Rock, Paper, Shotgun - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Graham Smith)

The past week saw the start of the RPS Advent Calendar, our yearly celebration of the best PC games of the year. You can find those and more linked below, among a roundup of our week’s features and reviews.

Oh, and if you’d like a newsletter version of something similar to this, then we’ve now got two of those for you. There’s a daily which automatically sends you our most popular stories each day, and a weekly which we handcraft with links and witty insight (or drivel, depending on my mood). You can subscribe to one or both at this handy RPS newsletter page.

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Rock, Paper, Shotgun - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Dominic Tarason)

Psychonauts 2 is looking exactly how a Psychonauts 2 should. Double Fine have kept the hype-engine on their Lucasartsian platform adventure sequel gently idling since their crowdfunding drive in 2016. Last night at the game awards they gave it a quick rev. Somehow, this is the first real trailer for the game – familiar, but with some exciting new sights, sounds and people to meet. Oh, and terrible puns being called out by its own characters, because it wouldn’t be a Tim Schafer game otherwise. Open your mind’s eye below.

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Katamari Damacy REROLL - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Dominic Tarason)

Katamari Damacy Reroll is out on PC, and all about little things becoming large, rolling their way through obstacles that looked impossible moments prior. Let’s give the diminutive Prince Of All Cosmos a hand, because his PC debut feels so very small compared to yesterday’s awards silliness and today’s Smash Bros overload. Together, with a little push, we can make it big – John reviewed it yesterday, and had a thoroughly lovely time with it. You probably will too, as Katamari is like a poncho – it’s impossible to be unhappy playing it. The launch trailer is rolling by below.

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Time Warpers - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Sin Vega)

We don’t really do themes for Unknown Pleasures, but sometimes the fates mess up and it sort of happens anyway. This week features the usual variety you’ve surely come to expect from our selection of the best new indie games on Steam, but fans of commerce ought to be particularly tickled.

There, see? We can do an intro without banging on about what time of year it is, or weird allusions to my private life. We just choose not to.

Owning the means of production this week: art history, baby dragons, and demonic denial. (more…)

Path of Exile - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Dominic Tarason)

Path Of Exile is a game in flux – the free-to-play action RPG is constantly being revised or reworked one way or another – last year its main story doubled in length. Today Grinding Gear Games have overhauled just about everything that isn’t> part of that central quest. The Betrayal league, free and live on the servers now, introduces a new Shadow Of Mordor-ish web of immortal villains to harangue. It also replaces the Forsaken Masters – a pantheon of quest-giving characters – with a fresh set of faces, each leading you into a small game’s worth of optional hack ‘n slashery.

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Rock, Paper, Shotgun - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Dominic Tarason)

The world may be a barely-habitable hellscape of unending hyperviolence, but that’s no reason to be glum according the new Rage 2 trailer. Along with announcing a May 14th launch date and a pre-order page popping up on Bethesda’s store (though not Steam, interestingly), The Game Awards last night gave us another look at the Id/Avalanche collaboration in action. The new video features a lot of dusty roads punctuated with flashes of neon, lots of gore and a peek at some of the roadside activities available. Take a peek at its well-signposted end of the world below.

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Insurgency: Sandstorm - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Dominic Tarason)

Gritty tactical team shooter Insurgency: Sandstorm launches next week. New World Interactive’s dusty game of desert warfare – both competitive and co-op – arrives on Wednesday, December 12th. Those wanting to sample its buffet of harrowing desert war scenarios can try it free right now – currently live and running until 5pm GMT on Monday, the current beta build is open to all, accompanied by a major update detailed here. There’s a new map, an offline training level, improved character models and some major optimisations. Below, a video explaining its many modes.

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Rock, Paper, Shotgun - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Emily Richardson)

For the purposes of brevity I m going to refer to Porpentine s new game as Almanac , rather than its full title of Almanac of Girlswampwar Territory & The _girls Who Swim As Fertilizer Through The Warm Soil Cloaking The Roots of The Glorious Tree of Eugenics . But just so you know, that is the full title of this weird lil’ adventure romp.

Having never played one of Porpentine s games before (I know I know, I m a bad person), I had no idea what to expect going into Almanac. At first glance, it s a simple 2D game that s accessible by design but completely mind-boggling in narrative. In my first foray into Girlswampwar territory I simply wandered the world a little, enjoyed the brilliant soundtrack, bumped into some folk with troublesome throat sacs and caught a whole bunch of diseases with little idea of where I was or what I was doing.

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The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Alice O'Connor)

Every year on December 6th, the birthday of former Nintendo president Satoru Iwata (who died in 2015), The Binding Of Isaac: Rebirth pays tribute to him and the Nintendo games which inspired Isaac in a special daily challenge run. We get to play as a wee Iwata, clad in his smart suit and clutching the ‘Gamekid’ item, while loot pools are slanted towards many of the items Isaac borrows from Mario and Zelda and whatnot. It’s nice. And then Iwata slaps a fetus on his face, starts wearing a sacrificial goat’s scalp, and… look, it’s still Isaac, okay.

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Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Alec Meer)

Very pretty/entirely menacing rand-o-dungeon-o game Below has been tantalising us from a distance for half a decade. “It’ll never happen!”, bellowed Derek Misery from a Twitter account with 12 followers, sometime in 2016.

Well, suck it up, Derek – all of a sudden, the closest thing there is to a follow-up to peerless adventure/musical odyssey/exploratory crisis Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP is out in seven short days.

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