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It wasn't possible to ignore the protesters directly outside Blizzcon's gates this year. They were drawn by Blizzard's ongoing failure to respond appropriately to Hearthstone pro Chung "Blitzchung" Ng Wai calling for the liberation of Hong Kong in an interview. They clustered right outside, handing out shirts, placards, and information. But inside, it was easy to forget. In a sea of people wearing Blizzard merchandise,…

Tagged with Activision Blizzard, BlizzCon 2019, feature, hong kong, Diablo IV, Hearthstone, Overwatch, Overwatch 2.

Don't come any closer, pal. I've got a gun. Oh wait, maybe I don't, because I pawned it when I was extremely drunk, and I didn't do a deal with the corrupt union boss to get it back. Oh dear, now a voice in my head that says it's Electrochemistry is trying to convince me to get drunk. I must be in bleak but lovely…

Tagged with Can't Stop Playing, Can't Stop Playing November 2019, feature, ZA/UM, Disco Elysium.

There is nothing worse for a world-leading chartologist (PhD) like me than a Steam sale. All sense is lost, all decorum thrown to the wind, as the same few games come stamping all over everything like an uninvited six year old whose parents let him go to bed whenever he wants. And we're entering Sale Season, people. It's going to get stampy.

Tagged with feature, Steam Charts, Valve Index, Destiny 2, Destiny 2: Forsaken, Destiny 2: Shadowkeep, Football Manager 2020, Grand Theft Auto V, Monster Hunter: World, Playerunknown's Battlegrounds, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.

I understand that Obsidian fans are sort of using the existence of The Outer Worlds to dunk on Fallout 76 (because OW is the real successor to New Vegas, right?). But before it was ammunition in a weeing contest, the game was a first-person space RPG where you did a shoot at extremely angry lizards. And, much like that one friend we all have, I…

Tagged with feature, Obsidian Entertainment, Private Division, The Outer Worlds.

Celeste has three core moves: Jumping, climbing walls, and dashing. But it's also a game about a lot more than that. It's about overcoming obstacles.

Tagged with feature, Have You Played, Matt Makes Games, Celeste.

Sundays are for recovering from a Halloween party. Perhaps by reading the best writing about videogames from the past week. Most writers for (ostensibly) sports website Deadspin quit on Wednesday, after its recently acquired buyers G/O Media insisted they "stick to sports" rather than write the kind of personal and political articles people liked them for. I've never been a reader, but the suppression of…

Tagged with feature, The Sunday Papers.

If you’ve played one of Overwatch’s lore PvE events, you probably know what to expect from the bulk of the new stuff that’s unique in Overwatch 2. The mostly-sequel format of its release means that a cleaner UI, new heroes, and a new map type will be added to the first game at the same time that the sequel launches, leaving a new look for…

Tagged with Blizzard Entertainment, BlizzCon 2019, feature, preview, Overwatch, Overwatch 2.

Diablo 4 was revealed yesterday in a swirl of blood and grime and men talking about the lure of the darkness both in the trailer and onstage. I chatted with a couple of the developers about the new world they’ve created, the monsters they filled it up with, and their painterly inspirations. And I played a bit. It was surprisingly well lit.

Tagged with Blizzard Entertainment, BlizzCon 2019, feature, preview, Diablo IV.

I love food. To me, food isn't just something I have to consume periodically throughout the day in order to survive -- it's a crucial part of my understanding of the world. I'm a food-oriented tourist (burrata in Florence! smoked fish in Copenhagen!) and a food-oriented friend (come over for dinner! let's go out for brunch!). Because of my penchant for produce and fervor for…

Tagged with doug valenta, feature, Kitfox Games, michidk, nuttatulipa, Priceless Play, sophiaaar, Croissant, Five Secrets, Free Sandwich, I Don’t Know How to Have Hotpot Alone, Pot Luck.

Here we are, Halloween is over, and video games are still fun of Halloween events. Bit weird. Feels a bit sad. Get over it, yeah? Okay, I did once keep a Christmas up until April because I missed the council's pick-up days and came to quite like having it around. Maybe this Halloween will regrow on me. Even if the shops are quite loudly insisting…

The best shooters endure. While other genres warp beyond recognition, there is something solid about the first-person shooter that makes it as dependable as a nice big AK-47. Maybe it’s the gung-ho simplicity - look down a barrel and pull the trigger. It's as fun to fire a double-barrelled shotgun from an early 90s FPS as the slick shotties of today. For that reason, this…

Tagged with best games, bestest games, feature, The RPS Bestest Best Games, Alien: Isolation, Apex Legends, Arma 3, Battlefield 1942, Battlefield: Bad Company™ 2, BioShock 2, Bulletstorm, Call of Duty 2, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered, Call Of Juarez - Gunslinger, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Crysis, Day of Infamy, Destiny 2, Devil Daggers, Dishonored, Dishonored 2, Doom, Dying Light, F.E.A.R., Far Cry 2, Far Cry 3, Far Cry 4, Half-Life, Half-Life 2, Halo, Left 4 Dead 2, Marathon, Metro Exodus, Metro Redux, Natural Selection 2, No One Lives Forever, PlanetSide 2, Playerunknown's Battlegrounds, Prey, Quake, Quake III Arena, Rage, Rising Storm, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl, Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter, Shadow Warrior 2, Star Wars Jedi Knight - Mysteries of the Sith, Star Wars Republic Commando, Star Wars: Dark Forces, SWAT 4, Team Fortress 2, The Chronicles Of Riddick: Assault On Dark Athena, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege, Unreal Tournament, Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, Wolfenstein: The New Order.

Of course Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare has nothing interesting to say about war. Of course its guns feel good, and its explosions are many and impressive. Of course the multiplayer is essentially the same game we've been playing for over a decade, only prettier and in more flavours. Of course a part of me likes it, and of course part of me is jaded…

Tagged with Beenox, feature, high moon studios, Infinity Ward, Raven Software, review, wot i think, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare.

After decades of stasis, the landscape of computer wargaming is beginning to change. Here and there desert hexagons are greening... dry arroyos are becoming rivers again... the accumulated dust and debris of forty years of conservative thinking is being sluiced towards the sea. Tired of threadbare, truth-blurring conventions, imaginative devs are looking at war and warriors in fresh, arresting ways. In today's column, I talk…

Tagged with interview, New Wave wargame, The Flare Path, Radio Commander, Rebel Inc: Escalation.

I wonder what the last "AI does a thing" headline will ever be. The one Google DeepMind are imagining, on their quest to create a genuine general intelligence, is something like "AI can do everything far better than you, nuh nuh". By their measure, their AI AlphaStar has climbed one more rung towards that goal by reaching Grandmaster level on StarCraft 2's European servers. That…

Tagged with AlphaStar, feature, Google DeepMind, StarCraft II.

Halloween didn’t really used to be that big of a deal in the UK, back when I were a kid. But now it is, so most people go to Halloween parties, or spooky club nights, or some other similar kind of terrifying celebration. I like to keep things traditional though, which means staying in on October 31st and kicking back with some Video Game Entertainment™.…

Tagged with AOne Games, Armor Games Studios, Benjamin Rivers, Cloak and Dagger Games, feature, Funcom, Hivemind Of Horror, Illusion Ray Studio, Killmonday Games AB, movie games, Off the Beaten Track, PlayWay, Protocol Games, Puppet Combo, Raiser Games, Rock Pocket Games, Schreihals Interactive, scriptwelder, Scythe Dev Team, Steppe Hare Studio, Storyyeller Games, Vikintor, Awake, Deep Sleep Trilogy, Don't Escape Trilogy, Don't Escape: 4 Days to Survive, Little Misfortune, Moons of Madness, Omen Of Sorrow, Palmyra Orphanage, Song Of Horror, Tamashii, The Beast Inside, The Glass Staircase, The Terrible Old Man, Walls Closing In, Worse Than Death.

Night School Studio's new game, Afterparty, just came out, and since it involves you drinking your way around literal hell, it would seem every bit the fitting Halloweeny treat. But taking a look back at Oxenfree, the point and click mystery that was the studio's first outing, it's impressive how much it stands up as its own spooky experience. It's not just spooky either, but…

Tagged with feature, Hivemind Of Horror, Night School Studio, Oxenfree.

Over a century has passed since the Kushan discovered the secrets of interstellar travel, buried beneath the crust of a backwater world. It is a fallow period for tales of galactic adventure. Having wrested their birth planet, Hiigara, from the Taiidan Empire, the Kushan have re-established their old clan households and embroiled themselves in petty rivalries. Homeworld: Cataclysm, a standalone expansion created by Barking Dog…

Tagged with Barking Dog Studios, feature, Hivemind Of Horror, Homeworld: Cataclysm.

Happy Halloween, citizens! When midnight comes and October ends, I, Ghoastus, will be banished once more into the spirit realm - at least until something sufficiently Roman happens to summon me back. I will miss you all. But before that dread hour arrives, there is time yet for one more terribly frightening story. It concerns my friend and colleague Nate, who started an unofficial RPS…

Tagged with #GhoastusTalesofTerror, Diary, feature, Ghoastus, Halloween, Hivemind Of Horror, Shrek, Shrernk, Shronk, Minecraft.

Do you struggle with horror games? Me too. I could list exceptions. System Shock 2, or the good Aliens Vs Predator (even after months of playing it, getting caught by a facehugger always sccared the bejesus out of me). Even Resident Evil 2, cheesy and sometimes predictable as it was. But those are the obvious ones. You've already played those. So I've been looking back…

Tagged with Deric Ruhl, feature, Greg Buchanan, Hivemind Of Horror, Noodletub Games, American Election, Scavenger SV-4, The Ghost Of You.

Phantasmagoria is a point and click adventure from the mind of Roberta Williams -- famed creator of the Kings Quest series. Phantasmagoria, though, is a massive departure from the family-friendly adventures of King Graham. It's a cheesy FMV horror adventure game that was a technical marvel in its time.

Tagged with feature, Have You Played, Sierra On-Line.