Category: Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Valve revealed a swathe of new features coming to Steam’s desktop client beta last night, and there are lots of new features that caught my eye. They’re overhauling things like the in-game overlay, creating a new toolbar to house achievements, friends chat and discussions, and creating a new hub that shows you everything that’s happened in the game’s community since you last played it. It also introduces a cool pin feature that lets you stick overlay windows on top of your game – handy if you’re following a guide, say, and don’t want to keep alt-tabbing out. But there’s one thing I’m quite upset about, and that’s the new Notes app. I love a good notebook game, you know? Fiddling out puzzles in Tunic, remembering patterns in The Witness… Notebook games are great. But I fear this new Notes app will kill that kind of note-taking dead. And that makes me sad.

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I quite enjoy the vwing-vwing lighstabering at the heart of Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, which is why it now pains me to have an extended moan about the PC version’s technical troubles.

Despite the odd glimmer of joy, like better-than-expected performance on its lowest system requirements, much about playing Jedi: Survivor on Windows suggests it could have used a little more time in the bacta tank. Sluggishness and stuttering are problems on higher-end graphics cards, even before adding the strain of ray tracing effects, and FSR upscaling often fails to deliver a significant performance boost.

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I spent time last week watching old, Japanese PlayStation game adverts after puzzler Humanity referenced them in its own trailer. Among those adverts were several for Fantavision, a little-loved colour-matching puzzle game about firework displays from 2000.

Imagine my surprise when today Fantavision showed up on Steam.

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Live A Live was originally released in 1994, but only on SNES and only in Japan. It was short as far as Square Enix JRPGs from the period go, but was unique in that it featured 8 inter-connected stories set across 8 time periods.

Last year, a remake brought the game to Nintendo Switch, and as of today it’s also available on Steam.

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Long before indie outfit Capybara Games made a name for themselves with Sword & Sworcery or Below, they made a puzzle-strategy game with the Might & Magic license for Ubisoft. Might & Magic: Clash Of Heroes was a surprise delight on Nintendo DS in 2009 and an HD release made its way to PC in 2011.

Now it’s getting a Definitive Edition release courtesy of Dotemu, with updated character art, quality-of-life improvements and rebalanced multiplayer.

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The Case Of The Golden Idol was one of my favourite games of 2022, but one twist I didn’t see coming from the heir to Obra Dinn’s detective crown was more of it, or more of it so soon, for that matter. Happily, developers Color Gray Games have announced a new DLC pack is coming for The Golden Idol next week called The Spider Of Lanka. Set in 1741, a year before the first scenario of The Golden Idol proper, this trio of new cases looks set to shed extra light on the titular idol whose mysterious powers set the original game in motion. I’m afraid I can’t tell you much more than that, as most of the announcement details have been slapped with big black REDACTED marks. Have a watch of the reveal trailer below instead.

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Grab a holy cross, maybe make some friends, and spray yourself with gross garlic water. Vampire-hunting shooter Redfall is only a mere week away, so developers Arkane have dropped a fun launch trailer to celebrate. It gives us another look at the titular rural town, haunted by fanged monsters, violent cultists, and psychic anomalies that distort the environment in weird and wonderful ways.

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For me, developers Deconstructeam are the GOAT at fleshing out characters through the subtle art of conversation. Whether it’s revealing the dark secrets of corporate espionage from the mouths of loose-lipped employees after a cocktail or two in The Red Strings Club, uncovering the cut-throat life of a hitman as he arranges beautiful bouquets in Eternal Home Floristry, or unravelling the personal philosophies of an old man who claims he can speak to God through a radio in Interview With A Whisperer, their games are detailed portraits of complex people. And after playing through an hour-long preview build of the team’s next game, the fresly unveiled The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood, I can already tell that this adventure is one of their most complex portraits yet. This time, folks, we’re dealing with divination, cosmic gods and sweet, sweet revenge.

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RTS-FPS hybrids aren’t a new thing, but they also haven’t been the most historically successful ventures. Well, Arma 3 developers Bohemia Interactive are taking a punt at blending the two genres with Silica, in the hopes that you can both shoot and command things with equal levels of good. It’s the first project to hatch from Bohemia’s incubator program, which helps indie devs make cool games.

Silica is largely the work of one developer, Martin “Dram” Malicharek, who was previously the lead on Bohemia’s Take On Mars. Having given Silica a whirl for over an hour, I struggle to see whether the RTS, FPS hybrid can truly offer the best of both worlds. It does, however, make being a crab extremely good.

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I don’t feel very strongly about Age Of Wonders 4. But I’ll be fair; it’s definitely good.

I’ve enjoyed most of my time with it, and the parts I didn’t were probably down to caning it too hard in too short a time. Such is that reviewz lyf. Played less intensely over a longer period, I imagine more of its intricacies becoming clear, and more custom playstyles emerging to encourage more replays and challenges. As it stands though, its generally high quality and interesting systems just haven’t captured my imagination.

It is not unimaginative, though. Some of its playable races are the usual elves and goblins, but most have a twist, like the cannibalistic dwarves, gold-obsessed necromancers, or the “cursed toadlings” I picked almost reflexively: a people transformed along with their warrior Queen Charming. Each comes with a starting hero and traits for their cities units, plus a set of spellbooks that determine what research you’ll have access to upfront.

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