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Left-handed Counter-Strike 2 players, time to raise that left hand in what could be interpreted as a celebration. In the game’s latest update, Valve have added the ability to swap from the default right-handed viewmodel to a left-handed one. There’s also an update to the buy menu, making it easier to track your bank account and grab weapons your mates have dropped. Alongside further UI improvements for grenade line-ups, and a tweak to the Active Duty map pool.
Manor Lords is obviously this week’s big survival-citybuilder game release, but I suspect Diluvian Winds is more my pace. It’s a “relaxing management game” about building a town for anthropomorphic animals around the foot of a lighthouse, although exactly how relaxing will depend on your ability to prepare for tsunamis and other weather emergencies which can strike and destroy your buildings. It’s out now.
People Can Fly, the developers of Bulletstorm and Outriders, have cancelled development of a co-op action RPG codenamed Project Dagger. The Polish company informed investors of the decision to cancel the game, which was initially to be published by Take-Two, earlier this month.
I never expected to feel genuine affection for Dr Robotnik, whose various level-ending wrecking balls and spiked doodads have killed me a million times over, but here I am sobbing like a banshee over the release of Dr Robotnik’s Ring Racers, a free Mario Kart-alike created by Kart Krew, the fangamer team behind Sonic Robo Blast 2 Kart, using the Doom Legacy source port.
This week saw the first (small) look at the new and upcoming Hobbit-themed cosy life sim Tales Of The Shire, plus the news that Embracer group is splitting into three, including a Middle-earth And Friends group. We thus use this as an excuse to spend some time talking about The Lord Of The Rings games we’d like to see, plus our favourite Rings games from days gone by (and also Gollum, and also we do impressions of Gollum).
Nate has been playing an impressive number of games, including one that did not allow him to invent the stick and therefore hampered his progress. We also talk about AI NPCs again, because one of them tried to get James drunk. Plus: some lovely recommendations to round off your weekly pod (one of them is a long life meat product).
Pine: A Story Of Loss, which stars a bereaved woodworker and thus may be a play on the double meaning of ‘pine’, is a gorgeously animated interactive fiction game that sees you performing farming chores and wordlessly reminiscing upon cherished memories. It’s short – designed to be played in a couple of sittings – and while the fiction is the focus here, you’ll spend time gardening and whittling in bespoke minigames as you find out more about the woodworker’s relationship. The publisher describes it thusly:
As each season changes, the woodworker must prepare for what’s to come. Tasks such as collecting water, thatching the roof, or planting crops each bring back vivid memories of his wife. Desperate to not let her memory disappear, the woodworker captures these moments in beautiful wood carvings. Yet, while each one is a promise to her memory, they soon become a dangerous obsession.
To keep the ball rolling with this month’s Game Club pick, we’re asking what you, the readers, think of Lethal Company?
By now, I can confidently say that the RPS team are scrap collecting experts and can easily meet the quota set by the enigmatic Company. Much to James’ chagrin, who prefers the chaos of being objectively ‘bad’ at the game. So confident was I in our abilities after our co-op sesh, that I dove into a solo game. Cue immediate death by a vengeful face-hugging bug. I’m expecting my first round of xenomorph child maintenance fees any day now.
With our blog chat scheduled for Friday 26th April, 4 PM GMT, here are a few conversation prompts we’ve gathered ahead of time. Tell us your thoughts in the comments and shoot any questions our way too. We hope to see you there!
Most of my time in Lethal Company is full of tomfoolery, panicking, and ultimately letting the quota down. As I run back and forth from the ship, only able to carry four things at a time in my puny arms, I frequently see the various monster inhabitants of the game excelling at pretty much everything. The Forest Keeper has brawny strength and can travel across the map in a blink of an eye, the Eyeless Dogs can sniff out an intruder in next to no time and The Butler has dedicated his life to maintaining a mansion even after the owners have long since gone.
This had me thinking – surely the various monster inhabitants of Lethal Company would make for a much better worker than myself?
Sure, most of them are ravenous killing machines – but that fits with the core values of The Company. After all, most of your time spent in the game will be collecting scrap on distant moons to meet an arbitrary quota set by The Company. You’ll then feed your pilfered belongings to the insatiable maw of a tentacled horror (otherwise known as the boss). You may be able to sympathise depending on your occupation.
So, if the monsters in Lethal Company were given the chance to work for said company, which of them would make it as an employee of the month and which would crash and burn harder than me getting thrown from the airlock five times in a row?
Join me as I peruse the CV’s of my favourite monsters in Lethal Company (as far as I know only half of them have opposable thumbs) and advocate for which of them should be my replacement as The Company’s new hire. After all, once this month’s Games Club is finished I’m not sure they’ll even let me back on the ship.
As an Assassin’s Creed girlie, I enjoyed Assassin’s Creed Mirage, a pared down (but still big game, which is really just proof of how bloated AAA games have gotten, but I’ll stop because it’s not time to take my personal bugbear for a walk) Ass Creed game that was closer to the simplicity of the older games in the stab ’em up stealth-action series. Yesterday creative director Stéphane Boudon and art director Jeal-Luc Sala took to Reddit for an AMA, and in response to a question about plans for Mirage DLC, Boudon said no – but that they have ideas for more stories for Basim.
My experience with actual flight simulators typically amounts to approaching the runway far, far too quickly at far, far too perpendicular an angle, so perhaps I’m better off just flying folded-up bits of A4. Happily, that’s exactly what Paper Sky, a “semi-open world paper plane adventure” from solo indie dev Brute Force, is offering.
