Feature: I won't say I'm in love
Who was the gladdest gladiator? HERC-U-LES! Who had a licensed Disney platformer? HERC-U-LES!
Brendan Caldwell
22 hours ago
5 days ago
Feature: Master grief
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Feature: No pressure
The submarine is filling with seawater and nobody left alive is doing anything about it. The captain is calmly discussing the battery life of his headset radio with the ship’s doctor, who is standing still on the upper decks fiddling with his inventory. Two decks below them a ravenous trio of giant, shrimp-like sea creatures are burrowing from crew quarters to medical bay, flooding the…
1 week ago
Feature: Apes out
The streets are in chaos. There is a police officer beating a slum dweller. A red-shirted gangster has started an ill-advised stabbing match with three members of a rival blue gang. And an ape, recently escaped from captivity, is calmly watching it all, unable to speak the language of these terrible people. Amid such bedlam, what do you do as a player of Streets Of…
2 weeks ago
Feature: Drinks all round
You can buy drinks for reprobates in Griftlands. The mingling crimefolk of this sci-fi card game hang out in bars and harbours, lounging on static screens hoping to sell you stuff, or waiting for a fight to break out so they can jump in for either side. There are hairy bouncers, froglike bartenders, and scar-faced bandits. Cultists, bent cops, and bounty hunters of all kinds.…
Feature: Getting animated about robots
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Feature: Throwback Thursday
Why are so many old games coming back? We asked developers why they chase nostalgia
Remember that thing you like from 10 years ago? It’s probably getting a sequel. Shenmue 3. Evil Genius 2. Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines 2. The calendar of upcoming games is packed with throwbacks that will revisit the worlds we left behind over a decade ago. Oddworld: Soulstorm is heading back to the strange homeland of Abe the skinny green freedom farter. Mechwarrior 5 is booting…
Feature: WELL!?
We are waist-deep in the liquid of July and things are starting to coagulate. The air is still, the waves are quiet. There are no colossal games on the charred blockbuster horizon, so this is a bounteous time for the thriving shoals of smaller games. Nipping at our thighs like sea lice. Demanding attention before the winter tsunami eventually comes to kill them all. Give…
Feature: Not that Black Friday, idiot
The Iranian Revolution of 1979 is not exactly well-trodden ground for videogames. But at least one game took a swing at it. 1979 Revolution: Black Friday is a game in the style of Telltale, a story told with playable cinematics and quicktime events. It's mostly made of conversations and the drama that comes from making a bad decision instead of another, equally bad decision. It…
Feature: Listen now or hoof it
Horses, that’s this week’s topic. Big galloping buddies full of teeth and flies. Brush ‘em, ride ‘em, put ‘em in your videogame. The RPS podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show, will appreciate it because this episode the pod squad are talking about their favourite saddlepals from the fantastical realms of this bewildering industry. Horses. They’re like big cats.
Feature: The sense of an ending
Pathologic 2’s easy mode lets you soak in the dread of an unwell town
There’s a woman wailing in that house. I keep walking. I walk until her screams are out of earshot, then I look at my map. I can see the noisy house drawn here, a square box with a little circle around it. I look closer. “You can hear wailing,” it reads. I close the map. I keep walking. I need a cog - a rusty…
3 weeks ago
Thousands perish in Elite Dangerous expedition, but survivors reach the edge of the galaxy
Whoa. I was too distracted during the disgusting month of E3 to pay attention to what really matters: the space news. The Elite Dangerous expedition which saw 13,000 players set out to cross the galaxy in a long trip has finally ended after six months. Just over one quarter of those explorers touched down at Beagle Point last month, which is practically the furthest you…
Feature: "Ask the hard questions"
Meet the geographer who tells studios when they’re ignorant and offensive
We hear a lot about level designers in games. Voice actors, concept artists, big directors. Kate Edwards is none of those things. She is a geographer. It seems like an odd job for the games industry, but the more you learn about her work, the more it feels essential. Edwards is hired by studios to cast her geo-eye over the shuffling NPCs of sci-fi space…
Feature: You've been blocked
‘Kids are not born toxic’ – How Roblox tries to keep 90 million children safe
“Kids are not born toxic,” says Laura Higgins. “Adults generally are where most of the negative stuff is online. It's not kids doing it.” Higgins works for Roblox, a children’s game of blocky-armed figures and even blockier cars. Well technically, it’s not one game, but many. Roblox is a sort of pick-your-own-playground with a platter of multiplayer minigames made by other players. You could fly…
Feature: Blocked
I played nine hours of sandbox puzzle game Starseed Pilgrim. It has been six years since it came out. I still don’t get it.
4 weeks ago
Feature: Terrible game design
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Feature: It's not about Somerville dog festival
‘Mystery is important’ – Inside’s co-creator won’t tell us the secret of Somerville
It’s set in England. That’s all I learn about gloomy sci-fi adventure game Somerville while talking to Dino Patti, producer at Jumpship. For all those hiding under rocks which are secretly giant spiders, Patti is the former co-chief of Playdead, the studio who made Limbo and Inside. The flagship games of the sad-boy-goes-right genre. Somerville is likely to have similarities to those quiet puzzle platformers,…
‘It’s not A Way Out 2,’ says Hazelight boss about their next game
Fold up your overalls, prisoner. We don’t know much about the next game from Hazelight, the studio who made co-op jailbreak ‘em up A Way Out. But we at least know it isn’t a sequel. "What I can say is that it's not A Way Out 2,” said Josef Fares, studio head, when he spoke to me at Gamelab Barcelona. “But it's going to be…
1 month ago
Feature: In the clink
The Elder Scrolls games delight zero-to-hero fantasists by introducing you as a prisoner in every installment. Shackled on a ship, locked away in a keep, transported to the block on a prisoner’s cart. It’s a nice tradition, the reincarnation of the world-saving pluralist nobody, always in chains. But these games lack true resolve. They set you free immediately, after serving practically no time at all.…
Feature: Poosh off
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