Category: Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Hi-Fi Rush falls into the latter category. Developer Tango Gameworks shadow-dropped the rhythm-action game out of nowhere shortly after an Xbox presentation, jettisoning The Evil Within’s murky mental hospitals and Ghostwire: Tokyo’s supernatural shinanigans for something markedly different: bright pulsating neon colours and a gang of loveable anime ruffians, where every whack and dodge is underscored by a beat.

Hi-Fi Rush is an action-adventure game with a mechanical core fuelled by musical beats. Protagonist Chai has undergone a risky medical procedure and emerged from the other side with a robot arm and an iPod accidentally implanted in his chest meaning his every waking moment is punctuated by a catchy beat. We too see these rhythmic motions, as Hi-Fi Rush’s soda pop-infused world moves to this steady pulse – platforms move in time with the music, lights flash in pleasing rhythmic patterns, and enemies attack to the beat of the drum.

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Amnesia: The Bunker, taking their signature scares back to the first World War. We now know that the game is releasing on May 16th for PC and consoles.

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Jigsaw Puzzle Dreams because I’ve only completed two puzzles in it. I’ve been doing the third one for about a year, because it’s, I think, six thousand pieces. I say “i think” because it’s been long enough that I can’t remember if I told the game to generate it as five or six thousand. But it’s a lot of thousand.

I really like jigsaws (I am in the middle of doing a real life one that is a big copy of the London Underground map) but, even though I have one of those special mats to do puzzles on so you can fold them away, they’re quite inconvenient. At the same time, though, there are very few digi-jigsaws that capture the kind of tactile experience of sifting and sorting through pieces. Jigsaw Puzzle Dreams really does, though.

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report from yesterday has revealed new details on the state of the Halo franchise and the turmoil at developer 343 Industries. This news comes after 95 employees lost their jobs, following mass layoffs across Microsoft. The layoffs affected long-time 343 devs, as well as contractors who only had a few days’ notice. Halo Infinite has been trying to find its footing after a rocky first year, but this report doesn’t inspire much hope from fans, at least for the series’ short-term future. The report delves into the studio’s switch to a different engine, an upcoming battle royale game, and most importantly, the lack of any single-player content in development.

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Jett: The Far Shore was, like the jagged colossi that roamed its lavender skies, an odd beast. When it emerged on the Epic Game Store in the autumn of 2021, you could see the conflict roiling in its belly – between the linear science fiction short story on the surface, and the freeroaming “Metroid snowboarding game” fighting to get out from underneath it.

“Once the story finished, I hoped an endgame would open up and allow me to play freely in its world,” I wrote in our Jett review. “That I’d have more opportunities to watch great Ghoke, the red sun, rise in real time, and to ponder the Far Shore’s fascinating mysteries at length. Instead, I could only replay previous chapters. If only Jett had embraced a rhythm as organic as its inspired ecosystem.”

When the Jett team read that review, they didn’t disagree. “You put your finger on it more accurately than anybody else, which was, ‘It really feels like this is building up to some sort of systemic-focused, open world endgame,’” says Superbrothers founder Craig Adams. “And internally we were like, ‘Yeah, it is.’” What they knew, and I didn’t, was that The Far Shore was just the first part of a two-campaign story. That journey has now been completed with the launch of Given Time, a bonus 12-hour adventure that coincides with Jett’s long-awaited Steam release.

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Inkbound once before, and not only is it markedly different to their previous game Monster Train, but it also featured the snappiest turn-based combat I’d seen. With that in mind, I dove into the game’s recent technical test with fellow RPS Treehouse-dwellers Ollie and James to sample the game at a more leisurely pace, and to draw upon their greater strategic expertise. Did the combat hold up? Were they pleased to be dragged into a co-op session with me? Yes… and no. We had fun, but it didn’t come quite as naturally without the guiding hand of the developers showing us the ropes.

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Call Of Duty: Warzone 2 and Modern Warfare 2 drop into their second season on February 15th, and we now have our first look at Warzone 2’s newest map and modes. In a series of Twitter posts, Activision announced a new, free-to-play “small map” called Ashika Island. Warzone’s new map will feature a brand new mode DMZ, alongside the returning mode Resurgence – a slimmer BR that cuts the lobby size down from 150 to 50 players, and enables respawns. Ashika Island and the new modes will launch alongside Season 02 on February 15th.

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The Sims 4 didn’t have toddlers until they were added in 2017, and sims’ early years will continue to telescope when March comes around. That’s when infants will finally be added to the game, turning babies into full sims.

The latest update also offered news on Project Rene, the eventual successor to The Sims 4. The key takeaways: it’s not an MMO but it will have multiplayer as well as singleplayer, and it’s years away from release.

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Star Wars Jedi: Survivor has been delayed by six weeks. In a statement released on Twitter, developers Respawn Entertainment said that the action-adventure sequel would no longer meet its March 17th release date and will instead draw laser swords on April 28th.

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