Category: Rock, Paper, Shotgun

At last, a game to unite Graham, Ollie, and me in a triumvirate of absolute dorks. Mars First Logistics is a game about designing little moon rover buggies to pick things up and drive them to somewhere else.

If you looked at it and went “ooh”, your coo lobe was right. “Design a vehicle” games are often too fiddly and/or competition-oriented for me, and trucking games too businesslike and grounded. This threads the needle beautifully. It’s challenging, but gently, prioritising an approachable design and smooth controls without sacrificing the satisfaction of solving a decent engineering puzzle. It’s even pretty, so that even plain driving back and forth is pleasant and rewarding.

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I was gone but now am here again to join my co-hosts on this week’s Electronic Wireless Show podcast, much like the hundreds and hundreds of of hours of interviews, press briefings and old presentations salvaged by Noclip and heaved onto YouTube. We were going to talk about children’s games this week, but given the game for children I was going to talk about was once Stadia exclusive Gylt it seemed a time to talk about the precariousness of digital media a bit (and also make James explain Stadia).

We’ve all been playing a few games here and there, and most of them are current, with Nate still very enthusiastic about being a dinosaur. James comes with more beans to the hardware altar, and we all have some slightly weird suggestions for your recommendations. Plus, because Liam is actually away this week, I made a special effort to pay attention to audio levels and reduce background noise because I’ve seen ye all complaining about when I have to edit the podcast and I’m sick of it.

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Ever since played the Gunbrella demo at the Devolver Digital booth at PAX West last year, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on it again. I don’t usually go for nails Metriodvanias, but there’s something about Gunbrella’s slick, parkour platforming and scrappy world that made me wanna give it a chance. Oh, and the deadly brolly, of course. I mean, it’s a gunbrella. What else is there to say?

The demo I played at PAX is now available to download and play on Steam, and I highly recommend it. Even if you’re a bit like me and Metriodvanias aren’t really your thing, the hour-long demo is entirely linear, and messing around with the gunbrella’s many, many abilities is more than a good enough reason to have a play, even if you’re just mucking around.

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Diablo 4’s permanently dark and dour world is doing the impossible in Season 1: getting even worse, somehow. The first seasonal update called Season Of The Malignant is coming on July 20th, developer Blizzard announced in last night’s livestream. The game’s first season brings another hellish threat from everyone’s nemesis/crush Lilith, a new questline, characters, powers, the first season journey, and yup, the first battle pass.

Check out the announcement trailer here:

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The Solidigm P44 Pro 1TB is one of my favourite SSDs, as it offers PCIe 4.0 speeds and excellent power efficiency while also being quite affordable. Recently we covered the drive hitting $65, and now we’ve reached a new milestone at Newegg – $60!

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Against The Storm is a fantasy citybuilder in which you’re challenged to construct not a sprawling metropolis, but a series of small settlements scattered across a world map wilderness. Recent updates have focused on making that world map more interesting and dynamic, including another released today.

The straightforwardly-named World Events update adds five new choosy, consequence-rich encounters to stumble across, as well as polishing older events, improving the UI, and more.

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There must be no games but third-person action games, said Sony. And so it was. Helldivers 2 is the next victim, trading the co-op sci-fi shooter’s from-above camera view for a from-behind perspective that really screams ‘hey it’s every other game’.

A new post and a new trailer from developers Arrowhead explaining how Helldivers 2’s combat and co-op works is, at least, an opportunity to differentiate itself.

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Every Total War is about a big bunch of bastards vying to be king of the bastards, and Total War: Pharaoh looks no different. It’s got eight wannabe King B’s to choose from, and a new 14-minute video from developers Creative Assembly explains how four of these play differently depending on their particular skills for combat, production and diplomacy.

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Creepy trawler adventure Dredge‘s second major update is out now, and it adds a photo mode and new wildlife events to snap. It also adds a passive mode, if what you really want is to experience its story and fishing without the trouble of its terrors from the murky depths.

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What comes to mind when you hear Dark Souls Pro Skater? What the flip, probably (because, you know, skateboarders flip. No?). A mod that lets you slay hollowed enemies as Tony Hawk is a good guess, but Dark Souls Pro Skater is almost the reverse. A clip went viral over the weekend showing praise-the-sun-guy Solaire shredding around the game’s opening Firelink Shrine. And yes, it looks as cool as it sounds.

You can watch the clip on Twitter, but if that cursed site’s not working, you can find it on YouTube. There’s also a version that has Shrek shredding but badly, for some reason. Firelink’s ancient, mysterious ruins are transformed into a fun skatepark. Who cares where the skaters came from? Just grind, Gwyndammnit.

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