Category: Rock, Paper, Shotgun

In addition to resolutions, new years are always good times to start thinking about the futureeeee, with or without a wibbly oooOOOoooOoooOh intonation. Predictions about what’s going to happen over the next 12 months abound, some of which are more spurious (and light-hearted) than others. But such near-sightedness is not what we’re concerning ourselves with today in this latest edition of Ask RPS. We’re looking much further ahead, thanks to this excellent question from MiniMatt.

They ask: “Dearest RPS, This being your 150th year in PC gaming [Ed: this question was submitted in 2023], please tell us what the next 150 years hold? Will VR become universal? Will the desktop PC box survive or will we all move over to laptops & steam decks? Will industry continue to consolidate or fragment? Get yer nostradamus on and tell us Peter Molyneux’s future.

Indeed, a lot has changed in the world of PC gaming since our esteemed founding in 1873, so come and find out our best guesses for what the future holds below.

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Bandai Namco have slapped a release date on Ilca Inc’s Sand Land, which isn’t a dodgy themepark created by an over-ambitious building supplies firm, but an action RPG adaptation of the same-named manga by Akira Toriyama, in which a titchy demon searches for the Legendary Spring and goes to war with a king who is hogging all the water.

It’s out 26th April 2024, and alternates beat ’em up action with cartoon tank customisation, in a sort of Dragon Ball X Mad Max homage with chunks of Dragon Quest thrown in for good measure.

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Core Engage and Daedalic Entertainment have released a new overview trailer for New Cycle, their post-apocalyptic “dieselpunk” city management game. “New Cycle” is obviously a bit of a self-contradiction, and I suspect that’s deliberate – one of the questions the video leaves you with is whether there is “a future beyond survival”, or whether we are doomed to just repeat the processes of extraction and gradual building-up, resource overexploitation and encroaching disaster suggested by these 12 jam-packed minutes of in-game footage.

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Choosing the lowest storage capacity Steam Deck or other PC gaming handheld then upgrading to a high-capacity SSD is often cheaper than choosing the highest-tier storage option out of the gate, and can even provide better performance too.

If that makes sense to you, we spotted a 10% discount on the WD SN740, a solid PCIe 4.0 option that works well in the Steam Deck and even better in the ROG Ally, Legion Go and MSI Claw gaming handhelds that support faster PCIe 4.0 speeds. After the discount at Scan in the UK, the SN740 is available for £81 for 1TB.

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Lexar’s Play Micro SD cards are some of the most affordable 1TB memory cards you can buy, and now you can pick up one for just £67.85 – within £3 of the cheapest price ever recorded for this model, which was during Black Friday last year.

These cards are rated for up to 150MB/s reads and have both UHS Speed Class 3 (3) and App Performance Class 2 (A2) certifications for minimum speeds, making them a decent choice for Steam Deck, ROG Ally and Lenovo Legion Go owners amongst other use cases in phones, cameras and more.

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VVVVVV was part of the initial wave of indie platformers, which means it was released in 2010 and is now a certified classic. To celebrate its 14th birthday, developer Terry Cavanagh has dropped an update which makes it Steam Deck verified and professionally translates it into 21 new languages.

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It took all of one turn before the insults started flying in our Solium Infernum multiplayer preview session this week. Specifically, they’d been launched straight into the court of League Of Geeks co-founder and studio director Trent Kusters, who was attempting to show us how the game’s asynchronous multiplayer mode worked in a six-player match-up – the public playtest for which goes live today, Thursday January 11th, over on Steam. Moments earlier, he’d been walking myself, deputy editor Alice Bee and guides editor Ollie through the basics of this strategy game from hell, telling us about the importance of claiming territory, seeking out places of power to bolster our domain, and how to do battle with our hive-like legion units. But just as we were watching our individual turn orders play out, Kusters announced that Ollie had given him the digital equivalent of a demonic slap in the face, demanding he pay tribute to him, or else…

To his credit, Kusters took it with good humour. “This is the beautiful thing about this game – it’s petty high school politics in Hell,” he said laughing before graciously deciding to accept the insult at the cost of some of his prestige – the all-important hallmark of how you’re perceived within this conclave of warring demons fighting for Satan’s empty throne. Personally, I think Ollie’s insult would have pierced my exceedingly thin skin instantly if I’d been in the same position, and I’d probably have been torn between declaring a vendetta against Ollie’s unjustified affront, or challenging him to a Praetor duel to exact some (hopefully) righteous vengeance. Alas, since we were literally only a turn into this game, none of us were in any position to make good on those options, leaving the only possible outcome as eating it and moving on. It was a smart move on Ollie’s part, and one that makes me both terrified and excited to see how our own team multiplayer sessions will play out in the run-up to Solium Infernum’s full release on February 14th.

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A new Elden Ring update has patched the game’s Easy Anti-Cheat to support a recent SteamOS update, as detailed on publisher Bandai Namco’s official site. It’s good news for people playing the FromSoftware RPG on Steam Decks, especially those haunted by memories of the game’s technical tribulations at launch, some of which were caused by the anti-cheat functionality. It’s less great news for the millions hankering for the slightest whisper of new information about Elden Ring’s Shadow of the Erdtree DLC. But save your pity, above all, for the dozens of videogame news writers – dozens, I tell you! – who must write about Elden Ring’s Shadow of the Erdtree DLC at any opportunity, lest the demigods of traffic eat our souls.

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The Independent Games Festival awards – aka: the only awards that are actually worth paying attention to – have announced the finalists for their 2024 cohort, and wouldn’t you know it, there are lots of RPS-endorsed games in there, lemme tell ya. Cooking adventure Venba leads the pack with a total of four nominations, but it’s closely followed by Cocoon, A Highland Song, Mediterranea Inferno and 1000xResist, all of which have scooped three noms apiece.

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New year, same us! The Electronic Wireless Show podcast returns and kicks off the new year with a look forward at what 2024 may bring. We chat about our most anticipated video games that may or may not be arriving this year, including some racing, some spac(marine)ing and some book selling. Also some freezing and some despairing (at BioWare and Bloodlines 2, potentially). Plus: Nate and James have an anecdote off, which makes me lose my mind and become a horrible person for about four solid minutes. I have apologised, and me and James are still friends.

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