Category: Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Ever since Crimson Desert dropped that audacious trailer at Gamescom 2023, I’ve yearned to soak in its medieval Just Cause 2 vibes. It’s hard not to be moved by the exaggerated kineticism of it all – the magic-enhanced swordfights, the jumping off cliffs and turning into a flying shadow monster, the ability to drift horses. Yes. Yes!

I’m therefore somewhat unnerved to report that my enthusiasm has been tempered significantly by actually playing it. I’ve since used all the straws I’ve clutched at to spell out “It’s just a demo” on my floor, but the fear remains that Crimson Desert’s fantastical open-world exploration is going to be interrupted by regular bouts of twangy, unwieldy, unsatisfying combat.

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Disney Epic Mickey: Rebrushed is a remaster of Disney Epic Mickey, a cult classic 3D platformer first released a decade ago on the Wii. In the original you controlled the titular Mickey Mouse who, armed with a magical paintbrush (wieldable by waving the Wiimote about), could paint or rub out surfaces to solve puzzles. It was the work of Junction Studios led by Warren Spector, best known for being The Deus Ex Guy. No, sadly Mickey could not nano-augment his brush for better target acquisition, nor project laser-guided anti-tank rockets from his podgy white mitts.

And no, Rebrushed doesn’t let him do anything of these either. Clearly a missed opportunity. But is it better nonetheless? With an updated look, some added secrets, more moves for Mickey, and controller/M&K support, I’d say longtime Mickey heads will adore this nostalgia trip. For total newcomers like me, I’d say it’s a platformer that’s certainly charming and clever and wonderfully experimental, but a bit flat in places too.

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Valve are likely up to something hardware-related again, report NotebookCheck. Their next chunk of plastic and wires – following the Valve Index, Steam Deck and Steam Deck OLED – could swap PC gaming’s favoured x86 architecture for ARM, the type of processor favoured by the Nintendo Switch, Macs, and mobile phones.

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Shirley Curry, aka the “Skyrim Grandma”, is no longer posting gaming videos, she’s told her viewers. An upcoming eye surgery is going to leave her recovering for some weeks and (more importantly to her) she is simply tired of playing games for an audience.

“It isn’t fun anymore,” she says in a video. “I’m tired of it. I’m bored with it, bored to death with it. So I am making the decision now – totally, finally – I am not going to be making any more gaming videos and uploading them.”

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Spoilers throughout. TLDR: fun, generous, beautiful animation and cinematography. Worked mostly fine on my PC. I would not have given it the best narrative award if it were up against Gran Turismo 7.

Writing of the frigid framing of Clockwork Orange’s atrocities, the film critic Pauline Kael asked: “is there anything sadder – and ultimately more repellent – than a clean-minded pornographer?” The lavishly directed and animated universe of God Of War Ragnarok is far from repellent, but it also feels spiritually squeegeed; a world of pulpy violence so chirpy and chaste as to strain belief that the scars that haunt its reformed anti-hero could have ever been inflicted there.

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Raise your thumb if you’ve ever impaled it on a HeroQuest skeleton’s scythe. Country’s gone soft these days, I tell you. I’ve seen those new Heroquest skellies. You couldn’t injure yourself on those scythes if you tried. It’s polearm-ical correctness gone mad! Well, good news if you’re nostalgic for a simpler time, where tiny scythes could maim you for life, and binary digits came in lots of eight and not a binary digit more. RPG Beyond Shadowgate is a vastly-expanded, modernised sequel to the classic NES adventure, created by the original’s designers, and it just released last week.

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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! Once again, the dastardly autumn breezes have blown my schedule all out of whack, so no cool industry person this week. Instead, here is a short excerpt from another weird story I starting writing, also containing poultry for some reason.

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Homeworld 3 is condensing its release schedule for post-launch updates. Instead of free and paid content arriving into 2025, it will all – three free updates, and two paid DLCs – arrive together in a “one major update” in November.

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The Finals‘ fourth season approaches. It’ll kick off on September 26th, with a new map, a new tutorial and the restoration of Cashout as the core ranked mode. There’s a new trailer below, which is worth watching even if you don’t play The Finals, says I.

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It’s a pirate’s life for me, and it’s a pirate’s life for Goro Majima, recurring eyepatched anti-hero of the used-to-be-called-Yakuza series. He’s the star of the just-announced Like A Dragon: Pirate Yakuza In Hawaii, a game I can only applaud for the brazen straightforwardness of its title. Whatever Sega were drinking when they signed off on Metaphor: ReFantazio, they were not drinking when they signed off on this. They were definitely drinking something, though. Here’s the reveal trailer.

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