The prestige sad dads are coming. No, I'm not talking about Alec (RPS in peace), but new PlayStation first-party games headed to PC. After the success of Horizon: Zero Dawn, which was released for PC last year, Sony Interactive Entertainment president Jim Ryan says more are on the way. The first will be open world zombie survival/wife guy drama Days Gone, which is coming this spring.
Like a lot of people, I saw that announcement trailer for Knockout City last week and thought, "that seems like a game I will never play, but I hope the people that do end up getting it have a lovely time with it." Then I ended up playing this past weekend's beta for about three hours.
If a year of fuzzy lockdown video calls has left you wanting to upgrade your PC's webcam, Razer have just announced a new premium USB3 model with all the bells and whistles you could possibly ask for. Dubbed the Kiyo Pro, this webcam has an adaptive light sensor to keep it running at high resolutions and frame rates even in low lighting conditions, and combines a large 1/2.8 CMOS sensor with Sony's back-illuminated pixel tech Stravis to deliver uncompressed 1080p 60fps video, as well as 1080p 30fps video with HDR. It also has a wide-angle lens, giving you a range of FOV choices, as well as multiple mounting options so you can stick it on your monitor or use it with a tripod.
Curse Of The Dead Gods is a roguelike dungeon-crawler I've had my eye on for a little while now. It has similar aesthetics to Darkest Dungeon, but rather than turn-based combat, it throws players into some Hades-like, top-down hack and slash action - a combo I'm very eager to try. It was in early access for just under a year, and launched in full today. It looks dark and punishing and very good indeed.
I will admit that sometimes, my posts about Hearthstone can stray a little from the strictly factual. After playing this card game nearly every day for five years, I’ve developed an intense relationship with it, which sometimes requires an extended metaphor about being harangued into buying a porcelain dog by a brute to fully express.
But not today. On Friday night, just after the opening ceremony of Blizzcon, I interviewed Ben Lee and Nathan Lyons-Smith, Hearthstone’s game director and production director, about the game’s future. We talked about the proliferation of ways to play, the mechanics of the upcoming Mercenaries mode, and the curbing of some of the randomness in constructed play. And for once, I was all business.
A lot of very talented people are playing Valheim. I mean, a lot of people are playing Valheim full stop - at the time of writing it's the fourth most-played game on Steam. But the people I'm talking about are the ones creating immensely impressive buildings in the viking survival game that put my little wooden huts to shame. Over the last few weeks, Valheim players have recreated some superb structures, from The Lord Of The Rings' Eye Of Sauron to Star Wars' Millennium Falcon.
As an adult, I can think of no more acute version of hell than coming back from uni and going on a summer road trip with the people I'd known at secondary school. But in fairness, if we'd all been part of a secret supernatural crime-fighting team - who did battles with often grotesque monsters in peoples' subconsciouses, no less - and had reformed for one last job> involving an undercover cop, a super-advanced AI, and our old pal the talking cat, I'd probably have way more interest. Such is the summer ahead of the teen codenamed Joker, the returning protagonist of Persona 5 Strikers.
Whatever cloud gaming technology might end up being successful at, it's clear the recent 'like a games store but streaming' model of attempts like Stadia and OnLive hasn't taken off. Now Electronic Arts have had a curious new idea of using cloud gaming to let you instantly play a new game while it downloads and installs in the background, continuing locally once it's done. They've merely filed a patent for this, and have not given any indication that they plan to actually do it for real, but it's maybe an interesting idea?
The number of games that support Nvidia's performance-boosting DLSS tech has grown by two today, with Nioh 2 - The Complete Edition and Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord both joining the DLSS games fold. Bannerlord's DLSS support had been previously announced by Nvidia earlier in the year, but Nioh 2 is a welcome surprise, especially after the various tech woes it suffered at launch. Indeed, Nvidia claims that all RTX owners should now be able to get 4K 60fps performance in both games with DLSS enabled, boosting frame rates by around 50% across the board.
Update: Google have now issued an update that should resolve a major bug affecting Journey To The Savage Planet. More below.>
Journey To The Savage Planet landed on Google Stadia last month, but unfortunately it arrived with a game-breaking bug that makes it unplayable. It's a pretty serious issue that you'd think the developers would be working on ASAP. However, Google are in the process of moving those developers to new roles within the company after shutting down their studios earlier this month, and now nobody seems to know who's supposed to be working on a fix.