Some game demos, you write up after the expo because they need a bit of reflection; some game demos, you write up immediately because they are easy to digest, even through a droning fugue of jetlag; and some game demos, you write up immediately because they synchronise perfectly with your swivel-eyed, hyper-caffeinated delirium.

Read more

Skyblivion’s been on track to come out in 2025 for a little while now, and now we know at least one of the places you’ll be able to grab it when it arrives - GOG.com.

The massive modding project that’s remaking The Elder Scrolls 4 in Skyrim’s engine has been in the works for over a decade. Having not had their hard work torpedoed by Bethesda and Virtuos’ own Oblivion remaster, its team are currently grafting hard to ensure they’re ready when the time comes to pull the release trigger.

With the mod now confirmed by GOG to be arriving on the PC storefront in 2025, assuming it makes its current release goal, I reached out to Skyblivion project lead Kyle 'Rebelzize' Rebel and GOG themselves. We chatted about what went into the decision for the same PC storefront that hosted Fallout: London’s release last year to handle this Oblivion-remaking Skyrim mod, and where progress is at on the road to release.

Read more

Hello reader who is also a reader, and welcome back to Booked For The Week - our regular Sunday chat with a selection of cool industry folks about books! No cool industry person this week. Instead, fantastic news: thanks to a new device that identifies trace levels of the arsenic once used to make book covers green, you can go back to laying fat St. Bernards on every sour lime flavoured tome you see, safe in the knowledge that the ones liable to give you the rare nosebleeding condition known as the 'hungry librarian' have been safely quarantined. Huzzah.

Read more

Sundays are for playing around with the Nintendo Switch 2, of course. Let's round up some writing from across the week first.

Jon Hicks, the former fifth Beatle of RPS and current co-host of Alice Bell's post-RPS podcast Total Playtime, has launched a newsletter. It's called Screen Grab and he's beginning it with a series of missives about the not-E3 showcases. You should subscribe, because Jonty is smart and funny and I want him to write more.

Read more

Partly in the absence of real surprises, and partly because the auditorium bass notes were making me feel queasy and dissociative, I spent a lot of this year’s Summer Games Fest showcase transfixed by Geoff Keighley’s balls. I am, of course, referring to the show’s animated backdrops, in which glutinous, gleaming orbs floated like nitrogen bubbles in a cosmic brain - sometimes tossed upon a tide of marbled petro-vomit, sometimes drifting over a scree of lava lamp effluence, sometimes hovering against sherbety silver Bermudas of arches and plinths. Immersive!

Read more

Sometimes, the stoic, ruminant gaze and flowing mane of a himalayan tahr goat is just what we need to get us through the week. Sadly, very few of us can pull off such a look. But we can at least aspire to embody its temperament on the inside. Probably best that way - a Dualshock controller doesn't have the same oomph on a quartet of cloven hooves.

So, fellow ungulates - here's what we're all clicking on this weekend!

Read more

Burden Of Command is a lot like me, in that it deserves a lot of love but it's too frustrating and annoying to get it for long.

The concept is promising: tactical battles with a small batch of soldiers, but as a "leadership RPG" instead of a regular wargame. Occasional glimpses kept my hope alive over its long development, perhaps predisposing me to forgive more than usual when it finally arrived last month. I'm glad I did. But wow, did this game get me yelling for a while.

Read more