!.04-Rock Paper Shotgun

!.04-Rock Paper Shotgun

Check out every Half-Life 2 level lined up together as one mega map

Posted: 19 Jul 2021 03:24 PM PDT

If you're not familiar with Noclip (the website, not the documentaries), I have a treat for you. Coded and maintained by creator "Jasper", Noclip.website contains versions of game levels that you can fly around in 3D to take a closer peek at. The site features a heck of a lot of Nintendo games (and some Dark Souls), but Jasper has also shared a bit of toying with Half-Life 2's levels. They've recently stitched together (almost) all of HL2's levels to do a bit of a flythrough showing off how they look all lined up in space together. Surprisingly decent, it turns out.

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Nvidia RTX 30-series graphics cards go on sale at Best Buy bricks-and-mortar stores tomorrow

Posted: 19 Jul 2021 03:09 PM PDT

Nvidia's RTX 30-series graphics cards offer a big performance uplift over their 10-series and 20-series competitors, but they've been nigh-impossible to find at a sensible price for months now. Best Buy has been one of the best bets to find a card in the US at a reasonable price, and tomorrow they'll offer visitors to selected physical stores the chance to buy a single graphics card - without worrying about bots, scalpers and - hopefully! - price inflation. Here are all the details you need to know to get your hands on one of the best graphics cards.

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Cris Tales review: a beautiful JRPG that's full of heart

Posted: 19 Jul 2021 03:00 PM PDT

I've long loved the fact that Final Fantasy VI's opera scene has remained so iconic, because I reckon that great JRPGs are basically musical theatre anyway. Orchestral swells of emotion! Spotlighted line deliveries! Choreographed, dance routine-like combat! Cris Tales isn’t technically a JRPG - it's from Colombia, so I’ve invented the completely new term CRPG, a genius acronym I’m sure will cause absolutely zero confusion - but this modern tribute hits the genre’s high notes with gusto. Consider this a standing ovation for an enchanting show, then, albeit one that’s sometimes a little light on meaningful audience participation.

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Final Fantasy's ATB battle system was originally inspired by race cars

Posted: 19 Jul 2021 02:09 PM PDT

Final Fantasy IV turns 30 today and to celebrate, Square Enix sat game designer Takashi Tokita down to talk about memories from development. It was the first Final Fantasy game he was involved with from the very beginning, he explains, so he's able to share some neat details on how the game's design evolved. He chats about character designs, romance plots, and the unlikely inspiration for the first ATB battle system that somehow came from watching F1 races.

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Ubisoft reveal Tom Clancy's XDefiant, upcoming free to play team FPS

Posted: 19 Jul 2021 12:18 PM PDT

Ubisoft's next Tom Clancy universe game is a free to play multiplayer shooter called Tom Clancy's XDefiant. Turns out it is indeed a Clancy game mashup shooter. It's a six on six multiplayer FPS with classes and ultra abilities and all, but your characters are called Defiants. It has a more irreverant, punk-y look than the typically serious Clancy vibe, Ubisoft say. XDefiant is still in early development, but they're hosting the first closed beta test in early August. Here are the details they've revealed so far.

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Apex Legends' next character Seer is cursed with a deadly gaze

Posted: 19 Jul 2021 10:19 AM PDT

Who doesn't love a bold fashion choice with a tragic backstory? Respawn have introduced the origin story for their newest Apex Legends character, Seer in a new animated teaser. He's cursed with eyes that can destroy people who look into them. Thus the flash hat, you see. They've not yet explained exactly what kind of abilities that will translate to in the battle royale world of Apex, but Electronic Arts say we'll be finding out more later this week. In the meantime, here's an introduction to Seer.

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Fall Guys season 5 brings squad modes and jungle themed levels tomorrow

Posted: 19 Jul 2021 09:12 AM PDT

I imagine it would have been tougher for sir Indy Jones to have made it through the Temple Of Doom if he'd been a stumbly, bouncy little guy. That's the fate that Fall Guys season 5 is dooming you to as of tomorrow. The new season theme is a jungle adventure with slippery and bouncy new jungle obstacles. As ever, it will bring a new reward track of costumes and cosmetics to unlock, one of which is that Spelunky fella. Oh, and Mediatonic are adding duos and trios squad modes.

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FFX and its infamous laughing scene are 20 years old today

Posted: 19 Jul 2021 09:00 AM PDT

If you can believe it, Final Fantasy X was released 20 years ago today in Japan. When I think of games 20 years ago, I still think we're talking about the 16-bit, maybe early 3D era of our beloved pasttime - yer Final Fantasy VIIs and VIIIs, perhaps. But X? Get outta here. Not possible.

Apart from its 20th anniversary making me feel intensely old and decrepit, though, it also means that it's been two whole decades since the birth of that laughing scene. You know the one. Tidus' forced and slightly crazed "HA, HA, HA, HA, HAAAAAAA" has been engraved into my subconscious ever since I first clapped ears on it, and it's probably one of the most (in)famous moments of the entire game. It's bad, brilliant and bonkers all at the same time, and I wanted to take a moment to celebrate this heartiest of gaming occasions. Here's to you, Tidus and Yuna's baffling bellows. May your excrutiating exclaimations echo throughout time for many more years to come.

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Mini Motorways review: life in the fast lane

Posted: 19 Jul 2021 08:05 AM PDT

If the brilliant Mini Metro gave me a newfound admiration for city subway designers, then Dinosaur Polo Club's latest minimalist transport sim Mini Motorways proves that urban road planners are actual god tier human beings.

Even with some of today's most iconic conurbations such as LA, Tokyo and Dubai reduced to their neatest, simplest geographical lines and land masses, I still manage to make a pig's ear of laying down a functioning road network. Just when I think I've got a handle on ferrying each city's busy commuters between their homes and giant industrial centres, something inevitably goes wrong. The pins stack up, jams back up for miles, and gridlock eventually brings the whole city to a crashing halt. But by golly is it fun.

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Amazon's MMO New World has as much in common with Valheim as it does World Of Warcraft

Posted: 19 Jul 2021 08:03 AM PDT

New World is Amazon's foray into the MMORPG genre and I got hands-on with an early build of its opening hours, which had me create a character, fight through a tutorial area, and graduate to a neighbouring town filled with vendors and plentiful quest markers. So, only a small portion of what's undoubtedly a game built for hundreds of hours of play, but enough to get a handle on whether I had that itch to get back in there and clock another hour or two towards that first hundred in its world. That's what matters when it comes to MMOs right? And I've got to say yes. Yes, the itch could use a good scratch.

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Company Of Heroes 3 devs talk janky tanks, motorbikes, and a mysterious super-heavy oddball

Posted: 19 Jul 2021 07:05 AM PDT

Ever since the pixellated rectangles of Dune 2 trundled into my world back in the early 90s, I’ve had a soft spot for tanks. I must have commanded millions over the last three decades of real time strategy, but in all that time they’ve not really changed much. A video game tank in 2021 might have a damage-reducing armour value, but it’s still essentially a box that snarls “yessir” when you click on it, and which functions perfectly until its hit points run out, whereupon it bursts. I want more complexity. I want tanks which feel like the messy, complex, cantankerous machines they are. And while there are many games which go well deep into simulating tanks, they’re largely not RTS games.

Among the extant tank-havers of the RTS genre, it’s probably Company Of Heroes 2 which lends the big metal lads the most personality. It makes Panzer Vs every bit the icons of fear they should be, while T-34s career about the place like the reckless, clattering have-a-go heroes they were. When Company Of Heroes 3 lands next year, we’ve been promised an even chuggier time, so I had a chat with the game's lead campaign director Andrew Deneault and lead mission designer Sacha Narine to find out more about what to expect.

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Watch the new Tom Clancy game reveal here today

Posted: 19 Jul 2021 04:10 AM PDT

Today, Ubisoft will announce a new game in the "Tom Clancy's" universe, but don't get your hopes up for a new Splinter Cell just yet. While Ubisoft themselves haven't said much about what they're revealing, a few snippets of gameplay have already been released, and it sure looks like Call Of Duty: The Division. I shan't knock it until we've seen more, however, so come join us at 7pm BST (11am PT) to catch the reveal stream.

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Skate won't be at EA Play Live

Posted: 19 Jul 2021 03:30 AM PDT

Electronic Arts' NotE3 stream, EA Play Live, takes place this Thursday, and at this point it seems they've announced more of what they're not showing than what they will be showing. No BioWare, no Star Wars, and now no Skate. I can't believe they'd do this. Fine, take the magic swords and spaceships, but the skateboards? Utterly cruel. Fortunately, the Skate team have teased that a "little something" would be shown today, so all is not lost.

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