Indies desperately tweak lines of code. Food trucks heat up industrial vats of chips. A collection of anime body pillows hang on the hooks, like that wall of the punished from The Handmaid's Tale. It can mean but one thing: EGX Berlin is upon us. And if you can’t make it - which you really should try if you can - the RPS Video Team…
Matthew Castle
5 days ago
3 weeks ago
Watch the RPS vid buds defuse bombs and break physics live at EGX 2019
Piles of merch teeter. Naughty schoolboys bunk off period two geography to play a bit of The Avengers. A little kid weighs up his chances of getting into an 18+ Cyberpunk presentation. It can all mean but one thing: EGX 2019 is upon us. Which leads to a second conclusion: the Rock Paper Shotgun video team are going to mumble and blush through another four…
2 months ago
Feature: Sight for sawed eyes
I did not expect Gears 5 to feature an extended Hamilton parody. And yet here we are: escaping a besieged city by hunkering down in a theatre, its walls pasted with the iconic image of Alexander Hamilton pointing to the stars. Only it’s not Hamilton, but Nassar Embry, who ‘Gearspedia’ tells me was the founder of the Coalition of Ordered Governments. And it’s not just…
3 months ago
Feature: Drinks are on them
Pretend to be friends with Japanese developers with these neat documentaries
Where does Suda51 get a drink after work? Sounds like the beginning of a (baffling) joke, is actually the pitch of Toco Toco, a series of short documentaries that follow Japanese creators on a tour of their favourite places. Some episodes are career retrospectives told through old haunts; others are just Trip Advisor, but with extra clips of fighting games. They are all beautifully shot…
4 months ago
Feature: “3, 2, 1… grab something”
Warframe’s Empyrean update is Star Wars meets Shadow of Mordor
“It’s not a fucking expansion.” On this Steve Sinclair, creative director on Warframe, is clear. He’s talking to us a few hours before the formal reveal of the ‘it’ in question: Empyrean, the Warframe add-on formally known as Railjack that is adding spaceships, throwing them together in huge space battles and using them to explore previously unseen corners of the Origin System. So if not…
Feature: Talking About The Talkies
Have you listened to… The Directors Guild of America podcast?
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5 months ago
Feature: Metroid meets marathons
Different people want different things from their Metroid-like games. (I refuse to use that daft Metroidvania word: the Castlevania games, even the more Metroid-y ones, share very little DNA with the games that are apparently aping it.) For some, the gradual filling-in of a map is enough to scratch the itch. For others, it's the ingenuity of the abilities and upgrades that enable your cartography.…
Feature: "We're building a rollercoaster!"
Baldur’s Gate 3 announced, from the creators of Divinity: Original Sin
They call it Ceremorphosis. The excruciating seven day process by which a humanoid might transform into a Mind Flayer. Stick one illithid tadpole in the brain and one week later you’ve got an octopus for a head and a craving for more grey matter. And what better visual metaphor for the return of Baldur’s Gate: the adventure that lodged in the hearts and minds of…
Feature: Cross-examination
Talking murders, mystery and amateur voice acting with the creator of Ace Attorney
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6 months ago
Feature: The king is dead
How many dead kings is too many dead kings? That's the question at the heart of The Witcher 2: Assassins Of Kings. I mean, the clue's in the title. Perhaps the bigger question is, will you join the ranks of the titular monarch manglers? And it's a doozy of a question. In a world already destabilised by a rush of regicides, what happens when one…
8 months ago
Feature: DICE with death
The real star of Battlefield V’s battle royale is a giant, roaming bonfire
DICE appeared to drop the ball when they didn't call Battlefield V's upcoming battle royale offering 'Battlefield Royale'. They called it Firestorm instead, which sounds like a terrible Steven Seagal film you'd buy for 99p at a petrol station. Having now played the mode, due as a free update next Monday, I can see why they went with it. The titular blaze dominates the whole…
Feature:
Introducing The RPS Sessions, the best of EGX Rezzed from the comfort of your home
EGX Rezzed fast approaches. Developers put the finishing touches to their demo builds and the tech team nervously eyes the tangled mountain of eight thousand HDMI cables to be unknotted before the event. For those unfamiliar with it, Rezzed is a celebration of all things gaming-related, but with more of a focus on the indie scene than its bigger EGX brother. You should definitely come…
9 months ago
Feature: Murder most florid
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Feature: Father, do you love me?
Reviews Roulette: The one with the monkey bird and daddy issues
There is no complaint more sure to induce eyerolls than ‘too many games’, but here we are. There are too many games! It’s not coming from a place of entitlement, but guilt: I’d love to give every Steam key we receive a proper chance, but time limits me to the familiar/most bribe packed. That’s where Reviews Roulette steps in. It’s our new regular video ‘show’…
Feature: Boxing clever
I’ve never understood why The Room is called The Room and not The Box. Yes, the box is in a room, but your eyes are so drawn to this ornate toy that you don’t ponder what is happening around you. And it really is a good game about boxes: the mystery of what’s inside them, the thrill of prising one open and… er, that’s about…
10 months ago
Feature: Tricks of the trade
Five weird gaming habits I’ve developed being an RPS video person
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Feature: The truth will (shoot) out
It translates, roughly, as ‘bullet refute’. Danganronpa, that is. Which makes more sense than it sounds, as the game is about taking part in murder trials and literally shooting truth bullets at lies as they spill out of suspects’ mouths. It’s not enough to say “If the glove doesn't fit, you must acquit”; the glove has to be loaded into the chamber and fired through…
11 months ago
Feature: Watson, the game is a bit silly
There is a moment in Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments where the detective has to identify a brand of cigar. “This scent is familiar to me, but in order to recognise it, I must combine my associations into one picture,” he says. You find yourself swivelling a stink cloud, aligning its wafting lines into a hidden image. Problem is, Holmes’ nose deals in broad stereotypes…
12 months ago
Feature: Mean Bean Machine
Video: Hitman 2 let me join the illustrious ranks of Sean Bean’s murderers
“For England, James?” “No, for XP.” 2000 XP, to be precise. That’s how much Sean Bean’s life is worth in the first of Hitman 2’s Elusive Targets. These are timed contracts that give you one shot at killing a special guest character - in this case, everyone’s favourite Yorkshire thespian (okay, it’s a toss up between Bean and fellow GoldenEye alumni Judi Dench). Bean, of…
Feature: Tomb with a view
For all the bruisings, beatings and impalings that Lara Croft endures in the recent rebooted trilogy, the real victim was Tomb Raider’s sense of scale. Everything became crushed down to deliver fidelity. There were temples, sure, but you viewed them from cramped tunnels as you scurried past guards, and towering structures were only seen from the extreme close-up of a climbing wall or the long-distance…