Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 review: a bastard for all seasons

After several hours of battles, sieges, imprisonment and torture in Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, a groggy Henry of Skalitz is woken by a servant girl in a castle outside Kuttenberg. She greets him like a nobleman. I have Henry push back. He’s a blacksmith’s son. He might have some blue blood care of his biological father, but he grew up in the soot and clamour of the forge. The girl nervously insists, however: Henry must be from the upper crust, or he wouldn’t have been welcomed and feasted by the lord of the estate. He wouldn’t be lying in his very own chamber with its very own hole for shitting in – and in any case, it’s more than her job’s worth to treat him otherwise. In a timid, not quite spiteful show of reverse class policing, she refuses to end the dialogue until she’s dismissed in a manner befitting her station.

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As Time Surrenders is a dirt-filtered stealth ’em up lurking in the shadows of Metal Gear Solid V

There was a moment in gaming history when it looked like all games would succumb to the dullest colours imaginable: brown and grey. Resident Evil 4, Fallout 3, Gears Of War – all bleary examples of a grubby visual style. This peaked in Clive Barker’s Jericho, a shooter so desaturated it felt like the colour settings on your monitor were banjaxed. I have heard this called “the piss filter” and generally lamented in industry circles. But it was always a puposeful choice, intended to add some grittiness to the world. And there’s at least one developer who is reviving “smeared dirt” as an art direction. As Time Surrenders is a very brown stealth game that takes a lot of inspiration from Metal Gear Solid V.

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OlliOlli World and Rollerdrome have been de-listed from Steam and nobody knows why

Friendly skateboarding game OlliOlli World and its rollerskating gun friend Rollerdrome have been delisted on Steam for unknown reasons. If you go to the store page for OlliOlli World, you’ll currently see the classic delisted message: “Notice: OlliOlli World is no longer available on the Steam store.” The same thing appears on the Rollerdrome page. No, we’re not sure why.

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EA re-release The Sims 1 and The Sims 2 on PC as DLC-stuffed Legacy editions

As rumoured, The Sims 1 and The Sims 2 have returned to (official) PC stores. Kindly Uncle EA has taken a break from his busy layoff schedule to rustle up a pair of Legacy collections that include a bunch of DLC. It’s the very first time the original Sims has graced a digital retail platform, I believe – it was first released in 2000, back when people used to access the internet using smoke signals and semaphore. Anyway, here’s the reveal trailer.

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Warner and DC Smash ’em up MultiVersus joins the pile of dead live service games

Warner Bros’ licensed free-to-play fighting game MultiVersus – aka, the one where Velma Dinkley and Arya Stark can team up to kick Superman’s face in – will no longer be playable online as of 30th May. It’ll be pulled from Steam, the Epic Games Store and the PlayStation and Xbox stores at the end of its next season, though you’ll still be able to get your fill of Bugs Bunny bashing offline against either friends or bots.

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The creator of Arctic Eggs is making a fishing game that I’m sure will be completely normal

The creator of frying pan simulator Arctic Eggs is working on a fishing game that I am certain will replicate the act of angling in an entirely ordinary and accurate fashion. Its approach to hooks, lines, and sinkers will combine the fishing from Animal Crossing, Sega Bass Fishing, and Webfishing, says developer The Water Museum in a post on Bluesky. It may have a splash of Dredge when it comes to inventory management too. Oh, also, a strange man might imply you are “disappointing someone”. Nothing to worry about. And the ocean may or may not turn completely red. These decisions have not been finalised. Everything is okay. It is possible the fish are safe to eat.

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Vampire: The Masquerade writer’s new dark fantasy vania also features vampires, plus screaming spiders

Mandragora: Whispers Of The Witch Tree is a 2.5D Soulsvania from Primal Game Studio, in which you electrify, bisect or incinerate handsome, ravening night creatures in a world of heaped skulls and burning spires. Yes, I’m well aware that “2.5D” and “Soulsvania” are nonsense words, woven by pestilent market forces. Samuel Johnson is turning in his grave, I expect. He has risen from his grave and equipped himself with an ironbound dictionary and is even now making his way through the layers of the English language, hellbent on slaughtering every ‘vania yet coined.

But never mind Samuel. Oversized rodents and spiders aside, Mandragora is notable for being written by Brian Mitsoda, writer of the original Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines and the former narrative lead for its sequel at Hardsuit Labs, which lives on in the hands of The Chinese Room. Primal have just announced a release date – 17th April. Here’s a trailer.

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Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector review: a sci-fi RPG that explores new space, yet I yearn for old ground

Don’t get too comfortable. As an RPG that puts you in the synthetic boots of an escaped robo-person, Citizen Sleeper 2 often has you on the run. It’s a crunchy, dicey machine of vibrant world-building that sometimes forgets itself in wandering prose. A compelling universe to sail through, with more habitats and hovels than its predecessor, more stations and stellar gateways. It can’t – for me – escape the dense gravity of the first game’s compact storytelling and novel character building, no matter how often it funnels you from one space caper to the next. But it has a good time trying.

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Please, call a job cut a job cut

Bioware released a statement yesterday. It talked of “turning towards the future”. It dreamed of “a more agile, focused studio”. Nowhere in the post did the word “layoffs” appear. But this is what the post was actually about. The closest it got to addressing the facts of what happened to an unspecified number of workers is the phrase: “we don’t require support from the full studio.”

It’s one of the most disingenuous announcements of job cuts in a recent and plentiful history of job cuts. A weirdly impressive feat from BioWare, considering the last two or three years have seen some spectacular verbal gymnastics from games companies when it comes to shitcanning people. Let’s take a look at some of our “favourite” mealy-mouthed press releases in which people have their jobs poetically “sunsetted” rather than, say, dropkicked out the window.

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Dragonsweeper is a free, neat and nifty RPG take on a venerable PC puzzler

The last Minesweeperalike I wrote up was a sparkling slurry of mind-altering pop-ups and resinous AI cleavage. It was David Cronenberg’s Minesweeper: The Substance Edition, and I was sincerely worried that I’d put you all off Minesweeper for life. But before you mop your last munition and turn in your index finger for good, give Dragonsweeper a try. It’s Minesweeper with an altogether less atrocious twist which you can hopefully deduce from the name.

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