Aug 8, 2021
Rock, Paper, Shotgun
Sundays are for dropping a bag of rice on the floor and staring at the mess you've created for a while. Before you form a hand-scoop, let's read this week's best writing about games.
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Sundays are for dropping a bag of rice on the floor and staring at the mess you've created for a while. Before you form a hand-scoop, let's read this week's best writing about games.
Newly unsealed documents in Epic's antitrust court case against Google allege that the tech giant considered buying "some or all" of Epic Games, out of concern over the Fortnite developer's intention to sidestep the Google Play app store.
Cyberpunk shooter The Ascent has been out for a little over a week and has received its first patch. Released yesterday, the update deals with performance and stability issues, including making ray tracing available to PC players using Xbox Game Pass.
Glorious VR rhythm shooter Pistol Whip is getting a free Western-themed update later this week. On August 12th, the Smoke & Thunder update will add a new set of levels in which you will fight through a train, shoot cowboys, and dodge explosive barrels.
It also adds "Styles", a substantial change to how modifiers work. Find trailers for both below.
Kerbal Space Program update 1.12.2 is live. It's a relatively minor set of fixes, but it marks the completion of the 1.12 update - and, in turn, the end of "sustained development" of KSP. It's been a fun ten years, but its development team are now turning their full attention to work on Kerbal Space Program 2.
Syndicate and Ultima Underworld have returned to GOG. The classics and their sequels were removed from the service back in June for unclear reasons, but are back now and for the "foreseeable future." Better still, they're all free to keep if you grab them anytime during the next four weeks.
Today it is finally the weekend and I'm going to have a waffle and ice cream for my dinner, and none of you can stop me! That's the true power of being an adult, and neatly demonstrates why the idiom that childhood is "the best years of your life" is a lie. I was never allowed to have waffle and ice cream for dinner as a kid. And after dinner comes delicious video games! Here's what we're playing this weekend.
Battling your nightmares may not be so fun as whacking 'em with yo-yos in real life, but it sure is in Dreamscaper. This action roguelike about defeating your inner demons every night has just escaped from early access into a full launch. It's still rather pretty, and has gotten some decent-sized updates since the last time we took a good look at it. Now that it's fully launched, you can help Cassidy vanquish her darkest emotions for good.
The biggo demo festivals that Steam started running last year are now going to be a recurring part of our reality. They can be a bit overwhelming, with bite-sized versions of hundreds of upcoming games to try. According to Valve, they have actually made an observable impact for developers who participate though. I mean, they would say that. It's Valve though, so they've prepared the numbers to back it up. Not only do games in the Steam Next Fest see increased wishlist additions, they also have a better rates of converting those wishlists to eventual sales, Valve say.
Less than a month after its initial announcement, Valve have invited a group of techies out to put their mitts on the upcoming Steam Deck handheld. Valve handed them over to several different sites to take for a spin with a selection of games including Control, Doom Eternal, Hades, and others. Not your RPS crew, alas, unless I massively missed a memo about Katharine being in Seattle.
In liu of us getting our own hands on the thing, here's what everyone who got to did had to say about it. The long and short is pretty positive: comfortable controls despite the large size and good performance even if the battery life may trend towards the low end of Valve's targets.