Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Based on time of day and year, global fertility rates, and our own secret, illegal research into RPS supporter breeding patterns, I calculate that there's a 12% chance you are reading this while carrying or cradling a small child. If that's the case, then: what on Earth are you doing here? We post all kinds of awful grown-up things on RPS. Mark is threatening to do another salacious mod article and just this very morning, I posted a picture of a xenomorph covered in blood.

This piece should be safe for kids, however, as long as you don't explain what a xenomorph is or what "salacious" means. It's about Messenger, a free browser-based game in which you run around a very small 3D watercolour planet, delivering post. I suspect you and your child will enjoy it, unless we've already corrupted them and you're now playing Aliens: Fireteam Elite.

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Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Remember when you were young, and had your first crush? All of a sudden your hormones are going nuts, and here's this person you can't think about without your face contorting into a goofy smile, or talk about without bashfully giggling. Well, it seems that's how part-time Gearbox exec and full-time social media poster Randall Steward Pitchford II feels about Borderlands 4's freshly revealed first DLC Vault Hunter.

It's understandable to be fair. Which of us hasn't found ourselves gazing longingly at a former casino robot dressed like a goth version of John Wayne, before volunteering to help animate its card-throwing? Sometimes, C4SH rules not just everything around you, but your very heart.

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Rock, Paper, Shotgun

It's been over half a year since Fallout: London developers Team FOLON announced that it'd be getting three bits of DLC adding new quests to post-apocalyptic Blighty. The folks behind the massive mod have been relatively quiet in that time, but they've now confirmed that the first of these DLCs, Rabbit and Pork, will require you to start a fresh save game.

Also, one reason it hasn't arrived already is that the team have been working to ensure other quest add-ons won't force you to go back to square one, whenever they drop.

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Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Update: Well, that escalated quickly. Following rumours over the weekend, EA have confirmed that an investor consortium consisting of Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, equity firm Silver Lake, and Jared Kushner's Affinity Partners have acquired the Battlefield 6 publisher in an all-cash transaction that values EA at around $55 billion. The consortium will buy 100% of EA and take it private, with the PIF rolling in their existing 9.9% stake in the publisher.

EA have put out a press release featuring various hyperbolic remarks from the likes of EA CEO Andrew Wilson, who will stay on in his position. EA will also continue to be based in Redwood City, California. The transaction is expected to close in the first quarter of 2027 - in other words, at some point between January and March, once it has been granted the usual regulatory approvals and voted through by EA's shareholders.

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Rock, Paper, Shotgun

As has been the case with all of Hollow Knight: Silksong's sizeable updates this far, Team Cherry have put out some tweaks as a Steam beta shot to the upcoming patch three's chaser. As of now, opting into playtesting this "interim update" offers some extra controller support and fixes, but the devs say more'll be added before the full patch goes live to everyone.

In case you need a refesher, the metroidvania's first patch made a couple of its early bosses a bit easier. Meanwhile, its second patch didn't do any balancing, but did bring handy fixes to problems like the Savage Beastfly boss cheekily hiding below some lava.

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Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Hello reader who is also a reader, and welcome back to Booked For The Week - our regular Sunday chat with a selection of cool industry folks about books! Having finally read The Epic Of Gilgamesh recently, I feel I should in be awe at how the proliferation of certain themes and dramatic modes throughout history speaks deeply to the truths of the human experience. However, gaming has taught me to recognise a dirty asset flip when I see one. For shame, much of storytelling.

This week, it's Saltsea Chronicles, Mutazione, Thronglets, and much more's Hannah Nicklin! Cheers Hannah! Mind if we have a nose at your bookshelf?

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Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Sundays are for laughing at your sat nav's American voiceover lady when, as you're visiting Northamptonshire for the first time, she pronounces Towcester as toaster. That can't be how it's said, you snort, surely everyone from there would have to follow-up revealing their hometown by insisting they weren't born in a bread slot. Silly sat nav, get out of here! You then end up at a racing circuit. Adrian Edmondson is chatting to a local radio host over the tannoy. The host pronounces it toaster. You ask a passerby. They pronounce it toaster. You wonder if your sat nav wife will take you back.

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Rock, Paper, Shotgun

I think Q-UP might be gaslighting me. It most certainly is a real video game, I played it myself. And yet it presents an entirely different vision of reality where it is the coin flipping eSport of choice. The worst part is that it nearly convinced me that such a reality is a pretty good one. Perhaps even more than half!

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Rock, Paper, Shotgun

I am genuinely unsure if MiHoYo are capable of making a game that doesn't heavily borrow from a different game you probably already love at this point in time. Denying The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild's influence on Genshin Impact is like denying the sky is blue! Only recently was Honkai: Nexus Anima revealed, a game that takes Pokemon and shoves it into a blender with Auto Chess. And now there is Petit Planet, a game I can only describe as Animal Crossing but if it was in space, I guess.

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Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Have you, like me, been unable to get that one TikTok sound out of your head that mixes Anri's iconic anthem I Can't Stop The Loneliness with the screams of Hollow Knight's very own Hornet ever since Silksong came out? It's a surprisingly good combo, but it also serves as an unintended reminder for something: these particular screams of Hornet's are nowhere to be found in Silksong. You know, the classics, like "SHAW," and "Adino!" not to mention the unforgettable "Hegale!" So of course there's a mod for that.

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