Category: Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Hello reader who is also a reader, and welcome back to Booked For The Week – our regular Sunday chat with a selection of cool industry folks about books! This week, I’ve been half reading in the garden and half staring in awe at my Kindle’s paperwhite doohickey and it’s ability to stay readable in searing sunbeams. I’m tempted to look up how it works but I don’t want to find out it’s made from the luminous, genetically-engineered husks of the workers that drop dead from dehydration at the fulfilment centers or something. To help distract me with yet more books, it’s Dishonored: Death Of The Outsider writer and Destiny 2 senior narrative designer, Dr. Hazel Monforton! Cheers Hazel! Mind if we have a nose at your bookshelf?

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Sometimes I want to play a video game, and sometimes I just want to assemble a quiet little Dutch town with iron bridges, fountains and dinky trams bustling about like bumble bees. The project in question is Tramstertram. Aside from being a terrifying feat of punmanship, it’s a browser-based building toy from Matt Stark, creator of the really rather lovely Viewfinder.

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The weekend bears down on us like a host of hissing, barrel-throwing psychics, but there is yet time for some brief updates on Remedy’s Control 2, which Remedy say is coming along nicely. The same is apparently true of the multiplayer Control spin-off Project Condor and the Max Payne 1 & 2 remakes, on which Remedy are collaborating with GTA and Max Payne 3 developers Rockstar.

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When I zoom the camera on Alex’s momentarily untensed face while he’s dozing by the pool, it’s not because I’m a creep. When I pursue Ayo and Dija around the garden, keeping their feet and butts in shot as they belittle each other, it’s not because I’m a busybody and a lech. And when I pan to the lighthouse piercing the sunset beyond the security spikes, it’s not out of any feeling of wonder, or even curiosity about possible escape routes. Please understand: I do not see these people, these objects at all, just the boneless, faceless traces they leave upon my own servitude to the lens.

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The first Splitgate was a cracker mash-up of Halo multiplayer gunfights and Portal‘s nifty spacetime windows. It was a gimmick that made flanking fun again, at least until you died to a distant rifle that was right next to you all along. Its sequel, Splitgate 2 is continuing that gimmick but is also sprucing up the free-to-play arena shooter with a few modern additions, like bum-sliding around corners and big deployable bubbles called “time domes” that slow down your enemies yet speed up your allies. All this and more comes from a gameplay trailer that went up yesterday.

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The new God Of War duology has my favourite snow in gaming. I can take or leave about 60% of everything else in them, but lawdy, that snow! In God Of War Ragnarok, the action kicks off a during the apocalyptic fimbulwinter, which is probably bad for some characters I don’t care about, but it is good for me personally, because there’s a lot of snow to play with.

How much snow, you ask? 190 flippin’ gigs worth, apparently, according to Sony’s system requirements.

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Shapez 2 will launch in Early Access on August 15th, bringing the relaxing, shape-cutting factory builder into 3D.

In a new post, its lead developer has laid out what to expect from Early Access. In the main: a polished, 40 hours-or-so experience with no known major issues, and a post-release roadmap waiting to be defined by player feedback.

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Did The Gentlebros come up with the pun “Pi-Rats” and then work backwards from there in deciding that Cat Quest 3 should be pirate themed? Or was “Purr-ibean” the initiating pun? I feel that the action-RPG sequel had to begin with one of wordplay or another, given that its Steam page boasts that it also has “furr-ocious spells” and “gla-meow-rous costumes”.

It’s also claws-out now on Steam, which has me feline fine.

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Roblox has been banned in Turkey, with a government agency citing concerns over “child exploitation.”

The decision to ban all access to the game and platform was taken by the Turkish Information and Communication Technologies Authority (BTK), who also blocked access to Instagram in the country earlier this week.

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You’re a long time undead. 7 Days To Die was shuffling along in early access for 11 years, until version 1.0 finally burst through the windows. In that time, many other survival games have sprouted, blossomed, and gently faded away. I first visited the burnt-out ruins of this zombie-infested world a decade ago and I returned to it this week to find a tree-puncher that, despite bearing the pockmarks of early access, retains much of what made it enjoyable back when the survival genre was still wearing its baby onesie. Instead of a review, I figured I’d scribble together a mini starter guide for new (or returning) players. Partly because the game is a proper time sink and it was taking me so long to get through everything. But mostly because I wanted to use that numberful headline. So, here you go: 7 dos and 7 don’ts in 7 Days To (7) Die.

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