Reader dearest, I fall upon my sword before you. I hurl myself upon it. I take a running start and leap upon my sword. Through the teeth and past the gums, look out guts here it comes and I’m split from the skull down, intestines and shame and regret and apologies spill steaming upon the ground, dissolving into putrid black mucus the cold earth swallows to fester and feed the blooms of so many future mistakes.

Dearest reader o reader dear, while I was off tromping around lochs on my hols earlier this month, Double Fine shared a trailer peeking at Full Throttle Remastered [official site] and it’s taken me this long to notice. THE SHAME. … [visit site to read more]

For an idea of how much Dota 2 s New Journey/7.00 update is A Big Deal, consider this: Dota, in general, has been in version 6.somethingsomething since 2005 – the Dota All-Stars mod days. It was around this time that the mysterious Icefrog originally took over development. That s endured all the way through Valve s Dota 2, right up until now, when all our expectations of the game s patch number conventions crumbled like so many tango-munched trees.

Moreover, the preceding patch 6.88 is held in unusually high esteem by both the community at large and the professional/competitive scene. Other than the questionable strength of certain illusion-spam lineups, 6.88 was remarkably well-balanced, with almost no heroes considered unviable and a relatively broad range of strategies, from drawn-out split pushing to full-davai five-man gank rushes being employed in games at all skill levels. [Don’t worry about the terminology if you’re less steeped in on Dota slang – just know that 6.88 was really versatile! – Ed>]

Nonetheless, Valve and Icefrog have held little back for 7.00, introducing not only a new hero in Monkey King, but the kind of fundamentals-altering additions that go even further than what skipping 0.11 version numbers would suggest. Perhaps the most impactful of these changes are Talents. … [visit site to read more]

Following a recent visit to Planet Coaster [official site], RPS funsters Adam, Alice and Pip sat down in a seaside cafe, exchanged bawdy postcards, and then got down to the business of discussing Frontier’s theme park management game. From the infuriating lack of a tutorial, and the depth of the simulation and creation tools, to Banksy and the fear of animatronics, their findings are all here.

… [visit site to read more]

Space Hulk: Deathwing [official site], the new squad-based FPS adaptation of Games Workshop’s tabletop Warhammer 40,000 spin-off, is now out. Our Alec is currently busy polishing his crotchskull but, once he’s done with that and made himself decent, he’ll load Deathwing and play so he can tell us all Wot He Thinks. For now, he sends initial word that “the environments look like concept art and it has the requisite thumpy metal sound effects, but do brace yourself for a whole lot of stomping down long, twisty corridors.” Sounds like Space Hulk all right. … [visit site to read more]

I drive the short trip back to my base, park my truck close enough to one of the buildings for the cable to attach, and offload the red blob from the back of my buggy. It looks like a thorned vegetable and I plug it into my research station, which is receiving power via cables from the solar panel on the back of my truck. When the research is complete, I will have the knowledge of which resources I need in order for my 3D printer to create a drill head, which I can then attach to a vehicle and use to cut paths through the fully deformable terrain.

Astroneer [official site] is a survive-and-craft game like many others, but it throws out a lot of the cruft and grind. I played it and suddenly it was five hours later, the intervening period a blur of pretty landscapes and achievable goals.

… [visit site to read more]

Overwatch [official site], aka the Shooter You Sigh At While Watching It Walk By, has begun some Christmas silliness in its latest update, including a new brawl mode that pits two teams made entirely of professional annoyer Mei against one another in a cautious snowball fight. There s also some new skins, emotes and all that carry on. More importantly, the changes to the hero Symmetra have been added. … [visit site to read more]

The next door on the calendar is ominous. The rewards inside are worth the risk but the whole area might well be contaminated. Day thirteen of The RPS Advent Calendar, which highlights our favourite games of the year, brings…

It’s the year’s best cooperative game, The Division [official site]!

… [visit site to read more]

When you receive a ‘Great Horses of the Isle of Wight 2017’ calendar from your uncle this holiday season, tear it open, flip to February, break out your spiffy new glitter gel pens, and write “NEW TORMENT!!!” on February 28th. That’s the newly-announced release date for Torment: Tides of Numenera [official site], inXile’s “spiritual successor” to the venerable Planescape: Torment. That means a weird fantasy-ish setting with mish-mash of worlds and a focus on words over weapons, all of which makes it one of Cobbo’s most-anticipated RPGs of 2017. … [visit site to read more]

Exciting Dishonored 2 [official site] news arrives in the form of an update that adds new stuff to the game rather than fixing what is already there. First of all, there’s a new game plus mode, allowing you to start fresh with all the abilities and bonecharms you’ve discovered at the end of a playthrough carried across into the next one. In a wonderful turn of events, you can play as either character in your new game plus, but will have access to both Emily and Corvo’s powers, allowing you to mix and match. The update will be available in beta later today and launches proper on Monday.

In January, a second free update will add a mission select screen, for replaying your favourite areas, and customisable difficulty modes. … [visit site to read more]

Today, on Tech That Sounds Kinda Cool But TBH What Really Matters Is Whether Games Using It Are Good But Hey Y’Like Tech Doncha Ya Funny Little Thing, comes news about SpatialOS [official site]. It’s a server platform which boasts about using the mystical powers of clouds to host thousands of players in super complex simulations, and which is supposedly dead simple to build games with. Improbable, the gang behind SpatialOS, aren’t the only folks with drifting servers but they have just announced a partnership with disruptive meteorologists Google and launched an alpha. … [visit site to read more]