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4 days ago
Disco Elysium’s new Hardcore mode wants you poor, sick and drug-addled
What've we got here, eh? Some sorta proper Poirot type, are you? A real Miss Marple? Well, I've got a case here that'll make you look like PC Plod. Political police thriller Disco Elysium reckons it's been going easier on you, and now flaunts a tough new Hardcore True Detective mode to really test your smarts. Try solving a murder when you can't afford a…
7 days ago
Feature: Updated regularly
Below you'll find the list of the best PC games we recommend you play right now. These are games that are new, that are being freshly updated, or that are stone cold classics of their respective genres. This is a living list, which means we'll be updating it throughout 2020 as we fall in love with new games.
2 weeks ago
Disco Elysium considered Twitter its competition for players’ attention
Disco Elysium was by and far my own game of the year for 2019 and it made RPS's list of best PC games of 2019 as well. Its gritty, ugly characters are memorable and its plot, despite quickly getting convoluted, is as hard to look away from as the latest original series from your TV subscription of choice. Rather than other text-heavy RPGs, though, lead…
3 weeks ago
Feature: A good year for games
2019 was a great year for PC games - aren't they all? - but you might not yet know what the very best PC games of 2019 were. Let us help you.
2 months ago
Feature: Don't leave the blankets until spring!
Winter brings out a part of me that immediately seeks a mountain of blankets in which to burrow. Even in my seasonally confused state of Texas, the weather has tended towards the chilly and left me with little excuse not to have a kettle boiling interminably as I layer on socks and pull the biggest comforter from the top of the closet. But this presents…
Feature: It isn't too late.
In the yard below, a corpse hangs from a pine tree. It is my failure and my shame for all to see, rotting in plain sight. Martainaise, the broken-down home of Disco Elysium’s broken-down police story, is an excoriating light shone not just upon its broken-down policeman, but also upon me, and my failure to be the person I thought I was. It is my…
3 months ago
Feature: Forever and ever, amen
The results are in! The links between the longevity of Steam Charts and the decreases in violent crime, the improvement of sanitary water supplies, and sudden global drops in serious health issues, are no coincidence at all! To quote from the paper recently published in Nature, "Causal links have been shown connecting Rock Paper Shotgun's Steam Charts articles to a remarkably number of positive worldwide…
Feature: Speedy resolution
How to deal with Disco Elysium’s twelve-year-old drug addict
The first proper obstacle in amnesiac police RPG Disco Elysium, if you don’t count your ceiling fan, is a small child who has taken a lot of speed. He stands outside your hotel, chucking stones at your corpse. Your case’s corpse. The one you need to investigate. This won’t do.
Feature: They can survive almost anything
Let me tell you about my cockroach obsession in Disco Elysium
So Disco Elysium is an RPG, yes? And you have to solve a murder, because you're a cop. Except you also can't remember anything whatsoever, including your own name or where you badge and gun are (how are you supposed to hand them over to your chief when you break the rules to get results??) or even, initially, that you're a cop. This creates the…
Feature: Lukewarm takes incoming
Don't come any closer, pal. I've got a gun. Oh wait, maybe I don't, because I pawned it when I was extremely drunk, and I didn't do a deal with the corrupt union boss to get it back. Oh dear, now a voice in my head that says it's Electrochemistry is trying to convince me to get drunk. I must be in bleak but lovely…
Feature: You won't feel a thing
The Schwarzschild radius of the Steam Charts continues to shrink as the effects of the Universal Collapse take greater impact on our daily lives. Read on if you want to know how to protect your family from complete atomic devastation.
Feature: Existence precedes disco
How Disco Elysium’s opening sets the stage for existential revolt
Existentialism. A word with baggage, and about it. Philosophers have deployed it to cover many different things, but they're all concerned with the baggage of being alive. The urgent dilemma of existence, as beings without apparent purpose. The concept fascinates me. It's what I get up for in the morning. Based on the opening minutes of detective RPG Disco Elysium, so does ZA/UM. It's clear…
Feature: Hectocotylus
People, I face a dilemma. (Great cars, them Dilemmas. - Ed) This week Destiny 2 takes up an astonishing five out of ten spaces on the Charts. So what's a professional games journalist of 20 years experience to do? Write ten octopus facts in less detail but with more jokes, or six more involved entries perhaps better celebrating our cephalopod friends? I've opted for the…
You don't need your deals herald to tell you that wordy isometric RPG Disco Elysium is finally a thing you can buy, did you know that to celebrate the release of ZA/UM's intriguing debut, GOG are giving away a free copy of Stygian Software's equally word isometric RPG UnderRail with every purchase? I thought not. Hurry, though, as this deal won't last for long. Read…
Feature: My uncle told me "disco biscuits" is slang for bad drugs
So, then. Disco Elysium, like Planescape: Torment, or even Fallout or Arcanum, is an isometric RPG with a lot of text. You, an alcoholic, probably drug-addicted cop in early middle age, wake up to face a new partner, a lynching that needs solving, and an apocalyptic hangover that has wiped your memory. So, you start the work of learning... well, everything. I managed to stumble…
Feature: Cogito ergo sum confusus
Disco Elysium Thought Cabinet: the Thoughts system explained
The Disco Elysium Thought Cabinet is one of the game's defining features. And that's saying something, considering the many different ways in which ZA/UM have deviated from the traditional RPG structure. In Disco Elysium, it's not just tools and clothes that you can equip but also Thoughts that you can mull over and adopt, almost always with both positive and negative results. Our Disco Elysium…
4 months ago
Feature: Don't worry; I spent about an hour on character creation too
The Disco Elysium skills and character creation system, much like the game itself, is big, brilliant, bizarre, and bewildering. With the four primary abilities of Intellect, Psyche, Physique, and Motorics each influencing a set of six distinct secondary skills, there's an enormous amount to learn and figure out before you even begin to delve into the story itself. Our Disco Elysium skills guide will walk…
Feature: Disco inferno
I am still figuring out what I think of Disco Elysium, but I can say with some certainty that it is the first game where I have done a small fistpump and thought to myself, "Yeah, you really nailed telling that woman you found her husband's body! Nailed it! Best cop ever!" Disco Elysium is a very dense RPG, where you play an amnesiac alcoholic…
Feature: Skill check for 'an exclusive'
Disco Elysium’s developers are in “a bloody battle” for the human mind
When visiting ZA/UM's studio, I had to take my boots off. This is because their studio, where they are putting the final touches on open world RPG Disco Elysium, is also a flat in a townhouse in Hove, where several of them live. It has nice wooden floors, unbelievably high ceilings, and a big bay window cradling some workstations. There's also a bookshelf full of…
While the fascinating surreal detective RPG, Disco Elysium should come to a tidy conclusion when it launches this month, developer ZA/UM say that should they get the possibility to make a sequel... well, they have some ideas. Chief among these is the option for a pregnant woman as a second protagonist, which sounds potentially wild in a wordy RPG where your inner thoughts and physical…
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