Rock Paper Shotgun – PC Game Reviews, Previews, Subjectivity

The Fallout 76 clown car continued its strange journey this week, as the recently semi-redeemed MMO stumbled over another technical hitch.

The popular in-game event Fasnacht Day was expected to start on Monday, but was quickly stalled by a bug. Players reacted with great frustration as the event was taken down, depriving everyone of an hourly semi-charming, semi-creepy masked robot march. Bethesda report that all is now well, and the event went live again early this morning.

The game event cancellations are pushing even deeper into the year now, as Blizzard have announced BlizzCon 2020 is a no-go. The event usually takes right at the beginning of November, but due to ongoing concerns about the Covid-19 pandemic they've made the decision to cancel it.

"We've talked about different paths we could take, and how each one could be complicated by fluctuations in national and local health guidelines in the months ahead," they said. "Ultimately, after considering our options, we've come to the very difficult decision to not have BlizzCon this year."

While the Silent Hill series still seems basically dead, and maybe that's for the best, parts will return in Dead By Daylight. The 1v4 multiplayer horrorshow's next DLC pack will introduce Silent Hill, with Cheryl Mason as a playable survivor, Pyramid Head as a killer, and the school as a new map. DBD has long had guest characters out horror films, from Halloween to Scream, so this is fairly natural. Hell, it's better than Konami tend to treat Silent Hill.

Ubisoft today announced revamped rereleases of four vintage games from the colony-building strat-o-sim series Anno, due in June. The Anno History Collection will bring new versions of Anno 1602, Anno 1503, Anno 1701, and Anno 1404 will newfangled fanciness including 4K resolutions and multiplayer matchmaking, all while preserving save compatibility.

"Skyrim Grandma" Shirley Curry has drastically cut back on her videos for the sake of her health and enjoyment of the game.

The 84 year old started sharing her Skyrim games in 2015, and her warm, joyful videos made her famous enough to get her own mod, and even a role in the next Elder Scrolls game. She's racked up over 800,000 subscribers on YouTube, but only a tiny percentage are active viewers, and the work and pressure involved are affecting her health.

I have not seen the Captain Tsubasa anime nor read the manga, but I am very into what I've seen of Captain Tsubasa: Rise Of New Champions. A football game where players have extremely anime special moves sounds wild. Allow me to describe my favourite from this new trailer: after a player slides forwards on his bum, two lads launch off his outstretched feet and, holding hands, surge into the air to simultaneously kick a ball so hard it lights up with blue flame. Yes, please, thank you.

Seeing as real-life racing has been suspended due the Covid-19 pandemic, Formula E started its very own series of virtual races in rFactor 2 to keep up the racing season online. The Race At Home Challenge features actual Formula E drivers as well as esports players, competing together to keep fans entertained and raise money for Unicef. But alas, one driver went ahead and tried to cheat the system, getting an imposter to drive in his place at this weekend's event.

In homage to one of the all-time action-RPG greats, Minecraft Dungeons has a secret level where you can fight herds of murderous cattle. Mojang's own action-RPG launched this morning, and folks have already discovered a nod to Diablo's infamous cow level, where wizards will be sent to mow down hordes of mooing mobs sprouting mushrooms. Killing cows: a cornerstone of the genre.

If you didn’t figuratively fill your boots with Memorial Day sale items over the weekend, you’ll be pleased to hear that Best Buy still has a few solid offers for the PC gamer with money to burn, including a whole host of pre-built gaming PCs and gaming laptops up for grabs, plus loads of discounts on mice, keyboards and Samsung's 240Hz CRG5 monitor.

The Dota 2 International 10 Battle Pass has landed, and the ground hath buckled beneath its weight. There is a silly number of new cosmetics and features for those who buy it, and a few new features for those who don't. Everyone now gets to play mini-games during those inevitable mid-game pauses when one player vanishes, and everyone can join newfangled player guilds where you jointly earn cosmetic rewards. Only Pass owners can create guilds, but I bet you know at least one sucker.

Folks rooting around in the recent release of Mafia III's Definitive Edition have found part of Berlin, a level scrap likely from a cancelled espionage game. Supposedly a project Hangar 13 started after Mafia 3, the game known as Rhapsody was never announced but whispers have leaked out before. Now here's a rough outline of Berlin, which might be the most we'll ever see of Rhapsody. That's a nice little find, though it's less nice that some players are reporting the Def Ed has brought new technical problems too.

Quantic Dream's trio of old PlayStation exclusives are being plonked in front of a new set of PC players next month, as Heavy Rain, Detroit: Become Human and Beyond: Two Souls are arriving on Steam on June 18th. They first launched on PC last year via the Epic Games Store, and it's not long now before they're freed of their exclusivity shackles. So, which will you try first? The murder mystery about finding your stolen kid? The android simulator that makes you decide if robots should be free? Or will you become a young girl trying to figure out what's up with her weird friend? You decide!

Good news for readers that pay in US dollars rather than pounds: Ubisoft are having a pretty comprehensive sale on their big hitting titles over on their US store right now, including 67% off Assassin's Creed Odyssey and The Division 2, and a whopping 75% off Far Cry 5.

Maybe there's not much Minecraft in Minecraft Dungeons, but there is a pretty decent action-RPG or so I hear. Mojang's click-click-click-click-clicking dungeon crawler launched today, with nary a block to mine or tree to punch but some weird and fun builds to experiment with. I'm up for an ARPG where one armour perk gives you a pet bat.

Just when you thought the excellent Logitech G915 Lightspeed wireless keyboard couldn't get any better, Logitech have just gone and announced they're making a compact tenkeyless model of it, the G915 TKL. Launching this June for £200 (US pricing TBC), it's still going to cost you a pretty penny when it comes out next month, but if you've been searching for a space-saving gaming keyboard that does away with all those pesky wires, then the G915 TKL could be just the thing.

Next up in the hack and slashin' RPG series, Torchlight 3 previously had a change of heart after starting life as an online game called Torchlight Frontiers. Echtra Games have now announced that the currently-running closed beta will wrap this Friday. Now that they're back in familiar territory, Echtra are planning some livestreamed announcements on the same day to talk about when the game will be "publicly available," which might be anything from a public beta to an early access launch.

From those folks at Frogwares wot love doing Sherlock Holmes adventures, comes the next sleuth 'em up based on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's gentleman detective. Sherlock Holmes Chapter One is a prequel story to the developers' other games, this time telling a story of Holmes' early years standing in for Gerard Way on My Chemical Romance tours. No, not really, but they say that Chapter One will feature a "cavalier young Sherlock" before his reputation preceded him. It's due out sometime in 2021.

After a brief moment of uncertainty during its first reveal, I had a pretty good feeling that Minecraft Dungeons would be some nice and breezy block-clad fun. Until I'd seen it though, turning Minecraft into Diablo's little brother was not an obvious experiment—at least not to me. What other game series should get a spinoff into some totally unlikely other genre?

Minecraft Dungeons isn't out until tomorrow, but RPS reviews man Nate has already called it some good, simple fun in his Minecraft Dungeons review.

Guinness World Records seems to have gotten a bit copyright cuckoo this weekend thanks in part to YouTube's automated Content ID system. A bunch of Super Mario Bros speedrunning videos were sent copyright claim notices based on a record holder's speedrun that Guinness uploaded to their own channel. They say the spree of claims was unintentional and should now be fixed. Whoops.