Rock Paper Shotgun – PC Game Reviews, Previews, Subjectivity

Lawyer ‘em up Ace Attorney isn’t technically a PC game yet, but it will be come April 9th, and in anticipation Capcom have been putting up blogs about various aspects of the point-and-shout games. Most recently, Janet Hsu from the localisation team has dug into the game’s famous (and often groan-worthy) puns, explaining how they get from Japanese wordplay to English witticisms.

It does include spoilers for the third game in the trilogy, Trials And Tribulations, so proceed with caution if you’re still waiting to be able to play them from your desktop.

At GDC this week, Blizzard gave a talk discussing the endorsement system that they added to Overwatch last summer, claiming that it reduced bad behaviour in the first person shooter by 40%. Huzzah!

Unfortunately, even if we take Blizzard’s own numbers totally at face value, it’s that remaining 60% you’re actually going to notice playing the game and interacting with the community.

Spike Chunsoft have announced Killer7 director Goichi Suda (aka Suda 51) will be returning to an old haunt to pen new story DLC for wrestleman sim Fire Pro Wrestling World. I'm not normally much for wrestling games, but even I can appreciate this series, formerly by Human Entertainment. Snappy action, powerful character creation and a history of surprisingly heavy story modes. I'm expecting great, possibly unsettling things from new DLC 'The Vanishing', after the utterly bleak ending of Fire Pro Wrestling Special for the SNES, which I WILL SPOIL BELOW.

I hold great respect for the Calvinball nonsense that is Mortal Kombat canon. Once a silhouetted joke fighter named after the developers, dark ninja Noob Saibot has grown into an actual character in the new trilogy. NetherRealm have just unveiled his latest incarnation in Mortal Kombat 11, and he looks as delightfully over-the-top as you'd expect. I'd almost be able to take him seriously, were it not for his amazingly goofy voice, sounding like a hybrid of Dr. Claw from Inspector Gadget and the hooded cultist from Harvester. Check out his shadow-clone fighting style below.

I made a few vows in remembrance of our former Adam (RPS in peace): I will try to understand grand strategy games; I will sneak one single ciggy after the company AGM; I will post about the release of new baseball games. Such as Out Of The Park Baseball 20, the latest in the management sim series I know Adam had a soft spot for, which launched today. Oh Adam. I could almost swear I saw Adam playing a baseball game on ye olde RPS Steam account the other night. The mind sees what it wants to see.

Why, yes, that is a polar bear about to saw an anime girl in half, because that's what happens when Zero Escape director Kotaro Uchikoshi is no longer restrained to the waking world. AI: The Somnium Files is his next game, developed by Spike Chunsoft, and now has a July 26th release date on PC. It's a sci-fi mystery that seems vaguely inspired by oddball Jennifer Lopez psycho-thriller The Cell, putting players in the shoes of a cyber-psychic detective investigating people's dreams as well as crime scenes. Below, a bizarre new trailer that I wouldn't try to make sense of yet.

Denuvo, the folks behind the much-maligned DRM-strengthening software Denuvo Anti-Tamper, intend to block more shenanigans. On Wednesday they announced Denuvo Anti-Cheat, a new doodad for developers to tie into their games to bust cheats. They say it partially uses machine learning to detect cheaty behaviour--a trick used by others, including by Valve in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive--but don't say much about its efficacy or any developers who are using it. I'm just mentioning it now so when, in the future, you see Denuvo Anti-Cheat in a game you don't send me "WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL ME?" e-mails.

Dice and EA have given a name and official rule-set to Star Wars: Battlefront 2's upcoming new mode. Capital Supremacy is due to roll out as a free update next Tuesday, March 26th and looks similar to the excellent Titan mode from the defunct Battlefield 2142. Large teams of mixed humans and bots work to hold points around a planetary battlefield. After holding territory long enough, a team can call in transports and ride them to the enemy capital ship where the attackers try to destroy it from within. While not exactly the same as Titan, it sounds similar enough to be exciting.

Standard-issue XCOM 2 is probably my least-favourite of the four different flavours of XCOM now available to us (i.e. including the Enemy Within and War Of The Chosen expansions), but that's a bit like saying I don't enjoy 29 degrees of heat quite as much as 26, 27 and 28 degrees. They're all great! Make it like that all the time, please. Only, y'know, without the heat-death of the planet. And, yeah, keep on releasing more XCOMs.

If you've avoided Firaxis' reimagining of The Greatest PC Game Of All Time (If You're An Old Man Like Me), XCOM 2 can be a rather full-on point of entry. On the other hand, it's currently free all weekend (and 75% off if you want to keep it forever), which is the easiest point of entry of all.

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is out now, almost a full day earlier than expected - fitting that FromSoftware's ninja soulsborne would stage a daring night-time infiltration. Earlier this evening, I checked Steam and it stated there was another twenty hours until the game unlocked; a cunning ninja ruse. I've just had my first ninja-run around Sengoku-era Japan, and can confirm that it looks great and runs silky smooth, at least on my semi-beefy laptop. Considering what I've seen of the console versions, us PC folk have the best version here. Below, an hour of RPS's video crew getting stabbed a lot.

Talk about promo games normally make me think of high profile stuff like Carmen Sandiego invading Google Earth, so I've got to tip a weather-beaten stetson to IFC films for going low-fi with The Wind. They've tapped Airdorf, solo dev behind the Faith series of bible-quoting exorcise 'em ups to produce a short browser horror game based on their upcoming movie. It's only a few minutes long and playable in your browser here, but packs in some effective chills that have me interested in the film, so it did its job. If you'd rather just peek from behind the sofa, there's a trailer below.

French revolutionary judge sim We. The Revolution (a clunky capitalisation I shall not use often, sorry devs Polyslash) is out now, sneaking up on me quiet as a guillotine blade. It's vaguely similar to Papers, Please, in that it's a game about being a political cog in a complex machine. Less similarly, this is about being one of the bigger cogs - a judge of some political influence - with your behaviour both in and out of court steering who will be in control of Paris when the fires burn out and the heads stop rolling. Below, a trailer looking at how the complex court cases work.

Not every problem in games needs to be solved by shooting, stabbing or going very fast. Sometimes you just need to stop, listen and talk things over, like in Oxenfree and Tacoma, two lovely story-driven games that you can snag free right now and keep forever. Contemporary teen ghost story Oxenfree by Night School is the current fortnightly giveaway over on the Epic store, full of sass and supernatural weirdness. Sci-fi mystery Tacoma by Fullbright is a little more grounded and quiet, letting you explore the lives and recorded dialogues of a space station's crew after some manner of space-disaster. Grab them on Epic and Humble respectively today.

Square Enix have kindly given way-advance notice of three dates you'll want to stock up on tissues for, announcing launch dates for the remaining three episodes of Life Is Strange 2. I don't have foreknowledge of what will happen to kiddywinkles on the lam with superpowers but, y'know, they are kiddywinkles on the lam - one way or another, you'll be getting sniffly. Better book that Tesco delivery for a family box of tissues today (other supermarkets are available).

Capcom are laying a common grumble about Monster Hunter: World on PC to rest in a couple weeks, with the release of an optional HD texture pack. While the PC version of the game is the smoothest, nicest-looking way to play the enormous boss rush, eagle-eyed folks noticed that many textures in the PC release were slightly fuzzier up close than their console equivalents. Not a huge difference, but it was still visible. Capcom smoothed out some of this in last October's update for the game, but will soon offer players with extra space and VRAM the option to crank everything up further.

"I just stumbled upon your jam-packed review page about Demi Lovato," began a letter that arrived in the RPS treehouse this morning. We were puzzled. Do we have any page about Demi Lovato, let alone a jam-packed review page? We (by which I mean I) have mentioned the singer a few times but... oh! I see.

When the letter asked if we'd write about Demi for their own site, Alec dismissed it as spam trying to wangle free work and advertising. Nope. I get it. This is sarky fan mail, complaining that we haven't posted enough Demi Lovato on RPS. Well, if you, the fans, demand it...

2K Games have taken the curious and welcome step of explaining what data Civilization VI collects about you, your computer, and your play - and why. It's fairly common for games from big publishers to report back, but rare for publishers to say what it's doing and why. The license we have to agree to ostensibly gives them permission, after all. Most evidently don't think it's in their best interests to be open, which is unfortunate because it is in ours. Whether you're okay with how much data they collect, ah, that's up to you; at least now we can make a more-informed decision.