Oh, and new Indiana Jones And The Great Circle trailer! Great. I’ve been looking forward to a nice, juicy chunk of extended gameplay. You know, something to really convey the flow of the game, rather than the admittedly impressive but nonetheless very fragmented snippets we’ve gotten so far. Now to sit back and…oh, wait. Hang on. It’s just actor Troy Baker telling me about all the great acting he’ll be doing. It is great, by the way. He’s doing a fantastic job. Maybe just, you know, a crumb of acknowledgement or elucidation over the whole ‘interactivity’ part?

Anyway, don’t mind me. I’m just an old fool who likes to press buttons. And, to be fair, it's not like Machinegames don't have a great track record. Anyway, here’s some good news: The game releases December 9th this year. Have a release date trailer.

Read more

Little Nightmares DNA runs strong in Tarsier Studios’ new game. So much so, in fact, that I’d assumed the trailer I watched during an online preview event last week was for a new entry in the horror cinematic-platformer series, right up until the name Reanimal appeared on the screen - shortly followed by a snippet of voiced dialogue.

It’s not just the horror setting, but the Grimm’s fairytale threat, the distorted adults-made-monsters through the trauma-tinged lens of a child’s imagination. A long-limbed man riding a bicycle in a threadbare suit chases children down an alley. A gangly, bowler-hatted pursuer scuttles down a long table like a spider. It's familiar enough territory, at least at first glance. But when Tarsier have a body of work subconsciously scarred by phantasms this vivid, recurring nightmares are just as potent.

Read more

Fine, that was slightly mean of me. There’s clearly at least fifteen people still playing Starfield, and Bethesda are today rewarding their commitment with a free buggy named the Rev-8. Today! It actually looks pretty nifty. With it, you’ll be able to hop, jump, and skip the tedious ballache that was hoofing it across the RPG’s needlessly large planets. Here’s a looksie:

Read more

ARPG (not to be confused with action RPG, the comments inform me) Path Of Exile 2 will release in early access November 15th, 2024.

Grinding Gear Games have been set on a November window for a while now, but this is the first time they’ve nailed down a date, and possibly clicked on it a bunch of times to show how serious they are. Do a game related verb I can’t accurately name because I never played past that beach at the beginning of the first game, and do it in the general direction of the trailer below. Watch it. Just watch it.

Read more

This seems like an odd one. I’m only tangentially familiar with the Dying Light games, but I was under the impression that the model here was releasing a single game, then updating and expanding it for years. Whether standalone adventure Dying Light: The Beast represents an attempt to course correct after Dying Light 2’s mixed reception, then, I’m not entirely sure. But if nothing else, it does share something in common with all the other adverts at Gamescom tonight: it is a game that exists, and will presumably be playable at some point.

Read more

The trailers of Gamescom 2024 want to be here with you, explained Keighley in his opening monologue. They are not directed at you. They are with you. That's lovely. Thanks videogames. And if - as we surely must - we judge the eagerness of these adverts to spend time with us by how quickly they appear on our screens, then FPS sequel Borderlands 4 surely loves us the most.

Do we love it back? Who knows. But it does exist, and it isn’t using a subtitle. That’s got to count for something, right?

Read more

As much as I’m a sucker for the grimmest and darkest of grimdark fantasy settings, the try-hardness of it all can get a bit grating at times. You could make the same argument at the opposite end of spectrum, of course. Cosy games seem locked in a perpetual arms-race to twee each other into the dirt, chopping their rival’s dog-petting hands off and taking a sparkly tinkle on their pastel corpses. But hand-drawn RPG Heroes Of The Seven Islands feels more authentic than all that. It’s bedroom antifolk by way of chill dungeon synth, by way of an antelope sorcerer named Jean-Pierre.

Read more

Oh, hey, would you look at that? Total War: Warhammer 3's patch 5.2.0 (arriving later today) has some new orcs and goblins in it.

Look at 'em! They've got swords and shields now!

Read more

Tactical Breach Wizards is a tactics game for people that don’t like tactics games. Magically, it’s also a tactics game for people who love them like nothing else. It’s permissive and demanding; playful and tense. Its globe-spanning plot covers conspiracies, PMCs, and brutal theocratic dictatorships. It also features a traffic-summoning warlock named Steve wearing a hi-vis robe. It’s finding that one absolutely, perfectly ridiculous XCOM turn, every turn…and at the same time knowing it’s absolutely, perfectly fine if you don’t. In short: it’s one of the most enjoyable tactics games I’ve ever played, and the only tactics game with a pyromancer so rubbish he relies on making his enemies pass out from heatstroke.

Read more

I’ve likely mentioned hitting Lovecraft fatigue so often that it’s now evolved into a second phase of Lovecraft-fatigue fatigue. This is not the same as Lovecraft refreshment, no matter how much I might want to return to the days before old one plushies and Cthulhu children’s books terrorised the internet en masse. There’s not quite enough information about “story generator” sim Marry a Deep One: Innsmouth Simulator for me to confidently say it’ll cut through my exhaustion with all things tentacular and horrifically be-gilled. But it is beguiling, isn’t it? There’s all sorts of little widgets and details shown off that remind me of everything from Sid Meier’s Pirates to classic adventure games, and maybe even a little Rimworld? It’s a heady soup, although one I’d recommend against quaffing, given where the water comes from.

Read more

Last week, the Xitter account for H2M - a mod aiming to recreate the heyday of classic Modern Warfare 2 multiplayer inside Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered - announced that they had received a cease and desist from Activision Blizzard, and would shut down the project. The 2022 version of Modern Warfare 2 lacked the original’s multiplayer, and H2M was so highly-anticipated that Steam sales of the 2016 FPS balooned in the lead-up to the mod’s planned release date. It didn't hurt that Activision had it on sale, of course, but the timing lined up so well that some fans speculated the discount was a deliberate bait-and-switch on the publisher’s part to profit from excitement over a mod they were already planning to shut down.

Read more

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! You know books, right? They’re like RPS articles, but slightly better for piling under a flock mat to make little hills for your plastic spacemen. Fitting, then, that this week it’s plastic spaceman enthusiast, writer on Absolver, Nightingale, Gladius, and Total War: Warhammer 3, and Ten Things Video Games Can Teach Us author, Dan Griliopoulos! Cheers Dan! Mind if we have a nose at your bookshelf?

Read more

Sundays are for cat. I’m currently in the process of acquiring a gorgeous white and ginger kitten for the local shelter. I have seen four seconds of footage and I’m already smitten, kitten. Before I spend the weekend getting very excited about big stretches, let’s read this week’s best writing about games (and game related things!)

Read more

Any gags I could make about an update that lets Total War: Warhammer 3’s dawi play tall are far too obvious for the discerning comedic palette that brought you such bangers as that time I just wrote “(penis)” a bunch so the Overkill’s Walking Dead page wouldn’t quote me out of context, so let’s just dive right in to the details. The strategy game’s 5.2 update is on the horizon, and tagging along with it are the first of the “extra bits” the team teased in June. I’m very excited about them. They sit somewhere between the usual patch fare of stat tweaks and errata, and the weightier faction facelifts that come alongside paid DLC. They’re also focused right where Immortal Empires needs them the most: depth, rather than width. In the dawi’s case, quite literally.

Read more

It’s an oddly Halloweeny summer week for games, this one. Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s October 31st release date leaked earlier, Steam have put together a Summer Fright Night bundle featuring RPS fave Hauntii, and I’ve got a strange urge to gorge on Haribo and mini Double Deckers until blood comes out of my eyeballs. What a perfect time, then, to dive into the alpha demo for vampire management game Blood Bar Tycoon, especially since Two Point seem to be resting on their laurels a bit too comfortably for my liking.

The idea here is you build a swanky bar serving claret cosmopolitans, ichor-ish coffees and uh, viscera vampiros to your undead clientele. But (with the sorta exception of the crimson-sapped Dracaena cinnabari) blood doesn’t grow on trees, so you’ll also be moonlighting as a human-nabber. You’ll research a slew of “whacky contraptions” to extract their blood, which I greatly enjoy, because “zany exsanguination” is a real winner of a feature. You can’t frivolously phlebotomise with impunity, however - you’ll also want to be on the lookout for vampire hunters aka the fun police.

Read more

Steam’s seeing a good few sweeping changes of late. They’ve recently added a ‘Trending Free’ tab to separate the no money down and no, money down playables. And, as of September, they’re cracking down on links to other websites in store pages. Now, horror of horrors, they’re coming for your ascii gigachads and “nobody is going to read this review so I’ll just say I’m gay” bangers. The changes are part of their ‘New Helpfulness System’, outlined here.

The new system, which will be enabled by default but can be toggled off, aims to “help potential players make informed decisions about the games they are considering purchasing by understanding the attributes of the game that other players like or don't like.” Ah, so a sort of ‘review’, if you will. I like it!

Read more

KIBORG: Arena feels like a throwback in several ways that I quite enjoy. It’s a free prologue to the upcoming cyberpunk puncher KIBORG. The titular arena is a large room in which you, a large man, bash a large amount of enemies. You have to punch a gong between waves to trigger the next, and this struck me as a nice pre-emptive nudge that every problem you face in Kiborg can be solved by rapidly moving your fist towards offending objects, which turned out not to be too far off the mark.

Read more

It’s been looking grim for Super Earth recently. I mean, not really. Multiplayer shooty Helldivers 2 is still sitting around 35,000 concurrent players, which is perfectly respectable, if only around 10% of its peak back in April. Still, a clutch of disgruntled ‘divers have recently found a novel way to protest an increasingly unpopular series of nerfs: laying down their guns and letting the bots take the damn planet.

“If Super Earth wanted to remain safe, they would stop nerfing our guns," reads one comment on the subreddit, in response to a post titled “Let the bots advance. Let the Super Earth burn.” It seems to have picked up some steam inside the actual game, too. As of earlier this week, there’s only around a thousand players actively trying to stop the bots advancing perilously close to the home planet, via Gamesradar.

Whether this is all massively overblown for the sake of a dramatic yarn or not, Arrowhead themselves have taken note of player concerns over nerfs. Yesterday, game director Mikael Eriksson unveiled a plan for the next 60 days, directly addressing player feedback over the controversial ‘Escalation of Freedom’ update.

Read more

The survivors in the upcoming Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster - itself an update of the 2016 HD version of the 2006 zombie open-mall action game - are still idiots. I’m starting to regret giving Burt a gun, honestly. Every time he bumps into a magazine rack he starts screaming like someone’s eating his face, and the little circle above his name turns red to indicate he’s in danger. That’s a mannequin, Burt. They can’t hurt you. They’re actually known for not being able to move.

Read more

As long-time readers will know, I'm a piteous mark for weird little game guys. I’m currently trying to puzzle out what the titular Mother Machine in The Curious Expedition studio Maschinen-Mensch’s upcoming co-op platformer refers to. But, if it’s a reference to forming a parental bond with what the game has saw-me-comingishly named “chaos gremlins”, I'm way ahead of you.

Ah, the press release speaketh! Probably should have read some more before I began exclaiming “Chaos Gremlins!” over and over. Have an announcement trailer.

Read more

Well, root my toots. Unless you’re Australian, in which case don't do that. Just enjoy the now very much confirmed-looking release of the original Red Dead Redemption on PC. That’s according to a listing on the PlayStation Store, which contains the currently inaccurate but tantalising phrase “now on PC for the first time ever.”

Read more

Conan Throwbrien welcomes its host to the stage with discordant jazz and uncanny colour bars glitches. It feels eerie. Desperate. A crushing inevitability. Four joke topics appear at the bottom of the screen. Ridiculous celebrity kids names. Action figures for news anchors. Diet water sales boom. You cautiously slide that last one over to the microphone. Throwbrien emits a string of chirps, like a flame-crested lyre bird with a wounded voicebox trying to mimic human language. “Have you folks heard about this one…”

There is an implied terror in this seemingly friendly opener. What if they have heard this one? What will Throwbrien do then?

Read more

Tango Gameworks are back from the dead. The Hi-Fi Rush studio have been acquired - alongside the IP for future games in the rhythm action series - by South Korean company Krafton, who also own PUBG Studios and Striking Distance, among others. “This strategic move will include the rights to Tango Gameworks’ acclaimed IP, Hi-Fi Rush,” Krafton said in a statement today. I particularly enjoy the hand-rubbing, grinning use of the word ‘strategic’ here. Great news though.

Read more

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?

Read more

Sundays are for more Gene Wolfe. I’ve finished Shadow Of The Torturer now, and I think Claw Of The Conciliator might be even better so far? Before I become ever more enamoured with Severian’s self-mythologising antics, let’s read this week’s best writing about games (and game related things!)

Read more

Oh, and new Indiana Jones And The Great Circle trailer! Great. I’ve been looking forward to a nice, juicy chunk of extended gameplay. You know, something to really convey the flow of the game, rather than the admittedly impressive but nonetheless very fragmented snippets we’ve gotten so far. Now to sit back and…oh, wait. Hang on. It’s just actor Troy Baker telling me about all the great acting he’ll be doing. It is great, by the way. He’s doing a fantastic job. Maybe just, you know, a crumb of acknowledgement or elucidation over the whole ‘interactivity’ part?

Anyway, don’t mind me. I’m just an old fool who likes to press buttons. And, to be fair, it's not like Machinegames don't have a great track record. Anyway, here’s some good news: The game releases December 9th this year. Have a release date trailer.

Read more

Little Nightmares DNA runs strong in Tarsier Studios’ new game. So much so, in fact, that I’d assumed the trailer I watched during an online preview event last week was for a new entry in the horror cinematic-platformer series, right up until the name Reanimal appeared on the screen - shortly followed by a snippet of voiced dialogue.

It’s not just the horror setting, but the Grimm’s fairytale threat, the distorted adults-made-monsters through the trauma-tinged lens of a child’s imagination. A long-limbed man riding a bicycle in a threadbare suit chases children down an alley. A gangly, bowler-hatted pursuer scuttles down a long table like a spider. It's familiar enough territory, at least at first glance. But when Tarsier have a body of work subconsciously scarred by phantasms this vivid, recurring nightmares are just as potent.

Read more

Fine, that was slightly mean of me. There’s clearly at least fifteen people still playing Starfield, and Bethesda are today rewarding their commitment with a free buggy named the Rev-8. Today! It actually looks pretty nifty. With it, you’ll be able to hop, jump, and skip the tedious ballache that was hoofing it across the RPG’s needlessly large planets. Here’s a looksie:

Read more

ARPG (not to be confused with action RPG, the comments inform me) Path Of Exile 2 will release in early access November 15th, 2024.

Grinding Gear Games have been set on a November window for a while now, but this is the first time they’ve nailed down a date, and possibly clicked on it a bunch of times to show how serious they are. Do a game related verb I can’t accurately name because I never played past that beach at the beginning of the first game, and do it in the general direction of the trailer below. Watch it. Just watch it.

Read more

This seems like an odd one. I’m only tangentially familiar with the Dying Light games, but I was under the impression that the model here was releasing a single game, then updating and expanding it for years. Whether standalone adventure Dying Light: The Beast represents an attempt to course correct after Dying Light 2’s mixed reception, then, I’m not entirely sure. But if nothing else, it does share something in common with all the other adverts at Gamescom tonight: it is a game that exists, and will presumably be playable at some point.

Read more

The trailers of Gamescom 2024 want to be here with you, explained Keighley in his opening monologue. They are not directed at you. They are with you. That's lovely. Thanks videogames. And if - as we surely must - we judge the eagerness of these adverts to spend time with us by how quickly they appear on our screens, then FPS sequel Borderlands 4 surely loves us the most.

Do we love it back? Who knows. But it does exist, and it isn’t using a subtitle. That’s got to count for something, right?

Read more

As much as I’m a sucker for the grimmest and darkest of grimdark fantasy settings, the try-hardness of it all can get a bit grating at times. You could make the same argument at the opposite end of spectrum, of course. Cosy games seem locked in a perpetual arms-race to twee each other into the dirt, chopping their rival’s dog-petting hands off and taking a sparkly tinkle on their pastel corpses. But hand-drawn RPG Heroes Of The Seven Islands feels more authentic than all that. It’s bedroom antifolk by way of chill dungeon synth, by way of an antelope sorcerer named Jean-Pierre.

Read more

Oh, hey, would you look at that? Total War: Warhammer 3's patch 5.2.0 (arriving later today) has some new orcs and goblins in it.

Look at 'em! They've got swords and shields now!

Read more

Tactical Breach Wizards is a tactics game for people that don’t like tactics games. Magically, it’s also a tactics game for people who love them like nothing else. It’s permissive and demanding; playful and tense. Its globe-spanning plot covers conspiracies, PMCs, and brutal theocratic dictatorships. It also features a traffic-summoning warlock named Steve wearing a hi-vis robe. It’s finding that one absolutely, perfectly ridiculous XCOM turn, every turn…and at the same time knowing it’s absolutely, perfectly fine if you don’t. In short: it’s one of the most enjoyable tactics games I’ve ever played, and the only tactics game with a pyromancer so rubbish he relies on making his enemies pass out from heatstroke.

Read more

I’ve likely mentioned hitting Lovecraft fatigue so often that it’s now evolved into a second phase of Lovecraft-fatigue fatigue. This is not the same as Lovecraft refreshment, no matter how much I might want to return to the days before old one plushies and Cthulhu children’s books terrorised the internet en masse. There’s not quite enough information about “story generator” sim Marry a Deep One: Innsmouth Simulator for me to confidently say it’ll cut through my exhaustion with all things tentacular and horrifically be-gilled. But it is beguiling, isn’t it? There’s all sorts of little widgets and details shown off that remind me of everything from Sid Meier’s Pirates to classic adventure games, and maybe even a little Rimworld? It’s a heady soup, although one I’d recommend against quaffing, given where the water comes from.

Read more

Last week, the Xitter account for H2M - a mod aiming to recreate the heyday of classic Modern Warfare 2 multiplayer inside Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered - announced that they had received a cease and desist from Activision Blizzard, and would shut down the project. The 2022 version of Modern Warfare 2 lacked the original’s multiplayer, and H2M was so highly-anticipated that Steam sales of the 2016 FPS balooned in the lead-up to the mod’s planned release date. It didn't hurt that Activision had it on sale, of course, but the timing lined up so well that some fans speculated the discount was a deliberate bait-and-switch on the publisher’s part to profit from excitement over a mod they were already planning to shut down.

Read more

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! You know books, right? They’re like RPS articles, but slightly better for piling under a flock mat to make little hills for your plastic spacemen. Fitting, then, that this week it’s plastic spaceman enthusiast, writer on Absolver, Nightingale, Gladius, and Total War: Warhammer 3, and Ten Things Video Games Can Teach Us author, Dan Griliopoulos! Cheers Dan! Mind if we have a nose at your bookshelf?

Read more

Sundays are for cat. I’m currently in the process of acquiring a gorgeous white and ginger kitten for the local shelter. I have seen four seconds of footage and I’m already smitten, kitten. Before I spend the weekend getting very excited about big stretches, let’s read this week’s best writing about games (and game related things!)

Read more

Any gags I could make about an update that lets Total War: Warhammer 3’s dawi play tall are far too obvious for the discerning comedic palette that brought you such bangers as that time I just wrote “(penis)” a bunch so the Overkill’s Walking Dead page wouldn’t quote me out of context, so let’s just dive right in to the details. The strategy game’s 5.2 update is on the horizon, and tagging along with it are the first of the “extra bits” the team teased in June. I’m very excited about them. They sit somewhere between the usual patch fare of stat tweaks and errata, and the weightier faction facelifts that come alongside paid DLC. They’re also focused right where Immortal Empires needs them the most: depth, rather than width. In the dawi’s case, quite literally.

Read more

It’s an oddly Halloweeny summer week for games, this one. Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s October 31st release date leaked earlier, Steam have put together a Summer Fright Night bundle featuring RPS fave Hauntii, and I’ve got a strange urge to gorge on Haribo and mini Double Deckers until blood comes out of my eyeballs. What a perfect time, then, to dive into the alpha demo for vampire management game Blood Bar Tycoon, especially since Two Point seem to be resting on their laurels a bit too comfortably for my liking.

The idea here is you build a swanky bar serving claret cosmopolitans, ichor-ish coffees and uh, viscera vampiros to your undead clientele. But (with the sorta exception of the crimson-sapped Dracaena cinnabari) blood doesn’t grow on trees, so you’ll also be moonlighting as a human-nabber. You’ll research a slew of “whacky contraptions” to extract their blood, which I greatly enjoy, because “zany exsanguination” is a real winner of a feature. You can’t frivolously phlebotomise with impunity, however - you’ll also want to be on the lookout for vampire hunters aka the fun police.

Read more

Steam’s seeing a good few sweeping changes of late. They’ve recently added a ‘Trending Free’ tab to separate the no money down and no, money down playables. And, as of September, they’re cracking down on links to other websites in store pages. Now, horror of horrors, they’re coming for your ascii gigachads and “nobody is going to read this review so I’ll just say I’m gay” bangers. The changes are part of their ‘New Helpfulness System’, outlined here.

The new system, which will be enabled by default but can be toggled off, aims to “help potential players make informed decisions about the games they are considering purchasing by understanding the attributes of the game that other players like or don't like.” Ah, so a sort of ‘review’, if you will. I like it!

Read more

KIBORG: Arena feels like a throwback in several ways that I quite enjoy. It’s a free prologue to the upcoming cyberpunk puncher KIBORG. The titular arena is a large room in which you, a large man, bash a large amount of enemies. You have to punch a gong between waves to trigger the next, and this struck me as a nice pre-emptive nudge that every problem you face in Kiborg can be solved by rapidly moving your fist towards offending objects, which turned out not to be too far off the mark.

Read more

It’s been looking grim for Super Earth recently. I mean, not really. Multiplayer shooty Helldivers 2 is still sitting around 35,000 concurrent players, which is perfectly respectable, if only around 10% of its peak back in April. Still, a clutch of disgruntled ‘divers have recently found a novel way to protest an increasingly unpopular series of nerfs: laying down their guns and letting the bots take the damn planet.

“If Super Earth wanted to remain safe, they would stop nerfing our guns," reads one comment on the subreddit, in response to a post titled “Let the bots advance. Let the Super Earth burn.” It seems to have picked up some steam inside the actual game, too. As of earlier this week, there’s only around a thousand players actively trying to stop the bots advancing perilously close to the home planet, via Gamesradar.

Whether this is all massively overblown for the sake of a dramatic yarn or not, Arrowhead themselves have taken note of player concerns over nerfs. Yesterday, game director Mikael Eriksson unveiled a plan for the next 60 days, directly addressing player feedback over the controversial ‘Escalation of Freedom’ update.

Read more

The survivors in the upcoming Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster - itself an update of the 2016 HD version of the 2006 zombie open-mall action game - are still idiots. I’m starting to regret giving Burt a gun, honestly. Every time he bumps into a magazine rack he starts screaming like someone’s eating his face, and the little circle above his name turns red to indicate he’s in danger. That’s a mannequin, Burt. They can’t hurt you. They’re actually known for not being able to move.

Read more

As long-time readers will know, I'm a piteous mark for weird little game guys. I’m currently trying to puzzle out what the titular Mother Machine in The Curious Expedition studio Maschinen-Mensch’s upcoming co-op platformer refers to. But, if it’s a reference to forming a parental bond with what the game has saw-me-comingishly named “chaos gremlins”, I'm way ahead of you.

Ah, the press release speaketh! Probably should have read some more before I began exclaiming “Chaos Gremlins!” over and over. Have an announcement trailer.

Read more

Well, root my toots. Unless you’re Australian, in which case don't do that. Just enjoy the now very much confirmed-looking release of the original Red Dead Redemption on PC. That’s according to a listing on the PlayStation Store, which contains the currently inaccurate but tantalising phrase “now on PC for the first time ever.”

Read more

Conan Throwbrien welcomes its host to the stage with discordant jazz and uncanny colour bars glitches. It feels eerie. Desperate. A crushing inevitability. Four joke topics appear at the bottom of the screen. Ridiculous celebrity kids names. Action figures for news anchors. Diet water sales boom. You cautiously slide that last one over to the microphone. Throwbrien emits a string of chirps, like a flame-crested lyre bird with a wounded voicebox trying to mimic human language. “Have you folks heard about this one…”

There is an implied terror in this seemingly friendly opener. What if they have heard this one? What will Throwbrien do then?

Read more

Tango Gameworks are back from the dead. The Hi-Fi Rush studio have been acquired - alongside the IP for future games in the rhythm action series - by South Korean company Krafton, who also own PUBG Studios and Striking Distance, among others. “This strategic move will include the rights to Tango Gameworks’ acclaimed IP, Hi-Fi Rush,” Krafton said in a statement today. I particularly enjoy the hand-rubbing, grinning use of the word ‘strategic’ here. Great news though.

Read more

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?

Read more

Sundays are for more Gene Wolfe. I’ve finished Shadow Of The Torturer now, and I think Claw Of The Conciliator might be even better so far? Before I become ever more enamoured with Severian’s self-mythologising antics, let’s read this week’s best writing about games (and game related things!)

Read more