Stellaris

Nate: The galaxy has been remade once again. Space opera strategy extravaganza Stellaris has a new DLC out, called Federations, and a massive free patch that overhauls a greater-than-usual number of the game's systems. Both the DLC and the patch focus hard on diplomacy, and so I thought it'd be a good idea to rope in a fellow space obsessive and see if, working together,…

Tagged with burgers, feature, Paradox Development Studio, Paradox Interactive, space, The RPS Verdict, Stellaris, Stellaris: Federations.

Everyone loves a good space game, but sometimes it can feel like there are more space games to play than there are stars in the sky. Fortunately, we're here to help with our list of all the best space games you can play on PC. Whether you're a budding space cruiser captain, a wannabe space conqueror or an intrepid space-faring explorer, there's a space game…

Tagged with Bestest Bests, feature, Battlefleet Gothic: Armada 2, Descent, Distant Worlds: Universe, Elite Dangerous, EVE Online, Freelancer, Freespace 2, FTL: Faster Than Light, Homeworld, Homeworld Remastered Collection, Kerbal Space Program, Mass Effect 2, No Man's Sky, Outer Wilds, Rebel Galaxy Outlaw, Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion, Star Traders: Frontiers, Stellaris, X3: Albion Prelude.

For a time it looked as though strategy games had sunk into a kind of deathly malaise, but fast forward to 2020 and the genre has never looked healthier, which is why we've compiled this list of all the very best strategy games on PC. Whether you want to conquer the depths of space, wage historical warfare or hulk around in big mechanical robots, there's…

Tagged with Bestest Bests, feature, Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition, Anno 1800, Battlefleet Gothic: Armada 2, BattleTech, Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2, Company of Heroes, Crusader Kings II, Dawn of Man, Defcon, Desperados III, Distant Worlds: Universe, Druidstone: The Secret of the Menhir Forest, Dune II: The Battle for Arrakis, Endless Legend, Europa Universalis IV, Frozen Synapse, FTL: Faster Than Light, Gears Tactics, Hostile Waters: Antaeus Rising, Imperator: Rome, Into the Breach, Invisible Inc, Men Of War, Mutant Year Zero: Road To Eden, Neptune's Pride, Northgard, Offworld Trading Company, Sacrifice, Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, Sid Meier's Civilization VI, Six Ages: Ride Like The Wind, StarCraft II: Wings Of Liberty, Stellaris, Supreme-Commander, The Banner Saga, They Are Billions, Total War: Shogun 2, Total War: Three Kingdoms, Total War: Warhammer II, UFO: Enemy Unknown, Unity of Command, Warcraft III, Warhammer 40000: Dawn of War - Soulstorm, Warhammer 40000: Mechanicus, XCOM 2.

Here we stand in the dark neo-year of 2020. The spam bots have risen to prominence, the governments of the world are bickering over follower counts, and history class has been renamed "meme studies". Somewhere, in a dusty room in the RPS treehouse, a rogue human is compiling a list article for a crumbling PC games website. It is a warning to all those who…

Tagged with feature, One Off The List, BattleTech, Deus Ex, Mass Effect 3, NieR: Automata, RimWorld, Shadowrun Returns, SOMA, Stellaris, Universe Sandbox.

Right now, there’s a room in Buffalo Grove, Illinois that's as quiet as a grave. The power is off, the robotic limbs are becalmed, and the once thumping presses are depressed. The Steam Controller assembly room is assembling no more, and with the recent Steam sale clearing out all the stock, the grand experiment is over. It’s the final part of Valve’s great Steam Machines…

Tagged with feature, Steam, Valve Software, Arma 3, Brawlhalla, Fallout 4, Overwatch, Stellaris, The Long Dark, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.

One of my favourite tropes in Science Fiction is aliens whose cultures are built around some hangover from the time before they made it to the stars. Take the Kelpiens from Star Trek: Discovery, whose existence is dominated by the inbuilt anxiety that comes from having once been prey species. Or Iain M Banks’s Idirans, the “top monster on a whole planetful of monsters'”, who…

Tagged with feature, Paradox Development Studio, Paradox Interactive, preview, Stellaris.

This week: Rude swears! Writing about more interesting games than the ones you boring people keep buying! And battle advice to people who've been dead 1,800 years! It's some Steam Charts.

Tagged with feature, Steam Charts, Battalion 1944, Cooking Simulator, Divinity: Original Sin 2 Definitive Edition, Gems Of War, Grand Theft Auto V, Hell Let Loose, Mordhau, Night Lights, Octopath Traveler, Playerunknown's Battlegrounds, Reventure, Stellaris, Total War: Three Kingdoms.

Hey, remember the good old days? Those giddy times I like to think of as last week? When the Charts felt fresh and new, filled with potential, as if any interesting game could take a top spot? Well, forget all that because it's all gone to shit again.

Tagged with feature, Steam Charts, Farming Simulator 19, Grand Theft Auto V, Insurgency: Sandstorm, Kingdom Two Crowns, Monster Hunter: World, No Man's Sky, Playerunknown's Battlegrounds, Stellaris, Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege.

I don't what is this? How many? Are we sure we're in the right charts? This is definitely the Steam Charts, where the mad-brained broken people just buy the same four games over and over and over? Because something is up. People have only bought the same three games over and over!

Tagged with feature, Steam Charts, Artifact, Assassin's Creed Odyssey, Farming Simulator 19, Just Cause 4, Monster Hunter: World, Mutant Year Zero: Road To Eden, Northgard, Playerunknown's Battlegrounds, Stellaris, X4: Foundations.

Civilization VI: Rise and Fall wants to solve a problem. That problem is perpetual growth, and it plagues many 4X games. Whether your aim is world conquest or cultural hegemony, victory in Civilization and many of its cohorts depends on domination. However peacefully you try to play, you're often straight-jacketed into a utilitarian-psychotic view where all resources and people are just raw material to be…

Tagged with 2K, feature, Firaxis Games, Seedship, Civilization, Crusader Kings II, Defcon, Fate of the World, Sid Meier's Civilization VI, Sid Meier's Civilization VI: Rise And Fall, Sid Meier's Pirates, Stellaris.

Another year over, a new one just begun, which means, impossibly, even more games. But what about last year? Which were the games that most people were buying and, more importantly, playing? As is now something of a tradition, Valve have let slip a big ol' breakdown of the most successful titles released on Steam over the past twelve months. Below is the full, hundred-strong…

Tagged with Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2, feature, NBA 2K17, NBA 2K18, Steam, The Elder Scrolls Online: Tamriel Unlimited, 7 Days To Die, Age of Empires II HD, Ark: Survival Evolved, Arma 3, Assassin's Creed Origins, Astroneer, Black Desert Online, Borderlands 2, Call of Duty: WW2, Call of Duty®: Black Ops II, charts, Cities: Skylines, Conan Exiles, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Crusader Kings II, Cuphead, Dark Souls III, Darkest Dungeon, Dead by Daylight, Dishonored 2, Divinity: Original Sin 2, Don't Starve Together, Doom, Dota 2, Dying Light, Elite Dangerous, Endless Space 2, Euro Truck Simulator 2, Europa Universalis IV, Factorio, Fallout 4, Farming Simulator 17, Final Fantasy XIV, Football Manager 2017, Football Manager 2018, For Honor, Friday the 13th: The Game, Garry's Mod, Grand Theft Auto V, Grim Dawn, H1Z1, Hearts of Iron IV, Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice, Hitman, Hollow Knight, Just Cause 3, Killing Floor 2, Left 4 Dead 2, Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, Middle-earth: Shadow of War, NieR: Automata, Northgard, Oxygen Not Included, Paladins, Path of Exile, Payday 2, Planet Coaster, Playerunknown's Battlegrounds, Prey, Resident Evil 7 Biohazard, RimWorld, Rise of the Tomb Raider, Rising Storm 2: Vietnam, Rocket League, Rust, Shadowverse CCG, Sid Meier's Civilization V, Sid Meier's Civilization VI, Smite, Sniper Elite 4, South Park: The Fractured but Whole, Stardew Valley, Stellaris, Subnautica, Tales of Berseria, Team Fortress 2, Tekken 7, Terraria, The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth, The Elder Scrolls Online, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, The Forest, The Sims 3, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, theHunter: Call of the Wild, Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege, Tom Clancy's The Division, Total War: Warhammer, Total War: Warhammer II, Wallpaper Engine, War Thunder, Warframe, Warhammer 40000: Dawn of War III, Watch Dogs 2, Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, XCOM 2.

Hi! I’m an incredibly charismatic space otter, and I love you! Not just you! I love everyone, be they otter analogues, bird people, or particularly advanced fungal infections! I even love murderous robots, which I’m aware is not a great idea because they’re murderous robots!At least that’s what Stellaris’ Scyldari would say, if they could do anything apart from bat their ears adorably on the…

Tagged with feature, Paradox, Paradox Interactive, Update Night, Stellaris, Stellaris: Synthetic Dawn, Stellaris: Utopia.

A funny old week in the charts, which is to say, H1Z1 and The Witcher 3 have been shoved out by the hatrick of appearances from Stellaris. Also it's worth noting that Dishonored: Death Of The Outsider has disappeared after just one week, which seems a bit of a shame.Oh, and as correctly predicted last week, absolutely no sign of XCOM 2 making nearly as…

Tagged with feature, NBA 2K18, Steam Charts, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Dead by Daylight, Divinity: Original Sin 2, Grand Theft Auto V, Playerunknown's Battlegrounds, Stellaris, Stellaris: Synthetic Dawn, Stellaris: Utopia, Total War: Warhammer II.

Big, slow, sweeping strategy games expose their rules in a way no other game does. Call of Duty doesn’t have floating numbers above enemy heads, telling you their movement speed, for example. But in most 4X and grand strategy games, there is no attempt to hide exactly how everything works: the stats, their interactions, are all laid out and plain to see. Yet these games…

Tagged with Endless Space, feature, Endless Legend, Endless Space 2, Europa Universalis IV, Sid Meier's Civilization VI, Sid Meier's Pirates, Stellaris.

'Terrible' only in the sense of their gaming capability. Honestly, I'm sure your laptop is lovely to look at and it was definitely a extremely sensible idea to spend all that money on it instead of buying a holiday or helping to save the pandas. Truth is, though, that playing recently-released games on the vast majority of laptops is about as effective as starting an…

Tagged with feature, Hardware, Dead Cells, Dota 2, League of Legends, Night in the Woods, Planescape: Torment: Enhanced Edition, Prey, RimWorld, Rocket League, Scanner Sombre, Stardew Valley, Stellaris, Stellaris: Utopia, The Elder Scrolls Online, The Elder Scrolls Online: Morrowind.

Tagged with feature, Steam, charts, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Dark Souls III, Dead Cells, Doom, Grand Theft Auto V, H1Z1: King of the Kill, Playerunknown's Battlegrounds, Prey, Stellaris, Stellaris: Utopia.

Last time in this diary on grand space strategy Stellaris, my species of sugary, democratic Tortals invited everyone to their space nation regardless of race, creed or culture. It was a burgeoning multicultural utopia called the Open Gates. Then a terrifying horde of transdimensional beings arrived and started to eat everyone like a rack of saucy ribs, which is against the rules.The Tortals and their…

Tagged with Diary, feature, Paradox Interactive, Stellaris, Stellaris: Utopia.

"It will all take care of itself" – infamous Tortal sayingWelcome to the Open Gates of Tortal. All are welcome here. Are you a slithering conformist lizard looking for employment? Come and work in our power plants. Maybe you’re a consumerist mollusc seeking some retail therapy? Then visit our pleasure districts. Are you a titanic ocean beast of uncertain origin? Join our defensive military academy,…

Tagged with Paradox, Stellaris, Stellaris: Utopia.

He was a boy. She was a girl. Can I make it anymore obvious? He wrote the weekly Steam charts. She read them.What more can I say?Other than that these are the ten Steam games with the most accumulated sales over the past week, obv. See ya later, boy.

Tagged with Ark: Survival Evolved, charts, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Dark Souls III, Dishonored 2, Europa Universalis IV, Europa Universalis IV: Mandate of Heaven, H1Z1: King of the Kill, NieR: Automata, Playerunknown's Battlegrounds, Stellaris, Stellaris: Utopia.

Everything was in place for the Romulan invasion of the United Federation of Planets. Warbirds screeched out of the shipyards of Romulus and Remus on a direct course for the closest Federation worlds, those belonging to the chilly Andorians. The real goal, of course, was neighbouring Vulcan. This was a symbolic war.As my jade vessels bombarded the frozen Andorian homeworld, the Tal Shiar informed me…

Tagged with feature, Grinsel, Matix, mod, Paradox Development Studio, Paradox Interactive, Shaggo, Stellaris Star Trek: New Horizons, Swizzlewizzle, Walshicus, Stellaris.