The Sims 4 didn't have toddlers until they were added in 2017, and sims' early years will continue to telescope when March comes around. That's when infants will finally be added to the game, turning babies into full sims.
The latest update also offered news on Project Rene, the eventual successor to The Sims 4. The key takeaways: it's not an MMO but it will have multiplayer as well as singleplayer, and it's years away from release.
Sony's WH-1000XM line of noise-cancelling headphones is brilliant - I've used a pair of XM4s while working for years - and they're actually pretty decent for PC gaming too, especially if you're in a louder environment. That's why I thought I should tell you that these WH-1000XM5s are discounted to £249 on Sony's UK site when you use code UPGRADE50 to knock £50 off the price. This is the first time they've dropped to this level, and for a go-anywhere set of headphones they might just be worth a look.
Last Friday afternoon, 40 developers from Ubisoft Paris gathered to strike in the first labour stoppage of Ubisoft’s history. It's the capper on what has been a turbulent month for the company. Three weeks ago Ubisoft announced they were cancelling three unannounced games amid “worsening macroeconomic conditions.” In a letter to employees, CEO Yves Guillemot said that “the ball is in your court” in regard to hitting deadlines and overturning Ubisoft’s sticky financial situation. French union Solidaires Informatique said that Guillemot’s "words mean something: overtime, managerial pressure, burnout, etc," and called on Ubisoft Paris employees to strike for better pay and working hours. It seems some devs heard the call.
The road to launch has been a uniquely turbulent one for The Settlers: New Allies. After an eight-year absence, the next entry in Ubisoft’s beloved city-building series was finally revealed in 2018, only to be delayed indefinitely two years later. The game then reemerged in a fresh new form in 2022, but a less than favourable reception from long-term fans to its closed beta saw the game delayed indefinitely once again.
12 months later, The Settlers: New Allies is all the better for it. An extended delay is never an easy decision to make, yet the team at Ubisoft Düsseldorf (formerly Blue Byte) has seen this additional development time as an opportunity to reach out to those most familiar with the series. “We learned [more] than just what was needed for the game,” creative director Christian Hagerdorn tells me during a recent preview event. “One of our biggest focuses was to be absolutely transparent with the players. Not just on where we were standing, but where we were going. We've been collecting the feedback as we were developing”.
Whomst among us hasn't dreamt of somehow being transported to a magical world, where there are talking unicorns, and you can throw lightning and control plants because you are this universe's very special hero? Such is the fate of Frey, who falls through a portal into Athia and finds that world in mortal peril. Although if I were here I'd be a bit disappointed. It's all very well being able to zoom around doing magic parkour everywhere, but there isn't much to do or many places to go. Not a single talking unicorn to be seen.
Forspoken is somehow both full and devoid of content. There is a huge open world, but it is mostly empty. There is an epic story of magic, other universes, and saving the world, but it only takes up a couple of days. I actually enjoyed a lot of Forspoken, but it gets more fun the more you play, and then it's over; I didn't pre-order this game for sixty odd quid, and if I had I'd be disappointed. Even the much-Tweeted about annoying dialogue doesn't happen much, and isn't contextually annoying. Forspoken is annoying, though, just not in the ways you might expect if all you've seen is people discussing out-of-context clips from cutscenes.
A series of senior job listings have revealed some details about The Molasses Flood’s upcoming Witcher game, codenamed Project Sirius. The studio behind Flame In The Flood were acquired by CD Projekt Red back in 2021, and CDPR first mentioned Sirius in an investor call last October. The project was initially described as "an innovative take on The Witcher universe telling an unforgettable story.” We now know that this “unforgettable story” could potentially be told inside of a multiplayer game, or at least a game with multiplayer and social elements.
As part of their 30th Anniversary celebrations, NIS America announced that Disgaea 7: Vows Of The Virtueless, the next instalment in the long-running JRPG series, is coming to PC this year. Disgaea 7 was actually released in Japan just a few days ago, but it’ll see an overseas release on Steam this autumn. NIS also announced rereleases for Rhapsody 2: Ballad Of The Little Princess and Rhapsody 3: Memories Of Marl Kingdom coming this summer.
Hello folks. I think there's probably some sort of law against wishing people a Happy New Year when you're saying it on the final day of January, but stuff it, I'm doing it anyway. Happy New Year everyone. Let's talk about all the cool stuff coming up on RPS in 2023.
The Corsair MP600 Pro is a great high-end PCIe 4.0 SSD, so to get the 1TB model for $155 at Newegg, a reasonable $45 off, is a deal worth writing about. As you'd hope from a drive of this calibre, this uses more expensive TLC NAND flash and has a DRAM cache, providing noticeably better sustained performance than QLC drives without a DRAM cache.
Footage purporting to be from Horizon Forbidden West's multiplayer alpha has appeared online. The leak surfaced on Reddit over the weekend, claiming to be from a "very old alpha" build from summer 2020. It's an interesting watch, as while the world and robo dinos look like classic Horizon, the characters jumping around fighting them look a lot more stylised than their hyper-detailed mainline counterparts.
I went to Berlin not long ago to sample the emotional highs and lows of Like A Dragon: Ishin, a remake of a spin-off that was previously only released in Japan back in 2014. Aside from almost crying and racing chickens, I had the chance to interview Ryu Ga Gotoku Studios' chief producer Hiroyuki Sakamoto, who revealed his favourite thing about the game: Goro Majima's undeniable sex appeal.
Sundays are for curling a mic away from your mouth, so your friends don't hear you crunching down on some Pringles. Before you bend, let's read this week's best writing about games (and game related things).
American Truck Simulator hasn't yet received its already-announced Oklahoma DLC, but work is underway on the state that will follow it: Kansas. You'll find a reveal trailer filled with grassy fields and grain silos below.
Battlefield 2042's update 3.2 will arrive next week, which is notable because it will revive Battlefield's traditional class system. If you were one of the many players to be frustrated by 2042's Specialists, then 3.2 is your chance to once again don the roles of Assault, Engineer, Recon and Support.
Barotrauma is a co-op scifi submarine sim, which is a great thing to be. It's been navigating the murky depths of early access for the past three years but is now prepping for a 1.0 this spring. Prepareations in this case mean "pre-patch" with "final fixes and changes" the development team wanted to make before the big release day comes, and a price increase in two weeks time.
Overwatch 2 players haven't been happy with the way its ranked matches have worked since launch. Blizzard agree, it seems, although they're not going to be reverting back to how things were in Overwatch 1. Instead they'll be implementing changes in season 3 and season 4 "aimed at creating more clarity in the system."
Steam's various discovery hubs are normally designed to steer you towards new games you might like to buy. The latest experiment from Steam Labs, however, is a DLC Discovery Hub. It offers up a tailored list of additional content you might be interested in for games you already own, and prioritises those you've played recently or played most.
Risk Of Rain Returns is a remaster of the 2013, side-scrolling roguelike, but it's adding plenty that's new. The latest 'dev thoughts' video from developers Hopoo Games demonstrates some of the new alternate attack abilities available for every character, from sniper shots to turning your enemies into food.
Ubisoft are working on two new Far Cry games, according to a new report, including the next mainline entry, Far Cry 7, and a standalone multiplayer offshoot from the series. Sources told Insider Gaming that the pair of games were originally just one project, but have since been split into separate single-player and multiplayer games. What could become Far Cry 7 is reportedly being referred to as Project Blackbird internally at Ubisoft, with the multiplayer game going by the moniker of Project Maverick. Both games are being developed with input from veteran Far Cry series developers Ubisoft Montréal.
Spooky indie pinball hit Demon’s Tilt passed me by in 2019, so I’m pleased the devs have decided to build on their bumper success with a sci-fi-flavoured sequel. Xenotilt transports the silver sphere action from the occult cathedral surroundings of Demon’s Tilt to a floating space hulk called the Samaritan. Forget any thoughts of friendly assistance to rack up a high score though, because this game’s subtitle is Hostile Pinball Action. You can see just how hostile Xenotilt can get by watching the trailer below.
HBO’s take on Naughty Dog’s shroomocalyptic game series The Last Of Us has been praised by critics as the best video game adaptation ever, but the show’s co-creator doesn’t think both games can be squeezed into a single season each. Craig Mazin discussed his hopes for the TV version of The Last Of Us while guesting on an upcoming episode of The Playlist Podcast. Mazin seems to think the second game would have to spread out across multiple seasons, like the tendrils of an infected.
Co-founders of the studio developing Steam wishlist hit The Day Before have rejected claims the game is a scam. The post-apocalyptic survival MMO was delayed from March to November this week as it turned out the devs hadn't actually got the game trademarked, prompting accusations from within the game’s Discord and Reddit communities that it might not exist at all. Talking to IGN, Eduard and Aisen Gotovtsev insisted that the delay was necessary and had been planned before the game’s Steam store page was removed.
Amazon US is running a Lightning Deal today that's worth knowing about: just $180 for a 27-in 1440p 144Hz gaming monitor from Innocn. This brand is one I've covered before - my colleague John Linneman was impressed with both a portable OLED and a 40-inch ultrawide from the Chinese company - so it's definitely worth trying in my view.
Well. They certainly remade Dead Space. With some small but welcome exceptions, Dead Space is a one-to-one remake of the 2008 original.
Your opinion on whether that is a good thing or not will depend on how you feel about the endeavour of remaking games from fifteen years ago in the first place. As far as I’m concerned, this remake allowed me to replay one of my all-time favourite games in a lavish new form, and in that sense, Dead Space is extraordinary.
February might be the shortest month, but this year it’s jam-packed with free games for anyone with an Amazon Prime membership. There’s nine games up for keepsies over the course of the month, with The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind GOTY Edition standing out at the front of the pack from February 2nd. Members will also get to claim the bathhouse management game Onsen Master, futuristic 3D runner Aerial_Knight's Never Yield, and chibi god-brawler Divine Knockout in the first half of the month.
Sony-owned developer Naughty Dog’s brand of story-packed action is relatively new to the world of PC gaming, but it sounds like we could miss out on more of their Uncharted and The Last Of Us games in the future. Naughty Dog’s co-president Neil Druckmann commented in a Buzzfeed interview that the company is “moving on” from the Uncharted series, and that they’re not feeling pressured into making The Last Of Us Part III.
EA Motive’s Dead Space remake stalks onto PC tomorrow, nearly a decade and a half after the original made us collectively need to buy new pants. Earlier this week, I reported on the possibility of this new take on Dead Space getting an alternate ending. The Reunion ending was leaked by an achievements list for the remake, but now the Dead Space Twitter account has confirmed that the game does indeed feature a secret ending. That’s not all, either.
Call Of Duty: Warzone 2 and Modern Warfare 2 multiplayer both begin Season 02 on February 15th, and the battle royale will see the return of the first Warzone’s 1v1 Gulag. Raven Software and Infinity Ward have shared details about how that’s going to work in a new blog post, along with some info about more changes to battle royale, DMZ, and Modern Warfare 2 multiplayer. The post doesn’t go over incoming maps, modes, and features that players can expect to see in Season 02, but the devs say they’ll be sharing more on those nearer to the new season’s kick-off time.
A roadmap for what’s coming to Animal Crossing-alike Disney Dreamlight Valley has revealed the life sim will be going multiplayer this year. Along with the option to drag your mates into bothering popular Disney characters and creating a magical kingdom of your very own, Dreamlight Valley’s roadmap shows that Encanto’s Mirabel, Frozen’s Olaf, and Simba from animated classic The Lion King will be coming to the game in free updates over the next few months. The roadmap also promised more new characters, realms, and gubbins such as clothing and furniture to stuff your house full of.
I'm a sucker for mechanical keyboards, but I don't discriminate against high-end membrane or scissor switch boards either. One of the best non-mechs I've tried over the last few years has been the Logitech MX Keys, which is available in a compact MX Keys Mini model or as the full-size MX Keys. Today, the full-size UK model is discounted on Amazon UK, where it's down from £120 to £80 - a nice 33% or 40 quid off.
Minecraft Legends is an action strategy game, which means you view the world from above and command armies of mobs. But there's still plenty that's familiar from traditional Minecraft, if tonight's presentation during the Xbox developer showcase is any indication.
They also announced a release date: April 18th.
We’re still a month and a bit away from The Last Of Us Part 1 arriving on PC, but it sounds as though the TV adaptation is doing well enough to land itself a second season. Actor Bella Ramsey, who plays Ellie in HBO’s The Last Of Us show alongside Pedro Pascal as Joel, told the BBC that she reckons Season 2 is “pretty likely”. Quickly covering herself – and preventing an online outbreak reminiscent of a scene from the show and/or game – Ramsey stressed that the show being renewed was still a decision for the suits at HBO. “There's nothing confirmed yet so we'll have to wait and see,” she said.
Source code for fantasy MOBA League Of Legends and its autobattler spin-off Teamfight Tactics has been stolen and ransomed, Riot Games have confirmed. In a series of tweets, the developer revealed that the code was taken in an attack on their systems last week. Demands have been made by the hackers, which Riot say they won’t stump up for. The hack is being investigated both by Riot and law enforcement agencies, but Riot insist that League Of Legends players’ personal data and information weren’t compromised by the hackers.
I was absolutely elated when Square Enix announced a new Final Fantasy Theatrhythm game during the Tokyo Game Show last year, as there's been a Final Fantasy music game shaped hole in my life for the best part of a decade. I played the pair of Theatrhythm 3DS games to absolute death back in the day, and was hoping that Squeenix's newfound PC love-in would mean I'd be able to write about it non-stop when Theatrhythm Final Bar Line comes out on February 16th. Alas, that joy was immediately curtailed when I saw FBL wasn't, in fact, coming to PC at all, and would remain a Switch and PS4-only game for the foreseeable future. But that's okay, because YouTuber Gloomhonk has created the perfect antidote to my Theatrhythm woes in the form of their brilliant Trombone Champ rendition of FF VII's Those Who Fight Further. Come and have a listen.
Enigmatic survival MMO The Day Before was set for release on March 1st, but devs Fntastic have announced that it’s slipping to November 10th due to trademark concerns. In the latest unusual twist in The Day Before's development, Fntastic shared a statement explaining the delay that credits it to a US trademark filing that the company overlooked. Oddly, The Day Before’s store page also seems to have disappeared from Steam within the past day.
Microsoft have reported worldwide technical issues with multiple Microsoft services this morning, including Minecraft, Xbox Live, Teams, Outlook and other 365 products. In a Twitter thread from Microsoft's 365 Status account, they said the problems have been caused by “networking configuration issues”, and that a recent network change had been rolled back. It's hoped this will solve the access problems people have faced trying to use these services this morning, but lingering issues may still be kicking about.
It seemed a shame, given Forspoken's somewhat unusual system requirements, that its demo remained unavailable on PC. Well, that's no longer the case. As of today, you can now give Square Enix's Cuff-ing season action-adventure a whiz before you decide whether you want to pay £65/$70 for it.
Over the past couple of days, Book Twitter (and actually regular Twitter, because it's such a catastrophically mockable opinion to have in public) have been making much fun of this dude, who essentially pitched that AI could disrupt books. Another guy enthusiastically replied that you could add Metaverse features so you could "live the book". Don't bother adding to the pile on, because there are no more jokes to make. They have been deluged by people pointing out that TV, films and video games all aready exist.
This made me think about, firstly, that we'd be much better off as a society if techbro web3 enthusiasts were all siloed into one giant Truman Show-esque hamster ball where they can all scurry about together thinking they're achieving things. But secondly, that some people really put a lot of store on interactivity. Including me! Graham was the one who sent me those tweets, and he said he wouldn't want to live in any of the books he's been reading, because everyone in them is sad or angry for the whole book, until almost the end. I said I wouldn't want to be in them because you'd only end up being a side character, and that's boring.
There’s a new Nvidia GeForce Game Ready Driver out, and for once it sounds pretty interesting – especially if you’re lucky/rich/unhinged enough to have dropped megabucks on one of Nvidia’s megabucks RTX 40 series GPUs.
The 528.24 WHQL driver is mainly aimed at tuning up GeForce graphics cards for imminent PC releases Forspoken, the Dead Space remake, and Deliver Us Mars. All three will include DLSS support, which might come in handy for Forspoken in particular, given its slightly bananas system requirements. But 528.24 will also get Hitman 3 and Marvel’s Midnight Suns ready for DLSS 3 upgrades, with both games set to gain support for the overhauled upscaler in forthcoming patches.
Most deckbuilding strategy games see you create a single deck of cards over the course of the game. With every completed stage, you're given the chance to add in new cards and take out old duffers, carefully honing those rough edges until it's your very own death by paper cut machine. Mahokenshi isn't most other deckbuilders, though. Here, you're tasked with creating a fresh deck of cards each time you start a new mission, bolstering your initial crop of starter attacks and movement cards with new, more powerful attacks on the fly as you move around its hex-based landscapes. Some can be found out in the wild, but most of them you'll be buying from village merchants, before upgrading them at dojos dotted around the map. And at the end the mission, they're all swept away.
It's certainly a refreshing take on deckbuilding, and it lends itself to even more spontaneous wins and comebacks than the usual frisson of tension you get from simply drawing a good or bad hand. But with main story missions quickly ramping up in difficulty, that scramble for bigger and better cards up front is often Mahokenshi's undoing. The whims of chance are felt more keenly than ever in Game Source Studio's debut deckbuilder, and they never quite felt like they're tipped in your favour.
Mimimi Games have been teasing their next stealth strategy game for over two years now, and finally, we know what it is. Today, the makers of Desperados 3 and Shadow Tactics: Blades Of The Shogun revealed that the game formerly known as Codename: Sweet Potato (or Süßkartoffel, in their native German) is now called Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew, and it's all about undead magical pirates. Sign me the heck up.
I got to see Shadow Gambit in action late last week, and boy howdy it looks super cool. Even better, it's coming to Steam and the Epic Games Store later this year. Read on below to watch its pair of exciting reveal trailers, and find out all about it.
After almost 14 years, I am still delighted by Windosill. It's still a joy to poke and prod at the wee indie puzzle game, tugging on orbs, spinning carousels, and jabbing at the many beaks and eyeballs and mouths and noises emerging from an ever-shifting box. It's such a reward for curiosity. And it still looks great too, with that unaging smooth vector art from developer Vectorpark. Now it's out on Android phones and tablets too. I bought it, and really enjoy how much a touchscreen adds to the tactile experience.
Time to dust off your headset and motion controllers, because a free VR version of Half-Life 2: Episode One is coming to Steam. Created by Half-Life 2: VR Mod’s SourceVR Mod Team, Episode One is the first of Valve’s episodic adventures to get the virtual reality overhaul treatment. It’s planned to follow up with Episode Two at an unannounced, but at a later date. You can take a gander at Half-Life 2: VR Mod - Episode One in full flow below, without wearing the fancy digital helmet.
It’s only been a week since Microsoft announced they were laying off 10,000 human staff across their various divisions (including their games studios), but they've now revealed they’ll be investing billions of dollars into driving breakthroughs in AI. Microsoft will be pumping the money into futuristic tech firm OpenAI, which operates Turing-botherer chatbot ChatGPT and its artistic relative DALL-E. OpenAI’s already received two investments from Microsoft, one in 2019 and another in 2021. This third investment is intended to be “multi-year” and “multibillion dollar”, allowing both companies to “independently commercialize” whatever budding Skynets emerge.
Thunderful have just unveiled the next game in their excellent SteamWorld series, and it's not the one we thought it was going to be. Third person action co-op adventure SteamWorld Headhunter was initially teased in November 2021, but Thunderful used their SteamWorld Telegraph: Special Broadcast this evening to talk about a very different kind of new SteamWorld game - and it looks rad as heck. It's a citybuilder, and (appropriately) it's called SteamWorld Build. I've played a bit of it already, and you can read more of my thoughts about it right here. Spoiler alert: it's a little bit good. If you just want the facts of what was announced, though, read on below.
More than 20 years after The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind arrived on PC, one mod has finally given us the option to ignore all the questing and just enjoy capturing the game’s fantastical scenery on canvas. With the Joy Of Painting mod, you can set up your field easel anywhere in Morrowind, daub some brush strokes on a canvas, and even flog the painting to earn a bit of cash.
I'm aware that I talk about The Sims a lot; in fact, that's kind of how I ended up in this job. So rather than go into detail here about the original game itself (although if you want to hear more about it, I've got something pretty cool in the pipeline for you, so watch this space!), I've decided to use this HYP to talk about the brilliant TV adverts that first brought it to my attention.
While Lunar New Year celebrations continue (I'm enjoying all the fireworks over my neighbourhood at night), you might fancy joining in by playing Tet. This lovely little free indie game has you zooming through minigames to prepare a dinner for a Vietnamese Lunar New Year party before all your guests arrive. Chop this, fry those, and don't forget to wash your hands! Designed and hand-drawn by Swiss-Vietnamese illustrator Charlotte Broccard, it's a lovely five minutes of fun.
The Prison Architect devs' next management sim The Last Starship is heading out of alpha and into early access on Steam this spring, RPS can exclusively reveal, and there will be a public demo going live later this week on January 26th. If you’ve ever fancied yourself as the Captain Kirk or Commander Adama type, then you’ll have a chance to construct and run your own spacecraft, and choose what missions you take on in this spaceship management game. Watch the latest trailer for The Last Starship below to get an idea of what spacey shenanigans await.
Modern Warfare 2’s multiplayer sees a return for the fast-paced Hardcore mode from previous Call Of Duty games when Season 02 arrives on February 15th. Over the weekend, devs Infinity Ward tweeted about Hardcore mode’s imminent comeback in the forthcoming update. Hardcore mode chucks out the game’s HUD, turns on friendly fire, and reduces health to make matches quicker and a little more unpredictable. There'll also be some changes to Warzone 2’s DMZ, such as new missions and difficulty tuning.
