Hello hello hello! This is Edwin chatting. I don't usually get to do these weekend features, but Ollie and James are busy working their magic (stripmining Black Myth: Wukong for guides and fleeing Gamescom), while Nic can't type complete words anymore without getting his hands eaten (see latest domestic update, below). I know that Ollie usually does a picture puzzle for you, but I am comparatively innocent in the ways of Photoshop and more importantly, very lazy - so lazy that I can't think of an elegant way to complete this paragraph, and will proceed immediately to stating: here's what we're all playing this weekend.

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"Age of Empires with dinosaurs" is, the developers of the Dinolords recently told me in a cramped Gamescom booth, a flattering description for their upcoming England vs. Vikingsaurus RTS. It’s also not a terribly accurate one. From what I saw of the game, Dinolords is more about the lords than the dinos, having as much in common with Diablo-style ARPGs as it does with classic strategy. And that’s a distinction which might just elevate it out of novelty status.

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A few months back, I enjoyed lurking a conversation on the RPS Discord about the proliferation of cyberpunk/steampunk/atompunk/what-have-you-punk variants and how most of them in fact lack the rebelliousness and counter-counter elements that punk actually entails. That discussion was back on my mind as I sat down to play Reignbreaker, a new action-roguelike from Studio Fizbin, at Gamescom 2024 – slightly wary of its self-described medievalpunk styling. However! Turns out you’re trying to kill the queen. Yep, that’s, uh, that’s pretty punk.

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Assassin's Creed: Valhalla, Odyssey, and Origins all have one thing in common: they've got a Discovery mode, which replaces murdering with learning. You can, quite literally, go on tours curated by historians around each of the game's respective maps. Instead of diving off a Sphinx and plunging your hidden blade into someone's spinal column, you can look up at the Sphinx and read a paragraph on its significance. Maybe view an actual, real life bit of ancient Egypt from an actual real life museum collection in-game. Perhaps embody an Anglo-Saxon lad in Valhalla, instead, and like, cook up some nettle soup having just got a fresh "Friar Tuck" at the local hair choppers (no guarantees on this last bit).

This is all to say that Black Myth: Wukong deserves such a mode, too. There were so many times throughout my review time where I stopped and stared and wondered as to something's meaning. Not only in the architecture, but in the characters, too. So here I am with a proposition: how about instead of thwacking things with my staff, I can use it as a walking stick and point it at things I want to learn about.

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Sorry everyone, I might have to start doing that Token RPS Starfield Liker thing again. The Shattered Space expansion, out on September 30th, probably won’t refurbish the RPG’s reputation as an overall miss – but it does ditch the proc-gen planet bloat for a single handcrafted hellhole, a true Bethesda speciality honed by years of Fallouts and Elder Scrollseses. And, if its - sadly hands-off - Gamescom showcase is any indication, it might just double down on Starfield’s own strengths as well.

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We’ve apparently never written about Atomfall, an oversight I’m now all too happy to correct, having played a promising forty minutes or so at Gamescom 2024. In development at Sniper Elite makers Rebellion, it’s a "survival-action game inspired by real-life events" – specifically the Windscale fire, which in 1957 coated much of northern England in radioactive fallout. Atomfall’s alternative history makes Britain’s worst nuclear disaster even more disastrous, plunging the realm into full-on post-apocalyptica and leaving your good amnesiac self to dodge death with nothing but a cricket bat and whatever you can scrounge out of sheds. I like it! Mostly.

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I’ve only managed to carve out the time for about two hours of staff-bonking simian action in Black Myth: Wukong thus far, but it’s been enough that I’m already quite enamoured with just how consistently novel and creative it’s been. I’m enjoying it enough to wish I’d encountered it in a vacuum.

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I genuinely don't like sucker-punching video games the second they're announced, but playing Glowmade's King Of Meat is three hours of my life I won't get back, and every second I spend writing about it extends that total, dragging me closer to a regretful demise. Here's the stuff I'm more positive about: buried at the core of this spurting interactive snarkfest there is a moderately OK third-person dungeon-crawler for groups of up to four.

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Now, I never played quite as much as our Brendy did of the original Splitgate. But I had a fun time with its mixture of Halo-esque trigger pulling and portalling around! So I was intrigued to give the alpha version of Splitgate 2 a go and see if it had a little more substance to it than its initial reveal, which gave off a, "it's Splitgate but with more money" feel.

Well, I think it's… a bit serious? It certainly has more polish and some extra additions, yet I didn't come away from it thrilled by its more competitive, class-based FPS leanings. I think it just needs a bit more time, perhaps, for a portal to open and some silly rocket launchers and baseball bats and zombies to come tumbling out of it.

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