As the fantasy Frenchman of Bretonnia arrive in Total War: Warhammer [official site] today with a free update, The Creative Assembly have announced they’re done with this instalment of the Twarhammer trilogy. The plan all along has been for one core game followed by two stacking standalone expansions, and the devs say they’re stuck well into the second part. While they don’t say quite where or who this will add, it will be leaving the Old World.

Speaking of new places, The Creative Assembly also teased that they’re working on a new game set in an era they’ve not visited before. … [visit site to read more]

Blood for the blood god, it’s only the weekly Steam charts! These are the ten games which sold best on Steam last week.

The debate has raged for an eternity. The infinite dilemma that has defeated even humanity’s greatest minds.

Which is best: guns or swords? Today, I have a definitive answer for you.

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Thimbleweed Park [official site], the new adventure game from Maniac Mansion creators Ron Gilbert and Gary Winnick, finally has a release date. On March 30th, two-and-a-quarter years after the game’s crowdfunding campaign ended, we’ll be welcomed into the small town of Thimbleweed Park to investigate murder and other strange goings-on. It’ll bring puzzles, chat, jokes, japes – y’know, stuff you’d broadly expect from the reunion of a pair of LucasArts adventure veterans. … [visit site to read more]

The old-school biff-bopping of a beloved NES beat ’em up has resumed with the release of River City Ransom: Underground [official site], an official licensed revival. It bleeps! It bloops! It barfs! It is, to refresh your memory, a scrolling beat ’em up with a touch of action-RPG as a group of plucky heroes kick the living heck out of badguys. I’m still delighted seeing how elaborate and acrobatic some of their moves are. Peep this: … [visit site to read more]

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Raised by screens is an intermittent autobiography, structured around the PC games I played in my youth. Most instalments are currently only available to RPS subscribers, but I shall compile them somewhere once the series reaches its eventual end.>

Some spoilers for Planescape: Torment’s ending follow.

Too many games now, too many websites, too much happening each and every day. I mean only ‘too much for me personally to keep pace with’, not that this is inherently a poor state of things. I think about how I came to play Planescape: Torment, and how differently that might happen today. … [visit site to read more]

As the press release sharks swim around our heels on the opening of GDC, one of them has gone in for a testing nip. Battle Breakers [official site] is an upcoming tactical RPG, Epic Games have announced. It s done in the flavour of Saturday morning sci-fi cartoons of the 80s, they say – a turn-based battler about taking back your Kingdom from space monsters. It is as ugly as a mauled bottom. … [visit site to read more]

Every Monday we send Brendan to scout the early access ruins for hidden treasures. This week, the careful Viking tactics of Northgard [official site]

This is Blainn, below. He s just killed a Wyvern. He’s my best mate because I gave him and his giant pals, the J tunn, enough food to last a lifetime. They reckon we in the Goat clan are excellent humans and now Chief Blainn is fighting alongside us in our hoofed conquest of the whole land. This is one endgame that comes in Northgard, a rock-solid RTS about allocating and reallocating your Viking workforce in just the right way. Technically this match ended over an hour ago, when my opponent reached a wisdom victory . But it s a testament to Northgard s foundations that, when given the option to leave or continue following my defeat, I happily clicked keep playing . … [visit site to read more]

A new expansion for card-thirsty players of Hearthstone [official site] has been announced, bringing with it splurging volcanoes that deal random damage, elemental fire birds that resurrect themselves stronger than before, and dinosaurs that can adapt as a game goes on. There s going to be 135 new cards but most interesting for Hearthstoners (I m guessing!) is the new Quest card type, which let s you setup a goal during the match and rewards you with a powerful card if you manage to complete it. … [visit site to read more]

Total War: Warhammer is good at presenting complex information in battles. Your unit of spearmen will tell you when they re attacked from behind and their banner will flash when they re about to retreat. Your general glows, and he or she is often comically large compared to regular soldiers. Arrows, cannonballs and spells have brightly coloured trails so you can tell what s about to hit you.

Outside of battles though, TW: Warhammer has trouble presenting basic information. In particular, the game s campaign map is a mess which is difficult to parse and frustrating to use. In battles, Creative Assembly make good use of visual shorthand so can you extract relevant information at a glance. The campaign map, meanwhile, is so visually busy that basic information like where your armies are and how far they can move is obscure.

… [visit site to read more]