Category: Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Having dipped into some deathmatches in Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3‘s beta over the weekend, I have come to the conclusion that – surprise! – it’s more Call Of Duty! But the biggest surprise? How familiar it felt. So, it might be a bit odd that MW3 is wholly unsurprising for being more COD and simultaneously, a surprise for being more COD. Really, I think it comes down to developer Sledgehammer’s decision to mash some of COD’s previous triumphs with some of its finest maps.

Despite COD extending its hand with a warm welcome back, I can’t help but feel it’s one trembled with nerves. MW3’s beta suckered me in with its nostalgia hits but there’s definitely an air of it being a stopgap as devs figure out where it should turn next.

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The fleetingly Epic Games-owned online audio distribution company Bandcamp have shed “at least” half their staff in the course of being sold off to Songtradr as part of mass layoffs at Epic this summer. That’s according to the union Bandcamp United, who are even now restarting discussions with Epic in the hope of obtaining a better outcome.

It’s terrible news for those affected, of course, but it also doesn’t bode well for the future of independent music. Bandcamp, which has now traded hands twice in two years, is one of the few places where indie musicians can make a living. There are plenty of angry reactions from musicians and bands on social media, as you’d expect, but game developers are also rallying in support of Bandcamp United, with criticism aimed at Epic and Songtradr in equal measure.

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“I am most moved and always have been by stupid courage — the kind when, against all odds, the hero just keeps going,” William Goldman once said. This is a thing Goldman I have in common. To help you tell us apart, a point of difference between Goldman and I is that he expressed his love of stupid courage by writing Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid, whereas I express mine by really liking Cyberpunk 2077.

Stupid courage is a trait that CD Projekt Red’s first-person RPG seems to admire, but that’s never more clear than in a new ending to the base game added by the Phantom Liberty expansion. It shows what happens when the heroes reject stupid courage and choose self-centred pragmatism instead. Spoilers for Cyberpunk 2077 and Phantom Liberty throughout.

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David Moralejo Sánchez’s Outpath, a blend of island base-building game and idle clicker, is now out on Steam with a launch discount and a rapidly growing sackful of positive reader reviews. The gist, for those who missed out on the demo: you walk around small islands punching resources out of the landscape, building crafting stations and dwellings, and slowly amassing the means to access other islands. Or, you ignore all that, and treat the whole thing as an idle clicker, with no time limit and no real opportunity to fail.

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Epic have dropped a bunch of details as to planned improvements for the Epic Games Store in the on-going race to out-Steam Steam – the Coca-Cola to Epic’s Pepsi Max. Amongst other things, we can expect more robust search features, support for third-party subscriptions, better EGS launcher performance, a download manager with improved controls, and a new “for you” personalisation tab – all of that rolling out across 2024 and 2025.

Naturally, Epic will be continuing with their free games program through “2023 and beyond”, and they’ve also put together a couple of special publishing offers for developers, Epic First Run and Now on Epic, which are designed to lure more studios from the amoeba-like embrace of Valve’s gaming empire.

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The Alt Controller showing at EGX this year was properly top tier stuff. There was, of course, the Future Of Play booth that our Graham organised for the show (the contents of which you can see right here), but every year the Leftfield Collection houses a couple more custom controller games that are just as illustrative of all the amazing things going on in the world of interactive entertainment these days.

Case in point, there were two games from this year’s cohort that impressed me in equal measure over the weekend – and it was perhaps fitting that they were located directly opposite one another in the Leftfield Collection’s long, white corridor. One was a mind-bogglingly complex, almost military-grade-looking briefcase stuffed full of switches, nozzles and buttons, and the other was an impossibly cute cardboard flip book and projector combo that let its cartoon hero Bib bound across the 3D paper environments to find a way home. Here’s a little look at both of them in action.

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Netflix has reportedly spoken with Grand Theft Auto devs Rockstar about releasing a GTA title via the streaming service, according to new reports. The talks occurred as the movie and TV behemoth apparently works to bring “higher-end” titles to their growing catalogue of video games.

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I love it when game names do what they say on the tin, but I love it even more when they contain hidden depths behind that initial simplicity. Hermit And Pig is indeed a game about a reclusive old hermit and his truffle-hunting pig, but this charming adventure RPG also has one of the most involving turn-based battle systems I’ve come across in a while.

Taking place in first person a la Dragon Quest, Hermit must deal with all sorts of mad and angry wildlife as he hunts for his favourite forest mushrooms, and their scowling (and endearingly daft) expressions are just the tip of this excellent iceberg. For you’re not just choosing from a list of moves and watching them play out onscreen. Oh no. Each attack also comes with its own three-button fighting combo, and you’ll need to input the right one (often at the right time) to deal the most damage. It’s a brilliant system, making Hermit And Pig easily one of this year’s highlights from EGX‘s Leftfield Collection.

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Minecraft is getting a new bit of Star Wars DLC filled with a bunch of familiar faces from the galaxy far, far away in blocky, Minecraftified form. You’ll also be able to make your own lightsaber and droid companion to take on your adventures as a Jedi padawan.

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If you played a videogame at all in 2022, I hope it was Roadwarden. A blend of RPG and visual novel from Polish developer Moral Anxiety, it cast you as lonesome wayfarer maintaining the paths and investigating the mysteries or grievances of a thinly populated wilderness setting. It was a game of immense feeling, craft and cleverness, inspired by table-top games, which puts hoarier ideas about videogame role-playing through the wringer. In the world of Roadwarden, there’s no grinding for XP. Knowledge, empathy and insight are worth far more than material wealth or wielding the shiniest axe. Quests can hinge on something as minute as your ear for dialects or knowing the correct form of address. And each village along the trail is a world in itself.

Moral Anxiety’s Windy Meadow – which actually dates back to before development of Roadwarden, but has been substantially remastered since the latter’s release – essentially narrows the focus to one of those villages. Out today, it’s a quietly gorgeous visual novel in which you follow several characters in different timeframes, building up a layered understanding of one and the same setting, with scene transitions plotted on a beautiful pixelart map screen.

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