Screenshot Saturday Sundays! We’re having a particularly grey and dreary end to the week up here, but I reckon it’s nothing a splash of work-in-progress screenshots, videos and gifs can’t fix. This week: Alligators in the woods, bullet-propelled platforming, a neon-blasted death labyrinth and birds, birds, birds.
Sundays are for one last hurrah, before melting into the freelance void. I will miss you, paps. Here’s the best writing about videogames from the past week.
For Polygon, Avery Helm dove into the weird, wild world of Blaseball. It reminds me of board games like Risk/ Pandemic Legacy, where the rules to something simple shift beneath your fit – except those rules are shifting for thousands at once, and a lot of them are just in people’s heads? I want in.
Yesterday, Epic Games appeared to intentionally violate Apple and Google app store rules to get Fortnite removed so they could jump-start a protest. Sick of mobile stores taking a 30% cut of microtransactions, they added a payment option bypassing official systems – something both stores forbid. Epic surely knew this, and the fact that they had lawsuits and an embarrassing protest video ready to go sure makes it seems like they suspected Fortnite might get kicked out. Epic do have one of the few products large enough to make a splash so hey, good on ’em for making a stand. I wish they’d done it without trying to weaponise fans.
Crikey, it’s been a hot minute since we last heard anything about Skywind, hasn’t it? Nevertheless, the colossal task of bringing all of Morrowind into Skyrim is still well underway, with the modders behind the project releasing our first look at the ambitious mod in over a year, by way of a spruced-up return to The Battle at Nchurdamz. Hope your arachnophobia doesn’t extend to mechanical spiders, readers.
The couch may be gone and the crowd safely isolated at home, but that won’t stop those pesky speedrunners from once again marathoning a whole lotta high-speed videogames. This year’s entirely-online edition of Summer Games Done Quick races off this weekend, beginning a week of charity speedrunning tomorrow in support of Doctors Without Borders.
Let’s make this clear right off the bat – Zodiac XX might be the coolest thing I’ve ever seen. Breaking from beneath the waves earlier this week, Virtuoso Neomedia’s latest creation is a hot-as-hell anime dogfighter that follows a band of gorgeous cel-shaded studs as they wreck megacorporations under the sea in slick-as-hell watercraft. It’s pure arcade bliss, and it’s out now – assuming you’ve got a Humble subscription.
It’s a dark day when not even Apex Legends can invest in public transport. Next week’s new season of high-speed murdersports is bringing an infrastructure overhaul to World’s Edge. But while concrete monstrosities and whopping great rocketships have been plonked all over the Icelandic arena, the criminals> at Respawn have shut down the region’s fantastic train network. Guess I’ll walk to my next high-stakes gunfight, then.
This was the week that the heavens finally opened to deliver sweet relief from a muggy British summer. It was as if the skies wept for the departure of Matt Cox, who this week left RPS after three years. There’s still time to say goodbye to him.
What are you playing this weekend? Here’s what we’re clicking on!
There was a bit of mumblin’ and grumblin’ when long-awaited Spelunky 2 got a PS4 release date announced without mention of a PC date. The bad news is there’s still no date. The good news is that Mossmouth have given their goals for a timeframe and hey—it’s soon! Spelunky 2 may be emerging on PC in October.
Last week all you Apex Legends players got the stylish animated introduction to Apelegs season 6 “Boosted”. Now it’s time for a look at how you’ll be actually playing the newest shootin’ and lootin’ character Rampart. There’s a bit of everything we’d already heard about in here: the new Legend, new SMG, and new crafting system. Check it out with your own peepers below.