A while back I wrote about Codenames, an excellent board game with a free browser-based version that made for some great long-distance family time during lockdown. Now, dear reader, I return once again with a free browser-based game that's perfect for long-distance fun. But this time, it's just about the funniest game I can remember playing. It's called Gartic Phone.
Overwatch 2 hero Bastion has been missing-in-action for over a week now, but Blizzard have now set a date for his return, alongside fellow missing hero Torbjorn. In an update on the Overwatch forums, Blizzard confirmed that the missing characters should be returning to the game on October 25th, alongside the Junkertown map, which has also recently been disabled due to graphical performance bugs. Their return coincides with the game’s next planned update.
>I watched a badminton match where one player was so dominant, his opponent looked like he'd largely given up. The commentator said, "Yep, the belief has all but vanished", as it panned over a guy who simply wanted to be anywhere but that court. At the time, I'd already sunk some hours into Gotham Knights and taken a quick break from the action to keep tabs on a tournament and collect my thoughts. But as I turned away from the telly to dive back in for another session, I couldn't help but think that if the same commentator had been in the room with me too, they would've repeated themselves. I'd simply had enough.
As we reported earlier this week, alongside The Sims 4 officially becoming a free-to-play game, Maxis also gave a sneak peek of Project Rene, the next incarnation of the Sims franchise. We're all calling it The Sims 5, but the vagueness of the reveal means it could be some kind of... platform? MMO? And personally I think 4 being free-to-play means bets could be off on it being a new standalone. But what do I know? It's very early for Maxis to be showing it off, a point hammered home by VP of franchise creative Lyndsay Pearson as she talked about it. And the fact that it is so early makes it look even more like a bid to stop player eyes wandering over to newer pastures...
Hello folks. Sorry to have to start another Letter From The Editor with an apology about how terribly late it is, but honestly, I'm not entirely sure where the time has gone. One minute it was June, and then suddenly... almost November!? I'm sorry everyone, truly. It has, in part, been another period of almost being able to announce some things, but also not quite. We're still working to get our proposed RPS Game Club off the ground, for example, but finding a good quality source of regular game keys for it has proven to be an elusive endeavour, to say the least. I'd imagine this will probably be a project for 2023 now (a delay, how quaint!), given how close we are to the end of the year, but I'll keep you posted as soon as we've got more to share on it.
Things that are> happening though, is the return of The RPS 100, which you may have seen us post about earlier in the week. This is our annual countdown of our favourite PC games of all time, as voted for by the RPS Treehouse. This year's list is quite different to the one we did last year - we do, after all, have pretty much a brand-new team in place now - and I'm looking forward to sharing that with you all next week. We even got our art team to make a special fancy header image for it this year and everything! Plus, if you were one of the people put out by our (accidental) glossing over of a certain immersive sim last year, you really> won't want to miss it.
Deep Rock Galactic is a game about going to work, assuming your job is to extract space minerals from a shattered planet occupied by trillions of giant, murderous bugs. If it isn’t, it’s not too hard to pretend, and DRG’s another-day-at-the-office wit lends it a likeable levity that’s partly why I’ve played it almost every week for a year and a half.
Last time, you decided that a game within the game just for funsies is better than temporarily piloting an enemy. It was another close result but ultimately you couldn't resist larking about, and I can't fault you for that (though if I could hop up on your shoulders and Ratatouille you into voting otherwise, maybe I would). This week, I'm asking you to pick between two very different types of movement. What's better: slide kicks or relocatable buildings?
My initial instinct when playing Payday 2 was to be sneaky. If I could creep through banks, jewellery stores, and all the rest without being detected, surely that’d be awesome. Only, the pursuit of that was anything but awesome. It was a gruelling slog of planning and restarts with rarely a sliver of success. So, I chucked my silencer away and donned the biggest suit of armour I could find. Unsurprisingly, the biggest joy in Payday 2 is going loud, and it turns out I’m a big fan of playing stealth games that allow you to skip stealth entirely.
The PC continues to collect PlayStation mascots like they’re Maccies Monopoly tickets. This time it’s adventuring iron-quiffed quipper Nathan Drake, courtesy of Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection, which is out on Steam on November 19th. And where there’s a Steam game, there’s usually a Steam Deck game, so Liam and I have both busted out the handhelds to see how well this remastered bundle of Uncharted: A Thief’s End and Uncharted: The Lost Legacy takes to more portable hardware. That includes the best settings to use if you want to play it on your own Steam Deck.
You can watch Liam’s video below to see how he got on, along with footage of how Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection runs in situ>. After swapping notes we’ve settled on a settings guide that will get you consistently decent performance across both the individual games; if you’d prefer it in text form, read on.
I loved Overwatch when it first came out. When the original game was fresh and new, I was experimenting with the characters just like everyone else. I found my niche in support, and got to be a pretty decent player with Mercy and Lúcio (I was particularly proud of the latter, because I flatter myself that he's quite difficult to play well). Then, you know, life happened. I didn't have as much time to play, and I just kind of stopped playing Overwatch.
I appear to have nodded off or something, because there are now 35 heroes on the roster, and Overwatch 2 is out. What. Who allowed this? I wish to speak to someone in charge. Jeff? Jeff From The Overwatch Team? Are you there? Jeff is still in charge right? Wait, wh-