The bumper sticker plastered to the rear of the pickup in front of me reads 'please let me merge before I start crying'. Behind me, an angry mob are starting to sharpen their pitchforks and light their torches. The next stop beckons, and I'm not going to make it on time. There's nothing I can do. For I am Bus Bound in this Steam Next Fest demo, and that bus is too large to slice through gridlock like a hooligan.
Rare's Everwild was one of a number of games Microsoft tossed in the bin as part of wider layoffs earlier this year. It was disappointing, if not a huge surprise given how protracted Everwild's development had been up until its demise, with lots of questions remaining as to what the mysterious ramble through nature would be like to play.
Now, some leaked screenshots might offer a bit more of an idea as to some of the stuff you'd have been able to get up to in between patting various creatures and swinging a staff around.
Alright readers, here’s the bad news: the Maw ate Edwin. I know, it’s unfortunate, but we all saw it coming. You can’t feed a Stygian horror nothing but PC game releases and expect it to simply forget about protein. The good> news is that the Maw isn’t a particularly thorough masticator, so I imagine Edwin will have clambered back out by, ooh, say, Wednesday. Like that episode of the Samurai Jack reboot, except he spends even more time in a loincloth.
Someone ring up Slayer, because it's going to raining blood in Borderlands 4 soon. That being the natural way to precede the arrival of the shooter's first paid DLC bounty pack next month and a free December update that'll bring a weird tree fight to the endgame.
All of this stuff will lay a pre-Christmas foundation for the arrival of a fresh vault hunter early next year. That hunter, whom Gearbox showed off a little while ago out of contept for chronological reveals, is Randy Pitchford's magic cowboy spirit animal.
Sundays are for getting your 10,000 steps in, apparently. I bring this up specifically because I’ve been crap at exercising recently and I need you, RPS readers, to shame me into doing it more, much as you did when I admitted on the podcast to rarely using sunscreen. I’m counting on you, everyone.
In exchange, here are some good writings, mostly about games, from the past week or so.
Someone's managed to force their way through the doors of the RPS Treehouse, and like a cat that knows it belongs wherever it pleases, he's settled himself in the corner he's deemed comfiest, and refuses to budge. Ah well, might as well mic him up and ask him what he's playing this weekend.
Drive faster, she screams as a cacophony of meepy noises, it's coming! I know, headstand lady, I know, comes my response from behind the wheel. We'd be safe if I hadn't botched one of the switchbacks and gently skidded into a low wall. I'd best put my foot down if I want to escape the demo of mysterious delivery driver Truckful without finding out what happens when a little truck is swallowed by a bigger truck.
Update: Build a Rocket Boy have provided RPS with the following statement:
Every one of our former team members poured passion, creativity, and hard work into our games and our studio. Parting ways with people is never easy, and we were deeply saddened to make that decision. We didn’t anticipate having to make redundancies after launch, but we approached the process with care and transparency, meeting all our obligations. We’re listening closely to feedback from former employees and are committed to learning and growing from it.Original story continues below:
Following the inauspicious launch of MindsEye and subsequent layoffs at developers Build A Rocket Boy, 93 current and former staff at the studio have signed an open letter demanding an apology, while accusing Build A Rocket Boy's senior leadership of having "consistently mishandled the redundancy process" and mandating "unbearable levels of overtime" around the game's launch.
Right, it's that time again. Get ready to slide back down the ladder of powerfulness, because mandatory wipeage is required to stick everyone back on the same trajectory ahead of [insert new thing here]. No, say the developers of shooter Arc Raiders. They will not bow before the mandatory wipe gods at this time, instead trying out a voluntary wipe system dubbed Projects.
Yep, rather than leaning on the same unavoidable resets which plenty of extraction shooters and survival games employ to ensure newbies aren't always guaranteed to run into folks with more levels someone playing a platformer in a regularly-stopping elevator to the sun, Embark Studios plan to do their own thing.
Earlier this week, a group of former ZeniMax developers revealed that they'd formed a new worker-owned studio in the aftermath of Microsoft's mass layoffs. It's called Sackbird Studios, and the logo's a bird with a sack. Following accusations that this bird looked like it could be AI-generated, the studio have responded that it isn't, but some of the images on their website were.