Latest Articles
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What are we all playing this weekend?
Well? Do tell!
This weekend is a big one for me. My brand new fancy shmancy ottoman bed is arriving in my new flat, after two weeks of curling up on the sofa with a weighted blanket. I'll also be topping it with my brand new ultra-thick memory foam mattress topper, raising me off the floor another crucial few inches. Think of the view I'll get from up there! To imagine there'll be any time for games! Pah!
I kid. Plenty of time for games for us all, even while reclining on gloriously beds with ungodly amounts of storage space. We love playing games here at Rock Paper Shotgun. Even Alice, who has routinely told me that actually there are no good games. Here's what we'll be clicking on this weekend.
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Fallout is headed to Fortnite’s next season
Wrecked will kick off next Friday
War never changes, and either does Fortnite's love of a crossover. Thus, Fallout and Fortnite are colliding as the post-apocalyptic RPG heads to the battle royale shooter’s upcoming next season.
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According to creative director for roguelite sequel
As you might’ve heard, Hades 2 is out in early access, offering up the much-anticipated sequel to Supergiant’s mythical (and delightfully thirsty) roguelite. Though the sheer amount of polish and Stuff in even its pre-release form might have you thinking that a full 1.0 release can’t be too far down the line, the game’s creative director reckons we’ve still got around a year to wait before it’s considered all finished up.
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As screenshots from closed playtest leak ahead of apparent reveal soon
If you’ve been wondering what Valve’s been working on as their next game after Counter-Strike 2, the answer may be at hand. Details and screenshots for Deadlock, a third-person hero shooter with MOBA elements, have seemingly leaked out of a recent closed playtest, revealing a blend of Overwatch, Dota 2 and Valve’s own Team Fortress 2.
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Elsewhere Entertainment team made up of Last of Us, Witcher and Far Cry alumni
Around a week after Microsoft shuttered a number of beloved studios with a track record of making excellent single-player, story-driven games, their newly-owned arm of Activision has revealed a brand new studio. Working on a new series of story-driven, triple-A games.
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Supporters only: Warm, relaxing town builder Of Life and Land has some impressive sim chops
Tell me again about the rabbits
I love building games, but it's not that often that put one down and feel particularly tempted to get straight back into it again. Of Life And Land is one of those, but thankfully not so much so that it threatens to consume my every waking moment.
It quietly does several things in a modest little way, that are all the more impressive for its lack of fanfare. The core one though, is that it takes the kind of simulationist foundation normally reserved for the punishing Dwarf Fortress derivatives or gnarly logistics games, and builds on them an approachable, gentle, even philosophical game instead. In a word: it's lovely.
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Ghost of Tsushima runs well on Steam Deck, making its PSN nonsense all the more annoying
Network issues
Ghost of Tsushima: Director’s Cut is now out and about on PC, sadly with the requirement of signing into a PlayStation Network (PSN) account in order to play the samurai action-adventure’s Legends co-op mode. The same requirement, you might recall, that Helldivers 2 players recently lobbied Sony into abandoning. No such luck here, and as previously warned, the need for said PSN sign-in to happen over Windows means that Ghost of Tsushima is essentially missing a chunk of itself on the Steam Deck.
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Lorelei And The Laser Eyes doesn’t let its surreal creativity strip its puzzles of logic
Simogo on then
“In one of Nero’s many manifests,” reads a books in surreal puzzle-box Lorelei And The Laser Eyes, referring to its eccentric (read: tastefully deranged) antag-artist, “there is a satirical proposal claiming that only dictators should be allowed to direct films.” Developers Simogo - of well-deserved Sayonara Wild Hearts and Device 6 acclaim - seem to agree that’s a position worth satirising. Lorelei, despite its single-solution puzzles, is not dictatorial. It’s far too interested in collaborating with you for that. It wants you to observe, consider, and interpret its many mysteries. What’s really hooked me here is how those puzzles are kept coherent and logical, despite you getting delivered a letter by dog and occasionally visiting a floppy disk bizzaro world where you converse with a magician who manifests from his own discarded hat.
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Supporters only: Nando's does difficulty better than videogames
How do we solve the easy/normal/hard problem?
Have you played Homeworld 3 yet? I have. I thought it was *gestures at review*. I bring it up because, as is often your way, the readership commented me into thinking about something I’ve been wanting to cover: the outdated relic that is the easy/normal/hard difficulty trifecta. "Ohoho," I warbled chuckilishly. "I shall craft a blistering manifesto, sharper than the apex of a Toblerone on the roof of your mouth when you try to eat it as god intended. I will solve this problem." And then I thought, "Actually, no. That sounds hard." So, instead, here are some wazzock-tier ramblings.
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Rumours point to Total War: Star Wars in the works at Creative Assembly
Rumours lead to hype, etc
Creative Assembly, the studio best known for their strategy Total War series, are rumoured to be working on a licensed Star Wars title. ‘Rumoured’ is the key word here, mind. Dualshockers credit “a reliable source” with the information that “three new Total War games are currently in development,” and that “one of the three new projects is expected to be a Star Wars-themed Total War game.” There’s currently no further information beyond that, I’m afraid, although I’ve reached out to Creative Assembly for comment.
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Summery Soulslike Enotria: The Last Song is delayed again, but there's an 8-hour demo coming soon
That's a pretty big demo
You might remember Enotria: The Last Song as the Italian-inspired Soulslike that shifted its release date from June to August to avoid Elden Ring: Shadow Of The Erdtree... but found itself nestled next to Black Myth: Wukong. Well, scratch that August release, as now it's been shifted back to September instead! But hey, there's a demo coming out real soon that'll hopefully give us a better sense of what the game's like. I imagine it'll involve a lot of fighting spindly monsters, dying, and resurrecting at whatever object they've decided will be the equivalent of Dark Souls' bonfires. Likely something Leonardo da Vinci made or drew or invented. That man's stats were specced high.
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Hurry up, Inquisitor
I've clocked up nearly 400 hours playing BioWare's big fantasy RPG Dragon Age: Inquisition, which is not a stat I'm particularly proud of. I'm not ashamed either, partly because, as has been identified by artist Corey Brickley, via the Maw, there's a lot of filler. Brickley has collated a list of suggested mods to slim down Dragon Age: Inquisition from a potentially 80 hours-long epic to a trim 40 hour story-focused romp, which means you might be able to play through it again in time for the launch of Dragon Age: Dreadwolf - which is a direct sequel to Inquisition.
I find this list of mods interesting! It's a way to change the game quite substantially without exactly transforming it, and it's very in-keeping with my campaign to make games 60% smaller. Still, there's at least one item on there I'd push back on, but also this isn't really a new problem for Dragon Age as a series.
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The 'Grand Theft Auto 6' of Grand Theft Auto 6-likes, aka Grand Theft Auto VI, is coming next “fall"
Take-Two narrow release window in latest earnings report
Open world crime-a-thon GTA 6 will release next “fall”, according to publisher Take-Two Interactive’s latest earning report, via Eurogamer. This narrows the previously announced release window of “2025” down by, uh, infinity I suppose? A year is an effectively endless stretch in terms of release calenders. But “Fall”, despite not being a real season, is something I can work with.
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Hell-wandering roguelike Hades 2 has received its first proper patch, and it does everything the developers said it would. You now sprint faster and, significantly, you can gather more than one type of crafting resource per run (as long you've unlocked the tool that lets you gather that resource). This means Melinoë can now go fishing, dig up seeds, mine silver, and gain the trust of errant shades, all in a single night's work. There is a catch though.
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Excellent 4X strategy sim Endless Legend is free on Steam for a week
Amplitude and SEGA giveaway ends 23rd May
Being offered a 4X game for free is definitely one of those cursed-monkey-paw situations. Sure, you’re saving physical currency, but at what price in terms of that most treasured and least tradeable of commodities, time? In the hours it takes to properly clean out a 4X game, you could probably build an empire yourself. OK, not a huge empire. An empire the size of the Vatican or the Principality of Sealand, perhaps. Maybe an empire that only covers the distance between your desk and your fridge. But an empire nonetheless. Go on, pronounce yourself God-Tyrant of your bedroom while you download Amplitude’s Endless Legend, which is 100% off on Steam till 10am PDT, 1pm EDT and 6pm BST on May 23rd.
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Supporters only: Biomorph is one the best of its genre, of 2024, and maybe all time
If only you could morph to the monsters
There are exactly one million metroidy rogueishy action platform games and that is okay. There's no such thing as too many of an entertaining thing in a world with, god I dunno, at least thousand humans in? Maybe more? Who knows.
They are rarely my thing, though. I try more than I really want to, for you, and games like Biomorph give me the energy to keep going through the many that leave me indifferent. This isn't one of my grudging admissions that a subgenre isn't all bad; it's a game that I can't even think of a way to complain about.
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Big cool weirdo Yoko Taro may or may not be working on something that may or may not be Nier
(Laughs.)
Fans of odd games with multiple endings and themes of identity and oppression, rejoice! Or, maybe, not rejoice. Time will tell. In the latest issue of Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu, Yosuke Saito, the series producer for Nier, teased that he might be working on something new with Yoko Taro and Keiichi Okabe, the director and composer for the Nier series, respectively.
Via Gematsu and PCGamer, Saito said, “I’ve been talking about wanting to do something with Yoko and Okabe for some time now. I’ll have something a bit more put-together to say in the not-too-distant future, so please stay tuned. It might be NieR, it might not be NieR. (Laughs.) That’s about all I can say for now.” Thanks for the clarity, Saito.
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Helldivers 2 players rally around an unlikely hero who just wanted to make friends
Democracy manifest, or something
When they’re not banding together to take on Sony or attempting to reinstate fired community managers, it turns out that Helldivers 2 players just want to make sure everyone feels included. Included in the co-op game’s endless war of attrition to protect Super Earth from bugs, robots, and basic awareness of military propaganda, and included in just having mates. Enter player ‘dremskiy’, whose tragic booting from a private game in which they just wanted to make friends has resulted in so many friend requests that their Steam account won’t accept any more.
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Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser's new studio is making an "open world action-adventure" game
Shock horror
Absurd Ventures, the company started by Rockstar Games co-founder and head writer Dan Houser after he left said juggernaut, are working on a new "open world action-adventure" game. That's according to recent job listings on Absurd's website (cheers Gamesradar for the spot), which mention such a thing. And to be honest, are any of us surprised? Not really. Will the finished product resemble GTA to some degree? I imagine yes. Am I happy about this? Yeah, go on then.
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Shockingly great soulslike Lies Of P is due a DLC by the end of the year
Sources said to currently have regular-sized noses
Our Edders, the RPSer I’d most trust to help me gank a rival covenant member with hammers, reckoned Pinocchio soulslike Lies Of P was an “instant must-play” in his review, and I was pretty fond of it myself. We already know that we’re due a sequel at some point the future, thanks to impressive sales. Director Jiwon Choi previously teased some DLC concept art, and now it looks like we’ll be seeing that DLC by the time the year’s out, according to a fiscal report.
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Ubisoft quietly cancel The Division Heartland
Middling America
As Ubisoft revealed Assassin's Creed Shadows they also released their earnings report for the financial year 2023-2024. Buried among the chatter of "profitable growth trajectories" and "B2B partnerships" was a brief note about looter shooter The Division Heartland. "Ubisoft has decided to stop development on The Division Heartland," it reads, "and has redeployed resources to bigger opportunities such as XDefiant and Rainbow Six." Ah, so this is the games industry equivalent of being summarily dumped by text.
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Ghost of Tsushima’s PSN login requirement will stop you playing multiplayer on Steam Deck
Cross-play will be in beta at launch
We’re just a couple of days away from Ghost of Tsushima’s PC release date, as the former PlayStation exclusive prepares to drop its Director's Cut - including its expansion and multiplayer DLC - on Steam. Having recently cleared up the question around whether you’ll need to sign in with a PSN account after the Helldivers 2 debacle - yes, if you want to play the co-op mode - developers Nixxes and Sucker Punch have now revealed that the login requirement will mean multiplayer won’t work on Steam Deck.
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There’ll be a supersized 2v8 mode this summer, too
After teasing an upcoming chapter inspired by Dungeons & Dragons, Dead by Daylight has revealed its next killer pulled from the pages of the fantasy pen-and-paper RPG: Vecna, long-running mega-baddie and inspiration for the Stranger Things villain. He’ll be voiced by Critical Role dungeon master Matthew Mercer and haunt a new dungeon map, where you’ll be able to do battle as new elf and bard survivors able to roll a literal d20 when they crack open treasure chests.
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African swordsmaster Yasuke will be the series’ first real-life protagonist
After being unceremoniously thrown into the spotlight yesterday with a pre-reveal leak, Assassin’s Creed Shadows has been given a proper unveiling via a flashy cinematic trailer, confirming both its leaked November release date and revealing that we’ll be playing as two protagonists for the first time in the series since Syndicate almost a decade ago. One of those heroes will also be the series’ first playable real-life figure: the African samurai Yasuke.
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It’s on Kickstarter now, ahead of a 2026 release
Alzara Radiant Echoes is a clear love letter to golden age JRPGs, pulling inspiration from the likes of Golden Sun and Lost Odyssey for a 3D turn-based RPG set in a Mediterranean fantasy world. Dark Souls composer Motoi Sakuraba is on board, along with Genshin Impact and Fire Emblem artist Yoshiro Ambe. And if that hadn’t already sold me already, developers Studio Camelia are also paying tribute to the best Final Fantasy game: FFIX, obviously.
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It’s not just Helldivers 2 - plenty of games owe a lot to the films of Paul Verhoeven
I say watch 'em all
Remember when Control came out and your mate Terry appeared out of nowhere to rant endlessly about how they’ve always loved brutalist architecture? Come on, Terry. No you haven’t. You spend weekends eating custard creams and watching Bake Off. You haven’t thought about brutalism since undergrad, be honest. Anyway, my version of that is Starship Troopers. As in, I’ve been waiting for a videogamey excuse to bang on about it in public for ages. Helldivers 2 is obviously as good an excuse as any, but really, I needn’t have waited so long. Official offerings like strategy game Starship Troopers: Terran Command and FPS Robocop: Rogue City aside, I reckon you can find Paul Verhoeven’s fingerprints all over games.
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I am dissatisfied with the hat selection in Little Kitty, Big City
Not everyone can wear every hat
Graham said he wanted someone to write about Little Kitty, Big City, asked if I liked cats, at which point my soul was possessed by some kind of deep animus. "I really like cats, I just hate the internet UWU nonsense about cats," I said. "God it's awful, I can't stand it, Jesus Christ it's just an empty and terrible way to talk about cats, cats don't deserve to be the internet animal-" at which point Graham managed to interrupt and said I was exactly the person who should write about Little Kitty, Big City.
I promise, I approached Little Kitty, Big City with an open heart, because I do really like cats. But given my aversion to their babification by the internet, it may be surprising that my chief complaint about Little Kitty, Big City is that the hats in it are largely not cute enough. This is a bold claim, because there are more than 40 to collect.
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Homeworld 3’s performance is uneven, but can be spared the worst of spacefight slowdown
Set course for the settings menu
Nic reckons Homeworld 3, the long-awaited spacefaring RTS, is mostly pretty good. Qualified hoorays for that, as well as for the fact that it doesn’t make especially mad demands of your hardware: besides netting a Steam Deck Playable badge from Valve, its minimum PC specs only list the likes of the Intel Core i5-6600 and Nvidia’s GTX 1060. Easily doable, for most aspiring galactic admirals.
Once a battle gets underway, however, Homeworld 3’s performance can start tanking, turning an initially smooth engagement into a more stutter-prone light show. The good news? You can more than double your framerates with a relatively small handful of graphics setting changes, even if some these (including the DLSS and FSR 2 upscalers) can be a tad inconsistent in their own right.
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Review: Read Only Memories: Neurodiver review - a bright cyberpunk noir overdosing on easter eggs
Squid pro quo
The characters in Read Only Memories: Neurodiver are deeply into anime. They love manga and figurines and trashy movies and horror novels. The interests of the game's creators have not so much leaked into this fictional world as they have been generously pumped in with an industrial hose. Even the visual novel's loading screens take the form of those two-second intermission panels that flash up to signal an anime's commercial break, complete with random characters announcing the game's name ("Neurodiver!"). In moments like that, the passion is endearing. But in other places, it is overwhelming. Neurodiver is obsessed with media in a way that often distracted me from the bright-eyed cyberpunk story it wants to tell.
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Supporters only: For two years, Kento Momota had the best game in the world
Ten years in development
Last week, I watched one of my favourite badminton players Kento Momota play his final match. As he stepped off court for the last time, I found myself welling up. He doesn't know me - of course he doesn't - and I don't know him. But for ten years I'd watch him at every opportunity and see him grow into one of the all-time greats. For me, his retirement wasn't only devastating in the sense he was a great ambassador for the sport: a positive soul, a good speaker, a hard worker. No, it also spelled the end of us being able to witness something impossible to replicate, a 'game' of badminton uniquely his. And for a magical two years, he had the best game in the world.