Category: Rock, Paper, Shotgun

We’ve had a glut of articles about gloomier video games on here today, Rachel’s bright and breezy Dungeons Of Hinterberg review notwithstanding. Tomorrow, I promise, it’ll be wall-to-wall wholesome life sims, pastel petals and hug emojis as far as the eye can see. But before then, a quick piece on well-received DreadXP-published horror sim The Mortuary Assistant, which will shortly be updated with an “endless embalming-only mode” that strips out the game’s supernatural scares and turns it into a very downbeat job sim.

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A good immersive sim, by its very nature, offers myriad varied approaches to solving problems. And yet, I find myself wanting to get hyper-specific when writing about the action of Corpus Edax, because it has an incredibly gratifying metal pipe sound, whether you’re stealthy wrapping it around the back of a blissfully unaware fool’s noggin, or lobbing it directly at their knee caps. In fact – although the game does have a delightful array of classic verbs, along with a few surprises – many of them are simply conducive to a stirring round of fisticuffs, to write my most British sentence of the week.

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I’ve been fumbling for a grasp on Bokeh’s skull-splitting horror game Slitterhead since I first heard the words “brought to you by Keiichiro Toyama, former designer of Silent Hill, Siren and Gravity Rush”. Thanks to a new interview, I now have a proper description of the relationship between protagonist and antagonist. Friends, Romans and countrymen: this is a game about a war between two sets of body-stealing monsters, waged in the neon shadows of a fictional East Asian city. It all puts me strongly in mind of a certain John Carpenter movie about squelchy goings-on in Antarctica.

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When you dive into the mess of folders on your PC, what do you find? Cobweb-plastered manuscripts for those twelve fantasy novels you started? Mouldy design documents for those nine games you never actually began coding? Perhaps dozens of little motheaten thumbnails of that masterpiece you’re planning to someday paint? Relax, I’m not calling you out (I have my own groaning cybercabinet of neglect). Rather, I’m here to say don’t worry. Everyone does it. Even famous Final Fantasy character designer and Kingdom Hearts director Tetsuya Nomura, who has a “huge number of game proposals lying dormant” in a mish mash of folders on his PC. You’re just like him!

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I’ve tried visual novel games in the past, like A Space For The Unbound and Hatoful Boyfriend. And what’s frustrating is that I just don’t get on with them, despite knowing that they can convey brilliant stories through all sorts of interesting cuts and shots and whatnot. I’m sorry to report that certain stories won’t grab me if they’re not ticking along at just the right pace or if they don’t pull me in straight away. I’m a needy soul, someone who demands immediacy and a special emotional sauce.

Until Then is, without a doubt, the only visual novel-y game I’ve truly enjoyed. In fact, I’d say I’ve more than enjoyed it – I think it’s superb so far. The teens that drive this story are written with an authenticity I’ve not encountered before, and the 3D interwoven with the 2D adds some surprising – besides the literal – depth.

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Usually when a game makes me want to stop playing and go outside it’s a bad sign, but with Dungeons of Hinterberg it’s different. It’s an action RPG that made me pine for the outdoors and want to be whisked away from all my responsibilities and just exist for a bit. Each time I would finish playing I’d be thinking about my next getaway, and although dungeon delving wouldn’t be on my holiday itinerary Dungeons of Hinterberg is making me think twice.

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No Man’s Sky is getting a big new Worlds update which treats the space sim’s gazillions of planets to a sumptuous overhaul, using technology devised for stablemate fantasy sim Light No Fire, which only has one planet, albeit a “literally Earth-sized” one with dragons. Catch a deep dive trailer for the Worlds update below.

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If DICE’s Battlefield series lacks for one feature, it’s surely the option to dig trenches. Properly dig them, I mean, not just waft them into existence with a wave of your magic trowel, a la Battlefield V. Think Minecraft, but with howitzers instead of Creepers. I have never been to war, but I do own several shovels, and let me tell you, if I ever hear artillery fire or even just dangerously raised voices round these parts, the first thing I will do is tunnel straight down.

Fuck it, I might do that if I read any negative comments on this news piece. Vex me not with your pestilent talk of “map balancing”. Watch this trailer for Flying Squirrel’s new FPS Over The Top WW1 instead. It abounds with trench-digging, and it looks like you can make some decent-sized craters, too.

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Back in 2011, Robot Entertainment released tower defender Orcs Must Die!, adding an exclamation mark to spark some urgency and also, irritate anybody who has to write about video games for a living, though not as much as the absolute maniacs behind Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X. Evidently, players did not sufficiently meet their demand for wanton Orc-massacring, for Robot were forced to release two sequels, which I personally would have titled Orcs Must Die!! and Orcs Must Die!!! or perhaps Orcs Must Die!!?, to indicate a mounting existential crisis.

Now, Robot have stepped things up by announcing Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap, a newly roguelite, four-player spin on the goblin-farming formula, whose subheading throws bumbling Orc murderers a bone by specifying that you might try building a trap of some kind, a deathtrap possibly. Please find below a suspiciously innocent trailer, which I promise you isn’t covering a wall of arrow launchers or similar.

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I increasingly judge Souls-adjacent games not by the height of their bosses or the depth of their dungeons, but the cleverness of their shortcuts, and Flintlock: Siege Of Dawn has my favourite shortcuts in an age. Rather than just being routes around to the other side of a barred door – though there are plenty such Lordrannish loops to find in this game – they consist of aerial chains of magic, purple triangles that suck you toward them when you hold a button. They lend vigour to a branching, faux-Napoleonic world that might otherwise be a collection of atmospheric strolls between bonfire-equivalents and fights defined by taut resourcing systems. They’re idiot-proof grappling points from which you can launch yourself at another triangle, a ledgeful of upgrade materials, or a loitering musketeer who is in urgent need of a ground-pound.

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