Say hello to RPS’s news reporter! Imogen Beckhelling has joined the team to work alongside Alice O in writing all things news. That includes the kind of daily posts we’ve always had, covering game releases, big updates and culture stories, but it also means we’ll be doing more of the in-depth reporting that we’ve rarely had the resources to pursue in the past. Come help me welcome Imogen to the team!
As League Of Legends winds up to start its tenth season on Friday, Riot Games have dropped a new anthem for the MOBA – or an old one, really. The new season’s cinematic music video is a cover of Warriors, see, the iconic (and never-bested) 2014 World Championship theme by Imagine Dragons. Now the song is all grim, choral, and bwampy, like so many other modern moody pop covers, which seems a bit of a shame. As for the new season, preparations are all set, with a new character and a whole heap of changes having arrived yesterday. Here we are, don’t turn away now.
A new trailer gives the first in-game peek at Magic: Legends, the action-RPG set in the world of monumental card game Magic: The Gathering. Made by Cryptic Studios, the mob behind City Of Heroes and Star Trek Online, it looks a whole lot more like a Diablo-y click-clicker than the MMO I had once expected. Initial whispers of Cryptic’s Magic game in 2017 described it as an MMORPG, but by its formal announcement at The Game Awards in December 2019 had become an “MMO action RPG”. I don’t see the “MMO” part at all here but hey, that’s what they say. Come have a look.
Sayonara Wild Hearts is a sort of rhythm action arcade game, and as I played I kept getting flavours of different things. In terms of video games I felt Thumper, then (less obviously) Fe, plus SuperHot and Persona 5. Oh, and that mine cart level in the first Harry Potter game.
But Sayonara wild hearts is also the drag race scene in Grease, the “Get in loser, we’re going shopping!” of Mean Girls, almost all of Edgar Wright’s version of Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, playing DDR in the arcade at the bowling alley when you’re 13, the chaotic energy of DeeDee from Dexter’s Lab, and the first time you go to a club and it has those cool lasers>. I barely managed to keep a lid on it all.
While most of the CES excitement has centred around new graphics cards like AMD’s Radeon RX 5600 XT, CPUs and strange new concept devices like Alienware’s Switch-like UFO PC this year, Crucial have something a little different on their CES booth this year: a new line of next-generation high-performance RAM that lets you 3D print your own personalised lightbar.
Crytivo, the developers behind simulation god game, The Universim, have announced they’ll be donating their profits to those affected by the wildfires sweeping across Australia.
In a community update on Steam titled “Mission Koala”, the US-based developers have pledged to give 100% of their profits from their own store, along with 30% of profits from all their Steam sales during January and February to help the fire relief effort.
The virtual hills are alive with the sound of music, thanks to Steam wresting soundtracks from the videogames they were yoked to. As of today, developers can sell soundtracks independently rather than as DLC, which means you won’t need to buy or download the games themselves. Videogames are defunct now. Let us all escape into the superior medium of sound.
Last year, I was both awed and terrified by the massive Acer Thronos gaming chair. It was a huge, mechanical monstrosity with three screens attached to an LED-encrusted metal arm that swooped down over your head, and you knew the moment you’d locked its fold-out keyboard tray into place that it was going to eat you alive and never let you leave.
Thankfully, Razer’s new Eracing Simulator Concept chair setup is a little less terrifying on that front, mostly because it looks like you’re free to leave at any given moment, but its wrap-around projection screen and hydraulic racing seat setup are no less impressive. As the name implies (and has been a running theme with the most interesting things to come out of this year’s CES tech fest), it’s just a concept right now, but here’s what your next racing setup could> look like very soon.
Monster Hunter World’s first big expansion takes hunters to the rather chilly land of Hoarfrost Reach. The new stuff isn’t just limited to what you discover in the frozen tundra, as Iceborne includes new monsters to hunt in familiar and new locations, as well as new techniques and Master Rank equipment. There’s a ton more besides this and we’ll be going through as much as we can.
As some of you will no doubt remember, when I joined this site I made a promise: that by the end of 2019, I would complete the game so good its subtitle comes before> its series title: Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII. Well guess what? I did it! With just half an hour to go until midnight on December 31, I hung up my bustus sword and put the chocobos to bed, after a gruelling battle with Lightning s final boss. Look – there s me shaking hands with series creator Sakaguchi Hironobu, as he congratulates me on my victory, right there in the header image. Feat proven, job done. Verdict: it was a decent game. Now let s all forget this ever happened and move on into 2020.
Hm? What s that? You want me to name> the final boss from Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII? Oh.