Update Night is a fortnightly column in which Rich McCormick revisits games to find out whether they’ve been changed for better or worse.>

I should ve been out killing griffins, goblins, and other gribblies, but for much of my Witcher 3 save file, it was Gwent that had its claws in me. It says something about me, I guess, that I preferred to stay in the pub and play cards than go out into the dangerous world outside, but it s clear that CD Projekt RED hit on something fairly special with its throwaway minigame. (more…)

Ubisoft’s Ghost Recon Wildlands this week introduces the Predator to the sandbox stealth-o-shooter. Yes, Predator, like the movies about headhunting aliens. Players will get to fight a Predator in a special challenge as well collect and use Predator items. As odd as this may be, it does make Wildlands more interesting to me as I’ll take a monster mash over oh-so-serious imperialist fantasy any day. And the Predators and Ghosts do have a lot in common: they both enjoy sneaking around jungles, casually slaughtering anyone they consider beneath themselves. (more…)

We’ve been following the development of mind-bending, reality-warping, picture-based puzzler Gorogoa for five years, since it was first revealed in 2012. It then went on to win an IGF Award in 2014, despite being unfinished. And now, finally, it’s here. And as our review says, it’s magnificent. We spoke to lone developer Jason Roberts about the long development, the process of what to leave out, and how unknowability was woven into the fabric of the game. (more…)

Get ready to grab your great axe, long-sword or naginata and set some heads a-rolling, because Ubisoft are finally testing dedicated servers for their melee brawler For Honor. Everyone, including people who don’t own that game, can download the test client now then start helping them with that from 1pm GMT on Thursday, when you’ll be able to slash around in the usual multiplayer modes but on dedicated servers rather than wonky peer-to-peer ones. They’ll stay up until 1am on Monday the 18th.

If you do own the game and you’ve been getting annoyed at unstable servers, then I can see why you might not be interested in testing out some new, differently unstable test-phase servers. Maybe just sit back and hope that Ubisoft make the server infrastructure switch early on in 2018.

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Left your Christmas shopping until the last minute again? Fear not! For we’ve compiled our very own RPS Christmas gift guide for such an occasion. Whether it’s small bits of hardware you’re after or a fancy bit of gaming merch to complement your best mate’s favourite game, you can find all this and more in our carefully curated list below.

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It’s notoriously difficult to surprise anyone when playing a first-person shooter in split-screen multiplayer, as they can simply peek at your portion of the screen, so how could a split-screen stealth FPS work? Released yesterday, Chambara attempts this using colours. Levels in the split-screen FPS are mostly stark black or white, see, and so are player characters – so you can hide in plain sight simply by being in front of scenery that’s the same colour as you. With shuriken and with sword, players try to find and murder each other. I quite enjoyed the early version I played a little in 2016, so I’m keen to see how it’s ended up. (more…)

Many of us go home to spend time with our families during the Christmas period. These are good times>. Nothing awkward or melancholy will happen.

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Oh look, Star Wars has snuck up on me again. At midnight tonight, cinema goers that are enthusiastic enough to brave the crowds will get to ogle The Last Jedi, sci-fi’s premier space wizard opera. Cinema screens aren’t the only place you’ll find new Star Wars, though – EA are dropping a batch of free Star Wars Battlefront 2 content today, giving you the chance to get new Star Wars under your fingers as well as across from your eyeballs. That stuff gets everywhere.

The Last Jedi DLC brings a couple of new heroes, multiplayer maps and ships, though I’m most interested in the three new chapters for the singleplayer campaign.

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Maybe you heard the story. An indie darling in 2012, eventually released into a changed world in 2017, commercial disaster and, at least, widespread coverage of said disaster after the fact.

I played Aztez; I gave it a few paragraphs in our weekly Unknown Pleasures round-up, genuinely unaware of how bright its light had once been and thinking of it as just another cool under-the-radar 2017 game. It was pretty good. (more…)

The list of games I feel I’ve dearly missed by skipping most consoles isn’t long, and it grows shorter all the time as classics are ported to PC. The latest venerated console game to come our way is Okami, Clover Studio’s 2006 game about a sun goddess incarnated as a wolf to save the land from darkness with her magical ink brush, launched last night. Now named Okami HD, it’s not majorly rebuilt but it is a bit prettier and hey it’s on PC so good, great, wonderful.

Oh, and you’ll get a snazzy Dota 2 courier skin too. (more…)