Category: Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Auto Added by WPeMatico

Star Wars Outlaws’ latest patch is out and aims to make stealth and combat more satisfying

Star Wars Outlaws‘ stealth has been much debated, though not hotly. Some people think it’s rubbish, some others think it’s basically fine. Ubisoft themselves seem to think it’s one of the key issues with the game, with the creative director previously saying the forced stealth sections are “incredibly punishing”.

Now there’s a new patch, apparently Outlaws’ biggest yet, and stealth and combat are firmly in the crosshairs. The AI and player detection has changed; you can now choose combat in areas where it was previously not allowed; and enemies have had weak points added, for those who wish to cause massive damage.

Read more

The jazz is as smooth as the spritework in murder mystery Loco Motive, out now

I go through this life burdened by the knowledge that I will never be framed for murder on a luxurious, multiple-day train journey. Not for me the thrill of flushing out the true culprit (or culprits???) between visits to the exquisitely upholstered dining car, against the backdrop of passing mountains. The best I can hope for is getting chewed out for hogging the toilet on a crowded commuter train to Leeds.

Read more

If one thing works in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, it’s the incomprehensible name generator for random NPCs

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl stays largely faithful to the original series’ bleak yet inquisitive tone and propensity for technical problems, but there’s another, much smaller feature that it also brings back: silly titles for its lesser NPCs. All the major and side characters are, indeed, characters, but rather than leave inconsequential henchmen and roving bandits nameless, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 assigns Zone-merc handles to each and every one of them. Some try to sound badass, some might as well have been chosen by the owner panickedly looking around the room for something to name himself after, and all of them sound like they should be on the actor’s wall in Toast of London.

Because your life partly depends on relieving slain foes of their belongings, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 encourages you to get up close and looty with these blokes, meaning you end up spending a lot of time reading goofy nicknames. I thought I’d pay tribute to the best ones I’ve seen so far, even if the majority of these honours will need to be given posthumously.

Read more

Overthrown is a city builder where you can throw your whole city at the sky because secretly, you hate city builders

Overthrown is a city building game made by and for people who can’t work out whether they love or despise city building games. In this curious concoction from developers Brimstone and publishers Maximum Entertainment, you are a chirpy anime monarch equipped with a magic crown that confers the ability to seize entire buildings and throw them away because aaaararargahragrhagh, I am sick of this dang sawmill. I am sick of perfecting the infrastructure. I am sick of stockpiling food for the winter. I am sick of my hard-working peasants and their happiness levels. I am going to pick everything up and hurl it into the sky.

Read more

Avowed’s rickety combat feels like the undoing of its lush fungal world

I have significant reservations about Avowed, Obsidian’s first-person Pillars Of Eternity spin-off RPG, but those reservations are significantly offset by the fact that I can be an undersea mushroom woman called Mystic Meg. In Avowed, you are the god-touched envoy of a distant emperor, sent to an island realm known as the Living Lands to investigate a mysterious blight. “God-touched”, in this case, means “fungal and a bit mermaidy”. It means that you can make rainbow toadstools sprout from your eyesocket in the character creator. It means that you can accessorise your cheekbones with what look like bracket polypores, or deck your ears with staghorn coral.

Read more

Steam tighten up rules for games with season pass DLC: “you have to commit to completing that content on time”

Valve have unveiled a new policy about season passes on Steam, which aims to ensure that developers release all the individual DLC involved on time and share adequate details about each DLC pack in advance. It specifies that developers can delay release of a season pass DLC just once, and by no longer than three months. In the event that a developer postpones DLC release by longer than three months, Valve may take such corrective actions as removing the season pass from sale or refunding players.

Read more

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024’s launch has been marred by long load times, server issues and now it has overwhelmingly negative reviews

I’ve been looking forward to Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 since it was announced, but I might wait a while longer before trying to play it. It launched yesterday and currently sits at “overwhelmingly negative” Steam reviews due to long loading times caused by server issues.

Read more

Masterfully silly brawler Gang Beasts gets surprise update with driveable cranes and Hitchcockian bird attacks

Gang Beasts is one of the games I think of when I recall the golden days of video game expos, before Covid rolled up and nuked the business model. It casts you as one of several jellybaby pugilists, fighting for dominance over such locations as Ferris wheels and the tops of speeding vans. All of the characters are 1) seemingly drunk, and 2) subject to real-time physics. Your abilities consist of 1) punching, headbutting or kicking people, perhaps knocking them out for a few seconds, and 2) grabbing people and things and either hoisting them skyward like a wrestler, or hoisting yourself skyward like a toddler climbing onto Mummy’s head. The only way of defeating people is to hurl them off-map.

Read more