‘Monster hunter’ might once have sounded an impressive job title, one sure to raise gasps and coos when mingling at a house party, but it’s got nothing on ‘god eater’. Sure, the jobs are largely the same, both involving hacking ‘n’ slashing big monsters with big weapons, but ‘god eater’ has much more… drama. You can see people’s faces fall when they ask the god eater if they’ve eaten any gods they’d have heard of. The eater quietly admits these ‘gods’ are biomechanical beasties roaming the ruins of post-apocalyptic Earth, and the ‘eating’ is mostly cutting off bodyparts to make into new weapons. But hey, you can see that for yourself in God Eater 3, released this morning.
A hugely impressive reimagining of a classic videogame has been released, so there’s only one thing for it – mod it until it’s just like the original. Boo, 2019, boo!
Take, for example, videos which replace the free-moving over-the-shoulder camera of the brilliant Resident Evil 2 remake with the fixed camera angles of the 1998 original. While I’m very happy with how the remake does it, this return to fixed cam does lend it a powerful horror movie je ne sais quoi – I should very much like to play that Resi 2 hybrid.
But will that ever be possible? I asked the chap behind the videos about how he’d done it, if and when it’d be released, and why embark on this reverse-remaking in the first place?
We’re only two months into 2019 at the moment, but already we’ve had just as many new graphics card releases – and both of them have sent shock waves throughout the world of today’s best graphics cards. In January, we had Nvidia’s latest mid-range champion arrive on the scene, the RTX 2060, and just this week we’ve had AMD unleash the world’s first 7nm consumer graphics card in the form of the 4K pixel-pusher, the Radeon 7. And, if the rumour mill is to be believed, we may even be getting a third> new graphics card very soon in the form of the Nvidia GTX 1660.
Now that we’ve seen what the Radeon 7 can do, however, it’s time to re-evaluate our best graphics card list for 2019. With all the old AMD and Nvidia graphics cards still going strong as well, we’ve now got more graphics cards to choose from than ever before. Fortunately, help is at hand, as I’m here to aid you in finding the best graphics card for you and your budget. Whether it’s for playing games at 1920×1080, 2560×1440 or 4K, I’ve got you covered.
Free-form town-builder Foundation, which popped up on Steam & GOG early access last week, falls squarely into the category of “games I wholeheartedly recommend but struggle to say many useful things about.” It’s like a bath. Baths are good. I like baths. You should take more baths. But I’m reasonably sure you don’t want to hear about what I listened to on the radio, what I was thinking about as I stared at the ceiling for twenty minutes, what colour my towel was or how thoroughly I scrubbed my armpits. (And if you do, let me know and I’ll set up the Patreon immediately).
Foundation is indulgent. It’s about doing what you want, which is to say building a sweet little medieval economy, without much else getting in the way. Soaking in bubbles, by way of building bakeries and shearing sheep.
It’s a good job the King’s Quest Collection exists. After all, how would I be able to revisit the first PC game I ever played?
Goat-herding depression simulator The Stillness Of The Wind is out now. Followup to the free Where The Goats Are by Lambic Studios, it’s ostensibly a game about farming, but a million miles from Stardew Valley’s industriousness. Players control Talma, a little old lady living out in the middle of nowhere, tending to her small herd of goats and living out her twilight days in near-solitude. If it’s anything like its predecessor, expect hints of tragedy and the creeping sense of unease that comes from quiet isolation. See the launch trailer below, but there’s no need to rush.
Amid Evil is in the final stretch before leaving early access, and has just rolled out the sixth of its seven planned episodes. Indefatigable’s Heretic-like FPS is, in my humblest of opinions, right up there with Dusk and Overload as far as brillo neo-retro shooters go. It has fanciful Quake-like level design with vivid colours straight from Heretic and a sense of scale only matched by Unreal. Plus some fun ideas of its own in terms of enemy and weapon design. The new, sixth episode – The Arcane Expanse – features a whole new set of enemies. See them in motion in a new trailer below.
After some behind-the-scenes wrangling with Valve, Enderal: Forgotten Stories hits Steam next Thursday, February 14th as a free, standalone game for anyone who owns Skyrim. Originally a mere mod (set in its own world entirely separate from The Elder Scrolls), you won’t even need Skyrim installed to play this version of Enderal. Developers SureAI say the Forgotten Stories version boasts more quest-lines, new character classes, a new (hidden) ending and other upgrades – it even has its own Steam Workshop for mods. See the very dramatic new trailer below.
I reckon most of the RPS Treehouse gang love us some Zachlikes, since well before Alice Prime coined the term in 2016 in reference to Shenzhen I/O. Puzzlemeister Zach Barth likes the term too, as he’s borrowed it for the title of his book. Currently crowdfunding on Kickstarter (500% funded in one day), Zach-Like shows the workings and the processes behind his practical puzzlers. There’s design docs for his major games, sketches and documents for some that never got made and some early design exercises. There’s even some pen-and-paper brainteasers in there, because we’re gluttons for punishment.
