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9 months ago
Feature: Short but sweet
I’ve been playing the endless Assassin's Creed Origins, a game so gargantuan that the time on my save file lasts longer than Ancient Egyptian civilization did. This is a revenge mission stripped of all urgency by the simple fact of being five million hours long. Whatever big bad awaits at the end can rest easy knowing there are 800 fortresses to clear out before I…
10 months ago
Feature: Listen to these dads
The dadification of games continues. So we’re going full Dad this week on the RPS podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show, as we’ve been asked to talk about the games we play with our children. Alec’s daughter is excited by the unlockable characters in Rayman Legends (and she’s also strangely fascinated by Battletech). John’s son is a bit younger and likes to watch his dad diving…
1 year ago
Feature: Give PC a chance
My nerves have been sufficiently jangled and my trigger-finger sufficiently itched by the glut of action games which landed in the closing months of last year. I crave an altogether more sedate beginning to 2018, and so my mind turns to games in which violence, reflex or any other kind of unblinking attentiveness takes a back seat. Primarily we're talking violence-free games here, but I…
Feature: Superman 64 syndrome strikes again
There are two games in recent memory which left me with an immediate thirst for more. Not in terms of story answers or glitzier sequels - it was simply that I wanted more of the same experience. I'd play a second Inside in a heartbeat - just more strings of strange and blackly comic scenes with well-judged, lethal puzzling. And I'd leap at the chance…
We've already seen which games sold best on Steam last year, but a perhaps more meaningful insight into movin' and a-shakin' in PC-land is the games that people feel warmest and snuggliest about. To that end, Valve have announced the winners of the 2017 Steam Awards, a fully community-voted affair which names the most-loved games across categories including best post-launch support, most player agency, exceeding…
Feature: Sit down for a while
[gfycat data_id="ImpartialConsciousFlatfish" data_expand=true data_controls=false data_autoplay=true data_title=false] In ABZÛ, you play as a diver who is exploring the sublime and vibrant depths of the ocean. As you dive further down you heal and restore areas that have mysteriously decayed and help bring back their natural beauty. It’s a wonderful and emotional game that can turn even the clunkiest of players into a graceful aqua-dancer. Yet while…
Game music that responds to your actions can be a magical thing. I'm talking about sneaking through enemy lines accompanied by an eerie string quartet, or cresting a hill while the scenery and music swell around you. Joost van Dongen, the man behind Proun and Cello Fortress, recently did an experiment with live soundtrack improvisation that makes for interesting reading. Dongen and his fellow improviser…
2 years ago
Feature: The best bargains
The Steam summer sale is in full blaze. For a while it even blazed so hot that the servers went on fire and all the price stickers peeled off the games. Either that or the store just got swamped with cheapskates looking for the best bargains. Cheapskates like you! Well, don’t worry. We’ve rounded up some recommendations - both general tips and some newly added…
Feature: Chill out
Navigate the gallery by clicking on the left and right arrows or use the left and right cursor keys on your keyboard! Real life is rubbish sometimes, and there’s nothing that video games can do about that. But I know that if I’ve had a particularly tough day at work, then sitting down at my PC and visiting a different world can often be exactly…
Feature: Keep your finger on the pulse without giving up sleep
I am dad, hear me whinge. Too many games, not enough spare time, for all my non-work hours are spent kissing grazed knees, explaining why you cannot eat the food in that cupboard, constructing awful Lion King dioramas out of toilet roll tubes and being terrified that the next jump from the sofa to the armchair will go fatally wrong. I'm lucky in that my…
Feature: Absent Friends
Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time. I fell hard for languid, gorgeous diving adventure ABZU at the time, but replaying it recently with my three-year-old daughter, it's become something else entirely. Not simply delightful - also strangely harrowing.
3 years ago
Alice is away moonlighting as a chiptune DJ this week, as well as nobly helping to fill her local public swimming pond with cement in order that it might become a skate park. Hence, it falls to me to pose the question eternal. What the dickens are you going to play this weekend? Pretty sure I can take a good guess, if I'm honest. Here's…
Feature: Down here all the fish is happy
I know, you're all off exploring the stars, but please don't neglect the seas. ABZÛ [official site] is the most beautiful sight I've seen on my screen this year. I know it has its irritations - particularly, the controls leave my sense of tranquility battered and bruised - but nonetheless its explosion of undersea life and air of casual exploration pleases me enormously. I felt…
Last week's best-sellers, today. Most of the recent mainstays are still hanging on in there, but it's goodbye to Dead by Daylight (for now, at least). We do get two intriguing new entries, one glowering and one that is ALL THE FISH. Number one, meanwhile, is probably the number one you expected. That's right: Limbo of the Lost is back-back-back!
Feature: Plenty of fish in the sea
Abzû [official site] is a beautiful underwater game which is, by turns, delightful and then very good at getting in its own way. I've played it twice now so follow me beneath the waves as I tell you Wot I Think:
The ABZÛ [official site] E3 trailer was one of my highlights of the show with its colourful underwater world, lovely soundtrack and promisingly fluid movement. There's now a slightly extended trailer online showing more in the way of gameplay. If you watched the E3 one which I posted a LOT of the scenes will be familiar but there are some slightly extended sections which show…
ABZÛ [official site] is basically Pip-bait of the highest order. Beautiful undersea exploration with music composed by Austin Wintory. Oh god, the kelp forests! The jellyfish! The sea floor! Come look!
5 years ago
We gushed a little about Abzû in our E3 chat yesterday but in our fawning, er, hadn't actually got around to posting about it yet. (The same thing happened with Cuphead.) That may because we don't much at all about it, other than it's a gorgeous undersea game and that developers Giant Squid are lead by Matt Nava, who was previously art director of thatgamecompany's…
