>Devil May Cry 5 is, like the entire Devil May Cry series, cool. But it s a particular kind of cool loud, dark and fascinated with the occult and forbidden. It s a mish mash of all the things you thought were edgy when you were a teen: explosions, pizza, guitars, leather, hair, more guitars, a big sword.

So when we re looking for an artistic genre, a mood, a milieu that has influenced Devil May Cry, where do we look? To heavy metal, of course.

(more…)

Last time on the BoC: The arrival of marauding goblins ended the brief rule of the usurping mayor Urist, and the battle to drive them off saw the fort s first non-accidental fatalities, as well as the emergence of several new heroes. But if the Basement s founder Lorbam hoped to resume business as usual in her weird little zoo when the dust cleared, she was sorely mistaken >

(more…)

Respawn Entertainment are indeed planning to add penalties for folks who abandon their squads and leave in the middle of Apex Legends rounds, but not just yet – and not in the exact form that they accidentally added it last week. Wednesday’s update, on top of accidentally making accounts seem reset, included a work-in-progress version of leaver penalties that was enabled by accident. Whoops. But the feature, which should discourage jerks in the free-to-play battle royale FPS from bailing and scuttling your chances of that Tofurky dinner, is coming. At some point. When it’s done.

(more…)

As this is my penultimate edition of Steam Charts, before I return to nuzzle into the warm infinite belly of Horace for all of time, I thought it might be fun to take a bit of a look behind the scenes of Steam Charts, to see how this weekly column comes together.

So, hey, join me as we step behind the curtain, and learn a little bit about the magic of Rock Paper Shotgun.

(more…)

Ubisoft have temporarily disabled The Division 2‘s ‘Project’ quests due to an issue which let players repeatedly claim rewards and–heaven forbid!–get more loot than intended. They tried to fix this on Sunday with an emergency server restart but that didn’t work, so the Projects are disabled until a full fix is in place. I hope you’re happy, you rotters. By squeezing more loot out the online looter-shooter than you were supposed to, you’ve taken loot away from everyone. Booooo.

(more…)

Ah, 2010! Lady Gaga and Beyonc were tearing up the dancefloor with Telephone, Inception was fuelling one million drunk ‘philosophical’ conversations, Jackass had gone 3D, and Civilization V had yet to reach that point in every Civ game’s lifespan where it’s declared superior to its successor. If you wish to party like it’s 2010, you might enjoy a new Civilization VI mod made by actual Civ 6 art director Brian Busatti. It aims to make Civ 6’s landscape, buildings, and units look more like Civ 5, less vibrant and more ‘realistic’. Yeah, but like, what if we’re still dreaming we’re playing Civ – does the game ever stop or will “one more turn” keep going forever? Makes you think, maaan.

(more…)

When Team Fortress 2 established hats as a quintessential part of multiplayer gaming culture, Valve set in motion a chain of events that have lead us to this pivotal moment. Events have reached their logical conclusion. Someone has made a game in which you are a hat.

Chapeau is an upcoming multiplayer brawler, except sometimes instead of brawling you’re trying to find the right person to clothe. Also sometimes the floor is lava. Shall we just jump into the trailer? It’s quite jazzy.

(more…)

Torment: Tides Of Numenera is apparently a ‘thematic successor’ to Planescape: Torment, which, as descriptors go, is even more woolly than ‘spiritual successor’. Translated into jargon talk, this is a single-player RPG with an isometric perspective, set in a part-fantasy part-steampunk universe, and it’s so story driven that it’s basically like reading a book.

(more…)

Upcoming point and click adventure game Detective Di: The Silk Rose Murders takes players all the way back to imperial China, where there s a serial killer to be caught. The good detective must investigate for clues, solve puzzles, and re-enact crimes according to his theories in order to figure out what happened and eventually track down the murderer. And, according to the trailer below, play a few rounds of Go while they’re at it.

(more…)

Sci-fi explore-o-puzzle game Epitasis will be appearing, as if through a mysterious portal, in stores in May. Players will be dropped into an ancient civilization, where they ll have to poke around and solve various little conundrums on the way to figuring out the underlying mystery of what happened to all the aliens that used to live here. I could sit here and stare at its colourful screenshots and gifs all day, but instead I ll share the trailer with you so that we can ooh and ahh over its bright beauty together.

(more…)