Category: Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Last time, you decided that improvised environmental weapons are better than skipping across a timeline flowchart. I can’t say I’m too surprised, considering that timeline flowcharts are rare and that I did illustrate t’other with multiple screenshots of Kazuma Kiryu smashing men with bicycles. Now if Kiryu had been jumping between timelines… ah, we can’t speculate, that’s not scientific. This week, I ask you to choose between cutting something unnecessary and adding something unnecessary. What’s better: quick restarts, or a diegetic HUD?

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What exactly is The Alters? It’s a question I’ve been itching to get answers to ever since Frostpunk and This War Of Mine developers 11 bit Studios first announced their strange new game at notE3 last year. Until now, all we’ve had to go on is a cryptic CG announcement trailer that showed a gaggle of identical clone-looking men in bright pink medical gowns, all of whom seemingly live inside a giant wheel full of shipping containers. It didn’t really tell us anything about what the game actually is, or how it plays, and we’ve heard precious little about it since.

Happily, I’ve now seen about an hour of The Alters in action at this year’s Gamescom, and first impressions are very promising. This is indeed a game about sort-of clones living in a big wheely shipping container, but these containers are actually modules you’ll be building in XCOM/Fallout Shelter-style chunks to advance the capabilities of your big wheel base as you work to escape the broiling heatdeath that’s slowly enveloping the planet. You’ll also be venturing out onto the planet’s surface to gather resources, all while managing your crew of clo- sorry, alternate selves – as you assign their daily work tasks, and then there’s the fact that, well, you’re all chuffing different versions of the same person and the literal embodiment of what your life might have been like if you’d done X instead of Y, or Y instead of Z. It’s a fascinating blend of ideas, and if 11 bit can stick the landing, I reckon it could end up being something really quite special. Here’s everything I learned.

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After 11 years, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive has been, somewhat unceremoniously, shut down in favour of the newer, shinier Counter-Strike: 2. Whether you like it or not, Valve wants you playing CS2. For those who don’t take their CS all too seriously, CS2 won’t seem like much of a change from CS:GO, besides some grenade changes, more detailed maps, and a disappointing lack of fan favourite game modes. And for those who train their aim on the reg and line up their smoke grenades, CS2 might look the part but lacks the precision of CS:GO’s movement and gunplay.

Still, CS2 captures what makes Counter-Strike tick and even if the foundation seems a little sparse and a touch shaky right now, I’m confident Valve have an FPS that’ll supersede CS:GO in time.

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If Starbreeze themselves were actually a Payday 3 heisting team I suspect they’d be verging on putting money back into the vault at this stage – retracing their steps with bulging duffel bags, while apologising to security guards not so much for the whole bank robbery thing as for smashing so many utilities on their way out. Shortly after announcing plans to make the four-player PvE shooter less online-dependent, the developers have announced that they’re also reworking Payday 3’s much-reviled progression system.

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I’m close to being whatever the Assassin’s Creed equivalent of a Pokémon genwunner is. It’s not like I’m snobby about the newer, more action-oriented Creeds; I welcomed the shift brought in by Assassin’s Creed Origins, which shook the series up a bit, and I loved Cassandra kicking her way around Ancient Greece. Valhalla, although it had a relative dearth of things to parkour around, was a fun open-world RPG. Which I suppose is the point.

Assassin’s Creed hasn’t been a game about a group of assassins following a creed and striking from the shadows for a long time. Here I would say that Basim, protagonist of Assassin’s Creed Mirage kicks down the door and kills everyone in the room, except this new entry in the series is smaller, more focused, and once again concerned largely with stealth, and is all the better for it. So it’s more appropriate to say Basim snuck in through an open window and is choking everyone out one by one.

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Minecraft Live, the blockbuilder’s annual event, will take place on October 15th, and bring with it news of the next update and the by-now traditional mob vote. Mojang have started to outline the mobs players will be able to vote upon, with the winner to be added to the game, and the first of the trio is an adorable crab.

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Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2 arrived on PC back in 2020 via the Epic Games Store, which is where it has remained for the past three years. Today it arrived on Steam. A game coming to Steam isn’t always the biggest news, but who hasn’t longed to slide their deck on the Steam Deck? Now you can.

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Dang!, the developer of fabulous glaive-tosser Boomerang X, are closing down. The studio announced on Twitter that they made the decision after failing to find funding for their next game.

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When I was a computer science student, I developed a messaging app called HYPE with a few of my (more-talented) peers. It worked really well, and we even used it to talk during lectures, but of course we never released it out into the world and after leaving uni it was abandoned. Years later, I saw the brand called HYTE and my immediate reaction was “They stole our idea!”

Of course, my reading comprehension is poor, and HYTE – the iBuyPower PC case company – is unrelated to my unreleased, unannounced Linux-based chat app.

And so it falls to me to tell you that if you don’t have a knee-jerk reaction to four-letter words that look like acronyms but aren’t, and you like small PC cases, you might be interested in this US deal for the HYTE Revolt 3.

This critically-acclaimed Mini ITX PC case is down to $112 at Newegg or Ebay, a cut below its regular price of $200 and MSRP of $250. $112 is a bloody brilliant price for this case, especially as it comes with a pre-fitted 700W 80+ Gold SFX power supply.

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Want AMD’s fastest consumer graphics card for a good price? We’ve got just the deal for you – the RX 7900 XTX, after debuting at a tidy $999, is now down to $889.99 at Newegg. That’s a nice $110 discount that brings the card into new relevance, especially as the first two FSR 3 frame generation games arrive. If you’re not a Newegg fan, the card is also available at Amazon for $909.99.

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