After trailers for Final Fantasy 16 were released last year, some questions were asked about its predominantly white cast. Those questions were answered by producer Naoki Yoshida in a fashion he correctly predicted would be "disappointing to some".
Yoshida has now revisited the question during the latest round of Final Fantasy 16 press.
I'm still not entirely sure if I'm playing Phantom Brigade right. According to its internal clock, battles usually take less than a minute. That time is divided into five-second chunks during which you're shown what the enemy will do, and must use that to coordinate your own mechs, placing their orders on a visible timeline. You finish your turn by hitting a button that makes everyone go at once for a few explosive moments.
In practice, behind those few seconds are an eternity of theorising, testing, and tweaking. There's probably a metaphor in there somewhere about writing, video editing, or catering. The result is a game that's taken me absolutely ages, but whose numbers suggest I'm supposed to be blasting through without a care.
I am enjoying it a lot, despite some frustration.
I have, genuinely, been trying to get plants for my office area (desk in the corner of the living room) for like nine months now. If my need for plants were a child, it would have been born. I had a decent pot plant called James Plant back in the UK, but when I moved I bequeathed James Plant to Graham - and, now that I think about it, Graham hasn't told me how James Plant is doing, so I should probably check in on that.
I know that digital plants do not replace real plants in a physical sense - i.e. I am getting no oxygenating benefit from them - but the little plants in Garden In! make me happy. And I've just realised the name is a pun, too.
Everyone loves a robot companion, from Half-Life’s Dog to the plethora of Star Wars droids that are so cute they generate millions in merchandising. That’s why I’m intrigued by Plasma, a spacey physics-driven engineering game that lets players build a variety of robot friendos, useful machines, and generally wild contraptions. Plasma comes from Patrick Corrieri and Marco Bancale, who have previously worked on the Poly Bridge series and the tense Kingdom games. Their new creative engineering sim is heading into early access on March 30th, and I can’t wait to see what people make.
There are plenty of great games based on books, but I’ve never seen an adaptation as unconventional as The Forest Cathedral, a dramatic reimagining of Rachel Carson’s science book from the ‘60s, Silent Spring. Carson’s book investigated the pesticide known as DDT, its harmful environmental impacts, and the misinformation that allowed companies to indiscriminately use it. The Forest Cathedral reimagines this series of events as partly a first-person walking sim across the woods and partly a 2D platformer set inside scanning equipment. So, yeah, not exactly a one-to-one adaptation.
Publisher Paradox Interactive are preparing to announce three new games and four expansions at their Paradox Announcement Show airing next week - an announcement of an announcement if you like. The Paradox Announcement show will go live at 6pm CET/ 5pm GMT/ 9am PT on March 6th and you can catch the show on Paradox's official YouTube and Twitch channels.
With the new Ryzen 7000X3D processors arriving today, it's perhaps not surprising to see last-gen models reaching new price lows. That's the case for the Ryzen 5700X, one of the fastest eight-core Ryzen CPUs ever made (behind the 7700X, 5800X and 5800X3D) and now firmly a member of the sub-£200 club. In fact, this processor is down to £177 at Amazon UK at present, meaning it's rapidly approaching half of its £329 UK RRP.
Yes, I know the CPU pictured is the 5800X. Please don't tell anyone! I didn't think you'd look at it that closely.
Buying American imports on Amazon UK is one of the best ways to get a steep discount without resorting to lesser-known sellers, and occasionally you find a deal that is streets ahead of the nearest comparable price in Blighty. That's the case with this deal, where you can pick up Lexar's NS100 SATA SSD in a beautiful 1TB capacity for just £46.
That's a super low price for what is by all accounts quite a reasonable drive, with read speeds up to 550MB/s, write speeds up to 500MB/s, TLC NAND flash memory and a DRAM-less design.
I’m not enough of a survivalist log-lugger for Sons of the Forest to be my leisure time bag, though it’s always entertaining to performance-test a PC game that’s constantly trying to kill you. This analysis and settings guide, then, is brought to you the ragged nerves of someone that’s spent several hours being screamed at by camouflaged cannibals, having only survived long enough to hear them by consuming several tins of cat food. Honestly, I am more cat food than man at this point.
Most JRPG fans on PC probably know Hironobu Sakaguchi as the creator and grandaddy of the Final Fantasy series. After he left Square Enix in 2003, Sakaguchi opened his own studio and worked on turn-based adventures like Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey - games that arguably matched his genre-defining classics - but PC gamers have been largely unable to experience them, until now. Maybe. Sakaguchi recently took part in a Q&A (reported by IGN Japan, translated by VGC) where he expressed the desire to bring his Apple Arcade exclusive Fantasian to PC.
Every weekend, indie devs show off current work on Twitter's #screenshotsaturday tag. And every Monday, I bring you a selection of these snaps and clips. This week, my eye has been caught by mech battles, Japanese horror, colourful farming, a hand-drawn horror game in the Doom engine, and plenty more. Come look!
Halo Infinite has been in an extended slump since its second season began 10-months ago, but 343 Industries are hoping to turn things around when Season 3: Echoes Within starts next week on March 7th. Echoes Within is undeniably the biggest update to Infinite since launch, as it’s adding new maps, weapons and equipment, and expanding the multiplayer’s narrative - which has been a series of perpetual teases so far.
Sundays are for ordering a Steam Deck and getting quite excited about its arrival. Before you track its delivery, let's read this week's best writing about games (and game related things).
Blood Bowl 3 released this past week to a reception from players as brutal as one of its matches. As its Steam reviews sit at the 'mostly negative' mark, developers Cyanide have posted a response aimed at "addressing the main topics of discussion".
The Dead Space remake was well received by players whether old or new to the scifi horror slice 'em up. EA are seemingly now asking a handful of players if they would therefore like the same remake treatment applied to Dead Space 2 and 3.
I think the headline I wrote is true. But I think it would also be true if it read, "If you sort-of liked but were also hugely frustrated by The Ascent, similar isometric cyberpunk shooter SlavicPunk: Oldtimer could offer a salve to your gripes." Bit long, though, as titles go. Watch the trailer below.
The Sims 4's will add infants in a free update on March 14th, but just two days later the Growing Together expansion will arrive. It aims to expand lifetime milestones for more than just children, as well as adding new complexity to relationship dynamics. You'll find a trailer explaining exactly how it all works below.
First, snowdrops. Then crocuses. Now, daffodils. You know, I had always appreciated council budgets including spring bulbs to make places pretty, but it's only this dismal winter that I truly realise the mental health bonuses of this. Spring is coming, they tell everyone by poking up in parks and on roundabouts, hold on just a little longer. But what are you playing this weekend? Here's what we're clicking on!
Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League got a lengthy demonstration at tonight's PlayStation State Of Play event, which clarified several things about what kind of game Rocksteady's long-awaited return to the DC Universe really is. It turns out it's a game with lots of floaty air combat, lots of noise, lots of loot and gear scores and weapon classes, and with a battle pass (but for cosmetics only). Plus there will be DLC to add new characters post-launch.
The next game from the developers of Tetris Effect and Rez Infinite is called Humanity, and it's an action-puzzle game in which you control a Shiba Inu and try to guide crowds of people around obstacle-strewn greybox levels. A bit like Lemmings, maybe, but presumably with a surprising emotional resonance. Watch the trailer below.
As I write this, Sons Of The Forest is the third most played game on Steam with 265,000 concurrent players. That's not bad for a game that came out a little over three hours ago. It's so popular in fact, it might have crashed Steam.
Earlier this month, we asked you to vote for your favourite strategy games of all time to celebrate the launch (and glorious return) of several strategy classics this month, including Relic's WW2 RTS Company Of Heroes 3, Blue Byte's The Settlers: New Allies and Cyanide's fantasy Warhamball Blood Bowl 3. And cor, I've never seen such love for individual expansions and total conversion mods among mainline RTS games and 4Xs. As with all strategy games, however, there can only be one victor - and you can find out what that single strategy game to rule them all is right here. Here are your 50 favourite strategy games of all time, as voted for by you, the RPS readership.
You know it’s a great turn in The Pale Beyond when only five of your crew are freezing, two have frostbite, and one has scurvy. After all the struggles and dangers I’ve been through trying to keep my ship’s crew alive in the bone-biting cold of the arctic tundra, that’s definitely a success in my book.
It’s easy to describe Bellular Studio’s survival sim as just ‘Frostpunk on a ship’, but in some ways that’s pretty accurate: you’re the leader of a group trying to survive in a harsh frozen wasteland. But it’s also a comparison that falls short in plenty of other ways. Sure, the engine of this survival sim might run the same as Forstpunk’s, but it’s buried deep in a handcrafted hull. With an overarching story that deals with the drama and despair of survival, together with a cast of underdog characters whose personalities and flaws fuel your determination to keep them alive, The Pale Beyond is much more human than its steampunk counterpart.
The devs behind Command & Conquer Remaster are releasing their The Great War: Western Front on March 30th, but for now they’re showing off exactly how the WW1 RTS works in a new developer diary. The ‘Commanding The Western Front’ video has several leads devs from Petroglyph walking us through aspects of the campaign, from the macro decisions of Field Commander Mode, to the tactical RTS skirmishes in Theatre Mode.
A lot of folks, including our Liam, have been having a grand old time hunting Japanese fantasy beasts in Wild Hearts. Great! Less great is that it still runs like concrete on PC, even after a performance-focused patch that developers Omega Force had detailed even before the game had formally released.
AOC make some of the best value gaming monitors in the business, especially in the mid-range where you can get some truly impressive specs and solid build quality at surprisingly low prices. Case in point is this deal on a 27-in 1440p 165Hz gaming monitor for just £230 after a solid £135 reduction. That's an awesome deal for this spec, which looks great and offers a competitive advantage over 60Hz alternatives.
Even after a decade marked by the abandonware crowd being proven right, there are old games that remain lost between the cracks of digital distribution. Instead of waxing lyrical about that though, I'm here today with good news: My favourite open world 3D spaceflight/trading sim Hardwar is back.
It's been back for over a year, in fact, via Zoom Platform, who've just made the interesting choice to publish it on Steam too, promising that their own store will remain resolutely DRM-free, and that this aims "to help fund additional signings and improvements for our DRM-Free preservation efforts". I'll brush aside analysing this strategy, because the immediate upshot is that, hopefully, Hardwar might finally get its due. In a better world, we'd already be playing its modern descendants.
For Magic Week, I wrote about Team Lazerbeam's upcoming dating sim Wrestling With Emotions: New Kid On The Block (WWE) and how you're able to romance a beefcake composed entirely of green ooze. There is, of course, far more to it than that. I asked Team Lazerbeam's Ben Rausch about how it tackles themes of queer identity and diversity in a kickass way, which I highlighted in my post, but wanted to highlight even more here. Their answers were too good not to share.
Amazon Games have announced that they’re bringing NCSOFT’s South Korean MMORPG Throne And Liberty to the Americas, Europe, and Japan. NCSOFT has a history of publishing their own games worldwide, as they have done with Guild Wars in the past, so their agreement with Amazon is somewhat unique. Amazon haven’t given a release window for Throne And Liberty, but they’ll be publishing the game on PC and consoles with cross-play enabled.
Documentaries chronicling game development are great. With so much marketing fluff surrounding games, it can be nice to hear directly from the devs about their inspirations, struggles, and creative intentions. Hearing them chat candidly, making jokes and getting excited, is a good reminder that real-life people are at the heart of every game - what a crazy concept. Luckily, these types of documentaries seem to be increasingly common, evidenced by the Yakuza (or Like A Dragon) docuseries that just debuted on YouTube.
Roguelike dungeon crawler Backpack Hero has been in early access for under a year, and it’s now getting a full 1.0 launch on PC and consoles in May. Backpack Hero has been successful for its three-person dev team and stood apart from other roguelikes with its Tetris-inspired inventory management. You see, success in Backpack Hero is determined by how you organise your bag rather than what you’re actually carrying, as you shuffle items around a grid to create synergies and mod your playstyle.
Forza Horizon 5 is getting a new expansion, and it will be revealed this Thursday, February 23rd, during a livestream. It'll be the first expansion since last year's Hot Wheels extravaganza.
A hearing took place at the European Commission in Brussels today related to Microsoft's proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard. Afterwards, Microsoft held a press conference and announced that they've signed a deal to bring all Xbox PC games to Nvidia's cloud service GeForce Now. The deal includes Call Of Duty, if Microsoft come to own it.
You’ve likely seen Blumhouse’s logo in front of horror films like Halloween and Get Out, and now you’re going to see that blue-tinged dirty wall at the start of some horror games. The film production company is launching Blumhouse Games, a division that will fund, publish, and produce horror games primarily by indie devs. The company say they’re looking for “original” content, so don’t expect any M3GAN spin-offs for a while.
Time is flying by a little too fast in 2023, although it’s not all bad news as a new month means new Game Pass additions. Microsoft have announced the next four games hitting the service before March 3rd, alongside Atomic Heart which releases today. I was interested in the steely Soviet shooter until I read James’ review and saw that the protagonist yells “Crispy critters,” more than once - I think I’ll skip.
Here are the next batch of Game Pass titles:
This is my first time hearing of Merge & Blade, not to be confused with Mount & Blade which is also on Game Pass. Merge & Blade is a hybrid between puzzle games and auto-battlers. Rounds will start with a Tetris-like mini-game, but instead of shapes, you’re guiding different unit types and merging them together. You then use your completed party to raid castles and kill monsters. Mixing - or merging - Tetris into a new genre is a recipe for success, so I’ll definitely be downloading this one.
I see the question, "What order should I play the Yakuza games in?" pop up on the reg. Like clockwork, it happens whenever a new Yakuza (or Like A Dragon, as it's now known) game arrives. And you know what? It gets to me. To experience the series in the richest way possible, there's an obvious answer. But if you're someone who hasn't got the time to do so, or you're a bit unsure whether Yakuza is for you, then there's another way in. Now pick up that bike and walk with me.
The Steam Mystery Fest is well underway, discounting countless games about detectives, murder mysteries, or generally strange occurrences. Lots of heavy hitters have big sales like Return Of The Obra Dinn and Pentiment, but as always, you’ll need to do quite a bit of scrolling to find the hidden gems. The sales last until February 27th, so you have a week to grab some cheap games, and if you’re struggling with recommendations, here are some good’uns.
You ever see that Mastodon post where a guy explains why he now understands Elon Musk is an idiot, because he's started talking about software? I imagine you've experienced a similar thing with video games, whenever a columnist for a broadsheet writes about them and you can instantly tell that they have never played one in their whole dahlia-manuring, boot room-having, fox hunt-following life.
Tomorrow, And Tomorrow, And Tomorrow is a book about the decades-long relationship between two people who are game developers. And like the above, it would be impossible to explain to someone who doesn't work in the games industry why a small exchange between the two of them made me absolutely roar with laughter.
Jumplight Odyssey is an upcoming starship roguelite colony sim from the makers of Armello, and when I saw it in action late last year, I was extremely pumped for it. It was formally announced with its very flash animated opening sequence during November's PC Gaming Show Preview stream, but now you, too, can see what it actually looks like in motion with its very first gameplay trailer. Come and have a gander at its spaceship antics - or, if you're like me, just watch the two full seconds of a crew member giving Ham the pig a nice big belly-rub on repeat.
If you’re British and you’re old, then you love the ZX Spectrum. (Or the Commodore 64, I suppose, but not both. Never both.) Personally, I’m what they called a “Speccy” kid, and I have carried a deep and profound love of the elderly microcomputer’s cassette tape screeches, colour clash and long, long load times into my adult life, despite the fact that – and please don’t get upset, purists – many of the great Spectrum games don’t hold up in the cold light of the modern day. It’s not that the games are necessarily bad, more that they were tremendous for their time. Still eminently enjoyable, but they require the player to get their head into a certain zone, to put up with what are inarguably quite archaic controls and mechanics.
Oddly enough, there are some Spectrum games on Steam, thanks to a publisher called Pixel Games. However, with the utmost respect to their output… these are not the kind of games that are going to foster interest in the Speccy amongst modern players. Of course, that may well not be the point, but I’d be a little taken aback if even avowed old-school gamers were going to bother picking up the likes of gardening simulator Pedro, a game that scored 63% in Newsfield’s iconic Crash magazine back in the day, or Sam Stoat: Safebreaker, which did a little better at 68%.
Every weekend, indie devs show off current work on Twitter's #screenshotsaturday tag. And every Monday, I bring you a selection of these snaps and clips. This week, we have a lot more of a horror vibe than I expected in February, from cursed websites to Apocalyptic events and even hints of Myst. Brrr! Chilling. Come see!
I see novelty games on Steam every couple of days; things like gun-wielding slime shooters, or hyper-realistic dog-walking sims. They all force a little chuckle out of me, but none of them have made me belly laugh like I Am Jesus Christ, a first-person retelling of Christ’s tale from birth, to death, to rebirth.
I Am Jesus Christ’s genre is slightly murky, although, it almost looks like a giant Skyrim mod complete with unfeeling NPCs, first-person spellcasting, and an open world full of quest markers. The newest trailer shows some of Christ’s cool abilities like walking on water, shooting light beams at Satan, and fishing - which is incidentally what I’m looking forward to the most.
In fairness, the Christ sim looks like a pretty robust and thorough retelling of his journey, depicting scenes like the Last Supper, only this time all the disciples have exclamation marks above their heads. The Steam page also details 30 different miracles (or spells) and a number of different areas to explore.
Like all good fairytale characters, Pinocchio gets a revision every couple of years - except for 2022, when he was adapted thrice (mostly in bad films, except for the Del Toro one). The loveable puppet isn’t waiting too long for his next comeback, as the RPG Soulslike Lies Of P is coming to PC and Game Pass in August.
Lies Of P’s newest trailer is mostly a black screen with a lot of VO, but we get a clear look at Pinocchio's daddy Master Gepetto this time. The trailer follows a blob wobbling through very Victorian streets before it slides into some automation and uses the machine’s body as a puppet. The result is a boss-sized monstrosity that sits halfway between Lovecraftian horror and industrial defect. It also reminds me of Gears 5’s weird infected robots, with tentacles and slime hanging off their metallic arms - equally gross and cool.
The newest trailer doesn’t show off any Bloodborne-style combat, but we’ve had plenty of looks at that already, including a fight with a gorilla robocop. This Soulslike looks just as aggressive as you’d expect, emphasising quick dodge rolls and last-minute, anxiety-fueled parries. Pinocchio’s arm doubles up as a grappling hook to pull enemies in, which is always cool in a hack n’ slasher, and makes even more sense when you’re playing as a puppet. Also, is it just me or is Pinocchio pretty this time around?
League Of Geek's Solium Infernum revival was first revealed at the end of last year, and while I got to see a very early alpha version of it back then, the subsequent demo footage wasn't quite ready for public consumption. Happily, League Of Geeks have now added the final bit of infernal spit and polish to Solium's first gameplay trailer, which has been shown off during IGN Fanfest this week. Come and have a gander.
Sundays are for buying your books from an independent book shop. Before you support local business, let's read this week's best writing about games (and game related things).
Earlier this week, globular suck 'em up Slime Rancher 2 received the Song Of The Sabers update. It adds a new, snow-covered zone called Powderfall Bluffs filled with prehistoric slimes. There's a trailer for the update below - but its also a "secret" designed such that some players might never find it, says its game director.
A new Steam feature allows you to transfer games between machines using your local network. If you've got a game installed on your desktop PC, and you want to play it on Steam Deck for example, you can now transfer it between the machines without having to re-download any files.
Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic is a citybuilder about wrangling supply chains and logistics. Sin is a big fan. Unfortunately the supply of the game itself from Steam has been halted, and its developers allege that it's due to DMCA takedown notices filed by a "once a respected member of our community."
Our fortnight of RPS Magic Week has ended (a little bit of chronomancery there) has ended so do catch up on all the witchery and wizarding if you want more to read this weekend. Beyond that, hey, do tell: what are you playing this weekend? Here's what we're clicking on!
On this week's episode of the Ultimate Audio Bang, we get an update on Hayden's knees and the various ways in which he's attempting to save them. We also take a gander at fantasy FPS Dark And Darker, Steam's most wishlisted 'shooter'. I'm less keen on it than Hayden is.
In the second part of the pod, we talk about the goals we've achieved in theHunter: Call Of The Wild, including a tale about moose and a deer that knocked me out.
