We’re just shy of Halloween here and the stars are aligning, allowing unholy powers to warp Doom into strange, near-unrecognisable forms through the powerfully dark act of modding>. Out tonight is Total Chaos, a survival horror mod so grand in its ambition that it leaves almost nothing recognisable as ‘Doom’, with detailed 3D environments and modern horror style. More traditional but still impressive is an early demo of The Crimson Deed, a vampire-themed dungeon crawl. Check out trailers for both below, plus some Quake-related surprises from 3D Realms. (more…)

Fallout 76 may be on the horizon, with Bethesda preemptively warning players of ‘spectacular’ bugs, but fans hungry for a more traditional, solo apocalypse are well served today. Fallout: New California might technically be a mod for Fallout: New Vegas, but it’s closer to a whole new game. Set out in the New California Republic twenty years before The Courier got shot in the face, there’s a new map two thirds the size of New Vegas, and a branching, voiced story that developers Radian-Helix Media reckon can take between six and thirty hours to finish. Below, the trailer.

(more…)

Skywind – a grand mod project to rebuild Morrowind using Skyrim‘s slightly more contemporary tech – may be shooting for the moon, but those stars feel almost within reach thanks to its latest trailer, released yesterday. Taking us on an ominously (and professionally) narrated tour of House Dagoth’s volcano-side properties, it’s a testament to what a small team can achieve with the right tools, enough time and a lot of dedication. Check out the video below, and its official TES Renewal Project page here.

(more…)

The radioactive wasteland of any Fallout game is a dangerous place, and twice as deadly for those who go in early. Those who pre-ordered Bethesda’s multiplayer spinoff Fallout 76 on PC (or PS4), can dive into post-apocalyptic West Virginia on October 30th, two weeks ahead of its November 14th launch date. Expect bugs, server issues and occasional nuclear explosions – par for any beta, really. Below, Fallout 76’s intro doing double duty as a new trailer.

(more…)

Enderal: The Shards Of Order by SureAI is arguably the most impressive thing to come from The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim‘s massive mod scene. While it may use Skyrim’s engine, it uses it to tell its own story in a new world, fully voiced and expertly produced. If there was any mod worthy of a high-profile release on Steam alongside Skyrim itself, it’d be Enderal. And that’s what’s happening.

While there’s some precedent for it (Skyrim Scipt Extender, a mod prerequisite, is available on Steam), Enderal is the first slab of game content to escape the Steam Workshop and establish its own store page. While there’s no date set for it yet, SureAI hope to release Enderal with its upcoming expansion on Steam soon, although you can get it direct from SureAI now.

(more…)

The Vikings have long ago invaded the coasts of pop culture on their dragon-headed longships and carved out their own Danelaw in the realm of video games. In recent years, they ve grown even bolder, taking over most genres from RTS to RPG, classic point and click adventure to action, with an utter disregard towards distinctions between AAA and indie. They ve settled in Hellblade and Frostrune, Dead in Vinland and The Witcher 3, God of War and Crusader Kings 2, and of course, The Banner Saga trilogy. Luckily, it s easy to spot a Viking. Horned helmets, mead-filled drinking horns, bloody battle axes and grim miens are a dead giveaway. When in doubt, tempt the suspected Viking with loot, then wait and see whether or not they can resist the urge to pillage.

(more…)

Listen up, you re drumming on my time now. What s the tune? It s the RPS podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show of course. This week we are talking about music in games, and what makes a good game soundtrack. The bleeps and bloops of Pac Man? Or the orchestral panache of Oblivion? A lot of people requested this topic, so we ve also done something special a music quiz! Can you guess the game based on a few seconds of music? Even if you can, I doubt you ll score higher than Katharine, who it turns out is, uh, quite interested in videogame music. (more…)

The Forgotten City, true to the spirit of its theme, is both a game that has yet to be released and is a game that has been available for years. While I’ve always been one of the few hold-outs that’s been annoyingly “meh” about Skyrim, I fired up my copy this week to play through the The Forgotten City, which began as an extensive mod for Elder Scrolls V. In 2019, it is getting a stand-alone version that reinvents and expands its lore, but keeps the intriguing mechanics intact. Now that I’ve played it once, I’m ready to play it a dozen more times in its next reincarnation.

(more…)

We’ve just passed the half-way point of 2018, so Ian Gatekeeper and all his fabulously wealthy chums over at Valve have revealed which hundred games have sold best on Steam over the past six months. It’s a list dominated by pre-2018 names, to be frank, a great many of which you’ll be expected, but there are a few surprises in there.

2018 releases Jurassic World Evolution, Far Cry 5 Kingdom Come: Deliverance and Warhammer: Vermintide II are wearing some spectacular money-hats, for example, while the relatively lesser-known likes of Raft, Eco and Deep Rock Galactic have made themselves heard above the din of triple-A marketing budgets. (more…)

Google’s DeepMind research division have made a pretty solid argument that the future of game AI is in self-teaching neural networks. Not content with destroying chess forever (credit to the BBC), their most recent project was to have a team of AI agents learn how to play a Quake 3-derived game of Capture The Flag from scratch. Not only did they master it, but after nearly half a million simulated games, these bots aren’t just better than human players, but more cooperative than a human if paired with one as a teammate.

(more…)