Matthew Castle

Different people want different things from their Metroid-like games. (I refuse to use that daft Metroidvania word: the Castlevania games, even the more Metroid-y ones, share very little DNA with the games that are apparently aping it.) For some, the gradual filling-in of a map is enough to scratch the itch. For others, it's the ingenuity of the abilities and upgrades that enable your cartography.…

Tagged with ChAIR, Epic Games, feature, Have You Played, metroidvania, Shadow Complex Remastered.

They call it Ceremorphosis. The excruciating seven day process by which a humanoid might transform into a Mind Flayer. Stick one illithid tadpole in the brain and one week later you’ve got an octopus for a head and a craving for more grey matter. And what better visual metaphor for the return of Baldur’s Gate: the adventure that lodged in the hearts and minds of…

Tagged with feature, Google Stadia, interview, Larian Studios, Baldur's Gate, Divinity: Original Sin.

How many dead kings is too many dead kings? That's the question at the heart of The Witcher 2: Assassins Of Kings. I mean, the clue's in the title. Perhaps the bigger question is, will you join the ranks of the titular monarch manglers? And it's a doozy of a question. In a world already destabilised by a rush of regicides, what happens when one…

Tagged with CD Projekt Red, feature, Geralt, Have You Played, The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings.

DICE appeared to drop the ball when they didn't call Battlefield V's upcoming battle royale offering 'Battlefield Royale'. They called it Firestorm instead, which sounds like a terrible Steven Seagal film you'd buy for 99p at a petrol station. Having now played the mode, due as a free update next Monday, I can see why they went with it. The titular blaze dominates the whole…

Tagged with Battle Royale, Criterion Games, Dice, Electronic Arts, feature, video, Battlefield V.

EGX Rezzed fast approaches. Developers put the finishing touches to their demo builds and the tech team nervously eyes the tangled mountain of eight thousand HDMI cables to be unknotted before the event. For those unfamiliar with it, Rezzed is a celebration of all things gaming-related, but with more of a focus on the indie scene than its bigger EGX brother. You should definitely come…

Tagged with EGX Rezzed, EGX Rezzed 2019, The RPS Sessions.

There is no complaint more sure to induce eyerolls than ‘too many games’, but here we are. There are too many games! It’s not coming from a place of entitlement, but guilt: I’d love to give every Steam key we receive a proper chance, but time limits me to the familiar/most bribe packed. That’s where Reviews Roulette steps in. It’s our new regular video ‘show’…

Tagged with feature, reviews roulette, video, Art Sqool, Fugl, Plane Mechanic Simulator.

I’ve never understood why The Room is called The Room and not The Box. Yes, the box is in a room, but your eyes are so drawn to this ornate toy that you don’t ponder what is happening around you. And it really is a good game about boxes: the mystery of what’s inside them, the thrill of prising one open and… er, that’s about…

Tagged with feature, Fireproof Games, Have You Played, The Room.

It translates, roughly, as ‘bullet refute’. Danganronpa, that is. Which makes more sense than it sounds, as the game is about taking part in murder trials and literally shooting truth bullets at lies as they spill out of suspects’ mouths. It’s not enough to say “If the glove doesn't fit, you must acquit”; the glove has to be loaded into the chamber and fired through…

Tagged with feature, Have You Played, Spike Chunsoft, Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc.

There is a moment in Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments where the detective has to identify a brand of cigar. “This scent is familiar to me, but in order to recognise it, I must combine my associations into one picture,” he says. You find yourself swivelling a stink cloud, aligning its wafting lines into a hidden image. Problem is, Holmes’ nose deals in broad stereotypes…

Tagged with feature, Focus Home Interactive, Frogwares, Have You Played, Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments.

“For England, James?” “No, for XP.” 2000 XP, to be precise. That’s how much Sean Bean’s life is worth in the first of Hitman 2’s Elusive Targets. These are timed contracts that give you one shot at killing a special guest character - in this case, everyone’s favourite Yorkshire thespian (okay, it’s a toss up between Bean and fellow GoldenEye alumni Judi Dench). Bean, of…

Tagged with feature, IO Interactive, Sean Bean, video, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, Hitman 2.

For all the bruisings, beatings and impalings that Lara Croft endures in the recent rebooted trilogy, the real victim was Tomb Raider’s sense of scale. Everything became crushed down to deliver fidelity. There were temples, sure, but you viewed them from cramped tunnels as you scurried past guards, and towering structures were only seen from the extreme close-up of a climbing wall or the long-distance…

Tagged with Crystal Dynamics, feature, Have You Played, Tomb Raider: Underworld.

“Every character you see is a real person,” said Todd Howard at E3, explaining the lack of traditional NPCs in Fallout 76. But I’m not so sure. Does Howard really expect me to believe that ‘CocktimusPrime’ isn’t waiting to greet everyone outside their vault? He’s there as I step into the light, his big, dumb name floating in front of a horizon that’s meant to…

Tagged with Bethesda Game Studios, feature, Fallout 4, Fallout 76.

Red Dead Redemption 2 was made by five million people working nine day weeks, but does it have a duck that collects your discarded throwing knives? Actually, I don’t know, as it’s not on PC. But a game that does feature a magic duck, and can be played on your home computer, is the lovely Luckslinger. It’s one of eight delightful cowboy ‘em ups that…

Tagged with Asymmetric, CreativeForge Games, Duckbridge, feature, Image & Form, neversoft, Ostrich Banditos, Rockstar Games, Spellbound Studios, Techland, video, Call Of Juarez - Gunslinger, Desperados: Wanted Dead or Alive, GUN, Hard West, Luckslinger, Red Dead Redemption 2, SteamWorld Dig 2, West of Loathing, Westerado: Double Barreled.

Return of the Obra Dinn is a terrible advert for sea travel and a great recruitment tool for the insurance industry. A boat arrives in port, absent a living crew and with too few remains to represent the 60 passengers in the ship’s log. You’re an investigator who has to fill in the gaps by studying this vaguest of crime scenes. I always thought insurance…

Tagged with Bestest Bests, detective games, feature, Lucas Pope, review, RPS Recommended, wot it think, Return of the Obra Dinn.

For years I thought Minesweeper was a horrible trick. It was hidden in a folder in Windows 95 called Games, but it didn’t look like any game I wanted to play (which was mostly Quake, at the time). Bonus side eyes for Spider Solitaire, which sounds more exciting than it is because of the word ‘spider’.

Tagged with Curt Johnson, feature, Have You Played, Minesweeper.

[Update: The first day's streaming is done! But you can still watch us kissing the ground hard in Human Fall Flat in the video below.] That rumbling sound you hear is half of Brighton packing its bags as Gamer Network decamps to Birmingham for EGX 2018. And the Rock, Paper, Shotgun Video Department will be at the show, too. We’ve decided to try our hand…

Tagged with EGX, EGX 2018, feature, video, Human: Fall Flat, Scum, SpyParty, This Is The Police 2.

I’m not sure if Bad North is a strategy game for the inept or the lazy. It does a lot that speaks to both: the islands you’re defending are small, you’ve only a few units to guide and those instructions don’t extend beyond ‘go there’ or ‘hide in that’. When they do get ‘there’ they auto-attack any marauders in reach and pursue the stragglers. It…

Tagged with cute but violent, feature, idiots, Plausible Concept, Raw Fury, real-time strategy, video, Bad North.