The Electronic Wireless Show podcast S2 Ep 7: failure to launch

podcast. What are some of the bad launches we remember? What part do we play in this ecosystem? Are we just doomed to get bad PC ports for the next few years, or is this going to happen forever now.

Plus, a terrifying Tower Of Jocularity that challenges us to know when games came out (we do quite well, I think), the games we’ve been playing right now, and a trio of movie recommendations.

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Disco Elysium ups its screenshot game with new collage mode

lawsuits and other messy goings-on at Disco Elysium studio ZA/UM recently, things are starting to look a little sunnier for this troubled RPG maker. Three of its lawsuits with former employees have been resolved this week, and today marks the arrival of a new mode in the game called Collage Mode, a daft and very entertaining screenshotting and diorama tool that lets you arrange Revachol’s many, many inhabitants in all sorts of weird scenes, poses and sizes. And yes, that is a giant Kim and Kuno up top there tormenting your tiny detective protagonist. What of it?

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Cities: Skylines reveals its last content roadmap after 8 years of support

Cities: Skylines 2, but the first game isn’t done just yet. Paradox have announced a roadmap for Cities: Skylines which will receive its last few content drops over the next few months. After taking us to Korea, Cities: Skylines will continue its world tour with three new Content Creator Packs on March 22nd – next Wednesday – and a Colossal Order-developed mini-expansion in May.

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The cursed elongated baby bug returns in The Sims 4’s Growing Together expansion

The Sims 4 recently spawned infants into its life sim sandbox via a free update, and the substantial Growing Together expansion. At launch, Sims would go from nascent babies to walking, talking kids, skipping the infant years that teach them, for example, how to talk in Simlish, although that does sound like baby talk too. The new expansion adds a lot to Sim’s life stages, but the real show stealer here is a pesky bug that elongates babies. Yes, you read that correctly.

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The Steam Deck’s lovely local downloads feature is out now for everyone

The latest Steam Deck client update has added Valve’s local network game transfers feature – previously only available in beta form – to the Stable branch, marking a full launch for one of the most useful Steam Deck feature upgrades in months.

If you missed the local transfers beta release last month, know that the name is quite literal: it lets you transfer Steam game installs between your PC and your Steam Deck over a local network, rather than having to re-download them onto every device you own. It also works when transferring between a Steam Deck and another Steam Deck, or between two PCs. Valve have a little explainer here, but it’s simple enough that – for example – hitting the Install button for a game on your Steam Deck will automatically detect if your PC is on the same network, and start transferring as much as it can from the desktop instead of downloading the whole thing from scratch.

You can even opt into sending/receiving game data from PCs and Steam Decks owned by other people, so long as they’re also connected to the same local network. The biggest benefit seemingly comes to those with monthly data caps (morning, Yanks), as these transfers won’t usually involve any extra downloads. Even so, it’s a helpful addition for anyone on all-you-can-eat data as well, since local transfers are much faster than old fashioned installs.

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Paranormasight: The Seven Mysteries Of Honjo review: a hair-raising and subversive horror visual novel

Paranormasight: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo is best played if you go in knowing nothing about it. Zilch, zero, nada. Its twists and turns from the get-go have my brain doing mental gymnastics, not just in the game but in trying to figure out how to write around them for this review. I’m not going to spoil everything, but keeping your expectations completley wide open lets Paranormasight snake right on in and surprise you when you least expect it to.

Here’s a quick elevator pitch: Paranormasight is a Squeenix-developed horror mystery visual novel about deadly rituals, ghost stories, curses, and the occult. Its subversive approach to classic visual novel staples make its puzzles feel smart and its horror scares hit hard. If you’re a fan of the thrills found in the Danganronpa and Zero Escape games, Paranormasight is like a bite-sized version of those two behemoths. It’s short, smart, and will keep you on your toes until the end.

So yeah, if that sounds like your thing, then have at it. From here on in, I’m going to be gabbing abut it in-depth.

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What’s the worst thing you’ve done for an achievement?

Ask RPS, our new mailbag feature where RPS supporters pose us questions that we then answer in public posts for everyone to enjoy, we’re turning our gaze to that loved and loathed staple of the video gaming landscape: achievements. Ah, achievements. Never mind if they’re good or bad. Today, we’re remembering the terrible things we’ve done to actually get them.

The question comes courtesy of Fachewachewa, who asked: What’s the worst thing you’ve done for an achievement? Or more generally, a time you were focused on a specific goal in a game, reached it (or gave up), and after, looked back and thought, “Why did I do that?”

Why, indeed. Come and find out which achievements have spawned our biggest gaming regrets, and why not tell us about your own gaming follies in the comments? We can all wallow in our foolishness together.

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Enjoy 15 seconds of bombastic monster slaying in Atlas Fallen’s first gameplay trailer

Atlas Fallen, the upcoming action RPG from Deck13, the gang behind The Surge games. The game’s sandy dunes and over-the-top combat gave Ed chirpy AA vibes, whle the rest of us were relegated to the initial CG trailer and the hands-off preview. Until now. Publisher Focus Entertainment have now debuted a gameplay trailer for all of us, too – although it mostly consists of second-long combat snippets, sandwiched in between very grave and serious and important VO.

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