Kalypso Media have set up an internal studio to make a new Commandos game with the rights they bought last year. This is good news.

My two year-old brain hadn’t developed to the point where it could enjoy sneaky shooting in Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines back in ’98, or in any of its sequels, but my brain’s more advanced form did adore Shadow Tactics: Blades Of The Shogun. Tim Stone lavished his Shadow Tactics review with Commandos 2 comparisons, so I’m hoping this will be up my street.

(more…)

Right now, there s a room in Buffalo Grove, Illinois that’s as quiet as a grave. The power is off, the robotic limbs are becalmed, and the once thumping presses are depressed. The Steam Controller assembly room is assembling no more, and with the recent Steam sale clearing out all the stock, the grand experiment is over.

It s the final part of Valve s great Steam Machines undertaking to be shut down. They d hoped to convince you to have a PC in the living room, or a small box for you to stream your library from your main PC. The Steam Machines never took off, the Steam Link box was discontinued a year ago, and now the Steam Controller will no longer be made. Gone, but not forgotten.

(more…)

I knew from my first few hours playing Rocket League that it would become my most played game on Steam. It took me nearly a thousand hours to reach the coveted top rank of Grand Champion. It remains, in my eyes, the perfect competitive multiplayer experience: easy to get into, difficult to master, and far more focused on tactical decisions and reading your opponents than about who has the twitchiest reflexes or the highest APM.

Rocket League is, simply put, my jam.

(more…)

We all know the drill by now. Hard disk drives (or HDDs) are slow but cheap. SSDs are fast but expensive. We can often justify the latter if we’re getting a small, internal drive for installing things like Windows or a couple of games on, but once you’re into the realms of 2TB and above in SSD land, you’re going to need to start handing over a few body parts in addition those buckets of cold hard cash. They’re just too darn expensive for most of us, especially if you’re after an external SSD as well like our best gaming SSD champ Samsung’s T5 or its very close rival, WD’s My Passport.

That’s why external HDDs like WD’s new Black P10 drive are still vital bits of kit for those who regularly deal with large files on the go or, in my case, need to back up lots of games so they don’t clog up my PC’s internal drives. Indeed, why spend 269 / $300 on a 2TB Samsung T5 when you could pay a fraction of that price and get the 88 / $80 2TB Black P10 instead? Or the 5TB model for 144 / $150? Yes, its read and write times are a heck of a lot slower, but when it comes to value for money, WD’s Black P10 really does have it nailed.

(more…)

A grimly cheerful dystopia is one of the most popular game settings there is, beaten only by densely populated desert wastelands. (This is why grimly cheerful dystopias in densely populated desert wastelands are a sub-genre all on their own.) It’s not hard to see the appeal for developers: it s loads of fun to write, it allows for levity in an otherwise thoroughly grimdark scenario, and it lets you demonstrate your ability to do satire without doing anything so uncouth as to be actually political. But it s a fine line to walk, isn’t it? For every Void Bastards turning outer space into your local job centre, there s a Fallout making its cheesy parody of corporate mascots into a fully-fledged corporate mascot.

Paranoia: Happiness Is Mandatory is a CRPG based on a classic tabletop RPG. In the tabletop game, as in the video game, you play a clone assigned as a “Troubleshooter”, making a squad of four. Each has a mutation, and a secret political affiliation. The game is about completing the tasks given to you by Friend Computer, an all powerful AI that is simultaneously a deity and a line manager, while also trying to drop the other party members in it and avoid getting caught yourself. Any attempts at satire during this fall flat.

(more…)

What’s behind door number 11 of the RPS Advent Calendar, you ask? Not sure. Could be a shortcut. Could be a giant boss. The door itself has an unusual posture.

(more…)

Not liking a cute puzzler like Dandy Dungeon: Legend Of Brave Yamada is a bit like staring at a puppy with cold indifference. Puppies are great, conceptually. There is no other way to buy unconditional love. But puppies are flawed. Liking them means looking past their annoyances, finding their embarrassments endearing, and putting in a lot of hard work.

I find DD’s dungeons more dreary than dandy, but perhaps they’re built for people with more patience. Or at least people who like the jokes more.

(more…)

Christmas is a time for giving. Such as when we when we reveal each day s Advent calendar game and you give us feedback saying we re wrong. But it can also be a time for nice giving, such as donating money to the first Rock Paper Shotgun Christmas Charity Stream. We ve decided to put our magnetic personalities to good use and raise money for British Red Cross, who help make life easier for a lot of struggling people – especially relevant in these dark, cold winter months.

On the 16th December, the video team – with some help from the words team – will be hosting an all day streaming extravaganza. Think Comic Relief, but instead of the cast of EastEnders getting dunked in a gunge tank (or whatever), it ll be some friendly dweebs sitting on a sofa and playing some games as the room grows stuffier by the minute. By the end of it sweat will pour from our faces as freely as dosh pours from your generous purse.

(more…)

Last Wednesday, Rocket League did away with loot boxes. You’d think that would be cause for celebration, but developers Psyonix have replaced them with Blueprints that many players consider overpriced.

The short version is that yeah, they are, but it’s more important that this replaces an exploitative model that profits from obsessional gamblers doing themselves serious harm. For the longer version, we need to descend into the murky world of value propositions.

(more…)

After the blurry blue delights of last month’s Sonic fest, those bundle fiends over at Humble have put together a brand new pack of game goodies for December, this time focusing on Paradox’s best management games to celebrate the early access launch of Surviving the Aftermath. Ironically, Surviving the Aftermath did not, in fact, survive the cut to get into the bundle itself, but Humble’s Paradox management bundle does include the most excellent Surviving Mars, Cities: Skylines and Prison Architect and all their various expansions for under $20.

(more…)