Parkour enthusiasts will need to wait two months longer to prance around an open-world city full of zombies (and zombies-to-be), because Dying Light 2 has been delayed again. Previously due December 7th, and spring 2020 before that, Dying Light 2 is now scheduled to launch on February 4th, 2022. The developers, Techland say they need extra time to make it good, yeah?
The first-person brawler Zeno Clash games have been long-time favourites here at RPS, and when Chilean developers ACE Team announced they were making a new game set in their weird and wonderful Clash universe back in July, we were over the moon. Admittedly, Clash: Artifact Of Chaos' reveal trailer left a lot of unanswered questions at the time, but the good news is that we've got an early sneak peak at a new developer diary that tells us all about the game's story and what to expect when it eventually releases next year.
Wondering how to collect and fully upgrade all the slabs in Deathloop? Slab abilities are the paranormal powers in Deathloop, the game's take on Dishonored's Void Powers and Prey's Neuromods. When playing as Colt or Julianna there are five of these slabs to pick up, as well as several levels of upgrades for each.
Wrangling flying pigs, saving a nerdy kid from the school bullies, cooking up exquisite dishes to appease a local casino boss whose slot machines you accidentally rinsed with your trusted lucky coin... These are the stories most adventure RPGs would stuff into their ever-growing sidequest menus - distractions meant to provide extra flavour to the world you're meant to be saving, or which hold bountiful supplies of EXP to level up your skills and weapons. Not so in Eastward.
In this impressive debut from Shanghai developers Pixpil, these humdrum slices of life are placed front and centre, forming much of the narrative backbone that drives the game forward. This is still a game that's ultimately about saving the world from a mysterious and all-consuming miasma, but it's also one that makes damn sure you know what you're doing it all for - and that's its striking cast of NPCs. As you busy yourself with the minutiae of their everyday lives, Eastward makes every person (and robot) count in this deadly post-apocalypse, and the result is an affecting, detail-rich tale that owes as much to the action of top-down Zelda games as it does to the role-playing intimacy of Earthbound.
I appreciate when a remaster of an old game looks like my memories of the original, a rose-tinted vision which would crumble if I looked at even one screenshot. Blizzard and Vicarious Visions have managed that with Diablo 2: Resurrected, from what I've seen, and a new trailer focuses on the redone cutscenes. And yeah, this is how I remember D2 cutscenes looking? They were dead fancy and high-tech, yeah? Must have looked like this?
The last time I got some brief hands-on time with Amazon's upcoming MMO New World, I emerged from Aeternum feeling pretty positive about this new kid on the massively multiplayer block. Crafting, in particular, had me pretty excited. But having spent a big chunk of time in its open beta, I've come away feeling a bit, I don't know, bleh? If anything, I just wanted to go back to my beloved Final Fantasy XIV.
A couple of weeks ago, Respawn Entertainment said they were going to get rid of tap-strafing in Apex Legends, but now it seems they've changed their minds. Tap-strafing is a movement exploit that allows players to keep their momentum after slide-jumping, letting them make speedier turns than they should. Unfortunately for Respawn, they say getting rid of this tech has some "unexpected side effects", so tap-strafing gets to stay in the game, for now.
AMD have launched a big update for their Radeon Software app and Adrenalin drivers, unlocking a clutch of potentially frame rate-boosting features for those with recent AMD graphics cards and CPUs. The new version, 21.9.1, also includes a Windows 11 driver that gets Radeon Boost, Radeon Anti-Lag and Radeon Image Sharpening ready for Microsoft’s next big OS launch.
In the meantime, those with both a Ryzen 5000 series CPU and a Radeon RX 6000 series graphics card – those lucky enough to have found one in stock, I should say – can take advantage of Radeon Software 21.9.1’s updated overclocking feature. In previous versions, it was possible to instantly overclock your graphics card with a single click; now you can do the same with both the GPU and CPU at once. Provided they’re from these specific product lines, mind.
Dishonored and Prey devs Arkane have released their latest superpowered sneak-o-shooter, the time-looping Deathloop. It's good, everyone tells me. However, one word of warning: a fair number of PC players are complaining about stuttering framerates, enough to bring it down to a 'Mixed' review rating on Steam. That's the sort of wonky time you don't want. If you want your initial loop o' death to be as slick as blood, maybe wait a bit in the hope of a fix?
The description under the latest trailer for Craftopia explains that its developers "combined many features we find enjoyable, such as hunting, farming, hack-and-slash, building, [and] automation" in making the game. It does not explain whether catching giraffes in Pokéball-like traps counts as "hunting", or whether blasting cows into space with a baseball bat is "hack-and-slash."
Craftopia remains every game that has ever existed, from Zelda to Factorio, just as it was last year - only now it's available via Xbox Game Pass.