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Ubisoft racing game The Crew shut down on March 31st, rendering the game unplayable for everyone who bought it since its release ten years ago.
In response, YouTuber Ross Scott has launched Stop Killing Games, “the largest campaign ever to stop publishers destroying games”. The initiative exists to encourage people to petetiion their governments about the issue.
I’m not much of a reality TV watcher. Genuinely, I’ve been humiliated on this count in RPS morning meetings, with certain “colleagues” whose names rhyme with “Malice Knell” making references I don’t understand and laughing at my expression of hurt and confusion. My grasp of reality TV basically ends with the finale of the very first season of Big Brother, feat. Nasty Nick. But you could argue that you don’t need to watch reality TV to understand and enjoy reality TV, because the basic reality TV thrill of forming weird parasocial attachments to people who are role-playing as themselves is now the golden rule of digital society generally.
“‘Reality’ stuff is huge now, and it’s not just reality TV,” says Nicole He, designer of The Crush House – an enticing, absurdist and engrossingly unpleasant new sim from Reigns and Card Shark developers Nerial. “It’s any kind of celebrity or influencer or streamer or something like that – there are so many parasocial relationships in that way, and I think that really started with reality TV, and then [continued] in the era of social media. It’s one of those topics that we don’t talk about in an explicit way, necessarily, but it’s something that you hopefully think about as you’re playing the game.”
You could say that the best Steam Deck case is the one you get for free, and to be sure, I have no qualms with Valve’s bundled carrier. Especially not the one you get with the 1TB Steam Deck OLED, which adds a neat mini-case in the form of a removable liner. Still! As you’ll see here, you do have a choice of worthwhile upgrade options, ranging from conventional hard cases with extra accessory storage to clever protective sleeves that combine impact resistance with improved handheld grip. The best way to avoid Steam Deck damage is to not drop it in the first place, as Sun Tzu probably said.
‘The Wild Bastards’ is about the best name I’ve heard for a gang of alien outlaws in a space-western, good enough that let’s skip past the fact that the game was announced last year and we’ve only just noticed. Wild Bastards is the follow-up to Void Bastards, 2019’s roguelikelike first-person shooter about a prisoner in a corporate nightmare forced to raid derelict spaceships on a wild goose chase. This time, it’s leaning into crime, jaunting across the galaxy to resurrect a game of legendary outlaws, the Wild Bastards. Allow me to repeat that name: the Wild Bastards. Alright, now come watch the gameplay trailer.
A terrible confession: I almost fell asleep during the presentation for Motion Twin’s Windblown. This wasn’t really Motion Twin’s fault. It was the afternoon of day four at GDC, my adrenaline reserves were spent, and there I was, in a warm, shuttered hotel room, with two men gently bombarding me with French-accented details of synergies, stackable trinkets and i-frames (I’m aware that the scenario I’ve just described is probably somebody’s kink – let’s move swiftly on).
Windblown itself is an airy, bright fusillade of Saturday morning cartoon vibes, a series of breakneck arena fights waged on procedurally generated island chains floating against a whirlpool sky. It’s all shaping up very nicely, and if I’d been playing the demo, I’m sure it would have woken me up better than any emergency deluge of instant coffee. But watching somebody else tear through this stratospheric world simply overloaded my depleted senses, and I came perilously close to nodding off.
In response to gold generation and item exploits in action rpg game Last Epoch, developer Eleventh Hour have released a statement on Steam admonishing those responsible and reaffirming their commitment to preventing further exploits on “both a technical and user level.”
The statement, which also mentions nefarious goings on involving the very much banned RMT (real money trading), details the recent fixes released to combat these issues, as well as the identification and banning of accounts found to have broken the game’s terms of service.
I’m not saying that Zuzu, the star of melancholic 2D adventure Skaramazuzu, is definitely inspired by that Adventure Time bit where the deer takes off its hooves like gloves. But I am saying that if it were, it’d have my full support, because the freak deer deserves to live on forever, even as a shadow wandering a gothic purgatorial landscape in an unrelated game.
We got a trailer for this one a few weeks back, and the game itself just dropped on Steam yesterday. It’s got that specific blend of Hollow Knight: Silksong -esque maudlin and whimsy that I personally love, skirting around the edges of both without slipping too readily into Tim Burton territory. The artstyle is crisp and wintery, the writing is goofy, and everything that moves looks like it evolved from the same dead tree branch. Feast your hooves on the trailer below:
Last time, you decided decisively that the spell Fireball is better than a button to unlock all unlocks. I should have known because our dear old friend Fireball is always there for us, always readily available, always keen to punch someone in the face, neck, and chest with a lump of solid fire. Thank you, Fireball. I love you. This week, it’s a question of anxiety. What’s better: security cameras following your every move, or shopkeepers annoyed when you don’t buy anything?
Classic management sim series RollerCoaster Tycoon will now be published solely by Atari, making the reborn retro video game company the new stewards for the theme park franchise as it marks its 25th anniversary.
Despite seemingly escaping the Embrace(r) of death through their sale to Take-Two at the end of last month, Gearbox Entertainment haven’t quite emerged unscathed. The studio has confirmed a number of layoffs shortly after the announcement of the sale, while clarifying that no positions related to the development of games were affected.
