In many ways Children Of The Sun is a highly relatable game. I do not have telekinetic powers that allow me to control the path of a bullet from a sniper rifle, and I was not part of a murderous cult that killed my father-figure. But if I did and I were, you can bet that I’d go on a rip-roaring rampage of revenge! Stepping into the be-grimed trainers and unwashed jacket of the protagonist – a misused girl whose vibe is that of a member of Gorillaz – you shoot a single bullet from your gun and control it in first-person as you zip it through the heads, hearts and hands of cultists placed around a level. It’s a satisfying Sniper Elite meets Superhot puzzle of ultraviolence, and it’s neat.
Rebecca (RPS in peace) was our resident monsterfucenjoyer for a while, and she was well up for Sucker For Love: First Date, but was slightly disappointed that as a horror-themed dating sim it leaned away from the dating and well into the horror. Now the sequel, Sucker For Love: Date To Die For has revealed a release date of April 23rd, and seems to be leaning into horror even more, while also still being a dating sim featuring an eldritch goat god with massive cans. Yet the presser also says “no scares this time”. I am confused, which is why it’s probably good there’s a demo on Steam to sort of give you a taster.
The multiplayer FPS which fools would tell you is named PUBG: Battlegrounds has added destructible terrain in an update today, letting you dig your own hole or punch through to enemies. Some might tell you this is inspired by Fortnite or Minecraft, especially considering you can dig with a pickaxe, but in my heart it’s further confirmation that Plunkbat is a stag & hen weekend simulator. After all, you can have your stag do at Diggerland. Awright lads, where we digging?
The Splintered Sea is an upcoming expansion for beloved battlements blasting building gameBesiege, taking its so far decisively land-based action to the high seas for some aquatic anarchy. You’ll be able to pit your custom war machines rudder to fin with enemy fleets and underwater nemeses when it launches May 24th on Steam.
Ahhh League Of Legends, a MOBA that occupied my university years. While I’d argue climbing the ranked ladder with my housemates were some of the best game moments I’ve ever had, I’d also argue giving up League was necessary. I became too involved, too close to the toxicity. But now League’s threatening to drag me back in with something I hadn’t seen coming – a Vampire Survivors-like PVE mode. No! I must resist (I will be on it immediately when it arrives).
Noita! A wizardly 2D dungeon crawler without compare, in both good and deranging ways. Man, it feels like only yesterday I equipped something without looking and suddenly everything that damaged me caused me to teleport at random. I flew through entire levels this way like a Tardis set to shuffle, bumbling into one enemy posse after another, granted a few seconds at a time to assess my surroundings before the sorcery swept me deeper.
Behind me, meanwhile, whole layouts exploded as lakes of pixelated lava, acid and other substances which I’d nudged in passing overflowed and combined and transformed. Noita! Heaven help us all, they’ve released a big new update, after all these years.
It’s odd to think back on a time before Baldur’s Gate 3 – and even stranger to think that the sprawling Dungeons & Dragons RPG was actually kicking around for a long while before its 1.0 release blew up awards shows, social media feeds and fan-fiction hubs last summer. Putting the game out into early access at the end of 2020 – multiple years before it was ready for a full release – worked out very well for Larian though, so it’s maybe no surprise that they plan to do exactly the same with whatever comes next.
Buckshot Roulette is simple, and simply unsettling. Sat across the table from a mysterious opponent clad in a deeply unnerving toothy mask, you pick up a shotgun loaded with shells. Then, you decide whether to point the gun at your opponent or yourself, and pull the trigger. Some of the shells are live, and others are blanks. Guess correctly, and you get to go again.
When Bethesda was working out how to turn their popular Elder Scrolls RPGs into an online behemoth to rival World Of Warcraft back in the late 00s, the initial pitch was “Elder Scrolls with friends,” creative director Rich Lambert tells me. A simple idea on paper, perhaps, but one that proved to be a lot more complicated in the realisation of it. Zenimax Online Studios was founded in 2007, a year after The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion landed to universal critical praise, but it wasn’t until seven years later that The Elder Scrolls Online finally released for PC in 2014. At launch “we were walking this weird line between ‘online game’ and ‘Elder Scrolls game’,” Lambert says. “We didn’t do either of them particularly well.”
Ten years later, though, The Elder Scrolls Online is thriving. At last count, the game has over 24 million players galloping about the plains of Tamriel, and later this June, it will receive its eighth major Chapter expansion, Gold Road, which adds Oblivion’s West Weald to the game and wraps up the mystery of the new Daedric Prince that arrived at the end of the previous expansion, Necrom. But the path ESO has taken to get here hasn’t been nearly as glittering, with its PC launch in particular generating “a lot of feedback”, as studio director Matt Firor told press at the game’s tenth anniversary event last week. In fact, it wasn’t until ESO came to consoles in 2015 that the game really found its voice, says Lambert. “We had to really figure out what we wanted to be, and we chose ‘Elder Scrolls’. As soon as we hit that core pillar of ‘It’s Elder Scrolls first, online second,’ then it really just helped inform everything we’ve done since.” Trouble is, when the thrust of ESO’s development straddled the launch of two very different Elder Scrolls games, even nailing down that first part of the pillar proved to be more challenging than expected.
Exciting news for the future of everyone’s favourite co-op shooter that isn’t legally an adaptation of Starship Troopers. A few days ago, Helldivers 2 issued a new major order to annihilate the Automatons, who had been pushed back like never before. And annihilate you all did, with players’ combined efforts being officially recgonised yesterday on the Helldivers 2 Xitter: Mission Accomplished! The bots have been eradicated!
