Rock Paper Shotgun

Deep in my heart I know that Hall of Fame-type accolades are largely just a way of dressing up a way of marketing your awards show/museum/whatever, but I also like to occasionally cast away the cynic in me and imagine a world in which this industry’s most important games and creators are rightly recognised, celebrated and preserved rather than being locked away in the vault of billion-dollar companies and left to rot. Imagine!

After rebooting Final Fantasy 7 as the trilogy of Remake, Rebirth and Really, You Went With That? (TBC), Square Enix are now planning to reboot themselves. Among the publishers’ revamped approach to making money - following a recent drop in profits, per their latest financials - is a more “aggressive” approach to bringing their games to more platforms than specific consoles (in other words, PlayStation) as exclusives, with a particular focus on “win[ning] over PC users”.

The story of Manor Lords’ soundtrack begins, as all inspiring tales do, with hunched-over late-night doom scrolling. It was pre-covid, and Pressure Cooker Studios’ composer Daniel Caleb was flicking through reddit posts when a trailer cut through the glare. He’d never heard of Manor Lords before. It looked like a new IP, but already had a huge Reddit following. Caleb loved what he saw. At that point, Pressure Cooker mainly worked on film scores, but both Caleb and fellow composer Elben Schutte... Читать дальше...

This news post leaves me in a quandary, readers, because I will need to write a swear word for the sake of full journalistic transparency, but Google’s algorithms tend to frown on sweary articles. On the other hand, Google’s algorithms don’t like it when you spend whole intros handwringing about Google’s algorithms, either, so let’s stop, er, faffing around and speak of Doom. Id Software parent company Zenimax recently trademarked “IDKFA”, a string of letters that will be of deep significance to original Doom players... Читать дальше...

Like with getting fancy polyhedral dice sets full of all glitter and wool, buying and owning are two different hobbies when it comes to books. I think this has gotten worse (if that's the word?) with the increasingly popularity of BookTok, the book-centric community on TikTok. It's really mobilised young people towards reading (which is good) but in some cases drives a consumption for consumption's sake approach, where one must have read new books to talk about, one must take no breaths between reading... Читать дальше...

The former lead writer of charming super-fascist simulator Helldivers 2 is working on a strategy and tactics RPG in the vein of Nintendo and Intelligent System's Fire Emblem games, which aren't available on PC and as such, are a complete mystery to you, a lifelong desktop warrior who would sooner cut their hand off than suffer it to brush against one of those filthy Nintendo witches, I mean Switches.

ROBOBEAT is the third one of these new-fangled rhythm FPS games I’ve played - after BPM: Bullets Per Minute and Metal: Hellsinger - and the first one I’ve actually clicked with. The concept evidently appeals to me enough to try out those other two, but I guess that I’m simply too much of a rebel-maverick-disruptor to play to the stiflingly enforced rhythms of somebody else’s drum. Something about ROBOBEAT’s roguelike shooting feels different though.

What if Scorn, but it's one that your mum got you for Christmas? That's easy, it's Necrophosis, baby. Much like Scorn, Necrophosis is also part-inspired by the dystopian surrealist works of Zdzisław Beksiński, which means lots of plucking brains out of sinewy bodies and plopping them into fleshy receptacles. There's a demo out now and while it's not outstanding, it tickled my curiosity more than I thought it would.

Back in the late 90s when all of you NORMIES were playing Diablo, I was playing a little-known Konami ARPG called Azure Dreams, which has alas never escaped PlayStation prison. It's a grid-based, upwardly mobile roguelitey dungeon crawler set in a big tower, each floor a semi-randomised maze of monsters (which you can capture), traps and pick-ups, where player and creature actions happen simultaneously.

Cheese and loyal pets (two important items on Maslow's hierarchy of needs) have been added to the co-op survival crafting game Abiotic Factor. The dairy product manifests as various suspiciously coloured cheese wheels which you can cook and eat, while loyalty comes in the form of freakish pets that can now follow your every move. The pets themselves are technically not new to Abiotic Factor, but their player-tracking behaviour is. "There is, as far as we know, no limit to how many pets can follow you at once," say the devs. Читать дальше...

There aren't many ways left to put a twist on Stardew Valley, but suffixing it with "in space!" oughta do it. Little-Known Galaxy is out in a week, and currently has a demo on Steam, where you can sample many of the delights that you're used to from a Stardewlike when you're new in town: meeting the locals, growing potatoes, and tidying up the place. Also, raising alien pets, seeking out new life, and new civilisations... It all takes place on a spaceship, you see, and this has some ramifications... Читать дальше...

Brass-blasting rhythm game Trombone Champ honked its way into our hearts when it released in 2022. Since then, it's garnered a dedicated fanbase that have kept its spit-valve full to bursting with creations like this Final Fantasy 7 mod. Trombone Champ mods are special among rhythm games for consisting of two elements: the button-tapping composition of the song itself, and the background visuals. You honk-tap away while unicorns or giant close-ups of full English breakfasts cavort in the background. Читать дальше...

Some fresh astral god trivia from my accidental molar expedition a few weeks back: each of the Maw's teeth is different. Some form a fractal baleen network of crosshatched layers disappearing backward into the vanishing point; others are shaped like lockpicks, raccoon heads and semi-detached houses. This week's new game releases are no less motley and misshapen, though thankfully not quite as heavily varnished with plaque: there's something in the shop for everyone, I think.