Category: Rock, Paper, Shotgun

I find myself agreeing with Ed’s Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora review so closely that we may as well have plugged our USB dreadlocks into the same magic tree. This is indeed an extremely Ubisoft game, with all the busywork and go-here-shoot-that roteness that entails, and although it throws some genuinely gorgeous visuals into the bargain, these also come at the cost of steep hardware requirements.

That said, good performance ain’t out of the question, at least not for modern CPUs and graphics cards. It will just take some digging through the graphics menus – digging that I’ve now completed, so join me as my blackened fingers bash out a convenient guide to Frontiers of Pandora’s PC performance and best settings.

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Feral Cat Den and Fellow Traveller have announced Nirvana Noir, a follow-up to cosmic philosophical jazz-me-whatsit Genesis Noir. Revealed as part of yesterday’s Day of the Devs showcase, the game continues the adventures of spacey watchmaker No Man, who must solve mysteries that spans two parallel realities, Black Rapture and Constant Testament. In Black Rapture, the Big Bang never happened. I feel ‘universe in which the universe never began’ is an… unpromising choice for a setting, but I am not an astrophysician, nor very much of a magic-realist, and I know eff-all about the jazz. Here’s the trailer.

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“Moebius built a world that doesn’t exist, but you can understand it. It’s a realist world. A world you can relate you, but it’s not your world,” says Edouard Caplain, art director for Jusant, the meditative tower climbing adventure that is Life Is Strange studio Don’t Nod’s latest game. Moebius was the pseudonym of French artist Jean Giraud, and whose surreal sci-fi and fantasy landscapes, with washes of contrasting colour and impossibly huge structures of soaring rock, have influenced games for years. You can certainly see that influence in Jusant, too: a world you can understand, though it’s quite unlike your own.

RPS slapped on the coveted Bestest Best sticker when reviewing it a few weeks back, calling it “a show don’t tell masterpiece”. A sentiment I can get behind as a long-standing proponent of silent games ever since the Evil Within 2 insisted on puncturing its creepy baroque ambience with consistently stupid dialogue. Jusant comes from a team that know how to write a conversation, though. So why the change of pace this time around?

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Influential British developer Jeff Minter, whose four-decade career spans the likes of Tempest 2000, Polybius, Space Giraffe and Revenge of the Mutant Camels, will be the focus of the next interactive documentary from the folks behind the roundly excellent Making of Karateka and Atari 50.

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Mech-farming sim Lightyear Frontier has confirmed its release for next March, landing around a year after the delayed chill space game was originally meant to touch down on Planet PC.

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Baldur’s Gate 3 is pretty popular, it turns out. So popular that more collective human time has been spent chatting up hot vampires, shagging bears and being turned into sentient cheese than human civilisation has existed for.

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Fortnite’s much-touted crossover with Lego is almost upon us – and it’s showing off a pretty darn impressive transformation. Lego Fortnite won’t just add a few minifig skins or some blocky guns, but a completely new co-op survival and crafting game mode with more than a touch of Minecraft about it.

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Well, this is a lovely surprise, isn’t it? Chill letter writing game Kind Words was a lofi hit back in 2019, encouraging players to share over 5 million anonymous notes of support and, well, kindness since launch. Now developers Popcannibal are back with a full-blown sequel, Kind Words 2 (Lofi City Pop). You’re probably thinking, ‘How could they possibly have made a sequel to this perfectly formed note ’em up? Have they added emails? Carrier pigeons? Inscribing on stone tablets?’ Well, as the reveal trailer below shows, it’s gone for more of an Animal Crossing-style city to enjoy, letting you connect with fellow players and express your deepest feelings in new, more directed settings. That’s right, it’s time to get out of your bedroom and touch some virtual grass.

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Ultros is one of those games you can’t help but pay attention to. Back when it was first revealed in May at Sony’s pre-notE3 PlayStation Showcase, its colourful, fever dream visuals from Hotline Miami artist El Huervo instantly made it stand out among all the drab multiplayer shooters jostling for attention. Then, between talk of it being set inside a cosmic uterus known as The Sarcophagus and having to use seeds and plants over successive runs to alter the shape of the map to your whim, it only became more intriguing. Now, after playing almost two hours of this Metroid-y roguelite for myself, there’s still a lot about it to take in and digest, but holy moly what a thing to behold at the same time. This is surely going to be one to watch for Metroidvania likers when it comes out on February 13th next year, because cor, this is looking really quite good, folks.

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Last time, you decided that Diablo’s Tristram theme is better than chain explosions. I hadn’t peeked at the votes while voting was still underway so I’m a little surprised by the outcome, given how much of the discussion favoured explosive practicality over emotive plucking. This week, I ask you to pick between two different types of cool missing. What’s better: ricochet attacks, or blue shadows on dodges and dashes?

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