Category: Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Cicadamata” – yes the rogue apostrophes are part of the official title, yes I will exclude them in future because they make my thalamus itch – is one of those games that makes me incandescently sorry I didn’t spend the past 20 years studying graphics design so that I could, for example, tell you what exactly is going on with that icecream bar HUD, those landscapes of bright diodes and cubes sliding through checkerboard obelisks, those twirling android digits, that wrist-rolling Muji paperweight of a shotgun.

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The rough beast that is Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 has cracked its shell and slouched towards the wincing light of day. They’ve released it, I mean. No verdict from us yet: our reviewer is still picking their way among the exploding motorbikes and mocking spectres of deceased Nicaraguan terrorists. But I can at least tell you with some confidence that if you’re a fan of pausing games or mid-mission checkpoints, you might want to give it a miss.

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I remember having a chat with my old barber last year about the Skate trailer. We weren’t concerned with the popular gripes. We were just stoked to record new edits and re-enter the classic Skate flowstate on a new engine that would hopefully have more grounded physics. My barber happened to be the frontman of Syracuse straight-edge hardcore band All 4 All. This was a punk rock barbershop, and fittingly, we both shared a fixation on landing tricks in Skate 3 as sketchy as possible.

To land sketchy is to land imperfectly, to look as if not in control. The leather jacket-wearing, kitchen-tattooing pro skaters in Baker, Zero, and Emerica videos were famous for making sketchy look really cool in the early 00s. I no longer live in Syracuse, but I imagine my old barber (shout out Sam, hope you’re well) is just as disappointed as I that the new Skate doesn’t even allow players to land sketchy.

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Tomb Raider developers Crystal Dynamics have announced another round of layoffs, their third round of jobs cuts this year. The studio say “just under 30 team members across various departments and projects” are losing their livelihoods, and claim this is necessary “to optimize the continued development of our flagship Tomb Raider game, as well as shaping the rest of the studio to make new games for the future”.

This year alone had already seen Crystal Dynamics lay off staff in two waves, with 17 employees being let go in March and an unspecified number of others handed their marching orders in August.

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Post-apocalyptic survival shooter Misery’s Steam page is back online, with developers Platypus Entertainment claiming that they’ve resolved a “misunderstanding” which led to an alleged DMCA takedown from Stalker creators GSC Game World. Platypus say that as part of this apparent resolution, they’ve removed a helicopter model, some guitar songs, and references to GSC’s games from their game at the request of the Stalker studio.

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Start using maps to check out service stations in Scandinavia, as Euro Truck Simulator 2‘s Nordic Horizons expansion is set to release on November 27th.

This DLC was announced back in January 2024, and as it shuffles out of SCS Software’s ever-busy DLC pipeline, it’ll leave some coaches and a recently revealed trip to Ireland waiting in the traffic queue. The devs have also been doing plenty of cool existing area revamps.

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Ok, before you get angry, all I know is that the Home Alone guy’s playing someone either in Caesar’s Legion or who dresses as a member of Caesar’s Legion, not that he’s nailed on to be wolf hat bloke. I just liked the headline. Now that disclaimer’s out of the way, Amazon’s Fallout TV series has gotten another trailer ahead of its December 17th debut.

As previous trailers have outlined, this chain of episodes is set in NEW VEGAS. That’s NEW VEGAS, the setting of obscure 2010 RPG Fallout: NEW VEGAS. There are characters, factions and things from NEW VEGAS, which the established cast will be interacting with because they’re heading to NEW VEGAS. Capische?

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Over 200 staff at GTA 6 developers Rockstar North have signed a letter to management calling for the “immediate reinstatement” of 31 workers fired recently by the company. Rockstar claimed they fired these staffers for “gross misconduct”, subsequently accusing them of sharing confidential info publicly. UK union the IWGB, of which the fired staff were members, have accused Rockstar of union busting and filed legal claims against the company.

The union have also held protests outside Rockstar North and Take-Two’s UK offices.

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If you sit and look at one of Assetto Corsa Rally’s gorgeously-rendered Alfa Romeos, Lancias, or Fiats in the car preview screens, there’s a palpable elegance and beauty to their forms.

Sadly, anyone watching me attempt to wrestle them through the Welsh woods or along tight stretches of French tarmac over the course of six hours so far would have rarely seen any elegant or beautiful driving. There are times, especially in long sweeping turns, when things start to feel as satisfying as they should. Most of the time though, Assetto Corsa Rally with a wheel feels a lot like you’re skating on ice, rather than the gravel and tarmac it currently offers.

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Among the trio of new hardware devices Valve just announced for 2026 – which also include the Steam Frame VR headset and a redesigned Steam Controller – the new Steam Machine is probably the most surprising. Mainly because the original Steam Machines, a series of partner-built SteamOS mini-PCs, sank like rectangular stones upon launching in 2015.

Designed and built entirely in-house, the new model is a very different proposition, though it’s not so much the updated hardware that has Valve believing it’s time to give the Steam Machine another chance. According to engineers Yazan Aldehayyat and Pierre-Loup Griffais, the biggest problem faced by those doomed Machines was one that the Steam Deck’s Proton software has solved: a lack of SteamOS-compatible games.

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