The best PC games ever The best PC games of 2018 so far Best graphics cards 2018 Best free games Rainbow Six Siege operators guide Monster Hunter: World guide
Feature: No castle; possibly no princess
The Joy of subverting retro-platformer tropes in Dere Evil .Exe
My relationship with horror films and games has always been relatively non-committal. Reason being that jump scares irrationally bug me while gore makes me squirm. For all my misgivings though, I find myself engrossed in any entry into the genre that plays on the logic we’ve inherited, be it the mysterious nature surrounding strangers or the fact that clowns are a bit creepy. A classic…
Feature: Off the beaten track
“I learned to love getting lost. You can get pleasantly lost when you don't know where you are but you know you'll find your way if you just keep going. That's the feeling I wanted to create in a game.” This is Stu Maxwell’s philosophy behind his debut game Shape of the World, a serene exploration game where the world’s lush, alien environment organically grows…
Feature: Ignorance is ... um... what is it again?
I am a lowly aspirant with nothing but my name and my failing body. I am uninitiated. I am a worm in the dark, crawling through the pages of the secret histories of the world. I'm playing Cultist Simulator. This is “a game of apocalypse and yearning”, in which players attempt to direct eldritch forces and hidden gods without the faintest idea of what they're…
Feature: Sit and spin
From Toe Twists to Charlie Hops, Helicopters and Coffee Grinders, there's Air Chairs, Flares, Knee Spins, Jackhammers, Six Steps, Two Steps and Back Spins. No, that wasn't an abstract poem, but a list of a handful of dance moves in the breakdancing rhythm game Floor Kids. There are over a hundred of these different moves, and through a combination of buttons and joystick directions the…
Feature: Cat on Bat
As an actual adult human being who still reads DC comics, I have to put up with a lot of BatBullShit. It's not the brooding that gets to me or even the weird and sudden flips between psychologically scarring street-level crimefighting and wacky Justice League space adventures. It's not the callbacks to events from previous decades that I don't care about or understand, and it's…
Feature: Object impermenance
Chores are not supposed to be enjoyable. At home, stacks of unwashed bowls, cups and cutlery flood the sink, with the occasional fly fluttering about in search of a morsel. It’s only when I run out of clean plates that I wearily make my way there, caterwauling as I wash the dishes out of sheer necessity. But when staring at the bloodshed of Serial Cleaner,…
Feature: Interrupt your friends
Few games nail the ebb and flow of conversations like Oxenfree, the supernatural drama about a group of teenagers on a deserted island. The cast speak over one another, cut their friends off mid-sentence and leave realistic gaps of silence that stretch on awkwardly until somebody says “so...”, and moves on.
Feature: Teetering on the brink
Far from Noise's protagonist has gotten herself in a bit of predicament. She is stuck in a car that is delicately balanced on the side of a steep cliff. To make things worse, the car’s engine has flooded and it needs all night to cool down. Now staring death in the face, and with a long night ahead, she starts to question aspects of her…
Feature: Wall running
Sign up to read this RPS Supporter exclusive article!
Feature: Voyage of the Sea Treader
Subnautica is remarkable for a great many reasons, and one of them is a particular creature discovered at about 300m deep, stomping their way in long processions across a well worn path of the seabed. The Sea Treaders. These titanic crustaceans(?) are a herd of complete joy.
Feature: Loaded dice
If you've ever played The Binding of Isaac or Enter The Gungeon, then Monolith is immediately familiar stuff. A comforting blend of twin-stick shooter and dungeon-crawl wherein you navigate mazes, hoard loot, upgrade your character (cute little spaceship-people in Pop n' Twinbee fashion), fight menacing-looking bosses, and then do it all again with even more stuff unlocked in the dungeon generator. What sets Monolith apart…
Feature: It's good to talk. Sometimes.
Destiny 2 has had a rough time of late, what with players discovering that late-game grinding may very well be a gigantic waste of time, and the general hostility to microtransactions going around these days. Since its launch on PC in October, players have also groused about its strict communication rules: there’s no in-game chat lobby, text or voice, in which to find fireteam members…
Feature: Lute crates
There is a lot going on in Figment. It’s a ‘musical action-adventure game’ with combat, puzzle elements, cut scenes, voice acting and several musical boss battles. It’s visually busy, full of strange, warped objects and surrealist structures from Dali’s clocks to Magritte’s apples – the world of Figment is bright and lively. But beneath all this, there’s the soundtrack, and Figment does something quite wonderful…
Feature: the wonder of being weary
The Orange Box turned 10 years old this year, and by extension Portal celebrated its anniversary too. Sitting alongside continuations of well-loved games, the short puzzle adventure could have been quickly forgotten. Tacked on to bulk up the box. It was, however, a surprise hit, winning over players with its smart spatial puzzles and writing that fans continue to quote. And while I can list…
Feature: Fourth wall breaking murder-bear
Villain monologues: forever a trope to make the eyes roll. I tend to skip through them as quickly as I can, waiting my inevitable escape. I don’t enjoy self-aware villain monologues either; they’re even worse because the villains know that they’re clichéd yet they do it anyway. I'd prefer it if they just immediately murdered me instead. Danganronpa, a visual novel/detective adventure in which a…
Feature: Through the doors of that rented room
Around an hour into The Norwood Suite, I was nestled so snugly into my comfort zone that it would have taken heavy machinery to shift me. That's despite the fact that this is a game that makes me suspect something sinister is lurking just out of view, that the edges of my vision aren't to be trusted. It's a very discomforting comfort zone.
Feature: Assassin's Apparel
Assassin’s Creed clothes are some of the best clothes in all games. Those layers, all those flowing, flapping, swinging layers: cloth and leather and swords and knives and pouches and harnesses. I often idly wonder, as I watch an Assassin’s Creed loading screen, how many people - how many studios! - produce Assassin’s Creed’s clothes? They’re a wonder of code and art coming together, of…
Feature: Secret stories everywhere
What Remains of Edith Finch is the kind of game that makes the phrase 'visual feast' feel appropriate again, as opposed to just breathless enthusiasm for CGI battle scenes in quoted four-star reviews on superhero movie posters. There is so much wonderful and surprising detail, both ostentatious and subtle, in the rooms that make up its impossible, wonderful house of dreams and death. So much…
Feature: The first rule of fight club is...bow to your opponent
My career in Street Fighter was a painfully short-lived experience. For a long time, I’d been trying to find a fighting game to really get into and to help me understand a genre I’d always been quietly interested in but entirely apart from. After being gifted Ultra Street Fighter 4 back in 2014, I was quickly hooked on the technical mastery and quick action -…
Feature: All about light
Weirdly, none of my favourite Assassin’s Creed Origins moments so far relate to assassinating. Then again, they never really did in the previous games. Instead they’re about buildings, specifically climbing them and going into them. So it’s appropriate that my absolute second favourite thing to do in Assassin’s Creed: Origins is tombs.
Page 1 of 2
Older posts