Latest Articles (Page 2)

As I was pleased to let you know earlier this week, the next free game for RPS premium supporters is roguelite citybuilder Against The Storm. This is your reminder that you can log on to claim your copy today, April 13th, from 4pm BST/8am PT. That should be around the same time as Against The Storm gets is new free update, Sentinels Of The Forest, which adds Foxes as a playable species, along with new buildings, abilities, and porridge - the most sensible of all the breakfast foods

We don't have infinite codes, so this key drop, kindly provided by publishers Hooded Horse, is on a first come, first served basis until we run out.

At PAX West in Seattle last year, I had the pleasure of interviewing the voice cast of Team Fortress 2. I chatted to John Patrick Lowrie (The Sniper), Gary Schwartz (The Heavy, The Demoman), Robin Atkin Downes (The Medic) and Ellen McLain (The Administrator) about the game's fifteen year long legacy, the process of finding their character's voices as well as their favourite quotes. It was a riot of an interview and, to be honest, a bit of a career highlight. It also did really well on TikTok, which I have mixed feelings about.

Fifteen minutes after the gang left the grimy conference room in which the interview took place (I had immediately crawled onto the floor in an attempt to ease the anxiety from having conducted said interview), I got a Twitter notification. Robin had posted a video. Following our chat, the group had attempted to order a sandwich from a cafe in-character, leaving the staff completely bemused as a result. Understandably the video did numbers, and over the last six months, the gang have been releasing new episodes in what is now known as "The Sandvich Saga" on a regular basis.

Movie tie-ins are back, and smaller than ever! After the free Pac-Man-style adaptations of Banshees Of Inisherin and Cocaine Bear, we now have a game for Renfield, the “Nic Cage is Dracula'' horror-comedy. It’s been appropriately turned into a Vampire Survivors-like bullet heaven shooter called Renfield: Bring Your Own Blood, and it’s in early access right now.

It’s taken a few GPUs, but Nvidia’s RTX 40 series is finally veering away from ludicrous luxuries and heading back in the right direction: that of graphics cards you can, and maybe even should buy, even if you’re not the heir to an Emirati property conglomerate. The GeForce RTX 4070 launches with a heavier price tag than the RTX 3070, and doesn’t make the shin-splintering performance leap forward that its predecessor did, but between its high speeds, low power usage, and DLSS 3 advantage, it’s a potent upgrade regardless.

Fans of Amplitude Studio’s ever-evolving ENDLESS series might be sad to hear that Endless Dungeon has been delayed by five months, pushing its May release date back to October 19th. The extra time will be spent “to better incorporate community feedback,” by improving the balancing, meta-progression, and onboarding, and giving the roguelike a few more layers of polish.

Summer Games Done Quick is coming back for its annual speedrunning charity event. Like previous years, SGDQ will be raising money for Doctors Without Borders, an NGO that provides medical care to those affected by disease, disasters, and conflicts. An Elden Ring double bill closed last year’s event - which managed to raise more than $3 million for charity - and FromSoftware’s juggernaut is once again featured at 2023’s SGDQ.

Last time, you decided that bioluminescence is better than dark darkness. You want not just light but eerie, near-magical light, and I can understand that. We're doing science here, we can't go groping about in the dark. This week, I ask you to choose between a reward for caution and a dare to be reckless. What's better: unit veterancy, or rerolling dice?

Cococucumber - the folks behind the beautifully odd Echo Generation - are ready to release their next voxel adventure, the fairytale slasher Ravenlok coming to PC, Game Pass, and Xbox consoles on May 4th. It’s clearly riffing on Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland as our protagonist, the titular Ravenlok, moves to a new inherited house, gets sucked through a magical mirror and steps into a trippy, mushroom-filled land. From there, she needs to fight this realm's off-brand Queen Of Hearts and save the remaining, slightly weird, storybook denizens.

Star Wars Celebration was held last weekend and the much-anticipated sequel Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is speeding toward us on April 28th. All of this nostalgia and excitement means there’s still fun to be had in a galaxy far far away, and luckily, there’s a 14-game Star Wars bundle on Fanatical to celebrate. It's currently enjoying a deep 80% discount for a limited time.

Frogwares are in a bit of a tight spot at the moment, being as they are a Ukranian studio. If I was trying to make video games in a warzone and: a) my last game was a big sexy prequel to my long running Sherlock Holmes series; b) the one before that was a Lovecraftian detective game with pretty recent assets; and c) my back catalogue contained a Lovecraft-themed Sherlock Holmes mystery, then I'd probably do what they've done with Sherlock Holmes The Awakened. Which is to remake the old Lovecraft-themed Sherlock Holmes game, but with new assets.

It's also got new puzzles and areas, and a slightly rewritten story to account for this being a sequel to Sherlock Holmes: Chapter One. It's a smaller, less ambitious game than Chapter One with some jank knocking around, and I wouldn't recommend it if you're not a fan of the series, but you know what? I think there's a glimmer of greatness in the very fact of its constraints.

Developer Dambuster Studios have shared the system requirements for their zombie masher Dead Island 2 ahead of its release on April 21st. Most of the game’s requirements seem pretty standard for a modern open-world game, although you’ll need some pretty powerful CPUs and GPUs to run the sequel at recommended settings and above. Ripping into hordes in graphic details might cost you.

‘The Tank’, I’ll admit, is a monumentally uninspired name for the mace-wielding brick privy of a man I’d bestowed the dubious honour of soaking up hits in place of my squishier mercs, but when sandbox tactical RPG Wartales let me assemble a party of 12 mad lasses and tapped chaps, the stash of good nicknames was always going to be the first casualty. So, The Tank he lived, and also died. Questing endlessly in this grimy medieval world won’t cut it. You’ll also need to keep your troupe paid and fed, so when evening fell to find nought but a handful of foraged mushrooms and a single mouldy apple I’d pried from the fingertips of a disemboweled bandit, it was time to get creative.

“Waste not, want not”, said the Earl of Human Sandwich, the inventor of cannibalism (I’m told). With this in mind, I’d invested one of my early ‘Knowledge Points’ into a tech that let me repurpose my dearly departed as delicious drumsticks. Slain friendlies don’t disappear after battle. Instead, you’ll find their tastefully dressed corpses in the loot menu afterwards. Ghoulishly, the ‘loot all’ option doesn’t add their cadavers to your inventory with the rest. You’ll have to manually drag them over, giving you just enough time to consciously make the decision to either bury or eat them. I did not bury him.

Update: Our RTX 4070 review is now live! Also it's on sale now but that's less important.

Nvidia have announced the GeForce RTX 4070, a 1440p warrior joining the RTX 4070 Ti and RTX 4080 in a collection of largely 4K-minded RTX 40 series GPUs.

The Trine series is returning for a fifth instalment, developers Frozenbyte have announced today, and it's arriving on PC sooner than you might think. Launching later this summer, Trine 5: A Clockwork Conspiracy sees the return of the co-op puzzle game's three famous heroes - Pontius the knight, Amadeus the wizard and Zoya the thief - as they tackle a mechanical clockwork army headed up by two dastardly villains trying to ruin the trio's good name. Come and watch the reveal trailer below.

Roguelike puzzler Desktop Dungeons was first released a decade ago, and the remastered Desktop Dungeons: Rewind launches next week on April 18th. Developer QCF Design evidently have a lot to celebrate and they’re doing so in style. Owners of the original game will be able to grab the remaster for free when it comes out. At no extra cost.

After 15 years, I finally managed to go back to Japan! And now I'm back, I thought it would be nice to recount the trip. It's a somewhat selfish thing, admittedly. Mainly because I think jotting down my scattered thoughts will help me process the holiday and, hopefully as a by-product of my outpouring, you'll get a sense of what it's like out there if you're interested in going yourself one day.

In an attempt to beat MS Flight Sim's world tour of countries, Game Pass is now expanding to more places. Microsoft has launched PC Game Pass in 40 new countries, after releasing a preview version earlier this year. Those of you who participated in the preview will be treated to two free months of PC Game Pass, “no further action needed.”

Cheap laptops are great. They can run Minecraft servers, download stuff while you're away, let you practice programming, let your younger sibling play with or against you in retro or indie games. You might already have one lying around, in which case have a think about the possibilities - but if you'd like one and don't have one in a cupboard somewhere, you can grab a cheap Dell Latitude 7390 off Ebay for £219.99 in 'good' and 'refurbished' condition. For the money, you get an 8th-gen Core i5 processor with integrated graphics, a compact 13-inch design, 16GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD. All in all, it's a pretty sweet spec for the asking price!

The Samsung 990 Pro is a blazing-fast PCIe 4.0 SSD, offering incredible speeds of up to 7450MB/s reads and 6900MB/s writes - right up against the limits of the PCIe 4.0 standard.

Normally this drive retails for about £200 in its massive 2TB incarnation, but now you can pick up this drive for just £152.99 at Ebuyer in the UK - a great deal on a drive that we've named as the very fastest PCIe 4.0 SSD for shorter loading times.

Right from the start, modders tried to make Valve's virtual reality shooter Half-Life: Alyx work without needing VR glasses. Now another such mod has reached the point of Alyx being fully playable from start to finish on a regular monitor with keyboard and mouse. This new mod looks more polished than some others, and claims it's the "easiest to use and most flexible" of the lot. I'm not too interested in a VRless Alyx but I'm sure it's welcome news to some.

Retro FPS Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun now has a release date of May 23rd, developer Auroch Digital have announced. Revealed last year, Boltgun is an homage to old-school shooters like classic Doom, mimicking those game’s speedy shooting and bloody visuals, and placing it in the Warhammer universe. Its loud, fast, and fun trailers meant Boltgun ripped its way onto RPS’ most anticipated games list, so thank the grim-dark gods for a release date.

Bithell Games and Disney are releasing Tron: Identity later today, a visual novel spin on the neon-coloured virtual world. Set on a new Grid - the digitised worlds in Tron - you’ll be investigating a mystery, making tough decisions, and solving puzzles, but today’s release is only the beginning. According to Disney, Bithell Games will continue to develop future games in the Tron series.

There are few success stories more inspiring than that of Tarn and Zach Adams. After twenty years of development Dwarf Fortress finally made the jump to Steam in December 2021, complete with exciting new features such as "graphics" and "mouse support". Although the game was already critically lauded, its availability on Steam made it a financial success, with thousands of long-term fans thrilled to provide the brothers with a long-overdue payday.

Following their panel on the highs and lows of procedural generation, the pair had a chat with Rachel about the game's recent Steam release, upcoming features, their favourite player stories and - most importantly - Zach's dog.

As every good munchkin knows, premium supporters of RPS get free game key giveaways, and this week we're excited to have a blast of first-come, first-served freebies dark fantasy citybuilder Against The Storm. On a somewhat desperate mission to reclaim the wilderness for a kind of demanding queen, Against The Storm charges you with not only building a prosperous settlement, but linking it with multiple others in a vast network of prosperity and civilisation. Read on to find out how and when to get your free key.

We have the dingy corridors of Dead Space (2008), we also have the pretty corridors of Dead Space remake (2023), and now, we can enter the Ishimura a third time with Dead Space Demake (2023, but it looks like 1996.) The fan-made Dead Space Demake takes the horror classic’s oppressive environment and brutal aliens, and recreates them in a PS1-style polygonal aesthetic. It’s out now on itch.io and it’s totally free.

Big big sequel Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is due to release later this month (April 28th), and EA have shared the “final gameplay trailer” in anticipation. The new look debuted at this weekend’s Star Wars Celebration - both well-timed fate and a clever bit of corporate brand synergy. The 2-minute trailer is packed with action shots while returning favourite Cere gives a very sombre speech about the dark times the galaxy is facing. Although, when is the Star Wars universe not in dark times? When are the odds ever in your favour? And what happened to "never tell me the odds?"

Our commitment to finding cool people and giving them a leg up continues, and this time I'm thrilled to welcome the lovely and talented Zijin Wang as our work experience bestie for the next few weeks. You'll already have seen a few news articles from Zijin popping up, after her first few days with us, and you'll see more over the next while. Everyone give a big, warm, RPS welcome!

Every weekend, indie devs show off current work on Twitter's #screenshotsaturday tag. And every Monday (well, Tuesday now, because we were off yesterday), I bring you a selection of these snaps and clips. This week, we admire vast landscapes, a horrible glob of dog, weird offices, giant monsters, and so many more interesting and attractive indies. Check 'em out!

Over the weekend, footage leaked online showing what appeared to be a shiny remake of Atlus’ Persona 3 and the next entry in Jet Set Radio, apparently making Sega the latest company to pursue the remake/reboot gold. Late last year, the publisher emphasised plans to “focus on remaking and remastering existing IPs,” although they haven’t confirmed the existence of either project yet.

Sundays are for staring wistfully out of a window and wondering when your friend Ed will return from his adventures. Before you let out a long sigh, let's read this week's best writing about games (and game related things).

In his weekly newsletter for the Guardian, Keith Stewart laments the recent cancellation of this year's in-person E3, highlighting the loss of access an event like E3 offers to journalists that can't be replicated by a glut of sterile, online showcases.

Following the passing of legendary composer Ryuichi Sakamoto last week, Mat Ombler has documented his effect on the world of video games. Featuring quotes from Jesper Kyd, Takeshi Furukawa and Yuji Naka, it's clear that Sakamoto's influence on the way games sound cannot be understated.