!.04-Rock Paper Shotgun

Stray shines most when it lets you be a jerk like a cat
Banners Of Ruin is Wind In The Willows crossed with Slay The Spire
A year on, Gabe Newell feels "great" about Half-Life: Alyx
Minecraft Dungeon's Echoing Void DLC takes you to The End
Outer Wilds' "first and only" expansion arrives this September
Make Space Engineers looks a little more Satisfactory with the Heavy Industry update
Everything announced at the Annapurna Interactive showcase 2021
In Skin Deep, cats have recruited you to fight space pirates
Hyper Light Drifter follow-up Solar Ash releases this October
Neon White is part demon parkour game, part dating sim
Starbase's early access space race has begun
Claire De Lune won't light any fires, but it'll warm you up
The Sims 4 Cottage Living review: unrealistic yet ideal cottagecore
The top 12 games on PC in August
The latest King's Bounty 2 footage shows a game at odds with its past
EWS podcast episode 149: the best robots special
Bridge-based strategy game Carrier Command 2 has been ordered to release in August
The Ascent review: a fun cyberpunk shooter that takes a while to warm up
Spook snapper Fatal Frame: Maiden Of Black Water will be haunting PC on October 28th
Scope out this early look at Halo Infinite's first full multiplayer match
Kena: Bridge Of Spirits has been delayed to September
The joy of playing Escape From Tarkov in single player

Stray shines most when it lets you be a jerk like a cat

Posted: 29 Jul 2021 02:53 PM PDT

Tonight's Annapurna showcase brought news of many games, and among them was Stray. First announced at E3 last year, it's a gorgeous-looking third-person adventure in which you control a cat trying to survive in a cybercity.

The first developer walkthrough of Stray revealed that someone has given the cat a gun. Watch the trailer below.

Banners Of Ruin is Wind In The Willows crossed with Slay The Spire

Posted: 29 Jul 2021 02:13 PM PDT

After a day short of a year in early access, turn-based anthro-animal battler Banners Of Ruin has launched in full. It's Wind In The Willows crossed with Slay The Spire, or Animals Of Farthing Wood crossed with Game Of Thrones. Check out the launch trailer below.

A year on, Gabe Newell feels "great" about Half-Life: Alyx

Posted: 29 Jul 2021 01:42 PM PDT

We learned a little more about the Steam Deck yesterday via Gabe Newell's chat with IGN, but that wasn't all that was discussed. IGN also asked Newell how he felt about Half-Life: Alyx one year on - and (with no spoilers), how he felt about the game's ending.

Minecraft Dungeon's Echoing Void DLC takes you to The End

Posted: 29 Jul 2021 01:01 PM PDT

Minecraft Dungeons's latest DLC is out now, promising "the conclusion of the Minecraft Dungeons story." Conclusions sound to me like the sort of thing you ought to include in the base game - but the DLC does also add the Minecraft biome known as "The End", Endermen mobs, and new items. There's a trailer below.

Outer Wilds' "first and only" expansion arrives this September

Posted: 29 Jul 2021 12:33 PM PDT

Mobius Digital's excellent space exploration game Outer Wilds is getting an expansion. Announced during Annapurna Interactive's NotE3 showcase, Echoes Of The Eye is set to release on September 28th. While the devs say it will be involved in the game's existing narrative, they're keeping quiet on what exactly we'll be getting up to. But, judging from the name, it likely has something to do with Eye Of The Universe, a mysterious object in the solar system that you spend most of your time in Outer Wilds trying to reach.

Make Space Engineers looks a little more Satisfactory with the Heavy Industry update

Posted: 29 Jul 2021 12:31 PM PDT

Space Engineers feels ancient to me at this point, but it seems only to grow in popularity. Its developers continue to support the game, too: today saw the release of the 1.199 major update and the Heavy Industry DLC pack. The changes are largely cosmetic, but it's good stuff if you like building big factories full of pipes.

Everything announced at the Annapurna Interactive showcase 2021

Posted: 29 Jul 2021 12:30 PM PDT

Tonight, Annapurna Interactive held their very first E3-like showcase, showing off loads of games they're publishing over the next year or so, as well as revealing new developers they're working with. We saw new gameplay for Stray, Neon White, Skin Deep, and a very special announcement from Outer Wilds developers Mobius Digital about a cryptic new expansion.

If you missed the stream, read on, because we've made a big list of everything that happened at the Annapurna Interactive Showcase.

In Skin Deep, cats have recruited you to fight space pirates

Posted: 29 Jul 2021 12:22 PM PDT

Skin Deep, the next game from Quadrilateral Cowboy and Thirty Flights Of Loving developer Brendon Chung got a new gameplay trailer at tonight's Annapurna Interactive showcase, showing lots more weird and wonderful ness for the "Die Hard in space"-like. It's a game where you've been, uh, "hired" by cats to be their insurance guy during a space flight. So, when pirates attack the ship, they pop you out of a container to fend them off.

Naturally, I had to ask Chung: why cats?

Hyper Light Drifter follow-up Solar Ash releases this October

Posted: 29 Jul 2021 12:17 PM PDT

Announced at the Annapurna Interactive showcase, the skating, monster-killing, vibey and vibrant Solar Ash will be released on October 26th. It's the next game from Hyper Light Drifter developers Heart Machine, sharing Hyper Light's cool and colourful 80s aesthetic, but flipping from 2D to 3D and putting a real emphasis on fluid movement throughout a huge world.

I had a chance to chat with the devs about Solar Ash, and they told me a bit about why they decided to go for something so different, and about the challenges of making such a speedy character.

Neon White is part demon parkour game, part dating sim

Posted: 29 Jul 2021 12:07 PM PDT

Neon White sounds like a lot. As you may have seen from tonight's Annapurna Interactive Showcase, it's a speedrunning first-person shooter where you use decks of cards that represent weapons to stop demons invading heaven. It also has dating sim aspects where you can chat and have a nice time with the other Neons (the demon slayers you're sort of working with). Better yet, it's made by the developers of Donut County, and designer Ben Esposito tells me that massive tonal change was because he wanted to go "apeshit".

Starbase's early access space race has begun

Posted: 29 Jul 2021 11:54 AM PDT

Starbase looks like one of those games you could lazily suggest throws everything but the kitchen sink at the player, but after seeing the asset browser in the latest trailer, I think it might even have one of those in there, too. It’s Trine developers Frozenbyte’s fulsome space survival sim, one where you find resources, build ships, explore, trade, and fight with others. I could have listed way more things, but it was getting silly. And this is an early access release, so there’s more to come.

Claire De Lune won't light any fires, but it'll warm you up

Posted: 29 Jul 2021 09:07 AM PDT

14 years on, it might say more about me than about games that I automatically want to reference Portal when I play a game like Claire De Lune. It's a bit unfair to compare everything in the first person physics puzzle subgenre to one of the best games ever made as a default.

You have a zappy non-violent gun necessary for navigating a series of platforming challenges. That's... actually where the similarities end. Instead of the increasingly sinister laboratory and wry humour, Claire De Lune crashes you into an alien planet and asks you to reunite with your daughter while periodically getting a flash of sad backstory.

The Sims 4 Cottage Living review: unrealistic yet ideal cottagecore

Posted: 29 Jul 2021 09:00 AM PDT

I grew up in the countryside and thus Cottagecore has always faintly amused me as a concept. My experience was more ThereIsAlwaysASpiderInTheBathcore. You may imagine that you spend your days picking letterbox-red strawberries from your garden, under the heady scent of roses, but in actual fact if you do not get to the strawberries within about 30 seconds of them ripening then they will be eaten by slugs. But I don't want to destroy anyone's dream, and if real-life cottage fantasy doesn't work out then there's always The Sims 4: Cottage Living.

This latest expansion to EA's (already monstrously expanded) life sim allows you to live out the ultimate Cottagecore fantasy. Compliant hens, a Llama to joke with, the ability to commune with wild foxes and birds, and loads of cute wooden furniture. It's probably my favourite expansion in recent memory, maybe because Maxis appear to have embarked on a tactic of taking note of the most popular community mods and then making them. They should have just done that years ago. We'd have had official bunkbeds for ages.

The top 12 games on PC in August

Posted: 29 Jul 2021 08:45 AM PDT

I know these monthly lists often highlight the 10 games that you should keep an eye on over the next month, but I’ve bumped it up to 12 for August. Because, if you haven’t heard, video games are back, baby!... And they might disappear again at any moment, so please just let me celebrate the fact that there are more than 10 computer games coming out over the next four and a bit weeks.

The latest King's Bounty 2 footage shows a game at odds with its past

Posted: 29 Jul 2021 08:25 AM PDT

The original King's Bounty was a classic RPS game. A sort of janky but inventive tactical mash-up that took Alec Meer (RPS in peace) into a battle inside his own belt for the right to upgrade it. This small glimpse at the upcoming King's Bounty 2, along with Ed’s hands-on preview a few weeks ago, doesn’t really hint at the extreme options the 2008 offering had, but there are moments in there that suggest at alternative routes and game-altering decisions.

EWS podcast episode 149: the best robots special

Posted: 29 Jul 2021 08:00 AM PDT

This week The Electronic Wireless Show Podcast is all about the best robots in games, which is another one of those topics we might have done before. But we're doing it again because darn it, robots are cool. Obviously this means we have a short discussion on whether cyborgs count as robots (yes, probably, but not in all circumstances).

As well as what I feel is actually a very productive chat about robots this week, we also talk about Miles Jupp and his thousands of children, Thomas The Tank Engine, and Matthew does a truly stunning Cavern Of Lies themed around Ace Attorney.

Bridge-based strategy game Carrier Command 2 has been ordered to release in August

Posted: 29 Jul 2021 06:50 AM PDT

One of the reasons I’ve been excited about Carrier Command 2, Microprose's first-person bridge command simulator, is because it looked close to being finished when I first came across it. I wanted to play it, and I didn’t want to wait. And I don’t really need to, because it’s going to be coming out in August.

The Ascent review: a fun cyberpunk shooter that takes a while to warm up

Posted: 29 Jul 2021 06:00 AM PDT

Having previewed top-down cyberpunk shooty RPG The Ascent a little while back, I thought it was just all right at the time. But now that I've plugged myself into the mainframe for many hours, I see that it takes time for The Ascent's mechanical heart to get the blood pumping. After it's limbered up, this game is often a great time.

I say "often" because The Ascent can veer from extremely fun to extremely infuriating in a matter of nano-seconds. There's a lot to like here, but the way it's wired means it frequently trips itself up. Remain patient enough to untangle the mess, though, and you're in for a real RGB romp.

Spook snapper Fatal Frame: Maiden Of Black Water will be haunting PC on October 28th

Posted: 29 Jul 2021 04:29 AM PDT

Fatal Frame’s premise has always tickled me. It’s a survival horror series where you fight off ghosts by taking their picture. It feels like a commentary on paparazzi and celebrities as the spirits gurn and whack away at the lens, but it probably isn’t. It’s been a console series for a while, but this year's E3 saw the announcement of a PC remaster of the Wii U’s Fatal Frame: Maiden Of Black Water. Now we've finally got a release date for it: October 28th.

Scope out this early look at Halo Infinite's first full multiplayer match

Posted: 29 Jul 2021 03:26 AM PDT

Halo Infinite’s upcoming technical preview got its own preview last night. Developers 343 Industries hosted a stream to show off what this weekend’s test will let people see and do, capping it off with the very first look at a full Halo Infinite multiplayer match. That’s probably what you want to see, yeah? Here’s a peek.

Kena: Bridge Of Spirits has been delayed to September

Posted: 29 Jul 2021 02:12 AM PDT

Gorgeous forest adventure Kena: Bridge Of Spirits has been delayed again, moving from an August release date into September. This is the second time Kena has been delayed - originally it was supposed to come out in 2020. Alas, as with many games last year, the pandemic made sure that didn't happen. Thankfully, this new delay isn't a huge wait though, and the developers at Ember Labs say they just need more time to polish the game.

The joy of playing Escape From Tarkov in single player

Posted: 29 Jul 2021 01:30 AM PDT

Tarkov Interchange, Norvinsk Economic Zone, 1500 hours. As I made my way to the extraction zone after wading through the remnants of a Swedish furniture store - a venture which had cost me most of my ammunition and the use of my left leg - I spotted a figure scrounging for supplies 300 metres away. Aiming my rifle, I took a shot, the bullet’s echo so deafening that I could barely hear the Scav yelling Russian expletives at me.

This is just a microcosm of the stories to tell about Battlestate Games’ online survival FPS Escape From Tarkov. In a genre that often either fails or doesn’t try to convey any type of legitimate emotional response, raids in Tarkov become these enigmatic tales of the senses. My stories differ from most because I play Escape From Tarkov single-player.

!.04-Rock Paper Shotgun

!.04-Rock Paper Shotgun

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