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Like everyone with a shred of taste and a pair of mostly functional eyes, I can look at Minecraft and appreciate the outrageously ambitious and detailed builds that get shared around every few weeks. Putting form to my own megastructures, though? Can’t, sorry – I already have plans to wander around and gawp at nature.
As a massive foodie with a near bottomless appetite, it pained me to watch Venba’s mouth-watering cooking puzzles knowing a similarly tasty-looking treat wasn’t waiting for me in real life. But as a second-generation immigrant, the game’s explorations of that experience hit so surprisingly close to home that I wasn’t left hungry by the time credits rolled. Venba is a touching, smart, and soulful game that made me want to hug everyone in my family immediately. Though, I do wish the game would’ve marinated in its good ideas a while longer.
What lies beyond Limgrave? I honestly don’t know. I’ve muddled my way through Elden Ring’s starting peninsula three times now, but have yet to step foot beyond the crumbling gatehouse of Stormveil Castle. The second Godrick The Grafted is reduced to a sickly pile of wobbly limbs, I turn the game off and walk away.
It’s not that I don’t like Elden Ring. I’m not struggling to connect with its open world take on the Souls genre. I’m not put off by the difficult encounters that await me, or the obtuse challenges I’ll be forced to overcome. The answer is weirdly simple. Limgrave provides me with everything I could ever want from a Souls game to the point that when Godrick croaks his final rancid breath and his (presumably) four tongues comically lop out of his stupid mouth, I’m left with the deep satisfaction that comes with the end of a journey, rather than the beginning of one.
Jagged Alliance 3 seemed like a probable car crash waiting to happen, in part because most Jagged Alliance games are, and in part because its wide-of-the-mark writing was already evident before release. But! It turns out to also be a cannily designed mix of old and new turn-based strategy ideas.
You can now try it for yourself, as there’s a demo on Steam.
Broforce was a side-scrolling riff on ’80s action movies, in which you’d take control of Rambro, B.A. Broracus and others to run ‘n’ gun through explosive levels. I feel like most of my runs would end because I blew myself up alongside the enemies.
On August 8th, Broforce is getting one final free update. Titled Broforce Forever, it adds six new bros, introduced in a trailer below.
Palworld is comfortably summarised as ‘Pokémon with guns’, thanks to its too-familiar character designs and third-person machinegun combat. It’s got more going on than that, though. It’s also Pokémon with base building, Pokémon with sweat shops, Pokémon with corpse piles.
A new developer tutorial explains how you can ‘use Pals efficiently’ by putting them to work for you.
Grinding Gear Games debuted a lovely big chunk of Path Of Exile 2 this evening, taking us through a section of Act 3 of its campaign and showing off two of its six new character classes: the Monk and the Sorceress. With almost 30 minutes of uninterrupted gameplay, we got to see exactly how they work in practice, and most importantly, we got a big long look at the monk’s beautifully choreographed staff twirling melee attacks. Yes please and thank you. I have to say, this is instantly more exciting to me than biffing skeletons with my Druid in Diablo 4, and I’m very pumped indeed to try the Monk out for myself when Path Of Exile 2 enters its closed beta in June next year.
Get ready to die lots in Path Of Exile 2, as developers Grinding Gear Games have told me that both the regular and Hardcore difficulty modes of their upcoming, now standalone sequel to their enormously popular ARPG are going to be a whole lot more challenging than before – both when it comes to the campaign and the end-game afterwards. Bosses, in particular, will pose much more of a threat this time round, as studio co-founder and Path Of Exile 2 creative director Jonathan Rogers says the big monsters you fought in the first game’s campaign were, in hindsight, “pretty anemic”.
“It’s been a really long time coming,” Grinding Gear Games’ co-founder and Path Of Exile 2 creative director Jonathan Rogers tells RPS, but their new action RPG will be getting its first closed beta on June 7th 2024. The news was announced at tonight’s ExileCon, where the developers also showed off a big new chunk of the game that focused on its two new classes, the monk and the sorceress – and it looks to be shaping up very well indeed. As for a final launch, however, Rogers isn’t quite ready to put a date on that yet.
Final Fantasy 14’s fifth expansion has a name, a (rough) release date and a first look at what seems to be a notable shift in tone from the apocalyptic climax of Endwalker. Dawntrail will be a summer-themed continuation of FFXIV’s story into a “new story”, bringing new jobs, various content additions and a major visual revamp for the MMO.
