If you re summoning Dark Souls, you have to be prepared to make a deal with the Capra Demon. In this pact, you will be granted the power of From Software s ideas, yes, but you will also be doomed to comparison. You ll only be seen in the light of that which came before. Ashen has made such a pact, and it invites that comparison especially often. It sticks so closely to the Souls formula it could be a dream Hidetaka Miyazaki once had. But lapsed hollows who look closely will also find that it uses the template to create its own mythology and its own admirable spirit, one of restoration rather than decay. If Dark Souls is a tale of perpetual, cyclical death and redeath, Ashen feels like tramping through a creation myth as it s still being told. I like it a lot.

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We’ve been to the forest, the desert, and a tropical island in Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds, but Vikendi, the newest map in PUBG, takes us to a hilly frozen tundra, located on an island somewhere between the size of Erangel and Sanhok. The map release also comes with a host of exclusive features and game adjustments, so we’ve put together this Vikendi map guide, where you’ll find everything you need to know to get started with playing the new map, such as the deadliest areas to drop into, best loot locations, Vikendi-exclusive weapons and vehicles, and some tips for getting that warm chicken dinner to feed you through the winter. (more…)

Hey, remember the good old days? Those giddy times I like to think of as last week? When the Charts felt fresh and new, filled with potential, as if any interesting game could take a top spot? Well, forget all that because it’s all gone to shit again.

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Oh, you want to see what’s behind door number 17 on our advent calendar of 2018’s bestest best PC games? It’s no good charging straight at it, trying to slide a finger into that little cardboard gap in the hope of wrenching the thing open. You’ll only break a fingernail and tire yourself out, you poor love.

No, you need to come at it sideways. Find the weak points. Go for the hinge.

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Just Cause 4 stuck its landing about as elegantly as a Victorian flying machine made from long-johns, strawberry shoelaces and seagull wings – here’s John howling about its numerous misfires in our Just Cause 4 review – but developers Avalanche aren’t giving up on it yet. Steam reviews currently average out to the dreaded Mostly Negative, with the vast majority of thumbs-downery prompted by the presence of more bugs than the family movie box office in 1998.*

Undeterred (well, probably quite a lot deterred, let’s be honest), Avalanche recently pushed out the first big JC4 patch, which attempts to wrestle the most overt boo-boos to the ground – including fixing texture pop-in, making keys remappable and menus less miserable, and overall ‘stability fixes’. They also promise that this is “just the start of the work we are carrying out,” with more patches planned next year. They’re also “very sorry to hear” that so many people have had a rubbo time with JC4, if that helps any.

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Much as every Christmas cracker must contain a paper hat and every Christmas stocking must give a satsuma, every Christmas’s gaming must include Skeal. No one knows when this tradition started but it’s tradition, and so we must play Skeal. I’m sure many of you already celebrate the season by playing Skeal with your family round the hearth, laughing and singing together, but for the uninitiated I’ll explain: Skeal is a free slalom skiing game which teaches us the true meaning of Christmas – power, pleasure, and pain.

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There’s a reason you don’t hear much about witches, which is that they’re not real. There’s a separate reason why you haven’t heard much about Witchfire‘s witches since The Astronauts announced their first-person occultist bosher last year – the devs are only eight in number, and they have all been very busy.

In a recent blogpost, The Vanishing Of Ethan Carter devs announced they’re about to get a bit more chatty. Weekly dev updates are due to start this Wednesday, while the announcement itself gives an overview of progress so far. It’s looking very pretty, quite swish, and rather creepy.

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I don t know if I m cut out for this. It pains me to write that. I m RPS s shooty boy, the kid with the crosshairs. I chomp M4A1 rounds for breakfast. But an average round of Insurgency: Sandstorm tends to chew me up instead, then squat over me while informing me about my poor life choices.

I think I m having a good time?

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Good morning! A lot of people had their end-of-year work parties this weekend, including us. But now it’s Monday again. It’s too early for… anything. You’ve got loads of wrapping to do and because you’re not in your 20s any more, the hangovers last for three days. So here is something soothing to stare at, meditatively. Pick out little details. Stay in bed a bit too long because the floor is very cold.

In my review I said that Gris might be the most stunning game I have ever seen. It’s an assessment I stand by, despite not being a huge fan of the story framework that stunningness (stunability?) is deployed around. Gris is probably a must play for anyone interested in illustration or animation.

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Guitar Hero was the best time I ever had with games. Music, friends, house parties, feeling cool in spite of/because of holding actual toys>. Guitar Hero on PC? Obviously a terrible idea. (But it was great news for me).

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