Rock Paper Shotgun – PC Game Reviews, Previews, Subjectivity

Sometimes, it's worth reading the news. When a story in Elite: Dangerous' fictional feed ended with an unexpected call for supplies in the Upaniklis system, most would've thought it flavour text. Not Malic_VR, a pilot and Elite streamer, who went to see what this minor fuss was all about.

What he found was a dilemma that'd make a brilliant Star Trek plot - an ancient human starship, packing thousands of colonists, a plague, and an isolationist movement that'll refuse outside help if it kills them.

If you like your violence from the perspective of a duck, or of a child who held onto their kite during a gale, then the two free games on Epic Games Store this week are very much for you. Both Ruiner and Nuclear Throne are top-down shooters, given freely as long as you grab them before next Thursday. Then the cycle of free stuff begins anew.

I loved those bafflingly ambitious late '90s/early 2000s shooters. I tried them all. I traipsed through Trespasser and wept at Hidden & Dangerous's muddy, buggy, broken war. And I joined Graham in falling a little bit in love with Project IGI's stomach crawling spy jank. That's why I'm not scoffing at IGI Origins, a return to the 80s Cold War sneakers that kept me entertained back in the day. As broken as they were, I'm always happy to see more.

The dramatically named Korean developer Pearl Abyss has three new games whirring away on their development PCs. The developers of Black Desert Online are working on three new MMOs: one shooter from the creator of Counter-Strike, one child-friendly jaunt, and one fantasy game. The three games have a proper reveal planned for on November 14, during Pearl Abyss Connect at G-STAR 2019. For now, we know they're called PLAN 8, Crimson Desert, and DokeV, alongside a handful of other details.

The final member of AMD's Ryzen 3000 CPU family, the ultra powerful Ryzen 9 3950X, finally has a release date - as do AMD's freshly-announced 3rd Gen Threadrippers. So far, AMD have only teased two Threadripper/Dataduke™/Bitbasher™/Loadmother™ CPUs, but these will be launching on November 25th together with their Ryzen 3950X sibling. If you like a CPU with more cores than your can shake a stick, step this way. We've got all the core (sorry not sorry) information right here.

Last week, Blizzard once again returned to Anaheim for Blizzcon 2019. But rather than welcoming Blizzard to his city for their annual convention, Rep. Lou Correa - a Democrat congressman for Anaheim, California - accused them of fostering online radicalisation in World of Warcraft. Less than a month after finding themselves in the US Government's crosshairs for their mishandling of a Hearthstone championship protest, Blizzard's handling of fraught politics may once again have landed the studio in hot water.

Has it been a year already, Hitman 2? With 12 months of murder in the bag, IO Interactive have eyes on the next step in Hitman 47's next adventure. Whatever form Hitman 3 takes, though, there's still a good deal of death left to dish out. November will be Hitman 2's biggest month yet, with no less than 2 new special events landing each week - starting with a new challenge pack and two legacy escalations landing today.

Motion Twin could probably stop developing side-on pixel slicer Dead Cells and everything would be just fine. It would leave behind an "Overwhelmingly Positive" review tag on Steam and a beautiful corpse. But they’re still fiddling with it, and the 15th update has just gone live. A new biome has been added, along with a new rune, a new meta upgrade, and more.

Reports of class warfare in Fallout 76 were probably overblown, but far from fabricated. The recent introduction of Fallout 1st, a paid subscription service offering cosmetics, conveniences and (not-so) private servers, has created something of a rift.

At first that just meant the odd subscriber got attacked by people in bear costumes. Now the subscribers are fighting back, with 300 of them joining a clan called the Apocalyptic Aristocracy. This involves flouncing around in fancy clothes while semi-joking about looking down on peasants. It's all good fun, apart from the toxicity.

A shortcut for long-gone mech shooter Hawken sits on my desktop. It's not the real deal, of course. Hawken went offline early last year. What I have, stitched together from salvaged code and networking wizardry, is an abomination. A corpse of a game forced back into life by players who can't let it go. It'll never be alive, but that's not going to stop us from trying.

No Players Online, a pay-what-you-want horror game on Itch from developers Adam Pype and Viktor Kraus, wonders if there's something deeply wrong with keeping a dead game running.

There are a few things in games that will demand my attention. If your game has a flare gun, I will use it, often to the detriment of my overall damage output. If I can wall run, I'm running on every wall in the game, no matter where it leads. Personal turrets will make me Torbjörn again. Fortnite has yet to really grab me, though. So far it hasn’t reeled me in. I can’t say it’s managed to pierce my flesh with a spike and then dragged me closer. But Epic have just added a harpoon gun, and that’s also on my list, so now I have to install it. That's the rule.

Sticks and stones may break on bones, but fists will never fail me. Now that Diablo 4 has emerged from its crypt, soaked in the blood of countless demons and undead ne'er-do-wells, we're starting to get more glimpses into the Action-RPG's grimdark fourth offering. Fitting, then, that our first extended look at the next dungeon-looter isn't some cowardly archer or wimpy wizard, but a brutal 24-minute look at a house-sized slab of beef knocking down skeletons with a whopping great stick.

Red Dead Redemption 2 has landed on the PC with all the grace of a bow-legged varmint drunk on moonshine. We've seen it first-hand. Hardware Sheriff Katharine headed into her gaming jail, ready to take on the Wild West’s most fearsome settings menu, but there was a crashing sound and a flaming cartwheel came rolling out.

There might be some comfort to those of you dealing with crashes, particularly if you’re being forced to replay the opening’s ponderous trod through the snow, because there’s a couple of chapter skipping save games already online. If you're sick of the sight of the snow, or if you just played it before on console and can't face a do-over, here's what to do.

Halloween has come and gone from Apex Legends. Zombie hordes have vanished, replaced by the bitter chill of a November bloodbath. As the year cools down, it's time to warm up. This week's Apex patch 3.1 finally adds much-needed training mode Firing Range - a freeform arena for trying out all of Respawn's toys - and a duos mode to pit you and a friend against the combined might of 58 brutal killers.

It’s comforting to know that The Sims 4 is still ticking along with new expansions. The world doesn’t need to hold its breath waiting, wondering, worrying about more Sims. We’re getting more. We’re always getting more. We’re getting more in about 9 days. The next expansion, The Sims 4 Discover University, brings the terrifying world of further education to the series.

Those of you parched for a friendly fantasy strategy game might click with A Year Of Rain. Daedalic Entertainment’s co-operative RTS wants you to hold hands with another player at all times. The Blizzard-ish battler for two is out today on early access.

Like it or not, it's hard to argue that Nomada Studio's debut Gris isn't an absolute stunner. Alice B found it a bit bleedin' obvious with its themes of feminine fragility and trauma in her Gris review, but that doesn't stop it being an absolutely gorgeous picturebook platformer. She wasn't alone, either. This week, publishers Devolver Digital alleged that a French studio has "ripped off" Gris when selling their mobile self-care app.

Like the chosen undead they follow, there are few walls in the Dark Souls modding scene that can't be broken without persistence. Since the original PC release was salvaged by stubborn fans, Dark Souls's modding community has spent years breaking a game that defies being broken. For the longest time, though, getting custom level geometry was a boss beyond modders' might. But once more, through bull-headed trial and error, another obstacle has been knocked away with Dark Souls' first third-party map, seven years after launch.

Well rustle my hard drive, Red Dead Redemption 2 is finally on PC. Yee-haw, and all that. Thing is, some gunslingers out there are spreading word that this ain't the sturdiest horse they've seen. From loading screen crashes to problems with Rockstar's game launcher, RDR 2 on PC is proving to be a grumpy ol' mule indeed.