there's something about Rise that's kept me hooked far longer than my jaunts in previous MonHan games, including PC mega hit Monster Hunter: World. And I think it's partly down to my new dog friends, the Palamutes.
]]>I haven't played a car game in over a decade. Not out of spite, or because of some bizarre gaming diet where I am not allowed to consume anything with four wheels, but it's just that everything nowadays is too realistic, or trying too hard to be unrealistic. I desire a car game that slots nicely in-between the two without fanfare. A simple, unceremonious racing game is what I'm after; Screamer. That game is Screamer. A third one. It's just, would I actually like it?
]]>There was a time when actual arguments were had over the validity of "real time with pause" as a design choice. A foolish time we ought not to revisit. I bring it up because I've been playing Fates Of Ort, a light-hearted action RPG that's more like "pause with real time".
Everything is frozen in time until you move, swing a sword, or cast a spell, replacing the usual reflex-based clickfest with a measured pace. Combined with its intriguing magic system, it lets you combine conditions and spell effects without becoming a test of how many button sequences you've memorised. There's even a hint of bullet hell, an experience I evidently enjoy more (ie: at all) when I can pause, and a tiny pinch of Dark Souls in its respawning/healing system. It's fun stuff.
]]>This weekend I have been playing and absolutely loving Laybrinth City: Pierre The Maze Detective. It's an animated, interactive puzzle game that's sort of a cross between Where's Wally and Hidden Folks. In it, you (Pierre, the Maze Detective) must hunt down the mysterious Mr. X, who has stolen the Maze Stone from the local museum and is using it to turn everything into a maze. This is causing no small amount of havok.
It's a beautiful game, with the mazes growing in complexity and size as you go. You start off in the museum, where the exibits have come to life. The city streets are overrun with a festival. Later you enter a magical forest, and run around the giant trees. There's also a magical city-castle, where the statues have come to life and are rebelling against being statues. It is - perish the word - absolutely charming, and full of details. But after playing for a few hours, I realised it didn't remind me as much of Where's Wally as it did of the Usborne Puzzle Adventures.
]]>Tanks are usually a boring, one note interruption to the exciting infantry shootytimes I was having.
Armoured Commander II, however, is fun. How dare it.
]]>There was a moment over the E3 weekend where Alice0 pointed out that a lot of people are remaking Left 4 Dead - apart from Valve. I have mentioned this before, but playing L4D2 accounted for about 60% of my time at university. I have a tattoo of the safe house symbol on my ribs (it is terrible).
The Left 4 Dead formula is simple on paper - small team of co-op players vs monster horde, getting from point A to point B with potential incidental side objectives on the way - but is tough to nail. You need to get the mix right. And this year's E3 has revealed a lot of people are rolling up their sleeves to have a go. Let's have a look.
]]>Double Fine's most treasured son (apart from Jack Black, who is not a real man and was obviously designed by a committee of wacky game developers some time in the late 90s) is undoubtedly Raz, protagonist of their 2005 cult hit Psychonauts.
Psychonauts is classic Double Fine. It's a 3D platformer with some puzzley bits that sees Raz training to be a psychonaut at a secret government facility disguised as a children's summer camp by having adventures that take place inside people's subconscious brains. This premise, you will note, is a cracker, even if not that many people thought so at the time. It's become more popular in recent years, though, and every so often I go back and give it a look, most recently being this weekend. So let me be the latest in a long line of people to say, "Blimey, it's still a bit good, isn't it?"
]]>Despite being a self-professed wimp when it comes to horror games, it takes a fair amount to properly rattle me when I'm actually playing them. I tend to get more stressed than frightened when playing games like Resident Evil, and the only time I've ever been properly scared and actually screamed in my seat was when I was playing P.T, Kojima's short teaser game on PS4 for the now cancelled Silent Hills. I had the lights on, Matthew by my side, and yet when we turned a corner in that creepy, looping corridor house, a ghost suddenly rushed us out of nowhere. Both of us yelled in terror at the sight of it, and it took ages for us to calm down and work up the courage to carry on.
It's not like I've been chasing that feeling in the intervening years (I am, after all, an officially certified wimp), but playing Resident Evil Village's House Beneviento section this week put me right back in that tiny London flat where we both screamed ourselves silly. It's proper nightmare fuel that place, and of course I had the good foresight to play it just before I was about to go to bed. Well done, Katharine, bravo.
]]>Every now and again, I think about Dishonored 2 and how good it is. I don't play it, I just observe it in my head like a photo album. I flick through my memories and shake my head in disbelief at how ingenious its levels are. I also take a moment to remember Karnaca, this beautiful port city nestled in the mountains and surrounded by forest.
I just wish I could explore more of Karnaca. I want to break free of the game's constraints and just wander into the hills, or potter around the mountains. This isn't a criticism, it's more of a compliment I think. That Arkane crafted a world I hunger for, but I probably won't ever get to explore fully. All I can do is bash my character against invisible walls and wail in agony.
]]>I've been thinking a lot about video game recommendations recently. Specifically, things like, "What game would you recommend to someone who's never played a video game before?" and, "What kind of games would you recommend to people who read a lot but don't necessarily play games very much?" My answer to both questions would probably be What Remains Of Edith Finch in the first instance, mostly because it has a really good story and its controls aren't too intimidating. But this week I realised I rarely think about the inverse of that last question: "What books would you recommend to people who play lots of video games but don't have much time for reading?"
Happily, I now have two solid answers, and they both come from the highly talented Stuart Turton: "The Seven Deaths Of Evelyn Hardcastle" for fans of Outer Wilds, The Sexy Brutale and Agatha Christie-style murder mysteries, and The Devil In The Dark Water for The Return Of The Obra Dinn likers.
]]>I developed this new allergic reaction this year, namely that my eyes feel like they're being blowtorched if I don't plop some miracle liquid into them regularly. They water and itch and I spend a lot of time blinking, which sort of feels like how a rusty shop grate sounds as it lowers.
I realised quite quickly into my playthrough of Before Your Eyes that I'd forgotten to administer the holy water. And in a game where time skips forward as you blink in real life, I thought I'd royally messed things up. But it turns out that having an allergy actually enhanced the experience.
]]>After I lived and breathed NieR Replicant for review, I looked back on my play time with a mixture of fondness and pain. The payoff of the fifth and final ending was worth the effort, but good lord was it a test of resolve. It was brilliance nestled in multiple layers of gift wrap, and I was happy to call it a day once I'd seen the final (x5) credits.
But one thing I haven't stopped thinking about is the menu sounds. NieR Replicant has excellent noises for its start menu and inventory management, both of which aided that sense of being transported to another world of monsters and emotion.
]]>Okami celebrated its 15th anniversary this week, and it got me thinking back to a series of articles I wrote about ten years ago (lawd) about the game's underlying myths and folktales, back when I was all young and pretentious and used phrases like "literary allusion" in posts with a straight face. I know better now (hopefully), but I still look back on that series fondly, and I'd like to share some of those stories here today in honour of the birthday of our favourite sun goddess. You might be surprised just how many characters are drawn from Japanese mythology, because lemme tell ya, Okami pretty much did the whole Wolf Among Us fairytale-characters-all-living-together schtick waaaay before old Bigby was even a speck in Telltale's eye.
]]>“News from the emperor, my liege”, cringes the chancellor, as he loiters awkwardly before the door of his lordship’s privy. But the only answer he gets is the rhythmic thump of buttocks on wood: once again, the Duke is having intercourse. The chancellor is used to this sound, of course. It is the furtive drumbeat which underscores courtly life in this game of Crusader Kings 3, beneath the faint and ever-present cacophony of the War. And it is distinctly uncomfortable to listen to.
]]>Recently I have been hoofing through Mass Effect Andromeda in my spare time. Like, properly hoofing - 10 hours at a time, like I'm back to being an adolescent with nothing to do except play video games and eat huge quantities of the short-lived early-noughties crisp spinoff Wotsits Wafflers. If anyone knows where I can source Wafflers, please get in touch.
Much like the Wafflers, Andromeda is probably not quite as good as I remember, but I still don't think it's bad. And actually, looking at it with fresh eyes, there's a lot in there that shows how really nearly almost great it is. In fact, I think it would have been much improved with the addition of more trees.
]]>Whenever I have a chunk of holiday sitting in front of me, the possibilities seem endless. Maybe I'll finally play Cyberpunk 2077 now it's been properly patched, I think. But maybe I should also finally finish Nier: Automata in preparation for when Replicant comes out at the end of the month. There are also those dozen odd indie games I've got piled up, too. Narita Boy, the final bit of Record Of Lodoss War: Deelit In Wonder Labyrinth, Signs Of The Sojourner and goodness knows what else. "I could probably do a bit of each!" I say optimistically. In the end, though, my grand plans for playing loads of games never really materialises. I might be able to manage it if I literally play games every second I'm awake from morning til night, but that's not very relaxing now, is it?
In the end, after an impromptu viewing of the 90s western film Tombstone, I decided to opt for the very manageable mission chunks of Desperados 3 as my big Easter holiday project, which is the latest rootin' tootin' real-time tactics game from the Shadow Tactics devs, Mimimi Productions. I'd played the opening few missions back when it came out last summer, but its long, sprawling maps gradually demanded more time and dedication than I was able to give them. I like to do entire missions in one go, you see, and do them stealthily, which often takes even longer because I'm pretty bad at being sneaky - as my five hours doing a complete ghost run of Dishonored 2's Clockwork Mansion level will attest. Now, though, I had entire afternoons to luxuriate in its detailed, densely packed playgrounds of trigger happy cowboys, and goodness, what an astonishingly satisfying and generous game it is.
]]>It is the year 980AD, in a very odd game of Crusader Kings 3, and under the brassy gloom of a midwinter afternoon, Europe holds its breath. For one hundred and fourteen years now, the continent’s fortunes have been driven by the whims of a single, anvil-sized heart. But today, in a sprawling fortress-chapel beside the Thames, that monstrous drum is striking its final, furious beats.
The last of the succession parchments have been signed. The last threats have been sent to the East. In the great hall, beneath the alabaster snarls of Zeus and Demeter, a marsh of sick cools from the near-apocalyptic revels of the emperor’s farewell feast. And now, in the imperial bedchamber, with a wheeze like a ruptured bouncy castle being leaned on by thirty builders, the soul of a god escapes its prison of flesh at last.
]]>I think we can generally agree that one of the main functions of video games is wish fulfillment. They let you believe you might not only be a powerful and competent person, but also the most powerful and competent person in the universe (and if that is not the case, why do Bethesda games even exist?). And, that being the case, survival games occupy a strange twilight world for me. I really wish I was good at them, because I really like the idea of most survival games.
I can barely survive my actual life when that includes sitting in a nice warm flat eating roasted, salted cashews from a bag that was sealed by a huge and complex robot the size of a warehouse, that was created specifically for the bagging and sealing of roasted, salted cashews. So pretending that I would, if I got stranded on an island or survived an apocalypse, be at all capable of doing anything other than lie down and wait for death to come to me is pure power fantasy. Except, I am very bad at most survival games.
]]>Take one look at Studio Koba's retro platformer Narita Boy and you could easily mistake it for a new kind of Tron game. It's awash with neon blues and rainbow-coloured light refractions, and the edges of the screen even flicker and bend like you're playing it on a CRT television. But this is no mere nostalgic landgrab for those of us who grew up in the 80s and 90s. Narita Boy's retro roots run deep. It's a game that's as much about old tech as it is indebted to it, and anyone who's ever tinkered about with their PC and still reminisces about the 2D action side-scrollers of their youth will find a lot to love here.
]]>The Vatican City, 1146 AD, and 90 years into a game of Crusader Kings III. As the doors of the conclave chamber are sealed, a ring of hangdog cardinals stare miserably at each other in the sudden gloom. It is time, once again, to choose a new Pope. Once, this would have been a gathering seething with the ambitions of powerful men. Now, it is a ritual of pure misery, attended by yokels who have barely even heard of Christ. They are all that is left.
Without a word, each of the defeated clerics step forwards to rummage in a velvet sack. Tokens rattle beneath their hands. When the sack is empty, the cardinals open their fists, and the chapel fills with murmured prayers of relief. Most of these men will live another year. But after the prayers subside, a lone sob continues to echo in the chamber. These are the tears of Pope Leo XXXVI, who has drawn the black token. And he weeps, for he will soon meet his God.
]]>I respect Outriders, a looter shooter that pushes precisely zero boundaries. In fact, it pushes them backwards. It says, "See all these boundaries?", then points to scuffed copies of Gears Of War for the Xbox 360 and the original Destiny, exclaims "Well get a load of this!", and slaps the two together.
Having played the demo last night with a couple of friends, I can confirm that I like this reverse direction the devs have taken. I had an okay time. And I was totally okay with that. Not everything needs to be brilliant nowadays, sheesh.
]]>New smash-hit Viking sensation Valheim is definitely not my kind of game, reader. It is a survival game, a genre I don't generally enjoy because tending to the needs of the pork sack my thoughts are locked in is tedious enough in real life, so I definitely don't want to do it in my virtual down time. I mean, I already have to do it in my down time anyway, and worrying that my viking is cold while also worrying that my actual toes are cold seems a dangerous thing to do.
It's also a game you are encouraged to play with other people, and I am deeply suspicious of other people. So on the face of it, Valheim does not have much to offer me. But I'll tell you this much: I think it looks amazing.
]]>As you may have seen earlier this week, I spent much of my downtime this month reading the official novelisation of Hideo Kojima's courier hiking sim Death Stranding. It was quite a strange experience, if only because so much of what I loved about the game wasn't present in the novels at all. The landscape you spend so much time analysing and assessing in Death Stranding is barely mentioned over the course of the books, and even the deadly BTs get surprisingly little air time for how often they seem to get in your way. But the strangest thing of all was how it depicted Sam's relationship with his jar baby BB, and it made me realise that all the weird, extraneous mess in its overall design is actually pretty darn important when it comes to establishing some of its later story reveals. I love a good game story as much as the next person, but when it's not supported by gameplay, something definitely comes a cropper.
]]>Every year when a new update for World Of Warcraft gets announced, or Final Fantasy XIV reveals some mad collaboration with NieR: Automata, I can't help but be sucked in again. Almost. I hover my mouse over purchase, but I can never bring myself to click.
Deep down, I know I don't like MMORPGs anymore. But for some reason I still believe that maybe, just maybe, I actually do. That this particular expansion where orcs fight in a shadow realm, or I can strut about in a new cross-promotional costume, will be like coming home after many years lost in the wilderness.
]]>I like little things. I mean, I like big things, obviously, but I also like tiny models almost as much. I had a dolls house when I was little and my favourite thing was the kitchen, because it had tiny beans and carrots in tiny pans of water, and tiny bottles of milk and loaves of bread, and even a tiny mouse because my dolls had terrible tiny hygeine, I guess.
So I love games that feel like minatures, like Bad North, which I love for how small everything is, including the sound design for your tiny soldiers' little marching feetsies. And so I love the little almost-alive dioramas of Tiny Lands.
]]>Reader, I have a confession. I have never played an early access game. I don't have a good reason for it. I've just never felt tempted to jump into a game before it's finished. Heck, I don't even buy episodic games before they're done, as I much prefer to wolf things down in one go than suffer the long wait until the next instalment. Until now, that is. Last week, I finally bit the bullet and bought Deedlit In Wonder Labyrinth, an early access Castlevania-like by tiny Japanese studios Team Ladybug and Why So Serious? that's based on the Record Of Lodoss War anime. You might recognise the former developer as the maker of Touhou Luna Nights, and Deedlit has a very similar vibe. It's a gorgeous homage to the 2D Castlevania and Metroid games of yore, while also incorporating some shump-elements to give it some extra zing. And it's properly great.
]]>There's this reality TV show in the UK called "I'm A Celebrity...Get Me Out Of Here!". The premise is simple: a bunch of 'celebrities' are flown to a camp in the Australian outback (last year it took place in a castle in Wales because covid, innit), they're subjected to trials which involve necking mealworms, and the public votes for their favourites.
Honestly, it's a banger. And on one of my daily walks, I came to the realisation that one particular moment from last year's show lined up nicely with my thoughts on Elwynn Forest in World Of Warcraft. Let me explain…
]]>Every game and their dog seems to be getting a TV show these days. Just this week Crystal Dynamics announced a new Tomb Raider anime that will continue the reboot trilogy, but last year brought us news that Fallout's getting one too, as is Disco Elysium - and The Witcher, of course, already has one (which we've dissected in great detail). Assassin's Creed is in Netflix's sights as well, but having spent a good 100-odd hours in Assassin's Creed Valhalla recently, there is only one possible form an Assassin's Creed TV show should take: a time-travelling adventure show that stars Eivor, Kassandra and Evie Frye, because let's face it, they're the best protagonists the series has and together I know they'd sort the Templars right out. Let me explain.
]]>I'm still in the state of mind that you get over the Christmas break, where you see a movie that's playing on TV in the middle of the day, and think "Eh, sure, I'd watch all of Miss Congeniality right now", as you eat the last of the stale cheese and crackers. Which is how I ended up watching Jackass: The Movie this weekend.
It's almost more of a cultural artefact than it is a film. Arguably, when your child asks you "Papa/mama, what were the early 2000s like?" you could do worse than showing them Jackass, with no further explanation. And from this I became very interested in the history of Jackass, and discovered that there was a PS2 era video game called Jackass: The Game.
]]>I remember being vaguely horrified when I first heard about Doom Eternal's meat hook. It's one of the new features id Software added to the series' classic Super Shotgun (aka, the best video game weapon of all time), and as its name might imply, you can use it to grapple toward enemies in order to get up close and personal with their soon to be squelched demon flesh. At the time, I thought, "But how can you improve on the already perfect Super Shotgun?" A lot, it turns out. Let me count the ways.
]]>Ah, the days of CD-ROMS... They were good, weren't they? My PC hasn't had a CD-ROM drive for several years now, but as a staunch lover of physical media, I just can't bring myself to chuck them out. Instead, most of the ones I still own have been buried deep in the recesses of the bags, boxes and drawers of my home office somewhere, rarely seeing the light of day and, in all honesty, might as well be in the bin for all the good they're currently doing.
But a couple of weeks ago, I was searching for a USB cable. Not any USB cable, I might add. The super long one I used for my Oculus Quest. I needed it to test the Oculus Quest 2, you see, but I couldn't for the life of my remember where I'd stashed it. I ended up turning my entire office upside down to look for it. Turns out it was in the spare room with all my other bits of tech (go figure), but the upshot was I found these glorious Half-Life beauties that my brothers used to own.
]]>This weekend for N7 day, it was revealed that not only are we getting a remaster of the original Mass Effect Trilogy, but also a brand new Mass Effect game! We should take a moment here to acknowledge that Imogen is apparently able to will news into existence. Send her your requests for sequel announcements.
Imogen has also already analysed the images to build a compelling argument that this will be set after Mass Effect: Andromeda, fourth and most maligned entry in the series. It makes sense: bring out a remaster of the ones everyone loved to cleanse the memory of Andromeda, the one a lot of people hated. That being said, I would also like to remind you all at this early juncture that Andromeda wasn't even that bad.
]]>Alright so I played and finished the second game in The Dark Pictures Anthology, Little Hope, this weekend. I did a spoiler-free review of it, if you are interested. But I would very much like to discuss a lot of very spoiler-heavy things, which is what this post is going to be.
See, like the other interactive horror stories Supermassive have made, Little Hope has a twist. And the twist left me with a few, very specific questions. I am going to discuss those questions in this supporter post, but that means you should only venture past the cut if you either do not care about spoilers, or have already played the game and can help me tease through them.
]]>When I first joined RPS two(!) years(!!) ago, one of the very first things I wrote about was RB: Axolotl, a visual novel about a bunch of axolotls living in different corners of a tank and having very intense, obsessive relationships with each other. At the time it was just a demo, but now it's a full game. I'm still playing my way through it, but indications after several hours so far are that the completed RB: Axolotl is weirder and darker than I could ever have imagined from the demo. This isn't a bad thing, to be clear.
I came to RB: Axolotl because I love and fear axolotls in equal measure. They are extremely cute and interesting but also unholy horrors of evolution that should not be. I stayed because the game had a similar thematic tension: initially it is a cutesy VN about a pink axolotl named Axy, who is trying to show off for the girl axolotl he likes. But then you meet the other axolotls in the tank. You encounter a mysterious external entity, RB (which stands for Rock Bottom). RB: Axolotl is, essentially, a perfect example of what I find so fascinating and worthwhile about visual novels.
]]>Every few months the internet gets back around to the "shhh let people enjoy things" phase of its ever-repeating cycle. I agree that there is no need to make fun of someone for enjoying a thing. But sometimes, when I see people deploying "let people enjoy things", I want to respond "let people not enjoy things". If I express a negative opinion or critique about some bit of pop culture ephemera, or a book or film that you love, it is not immediately a moral judgement on you for liking the thing. There is at least one exception, however, where I definitely am, and that is if I am talking about Ready Player One, which I think is probably the worst thing to ever be visited upon humanity in the history of all mankind.
I'm prepared to admit that my hatred of RP1 is pretty irrational, by which I mean I have perfectly rational and explicable reasons for thinking it is rubbish, but the speed at which I go from at rest to standing on my feet yelling about how much I hate it whenever it is mentioned is... intense. Because, and I will freely admit this also, I am very jealous.
]]>I haven’t been back to Japan in a long, long time. As a family we used to visit my grandparents' house quite often when I was small, and I am insufferably nostalgic about it. This was one of the last old school, traditional Japanese buildings in Yokohama, one with sliding doors embellished with beautiful murals of mountains on them, and a quiet shrine room where you couldn’t hear anything but the creak of wood.
Rainy Season by Inasa Fujio sees you take control of a Japanese boy reliving a childhood memory of a rainy day in his grandparents’ home. It’s a cozy, wistful experience which brought back some wonderful memories of times past, but also reinvigorated my desire to really explore Japan now I’m much older. You see, in Rainy Season there’s this locked front gate which refuses to open no matter how hard I rattle it.
]]>It's been over two weeks since Kojima's mad courier sim Death Stranding came out on PC, but during that time I've only just about managed to make it across Lake Knot to the game's second big area.
It didn't help that, once I'd arrived at the big port town and finished showering its first boss monster with a torrent of poop grenades, I decided to go all the way back across its first bit of map to finish up some extra delivery quests. But a big part of why it's taken me so long to get to the other side of Lake Knot is that I can't stop taking pictures with Death Stranding's excellent photo mode.
]]>Red Dead Redemption 2 may be a good Animal Crossing substitute for people suffering from AC-FOMO at the moment, but I'd argue that the best PC stand-in for Nintendo's cozy life sim is Adamgryu's A Short Hike, which you can currently get on the cheap as part of Itch's stupidly good value Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality.
Indeed, it made the long wait until Animal Crossing: New Horizons that bit shorter when I gorged myself on it over the Christmas holidays last year, and I often find myself returning to it even now. Despite being infinitely smaller in stature than Animal Crossing, my frequent dips into this cosy island jaunt became a bit like opening a tin of Cadbury Heroes, promising myself I'd have just the one and then an hour later finding the entire box had mysteriously disappeared in a puff of plastic wrappers. I just couldn't get enough of it. So if you, too, are feeling hungry for some Animal Crossing, why not ease that growling stomach with a little Short Hike. I promise it will do wonders for your digestive system.
]]>It's been a long time since I've been excited by a video game cutscene. I've never been the type of person who itches to hit the skip button whenever I get pulled into a pre-rendered sequence, but I do often find them to be a rather passive experience and I'm usually quite glad when they finally come to an end. In fact, I think the last time I was properly wowed by a cutscene was when I played Final Fantasy VIII back when I was all of 11-years-old. Obviously, the jump in quality from blocky old Squall to its fully 3D rendered action sequences was more than enough to get my pulse racing back then, but even recent Final Fantasy games have failed to elicit the same kind of reaction.
Until, that is, Final Fantasy VII Remake, because holy moly does this game have incredible cutscenes. I actually let out a genuine GASP at one point, and more than a couple of "CORs" and "OOOOFs" too, which is probably the strongest reaction I've had to an in-game cutscene for, well, practically 20 years.
]]>There is a moment toward the end of Final Fantasy VII Remake where you arguably have to make one of the most important choices in the entire game. Do you take the lift to go and save your friend Aerith on the top floor of the Shinra building, or do you take the stairs? I think I'd probably die if I had to climb 59 flights of stairs in one go, but trust me, friends, the stairs are the way to go, because this is legit one of the best game scenes you'll ever witness in your entire life.
]]>One of the best games I played last year wasn’t even a game, but a book. Murder in the Crooked House is a Japanese murder mystery by Soji Shimada, often referred to as the ‘God of Mystery’. As nicknames go, that’s pretty enviable. As books go, his are fairly interactive, clearly acknowledging that a game is being played between him and you. There always comes a point in his stories where he issues the ‘Challenge to the reader’, breaking the fourth wall with a simple message: ‘The clues are all there. Can you solve the case?’ The answer, in my case, is inevitably no.
]]>Steam's soundtrack sale is nearly over, but as the resident soundtrack fanatic here at RPS, I thought it was only right and proper to take some time out and celebrate some of my favourite tracks and compilations. After all, there are plenty of bangers in there right now, and it would be a shame to miss out on these crackin' tunes while they're going cheap. So come, put on your headphones, turn up your speakers and prepare yourself for an aural assault on the senses.
]]>When Supergiant Games started to make Hades, their Roguelike action-RPG, they had plenty of experience making narrative games. Across Bastion, Transistor and Pyre, they’d found they were pretty good at telling stories. But in a Roguelike? And what’s that? They intended to put Hades in Early Access? Could they ever fit with the kind of rich characterisation and storytelling that made Supergiant’s name?
“We were really curious to see if narrative could fit into an Early Access experience,” writer and designer Greg Kasavin tells me. “And it turns out, it immensely benefits from it.” I have to agree. Hades’ Sisyphean-twitch-action, in which you take repeated runs through the Underworld in an attempt to escape your hellish dad, is brought to life by a setting within the rancorous interplays between the gods of Greek mythology, and dynamic story design which responds to your progress.
]]>Ever since I played the moreish reverse tower defence delights of Necronator: Dead Wrong at EGX 2019, I've been keeping a watchful eye on Indonesian developer-publisher Toge Productions to see what else they've got in their surprisingly eclectic line-up of games coming out over the next few months. I'm really looking forward to their chill, coffee-making visual novel Coffee Talk, for instance, and after playing their recently-released prologue demo for Mojiken Studio's upcoming slice of life adventure game, A Space For The Unbound, I'll be adding that one to my list as well.
It's a charming pixel art adventure game set in rural Indonesia in the late 90s, and it follows the story of a boy called Atma and his young friend Nirmala. At the beginning of the demo, they're trying to finish writing a story together, but by the end of it Atma will have "space-dived" (space dove?) inside the minds of both Nirmala and a sleepy civil defence officer guarding a puzzle-critical ladder, petted some cats, acquired a mix-tape of keroncong music, and escaped the wrath of Nirmala's angry dad. It's a lot to pack in to 20 minutes, so come and let me tell you more about it. Did I mention it had very good cats?
]]>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.
]]>Where does Suda51 get a drink after work? Sounds like the beginning of a (baffling) joke, is actually the pitch of Toco Toco, a series of short documentaries that follow Japanese creators on a tour of their favourite places. Some episodes are career retrospectives told through old haunts; others are just Trip Advisor, but with extra clips of fighting games. They are all beautifully shot and make me want to leap in the screen and start hanging out.
Personally, if I was a famous anything I don’t know if I’d tell the general public where I’m most likely to be found. What if some maniac turns up, or it becomes another pilgrimage site for western fanboys to come and ruin (see: the retro videogame stores of Akihabara). No, despite the generous invitation, I think I'll sit back, whack the video up to full screen and just pretend that I’m mates the guy who made Nier Automata for a couple of minutes.
]]>Every game of Into the Breach tasks you with just about the biggest, most noble mission there is: save the world, this tiny watery globe we call home, from giant bug attacks, over and over again. But it also offers a smaller, more personal mission that's a little easier to get your head round: save one specific person. At the end of a game - success or failure - you get the option to bring one of your surviving pilots over into a new timeline. I always pick Isaac.
]]>You may have noticed I've written a fair few words about Nvidia's new RTX 2060 this week. It's a good graphics card and I like it a lot. If it had existed three years ago when I wanted to get Matthew a graphics card for Christmas that could play The Witcher III at 60fps at 1440p on max settings, I probably would have bought it instead of the GTX 1070 I ended up getting instead because it seemed like the best compromise at the time.
Of course, the only way to tell if a graphics card is any good is to play some games with it. Specifically, the same three-odd minutes of said games over and over and over again so you end up with a uniform set of data you can use to compare and contrast across a wide variety of cards, resolutions and graphics settings. And let me tell you, you start to notice some really odd things when you've played the same 90 seconds for the 1800th time in a row.
]]>Every Sunday, we reach deep into Rock, Paper, Shotgun's 142-year history to pull out one of the best moments from the archive. This week, Quintin's tale of Planetside heroism, originally published September 2008.
Planetside, then. Do I have any veterans in the audience? At ease, gentlemen.
It might not have dredged up the subscribers Sony were hoping for, and you personally might have found it a disappointment, a bully, a bastard, or most unforgivably, a bore. The developers were perhaps overambitious, and in any case they managed to screw up both on paper and in practice. But their game has achieved one beautiful thing, and that's the creation of the same invisible veterans' club that results from a real life war. If you played Planetside you might have already encountered this phenomenon: the mutual respect that instantly exists once you find out someone's an ex-Planetside player. Since I can't think of a name for this whole process, I'm going to dub it "I WAS THERE, MAN" syndrome.
]]>Every Sunday, we reach deep into Rock, Paper, Shotgun's 142-year history to pull out one of the best moments from the archive. This week, part one of Quintin's Mount & Blade diary, originally published May 2011.
I've been meaning to take a stab at free-form medieval RPG series Mount & Blade for years. YEARS. So it thrills me to say that I'm currently having an incredible time with Mount & Blade: With Fire & Sword, the latest game in the series which came out last week.
Join me for the adventures of Captain Smith, the worst mercenary leader to ever roam Eastern Europe.
]]>Every Sunday, we reach deep into Rock, Paper, Shotgun's 142-year history to pull out one of the best moments from the archive. This week, Kieron's look at his experiences working on Deus Ex mod Cassandra Project, originally written for PC Format and published on these pages with revisions in September 2008.
The decision to do a mod is the first step. It’s also, by far, the easiest. From then on, you’re entering a painful world of hurting to strive to create something that, in all possibility, will never be finished or be completely ignored by the community. These are general rules that I’ve learned from my own time theoretically being in a mod team. I felt the pain so, ideally, you shouldn’t have to. Or rather unnecessary pain – no matter what you do, you're going to carry your own scars.
]]>Every Sunday, we reach deep into Rock, Paper, Shotgun's 142-year history to pull out one of the best moments from the archive. This week, Quintin's brush with one of gaming's most fearsome map secrets, originally published March 31st, 2010.
Strangest game I ever played?
Well, okay.
It started when we met in the underpass at dawn. The memory's hazy now but I remember it was the underpass, and I remember it was dawn, because it was always dawn in AHL_5am.
]]>Every Sunday, we reach deep into Rock, Paper, Shotgun's 141-year history to pull out one of the best moments from the archive. This week, Alec marries a zombie and gets into a fight in a zombie universe, from this piece first published October 2nd, 2008.
So I gazed up at the mountain of games about guns due this Autumn, and I sighed a little. Did I burn myself out on all those FPSes last year? Are, heaven forfend, my baser instincts now somehow in check? I will play Far Cry 2 and Dead Space and Fallout 3, but right now they're not what appeal. I made it about 15 minutes into Crysis Warhead before the oh-this-again tedium hit, and I blame myself more than I do the game for that. I wanted something a little different, something I could sink into on more than a purely visceral level, but I didn't know what.
Turns out it was King's Bounty: The Legend, the RPG-strategy remake/sequel from some of the good (mad) folks behind Space Rangers 2. I'm not going to review it or even describe it here. Instead, I'm going to tell two stories that aptly demonstrate the insanity-ingenuity of the thing.
]]>Every Sunday, we reach deep into Rock, Paper, Shotgun's 141-year history to pull out one of the best moments from the archive. This week, we re-visit Kieron's Dark Futures series, which spoke to the leaders of the immersive sim. This is part five, an essay written by Clint Hocking.
Clint Hocking's career started with sending his resume into Ubisoft Monreal "on a lark". Six week's later, he's working on the original Splinter Cell, ending up as a designer/scriptwriter. After its enormous success, he rose to the position of Creative Director on Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory and Far Cry 2 before leaving this year to chase new horizons. Away from his game design, he's a prolific essayist on his own blog. And in keeping in that, rather than a traditional interview, Clint has wrote us an essay...
]]>Every Sunday, we reach deep into Rock, Paper, Shotgun's 141-year history to pull out one of the best moments from the archive. This week, Alec's 2007 celebration of the real meaning of Aliens, in (the original) Aliens versus Predator.
Like every good geek, I have a favourite gaming moment. It's in Aliens Versus Predator, a vintage but oft-forgotten first-person shooter that gets mentioned by my games-hack peers about as often as the Pope says "are you sure this hat makes God happy?"
]]>Every Sunday, we reach deep into Rock, Paper, Shotgun's 141-year history to pull out one of the best moments from the archive. This week, Alec's 2009 retrospective of Microsoft oddity Skifree.
Why? Why does he want to eat me? What did I ever do to him?
I'm just skiing, man. I'm not a threat to him or his people. I can't believe I taste that great, underneath this garish windcheater and plastic boots. I'm certainly not going to replace all the calories he spends chasing me down a frozen mountain slope at about 90mph. He wants to eat me because he's just a massive bastard. There's no other possible explanation.
]]>Every Sunday, we reach deep into Rock, Paper, Shotgun's 141-year history to pull out one of the best moments from the archive. This week, Adam's 2012 article singing the praises of videogame cities which are more than mere reconstruction, but are built from the bricks and mortar of ideas.
I've been visiting various cities recently, which always fill me with confusion and wonder, then Dishonored made me think about how much I miss Looking Glass. Put the two together and this happens. Join me in a meandering word-search for cohesion and theme in the use of the city across Thief, and the selected works of Rockstar and Charles Dickens. Be warned, there are spoilers for all three Thief games.
]]>Every Sunday, we reach deep into Rock, Paper, Shotgun's 141-year history to pull out one of the best moments from the archive. This week, Tim Stone's piece on grognard guilt, originally published in 2011.
No battle reportage this week. Rather than confuse you with another tale of how Easy Company went east then north a bit then left a bit while Baker Company went west then south then right a bit, I thought I'd try to get to the bottom of a feeling that has gnawed at the edges of my wargaming pleasure for the best part of 30 years. That feeling could be described as unease, or perhaps, disquiet. At a stretch you might even call it guilt.
]]>Every Sunday, we reach deep into Rock, Paper, Shotgun's 141-year history to pull out one of the best moments from the archive. This week, Adam's celebration of videogame cartography, from cloth maps to digital records of procedural worlds. This article was first published in 2011.
Some of my earliest memories of gaming are not of the games themselves but of the things that came bundled in the box with them. Whether it was a hefty manual, full of lore and encyclopaedic listings, or a little extra something. My games don't even come in boxes anymore. Recently, I've been thinking about the shelves in the house where I grew up, full of big cardboard slabs with none of this DVD case finery. I've been remembering the excitement of opening the box on the bus, surreptitiously because my parents always thought I'd lose the manual or disks before we reached home. And I've been thinking about what else I sometimes found inside.
]]>Every Sunday, we reach deep into Rock, Paper, Shotgun's 141-year history to pull out one of the best moments from the archive. This week, Adam explores his own gaming history to understand why he plays and why he writes.
This is my first week back from a holiday, during which time I barely looked at an internet, let alone wrote on one. I didn't play any games either, unless you consider freezing to death on a remote Welsh hillside to be some sort of game. As is often the case, not doing something for five minutes has made me think about why I do it in the first place. Why, of all the wonderful and fascinating things that exist, do I spend so much time thinking and writing about games?
]]>Every Sunday, we reach deep into Rock, Paper, Shotgun's 141-year history to pull out one of the best moments from the archive. This week, we revisit August 4th 2011 to find John and Kieron bickering about influential platformer Limbo.
Having played and reviewed Limbo, John found himself at the end of Kieron's (particularly sweary) disagreement gun, and as is always the case the two of them argued about it. An argument that can only be shared with the world. Whose side are you on? FIGHT! (This contains significant spoilers, folks.)
]]>Every Sunday, we reach deep into Rock, Paper, Shotgun's 141-year history to pull out one of the best moments from the archive. This week, since the Kickstarter for the remake ends in two days, part one of Quinns celebration and dismantling of Pathologic. This post was originally published on April 10, 2008.
Okay.
...okay.
I'm going to explain, right now, why a Russian FPS/RPG called Pathologic is the single best and most important game that you've never played.
]]>Every Sunday, we reach deep into Rock, Paper, Shotgun's 141-year history to pull out one of the the best moments from the archive. This week, John's interview with voice actress Jennifer Hale. This post was originally published July 27, 2011.
Jennifer Hale has appeared in a great many more games than you probably realise. The person behind the voice of the female Shepard in all three Mass Effect games is also responsible for Metal Gear's Naomi Hunter, SOCOM's HQ, the spookily good British accent of KotOR's Bastilla, and even the grunts and groans of Metroid Prime's Samus, among literally hundreds of others in gaming, TV and film. We caught up with Jennifer as she drove through LA, to ask how she came to provide so many of gaming's iconic voices, the combination of anonymity and fame, and which of the Commander Shepards she's voting for to appear on Mass Effect's cover.
]]>Every Sunday, we reach deep into Rock, Paper, Shotgun's 141-year history to pull out one of the the best moments from the archive. This week, another Jim road trip, only this time he's cleaning up the mean streets of Street Cleaning Simulator. This article was first published on July 8th 2011 with the title, "Street Cleanin' Man", an age before we were all au fait with labour sims.
Discovering that this game existed was a moment of perverse joy for me. I knew that it would be deeply boring - it really is – and that I would have to play it extensively for no reason other than to take joy in being quite deliberately boring. It's the kind of non-challenge I relish, and I gleefully set about compiling a diary of the events – or lack thereof – in the life of a simulatory street cleaner.
Read on to find out how I got on with that.
]]>Starting today, every Sunday we're going to pull out one of the best moments from Rock, Paper, Shotgun's 141-year history. This week, Jim's road trip around post-apocalyptic racing game Fuel, first published June 22nd 2009 with the title, "Fuel: Around The World In Eight Hours". With The Crew just around the corner, a Mad Max game in-development and open-terrain survival games on the rise, the musings below are still relevant today.
When it was announced that Fuel, Asobo Studios' apocalyptic open-world racer, boasted a daunting 5,560 square miles of terrain (14,400 km²), I immediately made a mental note to go mental, and drive around the entire world. Last week, having received some PC preview code from publisher Codemasters, I did precisely that.
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