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  • The Brotherhood of Steel as seen in Amazon's Fallout TV adaptation.

    Perhaps the Last Of Us TV show on HBO getting it right was the dawn of a new era of good TV based on video games, but I still approach each adaptation with trepidation. That includes Amazon's Fallout series from Westworld and Person Of Interest writer/director Jonathan Nolan, which just got its first trailer.

  • Farming in a Stardew Valley screenshot.

    Stardew Valley developer Eric Barone, also known as ConcernedApe, says he is currently in "(self-imposed) extreme crunch mode" while working on the pastoral life sim's 1.6 update. When asked what motivates him to keep working on the already-beloved game, Barone called Stardew his "life's work."

  • The metro from Cyberpunk 2077's E3 2018 trailer.

    Cyberpunk 2077 is finally getting the feature I most crave from every open world game: public transport. Update 2.1, due for release next week, is adding a fully-functioning metro system of the sort seen in Cyberpunk 2077's 2018 cinematic trailer - as well as new hangouts with your romantic pals, repeatable car races, and new accessibility settings.

  • A close up of Horace the Endless Bear looking at a big pile of presents with his name on, next to a plate of cookies with a glass of milk. It's the 2023 RPS Advent Calendar!

    The RPS Advent Calendar 2023, December 2nd

    It's a preservation celebration

    Time to open the second door on our advent calendar. No doubt some of you will argue this entry is some kind of cheat, but this is our treehouse and you're wrong.

  • An anthropomorphous grasshopper stands in a winter landscape carrying a guitar and talking to an ant seen from behind and leaning on the wall of her house.

    At long last, it is winter. All this week there's been a definite chill in the air that wasn't there before. No matter how many blankets I pile on top of my knees, it hangs there lurking, breathing down my neck, extending its icy mitts down my fingers until they're too frosty to carry on typing. I sometimes worry the cold will penetrate my very soul, a harbinger of something more sinister and oppressive. Oh wait. False alarm. It's just the cat giving me the evils out the corner of my eye because I've stolen their favourite woolen nap pillow. Nothing to worry about. Anyway! What are you playing this weekend? Here's what we're clicking on from beneath our duvets.

  • lg 24MR400-B.AUSQ gaming monitor 24-inch ips

    Deals: You can pick up a 24-inch 100Hz monitor for $80 at Best Buy

    A nice budget gaming screen - or a great second monitor.

    It's rare to see gaming monitors available for under $100, but that's exactly what Best Buy are offering at the moment. You can pick up an LG 24-inch IPS monitor with a 1080p resolution and 100Hz refresh rate for just $80 after a $90 reduction.

  • the nzxt h1 v2, with its internal components shown

    Deals: NZXT's excellent H1 v2 small form factor case is 50% off at Best Buy

    A great choice for a Mini ITX PC build.

    The NZXT H1 is a brilliant small form factor PC case that vaguely resembles the Xbox Series X, a portrait orientation design that minimises its footprint. This case originally retailed for $400, but today it's available for $200 from Best Buy. That's an excellent deal for a well-reviewed SFF PC case that also includes a 140mm AiO, a 92mm fan, a PCIe 4.0 riser cable and a 750W SFX power supply.

  • A character takes aim with a bow at a dinosaur in Ark: Survival Ascended

    Ark: Survival Ascended devs switch off cross-platform PVP to combat widespread cheating

    “We feel this is the best course of action for the health of the game”

    Ark: Survival Evolved remake Ark: Survival Ascended has seen its cross-platform PVP multiplayer temporarily turned off in an effort to crack down on PC cheaters.

  • Family Guy's Peter Griffin next to Solid Snake of Metal Gear Solid's butt

    Fortnite’s devouring of all pop culture into its gigantic maw continues apace, as leaks suggest that next on the menu for the IP-gobbling battle royale shooter is Metal Gear Solid’s Solid Snake and Family Guy’s Peter Griffin. (Don’t worry, The Maw is safe from the maw, for now.)

  • Someone's eye - outlined with very distinctive eyeliner - close-up in Mirror's Edge Catalyst

    EA are making more of their accessibility tech free for other devs to use, including a personal game coach

    Plus a photosensitivity analysis tool, route navigation system used in Mirror’s Edge and an automated player that can take over for you

    After offering up some of their accessibility inventions for free a couple of years ago - including the context-aware ping system seen in Apex Legends and code for a colourblindness tool - Electronic Arts are opening up even more of their accessibility features for anyone to use.

  • A close up of Mr X in the Resident Evil 2 remaster, menacing the player

    Yes, there will be another Resident Evil remake, Capcom confirm - but they won’t say which one just yet

    “We are very grateful to users that are vocal about their opinion,” adds RE4 Remake director

    Surprise, surprise: Capcom are working on another Resident Evil remake in their successful series of ground-up rebuilds for the survival-horror franchise. As for whether we’ll barrel straight into Resident Evil 5 from this year’s RE4 Remake or jump back to Zero or even, uh, sideways to Code Veronica? They won’t say - yet.

  • A space monastery is accompanied by three smaller ships in The Banished Vault

    Supporters only: Good games from 2023 that didn't quite make my GOTY list #2: The Banished Vault

    My annual I'M SORRY: 2023 Edition continues

    With apologies to Bithell Games for the two-in-a-row smackdown of games they released this year, the next entry on my list of good things that didn't quite make my personal GOTY rankings in 2023 is none other than The Banished Vault. I'll put my hands up here - I really did intend to review this one properly when it came out back in July, and I regret never quite getting round to it. Time, as ever, escaped me in the run-up to Gamescom, but it was also one of the first games in a while where I felt I wasn't quite equipped to do it justice.

  • A GTA 6 teaser image with the Rockstar Games logo and a date and time for the first trailer - 5th December 2023 at 9am ET

    The first GTA 6 trailer will release on 5th December at 9am ET, 2pm GMT and 6am PT, Rockstar have announced. What's more, they've shared around the first piece of GTA 6 art. It's got palm trees in it. Seagulls too.

  • A close up of Horace the Endless Bear looking at a big pile of presents with his name on, next to a plate of cookies with a glass of milk. It's the 2023 RPS Advent Calendar!

    The RPS Advent Calendar 2023, December 1st

    Open the first door and get ready to rumble

    Let's open the first door of this year's calendar. Lock, load, and bring a buddy.

  • A close up of Horace the Endless Bear looking at a big pile of presents with his name on, next to a plate of cookies with a glass of milk. It's the 2023 RPS Advent Calendar!

    Let's get ready ready, let's get ready ready, let's get ready to Christmas! Is it just me, or did 2023 seem like it had more games than ever before? But look, don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened - and make the smile extra big, because, as we do basically every year, the RPS staff have worked hard (read: voted and bickered) to bring you our games of the year in beautiful, numerical form. Digitally open a new door each day and enjoy the magnificent The RPS Advent Calendar 2023!

  • A view through a car window driving through woodland with a lightning bolt striking the earth ahead, from survival roguelike Pacific Drive.

    Horror car sim Pacific Drive, aka Jalopy meets STALKER, gets a release date and trailer

    Ironwood Studios to give "off-road" new meaning in February 2024

    I don't drive myself, and while that's mostly because I can't afford a car, don't really need one for work and have wibbly environmentalist sensibilities, it's also because the experience of driving, for me, has been thoroughly spoiled by videogames. I mean, just look at this trailer for Ironwood's Vandemeerian vehicle survival roguelike Pacific Drive. How am I supposed to be satisfied with some stupid road after watching that? What's the point of cars if there are no floating cryptid lifeforms, inexplicable walls of energy or lost research facilities involved?

  • Flintlock: The Siege Of Dawn's key art, which shows Nor and Enki fighting on a ravaged battlefield.

    Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn, previously described by Ed as "an exciting action-RPG mix of Elden Ring and God Of War" has a new trailer - and cat-lovers, you are in for a treat, because this game has a cat called Enki which you can use as a magic grappling hook and a handy source of lightning for your groundpounds. Enki has big cute ears and a beaver's tail, and I wouldn't be surprised if he's related to one of those awful, many-limbed gods Flintlock's protagonist Nor Vanek is trying to slay.

    I'm sorry, it's my first time writing about Flintlock, and I realise the "OMG it has a cat!" ship has probably long since sailed. Only hang on, Ed thinks Enki is a squirrel, while Graham thinks it's a dog. Which of us is correct? Developer A44 Games describe Enki as "fox-like", further muddying the waters. There's only one thing for it: you'll have to watch the video and decide for yourself.

  • Homeworld 3 screenshot, showing a fleet of spaceships in formation

    Homeworld 3 will launch on March 8th 2024, completing a development journey that began with crowdfunding back in 2019. To give some insight into that journey, developers Blackbird are going to release a documentary this December, a clip from which you'll find below.

  • A fortress as viewed in Adventure Mode in Dwarf Fortress.

    Dwarf Fortress is best known as a colony sim, but the wonderfully detailed fantasy world's it generates can be played in different ways. Adventure mode is a procedurally generated RPG campaign in which you control just a single character, and it's now on its way to Kitfox's DF-with-graphics Steam release in April 2024.

  • A character shooting lightning bolts at a group of beasts in RPG Path of Exile 2

    What to expect from the Path of Exile 2 beta, and how Grinding Gears are breaking their own rules

    Meeting the Mercenary, and chatting to game director Jonathan Rogers

    I am late to walk the Path of Exile. Very late: the evergreen free-to-play dark fantasy action-RPG launched literal generations ago in 2013, the heyday of Bioshock Infinite and GTA 5. (It's still arguably the heyday of GTA 5. Bioshock Infinite, not so much.) It's my understanding that New Zealand-based developer Grinding Gears have released approximately one bazillion Path of Exile updates and expansions in the decade since, the latest of which, Affliction, is briefly detailed in a boxout down the page.

    I am not your guy for blow-by-blow descriptions of what Affliction adds to Path of Exile. My cautious summary would be: lots of terrifying trees, and lots of modifiers. I am, however, your guy for a newcomer's snapshot verdict on the sequel ahead of the closed Path of Exile 2 beta on 7th June 2024. In a twist so far-fetched they might just pull it off, the new game is designed both for returning players and newcomers, and I think a lot of that is epitomised by the just-announced Mercenary class, which reflects game director Jonathan Rogers's desire to create combat mechanics that are at once more involved and more inviting.

  • A woman holds up a gun as she prepares to fight a group of guards in Spine

    Cyberpunk beat 'em up Spine wants to be Sifu meets John Wick

    We chat to the devs about their upcoming action game

    Tonight's PC Gaming Show: Most Wanted stream may have been mostly focused on games we already knew about, but there were a couple of surprises hidden away in there, too. One of them was Spine, an upcoming action game that asks the question: what if Sifu also had guns? The new gameplay trailer shows street artist heroine Redline punching, kicking and shooting her way through a cyberpunk-themed world of thugs and armoured guards, and her fancy footwork and the equally agile camera framing looks like it could be quite the combo when it eventually comes out in 2025. Alas, the trailer doesn't give away much else, but I spoke to developers Nekki ahead of tonight's showcase to find more about it, and how it's taking direct inspiration from Sifu and John Wick to become the next big cinematic beat 'em up.

  • The angel Andromalius from Solium Infernum (2023)

    Solium Infernum remake will hit Early Access in February 2024

    With a multiplayer playtest to come first

    Hellish political strategy Solium Infernum will launch into Steam Early Access on February 14th. The news was announced with a trailer that explains its demon scheming and manouvering, as well as its asynchronous multiplayer - of which there will be a test in early 2024.

  • Robed character stands on a cliff's edge, staring down at floating islands in Islands Of Insight

    Islands Of Insight was described to me by Katharine earlier as "Talos Principle: The MMO", and yep, that seems about right. It's a "shared world" puzzle game with toga-wearing characters and architecture seemingly littered with marble columns. It also now has a release window of February 2024 and a new trailer, below.

  • A Bard character looks on with interest in the Defiled Temple

    Larian have released Baldur's Gate 3 patch 5, which they're calling the fantasy RPG's "most feature-filled" update so far, and glancing over the patch notes, it's hard to disagree. It's not just about shaving the cats, this time: the standout additions and fixes include a new story epilogue, two new modes, and some performance boosts aimed specifically at the game's ever-divisive third act.

  • The adoring fan from Starfield in the crosshairs of a weapon

    This week on The Electronic Wireless Show podcast, we get a little bit removed from the rails, as it were. Things aren't looking great for Starfield - or at least, they're looking mixed, as in the Steam reviews, and verified but nameless devs are responding to negative reviews with comments that are basically like "no, our space game is fun and you're playing it wrong". We laugh about this (but also discuss the role of Steam reviews and devs replying to them). As well as that, the lads have been playing, well, the same sort of stuff this week, James brings us talk of mini PCs, and Nate makes us play Dracula or Russell Crowe. Extremely normal.

  • A battle against flying creatures in a sandy area in Dragon's Dogma 2.

    Capcom wants you to buy Dragon's Dogma 2 for $70 and yeah, I probably wouldn't

    Resident Evil publisher breaks the $70 barrier for the first time

    Capcom's fantasy action-RPG Dragon's Dogma 2 will sell for $69.99 - $70, if you disregard the usual "deduct one cent to fool silly left-to-right readers into thinking it's significantly cheaper" gambit - when it releases in March 2024. If you're in the UK, the figure is currently £53.98 on Steam. It's the first time Capcom have sold the base edition of a game for $70 in the US of A, and follows comments this September from a Capcom executive that videogames are priced "too low" these days, based on how much games cost to make.

  • Fleets exchanging fire in Stellaris Nexus with one large ship in the foreground

    Rome wasn't built in a day, but in sci-fi strategy game Stellaris Nexus, you can found, expand and fritter away a whole intergalactic empire in around an hour. In the case of my multiplayer hands-on, that empire was the Ix'Idar, a race of burrowing insect critters with a unique resource - pheromones. Boldly disregarding the PR's gentle advice that I start with an easier-to-master race, I set out to swarm the galaxy and immediately found myself at the bottom of the victory or "Succession" point scoreboard, with one player picking off my planets by means of espionage, while others stomped my fleets of stargrubs flat in no-nonsense space combat.

    I did manage to briefly take possession of the titular Nexus, a throneworld which awards beaucoup Succession points to its owner, but it turns out fixating on the Nexus is a great way to set yourself up for a midgame dogpile - you pour resources into capturing it, sacrifice half your fleet to the first invader, then lose it all to the second. With my initially bountiful dominions rudely shrunk to a smattering of isolated planets, I took the coward's way out of the press event and said I had to be going because I had other work to attend to. I didn't at all! I just wanted to go and cry in the toilet. Alas for the Ix'Idar - not so much "lions led by donkeys" as an antfarm in the hands of a wilful toddler.

  • The cover art for TimeSplitters: Future Perfect

    TimeSplitters studio Free Radical could close days before Christmas, Embracer exec reportedly confirms

    The UK developers resurrected just a couple of years ago were said to be at risk under Embracer’s restructuring plans earlier this month

    TimeSplitters studio Free Radical could be closed before Christmas, megacorp owner Embracer has reportedly told staff, as dozens of staff at the UK studio are said to be looking for new roles.

  • Cult of the Lamb's cultist-leader lamb sniffs a flower

    Cult of the Lamb devs Massive Monster seem to be staying true to their promise to bring a ‘sex update’ to the cutesy cultist roguelite next year, after their promise to satisfy thirsty fans ended up exploding more quickly than expected.

  • Hyenas is a sci-fi multiplayer shooter from Creative Assembly, the studio that made Alien: Isolation

    Total War devs Creative Assembly to refocus on “offline RTS games” after ditching online shooter Hyenas

    “Although the game itself was good, we did not think it would reach a quality that would satisfy our users,” say Sega

    Troubled developers Creative Assembly will double-down on their strength in making offline real-time strategy games, following their failed attempt to break into the competitive shooter market with extraction FPS Hyenas.