A website has appeared for the Valve Index, a new virtual reality headset from (obviously) Valve. This is where I m supposed to tell you more about it, but alas, I cannot, because the webpage simply reads Upgrade your experience. May 2019. What will happen when May rolls around? I do not know. What exactly is this experience upgrade they re talking about? Your guess is as good as mine! Can I put a third thing here, as article rhythm dictates I should? No, because that’s literally all the website says.

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This weekend, we are like a duck: aloof, quizzical, gagging for bread, aggressive to strangers during mating season, and calm on the surface but paddling like hell underneath. PAX East is this weekend in the Americky, and we have a small part in it thanks to sharing parent companies. Then next week is EGX Rezzed, the games show in London which we have a much larger part in. I’ve heard what some of the others are up to and… oof, that’s a murderload of prep work, let alone on-the-days work. Me, naw mate, I’m skipping it all to stay home. I only leave Scotland for births, marriages, deaths, and free dinners.

ALSO, REMEMBER: clocks go back on Sunday morning in the UK. Or forward. Spring back, leap forward? Your clock is wrong, I’m saying.

What are you playing this weekend? Here’s what we’re clicking on!

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It’s best not to count a vampire out, but this launched yesterday already, so the Count is definitely out. Higher Vampire Dettlaff van der Eretein and his bat-winged horde have descended upon Gwent, CD Projekt’s Witcher-spinoff CCG. Today’s expansion, The Crimson Curse is the first major card expansion the game has seen since its open beta debut in 2017, a long time for a CCG to go without fresh blood. Fortunately, it looks like The Crimson Curse brings a juicy transfusion of new stuff to the meta, including five new leaders and 101 new cards and fun new rules to learn. Below, the developers walking through the new stuff.

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It feels strange – wrong, even – to call any Valve game ‘failed’, but collectable card game Artifact has been on a sharp downward spiral since launch. Today, Valve spoke up about their struggling CCG and what they’ve got planned for it in an official blog post here. While there’s some of Valve’s usual vagueness, it’s hard not to read some sadness into “Artifact represents the largest discrepancy between our expectations for how one of our games would be received and the actual outcome”. Their plan? Put small, incremental updates on hold and go back to the drawing board.

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In the grim darkness of Bedrock, there is only war. At least, that’s how I’m rationalising Warparty’s comic-book cave-people fighting alongside dinosaurs of all shapes and sizes. Developed by Warcave and Crazy Monkey Studios, it was released yesterday after a while in early access. Warparty is a traditional base-building RTS with three factions of prehistoric people just itching to biff each other. That might be just what the shaman ordered, considering that it seems to be a rather under-sold genre lately. Below, the launch trailer introducing each of the three playable tribes.

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Given that I’m still playing Doom 25 years later, I doubt I’ll ever tire of fast, messy demon-crushing shooters. Prodeus, from a duo humbly calling themselves ‘Mike And Jason’ on the game’s store page, is a fine-looking take on the genre. It blends modern rendering techniques with intentional low-fi grubbiness, and what looks like some fast, fun gory shooting. In order to hire on some extra help to get the game finished and into early access with a level editor on day one, the duo have turned to Kickstarter, and have raised almost half their target in a few days. See it in action below.

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Guardians still chasing godroll guns, rare loot for achievements and titles, or a deathray built from spacedragon bones should soon find themselves a little less frustrated, as Bungie plan to remove or reduce the randomisation that’s stopping us from getting goodies in Destiny 2. The MMOFPS’s weekly content reshuffle has given many players long and frustrating waits for specific activities to get items they want, see, and god help people trying to collect all the bafflingly/pointlessly rare loot in the Dreaming City. This, and more, will change soon.

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Star Citizen continues its slow march towards looking like a halfway coherent game. Rolling out this weekend is another big update, Alpha 3.5, this one focused on fleshing out the planet-side experience in the space MMO. The biggest (in the most literal sense) addition this update is ArcCorp, a planet that is also a corporation, where ships are likely held in place by the invisible hand of the market instead of gravity. Cloud Imperium Games are also overhauling the game’s flight model and character creator, finally adding playable women to the game, apparently a lower priority than the first hundred premium-priced spacecraft.

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If Foundation is the warm bath of 2019 city-builders, Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic is the ice bucket challenge. Set in the mid-to-late 20th century Soviet Union, this is the management sim as demanding, meticulous manual labour, not unwinding with a cup of Cadbury Instant and a copy of Chat magazine. Frankly, I’m surprised it doesn’t demand that I lay every single brick by hand.

I don’t know if I can say I like> it, but I respect the hell out of it.

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Games have had some iconic moments. The death of Aeris, the twist in BioShock, that bit in Mass Effect 2 when you punch the reporter completely unprovoked. We love to revisit these moments, but sometimes loading up an old save isn t enough. Sometimes you need to step into your character’s shoes in a more theatrical manner.

At EGX Rezzed next week, we re hosting a special live podcast in which the staff of RPS act out some of the most famous scenes in gaming history. Don t worry, we ve adapted them for the stage, and we re confident our team has retained the spirit of these moments. Yes, I know Alice B has not played Final Fantasy VII, but in many ways that makes her the perfect person to write the script for its most tragic scene. Our methods are sound.

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