Rock Paper Shotgun – PC Game Reviews, Previews, Subjectivity

Ubisoft today announced that another three executives have resigned as the company continue trying to deal with the recent allegations of serious and widespread harrassment and abuse. The three stepping down are chief creative officer Serge Hascoët, global HR head Cécile Cornet, and Yannis Mallat, the managing director of Ubisoft's Canadian studios. This comes a few days after the resignation of Maxime Béland, vice president of Ubisoft's Editorial department. I was sceptical when Ubisoft first announced their desire to improve, but I can't deny some big changes are happening - Hascoët was one of the most powerful men at Ubi.

Screenshot Saturday Sundays! Our weekly ritual returns, gathering us all to summon gifs, screenshots and work-in-progress videos from the murky depths of the game development community. This week: Satan's personal elevator, wibbly-wobbly firearms, a late-night conversation and powerful amphibious tongues.

Yeah winning a last-man-standing battle by bursting your opponent's head is great and all, but have you ever won a battle royale after your opponent got clobbered by giant fruit rolling downhill? Such is the foolishness of Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout, a 60-player party game inspired by those wacky TV game shows like Wipeout, Takeshi's Castle, and It's A Knockout. You know, daft obstacles, unfair traps, falling over - that sort of tomfoolery. And last night, Devolver Digital announced a release date of August 4th.

NotE3 continues today with Ubisoft Forward at 8pm (noon Pacific). Ubisoft's notE3 stream promises more on Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Watch Dogs: Legion, an Hyper Scape, plus "a few surprises". One of those surprises is already blown, as the existence of Far Cry 6 leaked on Friday. Heaps of Assassin's Creed Valhalla gameplay footage has leaked too. But hey, you can get a free copy of Watch Dogs 2 for watching the stream.

"I can't quite get what Weird West is as a game, but I bloody love the aesthetic," our Nate said last month. He'd just seen a notE3 trailer which had plenty of mood but not much of the game. It's an action-RPG with some immersive sim-ish bits, yeah? From some folks formerly of Dishonored and Prey devs Arkane? I'm still not quite sure about the shape of the game but a new trailer from Devolver Digital's stream tonight shows more than I'd seen before.

It's been quite fun to get some of that old E3 self-indulgent and money-wasting spectacle today in Devolver Digital's own notE3 showcase/short film. D3: Devolver Digital Direct continued the indie publisher's absurd years-long story of company executives, exploding heads, and the future's future. As we enter the fifth week of an endless online marketing experience filling in after E3 was cancelled by the pandemic, I am tired. Devolver devoting most of a 45-minute presentation to a fictional corporate power struggle might stretch jokes thin but hell, after so many hours-long streams, it almost feels concise. And, y'know, it's fun.

The new trailer for Serious Sam 4 coming out of Devolver Digital's notE3 stream today didn't show much of the game, but what it did show looks like Serious Sam to me. Wacky cartoon monsters roaming around arenas in real-world-ish locations? Yup. Quite a few of those monsters at once? Quite. Unnecessary story? Seriously. Explosions, lasers, and gibs? Oh my! Check out the trailer below.

Those rapscallions at Devolver Digital have stepped up their E3 shitposting this year with Devolverland Expo, a free game recreating the horrifying spectacle of a video games show. And surprise, it's out right now. Made by Shadow Warrior developers Flying Wild Hog, it sends us into a cancelled video games expo to steal trailers while fighting security systems. You know, so you can watch trailers for video games inside a video game.

In less than two weeks, you could be a horrible meaty mass of tentacles and teeth crawling through vents and devouring hapless humans. And in the game, obvs. Devolver Digital today announced a July 23rd release date for Carrion, the platformer which will at least let you live out a digital facsimile of your true life's dream. I've been cooing at this horror for years now and soon we'll all get to tickle its tummy and feed it scientists. It still has a demo for now, too.

Following its announcement earlier this week, Devolver Digital today pumped out the first Shadow Warrior 3 gameplay trailer. It looks: good. Yeah I was already expecting swords, big guns, and buckets of blood, but ooh I am extra-interested in swish new movement options like the grappling hook little you dramatically slingshot around arenas. Here, see the trailer yourself below.

Let it not be said that SnowRunner doesn't have enough snow to run (well, drive) through. The rough n' tough truck sim is adding more routes to get stuck in with Lake Kovd, a treacherous frozen quagmire packed that'll arrive with the game's first season pass update later this week. Hope you've brought tyre chains, because it's about to get real slippery in old Russia.

There are only so many times I can say "cor, wouldn't it be nice to travel again" in the pandemic-ridden hell year that is 2020. But I'm going to say it again here, because Tropico 6's sun-swept beaches are opening up all weekend. The irreverent, satirical city-builder is currently free to download and try over on Steam, with prices slashed on trips to the rest of the Tropico franchise.

Cannae be having a hero shooter without heroes, can we? Ahead of its launch date next Tuesday, Rocket Arena has shown off more of its bouncy blasty gunfights with two new trailers - one for the expected, eccentric cast of rocket-toting characters, the other for the maps they'll be blasting each other out of - alongside plans to add even more maps and a new hero when the first season kicks off a few weeks after launch.

The festivities of notE3 ramp back up this weekend, starting at 8pm (noon Pacific) today with D3: Devolver Digital Direct, a stream of announcements and trailers from the rapscallions with buckets of irony and larger buckets of fake blood. We already know it'll have the first gameplay trailer for the newly-announced Shadow Warrior 3. I would feel confident guessing they'll announce at least one game with rude 'tude and Doseone tunes. And it'll surely consider the blood-soaked saga of Nina Struthers, their fictional chief synergy officer who has killed and been killed in previous years' streams.

If there's a downside to living in the middle of the city, it's that fairs just really aren't a part of my life. But then, with the whole Covid-19 pandemic going on, it's not like there are many being held this year anyway. In place of their usual mud n' music happenings, however, the Oregon Country Fair In The Clouds has taken the 50-year-old folksy festival online, constructing an endearingly makeshift (and somewhat surreal) virtual arts fair that's free for everyone, local or not.

If you've been waiting for new roads to ride in American Truck Simulator you'll be climbing back in your cab soon. The American steer 'em up is headed to Idaho for its newest expansion which will launch next week on Thursday, July 16th. Catch a look at some of the landmarks you'll spot with the new Viewpoint feature in SCS Software's new trailer.

Amazon's expedition into game development has hit another bump in the road. Their open-world historical fantasy MMO New World was scheduled for release on August 25th. They've now pushed back to spring of 2021 to take "time to get things where we want them before we fully release."

Welcome To Elk is an upcoming adventure game that's stranger than fiction. The developers at Triple Topping previously made the weird but sweet Spitkiss and are back to tell some weird, true stories. They've made the first bits of Elk freely available along with a new gameplay trailer that shows off the goofy adventures on the island of Elk.

Classic Castlevania vibes live on in Bloodstained: Curse Of The Moon 2, a sequel to the retro-inspired spinoff that Inti Creates developed for Bloodstained: Ritual Of The Night. The 8-bit styled platformer has all the whip and gun action of its predecessor, now with local co-op.

As businesses do when they want to become better pals, Sony and Epic Games have announced their intentions to work closer together with a press release and a price tag. Sony have made a "strategic investment" to acquire a minority interest in Epic to the tune of $250/£197.5 million. Suppose this explains why we saw that Unreal Engine 5 tech demo running on a PlayStation 5 eh?

Dell's big mega sale is still going strong in both the UK and the US at the moment, but the US has just got some fantastic new gaming monitor deals that are worth shouting about, such as $125 off their 240Hz AW2521HFL display, which is one of Nvidia's officially certified G-Sync Compatible monitors (pictured above), and a massive $460 off their ultrawide Alienware AW3420DW.

If you fancy a go with the fancy new planes of Microsoft Flight Simulator, sign up now because MS have announced it's entering closed beta testing on July 30th. While you will need to be lucky enough to get picked, they have said they want everyone to have a chance to play, eventually. I've never played a proper sim-y plane game before but to tour the gorgeous world they're cramming into this game, I'm willing to learn.

Superb spaceship slicing sim Hardspace: Shipbreaker has added a new difficulty option to career mode, with shift timers disabled.

The existing career mode cuts you off and forces you back to base every 15 minutes, making things too stressful and intrusive for some. You can now take all the time you want with a wreck instead. They've also made the puzzling decision to give you an infinite oxygen supply for this mode. This is all additive, so players who like the thrill of yanking out a nuclear reactor and blasting it to safety in the dying ten seconds of a shift can still blow themselves up on company time.

Can you imagine a Dark Souls-meets-Monster Hunter RPG made by Valve? I think I would've loved that. Unfortunately, it's on a list of Valve's games that were never meant to be. Of course, Half-Life 3 is sat up on that shelf, too, along with Left 4 Dead 3, and another Half-Life-themed shooter that would've looked very different to what we got with Alyx. It's all been revealed as part of the Half-Life: Alyx - Final Hours documentary, and there's loads of juicy info on what Valve have scrapped over the last 10 years.

Looks like Ubisoft will be announcing Far Cry 6 during this weekend's Ubisoft Forward event, because the game's existence and a few details have been revealed by a page on the PlayStation Store. It appears to have gone live by accident and has already been taken down, but it was there. Far Cry 6 will send us to the "tropical paradise" of Yara to fight against a brutal dictator and his son, and yes we will get animal friends again. The store page said it's coming on February 18, 2021.

Ubisoft are holding their big notE3 Ubisoft Forward event this weekend, and to celebrate the occasion they're holding another massive game sale over on the Ubisoft Store right now, with savings of up to 85% off their entire back catalogue of games. Plus, you can save an extra 20% on your entire shopping cart with the code UBIFORWARD. Come and have a gander at the biggest deals below.