I’m having an odd time with Assassin’s Creed Origins. It is, perhaps, the most “fine” game I’ve ever played. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s not bad. There are bugs, but they’re not that bad. There’s… plenty to do? It is, I’ve found, one of the most bland games I’ve ever experienced. But goodness me, it lets you take a good screenshot.
I’ve found, as I’ve played the first ten or so hours, that I’ve had much more fun using the game’s photo mode than I have completing any of the quests. So I figured I’d share some of my snapshots with you. Read the rest of this entry »
I took last week off to play Dishonored 2 [official site]. That might seem strange, but this was a game I didn’t want to play for work. I wanted to approach it completely differently, play it like I would play games when I was a teenager, no pressures to produce copy by a deadline, no weighing up pros and cons as I went, and most of all, the liberty to luxuriate in playing slowly, meticulously, without worrying that I’d not reach the ending before the internet had moved on. So of course I’ve got so much to write about it now, because apparently I can’t switch off the work bit of my brain. I’ve got a few features half developed, but I thought I’d get the most important and pressing article done straight away. Here’s a gallery of the piles of unconscious bodies I left on my way.
A part of the big Steam update that’s been rumoured for a good long while appears to be a new rule that games will no longer be allowed to use misleading screenshots in their store page carousel. The news, reported by Kotaku’s Nathan Grayson (Who he? – Ed), says that Valve have confirmed an update to their guidelines for sellers, and from now on only in-game shots will be acceptable.
An experiment with screenshots from game-of-the-season, Rocket League.
I love Rocket League [official site] dearly. It is a game about footballing cars which involves enough skill that you feel like there’s a game to learn – or even to master – but enough riotous joy that you can play chaotically with friends of all skill levels. At the moment I spend roughly 50% of my play time being competent, 25% sailing majestically past the ball because I can’t master three dimensional space and 25% being bullied and exploded by friends because “exploding Pip’s things and also Pip” is a favourite minigame across many titles and platforms.
Bethesda’s E3splosion not only saw Fallout 4 getting a 2015 release date, Dishonored 2 announced, and something something Elder Scrolls Online something, but a pile of new goodies for DOOM. There’s a new trailer below, along with a puddle of new screenshots, and – OMG – double-jumping. Oh, and SO much gore.
Part of this arduous labour that is my job is to take an awful lot of screenshots. And once taken, they need names. Now, a better person than me would have some sort of System, which would make them so incredibly easily organised, labelled, and rediscovered. But I am not a better person than me. I’m me. So it is that I give them three or four letter names that I ludicrously believe will mean something to me more than four minutes later. Then, they get dumped into a section of my screenshot folder entitled “OLD”, which after almost eight years of RPS stands at exactly 30.0GB big. 30GB of 100k-ish cropped screenshots, poorly labelled, archived for Later Use. Let’s see if you can figure out what the bloody hell they all are.
Goodness me, the Firewatch trailer looks a bit good. Just shown for the first time at PAX by Campo Santo – a team made of developers from DoubleFine, 2K Marin and Telltale – it seems to be a freely explorable, though narrative-led, mystery adventure. And good gravy, it looks pretty. The first trailer, and first eight screenshots showing the 1980s Wyoming first, are below.
You like The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt screenshots. I know you. You can’t resist them! Six new ones have emerged from Gamescom, which is a small gathering of gaming enthusiasts in Germany. Because you’ve been good, if you click on the pictures, they’ll get extra-big. Big enough that you could use them as a desktop background, and pretend you’re playing The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt on your PC right now! For the complete inexperience, you could lay the words “INSERT COIN” over the image, and then bash at your mouse and keyboard constantly imagining that you’re having some notion of control.
There’s also a trailer of old Mr Witchy completing a mission, but one thing at a time.
…is now open! I’d like to thank everyone who contributed images and recommendations. The Hanging Committee’s job was an absurdly difficult one. Beyond those burly security guards is a selection of exceptionally fine simulator screenshots (Wargames will have to wait their turn). Grab a complimentary flute of fizz and an Avro Vulcan shaped vol-au-vent and go gawp at the enlargeable masterpieces.
Here are some new shots from Sega’s merry space rom-com, Alien: Isolation. I believe it’s a comeback vehicle for Tim Allen *record-scratch, generic baseline-driven disco* who’s about to find out that trying to stalk the daughter of Sigourney Weaver through the bowels of a space station isn’t as easy as he imagined. Along the way, he’ll find out what it’s truly like to be an acid-blooded killing machine in a world that’s moved on. I believe the synthetic that’s been torn apart in the screens might also be a comeback for Rob Schneider. Read the rest of this entry »
A new collection of screenshots for Creative Assembly’s Alien: Isolation have appeared. Aliens, corridors, tools, and is that the chewed up remains of a Synthetic who’s been dragged across the floor?
There is scant information about there about Lords Of The Fallen, even though it was first announced (as Project RPG) a year ago. The game from The Deck 13, headed by former CD Projekt Red dev Tomasz Gop, doesn’t have a website, nor even an entry in secret industry tome Gamespress. Yet the game that people seem to be pitching as a rival to The Witcher 3 has managed to produce some screenshots despite it all.
Star Trek has been in development for over four hundred and fifty thousand years now. The game’s set between the two J.J. Abrams films, yet still calls itself simply “Star Trek”, presumably in a bid to be as impossible to Google for as is humanly imaginable. (They may as well have called it “Britney Spears”.) The release is currently set for April 23rd in the States, then it slowly drifts to Europe by the 26th. And today they’re promising us “the opportunity to explore the USS Enterprise.” And, the slow drip of two new screenshots (clickem to biggem).
Go on, try to guess. Creative Assembly have announced the first playable faction for the forthcoming Total War: Rome II, and we know who it is! Okay, I’ll give you some hints about who you’ll be able to play in Rome II. They liked long straight roads. They conquered enormous stretches of the globe. They were very keen on murdering each other to usurp power, and were master strategists in battle. Can you guess who’s in Rome II? Can you?!?
It’s been a long time since we’ve heard from DARK, a spooky action-RPG. Six months, in fact, with pretty much radio silence from its publicity machine. So to reappear with only more screenshots at this point seems a little odd. It’s time for some more footage, guys. Moving pictures. This doesn’t feel like progress. The last time we saw it was May’s rather impressive teaser, that showed the cel-shaded design, and the FEAR-alike scares. And since then, just the memories. Now, some images:
Mr Ron Gilbert, inventor of clicking, has released a bunch more screenshots of his forthcoming adventure, The Cave. The existence of The Cave does seem something of an anomaly – Doublefine ran their famous Kickstarter campaign on the basis that publishers won’t fund the development of adventure games. And almost simultaneously announced they’re developing a new adventure game published by Sega. Huh. IS the sort of disguise as a platformer really that effective? You can take a look at how it’s shaping up below.
The ostentatiously-named Star Trek (in fact the fifty-third Star Trek computer game) isn’t due until early next year, despite trailers having been appearing since 2011. But trailers still they a-come, and Gamescom has revealed yet another. It’s an action-packed frenzy of Kirk-and-Spock shootyfighting, and far too few bleepy-bloopy computer noises for my liking. There are also ninety-six billion new screenshots, which you can see below.
Alec can’t post these XCOM: Enemy Unknown screenshots. We’ve had to ration him to only thinking about the game in safely designated times, to stop him from exploding with excitement. For safety reasons, I’m bringing you the seven latest images of Firaxis’ take on the classic game. You may stare at them and probably worry that they’re doing it all wrong below.
Here’s what I know about Total War: Rome 2. It’s this strategy game, where you play as… the Romans? And they’re really angry about something – I bet Caecilius cheated on Metella again, in the horto. So rather than just a regular war, that they have all the time, this time it’s a TOTAL WAR. But for the second time, because the last one didn’t quite take. The game features Romans, horses, and probably statistics. And armies! You can see four new screenshots of such matters below.
