Category: Rock, Paper, Shotgun

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.

Read more

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.

Read more

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.

Read more

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.

Read more

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.

Read more

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.

Read more

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.

Read more

I was partial to a scrappy little strategy game even before idiot billionaires doomed the planet, and the UK to brain-steaming heat just when you thought we’d escape it this year. Khaligrad is plenty scrappy. Its edges are rough and you have to figure it out yourself, but it’s more intuitive than it appears, and easy to operate once you discern some basics. It’s scrappy too in that it’s, well. It’s Stalingrad. Not really: its world is so fictional it’s their 15th century. But the invaders are explicitly fascists and the defenders communists embroiled in a long and brutal semi-guerrilla city war with World War 2 technology. Thankfully, it’s stripped of any actual fashy or genocidal play-acting beyond each side doing “hail the empire/union” bits as a sign off.

I think that’s why, despite its brutal and difficult setting, it’s this year’s entry in the long tradition of Low-Intensity Strategy Games For When Hot Why Hot Please Stop You Cannot See My Begging Tears For They Evaporate.

Read more

WolfEye’s debut game Weird West attempted to pack a little of Dishonored‘s immersive sim sorcery into a top-down action-RPG. For the studio’s next game, co-founders Raphaël Colantonio and Julien Roby are leaning into comparisons with their old endeavours at Arkane more earnestly. The new game – currently untitled and without a release date – is a first-person sci-fi RPG set in an alternate-1900s North America, which ostensibly combines the ingenuity and gadgetry of Dishonored and Prey with a “real RPG” experience redolent of Skyrim and modern-day Fallout.

Read more

I’d initially assumed that puzzle game Sliding Hero counts was a Sokoban-like, until I realised that it’s actually you, not endless boxes, that do the sliding here. Still, I wasn’t entirely convinced. The only thing that’s fun to slide back-and-forth indefinitely is a lounging cat on a smooth kitchen worktop. Still, after messing around with Sliding Hero’s Steam demo, I think this one might have much longer legs than its restrictive-sounding concept suggests. All the better to endlessly slide with.

Read more