Category: Rock, Paper, Shotgun

“Deus Ex but tiny and hilarious” is how I pitch the first Streets of Rogue to people in elevators. Then I kick the elevator control panel to pieces, climb out the hatch, and cut the cord with a buzzsaw I smuggled in earlier. “It’s also total chaos!” I yell, as the elevator plummets. “Ha ha ha ha ha ha!” Streets of Rogue 2 is looking similarly chaotic. But one thing has been brought to order: its release date. It’s coming to early access on August 14th, while a new trailer (below) shows horse riding, flame throwing, and speed boating. My favourite moment is when a man pumps magic gas into a room full of people doing zumba, and it turns them all into giants, and they freak out and start smashing the walls in a panic.

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The god of video games news is vengeful, for this weekend He has sent forth a flood of game announcements to wipe out any remaining game journalists from this earth. Come at me, God! What have you got? Ah. It’s Ale Abbey, a management game about brewing beer in a monastery of medieval monks, and between making craft ales the priests get tipsy on their own supply. You can’t fool me, god of game reveals, this one has been openly in the works on GameJolt for 2 years. But, yes, I suppose now that the developer is teaming up with the Northgard creators as a publisher, the people must know.

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The Artful Escape developers Beethoven & Dinosaur are following up their musical platformer with another soundtrack-driven narrative game. Mixtape draws on the classic tropes of coming-of-age teen flicks, adds striking stop motion-style visuals and completes the package with a soundtrack that would feel right at home in a John Hughes movie.

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Microsoft and Blizzard have slapped a release date on Diablo 4‘s forthcoming content-o-season Vessel Of Hatred. It’s out 8th October 2024, and sees you hooting and hollering down the road to the new region of Nahantu in search of Neyrelle, a character “who is both suffering the fate of her choice to imprison the Prime Evil Mephisto, and seeking a means to destroy him”. In the process, you may choose to become “the apex predator of the jungle as the all-new Spiritborn class”. You can also recruit mercenaries to help you, fight alongside other players in a new PvE co-op activity, “and more”.

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Max Caulfield is back! The time-bending protagonist of the first Life is Strange is returning in a new entry in the series, Life is Strange: Double Exposure. It’s out this October.

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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! You likely already know that books are made from trees, but did you know that Kindles are made from discarded tree asset packs? My uncle, who is a tree, told me that. This week, it’s the one and only author and games-worder-abouter, Alice Bell! Cheers Alice! Mind if we have a nose at you bookshelf?

What are you currently reading?

What did you last read?

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I wrote about the Wholesome Direct earlier this evening and pulled out a handful of games I liked from the showcase. I didn’t mention the game I liked most, because I wanted to give it this fuller shoutout. Lost And Found Co. is a hidde object adventure game set in a colourful, densely detailed world, and there’s a demo available to play now.

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The Finals is a multiplayer first-person shooter about stealing cash and demolishing buildings in a virtual reality game show. Why does it need to be set in a virtual reality game show? So it can do things like transport players to Kyoto in the year 1568, which is what will happen when season three arrives on June 13th.

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The advertising bonanza formerly known as E3 continues into its second day with another set of streams. The Wholesome Direct was today’s highlight, in my mind. The yearly collection of games that may or may not be cosy, but which definitely do not involve stabbing men in the neck, always contains some games worth keeping an eye on. This year was no different, and you’ll find the archived stream below.

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Computer Artworks’ 2002 videogame adaptation of 1982 movie The Thing was a ghoulish and gripping third-person shooter with some terrific mechanics that weren’t quite fleshed out, flesh being the operative word. For instance: you can enlist surviving soldiers as squadmates, but are they really surviving soldiers, or are they human-shaped warrens of teeth and mandibles waiting to shower you in digestive juices? You have a limited supply of blood tests with which to determine whether any people you rescue are Things in waiting – and even as you’re worrying about them, they’re casting suspicious eyes at you, care of some embryonic “trust” and “fear” systems.

Sadly, much of this acute paranoia could be easily gamed out in practice – back in 2002, I deduced that contact with enemies increased the odds of infection, and adopted a policy of shooting anyone who’d been in my squad for too long. But it’s the kind of system an intelligent remake could pounce upon and have fun with. Sadly, Nightdive are not working on a remake, like their previous System Shock remakes. They’ve just announced that they’re making a remaster, due later this year. Still, I will take a Thing remaster and thus, the opportunity to write more about The Thing, over no remaster at all.

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