Category: Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Ever been in a position where two people are really going at each other, hurling pointed jabs and insults back and forth, and you’re stuck in the middle? Well then, perhaps you’ll empathise with the enemies in Archons, a twin-stick Vampire Survivors-like where you control two characters at once, and attacks bounce between them automatically as they move about the arena. I gave the Steam Next Fest demo a quick whirl today, and after a couple of swift attempts (I died horribly fast), I realised this could become a bit of a danger to my free time, so I’ve put it away for now.

Read more

Praise the gods, it’s Hades 2 update day, and developers Supergiant are not mucking about. They have bolstered the nippy roguelike with a heap of shiny new things in this “Olympian Update”, including a new weapon with homing attacks, a liver-pecking boss fight, two new animal familiars, and the home region of the Gods – mount Olympus. It’s probably the biggest update they’ve made yet in terms of fresh sights. And by “fresh sights”, I mean Dionysus sporting a leopard-print thong. Yikes.

Read more

In a recent chat with the Ian Games Network, IO Interactive boss Hakan Abrak said the Hitman developer “absolutely feel(s) like 20 plus years of training for the agent fantasy, creating an agent that travels the world and globetrotting whatnot, has given us some know-how” on bringing James Bond to the greasy screen (“greasy screen” is my new attempt at coining a “the big/small screen” but for games. I foresee big success.)

Abrak is so confident, in fact, that he reckons their Bond project might end up mirroring the World Of Assassination’s trilogy format. “But what’s exciting about that project is that we actually got to do an original story,” Abrak says. “So it’s not a gamification of a movie. It’s completely beginning and becoming a story, hopefully for a big trilogy out there in the future.”

It’s a fine interview, worth a read. But I must ask: how are the queues, Abrak? How am I supposed to get excited about a new IO game if you don’t mention the queues?

Read more

I punched a cultist in the face in Streets Of Rogue 2, just because. He started running away – something I would not allow. When another robed cultist spotted what was happening, he tried to intervene, and a kind of Benny Hill pursuit chain began. We ran across a beach, through public toilets, and into the surf. In the end I had to knock them both out. As they lay unconscious, I worried they might soon wake and tell someone what I had done. This can’t happen, I hate accountability. I punched their unawake bodies toward the sea in an effort to float the evidence away. But after a few punches the first man exploded into chunks of flesh. I am a murderer now. I was supposed to be a chef.

Streets Of Rogue 2 has a demo out for Steam Next Fest, and while a lot of features are locked up behind the word “UNAVAILABLE” in red font, there’s still quite a lot of mischief for you to get up to.

Read more

Archetype Entertainment and Blur Studio’s space RPG Exodus was announced back in December, and was broadly notable for a couple of things: 1) Matthew McConaughey plays a character, and 2) the game’s story is woven around time dilation during faster than light travel, with star-hopping adventurers prosecuting a fight against evil Celestials over hundreds, perhaps thousands of years.

Now, it is notable for three things, the third thing being a cosmic blubber-spire of gurning faces who want to eat your ship and soul. Say hello to the Mara Yama, the ickiest Celestial faction so far. Here’s a trailer, in which McConaughey does that thing where he lingers on the sibilants and makes you want to lean in and vigorously mess up his hair.

Read more

The existence of Knights In Tight Spaces, sequel to Fights In Tight Spaces, implies the existence of an unknown quantity or perhaps, an infinity of follow-up games that rhyme with both of those. Frights In Tight Spaces is the obvious horror spin-off. Sleights In Tight Spaces would be an urban pick-pocketing sim. Fights In Trite Spaces is about arguing with people on social media. Ah, you could spend a whole article, indeed, a series of articles, just fleshing out the iterations. Fortunately, Knights In Tight Spaces has a new demo to distract me.

Read more

Ah, what a pickle I’ve gotten myself into. I need to climb down from this table if I’m ever going to meet up with my teammates and finish the game, but the stupid zombies cannot get me if I stay up here. It’s an absolute gherkin, I tell you. A real cornichonundrum.

The steel pipe in my right hand is doing a decent job of whittling them down, and the torch in my left lets me see the expressions of impotent rage on their flaky faces. Still, the pipe won’t last forever – this is videogame steel, the crumbliest steel there is. Thank god No More Room In Hell 2 doesn’t bother with the hunger or rest parts of the survival equation. I can, in theory, stay on this table forever.

Read more

Twitch have temporarily banned an account run by streamer Asmongold, otherwise known as Zack Hoyt, after he expressed genocidal sentiments about Israel’s killing of Palestinian people in Gaza. According to the eSports journalist Rod Breslau, he’s been sent to the naughty step for a grand total of two weeks, which I’m sure will be a huge inconvenience and will really teach him the error of his ways. Assuming Breslau’s sources are accurate, it’s a great demonstration of Twitch’s tolerance for streamers with big audiences, the kind of slap on the wrist you’d expect from a platform that recently reinstated Donald Trump’s account after banning him in 2021 for the charge of inciting an insurrection.

Read more

“Do you have a ping of 1000 or something,” my opponent asked, during my inaugural bout of Straftat. Ah yes, this is it, that sense of unpleasantly intimate sheepishness. That‘s the withering late-90s chatbox scorn I’ve been missing, in this age of glossy live service multiplayer. I hid under a stairwell in order to meditate upon my response, then laboriously typed: “No, I just suck.” Right on cue, the other player tumbled into view and shredded me with an AK.

The player I met in my second match was more forgiving. “I honestly think the characters need more HP,” they said, generously. My wrists need more HP, actually. My eyes and reflexes need urgent patching.

Read more

Riot Games are cutting more jobs at their studios, the company announced today. This is the second time in a year the League of Legends developer has laid off workers. Chairman and co-founder of Riot, Marc Merrill, made the announcement yesterday, claiming that by cutting these jobs the company was “evolving League” and “investing heavily in solving today’s challenges”. A total of 32 people have lost their jobs, mostly workers on League of Legends, according to a figure the developer gave to our sister site Eurogamer.

Read more