Rock, Paper, Shotgun
Articles about Rock, Paper, Shotgun
Airborne open world Atmosfar gets an early access release date and a trailer full of flying islands, cloud cruisers and sky taxis
There was a time when open worlds made of flying islands really seemed like the New Hotness. I guess The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is the obvious trendsetter, but my mind always returns to Bossa's ill-fated aerial MMO Worlds Adrift. I have fond memories of a preview session in which a developer and I tried to rebuild a wildly rolling airship in a hurricane. We failed, but a good time was had plummeting and dying.
Anime racer Screamer no longer demands you retrain your fingers, with a fresh patch adding single stick drift controls
Both James and I dug anime-styled arcade racer Screamer when we gave a verdict on it earlier this year, but one aspect that raised both of our eyebrows was the game's unorthodox twin stick drift controls. Usually, steering and sliding in racing games are managed by the one singular controller stick, keeping things simple and intuitive, but Milestone opted to make you kick out the tail with a second stick instead.
Hackers steal millions of Discord IDs and email addresses in “deliberate, multi-stage attack” on security service Double Counter
Discord’s privacy woes continue as hackers of a third-party security tool make off with 1 million user email addresses.
Lynchian noir mystery Silver Pines takes the best bits from horror, the middling bits from Metroidvanias, and the worst bits from adventure games
I want, and not even especially deep down, to like Silver Pines more than I do. Wych Elm’s debut game – a Twin Peaks-inspired, neo-noir detective mystery that quickly repaints itself in survival horror red – is endearingly unusual, an angular mishmash of different genre staples that, nonetheless, stays coherently glued together by its expressively moody visual style and an intriguing missing-person tale.
My horror that 32GB RAM has become the norm is exceeded only by my contempt that 7.28% of you have over 4TB free hard drive space
Valve’s latest Steam user hardware survey suggests that 32GB or RAM has become the norm among PC players, alongside a spike in Simplified Chinese users.
“It changes the notion of safety for the enemies, but also for you”: Rainbow Six Tactics’ destruction undoes the classic dynamics of flanking
During the hands-off presentation of Rainbow Six Tactics at Gamescom, destruction obviously featured. Walls were breached, cover was blown up, and masonry was peppered with rounds. It looked excellent, but it was also familiar from other turn-based tactical games. Considering the focus of scenery destruction in Rainbow Six Siege, I wasn't sure how the team were actually advancing the tech beyond what we've seen in games like XCOM 2.
Alleged footage of Xbox’s cancelled Perfect Dark reboot shows a parkour-heavy chase scene and the summary execution of fruit
Alleged footage of Xbox’s cancelled Perfect Dark reboot in action has appeared online, including a parkour-heavy chase.
“Your body is foreign territory”: Small-town mystery puzzler Patience is a Virtue explores power and vulnerability by way of a unique conversation system
The English language can be a way of communicating, and it can be a way of subjugating. Patience is a Virtue protagonist Louis knows this intimately. In this "cozy-meets-creepy" conversation puzzle game from teaisfortoby!, some interactions require you to answer only using the words spoken by the other party.
GTA 6 won’t be playable on PC at launch via Xbox’s cloud streaming services, Microsoft exec indicates while refuting exclusivity deal report
Xbox’s Matthew Ball has denied that GTA 6 will be playable on PC at launch via the company’s cloud streaming services.
Games industry investors are “sitting on the sidelines waiting for obvious slam dunks”, says Undead Labs boss, with labour costs a key worry
The studio boss of State of Decay 3 developer Undead Labs has explained the decision to go indie in the context of an investment landscape looking for megahits.
ROTETRA is Tetris where the blocks fall from four different sides at once and lord almighty I don’t have the brainspace to be good at it, but it sure is fun
One set of tetronimos is enough!
You and I both know you’re not sleeping well in this economy, so have a gander at Sheeps, a roguelite about counting sheep pouring out of a strange portal
I've never really been able to do that whole counting sheep thing to get to sleep. Just doesn't work for me. Instead, my brain prefers to latch onto something embarrassing I said when I was 14 and then imagine what the people who heard that must think of me, conveniently forgetting that 15 years have passed since then and only I would ever remember such an inane moment of a life. Segue! Here's a going about counting sheep called, you'll never guess it, Sheeps, and it's a roguelite so it's actually more interesting than that, I promise.
Cancelled MMO spin-off Borderlands Online is playable once again, and the team behind the unofficial project thankfully didn’t use any genAI to get it running
There’s always a second chance at life.
Take out some monsters and then turn them into take-out in the post-apocalyptic tycoon survival sim Midwest 90: Rapid City, out in early access next month
Or for the Brits, turn them into a takeaway. Just didn’t flow as good, is all.
“Your word is undeniable truth”: Can’t be bothered to find evidence in Warhammer 40,000: Dark Heresy? It’s fine, because no matter what, you’re always right
If the promises that Owlcat are making of Warhammer 40,000: Dark Heresy aren't just PR fluff, it sounds like we might be in for a good bit of fun. In Dark Heresy, you are an acolyte of the Inquisition, meaning you have to look out for that titular heresy, which actually means that you're a space cop.
Jagex pull Runescape trailer and apologise for genAI use after complaints about six-fingered knights, pinning the blame on a “trusted external partner”
I'm really tired of writing about genAI today. It's my first news shift with RPS, and within a few hours, I've written three stories that are solely about genAI use by modders, indie outfits and now, somehow, Jagex. Still, the horrors persist, and so I must continue reporting on them.
Some staff at Eternal Strands and ex-Ubisoft devs Yellow Brick Games report they’ve been laid off
LinkedIn posts suggest that several members of staff at Yellow Brick Games have been laid off.
Bullet heaven battler Warhammer Survivors arrives in November, with a new demo out now to whet your appetite for destruction
Warhammer Survivors has gotten a November release date and new demo.
Sonic Team’s Takashi Iizuka dismisses the apparent inevitability of remakes, saying “you’re essentially providing the same experience again”
At this point, you can't even open the Steam front page without stumbling over remake after remake (sometimes remasters, just to spice things up). To say remakes are in vogue would be an understatement: they're an almost guaranteed moneymaker that can prey on nostalgia and a lust for a 'better time' to deliver games that can offer some ephemeral reproduction of the feeling of childhood, thus protecting from the Scaries of living in the current time.
Question passengers with tarot-like cards in Dreadline Express, a train mystery with the most intriguing conversation system I’ve played since Her Story
In Dreadline Express, you play a character who awakes in the cabin of a carriage on the last human train. It hurtles down the track, bathed in the red light of an alien sky. At the windows of the carriage, eldritch tentacles press themselves against the glass. A voice crackles at the speaker, it announces that you've been selected by lottery. You're to be sacrificed for the greater good. The message signs off "All hail the Supreme Engineer".
Star Wars Galactic Racer review: now this is frenetically fun podracing with a totally unforgiving streak
Becoming a boost junkie in arcade racers that offer such potent bursts of extra oomph is usually only a matter of time. Star Wars: Galactic Racer is no different. The hooks have been in deep.
PlatinumGames CEO pauses a discussion on Stellar Blade’s Bayonetta costume crossover to casually infer more Bayonetta may be on the way
It's been a bit since Bayonetta has had any time in the spotlight. 2022's Bayonetta 3 released to pretty good reception (although did earn ire for its depiction of the witch herself), but all's been quiet on the Umbral front since. With creator Hideki Kamiya having left PlatinumGames in 2023, it seemed even more unlikely for the series to continue. A ray of hope appeared in an unexpected place, though: Stellar Blade.
Car Park Capital's cities are utopias of public transport networks and green living, or they were before I got done with them
The streets of Baldtown City are nearly empty of traffic. It's not that it's a ghost town: up and down the pavements there are crowds of citizens bustling to and from work. They pile into subways, queue up at bus stops, and enter and leave the town by a regularly-running intercity metro service. Their city is woven with affordable, clean, public transport. As a representative of big auto, whose one joy in life is bringing people the freedom of car dependency, Baldtown city will have to change.
Retro platformer series Dizzy is back for a new game from its original creators, who are really happy for you to know it’s made with AI
For British people who were actively playing games in the late 80s and/or retro enthusiasts looking back at that period of the industry, the name Dizzy might ring a bell (it doesn’t for me, but what can I tell you, I’m 24). A prolific platformer series starring a bipedal egg, it spanned formats from the ZX Spectrum to the NES and Game Gear, and managed sixteen(!?) releases between 1987 and 1992 - before slowing significantly past the millenium.
Following through on their warning, Until Dawn and Directive 8020 devs Supermassive lay off “more than 70” staff
Supermassive Games have laid off “more than 70” staff, having previously announced jobs were at risk not long after Directive 8020’s launch.
After 12 years, Ultra Street Fighter IV gets not one, but two connection-stabilising rollback netcode mods aaaand they’re both made using Claude
Street Fighter IV, the game that basically revived the fighting game genre back in 2009 and gave birth (not literally) to a new subset of players lovingly referred to as ‘09ers’, saw its final iteration in 2014’s Ultra Street Fighter IV. While it wasn’t the most perfectly balanced game, it’s remembered fondly by its players and is viewed by many as the last vestige of ‘honest Street Fighter’.
Noematica is a lucid dreamer’s “n-dimensional” take on The Sims that proudly boasts it will never ever gouge you for DLC
Over the course of my illustrious tenure as RPS news mangler, I have seen many Simslikes. Tragically cancelled Simslikes from publishers better known for feats of tactical incest! Corrosively telegenic Simslikes suggestive of a paved-over burial ground! Cottagecore "don't call me a Simslike" Simslikes! And now, finally, Simslikes that appear to have been conceived in the Red Room from Twin Peaks.
Claims that genAI speeds up PC ports of classic games are either “false” or missing the point, says Banjo Kazooie: Recompiled developer
The software developer behind an unofficial PC version of N64 platformer Banjo-Kazooie has posted an impassioned screed about the usage of generative AI tools for rush-job PC ports of classic games.
“Even if I knew how it would end, I would do it again”: Hellblade developers Ninja Theory appear to have kicked off the redundancy process
Hellblade studio Ninja Theory appear to have kicked off the redundancy process as part of a closure post-Microsoft split.
GTA 6 writer says the series has never had “much focus on national politics” beyond GTA 4’s war on terror, and the latest entry won’t get “too specific”
GTA 6’s approach to satirising politics and the American dream has been discussed by Rockstar’s senior vice president of narrative.
“Coders will never forgive me for this level”: Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun 2 has a rotatable “fleshmetal” puzzle map that drove its own development team crazy
In the grim darkness of the far future, there is something far worse than war. There is: a level that is basically a huge, spinning lock full of tentacles, with your Space Marine or Sister of Battle protagonist naturally serving as the key.
This week in PC games: Star Wars: Galactic Racer, Hellraiser: Revival, and a throwback tycoon game about turning utopias into carparks
Happy this week, all! I regret to inform you that the videogame developers have been at it again. Sometimes, I find that the promising new releases distribute themselves evenly throughout the week, like butter perfectly spread over just the right amount of toast. And sometimes, as with this week's haul, they congregate weirdly on Thursday and Friday. It's as though they were trying to get away from me, like rats ambushed in the pantry, pawing frantically against the weekend's closed and bolted door. Haha! Hahahaaha!
RuneScape 4 is a new Unreal Engine MMO which reportedly grew out of a planned Dragonwilds expansion, though it’s still a long way off
RuneScape 4, a new Unreal Engine MMO which reportedly grew out of a planned RuneScape: Dragonwilds expansion, has been announced by Jagex.
“We opted out of some things really early on”: How the small team making No Law plan to make it look as big as Cyberpunk 2077
If you've watched the trailers for No Law or the tech demo that developer Neon Giant showed off at Unreal Fest earlier this year, it would be easy to believe the game has a similar scope to CD Projekt Red's Cyberpunk 2077. After all, both games are open-world RPGs set in cyberpunk cities. Set in a beautifully realised mediterranean city that is somehow equal parts Lisbon and Kowloon Walled City – and with corner shops that are as stuffed with riches as the one down the road from my flat.
The Sunday Papers
Sundays are for having the first lie-in in a month. No trips to visit family, no waking in unfamiliar beds, and, best of all, no having to wait until the hosts are up before you can get started on breakfast. I will be snoozing deeply in my own particular mattress before having a plate of toast and scrambled eggs at a time that I deem appropriate.
The Other One: Jordan Magnuson’s Game Poem jam is a fascinating collection of chimeras
Sometimes I Wonder About The Other Me is a 2D platformer created by "small game" developer Luis "Ludipe" Díaz Peralta, whose other works include A Place For The Unwilling. It's broken into a handful of single screen maps. On each screen, there's a Mario-brand exclamation mark block that burps a text fragment, forming an overarching monologue that begins with the title phrase. As you move between screens, you come to a signpost pointing left and right.
What are we all playing this weekend?
The team share that they’re playing this weekend, which number multiple Star Wars games, a Castlevania demo, and many secret games.
Desktop and handheld prices going out of control means PC bargain hunts lead to my old enemy: gaming laptops
I don’t know if memory shortages have permanently killed off the concept of 'cheap' gaming PCs, but they have at least beat it into a coma. On the desktop side, inflated RAM, SSDs and graphics card prices continue to inflict karmic pain for our years of "It's cheaper to build it yourself" smugness, while formerly affordable handheld PCs are either suffering 40%-plus jackups or launching above £1K from the off. And the Steam Machine! The poor, square Steam Machine.
“Support modders, not AI”: Total War: Warhammer 3 mod “deliberately corrupted” by its own creator in protest of AI-infused unauthorised reuploads
Total War: Warhammer 3 mod SFO: Grimhammer 3 has been “deliberately corrupted” by its own creator in protest of AI-infused unauthorised reuploads.
RAM shortages are only getting worse and will last until at least 2028, Micron boss declares from atop a mountain of money
RAM shortages will carry on until at least 2028 with “much higher prices” being paid next year, Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra has said during an earnings call.
AI-generated Fallout: New York browser game full of utterly cursed faces slapped with Bethesda cease and desist, its slop prompter claims
Bethesda have seemingly slapped an AI-generated Fallout: New York browser game with cease and desist order.
PUBG extraction shooter Black Budget canned less than a year from reveal, after Krafton decide it won’t “deliver an experience players could enjoy over the long term”
PUBG: Black Budget, an extraction shooter spin-off, has been cancelled by Krafton following less than a year of alpha testing.
If game developers steal one thing from No Law, I hope it’s the open-world game’s ridiculously detailed and realistic corner shops
The corner shops and bodegas in No Law are so much more realistic than they need to be for an open world game. I hope more developer follow their example.
Reigns and Card Shark developers Nerial are closing down, laying staff off while the founders go “back to our roots”
“We need to take a break”: The amazing Nerial, creators of Reigns, The Crush House and Card Shark, are closing down.
RetroSpace offers a huge sci-fi playground for inquisitive space janitors, but I’m not that System Shocked by the tools at your disposal
In my time as a videogame partaker, I have crawled through approximately three billion airvents. I may well have crawled through more vents than you've had hot dinners. As such, any videogame that can get me excited about loosening a barred hatch and hauling my heavy ass into a square tunnel is doing something right.
Control Resonant’s New Game++ update also squashes some of my least favourite bugs, including the one where magic doors change my trousers
The latest Control: Resonant update is a biggun, adding New Game ++ mode, smoothing low-end performance, and stopping a bug from forcibly changing your clothes.
I’m not sure the “AI” in my chair’s lumbar support actually counts as AI, but it has been smart enough to help my posture
Note from James, 02/10: We've heard your complaints that some of the wording in this piece - a lot of which, if I'm honest, was added/changed by me in the edit - overstates the chair's potential health benefits. The HBADA’s X7 chair may reduce back pain during long periods of sitting at your desk but it will not literally fix your spine. While it is and will remain the RPS way to indulge in some occasional hyperbole, we don't want to suggest that swivel chairs cure physical conditions, so I've clarified these bits to avoid confusion.
Capcom aren’t just running out of Resident Evil games to remake - they’re banking on it, with a mysterious “crossover” planned when the timelines collide
Capcom have done a brisk trade in Resident Evil remakes this past decade. They've gone back to formula with Resident Evil 2, Resident Evil 3, and Resident Evil 4, not just bumping up the resolution and revarnishing the cutscenes, but writing new variations on the old survival horror fables. There's a Resident Evil: Code Veronica regurgitation due in 2027, and a Resident Evil 0 resurrection allegedly to follow in 2028.
The Witcher 3: Songs of the Past’s setting “felt like a really natural way to go”, CD Projekt Red story director says, while parrying my attempts to breach the DLC’s guard
Ever since The Witcher 3's decade-on expansion Songs of the Past was revealed not to be a windup nor a case of empthy rumourmongering, I've been eating up as many details about its story as CD Projekt Red have offered. The truth is that, outside of showing off the setting and a few of the characters Gerry'll chat to, they've kept their lips pretty tight.
“We want people to try and outsmart the game”: No Law aims for Arkane-style reactivity within a dangerous walled city
Port Desire, the hemmed-in city setting of immersive sim No Law, is hard to place. At points, it reminds me of walking around Lisbon. It shares that Portuguese city's verticality, where hill-straddling streets shouldered by colourful houses and corner shops can feel like tiers on a wedding cake. The strong sunlight and bursts of foliage reinforce the mediterranean vibes. Yet, the port city's structure and history is much closer to Kowloon Walled City, the ungoverned Chinese enclave that existed within British-owned Hong Kong.
“Xbox is not for sale” despite all of the layoffs and neat repackaging of studios within Microsoft’s corporate structure, CEO Asha Sharma says
Despite recently having overseen the laying off of 268 staff in the second of multiple rounds of cuts planned for this financial year, Xbox CEO Asha Sharma has denied that their are plans to sell Microsoft's gaming division. The bloodletting at Xbox in recent months has not only seen workers let go, but the place of studios within the company's structure being altered.
The Division developers Massive are now “the global brand” in charge of Splinter Cell and Ghost Recon, alongside a new Ubisoft dieselpunk MOBA
The Splinter Cell and Ghost Recon teams will now “operate under” The Division devs Massive Entertainment, as Ubisoft continue to restructure with Tencent money.