Ah who needs magic in RPGs anyway, right? Henry of Skalitz of Kingdom Come: Deliverance fame sure doesn’t. If you’re looking for another big RPG to tickle your tabard, Warhorse Studios’ big RPG about life as a blacksmith turned soldier in medieval Europe is getting a free to play weekend.

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Whether or not famously difficult games should have an optional easy mode has long been a point of contention. But many already do, albeit unofficially, thanks to modders taking things into their own hands.

Take the fella who goes by “n00bplatformer”, for example. He recently created an “Assist Mode” for run ‘n’ gun action game Cuphead. It makes simple tweaks to some of the game’s systems, like granting players six hitpoints instead of the usual three, and boosting weapon damage an extra 50% so that boss battles don’t drag on so long.

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It’s Thursday, and that means new free games on the Epic Store. Between now and February 20th there are two quite fight-y games up for grabs. The first is Kingdom Come: Deliverance, a rare medieval RPG that focuses more on historical stuff rather than the fantastical. Next up is Aztez, a side-scrolling brawler set in Aztec times when the only colours they had were red, white and black.

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I m willing to bet that 100% of the people reading this have made no impact on medieval society. But now you re thinking about it, aren t you? The idea is settling into your brain, like a pre-medicine parasite bedding down in your grey matter. Don t panic! I didn t incept you for no reason, but instead to get you thinking about what you could make with Kingdom Come: Deliverance‘s just-released mod tools. The Bohemian landscape, its people, and its intrigue are now yours to manipulate, with a surprisingly large modding package from developers Warhorse Studios.

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Horses, that s this week s topic. Big galloping buddies full of teeth and flies. Brush em, ride em, put em in your videogame. The RPS podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show, will appreciate it because this episode the pod squad are talking about their favourite saddlepals from the fantastical realms of this bewildering industry. Horses. They re like big cats.

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If you believe (incorrectly) that there’s no such thing as bad publicity, you may be impressed that people are still talking about publisher THQ Nordic GmbH. Their ‘Ask Me Anything’ Q&A session on 8chan – an infamous image-board permanently delisted from Google for hosting suspected child porn – got people chattering. Unfortunately it’s the kind of chatter that has brought parent company THQ Nordic AB out of the woodwork to publicly apologise for the incident to “group employees, partners and consumers”, although it’s a predictably rote and half-hearted statement.

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“We’re doing an 8chan AMA and we have no idea why,” announced THQ Nordic on their Twitter account earlier this evening. If you’re not aware, 8chan is an imageboard website which has been de-listed from Google search results for hosting “suspected child abuse content,” and which is associated with Swatting and Gamergate.

THQ Nordic’s marketing director has since apologised and claimed ignorance, but both are hard to believe.

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Nom Nom Nom Nom. Nom Nom. Nom. That was my impression of THQ Nordic acquiring various IPs as part of it’s ongoing, unstoppable quest to presumably create some sort of bizarre Smash Bros knockoff where you can fight Sergeant Cortez from TimeSplitters as the goat from Goat Simulator. Warhorse, the team behind last year’s Kingdom Come: Deliverance, is the latest studio to say hello to the inside of THQ Nordic’s belly. Nom Nom Nom.

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While last year’s Steam Awards were just a poll on the store, Valve are stepping up their game this year. Starting in a few minutes (at the time of writing) is the Steam Awards 2018 show, broadcasting live on the company’s own Steam TV site. While I doubt there’ll be anything as surprising as Epic’s coup at the Game Awards before the holidays, there’s still a chance for unexpected announcements in there, plus I’m curious just how fancy the show will be. Tune in here on Steam TV – the show starts soon. Below, a reminder of the categories and the nominees in the running.

Update: Show’s over, and honestly I’m a bit underwhelmed, even starting with low expectations. No surprises, no human faces, no pageantry. Barely any time to breathe, even. The show began immediately with the awards and hammered through them in under twenty minutes. At least each of the winning studios recorded a little award acceptance clip – that was nice. You can see a recording of the show on the Steam Awards page here.>

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Ho ho ho! John still hasn’t returned after Christmas, missing presumed drowned in egg nog, so I’m filling in today. Valve have already blarbed about 2018’s best-selling games so we’re back on the weekly charts. Last week’s top ten was largely familiar, though catching the tail end of the Steam Winter Sale has introduced a few surprises.

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