Skyrim is more than the sum of its parts, which is another way of saying that many of Skyrim's parts are janky. High on the list is its third-person camera, which was rough around the edges in 2011 and feels extremely old fashioned here in 2021.
Enter, as always, the modders. The True Directional Movement mod available from Nexus Mods offers "modernized third person gameplay", and it looks like a huge improvement.
Does Back 4 Blood let you blow a giant bubble around a zombie and then pop it to defeat it? I doubt it. Bubble Bobble 4 Friends would seem, therefore, to be the superior game.
Taito's 2019 revival of the classic arcade series is now making the leap to PC. It's been retitled Bubble Bobble 4 Friends: The Baron's Workshop and includes a level editor, and it'll launch on Steam sometime this summer.
The MAG272CQR is one of MSI's best monitors, hitting the current spec sweet spot - 27-in, 1440p, 165Hz. It debuted at £400 last year, but now it's down to £100 less than that on Amazon UK - just £298.97, if you want to be exact. The price on this monitor has changed a fair bit over the last few months, ranging from £329 to £379, but it's a low price we haven't seen the likes of for some time.
The WD Blue SN550 is one of our favourite SSDs, and holds our current slot for the 'best budget NVMe SSD'. That's an important category too, as it offers a taste of the incredible speed offered by NVMe SSDs while costly just a fraction more than substantially slower SATA SSDs. Today, the largest capacity SN550 WD make, the 2TB model, is down to £175, around £50 cheaper than it's been for the last month and only a few pounds over an all-time low price.
Riders Republic looks like SSX by way of Forza Horizon: that is, a big playground about racing down a mountain on bikes, snowboards and wingsuits. The health and safety in its latest mini trailer is terrible>, but it does bring the news of a beta for the game to run this August 23rd to 25th.
Ten years ago, I went through a brief but intense stint of being well into Left 4 Dead. I was absolutely appalling at it, and I don't think I ever truly grasped what was going on in a single match I played. Nevertheless, I was at least so enthusiastic in my bewilderment that I was eventually taken on by a clan, grudgingly, as a sort of court jester. Everyone knew that playing with me was basically a death sentence. But my towering overconfidence whenever I got to play as the Charger - and then the barks of hapless sorrow which inevitably followed, as I sent them hooning straight out of a skyscraper window - were apparently just amusing enough to make me worth carrying.
In the spirit of my barnstorming PvP days, then, I am going to give you some weapons-grade tactical insight into the new mega zombos, or "Riddens", appearing in Left 4 Dead's upcoming spiritual successor, Back 4 Blood. Admittedly, I've not played the game yet. I've not even watched the footage from my colleagues who have played (and you can find their full Back 4 Blood open beta report right here). But that's not going to stop me telling you exactly what these exciting new deadoes are about, or how you can leverage their abilities to win every single time you play its humans vs zombies PvP mode. I am going to offer my analysis based purely on a cursory glance at each monster's concept art, my staggering powers of intuition, and nothing else. Hope you're ready to learn.
I had a grand old time blasting through the open beta of Back 4 Blood's campaign mode earlier this week, and I'm pretty sure everyone from Left 4 Dead diehards to complete newbies like myself will have an equally fun romp with it when the open beta starts for real on August 12th. What I'm less confident about, though, is whether people will be saying the same thing about the game's PvP Versus mode, which will also be available to try in the open beta when it comes out next week.
Due to some technical difficulties during our hands-on preview session, I was the only RPS squad member who actually made it into a PvP match, so most of my experience is based on playing with strangers, which we all know is never as good as playing with a proper group of mates. However, even if you do end up playing Back 4 Blood Versus with friends, the 4v4 maps I got to play definitely felt like they gave the human team a much bigger advantage than the side playing as part of the game's zombie horde. With games spread over three rounds, effectively consisting of six runs at the same objective - stay alive longer than the other team - I wonder whether it will have enough staying power to keep players coming back for more once the campaign's done and dusted.
Back in 2020 Turtle Rock, developers of the original Left 4 Dead and more lately the asymmetrical multiplayer game Evolve, revealed the existence of Back 4 Blood. It's a game where four players can engage in co-op PvE against zombies or PvP against other players. It is not Left 4 Dead 3, but because my> ideas aren't owned by Valve, I think I can safely say after an early peek at its open beta campaign that it is, to all intents and purposes, Left 4 Dead 3. But more>.
Ordinarily with games, something grabs me, I become dangerously obsessed with it to the exclusion of all else, and then suddenly abandon it for no reason a fortnight later.
That hasn't happened lately. I have, however, been playing Stirring Abyss, and in the interests of being fair, I must make it clear upfront that I've enjoyed it, and my choosing not to go into detail about it shouldn't be taken as a mark against the game itself. With that said, I want to thank it for prompting me to raise a longstanding grievance I have with turn-based tactical games: We have a problem, friends, and that problem is overwatch.
The sweet, camping exploration game Haven Park is out today, and takes inspiration from the equally charming indie title A Short Hike by Adam Robinson-Yu, and also from Nintendo's popular villager hoarder Animal Crossing. Haven Park hopes to make us love the outdoors again despite the state of things - at least by the looks of its screenshots and gameplay videos. Like any successful game, you play as a bird named Flint, exploring the park around you. The soundtrack fits the gameplay shown in its trailer quite nicely, and reminded me of the work Natureboy Flako did producing the futuristic, chill sounds of indie explorer Stonefly.