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Nvidia’s RTX 4070 is a great graphics card – but the release of the competing RX 7800 XT has put pressure on Nvidia to drop prices. Combined with a 10% Ebay discount that knocks £54 off the price of a unit from MSI, it’s now possible to grab this GPU for just £481 – essentially the same price as AMD’s RX 7800 XT while delivering around 15% better RT performance, while also packing in the frame-rate advantages of DLSS 3 Frame Generation and superior power efficiency.
Cyberpunk 2077‘s triumph was that it offered a sprawling story, dozens of hours long, which cohered around just a small number of themes. Or maybe even a single thesis: that the cynical, defensive, self-centred voice in your head – personified by ancient, soul-trapped, anarcho-rockstar Johnny Silverhand – offered only a literal dead-end, and that real rebellion in the face of a messed-up world lay in helping friends. It was Frank Capra with robot arms and samurai swords, and I ate it up.
V doesn’t go to Washington in Phantom Liberty, but Washington comes to her. CD Projekt Red’s major expansion to the first-person RPG opens up a new district and a new cast of characters, including the President of the New United States and an aging sleeper spy played by Idris Elba. The themes remain the same, but the thesis is being tested: how can you help your friends if you don’t know who they are, and if their goals are mutually exclusive?
A new version of Stardock’s cosmic empire wrangler Galactic Civilizations IV, titled Galactic Civilizations IV: Supernova Edition, will release on Steam and the Epic Games Store on 19th October – which also happens to be Stardock’s 30th anniversary. It’s “by far the biggest expansion Stardock has ever made”, according to company founder Brad Wardell, who claims this latest dollop of interstellar tyranny will “transform the gameplay in ways not seen in a 4X game before”. By which he chiefly means that the Supernova Edition uses large language learning models to generate civ backstories on demand. Let’s dig in!
Among the chunkier morsels from yesterday’s leak of Microsoft documents is an extended email from Xbox CEO Phil Spencer, dating from 2020, in which he argues that today’s largest AAA videogame publishers remain dogged by their “failure” to adapt to the shift from physical to digital videogame distribution, and especially, subscription models such as Microsoft’s own Game Pass. This inability to move with the times, Spencer suggests, has created a situation whereby the largest publishers rely on sheer “production scale” to attract and retain customers.
In turn, this has meant that publishers are unwilling to bet on new IPs – it could be billions down the drain, after all. Instead, “AAA publishers are milking their top franchises but struggling to refill their portfolio of hit franchises”, while relying on “rented” IPs such as Star Wars. This is an older email, of course, and there’s an obvious element of self-flattery in the shape of Microsoft talking up Game Pass. Still, it’s a persuasive account of recent industry history, bolstered by Spencer’s notes from conversations with Assassin’s Creed outfit Ubisoft and GTA publisher Take-Two Interactive in particular.
Sega’s Like A Dragon Direct happened in the early hours for us UK netizens last night, which meant I woke up today to an absolute heap of flaming hot Yakuza news. Not only is Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth launching on January 24th next year, it’s taking Ichiban and co. to the sunny island of Hawaii! Kiryu’s back and in a battle with his biggest adversary yet. And you can become an unhinged Pokémon master, among many, many other things. We’re so back. We’re so effing back.
If 2023 is remembered for one thing, it’s that it was a 100% critical success year for the RPG. Role-players across the land have been feasting exceedingly well these past few months, what with the stonking success of Baldur’s Gate 3 (and to lesser extents, Starfield and Diablo 4), so we thought it was about time to celebrate your favourite RPGs of all time. Your votes have been counted, your comments have been sorted, and the cream of the RPG crop has been assembled. But which of the many excellent RPGs have risen above all others? Come and find out below as we count down your top 25 favourite RPGs of all time.
Hop onto Game Pass today and you’ll find the launch day arrival of Lies Of P, which Ed describes as “an instant must-play for Soulslikers” in his review.
I’m a Soulsavoider, so I’m more interested in the other games coming to Microsoft’s Full Convergence stepping stone in the next couple of weeks, including Cocoon and The Lamplighters League.
According to leaked documents, Microsoft are/were remastering Oblivion and Fallout 3. This is boring. The past decade of innumerable remasters has been boring enough, but remastering these two games is particularly boring. When even bother when all Bethesda have made since Oblivion is Oblivion remakes with added spacesuits or yelling? Boring. But while I think the torrent of remasters is a miserable sign of big publishers just giving up, if they’re going to do it anyway: why not Morrowind?
After a draining day’s reportage upon the thoroughly alien doings of vast corporate publishers, I like nothing better than to flee, blabbing and weeping, into the arms of a micro-RPG. Scumhead’s Franzen – released a few days ago on Steam and Itch – has a couple of big draws, straight off the bat. Firstly and least importantly, it’s free, which it really shouldn’t be. Secondly and more significantly, it’s one of those rare RPG miniatures that is both richly imagined and snappy, with a busy and befuddling world in which you have immediate clear motivations that escalate rapidly and breed Dire Implications. It also looks like a 16-bit Pathologic, so consider me firmly on board.
I dunno if you’ve heard of this game Starfield, but there’s a lot of talk about it at the moment. It is a roleplaying experience where the role you play is not “Viking-ish warrior who can shout with the power of a million metal frontmen” or “wasteland wanderer downing cans of irradiated coke” but “person in space following a broadly unexciting A-plot”. Much of the most interesting stuff in Starfield is on the periphery of the main story, as is the case with most Bethesda RPGs, but I find Starfield to be much less whimsical (something I won’t relitigate here). As an RPG, Starfield is taking itself seriously, and sometimes this collides with the design game systems and menus.
An example of this is that you are supposed to experience the vastness of space, but cannot do so without going through a lot of loading screens. Another is that you have two sets of clothes: a spacesuit for places that are hostile and have no breathable atmosphere, and street clothes for planets that do. And NPCs keep making fun of me for wearing my spacesuit when I don’t need to, and I hate them for it.
