This week in PC games: Gamescom and GTA 6 fight for our attention, but don't forget Folk Emerging, MGS4 and the horror game about balancing a cake

Hello all! I regret to report that the Maw is in a really good mood this week. Its scales have an almost flirtatious lustre, flashing in and out of visibility as I gaze from my eyrie above north London. Its crimson coral coils and fins of mounded verdigris can be seen reflected in the distant moneytemples of Canary Wharf. Its fractal teeth and hair form expressionist whorls and divots among the haggard late summer clouds.

The Maw is merry because this week is Gamescom week - a time of much videogame news and thus, a time of feasting for extradimensional gods with a hankering for headlines. It also happens to be the week in which Rockstar and Netflix will stream a GTA 6 documentary (27th August), giving rise to many, many articles in the vein of "50 individually rendered breakfast cereal shapes you missed from the all-new Vice City". As if all that wasn't enough, there are a load of uncommonly chunky new PC releases to contend with. Here's my latest list.

Read more

from Rock, Paper, Shotgun https://ift.tt/LM4KcR9
via ifttt

Haul a star through a labyrinth in Today's Star Is, a challenging free game from the Love Eternal devs with a new level coming every day

It's the start of a new week, and you've got a bad case of the Mondays. Ah, but why do I antagonise you so with these twee and crushingly normative white collar office job cliches? You aren't necessarily working a 9-5, and every day is hard, isn't it? You've got a lot on your mind. You've got a lot on your plate. It seems there's no end to the woe. Rest easy, my friend – no vexation you are feeling can possibly be as vexatious as the Space Invader area in Today's Star Is.

Read more

from Rock, Paper, Shotgun https://ift.tt/9V4z5NZ
via ifttt

Massive Morrowind mod Tamriel Rebuilt's Poison Song expansion is out now, complete with new quests to join Great House Indoril and the Ordinators

Tamriel Rebuilt, the Morrowind modding project gradually adding the province's mainland to The Elder Scrolls 3's Vvardenfell-centric map, has gotten a fresh expansion over the weekend. Dubbed Poison Song, it's the long-teased update which lets you join House Indoril, the great Dunmer house the Neravarine's namesake Indoril Nevevar belonged to belonged. It'll also let you join the Temple Ordinators, Morrowind's golden-masked lawkeepers, and explore a new region full of "lush gardens and bountiful fields".

Read more

from Rock, Paper, Shotgun https://ift.tt/tw4s9hU
via ifttt

The Sunday Papers

Sometimes, Sundays are only for rounding up videogame criticism and journalism. I try to cast a wider net when my turn comes to deliver the Papers, because I figure you've probably been reading about videogames all week, and would appreciate e.g. an essay on the mating habits of snails or the top 7 most elaborate UFO conspiracies, but this Sunday, there are no snails or UFOs within easy dredge. So instead, please accept a boatload of finest mitherings on Duke Nukem, oracular visual novels, sociable space sims, and 'search action' games.

Read more

from Rock, Paper, Shotgun https://ift.tt/dBGQUgZ
via ifttt

Chromatic aberration is made manifest in NECHROMIA, a high contrast survival horror set in a castle made of something else's memories

Look, I love a PS1 horror throwback as much as the next whatever Gonzo is, but they don't all have to look like Silent Hill or Resident Evil, do they? There have been some aesthetic divergences in the renewed interest in the pseudo-genre, like with 2024's excellent and queer as hell Sorry We're Closed, but I'm hungry for more. Hence my interest in NEHCROMIA, a high-contrast survival horror set in a castle made of memories that aren't yours (a seizure warning is in order for the trailer below).

Read more

from Rock, Paper, Shotgun https://ift.tt/HbU6I27
via ifttt

Tulpa the Unseen Lover is a psychological visual novel about a depressed manga artist manifesting a cute, ominous anime girl made by former Spider-Verse animators

It's very rare that I'm not thinking about the works of Satoshi Kon (pop on Tokyo Godfathers this Christmas, you won't regret it), but the one that I always come back to is Opus. It's a manga the director made in the mid '90s that he ultimately never finished before his death, following a manga artist who gets sucked into his own creation and forced to deal with the consequences of his writing. Tulpa the Unseen Lover, a psychological visual novel made by former Spider-Verse animators, is sort of like that, only in this case it's about a manga creator bringing an anime girl to life in his mind.

Read more

from Rock, Paper, Shotgun https://ift.tt/rVlBvbT
via ifttt

"Buying any of our games helps support the studio": Psychonauts studio Double Fine are the latest former Xbox-owned studio to get the rights to their games back

Earlier this week, South of Midnight developer Compulsion Games shared word that they now own all of the publishing rights to their games, a welcome update in light of the ongoing BDS boycott against Microsoft and Xbox. And now, another studio is joining the realm of boycott freedom, this time Psychonauts studio Double Fine, as CEO Tim Schafer has confirmed that they too now own the publishing rights to their own catalogue.

Read more

from Rock, Paper, Shotgun https://ift.tt/yQgwzsH
via ifttt