Rock Paper Shotgun – PC Game Reviews, Previews, Subjectivity

The Resident Evil Showcase aired today with new footage of Resident Evil Village, a release date announcement, and a brief glimpse of a new multiplayer game called RE: Verse that will be bundled with Village. You can watch the trailers and full livestream below, as well as read about a few extra details.

On Tuesday, I reported on game development tool Game Maker being acquired by Opera, makers of the Opera internet browser. Opera have now officially announced the acquisition, saying that Game Maker would be paired with Opera GX, their dedicated gaming browser, in forming the basis of a new division of the company called Opera Gaming.

Ocean's Heart is a Zelda-like, in the sense that it's a 2D, top-down sword swinger in the vein of Link To The Past. That means you'll never see the kind of vista that's in its key art (top left, above). You'll never see that beautiful blue sky. And yet, and yet, I cannot resist the promise of a piece of art like that. I click on every game that uses it.

Puzzle Quest is returning after a ten year absence. Puzzle Quest 3 will again combine match-3 and RPG mechanics together with the original designer Steve Fawkner at the helm, but this time it'll be - possible uh-oh - free-to-play.

Maybe you miss Hollow Knight, or you're dead tired of Dead Cells. Then Skul: The Hero Slayer might appeal. It's a side-on stabrawler roguelite that's just left early access in which you can swap skulls to swap skills, and also lob your noggin at enemies. It's nice, from my brief play of it, and there's an announcement trailer below.

2016's point 'n' click adventure game Kathy Rain is returning this year with a new, rebuilt, expanded Director's Cut. Along with more puzzles and chat, it'll have touched-up looks and bonuses like controller support. I quite liked it, as far as I can remember, and have forgotten enough that I'm game for another go when the revamp arrives later this year.

When you want to marry an NPC in Skyrim, you propose using an Amulet of Mara. In real life, you can now buy an official 10-karat gold ring based on the amulet's design. For $1000, you can make your proposal hella Skyrim. I have previously heard of at least one person proposing with a custom ring based on the amulet, and one who proposed with an actual replica amulet.

Two weeks ago, Twitch announced they were suspending former US president Donald Trump from their platform, after he incited a violent attack on the US capitol. At the time, Twitch said they would "reassess" his account after his presidency ended. Well, now he's been booted from the White House, Twitch have banned him for good too. They're also updating their policies to crack down on those who encourage violence on the streaming platform.

Devouring an entire solar system with industry is, at once, both frightening and highly appealing. Well, sci-fi management sim Dyson Sphere Program is now out in early access, if you're curious as to how it feels transforming stars and planets into cogs for your mechanised empire.

Do you ever play Valorant and just do a little sigh when you see what map has been picked from the pool for your next match? For me, that's Split (and also Icebox actually, but this post isn't about that freezy fiend). Split's always been a tough one for attackers, with its annoyingly tight choke points you'd need to funnel down, and far too many 50/50 angles for defenders to hide in. But last night, Riot Games released a patch with tons of little changes that should make Split a whole lot less frustrating to play.

Officially, Hitman 3 launched yesterday. In reality, uh, some players still aren't really getting to play. The servers which imported progression from the previous two games have been overloaded, an issue Io Interactive scrambled to fix yesterday. Server woes are also causing some players to have the game interrupted by error messages prompting them to reconnect or play offline. Io's most recent statement said they were working on servers.

I honestly don't know where to begin with this pair of trainers that PC manufacturer NZXT and fashion outfit Artifact Studios announced last night. At first, I thought it was merely a fancy sneaker with an RTX 3080 ground into the heel - a feat that, during a global graphics card shortage, would have made my soul cry big salty tears of bitter discontent. Upon closer inspection, though, it seems they've built an entire PC inside this enormous piece of footwear, with an NZXT cooler, motherboard and fans all visible through the transparent purple side panel. It's an impressive feat, to be sure, but I also have so many questions. How does it run? How many feet per second can you travel in these things? And will the fans help keep my toes nice and cool, or will they tear my soles to absolute shreds?

Update 21/01/2021: Valve have responded to the European Commission's claims, saying they disagree with the Commission's findings and the fine they've been issued. Read their full statement below. Original story from 20/01/2021.

Valve and a handful of game publishers have landed themselves in hot water with the European Commision for geo-blocking Steam keys in certain regions in Europe. The Steam owners, along with Bandai Namco, Capcom, Focus Home, Koch Media and ZeniMax (Bethesda's parent company), have been collectively fined €7.8 million (around £6.9 million) for "breaching EU antitrust rules".

Bright and colorful platformer Balan Wonderworld isn't too far away from its March release date now but you can try it out next week if you're keen. Square Enix have announced that you can hop in and give it a go on January 28th. You can even try out the local co-op bits if you're planning to play along with a pal when it launches.

It's been years since I've played Minecraft on a regular basis but I still really enjoy when new features and creatures start showing up in game. Without fail, it means that the always creative Minecraft players will come up with unexpected ways to use them. The newest Minecraft snapshot adds some more parts of the upcoming Caves & Cliffs update including the pretty glow squids and their glowing ink.

While he's spending quarantine in New Zealand, the national news channel has gotten Valve guy Gabe Newell to sit down and pointedly not answer some of his very favorite questions. They did their best to ask about all the games that end with threes, but Newell of course declined to say anything on the subject. He was willing to say that the company has games in development currently and also mentioned that launching Half-Life: Alyx had created the despire within the company to continue creating singleplayer games.

The magic of AI-powered text to speech continues as Skyrim modders get their hands on an application that generates speech from text based on voice samples from Bethesda games. It's already inspired a trailer with AI-only voice acting and a new mod that gives Skyrim characters lines to compliment your dragonborn's naked figure. Oh, the things modders will do.

Launch day log in issues aren't a thing I'd expect to hear about surrounding a single player stealth romp but hey, it's 2021. There are no rules. Hitman 3 is out today and it seems that the website meant to import your prior hitmaning progress into the newest murder fest is having a bit of a struggle. That wouldn't be so bad, except waiting to make that import is effectively keeping players from starting in on Hitman 3. Io Interactive say they're on the case.

Among Us became a surprise smash hit in 2020. The hidden-role murder 'em up was originally released in 2018, and managed to burst its way to fame late last year thanks in large part to lots of Twitch streamers. Alas, this success brought with it a fair few challenges for the developers at Innersloth. Yesterday, they released a dev blog explaining why development and updates have been taking so long, and telling fans a bit about what's been going on behind the scenes.

Ian Hitman's current trilogy of sandbox stealth-o-murder games wraps up today with Hitman 3, which launched just a few minutes ago. As he fights a vast conspiracy, he'll do murders in new levels everywhere from England to Dubai, and get into a few of his trademark daft situations. One mission is just a murder mystery potentially starring Ian, an actual murderer, as the detective. Unfortunately, the promised ability for owners of the previous two games to connect and play them inside 3 is delayed.

Blizzard are shaking up Hearthstone's update schedule with a crafty new strategy: big expansions that now spawn small expansions. The Darkmoon Races is the first of what they've dubbed 'Mini-Sets', which shuffles in some new additions to last year's Madness At The Darkmoon Faire expansion. It contains 35 new cards and arrives tomorrow.

Horizon Zero Dawn was pretty darn buggy when it came out on PC last year. It was a shame considering it was the first bug PlayStation exclusive to make the jump to PC. But Guerrilla Games have been steadily updating it to fix all sorts of problems, and yesterday the game received its 1.10 patch, adding in a couple more crash fixes and performance improvements.

Notably, this patch marks the start of Guerrilla slowing down on their HZD updates, so they can shift focus to work on the game's sequel, Horizon Forbidden West.

Game Maker is an entry-level game development tool which has been used to create several indie megahits, including Undertale, Hyperlight Drifter, Heat Signature and Katana Zero. Since 2015, its developers YoYo Games have been owned by gambling software creator Playtech. There's been no official announcement that this has changed, but a report on Reuters states that Playtech have sold YoYo Games for "about $10 million".

Like Omori before it, Ratropolis is another game we missed because it snuck out over Christmas. This is much like the rats I used to live with in an old house share, who snuck around every trap we laid down for so long they became like friends. Horrible, noisy friends who'd steal our pasta... Much like all housemates.

Ratropolis is also a roguelite tower defense citybuilding deckbuilding real-time strategy game, though. I've never met a housemate who can say the same.