Comb your hair, spray that perfume and suit up for a night of high culture, readers – the third edition of the Game Music Festival is underway. Starting last night, you can already tune into a full evening of orchestral rearrangement of scores from Bastion, Transistor, Pyre and Hades, with Larian Studios picking up the mic tonight for a more high-fantasy swing at the concert scene.

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Ah, religion. I know this is a topic we all have trouble agreeing on. But fear not, humble practitioner of a good pray, I am not here to squint angrily at your favourite book of life advice. I m only here for the videogame religions. The ones that are very, very, very, very bad. You know, the gun-loving cults and the xenophobic people-burners. The (mostly) fictional religions that involve an uncommon volume of murder. Step this way, sprinkle yourself with some of my 100% genuine oil of the almighty, and peruse the 9 most dodgy religions in games.

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You re a good person, reader, and I will always believe in you, no matter what. No, not you. The person behind you. No, to the left of… No, the other person. The one in the green– No, you, with the… NO. The person BEHIND you, I said. The person with– Oh great they ve walked off now. This whole thing has been a waste of time. My only friend among you is gone because we re several sentences into this intro and none of you can understand how pointing works. I hope you re all happy. Here s your god damned podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show.

Honestly.>

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The old quote is wrong: neither death nor taxes are, it seems to me, as terrifyingly certain as the Steam Summer Sale. Yes, once more we can add to the heap that is our backlog by buying games for, what, five quid, on average? But there are so many to choose from that it’s easy to get flustered, so who better than the staff of RPS to hand-pick the best ones for your consideration (rhetorical question; do not answer)?

Check out the full list below for a mix of games that should suit all pockets and tastes.

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Sit down at the boiling pot, stranger. Let me tell you a tale. A sordid tale, full of fascinating lands and captivating characters. A story of wonder and flame, strangeness and warmth. Would you like to hear it? Great. Just play this rubbish cover shooter for a half hour. I ll start the introduction when you hit the first checkpoint.

Welcome to the RPS podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show. This week we re discussing some great stories that come packaged with terrible games. (more…)

Hello chum! Sit down and have a nice glass of water and a pack of Bombay mix. That’s how we greet our closest friends on the RPS podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show. This week, best pals John and Brendan discuss how friendship is handled in videogames, and what characters felt most like close buddies. John felt a kinship with Alistair from Dragon Age: Origins, and sees Lydia from Skyrim as Wilson the football from Castaway. Whereas Brendan felt a habitual closeness to the undead woman in Dark Souls who sold him poisonous arrows. Takes all sorts, really.

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Pyre [official site], the sportsdunking new RPG from the studio behind Bastion and Transistor, has added a tough new difficulty mode in its ‘True Nightwing’ update. Unlocked after completing the main campaign, the new mode is “reminiscent of an ‘Ironman’ mode in other games” according to developers Supergiant Games. In short, it launches you right into the full experience with everything unlocked and no reloading from checkpoint or restarting sportsfights. (more…)

How many times have you played as The Hero of the Revolution? Where you get to lead the charge against an evil government, backed by a rag-tag rebel group, as a rough, gruff outsider. You re the one who drives the action, at the head of every important rebel action – it s your guts and your guns that will win glory for the revolution. You re the face of change, in that you literally show up on all the WANTED posters. The rebels cheer for you when you walk close. Everyone assures you history will remember your name.

Pyre s not that game. You re just a hero of the revolution, no capital letters, and certainly no glory. No one will remember your face, much less your name.

Extensive spoilers for Pyre follow. (more…)

Well even if the Sun won’t shine, the Steam Charts can still spread brightness into our lives. By some manner of wondrous majjicks, this week’s chart doesn’t even include H1Z1, Fallout 4, nor The Witcher 3! I barely even know what to do with myself. I’m dizzy! Come, join the celebration. (more…)

A purgatorial fantasy sport is not the direction I expected Supergiant Games, creators of Bastion and Transistor, to go with their next game. Then again, expectations seem increasingly useless when it comes to a studio such as this. Pyre [official site] is set in a world where literacy is banned and punishable by exile banishment to a dangerous land called the Downside, cut off from the home realm of the Commonwealth. This underworld is where you find yourself. But you soon make new friends and, to earn your freedom, you start to compete in a quasi-religious tournament of orb-throwing and goal-scoring.

The sport of Pyreball itself has caused me to curse and sigh many times, but I can t accuse it of being uninventive. That goes double for the story of this band of exile-sinners, told through visual novel-style interjections and dialogue choices. It s a great story. One I often wish didn t have fantasy netball clinging to it.

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