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Feature: Choose your own adventure
Metro Exodus wants you to feel liberated from all those trips through the tunnels
It’s deathly quiet in the forest. Then the silence gives way to a man shouting for help. He's tied to a post and trying to fend off a ravenous wolf. A single crossbow bolt takes the feral creature out. The shirtless man pleads for my help to free him, cussing as he explains his predicament. I choose to cut him loose. “I owe you my…
Feature: All work and some play
The Suicide of Rachel Foster asks “What if Firewatch, but also The Shining?”
Midway through totemic 80s skin-crawler The Shining there's a scene where Jack Nicholson's disheveled caretaker, scouring the Overlook Hotel for the antidote to writer's block, stumbles on a scale model of the hedge maze his wife and son are exploring outside. He glares down at it (Nicholson's eyebrows really deserve an Oscar apiece) and the film cuts to a slow zoom from above, showing us…
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HP’s Omen X 65 Nvidia BFGD now has an added soundbar, but no one knows if it’s permanent
It's been quite some time since we heard anything concrete about what's going on with Nvidia's BFGDs (or Big Format Gaming Displays for the acronym-averse). After their initial unveiling back in January 2018 at Las Vegas tech shindig CES, there's been a big old pile of nothing regarding these giant 65in G-Sync HDR monitors, and we still don't know when they're actually coming out, how…
Feature: Duck, duck, pig
CTRL C XCOM: Enemy Unknown CTRL V XCOM: Enemy Unknown Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden
Feature: Shoeing the VR goose?
Cybershoes’ err… Cybershoes let me run around in Doom VFR from the comfort of a wheelie chair
VR treadmills are possibly one of the daftest things on the planet. Yes, they sort of avoid that classic virtual reality hazard of tripping over headset cables and falling flat on your face, offering a way for TRUE VR immersion seekers to feel like they're really 'in the game', so to speak, but a) they're crazy expensive, b) take up mountains of room, and c)…
Feature: Blobby blobby blobby
Oh no, the village bridge is broken. But that's okay, I'll ask for help from the spider in this tree. Come down mister spider, and help me fix the bridge. “Did you break it?” he asks. Yes, I say. I walked across the bridge – really just a piece of string – and it snapped. “Fix your own damn mess!” I consider his words carefully.…
Feature: Escaping the grind
There’s something about Mosaic. Maybe it‘s the dark colour palette, the poignant use of lighting or the low poly aesthetic of Krillbite Studio’s second game, but I’m transfixed. Krillbite’s first title, exploration horror Among the Sleep, was an unexpectedly big success, a… sleeper hit, if you will. Mosaic is supposed to be a departure in every way, but it retains a gloomy atmosphere that makes…
Feature: Keep 'em peeled
There were a lot of games at Gamescom. A lot of them were good and interesting, but I didn’t get enough time with them to write you thousands of words, or they’re not quite done enough yet. They’re a soufflé that needs more time to rise. But I still wanted to tell you about them, these strange little soufflés in many different flavours. An alternate…
Feature: We have the clearance
There’s a man staring at a fridge, and he's locked in a glass room. “Oh thank god,” he cries. “I’ve been staring at it since yesterday with no breaks. Are you here to take over?” This is a scene from Control, the upcoming psychological shooter from Remedy, the creators of Quantum Break and Max Payne. Our hero, Jesse Faden, is the newly appointed head of…
Feature: One cool customer
HP Omen’s ear-cooling Mindframe headset is actually sort of brilliant
The HP Omen Mindframe headset is quite possibly the most bonkers piece of audio equipment I've ever seen. It's called MINDFRAME for a start, which is both brilliant and ridiculous in equal measure, but what really sets it apart from other headsets is pretty damn cool - as in literally cool thanks to its thermoelectric ear-cooling earcups. I'll admit I was a bit skeptical when…
Feature: A twenty minute misadventure
Mount and Blade II: Bannerlord’s single player campaign is full of thugs and bog men
Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord is the medieval war ‘em up that often pops up to say: “Hello, I still look good.” We have seen its sieges, its horse archers, and even played some of its multiplayer sword-clashing. But at this year’s Gamescom, I played some of the single player campaign. And oh yes, that’s the good stuff. I played as Valtis, an athletic sword-swinging…
Feature: Where is my mind?
The Twin Mirror demo and the mysterious case of hey, what happened to my shirt?
Picture the scene if you yourself were Sam, the protagonist of Dontnod's new IP Twin Mirror. You wake up, hungover, in a cheap hotel room. You’re still in the jeans you wore the night before. Your mouth probably tastes like a tiny glue factory. A hotel staffer is hammering on the door because you’ve missed check out. Suddenly you realise: you’re not wearing a shirt!…
Feature: In space, no one can hear you dream
At Gamescom I had a (hands off but up close and personal) preview of Shortest Trip to Earth, a roguelike space survival game that is due to go into Steam early access later this year. The team lead, Edvin Aedma, who also wrote RPS favourite Teleglitch, played, whilst I watched and made demands about what our crew should do next. I wondered why I couldn't…
Feature: Stand up straight
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice seeks to make nimble ninjas out of old knights
I've changed, man. In Dark Souls' kingdom of Lordran I was a shield-up, spear-ready warrior. By Dark Souls 3 I was happy to run around in my loincloth. And in Bloodborne, I embraced the aggressive pest control of the quicksilver pistol. But throughout all of these die ‘em ups I have remained cautious in spirit. Slow, methodical and wary of corners. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice…
Feature: Did you know octopuses have three hearts?
Lovecraftian preview Top Trumps: The Sinking City vs. Call of Cthulhu
Lovecraft seems to be the theme du jour at the moment. 2018 trends: pair tailored suits and details inspired by fetish wear with cosmic horror and old school '20s racism. I saw probably the two most prominent games inspired by Lovecraft at Gamescom, Frogwares' The Sinking City and Cyanide's Call of Cthulhu (though there were others, including a turn based, tactical affair called Stygian: Reign…
Star Citizen seems to be real and you can try it for yourself this weekend
Despite sometimes seeming like a shared hallucination, it's harder to deny that Star Citizen exists in some tangible capacity today, as it's currently free for all to try. To wrap up their appearance at Gamescom, Cloud Imperium Games flung open the hangar-bay doors to the cold and hostile void of space. And by that, I mean the general public. Those wanting to take a poke…
Call Of Duty: Black Ops 4’s new trailer extends a an olive branch to the high-end PC crowd
As twitchy as the Call Of Duty games have been since Modern Warfare, the series has built up a reputation as a console flagship series. Publisher Activision seem eager to break away from that impression with Call Of Duty: Black Ops 4, and to prove this, they've packed their Gamescom 'PC trailer' with as many buzzwords and high-end hardware concessions as possible. Blops 4 may…
Feature: Birkin with convention
Resident Evil 2’s remake is like playing with a beloved and battered old toy
I was beaten to death by the bloke with the big eye. If you went through the zombie gauntlet of Resident Evil 2 back in 1998, you will recognise this large, gurgling sod. William Birkin is the zombified antagonist whose pharmaceutical experiments have turned Racoon City into a shambling shantytown. That’s fine. The same experiments also turned him into a bloke with a giant case…
The eighth Settlers game is due out next autumn, but Ubisoft aren’t counting
I apologise for the Seinfeld moment, but what's with games dropping numbers from titles? The Settlers series got up to its seventh (admittedly with a couple Name: Subtitles) before returning us to 'The Settlers'. Still, at least a new one is on the way, announced at Gamescom and due for release in autumn 2019. Also announced- presumably to cause further confusion - was The Settlers…
The Assassin’s Creed series is taking a little lie-down in 2019
Ubisoft are giving their studios a moment to catch their breath after the launch of Assassin's Creed Odyssey in October. After debuting a new Odyssey trailer (below) at Gamescom, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot stated that there's no sequels, spinoffs or side-games due in 2019, as reported by Gamespot. Their focus for next year will be live support for Odyssey. Probably for the best, as according to…
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