As the charting games on Steam once more congeal into a single amorphous lump, quickly dive in to catch the last appearance of Subnautica, and probably Slay The Spire too. Next week it’ll just be GTA: Counter-Strike – Witcher Battlegrounds. (more…)
Some websites will fob you off with scant details about your favourite best-selling games, but not RPS. Here you will find gaming’s most insightful commentary on the leading games of the modern age. (more…)
Take one hundred players fighting to the death in that Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds way, throw them into the S.T.A.L.K.E.R.-esque irradiated and anomaly-ridden ruins of Chernobyl, and you might have a game like the newly-announced Fear The Wolves. This latest game to hop on the hot Battle Royale trend is coming from Vostok Games, the studio founded by some former members of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. developers GSC Game World. Fear The Wolves is separate to Vostok’s not-very-good S.T.A.L.K.E.R.-inspired multiplayer shooter Survarium, mind, which is still in early access.
Where oh where is #9 this week, you ask, uncertain that it is possible to have a top ten without it. A mystery! Of course there are the usual suspects, the increasingly usual new suspects, and even a couple of new entries, but when it comes to slot nine, there’s a gap. The URL for the entry is this, the number seemingly unattached to anything on the store, and not> the since deleted entry for the idiotic CS:GO championship sticker collection, as I’d first assumed. Go solve the mystery, mystery solvers! (more…)
Sure, you can expect a stag & hen weekend to get rowdy when 100 hungover top lads are dropped onto an island brimming with guns, but cheating just isn’t cool. There’s a fine line between banter and being an arse, Gary. In their ongoing battle to keep Gary and his cheaty mates out of Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds, the developers have been working on new anti-cheat tech of their own. Following a stretch in testing, this should hit the main servers next week. The devs say they are planning to make it less strict about blocking non-cheaty software which hooks innocently into the game – but ReShade is definitely banned. (more…)
People are leaving Miramar in droves. A confusingly large number of people apparently prefer the original Erangel map, which is why I’ve seen player counts dwindle as people leave at the start of a desert match, seeking greener pastures. Nowadays, those kids are even editing game files so they automatically leave a round when it loads up Miramar.
Today’s update to the test servers for Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds seeks to tempt some of those players back. My guess is if anything’s going to do that, it’ll be the promise of extra buildings and cover across the map. I haven’t tried it myself yet though, so the jury’s still out.
Though Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds now has two maps, it does not have an option to choose which you play. While the devs do plan to add one, for now players have used sneaky tricks to get the map they want. Some disconnect from servers if the randomly-selected map isn’t what they want. And, it turns out, some make it simpler by outright removing one map’s files. The game does still run, but any time it tries to join a game on the undesired map it’ll return right to the menu. One player even made a tool to remove maps easily. It’s awkward that there still isn’t a map-select option. (more…)
Aw MAN! Just when I’d started up a great new running gag for the appearance of GTA V in the charts, this week it’s fallen out! And Divinity: Original Sin 2 has finally failed to make the grade for the first time this year. However, you’ll be relieved to learn CS:GO and Plunkles don’t let us down and wearily continue their infinite reigns.
Meantime, there’s quite a nice mixture of fresh and more recently popular scattered within. (more…)
At the start of every Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds match, players wake up confused and hungover after a fierce night on the lash at their stag and hen parties. They blink, squint at the 99 other zombies, search in vain for a Red Bull or ideally a fried breakfast, then pass out before awaking on a plane. This will change, a little. With the next update (currently live on the test servers), the game will split players in the loading lobby between several different areas of the map. Having 100 people in the same spot harms performance too much, the devs say, so they’re spreading people out. Guns will be removed from the lobby too. (more…)
Well sound the klaxons, unfurl the flags, hoist your main-braces and petards whatever they may be, 2018 is proving far more interesting for charting Steam games. Of course we can’t escape the three usual suspects, but beyond those this is quite the collection of interesting, independent, and novel games. (more…)