DCS World, a combat flight sim made from a superhard composite of Truthite and RTFM, is a few days* away from an engine upgrade that will unify like a drill sergeant and spruce like a Scandinavian forest. Earlier this week I took a break from foliage-shredding in Combat Actions: Vietnam (Assessed below) and whale-worrying in Nantucket (Want to join my crew? Read on) to quiz producer Matt Wagner about the sea change that is ‘2.5’.

* The 2.5 Open Beta will release on 31 January and the “stable” version a week later. (more…)

History, scholars agree, is a washing machine on a spin cycle with a brick inside: as it bounces round and round, the brick will often return to the same point but is slightly changed by an entropy that eventually will violently shake the machine to pieces then our ma will give us a right skelping for copying YouTube videos. The cycle returns to a familiar point soon with PixArk, a Minecraftbut based on a survival game based on Minecraft. Deadly murderous survival sandbox Ark: Survival Evolved recently left early access and now the friendly spin-off PixArk is about to enter it. The brick bounces on. (more…)

Look, I know putting ‘space’ in front of something atypically space-ey might not be the most subtle way of getting people’s attention, but I can’t deny that it works. If the idea of playing as space Vikings while listening to a kick-ass space violin in 4X strategy game Endless Space 2 appeals as much to you as it does to me, then good news! The Vaulters expansion came out yesterday, throwing the science and military focused nomads into the cosmic fray. A launch trailer awaits below.

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Once more into the deals breach, my friends. Once more, we gather here today to take a look at the very best PC gaming deals of the week, or of the past few days at least. Since it’s the end of the month and most likely payday for you, this will either prove truly convenient for you or ultimately destructive – only time shall tell! Let’s have a look at what’s been around in the last week.

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Earlier this week, Nvidia’s GeForce Now PC beta left me pleasantly surprised. This was cloud gaming done right, I thought. I can play my own games on my own ancient hardware at the highest possible graphics settings and give a cheeky middle finger to all those soaring GPU prices in one fell swoop. It’s almost like the PC-equivalent of the Nintendo Switch, as I can use my tiny laptop to play all the latest games from any room in my house. Having seen French start-up Blade’s new Shadow box, however, I’m starting to think I don’t even need a PC full stop anymore.

Whereas GeForce Now is all about letting you game in the cloud, Shadow wants to move your entire PC there. You don’t even technically need that box up there in the header. That’s essentially just a 4K decoder for those who want to sit down at a desk and use a mouse, keyboard and monitor. You could, in fact, access your Intel Xeon and Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080-powered cloud PC from your phone, tablet, Android TV or even a Mac, all with a single tap of its multi-platform app. The real clincher, though? You can seamlessly switch between all those devices simply by launching the Shadow app on another device. Based on an hour-long demo session, this looks like it could be the real PC Switch.

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Subnautica is an underwater survival game about crash landing on an alien planet and becoming best mates with its fish. It surfaced from early access this week and John and Brendan have both been for a dip. Here they share their thoughts on leaky bases, scary whales and the urgency of an alien flu. Note: Spoilers to follow. >

John: Here s a thing. I think it s impossible to discuss Subnautica – the Official Best Survival Game Ever Made – without spoiling it. Like, if we say anything beyond, You crash on a watery planet, and there are some fishies nearby, then we take away from the reader the experience we both had approaching it. So what I say is: if you haven t played Subnautica but want to, bloody well go play it and stop reading this nonsense. For everyone else who has, or needs convincing, we ll say some other stuff.

Brendan: I agree with all of the things this man is saying. If you don’t care about spoilers, read on. (more…)

Hey, come here a second. I want you to stare at this dank room full of eerie machinery. Really give it a good stare. Drink in the atmosphere, maybe play with some of the meatblobs, think about how small we are in the universe, and

BOO!

Liked that, did you? If you quite like a spot of spooking with cosmic horror and science gone meatwild, you might enjoy more free scares in Amnesia: The Dark Descent and Amnesia: A Machine for pigs. The pair of first-person puzzle-o-horrors are free for keepsies right now, see, Steam keys and all. (more…)

So many people have been looking forward to Iconoclasts for so many years – we wrote our first impressions of it in 2011! – that it’s dangerous to venture any opinions into the fray.

But I fear no danger. Iconoclasts, properly released after all these years, is fine. Kinda. (more…)

No. Let’s not be ridiculous. But there are so many examples of bad survival games that it s important to remember the good ones. So that s what we are doing on the latest RPS podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show. We’re breaking stones over the heads of rubbish survival games, but cooking, salting and eating the delicious ones. Adam wraps himself up in The Long Dark but reluctantly sets Project Zomboid on fire to stay warm. Matt gets sea sickness from Subnautica but wants to swim again anyway. And Brendan freedives into Subnautica too, in an attempt to escape from all the mediocre survival games set on red planets. (more…)

I hadn’t heard of Yume Nikki until a fortnight ago, when the Japanese cult classic explore-o-horror popped up on Steam after over a decade and a sequel was announced. After reading Giada Zavarise’s praise of the first one, I feel I’ve really missed something. I’m now on a timer to catch up, as the publishers today announced that sequel Yume Nikki: Dream Diary will arrive on February 23rd. It’s no longer the work of enigmatic solo creator Kikiyama but an entire team, and the sequel’s also jumping from RPG Maker’s 2D to fancy 3D. (more…)