Category: Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Auto Added by WPeMatico

Trip is a pleasant train journey with normal folk, like this unblinking child who speaks only in dark symbols

Normal games for normal people, that’s what everyone loves. Cosy experiences where nothing goes wrong and you have absolutely zero things to investigate and no otherworldly mysteries to worry about. It may shock you to learn that we were recently duped by “normal” gardening sim Grunn, which was not normal at all. But don’t worry, it won’t happen again. Today we bring you the ordinary and not-one-bit-suspicious Trip, which sees players wandering from carriage to carriage, chatting pleasantly with passengers during a long train journey. How long? Let me look at the timetable here, let’s see… “Forever,” it says. Hm. Must be a misprint.

Read more

Diablo 4: Vessel Of Hatred review: mildly pleasant clicking in very pretty jungles

Write travel journalism to imaginary places, my spaghetti once spelled out. Do package holidays count? In Nahantu’s jungles, I linger to take shots of vines spilling from verdigris-kissed cages, of footfall-slicked stone paths and mesoamerican mosaics. Even Vessel Of Hatred’s malignancy feels like a grimly gorgeous tourist trap. Trip Advisor-recommended cyclopean polyps. TikTok viral demonic cysts. I’ve even got a leopard cub to pose with. He’s not sedated, promise. He’s just like that. I told him how much the ultimate edition costs and he’s been catatonic ever since.

I’d like to stick around, but I keep getting ushered along to the next leg of the tour. There are mobs to pop into goo like ripe spots, each fight as slick and frictionless as a pygmy hippo in a butter bath. There are a dozen different tiered resources and event types designed to make repetition feel like progress, until hell freezes over then melts again. It’s fine, Blizzard packed me some wellies. It’s all so comfortable I suspect they’d have thrown in some Xanax and a back rub if they could.

Read more

Until Dawn actors hint at a sequel, but there’s reason to be sceptical

I loved the original Until Dawn – a spruced-up horror take on those old FMV adventure games, with just the right mix of B-movie self awareness and creature feature scares. I was very close to buying the recent remake, actually, until I watched the extended prank scene online and realized, oh no, they’re taking themselves seriously now. They prestige-ified it. It insisted upon itself, Louis, so I didn’t bother. I still wouldn’t say no to a sequel though, and based on a couple of (admittedly vague) hints from two of the game’s actors, one might already be in the works.

Read more

What’s on your bookshelf: Remedy Entertainment, Bioshock 2, and Gone Home’s Johnnemann Nordhagen

Hello reader who is also a reader, and welcome back to Booked For The Week – our regular Sunday chat with a selection of cool industry folks about books! I need to start getting a ‘Gene Wolfe referenced’ reaction image for these things, I swear – although this reference is at least hidden behind a couple of links. Which links? That’d be spoiling the layered environmental storytelling that keeps you coming back. This week, it’s Senior Technical Narrative Designer at Remedy, previously of Fullbright, Bioshock 2, and Where The Water Tastes Like Wine fame, Johnnemann Nordhagen! Cheers Johnnemann! Mind if we have a nose at your bookshelf?

Read more

There’s a future where you and this bucket that fits over your head decide what a game meant to say, not the useless idiots that made it

It’s not far away, you know. The promised land of never having to experience a game the way it was intended again. That long sought after holy grail of sticking your fingers in your ears and going wahwahwah. But it’s not going to be something created by people with talent, vision, expertise, drive, a dream, or a story in their hearts. No, as with everything in our imminent future, it will be achieved by putting a bucket over your head.

Read more

Europa is out now, offering a Ghibli-inspired world in which to fly and solve puzzles

“Studio Ghibli” is a genre of game, in the same way “Aliens” and “Blade Runner” are genres of game. Blue skies, wind rustling grass that’s a just-so shade of green, a preoccupation with flight? Welcome to Ghibli town, friend.

You’ll find all of the above and several other familiar pieces of iconography in Europa, a puzzle and story-led adventure that’s out now.

Read more

Keep Driving is a sumptuous and sleepy RPG roadtrip, inspired by Jalopy and FTL

“Post Void is a masterpiece of compulsive motion and hypnotic, irresistible sounds,” wrote Sin of YCJY Games’s “orgiastic” shooter. “It does something to my brain that I’ve never experienced before.” The developer’s just-announced Keep Driving seems a lot less inclined to scramble your grey matter, though it’s partial to the old rose-tinted goggles. It’s a droll, backward-glancing and slightly ominous 2D management RPG in which you drive to a music festival on the other side of the country. Along the way, you will pick up hitchhikers, upgrade your car, fill your boot with random junk, and participate in turn-based, non-lethal “combat” with dawdling children and obstinate tractors. Here’s a trailer.

Read more