!.04-Rock Paper Shotgun

Ubisoft say now is the time for free-to-play games "across all [their] biggest franchises"
Quakecon will return as another virtual event this August
Get the 49" Samsung CRG9 ultra-wide for £300 off today
The best external SSD and HDD deals from Amazon Gaming Week
Ubisoft's live sea-rvice game Skull & Bones delayed again
It looks like Battlefield 6 will be announced next month
The Weekspot podcast #037: All lycan eat
The Room 4: Old Sins' dollhouse looks lovely as a Lego set
HTC have just announced two new Vive VR headsets
Galactic Civilizations IV is officially happening, and it sounds very grand indeed
Yup, World of Warships has added Godzilla and King Kong
Horror film director claims Resident Evil Village used his monster designs
Valorant's new game mode makes your whole team play as the same agent
I can't get enough of the Asus ROG Zephyrus M16's enormous, bezel-free screen
Our guides team is evolving, and you could join us
The 1TB Crucial MX500 SSD is back down to just £67 again
Nvidia's RTX 3050 and RTX 3050 Ti laptops are official
Everything you need to know about Intel's 11th Gen Tiger Lake CPUs for laptops
It looks like Shadow Warrior 3 has a lot of eyeball-based weaponry
Preview: HighFleet is a massive, smoke-belching slab of air combat which somehow keeps itself in the sky
Have You Played… Football Manager 2012?

Ubisoft say now is the time for free-to-play games "across all [their] biggest franchises"

Posted: 11 May 2021 03:35 PM PDT

Ubisoft is going to focus more on producing "high-end free-to-play games" in future - sort of. In an investor call earlier today, chief financial officer Frederick Duguet said that the company's focus on releasing 3-4 premium games per year "is no longer a proper indication of [Ubisoft's] value creation dynamics."

That doesn't mean they're going to stop making games with an entry fee, but it means that free-to-play is becoming a larger part of their business. The comments come after Ubisoft announced a new free-to-play game, Tom Clancy's The Division Heartland, earlier this week.

Quakecon will return as another virtual event this August

Posted: 11 May 2021 02:36 PM PDT

Quakecon 2021 will take place this August, and like last year it will be an online-only event. In today's announcement, Bethesda said that they'll have more to share about the lineup in June.

"We can’t wait to get back to Dallas with our QuakeCon family, but for the continued safety of our staff, the volunteers, and the community, this year’s QuakeCon will once again be a digital-only event," says the brief statement.

Get the 49" Samsung CRG9 ultra-wide for £300 off today

Posted: 11 May 2021 02:35 PM PDT

Right, this is a big one - and I mean that quite literally. The Samsung CRG9, one of hardware honcho Katharine's favourite ultra-wide monitors, has seen a massive discount in Amazon's Gaming Week Sale, a reduction so large that the monitor itself appears small by comparison.

The best external SSD and HDD deals from Amazon Gaming Week

Posted: 11 May 2021 02:03 PM PDT

External hard drives are one of the best ways to quickly and cheaply add game or media storage wherever you need it - but they can be slow. That's why, as internal SSDs have become table stakes for gaming machines, external SSDs have also started to become quite popular. By pairing fast flash memory with a high-speed USB connection, you can get storage that feels just as rapid as the best SSDs for gaming, but can travel with you to be used with desktops, laptops, TVs and game consoles. Amazon's Gaming Week sale includes quite a few of these modern marvels, so we're going to break down the best buys available from the likes of WD and SanDisk.

Ubisoft's live sea-rvice game Skull & Bones delayed again

Posted: 11 May 2021 01:53 PM PDT

What is a skull if not a bone? A bone structure? Either these pirates are pedants or they should have named their game Bones & Bones.

Perhaps it's questions like these that have led Skull & Bones, Ubisoft's seafaring adventure, to be delayed yet again. This time it's been pushed until sometime after March 2022.

It looks like Battlefield 6 will be announced next month

Posted: 11 May 2021 01:19 PM PDT

It looks like we're going to see the new Battlefield soon, if a hint tweeted earlier today by the game's official Twitter account isn't a ridiculous fake-out. The timing suggests it might coincide with June's virtual E3 on June 12th-15th, but EA's own event, EA Play Live, isn't happening until July.

The Weekspot podcast #037: All lycan eat

Posted: 11 May 2021 10:00 AM PDT

We’ve been doing The Weekspot for the best part of nine months now. In that time, there’s been weeks where either the big releases have dried up, or the news has been lacking a little oomph. But, I think we’ve been able to cobble together a podcast you can enjoy, regardless of the previous seven days in PC video gaming. This week, there was zero cobbling.

The Room 4: Old Sins' dollhouse looks lovely as a Lego set

Posted: 11 May 2021 09:25 AM PDT

Every game in The Room series is about the slow unlocking of a layered puzzle. They’re detailed, marvellous things, and you can often forget just how cool they are while you’re looking for a lever or begging your partner to Google for a solution (that way you didn’t look for one, you see?). To remind you, or to spoil it for you, The Room 4: Old Sins’ graphics and motion designer Roger Schembri has designed that game’s dollhouse in Lego Ideas, rendering what it would look like if Lego ever made it into a kit.

HTC have just announced two new Vive VR headsets

Posted: 11 May 2021 09:00 AM PDT

Today is clearly the day for all the new PC hardware announcements, as HTC have just unveiled not one, but two new Vive headsets for VR: the Vive Pro 2 and Vive Focus 3. The former is the consumer-focused successor to their original Vive Pro headset, adding a new 5K resolution display and a super smooth 120Hz refresh rate to the mix, while the latter is an all-in-one headset that's aimed at business types, offering the same 5K display but a lower 90Hz refresh rate.

Galactic Civilizations IV is officially happening, and it sounds very grand indeed

Posted: 11 May 2021 08:21 AM PDT

Space-faring 4Xer Galactic Civilizations IV has been announced by Stardock, and it's due out in 2022. The new deep space strategy game expands on the series' template by a number of factors, bringing multi-sector maps and a huge cast of characters to what was already a chunky series. Here’s what we know.

Yup, World of Warships has added Godzilla and King Kong

Posted: 11 May 2021 06:29 AM PDT

World of Warships has added Godzilla and King Kong. The rest of the words in this paragraph are probably meaningless because you’re now trying to imagine that. I could just talk about my cat for a few sentences, but professionalism, and Graham, forces me to keep on track. The twin titans of the best movie of 2021 are available as commanders for the F2P naval battle sim, where they’ll stand on top of a pair of new battleships like badly misshapen sails.

Horror film director claims Resident Evil Village used his monster designs

Posted: 11 May 2021 06:19 AM PDT

The director of the 2013 found footage horror film Frankenstein's Army has accused Capcom of using one of his monster designs in Resident Evil Village. I won't say too much more before the cut, because there are big spoilers for the game (and the film, I guess) in this post. But I will say: I did a little giggle when I saw the monster. I'm sorry, maybe it's very scary with more context around it. You tell me Resi players and Frankie's Army watchers: do these beasts give you The Fear?

Valorant's new game mode makes your whole team play as the same agent

Posted: 11 May 2021 06:05 AM PDT

Riot Games seem to be experimenting with another less competitive game mode in their guns 'n wizards FPS Valorant. Replication is a new best-of-nine Spike planting mode with a rather chaotic gimmick - players on the same team will all have to play as the same agent. I know what you're thinking: 'Oh god, I'm going to be perpetually blinded by five Breaches'. But thankfully, Riot are adding in a little feature called Flashguard that should at least let you see for a couple of seconds.

I can't get enough of the Asus ROG Zephyrus M16's enormous, bezel-free screen

Posted: 11 May 2021 05:30 AM PDT

It's big news in laptop land today, as the launch of Intel's 11th Gen Tiger Lake H-Series CPUs for laptops and Nvidia's RTX 3050 and RTX 3050 Ti laptop GPUs has prompted a whole new swathe of gaming laptop announcements. I got to see two of them early in an online demo presentation: the 16in mega screen of the Asus ROG Zephyrus M16 (pictured above), and its large desktop replacement sibling, the Asus ROG Zephryus S17 (pictured above, right). Both look like very fine gaming laptops indeed, but it's the super narrow bezels on all four sides of the Zephyrus M16's display that have really caught my eye here. It looks absolutely gorgeous, and I don't think I've seen a more impressive-looking display in all my years of tech journaling.

Our guides team is evolving, and you could join us

Posted: 11 May 2021 05:11 AM PDT

Our guides team is changing. Ollie Toms is stepping up to become guides editor, after two years of writing some of the best game guides in the industry. He's filling the role left vacant by Jake Green, who hopped onto RPS after USG's closure last year and has now departed for pastures new. And James Law, who similarly joined RPS last year, is likewise leaving for some new adventures.

That means we're now hiring for two new guides writers. Come, congratulate Ollie, sing farewell to James, and find out where you can apply to work for RPS.

The 1TB Crucial MX500 SSD is back down to just £67 again

Posted: 11 May 2021 05:04 AM PDT

A couple of weeks ago, the 1TB model of the excellent Crucial MX500 SSD hit a new all-time low price of £67 in the UK. Alas, the deal lasted all of twenty seconds before it shot back up to its usual price of around £84. Thankfully, this cut-price SSD deal has now resurfaced thanks to Amazon UK's big gaming week sale, giving you another chance to pick up this nippy SATA drive for the same low price of £67.

Nvidia's RTX 3050 and RTX 3050 Ti laptops are official

Posted: 11 May 2021 04:00 AM PDT

Hot on the heels of Intel's 11th Gen Tiger Lake laptop CPU launch, Nvidia are also announcing a new swathe of RTX 30-series gaming laptops today powered by their new RTX 3050 and RTX 3050 Ti mobile GPUs. These new entry-level RTX laptops will start from $799 in the US (UK pricing TBC), bringing Nvidia's ray tracing and DLSS technology to the mainstream.

Everything you need to know about Intel's 11th Gen Tiger Lake CPUs for laptops

Posted: 11 May 2021 04:00 AM PDT

Intel have finally unveiled their full line-up of 11th Gen Tiger Lake H-series laptop CPUs today, and with it a fresh wave of over 80 new gaming laptops to be released over the coming weeks. These high-performance laptop CPUs will succeed Intel's ubiquitous 10th Gen Comet Lake chips such as the Core i7-10750H and Core i9-10980HK, bringing with them up to 19% gen-on-gen multithreaded performance improvements, PCIe 4.0 support and the latest wireless connectivity standards. Here's everything you need to know.

It looks like Shadow Warrior 3 has a lot of eyeball-based weaponry

Posted: 11 May 2021 03:50 AM PDT

The pair of Shadow Warrior 3 trailers below are intense and ridiculous. Like modern Doom, but instead of Hell’s spawn spewing onto Mars they’ve accidentally invaded a ‘90s children’s quiz show set. There are eyeballs popping out of maws and gleefully killing everything, and each arena has vast killing devices that grinds enemies into a fine paste. If the gore was green slime instead of viscera it would probably be a big hit on Nickelodeon.

Preview: HighFleet is a massive, smoke-belching slab of air combat which somehow keeps itself in the sky

Posted: 11 May 2021 03:00 AM PDT

There are some game traits which you will know, if you have read a moderate number of my posts, are surefire Nate-bait. Settings which go big on the stark, WW1-evoking side of the “dieselpunk” identifier? Yes please. Bafflingly utilitarian, diegetic UIs covered in clunkers and switcheroos? Like and subscribe. Baroque, crypto-feudal science fiction cultures, where archaic royal houses persist in the middle of mechanised warfare on a chilling scale? Here’s my credit card number.

HighFleet - which is slated to come out in Q2, so sometime in the next few months - plots a course straight through this maelstrom of tropes, and comes out in a blaze of glory. And, admittedly, in a blaze of fire. But in a good way. Mostly.

Have You Played… Football Manager 2012?

Posted: 10 May 2021 11:30 PM PDT

Reading Football Club are the exact kind of team absolutely no one cares about. They put the supporters through an emotional Gladiator gauntlet whilst the rest of the world walks on by, unaware of the fact that the team somehow failed to score against a Yeovil Town team with three red cards.

!.04-Rock Paper Shotgun

!.04-Rock Paper Shotgun

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