Rock Paper Shotgun – PC Game Reviews, Previews, Subjectivity

I like neat AI stuff. The prospect of making machines autonomously clever (whatever that means) is a fundamentally exciting concept to me, even though there are plenty of ways in which AI is being and will be used to make people's lives worse. I'm therefore a prime target for Two Minute Papers, a YouTube channel that takes interesting research papers and presents them with hyper-infectious enthusiasm.

One of their latest vids is about an AI someone's managed to trick into being really good at generating realistic basketball movements from a tiny amount of data. I don't understand how, but I don't particularly want or need to. This man just wrapped up his vid by whooping "what a time to be alive", and you know what? It is.

We've got sitcoms based on game development, so hows about repaying the favour with a playable comedy series? That's the idea behind 3 Out Of 10, an interactive animated series from Mothergunship developers Terrible Posture Games. Debuting on the Epic Games Store today, each week should see the release of a new episode following the hijinks of a hapless gamedev studio trying to create their first half-decent hit.

An ominous shadow falls across the Earth, cast by a tentacled beast that reaches out to grasp the planet. Impostor Factory, the final game in the To The Moon series, is not effing around. Whatever journey the game will take you on, it involves the apocalypse, a time-travelling bathroom, and reliving lives. It is a “wholesome celebration of the bloody end of the world”, as the new trailer shows.

It can be lonely being a Wargroove multiplayer fan. I hopped into Chucklefish’s Advance Wars-inspired strategy game the other day and there was only one game in the public lobby. I’m too shy to join such a game, so I left. But the latest patch might make that less of an issue, as it gathers up all the console versions and the PC and lets them play together.

We're only a week away from our next dive into Cyberpunk 2077's neon-filled Night City, as CD Projekt Red have just announced their next Night City Wire showcase will be streamed on August 10th. The last one provided a nice little insight into some of the features we can expect to see in CD Projekt Red's upcoming RPG, and this one looks to be a similar affair. This time round they'll be taking a closer look at the game's character backgrounds, or "life paths", as well as showing the different types of weapons we'll be able to get our cybernetic hands on.

As far as lockdown hobbies go, invasive surgery's a bit of a strange one. But if you insist on getting snappy with a scalpel, Surgeon Simulator 2 is opening the operating theatre a little early with a closed beta. Kicking off tomorrow, Bossa will give you a few days to get used to a stranger's insides before the medically-trainer hand-wobbler opens the hospital doors later this month.

Drink More Glurp is a game about aliens who simply do not understand the Olympics. They think that it's all about paid sponsorships, and as a result, their sponsors have weirded-up all the events, making it so these poor aliens have to deal with increasingly bizarre competitions. Now, when I say aliens I mean you, because they're who you play as in this quirky party game. It's no small fry sports competition either, 'cos you can play it locally with up to 20 people. 20!

Gaming laptops are expensive at the best of times, especially if you want one with a decent graphics chip inside it and isn't the size of a small vehicle. Happily, Newegg have chopped a massive $450 off Asus' ROG Strix Hero III laptop today, taking this normally $2000 gaming machine down to a much more appealing $1550. That's still a sizeable amount of cash, of course, but you do get an RTX 2070 graphics chip inside it, a Core i7 processor, a 144Hz display and a 512GB SSD.

In what might be considered an unsurprising move, Ninja was back on Twitch yesterday - if only for a brief couple of hours. He played a bit of Fortnite's new Joyride update with Dr Lupo in his first stream on the platform since he left for Microsoft's now-dead Mixer last year. The popular lad had managed to rack up 100,000 viewers when I caught part of the stream early on yesterday, so his audience is clearly still there, though it doesn't seem like he'll be pledging himself to Twitch again just yet.

If you've been hankering for some more Dark Souls-like action after playing Mortal Shell's free open beta last month, you won't have to wait much longer, as developers Cold Symmetry have confirmed it's coming out in full on August 18th. This action-RPG is the very first game from Cold Symmetry, and it is truly a love letter to all things Soulsborne - gothic settings, huge freaky enemies and brilliantly bulky weapons with which to whack them with. I'm sold, tbh.

My phone is not a phone. I message on it, I poke things on it, and I take photos of my cat with it. Phoning people is the last thing I want to do with it. I also used to chase after llamas on my snowboard on it, but now I can do that on the PC as Alto’s Adventure and Alto's Odyssey, two lovingly crafted endless runners, are now coming to the Epic Games Store as The Alto Collection, and they’ll be free for the first week.

The standard edition of Microsoft Flight Simulator costs £59, but like me trying to show my parents their house from a Airbus A320neo, we can go lower. A lot lower, as it turns out. Here’s how you can play (but not own) what’s looking to be the first game of the next, next, next-generation for as low as £1. And you get over 200 other games with it as well.

It seems to be all go on Samsung deals this week, as Amazon have slashed the prices on two Samsung gaming monitors today as part of their wider Samsung sale event. Technically, they're different models of the same display, Samsung's CJG5. One is a curved 32in model, while the other is a curved 27in job, but the important thing is that both of these 144Hz, 2560x1440 screens are back down to the same price they were over last year's Black Friday period, making it a good time to pick them up.

The Samsung 970 Evo may have been replaced by the 970 Evo Plus quite some time ago, but when the UK's BT Shop currently has the 500GB model for a very agreeable £78 versus the Plus' usual going price of over £100, this is one SSD deal that's definitely worth snapping up if you're in need of some new storage. They've also got the 1TB model for £138, which is a good £40 cheaper than its equivalent Plus model.

It's time to collect your driving licence, because Fortnite's Joyride update just added some shiny new vehicles for you to race around in. There are four cars/trucks for players to find across the battle royale now, each allowing you to pick up your buds, hang out the windows and cause some carnage. You can even stick on their radios for a little sing-along if you fancy.

As Prison Architect proved, you can hide dark themes inside a cute wrapper and people will swallow it. It now looks like the ‘70s set Honey, I Joined A Cult is trying to pull off the same trick.

The upcoming cult management sim just got a shiny new trailer, and confirms it's coming to early access in 2021. The pitch is that you design a cult HQ and recruit acolytes to your ‘cause’ while dealing with the nosey press (ugh, hate those guys) and rival heretics. I’ve double-checked and the trailer contains no subliminal messages. Now join us, brothers and sisters! I mean, let’s watch the trailer. Ahahhahaa.

If you've played as or against Valorant's explodey agent Raze, you'll know that her ultimate ability is pretty darn strong. It's basically a massive rocket launcher that fires off a single shot, but one so powerful it can instantly kill all enemies in a decent-sized blast radius. As you might expect, it can be pretty hard to avoid, so in yesterday's Act 2 patch Riot Games put in a small nerf for it. Except, something went very wrong with said nerf, because after the patch went live, she was able to fire multiple rockets at her poor unsuspecting foes.

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away... Star Wars: X-Wing Alliance was released. 21 years ago, in fact. But to look at the work the people at X-Wing Alliance Upgrade are doing to the classic space dogfighting game you wouldn't think it was from the '90s. They’ve added dynamic cockpits, modern lighting, upgraded all the ship models, and have even ported it to VR. Below is a comparison between the original game and the updated version that’ll get your midi-chlorians flowing.

The battle-royale-but-not-like-that videogame known as Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout has exploded. In a good way. Everyone and their squishy cartoon dog has been playing it, to the point where developers Mediatonic had to repeatedly take down their servers for beefing purposes.

It's a game show in the vein of Total Wipeout, or possibly an extremely squidgy version of Takeshi's castle. Players are whittled down from 60 as they get eliminated via various mini-games, then whoever's left has to race up a hill, dodging obstacles in the hope of being the first to grab a crown. So far I've played two matches and wound up cackling in near constant delight - but for now I just want to show you some of the best Falls from the internet. I can virtually guarantee they will improve your Wednesday.

Blizzard have confirmed that they’ll be hosting BlizzCon as an online event due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The annual celebration of their games and communities was cancelled this year, with a suggestion that they’ll be holding it virtually in 2021. During a recent earnings call, Blizzard’s president J. Allen Brack confirmed that it will be happening “early 2021”.

However many people enter the RPS treehouse, the same number of people eventually leave. There's no fighting inside, just fun and games. In this Dave Irwin leaving RPS guide, I'll say goodbye to Dave, thank him for his work, and explain how you can do the same.