Category: Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Look up major events in 2011 and there’s some world-changing stuff… and some not so world-changing stuff. Shadows Of The Damned’s Xbox 360/PS3 release may slip into either camp, depending on whether you liked it back in the day or not. It’s a third-person action adventure where two famous video game folks joined forces: No More Heroes’ Suda51 and Resident Evil’s Shinji Mikami. And to my knowledge, it’s considered a bit of a cult classic.

So, having played Shadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered after never experiencing the original, do I think it’s any good? If you were a fan of the OG, there’s no doubt you’ll like it. If you’re coming in as a newbie, I think it’s refreshing in the sense it’s a trim throwback with some interesting ideas and middling-to-good execution. But its whole schtick isn’t only a product of its time – it’s actually downright yucky.

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Real ones know that the only XCOM spin off worth its salt is Hasbro’s 1999 play-by-mail banger First Alien Invasion, although that didn’t stop System Shock 2 studio Irrational from getting to work on an FPS set in the strategy series’ universe after being acquired by 2K in 2006. If your sentiments are anything like I remember a lot of the internet feeling at the time, you may get nightmarish flashbacks to the trailer below, first shown at E3 2010. The project was eventually canceled and adapted into 2013’s The Bureau: XCOM Declassified, but Irrational co-founder and current Wild Bastards studio Blue Manchu founder Jon Chey has shed some light on the FPS’s development, and it sounds like it was once a far more ambitious project. Kaiju ambitious.

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I played Balatro for an hour, had a pleasant time, then uninstalled it. I know a trap when I see one. Perhaps you are made of stronger stuff than I am, however. Perhaps you like that monkey on your back. For you, there’s a new free update, which adds a second set of themed card art to the game inspired by the games Binding Of Isaac, Cyberpunk 2077, Stardew Valley and Slay The Spire.

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Windblown looks rad. It’s an action-roguelite for 1-3 players in which you dash-and-slash in rapid combat on floating islands, and I am extremely interested in feeling its game-feel for myself. Good news! I can get my game-feelers on it now because it’s out in Early Access today.

If you watch its launch trailer below out of context however, you might be fooled into thinking it’s actually the emo second half of an Isekai anime series.

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Blizzard announced earlier this year that BlizzCon wouldn’t happen in 2024, with the live event instead being replaced by a series of franchise-focused streams. Next on the schedule is Warcraft 30th Anniversary Direct, which Blizzard have now announced will stream on Wednesday, November 13th at 6pm GMT/1pm ET/10am PT.

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A huge scary bearded man has just kicked down my door. His face and shoulders are doused in tactical Dorito dust. His eyes are heavily redacted. He’s got assault rifles and comparison screenshots poking out of his ribcage, which are making an absolute mess of the hallway plaster. He says he is Call Of Duty Man, and he is here to let me know about Black Ops 6‘s day one patch. The new Activision FPS is out tomorrow 25th October, I gather. Call Of Duty Man speaks only in three-syllable bursts and rolling bombardments, but I think if I listen carefully I can make out the highlights. Here’s what that patch involves, in nickel-plated bulletpoint form.

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Zotac are one of the better graphics card makers of the post-EVGA era, so even as the early pangs of handheld gaming PC fatigue start to creep in, I’ve been keeping a hopeful eye on the Zotac Zone. This is their take on a Steam Deck rival, or more specifically, the Steam Deck OLED, as this is the first real competitor to go for a similarly star-bright, colour-erupting AMOLED display. Cor, phwoar, and indeed, wowzers.

Much like a Zotac GPU, the Zone is chunkier than you might like but ultimately well-crafted. It successfully combines that rich screen with oodles of input features and Deck-thrashing performance, though between its high price and a downright vampiric thirst for battery juice, it’s definitely more of a specialist tool than a crowd-pleasing portable.

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New Polish studio From Chaos consist of former members of Witcher developers CD Projekt Red, Frostpunk developers 11 bit studios and 4X household Paradox Interactive, led by erstwhile Gwent programmer Tomek Dietrich – so it’s no huge surprise that their debut game, Liegecraft, is a big beardy historical strategy RPG.

It’s a hex and turn-based experience in which you play a dinky little despot running around a medieval world building castles, taking vassals, mustering armies, and going on quests that involve branching dialogue. It’s got a pleasant upstairs-downstairs vibe. On the one hand, you get to paint toy towns on hexagons, as in a traditional 4X or Civ clone; on the other, you can smash-cut to a banqueting scene and watch a drunken dignitary throw a goblet at your master of horse. Here’s the trailer.

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Ubisoft Montpellier’s Beyond Good And Evil 2 has been delayed so much that it has transcended the label of “vapourware”, while staunchly refusing to become “abandonware”. Announced in 2008, it has now comfortably outstripped Duke Nukem Forever as the “triple-A” game with the longest development time. I’m sure there are a few indie passion projects that have been bubbling away in the shadows for longer, but nothing on this scale. What’s less tangible than vapour? Ectoplasm? The promises of small children?

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The developers of Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 have released an update to the third-person shooter that reverts a lot of tough difficulty changes made in a previous patch. Turns out upping the spawn rate of the vicious Tyrannid baddies across all difficulty modes was not welcome among the meathead murder boys of the Imperium. And this change wasn’t the only one that caused enough ructions to justify hasty recalibrations from Saber Interactive.

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