RPS Feature Pros and cons of the new Civ
Unlike Adam, I’ve not been lucky enough to spend the last month soaking in a deep Civilization VI [official site] bath, so I leave it to him to give you the complete picture. I’ve spent a big chunk of today with Firaxis’ latest historical turn-based strategy epic though, and already it’s filled me up with things to say about it. I’m genuinely surprised by how different it feels. There are reasons why I’m massively charmed by it, and there are reasons why it’s been frustrating me.
RPS Feature Beyond Beyond The Sea
Almost ten years after we first daddied and kindlied and golfed, BioShock has today returned in an apparently fancy-panted remastered version, aka Bioshock: The Collection [official site]. Sadly it’s not in the best of shape, in terms of what we PC folk tend to demand from our settings menus and whatnot, but perhaps a more overriding question is but how does it look?
I shall show you, in thirty different ways. A few thoughts of my own just beneath the cut too.
RPS Feature Triangles trianlges triangles.
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is a beautiful game, but it doesn’t deal in sweeping vistas and natural beauty. Its visual currency is instead invested in ornamental stag heads, tree statuery, fluorescent lighting, swooping electrical cables and complicated ceilings and stairwells. I took 18,000 screenshots while playing the game and I’ve collected the best inside. Beware: here lie spoilers for environments, locations and, probably, with some plot details embedded within.
Hello! I’ve just updated this gallery of screenshots with my latest travels in No Man’s Sky [official site]. Mostly I’m just documenting lovely, peaceful moments and lovely colour palettes. Humour seems to lend itself better to video than screenshots, as with these animals.
I’ve spent a significant chunk of the last few days having an explore in No Man’s Sky [official site]. I still have my reservations and there’s so much clunkiness and frustration that needs dealing with AND the tutorial/new player onboarding is dismal – in fact, my thoughts are pretty much in line with John’s review of the game – BUT I’ve also had moments of joy, and I do feel compelled to keep exploring. My screenshot count is just shy of 400 right now so I’ve put together a kind of travellogue to illustrate my journey so far via my favourite images. You can click on any of them for a larger version and you can navigate the gallery using the arrow buttons just next to the images.
RPS 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 I should share some of the sights I saw with you.
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RPS Feature Darling it's better, down where it's wetter
Over the last three days I seem to have racked up 18 hours in Subnautica [official site] and several more than 2,000 screenshots. I’m playing in Freedom mode so I can ignore food and drink requirements and spend a lot of my time building little bases to act as viewing platforms for kelp forests. BUT! I also discovered the freecam command in debug mode so here is a whole gallery of undersea loveliness to try to communicate why I’m spending so much time under the sea!
RPS Feature A retrospective of the best 2000AD game
2006’s Rogue Trooper, an adaptation of the 2000AD comic, isn’t the first game off anyone’s lips, unless they’re specifically talking about 2000AD games which were pretty good but no-one remembers them. But I remember Rogue Trooper. I was all about 2000AD at a certain point in my life, enough so that an attachment to the holy trinity – Dredd, Johnny Alpha, Rogue Trooper – will stay with me for life. But while Dredd vs. Death seemed like a hollow disservice to the character and his world, Rogue Trooper was a very straightforward game which just nailed it, and took me right back to why I used to love the surly blue guy. It is not a classic. But it is an extremely well-judged action game that is extremely true to its source material. I like it a lot. No-one’s ever going to celebrate it.
So I will.
We’ve no new Witcher 3 videos of late, but if you scroll through these really, really quickly, it’ll be just like watching a low frame rate, abysmally edited video. Make some sword-swooshing noises as you do it, for added effect. The genesis and/or novelty of these 65 1080p screenshots of CDP’s next massive roleplaying game is somewhat indeterminate at present, but I’m sure a good number of them will be fresh to your eyes. PCs with low memory should perhaps be wary of this doubtless RAM-hungry post.
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Hello, faithful word-consumer. Would you care to also consume images this day? I have been replaying post-Bullfrog outfit Mucky Foot’s wonderful 2001 management game Startopia, which recently saw a re-release on Steam (as well as having been on GoG for some time prior to that). It took a bit of fiddling, but I managed to get it running at 2560×1440 with a ton of anti-aliasing and, well, my God. It’s absolutely beautiful to behold despite its 12 year vintage. Partly that’s down to judiciously characterfully artwork and a strong sense of scale, partly it’s because the game has an uncommonly liberated camera, able to go pretty much anywhere. I’m no Dead End Thrills, in a great many ways, but I’ve rounded up a collection of screenshots which somewhat demonstate how breathtaking this game is at high resolution. I really do think you should take a look.
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Arkane’s Dishonored is very exciting and feels like it’s getting nearer, but that might be an evil, supernatural trick being played on us. While we haven’t had a release date for the amazing sounding immersive sim, Bethesda have started to open up more about the setting, the world, what you do. More importantly in this crazy world of ocular pleasure, they’re releasing screenshots and video of the supernatural assassin’s redemptive bloodletting. If I cared about PR buzzwords, I’d call what follows a ‘media blast’, but I’m a loose cannon. Hit the jump for the *checks thesaurus* ‘cable peal’.
Not at all inspired by John’s visual homage to Day of the Tentacle, I find myself compelled to present this large roster of attractive images from a game I’m rather taken with. UFO: Enemy Unknown, also known as X-COM: UFO Defense, is an exciting new science-fiction tactical action game from British developers Mythos, due for release in October 1994. You’ll need to make sure your IBM-compatible personal computer has been upgraded to 2Mb of RAM and a VGA monitor for this one!
This may seem a bit strange, posting a gallery of images from a seventeen year old game. But as I replayed Day of the Tentacle last week, every scene made me take a screenshot out of the pure pleasure of looking at it. And you know what else? Those scenes are already in the shape of an RPS image. It’s meant to be. It’s divined from above. And so here, two decades late, is a gallery of DOTT images. It’s like looking through a photo album of a favourite holiday. For me at least. And I suspect for quite a few others too.
