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Feature: Cast the first stone
In Romero Games' Empire Of Sin, you play a prohibition era crime lord in Chicago, organising your rackets and engaging in turn-based combat with rivals. It's an era developer Brenda Romero has always been fascinated by. She grew up in a town in New York state called Ogdensburg, which hadn't, historically, had a lot going for it until US prohibition started in 1920, triggering 13…
A second visit from the deals herald in a single day? Well, I never. It's for good reason, though, as Humble have just announced that October's Humble Monthly bundle will be headlined by none other than the stompy mech strategy titan, Battletech. Our Alec (RPS in peace) grew to be quite fond of Battletech when it first came out last year, so much so that…
Feature: Let's give them something to talk about
Bloodlines 2’s dialogue system looks more subtle than the original
As is my wont, I am here to bleat about Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines 2 at you. I got in to see the Gamescom demo build, which they were also showing off at E3, but since Brendy got a punchy vampire run I tried to steer it more towards the sneaking and talking route by yelling things like "play both sides!" at Paradox product manager…
Feature: Tremere-king me very thirsty
Watch us do a stealthy, bitey run in this deep demo of Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2
If you hold the shift key to slide down the RPS treehouse’s rickety ropeladder, you’ll get ropeburn, but you’ll also get to the bottom of the tree. There, you’ll find a trap door that requires a pulley and a rubber chicken to open, and at the bottom of the gaping chasm, you’ll find me, a ball and chain fastened to my ankle and purple and…
Spend 30 minutes in the company of Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2
Last night I met a guy, who knew a guy, who told me about a girl, who said she was penpals with some sort of rat thing, who wrote a URL down for her, all so I could get this footage of Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 to you. I was up all night, and it turned out all I needed to do was…
Feature: Embrace death
Bloodlines 2 asks you the same question of every vampire when they've gone through the Embrace: Do you hide in the shadows, or become fear itself? The original Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines was a cult favourite, so beloved that the fans fixed the issues with the game. The team at Hardsuit Labs know all too well that it is a big deal that Bloodlines…
The mob, for all their terrible, terrible crimes, are the perfect set-up for a tactical game. They have a structure, guns, and are in continual conflict with just about everyone, including themselves. Off the top of my head, I can’t think of a game that’s done the organisation justice (that’s for the police to do, aha!) from a top-down level, but with Empire Of Sin…
Hark, for the dawn of another wondrous age approaches. Or at least a competent one. Nate and Astrid have both taken a good hard look at Age Of Wonders: Planetfall and have declared: (in different, longer words)'yeah, that's pretty good that is'. It's a 4X game that pans down into small-scale tactical combat, wedding gross imperialist strategy to itty bitty unit bossing through the medium…
Feature: A glowing space crystal in the rough
I’ll be honest, I came dangerously close to not recognising Age Of Wonders: Planetfall for what it is: a solid, well-designed strategy game. Like a jaded ogre examining bones for shreds of meat, I nearly tossed it aside with a grunt, letting it plonk down the bone-hill into the Steam refunds ossuary. But then, I would have missed out on the rich, dense marrow within.
Get Crusader Kings II and all its expansions for £12 in the new Humble Bundle
Hey, you there, the reader who's always fascinated to hear weird tales and unusual patch notes from Crusader Kings II but has never gotten into the wheeling-dealing empire strategy game because even just buying it is intimidating with the array of add-ons supplementing it. Yes, you. You can now grab CK2 and all fifteen expansions for just over £12 in a new Humble Bundle, which…
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: Relaxing times in medieval Estonia
One of the games I return to regularly is Crusader Kings 2, and usually, what pokes me back into its torrid embrace is a trip abroad. I’ll go to a place I’ve not really thought about much, then get well into its history and, because my curiosity writes cheques my attention span can’t cash, I’ll fail to read up on it at all. What I…
Feature: Separating the chaff grenades from the wheat... grenades
It’s a bit tricky to knock together a list of the best upcoming stealth games, because it’s a bit tricky to say what a stealth game even is anymore. Stealth is more frequently looking like a playstyle or bulletpoint rather than the crux of an entire game. Even the best stealth games in recent memory - yer Invisible Incs, Ian Hitmans, Alien: Isolations - have all…
Feature: Bask in his healing fart cloud
Intricate 4X strategy games don’t benefit much from short demos, especially during the annual videogames vomitorium of E3. But a short demo is what I got with Age Of Wonders: Planetfall. I would need far more time to get an understanding for the Civ-like encroachment of its world map. And I can't give you a solid impression of the battles based on the single brief…
Feature: Quit murderin' for a second, Joey, willya!?
Empire Of Sin is full of serial killers and drunks who need a good mobster manager
Ronnie O’Neill is a scumbag. But that’s okay. In about 20 minutes he’ll be dead, slumped on the tarmac next to a black truck. That’s what happens when you mess with Al Capone, you filthy mutt. At least, this is one way things can go in upcoming mob strategy game Empire Of Sin. It’s part mobster management, part turn-based tactics, with a splash of the…
Romero Games and Paradox recruit Dotty Bacon and Two-Ton Clyde Malone for Empire Of Sin
Spit-shine your spats, dust off the fedora you hid in shame, and prepare to give some goombas the ol' rat-a-tat-tat in Empire Of Sin, a 1920s mobster strategy game announced this week at E3 by Paradox Interative and Romero Games (the studio of those Romeros, Brenda and John). We'll get to do crimes and build a gang of toughs with excellent names including Dotty Bacon,…
Feature: She's got all her own teeth
The Bloodlines liker has, as they say, logged on. Paradox and Hardsuit labs have released a new gameplay trailer for Bloodlines 2. Excellent. It’s a smaller mouthful than the taste I had at GDC last year, but it’s a slightly different one. An amuse-bouche, we might say. Made of blood pudding, or something else all vampire-y. Brendy saw an extended demo, and has thoughts about…
Feature:
They just keep coming don't they? A lot of games were announced at E3 2019, things that we didn't know about, as well as stuff that's previously announced, or expansions to already released games. Now, to the casual outsider, what we're doing might seem absolutely nuts, but we thought we'd put together an alphabetical list of all the PC games that have been confirmed to…
Feature: Bite me
Bloodlines 2’s vampires are scrappy fighters and goofy dancers
Press X to dance. It’s not the first demonstration of demonic prowess I expected to see during my brief hands-off playthrough of Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines 2. But it is one of the very first things developers Hardsuit Labs show off. Our character has just been sauntering through the streets of Seattle. Sewer grates pump steam into the air, the lights of the city glare…
Watch Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2’s first gameplay video
I'm still not entirely convinced that Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 is a real game that's really coming, given its tortured history, but watching the first gameplay video today is starting to turn me around. It appears to show some of a newly-bitten vampire's first nights in Seattle, running errands for the warring powers that be, and I want to believe. Original Bloodlines storyman…
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