Category: Rock, Paper, Shotgun

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Pong is getting a “creative sequel” in which you play the ball

When The Lord of the Rings: Gollum was announced a few years back, the general response was “who on Middle-earth would want to play as Gollum”. I’m wondering if Atari and Graphite Lab’s “creative sequel” to Pong, aka Qomp2, will face a similar reception. Released in the 70s, the original Pong was videogame tennis. In this reinvention – which, confusingly, is also a sequel to Stuffed Wombat’s Qomp, with the Pong branding sort of ladled on top – the homely pixel ball has shattered one player’s paddle and escaped into an Axiom Verge-esque labyrinth of spikes, energy beams and floating T-Rex heads. Filing this premise somewhere on the “what if” spectrum between the Edge line about talking to the monsters in DOOM and people demanding to land on gas giants in Starfield. Find a trailer through the jump.

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Original Picross developers are releasing their next nonogram puzzler on Steam

There are a lot of Picross-style nonogram games available on PC these days, but many of them fail to inspire the easy, compulsive fugue of Picross itself. I’m hoping Logiart Grimoire will achieve such numbing delights when it launches into Steam Early Access next month. It’s got the pedigree for it, given that it’s made by Jupiter Corporation, the creator of all those original Picross games for Nintendo devices.

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Dark Messiah of Might & Magic might get raytracing and co-op thanks to modders

Released in 2006, Dark Messiah Of Might And Magic made the most of still-novel physics tech by letting you torment orcs with slippy floors, collapsing log piles, and swift kicks directly into spikes. These slapstick delights made it a cult classic, but rights-holders Ubisoft haven’t done much with the game since.

Now a group of modders have been given a “completely blank check” by Ubisoft to do what they want with their efforts to build a modding SDK for the nearly 20-year-old game, and their ambitions include co-op and raytracing.

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Thank Goodness You’re Here is a bit like a Yorkshire Untitled Goose Game, but infinitely weirder

The Opening Night Live trailer for ‘comedy slapformer’ Thank Goodness You’re Here! was a joyous balm in a sea of shoulder shrugs last week. Its bright, cartoon visuals instantly stood out against the grey, ultra-realistic grizzle beards of everything else Geoff had to offer in his Gamescom mega show last Tuesday, and even now I still find myself whistling its jaunty little song around the house. But what exactly is Thank Goodness You’re Here!? Well, having played through one of its 15 minute missions now, I can tell you it’s a bit like Untitled Goose Game, in that you have a village you can wander about in causing chaos, but it’s also much more structured than that, with specific quests and people to help as you guide your tiny travelling salesman through its surreal neighbourhood. Here’s what I learned.

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AMD FSR 3 demystified: how the next-gen upscaler could upgrade performance on “any” GPU

Apologies to Geoffey K and his GTA 6-loving stage invader, but for me, the torquiest head-turner of Gamescom 2023 was not a game but AMD FSR 3. The Radeon gang’s long awaited answer to DLSS 3 finally got a proper reveal, showcasing how its frame generation feature – called Fluid Motion Frames – could triple performance in supported games. And, while it was revealed alongside two new GPUs – the Radeon RX 7800 XT and RX 7700 XT – AMD general manager Scott Herkelman suggested that FSR 3 will work “on any graphics card” once it launches.

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I have consumed Starfield’s universe and it tastes of whole milk and cinnamon

“What’s better than gazing at the Milky Way?”, asks Bethesda. The answer? “Savouring it as well.” That’s right folks, I may not have laid my hands on big Todd’s mega RPG Starfield, but I’ve actually tasted its universe, in the form of a promotional drink handed out at Gamescom. It’s composed of cinnamon and stardust, with the boundless expanse of space taking on the form of a grey liquid goop. I’ve got to admit, I think it makes for an excellent beverage, and could perhaps have elicited more excitement from me than the game itself will on release.

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Life By You’s humans are always watching you, and some of them can be real creepy about it

How do you condense the vast, far-reaching tendrils of Paradox’s open world Sims-killer Life By You into 20 minutes? The short answer is you can’t, really, but while most of my brief, guided Gamescom demo covered very similar ground to what I saw back in March when it was first announced, there was one little detail that really grabbed my attention – and that’s how everyone has eyes like a hawk in this game. They’re almost constantly aware of everything that you’re doing. So much so, that they can even get a little bit creepy about it, as was made plain in my hands-off demo session.

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