Matthew Castle

EGX Rezzed fast approaches. Demos are being tweaked, wristbands printed and an army of organisers scratch their heads about how to get a bazillion PCs to work in a 19th century dockland warehouse. For the uninitiated, Rezzed is a celebration of all playthings virtual, with a distinct lean towards the indie scene compared to its bigger EGX brother. And it’s held in the Tobacco Docks,…

Tagged with EGX Rezzed, EGX Rezzed 2020, indies uncovered.

It’s quite rare for a composer to be offered as the spokesperson for an upcoming game, but it’s also quite rare for a game to sound as good as Ori And The Will Of The Wisps. So good, in fact, that it was Gareth Coker’s tinkling ivories that were first used to announce the game at E3 2017, where he sat at his piano and…

Tagged with features, game music, interview, Moon Studios, Xbox Game Studios, Ori and the Will of the Wisps.

I would definitely die in a zombie apocalypse. That’s my main takeaway from The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners, a VR tie-in that launched on Steam yesterday. A full-bodied control scheme demands you swing axes with both hands to put enough weight behind your attack, and knives and screwdrivers have to be buried into scalps with committed plunges; half an hour of whacking walkers has…

Tagged with feature, skydance interactive, video, VR, Zombies. Again., The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners.

I don’t have the facts to back this up, but it is unlikely Westerado had the same budget and team size as Red Dead Redemption 2. Not to go all Digital Foundry on you, but I estimate that there are more graphics in one of Rockstar’s physics-enabled horse gonads then there are in the entirety of Ostrich Banditos’ virtual frontier. And yet, for my money,…

Tagged with feature, Have You Played, Ostrich Banditos, Westerado: Double Barreled.

Nothing better captures the magic of Shenmue III than its save files. On one line, the current date and time; above it, the date and time this particular save will whisk you back to. Because that’s what Shenmue is: time travel. The opportunity to visit a very specific moment in history. In the case of Shenmue III, China in the spring of 1987. Of course,…

Tagged with Deep Silver, feature, review, wot i think, Ys Net, Shenmue III.

Reviewing Red Dead Redemption 2 a year after its console release is like happening upon a frontier homestead after it's been attacked by bandits. It’s a game that has been subjected to every take under the sun, and stripped to the bone by internet vultures; every last secret dug up, every mechanic scalped and scrutinised, until no magic remains. I, adopting the role of world-weary…

Tagged with feature, review, Rockstar Games, wot i think, Red Dead Redemption 2.

I did not expect Gears 5 to feature an extended Hamilton parody. And yet here we are: escaping a besieged city by hunkering down in a theatre, its walls pasted with the iconic image of Alexander Hamilton pointing to the stars. Only it’s not Hamilton, but Nassar Embry, who ‘Gearspedia’ tells me was the founder of the Coalition of Ordered Governments. And it’s not just…

Tagged with feature, review, The Coalition, wot i think, Xbox Game Studios, Gears of War 5.

“It’s not a fucking expansion.” On this Steve Sinclair, creative director on Warframe, is clear. He’s talking to us a few hours before the formal reveal of the ‘it’ in question: Empyrean, the Warframe add-on formally known as Railjack that is adding spaceships, throwing them together in huge space battles and using them to explore previously unseen corners of the Origin System. So if not…

Tagged with Digital Extremes, feature, TennoCon, Warframe.

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, Baldur's Gate III, 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.