Latest Articles (Page 2)

The wallpaper on my phone is of a nondescript street in Shibuya. If I hold my thumb down on the photo in my phone's gallery, it actually springs to life for a few seconds and rewinds time in the process. It shows me wobble the phone into position and take the snap: a giant crab clings to a restaurant, a lady totters towards us with a white plastic bag looped around her arm, colourful signs stacked like Legos jut out of grey, "The Body Shop" lies in the distance because of course it does.

It means a lot to me, this photo. It's the precise moment I felt excitement shoot through my chest, a pang of "I can't believe I'm back". Then the next morning, a jolt that, in hindsight, definitely altered my brain chemistry. A wave of, "I finally get to disconnect and in many ways, I get to reconnect, too".

Friends, another soul is departing the RPS treehouse today. Ed has decided to lay down the mantle of reviews editor and rejoin polite society. Come join me in saying goodbye.

Like many JRPG series, it feels as if the Tales Of series has made strides in popularity in recent years. Both 2016's Tales Of Berseria and 2021's Tales Of Arise had charming worlds and flashy combat, and the latter has found a home on our picks for the best of the genre.

Now the series is adopting the other dominant JRPG trend of late: remakes and remasters. Tales Of Graces f Remastered, a revision of the 2009 entry in the series, is out now.

The announcement of a new Tokyo Xtreme Racer for the first time in 18 years was a welcome surprise at the end of 2024. It now has a release date: January 23rd. It's an Early Access launch, but I am excited to drive a gaudy monstrosity on a Japanese highway.

Blade Chimera is a cyberpunk metroidvania from Team Ladybug, the team behind the really very good Touhou Luna Nights and Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth. As with Deedlit - one of our favourite 'vanias - I’m drawn to it partly for the opulent real-time RPG combat, and partly because, to be very superficial, the protagonist is taller than I’m used to in games like this. Sometimes he feels too tall for the levels.

Following the Republican victory in the US 2024 elections, several US companies have experimented with "pivoting away" from Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, a collection of employment practices aimed at challenging bias and prejudice in the workplace. Facebook owners Meta, Amazon, Walmart, McDonalds and others are reportedly scaling back their DEI initiatives to stave off backlash or litigation from conservative pundits and politicians, who regard DEI guidance about discrimination as a form of discrimination in itself. Following the election, I've also noticed a couple of video game company executives express misgivings about DEI - misgivings that, amongst other things, illustrate that "DEI" has come to mean a lot more than just annual training about micro-aggressions.

A long time ago there was a plague, and I have deleted 23 variations on the bitter, accusatory end of this sentence.

Wouldn't it be a jolly time to gather the dead from the streets, haul them to the graveyard, and bury them for what seems like relatively good money? Gosh, the government even provide a cart for free. In Plague Colon London 1665, you might be better protected proportionate to contemporary medical knowledge than BUT ANYWAY HO HO LAUGHTER GUFFAW.

Counter-intuitively, this is, if not quite jolly, a satisfying job simulation with a strong but unintrusive narrative and a slightly primitive low-fi charm.

I have an on-and-off-again relationship with boardgaming based mostly on the fact that I have nobody to play boardgames with. I used to be part of a boardgaming circle, but then I missed a fateful opening round of Twilight Imperium, and then the pandemic started, and then everybody lost patience with Tabletop Game Simulator.

I've been on a journey. About an hour into Minishoot' Adventures, I was ready to call this straightforward mix of 2D shmup and 2D Zelda mediocre. My mind had been changed long before I beat the final boss, by which point I thought it was good, but I still felt that all the people praising it at the end of 2024 were singing so loudly only because it was good and short and obscure, three things which in combination are easily mistaken for greatness.

Then I pushed past that final boss, mopping up the remainder of the map, and in that last 25% I think I fell in love. Minishoot' Adventures is straightforward in concept, but its execution is a masterclass of craftsmanship.

In what has become fine tradition, I have learned of an amazing mod on the same day I have learned that the mod has been kiboshed by publishers. The mod in question is the GTA 5 Liberty City Preservation Project, a six year project that rebuilds GTA 4's Liberty City in GTA 5's world. It launched earlier this month - and now it is no more, for Rockstar have descended like briefcase-wielding peregrine falcons and performed what is being called a "friendly takedown" on modding team World Travel. My brother did a "friendly takedown" on me once, and my elbow still doesn't bend the right way.

The world looked upon the Nintendo Switch 2, and saw that it was good. Or is it? Observe its enlarged, bezel-shaved screen. Its all-black colour scheme. Its redesigned, more sculpted controllers. Clearly, this is a naked attempt at ripping off and cashing in on the real best gaming handheld of 2025, the Steam Deck.

I, for one, won’t stand for it. Here are five reasons why everyone excited about the Switch 2 is wrong, and should buy a Steam Deck instead. Or maybe the Steam Deck OLED, that one’s better.

Thousands of people who bought the "N95-grade" Razer Zephyr face mask during the Covid-19 pandemic are finally getting a refund for the dodgy mask, months after US agencies ordered a $1 million payout from the gaming hardware company. The Federal Trade Commission are sending out cheques as we speak. I don't know if I should be glad that a trading standards agency has done its job, or depressed that over 6,700 people thought this mask looked good enough to buy in the first place.

Last year's defining indie smash hit, Balatro? Not nominated for the IGF grand prize. Animal Well, which turned damn near every games journalist into a tiresome obsessive? Not nominated for anything. UFO 50, an impressive, important, big boy achievement snubbed by our own 2024 list? It did get a Grand Prize nomination.

I don't disagree with any of the nominees or absences in this year's Independent Games Festival Awards, so I don't mention any of the above to stir up trouble. Instead I look at this list and think: wow, video games are more varied than ever, so much so that there's no longer a dominant cultural narrative even within the specific niche of indie gaming.

I adore A Short Hike, to the point that I've finished the uplifting, playful mountain ascent three times. When I tell this to people, one of the most common responses is: hey, you should play Lil Gator Game. I have played Lil Gator Game, and yep: it's good, too. A similarly knockabout outdoor adventure with a cast of vibrant characters. Now it's getting a new "game-sized" expansion called Lil Gator Game: In The Dark.

Lonely Mountain: Snow Riders was one of the best demos I played last year, because it felt so good to gracefully slide down its white-powdered mountains (and clumsily crash into a tree). It might have been one of the best games I played last year, who knows, but it was delayed into 2025. Now it's got a fixed release date again: January 21st.

Making a game about emotionally wayward 20-somethings in a band? You have my sympathies. Night In The Woods nailed the assignment so thoroughly, and is so beloved, that you're in for some tough comparisons. Afterlove EP has plenty going for it that makes it seem like it might be able to hold its own, however. It's set in the city of Jakarta, Indonesia, for one. It was conceived of by the creator of Coffee Talk, another beloved game, for another.

It's now got a release date: February 14th.

My feelings about Forest Reigns are equal parts enthusiasm and disappointment, inflation and deflation, straight off the back of the announcement trailer. On the one hand, as a fan of weird forests, which is to say all forests, I'm keen on the prospect of an FPS set in a post-apocalyptic Paris that has been overrun by sentient, pissed-off trees. It's from a team led by a former S.T.A.L.K.E.R. developer, too, and those S.T.A.L.K.E.R. alumni certainly know how to post a good apocalypse. On the other hand, the announcement video suggests a game in which you will mostly treat the frenzied flora as a source of "emergent" cover and terrain traps. Have a look.

Stray Kite Studios, a studio that includes former developers of Age Of Empires, Borderlands and Bioshock, have revealed Wartorn, a real-time tactics roguelite in which two elven sisters pit spells and minions against a brace of fantasy opponents, including ogres. It's a smaller-scale, squad-managerial affair reminiscent of the ancient Myth: Fallen Lords, though the "painterly" art direction reminds me more of the impressionistic World War 1 fable 11-11: Memories Retold.

The current sole creator of immersive sim-shooter Fortune's Run has abruptly announced that the project will be going on hiatus, because they are going to jail. Team Fortune's lead developer, Dizzie, has been handed a three year sentence for a "violent crime", following around five years of legal proceedings. The other developer, Arachne, recently left game development after recovering from a mishandled surgical procedure last year. According to Dizzie, her departure doesn't have anything to do with the aforesaid violent crime, which pre-dates their relationship.

There are currently 35 heroes in Marvel Rivals, split between the roles of Vanguard (tanks), Duellists (DPS) and Strategists (support). That's plenty to get your head around, and the roster is expanding rapidly. NetEase have announced that they plan to introduce a new hero approximately every six weeks - in other words, twice per three-month season. I wonder how long it'll take them to probe beyond the obvious Marvel headliners and start seriously abrading the bottom of the Connected Universe barrel. Nagneto, for example. Or how about J. Pennington Pennypacker, who shoots coins out of his wrists?

You know when you drop your nice, shiny pen and it rolls under your bed, and you look under there and see it winking from the depths of a stygian expanse of superannuated dust bunnies, lakes of mildew and anomalous debris that absorbs far too much light? Just me? I need to get out the mould spray more often.

OK, how about when you were a kid and you lifted up a nice, round stone and the damp, fertile soil beneath writhed away from you in a fervent knotting of pellucid, boneless bodies and the tickling of a thousand little legs? Right. Anoxia Station is that and also, a turn-based strategy game about drilling for oil. The recently released Itch.io demo is rough around the edges, but I do adore the vibe.

A quick one: Firaxis have confirmed that Civilization 7 will be Steam Deck verified at launch. It's a pleasant surprise, given that 2016's Civ 6 is still only listed as "playable" on Valve's oversized Switch. I like this news about as much as I'm terrified to realise that Civ 7 is just under a month away. I do not need that much strategy game, this early in the year. But hey, at least I'll be able to play the new 4X in bed as Sid Meier intended.

A recent spate of forced password resets in Action RPG Path Of Exile 2 was acknowledged by developer Grinding Gear Games on Sunday, after a hacker gained access to an administrative account. As reported by 404 Media, this follows several reports on the game's forums and social media from players who'd had their inventories emptied of rare items.

A new report has thrown fuel on the fire labelled "Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion remake". Don't ask me why people have started labelling fires. It's probably a rite to summon a Daedra, or something. Anyway, a new version of Bethesda's somewhat scorned 2006 RPG is allegedly in the works at Singapore-based Virtuos. If rumour speak true, it's being made in Unreal Engine 5, and will feature changes to core systems like blocking, stamina, and sneaking.

"Coming off Turbo Overkill has been great," Trigger Happy's Sam Prebble tells me over call. "That game's development... I mean, it worked out. But it was very messy because it was my first game and I didn't know what the hell I was doing. So I found myself, when it came to pumping content out, I was like: oh, shit. This code base is fucking awful. Like, I can't put stuff together easily. I'm running into bugs everywhere. But now shit just works!"

You might know Sam Prebble as Trigger Happy Interactive, the solo developer behind frenetic FPS Turbo Overkill. Before that he went by a different name, attached to a very different project. Total Chaos, first released in 2018 under the moniker Wadaholic, is a total conversion mod for Doom 2. With its focus on a thick survival horror atmosphere of tension and disempowerment, it's about as far removed from Turbo Overkill's manic, Doom Eternal-inspired action as a game can get. As Prebble puts it, the only thing the two projects have in common is the first person perspective. Even so, he found himself returning to Total Chaos after wrapping development on Turbo Overkill, resulting in the standalone remake.

Ah Starfield, the game that left the collective consciousness long ago. In her review, Alice Bee (RPS in peace) said that it was such a large thing it ultimately felt "small, cold and unlived in". I remember thinking the same. Would I have thought differently if it had copious amounts of gore? No. But would I have had a better time? Probably yes. Well, a former senior artist at Bethesda has revealed in an interview with Kiwi Talkz podcast (cheers VGC for the spot) that they'd originally planned for it to have decapitations but decided against them in the end.

Update: While the selection of DLSS 3 games has vastly improved since this guide was published, it’s also about to get the classic tech product superceding treatment. DLSS 4 is set to launch along with Nvidia’s RTX 50 series GPUs at the end of this month, and whereas DLSS 3 can generate one AI frame per traditionally rendered frame, DLSS 4 promises to generate three AI frames at a time – potentially making for a much bigger boost in total framerates. Albeit, still without affecting the number of 'real' frames that you’ll see.

We often get sent so many games from publishers and developers that we simply don't have the time or capacity to play. But 'tis the start of the year and I felt like I had a duty to give some of them a proper whirl and see what's what. Thus I was lured once again into the roguelike genre, for which I am an eternal sucker.

Developed by Wave Game, Magicraft sees you play as a kid who's isekai'd into another dimension (or at least, I think he is, because I chose the option to "skip the story" when I selected new game and only later deduced the situation) and tasked to mince all the demons within it. It's typical fantasy fare with an interesting twist: you can combine any number of spells within your inventory, which made me feel very clever, even if I had no idea what I was doing.

Like it or not, horror gaming is often built on jump scares. Deriding a good cheap scare ignores the endorphin rush that draws so many players to the genre, in the same way that the "elevated horror" trend forfeits some of the soul of schlocky slasher flicks and ghost movies. Don’t get me wrong, Silent Hill and Alan Wake deserve their flowers - but even those games would wither on the screen if Pyramid Head didn’t bust through a wall from time to time.

One unsung jump scare game in particular pioneered horror in the internet age, blazing everywhere from nascent social media to major television networks. In fact, if you had an internet connection circa 2005, there’s a good chance you played it. Alas, it was too ahead of its time, too successful at leveraging virality before viral horror was sought after. Next time you see a streamer throw their headphones across the room in fright, beware: the spirit of Scary Maze Game is right behind you.

Here be your first moving-picture look at The Blood of Dawnwalker, the dark fantasy RPG in the works at Rebel Wolves – the studio founded by a bunch of former The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077 devs. As hinted at a couple of times over previous years, when it was known simply as Dawnwalker, you’ll be playing as a vampire, employing various spooky powers to fight militiamen (and, it seems, at least one giant mechanical spider-thing) amidst a deadly plague outbreak.

Unsurprisingly, in retrospect, the trailer also has big The Witcher vibes. The stringy orchestral music? The dramatic monologues? The horrible things happening to armoured grunts? This thing’s really playing the Polish fantasy hits.