!.04-Rock Paper Shotgun

!.04-Rock Paper Shotgun

Physics dog breeding sim Wobbledogs has left early access

Posted: 15 Mar 2022 04:55 PM PDT

I like devlogs, those scrappy blogs where game creators crack open the egg of videogames to show you the yolk of development. The mistakes, the dead ends, the iterations; they illuminate the hardships of creation, and they're entertaining to boot.

I like dogs, too. I wrote as much when writing about the horrific rectangular dogmorphs of a particular devlog - doglog? levdog? - back in 2016. Those early GIFs would become Wobbledogs, a pet simulation in which you breed mutant dogs. It has now left early access.

Read more

Zero Escape and Weird West arrive on Game Pass this month

Posted: 15 Mar 2022 03:46 PM PDT

Cowboy horror RPG Weird West and visual novel Zero Escape: The Nonary Games are among the new additions arriving on the PC Game Pass subscription service in March.

Read more

Babylon's Fall's devs want to know what you think of its graphics

Posted: 15 Mar 2022 03:05 PM PDT

The "occasional stunning oil-painting backdrop" was about the only nice word Ed had to say in his Babylon's Fall review. PlatinumGames first foray into making a live service is otherwise a mess, with repetitive missions, dull combat, confusing stats and loot, and more problems besides.

Publishers and co-developers Square Enix aren't giving up, however. They've launched a survey asking how they can deliver a "better game experience", but it's the graphics they're focused on.

Read more

Perfect Dark development beset by "fast and furious" staff departures

Posted: 15 Mar 2022 02:34 PM PDT

A new Perfect Dark game was announced back in 2020, but it seems like development hasn't been going smoothly. A new report from VGC says that as many as half of the core development team have quit the project in the past year, including several people on the senior design team. Sources say these departures are partly responsible for Crystal Dynamics being drafted to work on the game late last year.

Read more

Tencent buy majority stake in Rime and Song Of Nunu developers

Posted: 15 Mar 2022 01:50 PM PDT

Tencent have bought a majority stake in Tequila Works, the developers of Rime, Deadlight, The Sexy Brutale, and forthcoming League Of Legends tie-in Song Of Nunu. No fee was disclosed with the announcement, but Tequila Works co-founder Raúl Rubio said the investment would allow the company to focus on "original IPs".

Read more

Video Game Accessibility Awards celebrated games which welcome more players

Posted: 15 Mar 2022 11:24 AM PDT

This weekend brought the second annual Video Game Accessibility Awards, a celebration of games which make an effort to welcome a wider range of players. Prizes came in ten categories covering everything from control and text options to friendly training spaces. It was a fun awards show too, with good hosts, chat from devs, and even a special appearance from Van Wilder star Ryan Reynolds.

Read more

RiffTrax: The Game has you and your pals crack jokes over bad movies

Posted: 15 Mar 2022 10:11 AM PDT

After making What The Dub?!, a game which is basically about cracking jokes over bad movies like you're on Mystery Science Theater 3000, Wide Right Interactive are now getting even Mistier. Today they announced RiffTrax: The Game, teaming up with the post-MST3K jokefest for an official new party game about making your pals laugh by cracking jokes over bad movies.

Read more

Does Grand Theft Auto need a story when it's the world's best sandbox?

Posted: 15 Mar 2022 10:00 AM PDT

It’s been 45 minutes since we started our attempt to access the new co-op missions in Grand Theft Auto V and my friend is hiding behind a car while he furiously Googles a solution. He’s on the cusp of figuring out the next required step when he’s incinerated by a rocket launcher.

Every few months we hop into GTA Online with the intention of checking out some Hot New Content. Last time, we ended up running each other over with go-karts while the party leader tried to set up a mandatory LLC and email a tax return to Rockstar. We never did reach the High Octane Bank Heist.

Read more

Oh hey, the new NZXT Function keyboards are pretty good

Posted: 15 Mar 2022 08:07 AM PDT

PC component makers NZXT continue expanding beyond the confines of cases, having just launched two lots of desktop peripherals: the Function mechanical keyboard series, and the Lift gaming mouse. Thanks to a shipping slip-up I’ve only been getting acquainted with the Function family, but so far its three models have proven to be adept at games and typing alike – with a big bonus for customisation in the form of easily hot-swappable switches.

Read more

Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak launches June 30th

Posted: 15 Mar 2022 07:39 AM PDT

Capcom today confirmed a release date of June 30th for Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak, the first expansion for the latest in their monster-mashing series. In a livestream they also get into the expansion's story, its world, and many of the big dogs you'll be killing then skinning. Watch on for all the dog-destroying deets.

Read more

Redout 2 is shaping up to be a blisteringly good anti-grav racer

Posted: 15 Mar 2022 07:00 AM PDT

If you’re unfamiliar with Redout, it’s an anti-gravity racer inspired by the likes of F-Zero and Wipeout. And if you’ve not played any of those before, then imagine a pod-racer from Star Wars belting it down Mario Kart’s Rainbow Road - except, hang on, there’s a mysterious white powder caked on the bristles of Mario’s mustache. The sheer speed of the first game made it pretty popular among race-heads, but a bit of a daunting prospect for those used to a traditional “wheels on the ground” racing experience.

Redout 2 doubles down on the speed element, that's for sure. But there's definitely an added air of approachability to this anti-grav racer, making the transition from Geforce to g-force a little less bruising than before. AI presets, added customisation, and more generous modes help make this a racing game you should keep up with.

Read more

How WH40K: Chaos Gate - Daemonhunters aims to avoid "analysis paralysis" by letting you carve up the galaxy

Posted: 15 Mar 2022 07:00 AM PDT

You may not have heard much about developer Complex Games, but the Canadian studio has a surprisingly storied history. Despite spending the last two decades building mobile and browser games for the likes of Disney, Nickelodeon and Zynga, their heart has always resided with the PC. "There wasn't a lot of game development in Winnipeg, so we tried to figure it out ourselves and spent a few years trying to build a PC game," says creative director Noah Decter-Jackson. Fresh out of college, Complex's first project was a third-person hand-to-hand action prototype that they pitched to publishers at E3 2003, an endeavour that Decter-Jackson describes as "phenomenally unsuccessful".

This led to Complex remodelling as a work-for-hire outfit, and their long track-record making mobile games. But in 2015, Complex launched The Horus Heresy: Drop Assault, a fast-paced tactics game in conjunction with Games Workshop. In the wake of Drop Assault's success, the studio saw an opportunity. "We had been wanting for a long time to return to our PC roots," he says. "So we pitched a core idea for a game to Games Workshop, because Drop Assault had been quite successful... and that's essentially how Chaos Gate: Daemonhunters came to be."

Read more

Ship Of Fools brings the co-op chaos of Lovers In A Dangerous Spacetime to the high seas

Posted: 15 Mar 2022 07:00 AM PDT

First unveiled last week, Ship Of Fools is an upcoming seafaring roguelite where you and a fellow co-op pal take on hordes of horrible beasties as you sail the high seas. Depending on your choice of player two, it's also likely to be an apt description of how you'll feel playing it.

Having waded through an early preview build of its opening Forgotten Waters stage this week, this is one co-operative cannon fest that seems destined to see friends and family not so much walk the plank after an untimely defeat as get absolutely spanked by it. Imagine the visual chaos of a game like Overcooked combined with the frantic, tactile ship management of Lovers In A Dangerous Spacetime and you're pretty much there, albeit with several more barnacles, bug-spewing mosquitoes and laser-firing totem poles in the mix. The jangle of Davy Jones' locker is never far away in this storm-stricken archipelago, so beware, fools. You will not be suffered gladly.

Read more

The “world’s fastest gaming CPU”, AMD’s Ryzen 7 5800X3D, gets a price and release date

Posted: 15 Mar 2022 06:00 AM PDT

The AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D, what the red team calls the “world’s fastest gaming CPU”, now has a price and release date: it’ll cost $449 and hit shelves on the 20th of April. A quick check of Intel’s current top chip, the Core i9-12900K, has it at $614 – so that’s potentially a big saving, if the Ryzen 7 3800X3D really can outpace it. UK pricing is still TBD.

Read more

Steam is holding a JRPG sale this week

Posted: 15 Mar 2022 05:46 AM PDT

Steam started a week-long "JRPG sale" last night, offering discounts on hundreds of games, some of which are RPGs, and some of which are even Japanese. The theme is broad but the deals are solid, including 80% off Valkyria Chronicles 4, 50% off Chrono Trigger, 45% off Yakuza: Like A Dragon, and hundreds more discounts. Heck, even RPG Maker is on sale, so you can make your own JRPG, and then sell it on Steam, and then join in the next JRPG sale.

Read more

DirectStorage API finally launches, faster SSD performance beckons

Posted: 15 Mar 2022 05:05 AM PDT

Remember DirectStorage? Back in the not-exactly-halycon days of 2020, Microsoft revealed that the storage API would make its way to PC, having showed how it could slash loading times to bits on the Xbox Series X and S. A year and a half later, it’s finally ready for Windows, as Microsoft have made the full DirectStorage API available to developers.

Read more

Faced with no robot T-Rex mount in Horizon, I would rather walk

Posted: 15 Mar 2022 04:00 AM PDT

Behind the scenes I have been chipping away at Horizon Forbidden West on the PS5, a game I would characterise as good, lots of fun, very pretty. (Sidebar: having recently conducted an inventory of all my posessions for international shipping purposes, it appears the PS5 is literally the most valuable thing I own. I am 32 years old). I'm not very good at it, to be honest, so recently knocked it down to easy difficulty in order to stomp on robot heads with greater efficiency. Good ol' Aloy.

Anyway, now that I have awakened a sort of mother-surrogate AI and started the actual business of saving the world, I cannot help but ask the key question: why can I still not ride into battle atop a massive great robot T-Rex?

Read more
Posted by: at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)