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Have you said hello to our new staff writer, Nic Reuben yet? You should say hi to Nic. You’ve already been reading him on RPS for years as a freelancer, but he’s ours now. Is us now. In other news, hey, it’s a long weekend! Most of us (sorry, Alice Bee) have Friday off and Monday too, so expect us to return properly on Tuesday. Until then, what are you playing this Easter weekend? Here’s what we’re clicking on!
Head over to the Epic Games Store on April 4th and you’ll be able to grab The Outer Worlds: Spacer’s Choice Edition and Thief (2014) for free and to keep forever. Like a thief!
Rhythm shooter Metal: Hellsinger has you circle-strafing Quake-style level layouts at high-speed while you shoot demons to the beat. I meet the news that it’s getting a VR version this year with some trepidation, therefore. Do I really want to vomit on the beat?
Sega Of America employees have become the first a major US video games studio to ratify a union contract. The contract covers guarantees minimum yearly pay increases for around 150 staff through 2026.
A regular rogue’s gallery of independent game developers – including the creators of Dead Cells, Slay The Spire, Darkest Dungeon, Spiritfarer, Terraria and V Rising – have clubbed together to run their own videogame showcase: the Triple-I Initiative. Initially screening on 10th April, it’ll be a 45-minute, unhosted, back-to-back series of trailers, reveals and surprise game or demo releases, designed (as per the press release) “to highlight fan-favorite games and hype up established indie classics as well as new IPs”. It could become a yearly thing, but that’ll obviously depend on how well the first showcase goes down.
According to a few of the organisers, the IIIIs – as they shall now and forever be known – reflect a high level of anxiety even among more established indie teams about finding an audience, together with a feeling that they aren’t being served by existing showcases like the Geoffies, with their blockbuster headliners, celebrity cameos and extended Kojima soliloquies.
Pepper Grinder is one of those games that has so many great moments in it that recounting them would almost feel unfair to anyone hoping to play it. There are feats of platforming prowess on show here that should really be experienced fresh and unsullied by rudimentary descriptions of them, because to say anymore would be to spoil the surprise. This feels doubly important when the game itself is so fleeting in length, its brief and dizzying journey through the dirt, magma, ice and marshy bogs of this strange, treasure-stuffed island coming to a swift conclusion in just over three and a half hours. It left me wanting more the moment the credits rolled, but deep down I know it’s also perfectly formed just the way it is. Rather than outstay its welcome, Pepper Grinder shows up, performs its party trick, then gets the hell out of the way, leaving you to bask in the warm glow of a good game well done.
I’ve griped before that Warhammer 40,000 Darktide hides satisfying challenges behind tedious grind, but another interesting challenge is easily missed and forgotten at the opposite end of the scale. Darktide is hard when you start a new character, with weapons that barely scratch some foes and no talents to back them up. It’s a challenge unlike the official high difficulty levels, which lean towards drowning you in special enemies. So after hitting level 30 on all four classes and grinding out great gear, I’ve started a new character who’ll never learn skills or get a good gun. She’s quite bad, and that’s quite fun.
Chymicalia is an adventure game and/or visual novel “about causing chaos in a small Yorkshire town with unlicensed alchemy”. Hey, I’m from a small Yorkshire town originally! I recognise that chip shop with the palsied neon sign! And hey, that looks like the underpass they told us kids to stay away from! And the textile mill they eventually turned into an old folks home! And the teleporting sentient potion shop where we used to hang out and play pogs! Wait, scratch the last one.
Today I learned that ‘Wanko’ is Japanese for dog, rather than just being Aussie slang in the vein of ‘smoko’ or my favourite, ‘bottle-o’, which is what they call an off-license. I learnt this because of Doronko Wanko, a lovely free game about a dirty pomeranian where you try to score as high as possible by doing actual, financial damage to your owner’s home.
Sonic Dream Team developer Hardlight and Total War studio Creative Assembly have been hit with a round of layoffs by publisher SEGA Europe, affecting around 240 roles across Creative Assembly, SEGA Europe, and Hardlight, via IGN.
Staff were notified by an email sent around this morning from SEGA Europe’s managing director Jurgen Post, alongside the news that Relic Entertainment, makers of Company of Heroes and Dawn of War, would be sold. As IGN point out, SEGA Europe studios Sports Interactive and Two Point Studios, makers of Football Manager and Two Point Hospital respectively, were not mentioned in the email.
