!.04-Rock Paper Shotgun

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• Taiko no Tatsujin: The Drum Master is out on PC, with Studio Ghibli DLC
• Here's when you'll be getting your Steam Deck email
• Valve have no plans for Game Pass-style subscription
• Aperture Desk Job is a free, short game set in the Portal universe
• What are we all playing this weekend?
• This War Of Mine and Slipways devs will donate profits to Red Cross working in Ukraine
• Atelier Sophie 2 is out now, still an anime-as-heck craft 'em up
• Cris Tales is free to keep from Epic right now
• My Friendly Neighborhood's Steam Next Fest demo is a refreshingly grown-up take on old horror tropes
• Tencent buy 1C Entertainment, makers of King's Bounty
• This strange adventure game is controlled by pulling faces
• All your Steam Deck questions answered in our 19 minute Q&A
• Here's what Valve have been playing on Steam Deck
• Gabe Newell: NFT actors “not people you want to be doing business with”
• Steam Deck review: a little big deal
• Consolidation in games must “create value for customers,” says Gabe Newell
• Gabe Newell talks Steam Deck, crypto risks and why the PC industry “won’t tolerate” closed platforms
• I can't believe how good Blood West is
• The Wandering Village's demo is like building a Lego set on a cat's spine
• Deep Rock Galactic is free to play in full on Steam this weekend
• Tiny Combat Arena early access review: a stylised and supersonic dogfighting sortie
• Making Souls games accessible isn't the same as making them easy
• Elden Ring players share possible fixes for technical problems
• RPS Time Capsule: the games worth saving from 2004

Taiko no Tatsujin: The Drum Master is out on PC, with Studio Ghibli DLC Posted: 26 Feb 2022 01:59 PM PST I first encountered the Taiko no Tatsujin series in an arcade in Tokyo, but now it's even less accessible: it's out on PC but only via the Microsoft store. If you're willing to make that journey, you'll also be greeted by two new DLCs which adds Studio Ghibli tracks and music from classic Bandai Namco games. Read more

Here's when you'll be getting your Steam Deck email Posted: 26 Feb 2022 01:38 PM PST So, James' Steam Deck review suggests the new handheld PC is pretty good. Good news for Valve, bad news for my wallet. I've apparently got a month before I need to commit to buying one, however, according to details laid out by Valve of when emails will go out to those who were first in-line with pre-orders. Read more

Valve have no plans for Game Pass-style subscription Posted: 26 Feb 2022 01:05 PM PST Valve have no plans for a Game Pass-style subscription service, according to Gabe Newell. They're not against helping Microsoft launch Game Pass on Steam, though. Read more

Aperture Desk Job is a free, short game set in the Portal universe Posted: 26 Feb 2022 12:22 PM PST In between the Steam Deck reviews and Gabe Newell interviews yesterday came a surprise announcement of a new, short game from Valve. Aperture Desk Job takes place in the Portal universe and stars Grady, a new personality core, setting you product testing challenges while you sit in front of controls that look suspicously like a Steam Deck. You won't need a Steam Deck to play it, though, when it launches on March 1st. Read more

What are we all playing this weekend? Posted: 26 Feb 2022 01:00 AM PST The Steam Next Fest ends on Monday, so do check out the bevvy of demos while you can. We've already recommended loads but I still have a dozen or so I want to play. Which other demos would you recommend to everyone, gang? And what are you playing this weekend? Read more

This War Of Mine and Slipways devs will donate profits to Red Cross working in Ukraine Posted: 25 Feb 2022 02:33 PM PST Profits from the next seven days of sales from This War Of Mine and Slipways will be donated to the Red Cross to support people affected by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Both developers posted the announcement on Twitter today, with GOG joining in by saying that their share of sales of both games will also be donated. Read more

Atelier Sophie 2 is out now, still an anime-as-heck craft 'em up Posted: 25 Feb 2022 02:05 PM PST The Atelier industrial complex has rolled out another JRPG about an insufferably optimstic young anime girl brewing potions and beating up local wildlife. Atelier Sophie 2 is the sequel to 2015's original, and the latest in the series since Atelier Ryza 2 launched almost exactly a year ago. Read more

Cris Tales is free to keep from Epic right now Posted: 25 Feb 2022 01:23 PM PST Cris Tales, last year's earnest RPG with a pop-up book art style, is currently free from the Epic Games Store. If you grab it before March 3rd, it's yours to keep forever. Read more

My Friendly Neighborhood's Steam Next Fest demo is a refreshingly grown-up take on old horror tropes Posted: 25 Feb 2022 01:04 PM PST It's no secret that I love horror games, but lately I've been going through a bit of a dry spell when it comes to finding upcoming titles to get excited about. I picked up the My Friendly Neighborhood Steam Next Fest demo to kill half an hour without many expectations, but what do you know, it's shot right to the top of my indie horror wishlist. Read more

Tencent buy 1C Entertainment, makers of King's Bounty Posted: 25 Feb 2022 12:50 PM PST 1C Entertainment, the publishers of games like Men Of War and King's Bounty, have been bought by Tencent. Among the 1C subsidiaries hoovered up are Muve, Cenega and QLOC, the latter of which provide co-development, testing and localisation services to companies like EA, Warner Bros. and many others. This is the second company Tencent have bought this week, with them picking up Inflexion Games, the makers of survival game Nightingale. Read more

This strange adventure game is controlled by pulling faces Posted: 25 Feb 2022 11:01 AM PST Moody new adventure game Who's Lila? has an interesting alternative to selecting dialogue options: pulling faces. And you really have to pull the face. Drag your fella's facial features around to form expressions, and that emotion will be the foundation of his behaviour in conversation. It's an interesting challenge on a timer, and the intentional performance of emotion feels perfectly sinister when maybe we know a little too much about a missing person. Who's Lila? does have a demo, so you can pull some faces yourself. Read more

All your Steam Deck questions answered in our 19 minute Q&A Posted: 25 Feb 2022 10:00 AM PST Last Friday I asked you, our loyal readers, if you had any burning questions about the Steam Deck. The aim was to answer as many as possible in time for the system’s official launch, which is today! After scouring through your questions and posing them to hardware editor James - who's been putting the system through its paces for a week or so now - we've created a mammoth 19 minute long video that's bursting at the seams with new information about Valve's first handheld PC. Read more

Here's what Valve have been playing on Steam Deck Posted: 25 Feb 2022 10:00 AM PST Over the course of my Steam Deck review testing, the majority of games I tried ran without issue. Some didn’t get on with SteamOS’s Proton compatibility software, and others needed a bit more work on the ol’ anti-cheat, but I wouldn’t be surprised if most Steam games end up rated as Verified or Playable in Valve’s compatibility review programme. What, then, are some of the very best games to play on the Steam Deck? Personally I’ve most enjoyed the ones designed with thumbstick controls in mind (like Horizon Zero Dawn and Death’s Door) but since I was interviewing Gabe Newell and members of the Deck dev team in the run-up to the Steam Deck's launch today, I took the chance to ask them if they had any suggestions. Here's what they've been playing. Read more

Gabe Newell: NFT actors “not people you want to be doing business with” Posted: 25 Feb 2022 10:00 AM PST From Ubisoft to Konami to the Epic Games Store, games companies are doubling down on NFTs as fast as others are backtracking on them. Valve, on the other hand, aren’t likely to get involved any time soon, owing to “a lot of criminal activity and a lot of sketchy behaviours”. That’s according to co-founder Gabe Newell, who recently spoke to us about his concerns around crypto. While indie game store Itch.io declared NFTs a scam, Newell is more open to the “underlying technology of distributed ledgers” – but says there are just too many bad actors using that technology for nefarious endeavours, namely fraud and money laundering. Steam banned games with NFTs and cryptocurrency last year. Read more

Steam Deck review: a little big deal Posted: 25 Feb 2022 10:00 AM PST Praise and curse the Steam Deck, for it has stolen 20 years of my life. A few minutes into playing on this – the first serious attempt at a handheld PC from a major gaming entity - and I am once more a child, alternating between sinking into the sofa to redirect energy into my thumbs and wanting desperately to rush round my friends’ houses to show them the cool new thing. Not that the Steam Deck is a nostalgia exercise, given it’s built to run the very latest AAA games as much as it is indies and retros. And it certainly isn’t twee: from its no-nonsense, all-black design to the performance-tweaking options in its OS, the Deck is a serious device, even and especially when it’s serious about giving you a good time. That’s in spite of some imperfections, to be sure – the software, screen and battery life may disappoint anyone expecting another top-end Valve hardware masterclass to follow their Index virtual reality headset. But the Steam Deck is more accessible, more affordable, and far more useful to have on a train. Read more

Consolidation in games must “create value for customers,” says Gabe Newell Posted: 25 Feb 2022 10:00 AM PST The consolidation of the games industry – that is, games companies being bought up and absorbed by bigger games companies – has been increasing, intensifying, and giving poor Ed the aches. Exhibited most dramatically by Microsoft stumping up $69 billion for Activision Blizzard, this trend towards conglomerification has raised worries about both creative expression and the potential locking-down of more games to certain platforms. Valve president and co-founder Gabe Newell is no stranger to making some additions. Valve famously hired the student developers of Narbacular Drop to work on what eventually became Portal, and acquired Firewatch developers Campo Santo in 2018. In our recent interview, I asked him whether he thought consolidation could be a problem for the industry going forwards. Read more

Gabe Newell talks Steam Deck, crypto risks and why the PC industry “won’t tolerate” closed platforms Posted: 25 Feb 2022 10:00 AM PST I recently had the chance to grill Gabe Newell – Valve president and co-founder, plus brain tech enthusiast – about the Steam Deck. What followed did indeed start with a look at Valve’s portable PC, including the lessons learned from the company’s past hardware attempts, but it soon swerved into a wider-ranging discussion on cryptocurrency, NFTs, consolidation issues affecting the games industry and whether there might be whole new Steam Decks in the future. Come and read the full Q&A below. Read more

I can't believe how good Blood West is Posted: 25 Feb 2022 08:51 AM PST Last week I hinted that I've been recaptured by Hunt Colon Showdown. I did not elaborate on how I wish there was a version that couldn't be undermined by boring, annoying Other People. Blood West isn't the same as Hunt, but they're definitely related. It also wears its love of Blood on its sleeve. It also also carries Thief DNA, and even takes some notes from Dark Souls, a game I dislike because it's bad and everyone is just wrong. Most remarkably though, Blood West feels almost entirely itself, rather than just an assembly of other things. It's really damn good. Read more

The Wandering Village's demo is like building a Lego set on a cat's spine Posted: 25 Feb 2022 08:29 AM PST I've been playing the Steam Next Fest demo of The Wandering Village, a city-builder that has you rustle up a community on the back of a roaming beast. It's called Onbu and it couldn't give a monkey's that you're on its back just trying to get by. At first, that is. Eventually you're able to strike up a bit of a relationship with the big lizard and build a sort of symbiotic relationship. Onbu stays on track, Onbu gets a treat. Good Onbu. I'm not usually one for strategy games where you've got to manage rocks and wood and allocate workers. Some of that comes down to their many systems frying my little brain, but Onbu has me persevering. Why? Because the resources I'm harvesting and community I'm building help or hinder Onbu. My enemy isn't some army a mile away, it's Onbu. Read more

Deep Rock Galactic is free to play in full on Steam this weekend Posted: 25 Feb 2022 06:07 AM PST If you're looking for a spot of jolly cooperation this weekend, other than Elden Ring, round up the crew and get rowdy in Deep Rock Galactic. The excellent cooperative FPS, where we play as spaceDwarves gathering spacegems and battling spacebugs in destructible spacemines, is holding a free trial weekend on Steam to celebrate its fourth birthday. It is a (rock) cracking game. Read more

Tiny Combat Arena early access review: a stylised and supersonic dogfighting sortie Posted: 25 Feb 2022 06:00 AM PST Harriers are rare among the bird family, in that they’re one of the very few birds to have been overtaken in popularity by their namesake fighter jet*. Mention a harrier anywhere outside of an ornithology summit and people will assume you’re talking about the hovering aeroplane rather than the diurnal hawk. Tell somebody your harrier is hungry and they’re as likely to chuck a vole into a turbine as they are to feed it into your pet bird’s gullet. So it’s unsurprising that Tiny Combat Arena is about Harriers of the cold and featherless kind. The one-person dev team behind the air-to-air combat simulator is apparently in love with the floaty-shooty jumping jet, so much so that it’s the only type of plane available to fly in the game's early access release. The retro-styled sim lets you pore over the low-poly plane as it rests in the hangar, to rest your chin in your hands as you lovingly scroll through its various specifications, inspecting its payload like you’re checking a dog over for ticks. Read more

Making Souls games accessible isn't the same as making them easy Posted: 25 Feb 2022 05:00 AM PST In school, I played with imaginary swords. Typical playground fantasy for those not good enough to be picked for football: battles under the netball hoops with weapons no one could see. Little did I know I’d be doing the same when I discovered Dark Souls over a decade later. Since the onset of chronic illness that left me cognitively limited in 2015, I’ve finished countless runs, collected everything, killed every boss, and didn’t see any of it. Read more

Elden Ring players share possible fixes for technical problems Posted: 25 Feb 2022 04:23 AM PST After three years of waiting and hoping, Elden Ring finally launch last night and yep, sounds like it launched too early. Many PC players are reporting suffering low framerates, or stuttering, or crashes, or nonfunctional controllers, or.... While we wait for official fixes in patches, players are sharing possibly-maybe-kinda workarounds that might help. Read more

RPS Time Capsule: the games worth saving from 2004 Posted: 25 Feb 2022 03:08 AM PST Welcome back to the second edition of The RPS Time Capsule, a monthly feature in which the RPS Treehouse gathers round a small tiny shoebox to stick their favourite, bestest best games into from a specific year to preserve until the end of time. The first time capsule we dropkicked into space was all about the best games from 2010. This time, we're excavating the best games from 2004. Which games will make the cut, and which ones will be consigned to the all-consuming digital super bin? Find out below. Read more

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