Congratulations! You've opened another door on the RPS Advent Calendar! That deserves a reward. Head to our rewards screen to collect it! No, not that one. Not that one either. Look, just follow the exclamation marks.
Almost everyone at RPS towers is alseep right now after pulling a very early morning shift covering St. Keighley's Awards Adsplosion, although shout out to Alice0 for sending her entry to what we're all playing ahead of time, and Edwin for just waking up and emailing it in around lunchtime, against all that is necessary. Most of what everyone is playing this weekend is 'being asleep', I assume, although those of us who will be awake have a bit of a variety this week.
RPGs are among the trickiest candidates for any kind of coverage where you can't basically book a week off to do little else, but I've had my eye on Colony Ship for a while. After a too-soon dabble in early access, I was already intrigued by its setting. You'll never guess.
It's a welcome change from dusty radiation or goddamn elves again, and the RPG structure feels flexible and fairly responsive to your actions even before you start picking sides and ideologies. It hasn't quite stolen my heart, but it may well steal some of my christmas.
Okay, okay, I know the last two of these have only been fairly lukewarm interpretations of what I'd normally consider 'good', but listen, this is the real deal folks. Roto Force is excellent, and comes with a hearty recommendation for both twin-stick shmuppers and, you know, cool people in general. It's also an excellent Steam Deck game.
This morning, in the cold, post-Game Awards light of day, it became apparent to me that, incredible as it seems, some of you out there have taken Geoff Keighley at his word that The Game Awards is something more meaningful than a flashy ad show to make money. I can't really blame you for being an open-hearted optimist, but must ask: have you never watched The Game Awards before? I have, and this year, despite not having had to stay up until 5am covering it, I'm grumpy enough to point out that we don't actually have to be nice about the great, clomping shiny trainer of marketing in 2023, the year everyone was laid off.
The eighth door on the 2023 RPS Advent Calendar leads, technically, to Hell, but the good news is that you don't have to go through it so much as stop anything coming the other way...
Dead Cells developers Motion Twin and publisher Kepler Ghost have announced Windblown, a wholesome yet bloodthirsty new roguelike action game in which heavily-armed cartoon animals set out from a floating village to brave the horrors of the Vortex. It’s due in early access on PC in 2024, and we’ve got the first trailer for you below.
This week on the Electronic Wireless Show podcast we give our live* reactions to the new trailer for ">Grand Theft Auto 6, a game that certainly exists! Basically none of the predictions we made two weeks ago came true, but hey, there might still be a bunch of gorillas in it. And what about the fact that it leaked, huh? Is that bad? Should we feel sad for Rockstar? Will it make a difference, really? And why did James drink so much whiskey this weekend?
High-quality microphones can be quite expensive - I recently reviewed SteelSeries' Alias mics which start at $180 - but you can still get a great mic for far less than you expect.
Case in point: you can get the excellent Neat Bumblebee 2 USB mic for $17 at Woot right now, using the code TECHELF to knock off an extra $3 off the list price of $20. This mic originally retailed for $100 and attracted strong reviews at that price point - but at $17, it's cheap enough to recommend to literally anyone that uses a computer.
This door on the RPS Advent Calendar is in fact not a door, but a portal. It could go anywhere> - including nostalgia land.