Well now, here is a brilliant little surprise. Who’d have thought the best game set in the Thief universe this year would be an itsy bitsy isometric Ludum Dare 29 entry? Maybe that’s a bit of an overstatement, but Beneath The City really is a smart (though sadly brief) execution of a really fun idea. In short (but undeniably stout), it’s a real-time turn-based stealther set in Thief’s City. Each time you dash in any direction with a lithe tap of an arrow key, so too does every guard on the map. There’s also light sources to account for, water arrows to fling, and a mystery to partially unravel. Garrett – the real> Garrett – would be proud.

… [visit site to read more]

Texture packs, replacement models, and post-processing mods can do a lot to pretty a game up, but they can’t conceal that jagged old level geometry. It’s an awful lot more work to re-do and update levels but by gum, the folks at Deus Ex: Revision are putting in the time. The Caustic Creative team have been tarting up and reworking Deus Ex‘s levels with more props, more decorative architecture, and fancier lighting.

Version 1.0 of the “re-imagining” mod had been due on May 12 but due a mysterious alluring offer it’s pushed back into the nebulous “near future,” those PC Gamer chaps have spotted. In the meantime, we’ll have to make do with a new video showing off a few of the reworked levels.

… [visit site to read more]

I m terrified of a goat. How has it come to this? To be clear, it s a Satyr rather than a farmyard animal but the features that frighten me aren t Dionysian or mythological in the slightest. I m cringing from the echoing clip-clop of hooves, a piercing bleat and a belching whinny. Depths of Fear is a game about being hunted and murdered by monsters in ever-changing labyrinths.

Like a surreal and low budget horror film discovered on an obscure television channel during a night that has lasted too long, it s jarring, hugely imperfect and strangely alarming. I ve happily lost myself in it for two evenings now.>

… [visit site to read more]

I m terrified of a goat. How has it come to this? To be clear, it s a Satyr rather than a farmyard animal but the features that frighten me aren t Dionysian or mythological in the slightest. I m cringing from the echoing clip-clop of hooves, a piercing bleat and a belching whinny. Depths of Fear is a game about being hunted and murdered by monsters in ever-changing labyrinths.

Like a surreal and low budget horror film discovered on an obscure television channel during a night that has lasted too long, it s jarring, hugely imperfect and strangely alarming. I ve happily lost myself in it for two evenings now.>

… [visit site to read more]

“Word is: if you don’t crack this one, you’re out of a job.”

I’ve previously established that Where’s An Egg? is the best game about being a detective, but Make It Good is probably the best text adventure about being an alcholic detective. It was released in 2009 but I only discovered it this past week. It’s free and you can play it right now in your browser.

… [visit site to read more]

A quick primer for those who’ve been living under a rock: 1) SOE’s making a spiritual successor to Star Wars Galaxies that is also a zombie game, 2) yeah I know, and 3) zombies have transcended mere fad-dom and become immortal cultural icons for reasons I’ll never be able to fully comprehend. H1Z1‘s impressively ambitious within a very narrow lineage, though. Think DayZ or Rust, but with thousands of players per server, huge areas for them all to build on, and realistic fire to purify all that the unholy hand of man has wrought>. Or piss off your friends/enemies. Whichever. Quick trailer and lengthier recording of a recent Twitch stream below.

… [visit site to read more]

I’m not sure if Project CARS is the car-est car game of all time like Need For Speed: Shift developer Slightly Mad is claiming, but it is ludicrously attractive. These days I tend to keep my eyeballs inside> my skull unless a technicolor dream art style saunters by, but I guess my heart-on for shiny things wot look like real world cameragrams hasn’t entirely atrophied. Case in point: the latest CARS (not to be confused with Pixar’s inside voice/terrible take on the word) trailer matches the game against real life in a 1:1 vroom-vroom competition. Mr President, I know you’re reading this, so let’s just get it out of the way now: I think we’re gonna need a bigger graphics.

… [visit site to read more]

Doddering old fools that we are, sometimes here at RPS we miss games when they’re announced. Perhaps we were busy shouting at the television, or simply enjoying a nap to escape the bright afternoon light. That’s okay. First-person sprinters are always of interest, no matter how late we come across them.

Master Reboot developers Wales Interactive last month announced Infinity Runner, a run ‘em up with a chap dashing about to escape a collapsing spaceship. So we decrepit folks might better imagine we’ve tossed our walking sticks aside, it has an Oculus Rift mode too, and multiplayer so we can pretend we’re out with our friends again.

… [visit site to read more]

It’s kind of a fantastic time to be a PC gamer, if you haven’t noticed. Pretty much everything of note is coming to our platform of choice, and also we get productivity software! Does it get any better? That does, however, make rare exceptions like Halo creator Bungie’s new (don’t-call-it-an) MMOFPS Destiny all the stranger. So why can’t the multi-million-dollar-banking mega-dev – dual-wielding newfound pseudo-freedom and a series not synonymous with Microsoft’s bawkes of eckses – pump out a PC version? “It’s complicated,” apparently. But there is hope, dim though it might be, for the future.

… [visit site to read more]

Each Monday, Chris Livingston visits an early access game and reports back with stories about whatever he finds inside. This week, isometric turn-based RPG combat (and attempting to avoid it) in The Age of Decadence.>

Imagine walking out of a store and discovering that not only have you been pickpocketed while shopping, but the expensive item you bought is actually a worthless trinket. When you complain to a city guard, he suspects you’re> the real thief, and when a friendly citizen offers to help, you soon find yourself in an alley surrounded by armed thugs. You’ve been ripped off, robbed, accused, mislead, and stabbed to death, all in a single afternoon. Welcome to The Age of Decadence! A quote from the tutorial seems fitting: “Remember to save, you are going to die soon.” … [visit site to read more]