Absolver, much like its cast of masked pugilists, is a fighter. Sloclap’s stylish online brawler-RPG was plagued with server and balance issues through its first few months of life, but the studio believed in it, and haven’t given up. For a while, the studio have been working on a major new update centred around a PvE mode featuring new environments and enemies, buffed up with fresh AI. Today, they teased that the reward for besting these new foes would be a fifth fighting style, inspired by one the greatest martial artists of the past century.

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FromSoftware’s Metal Wolf Chaos is a true game of legend. Under the cold, metallic shell of an Armored Core-esque mech shooter beat a heart of pure stars, stripes and apple pie. Starring an American president single-handedly thwarting a coup with his personal mech-suit, it was so American that not even America> could handle it, and never left Japan despite being exclusive to the US-centric Xbox. Long have people cried for a sequel or port, and publisher Devolver Digital might just be teasing it.

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The phrase “mid-range gaming laptop” often seems a bit silly, considering that even this tier in theory the most sensible one is still occupied by mad, distressingly angular notebooks costing as much or more as a 4K-ready desktop. That said, there s certainly a gap worth aiming for between bulky, plasticky entry-level models and the swish but even more punishingly expensive high-end.

This is where Asus first-gen ROG Strix Scar Edition and ROG Strix Hero Edition reside, and now Computex has revealed their replacements in the form of the ROG Strix Scar II and the ROG Strix Hero II.

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One of those there ‘E3 trailers’ introduces the XCOM-ish tactical action and Cold War setting of Phantom Doctrine, the espionage ’em up which pleased our dearly-departed Adam (RPS In Peace) when he played a preview version last year. Take turn-based tactical infiltration, wrap it in a big conspiracy unravelled with the help of that ol’ trusty corkboard covered cards, pins, and string, and developers CreativeForge Games have something interesting going on. Here, watch the trailer. (more…)

Six Ages: Ride Like the Wind is another of those games I’ve been excited for since the moment it was announced. Long-awaited successor to ’90s cult favourite King of Dragon Pass, it’s a blend of tribal management and roleplaying presented primarily as as Choose Your Own Adventure. Today, Six Ages gets its first non-teaser trailer, along with a release window announcement – we’ll be raiding clans and taking cows again in 2019, although iOS folks will have the game in just a few weeks.

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The crappiest common cards in Shadowverse look better than the best legendary cards in most of the collectible card games I’ve played, so you can imagine what Shadowverse’s legendaries look like. They are stupidly, irresponsibly beautiful. Dragons with uncountable glistening scales, angels clad in impossibly pearlescent metal, musclebound demons flanked by swirling tongues of raven-black flame, to say nothing of all the hunky anime boys and cute anime girls. The legendaries are also stupidly, irresponsibly powerful, which pretty much sums the whole game up. Shadowverse is a game of extremes – sometimes great, sometimes not-so-great, but always a spectacle. (more…)

Building your own PC can be pretty damn satisfying when you’re not paying through the nose for one of today’s best graphics cards and actually manage to get it all working> when you first turn it on, but sometimes we just want someone else do the hard work for us – especially when that someone is graphics card extraordinaire Zotac and the PC in question is the delightfully diddy MEK1.

I say diddy – the MEK1 is still positively monstrous compared to Zotac’s other collection of miniature media PCs and tiddly little NUC units they’ve made over the years. But at just over 418mm tall, a svelte 118mm wide and a sleek 415mm deep, this mini-ITX build is arguably one of the neatest kinds of gaming PC you can get that stills fit on top of your desk without it looking completely ridiculous – and its 6GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 graphics card and Intel Core i5 CPU aren’t bad either. Let’s take a look.

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Following the teen drama of Life Is Strange and the bloodsucking drama of Vampyr, Dontnod Entertainment are next applying their spooky sensibilities to a tale of a journalist returning to his home town. Publishers Bandai Namco today announced Twin Mirror, the Dontnod game they teased last year but had kept secret. Turns out, it’s a “psychological thriller” story ’em up involving amnesia, investigation, and possibly a bar brawl with a ghost? Watch the announcement trailer below. (more…)

E3 2018 begins on Saturday and over the week that follows will deliver new games, new trailers, and new details of what PC games we’ll be playing in the years ahead. It is pure hype, all pomp and gloss and outlandish promises – but that’s exactly why E3 is great. It’s games as nothing but ideas and potential, before the yoke of reality gets attached by those games actually being released.

So let’s follow in kind. Without restrictions, what does the RPS team hope to see from this year’s E3? Unannounced games we hope exist, announced games we want to see more from, anything goes. You can watch the video above for some ideas, you can read the words below for some more ideas, and then if you like you can let us know your own suggestions in the comments. (more…)

Skullgirls developers Lab Zero have proven their skills on the artistic and mechanical fronts, and with upcoming action-RPG Indivisible they’re applying them to a formula that almost nobody has touched in decades; PlayStation JRPG classic Valkyrie Profile. For those wise enough to have backed the crowdfunded game, a new demo has been released, and for the rest of us, a fancy new gameplay trailer that you can see within.

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