Crimson Desert is, by many accounts, a video game. A not necessarily good one, a perhaps just ok to occasionally baffling video game that appears to be big for the sake of winning a pissing contest. It is also potentially a video game that is not being entirely honest about certain art assets being human-made or not.
I'm going to say it: bullet hells are more stressful than Souls-likes. Why are there 10,000 orbs approaching me, promising me misery and death! And I have to both tactfully dodge them while also staging a front myself? The visual information alone is enough to deteriorate the mind, memorising a list of attack patterns from some big dude with a sword seems like chump change by comparison. So this leaves me quite sweet on DeeSicks, a roguelike take on the game with physics-based dice rolling where god has died and you become your own boss.
Slay the Spire 2 is, quite notably, a game in early access. This means many things, but most importantly it means that any changes that are made aren't necessarily final, they're just more tests to see what does and doesn't work. The roguelike deckbuilder's first proper update went live yesterday, adding in a phobia mode with some bespoke assets and making a whole bunch of tweaks. It's that second part that has riled up the feathers of some spire slayers (just have a brief trawl of recent reviews), prompting developer Mega Crit to take a moment to explain just how they go about their "patching methodology."
I truly hope the sun has got his hat on this weekend as I'm cycling out to family in the countryside and I'd rather not arrive soaked through by rain. Granted, I will be arriving soaked through with sweat, but I am happy with this outcome. For reasons I can't quite fathom, self-wetted clothes are bearable, weather-wetted clothes are intolerable.
Pearl Abyss have released the first proper update for their grand and obfuscatory open world RPG Crimson Desert, introducing a slew of tweaks for the game's many, many systems. The developers have added new finishing blows or follow-up attacks and skills for certain moves, and a new tutorial quest for a particular section in chapter 3, but the most important changes, I think, are the bug fixes and general attempts to make Crimson Desert less "like a product exploding at the waist with far too much stuff and an irritating tendency to avoid communicating anything to the player", as one critic put it. In particular, you may be relieved to hear that bosses can no longer beat you up while you're reviving.
Well, you all did it, Cryo Archive has been unlocked in Marathon. Bungie detailed the new mode in a blog post earlier today, where it shared an important thing to keep in mind with the new map: it's only available to attempt on weekends. Aye, you'll need to forgo any social plans you have out in the real world to tackle this one.
Tomb Raider developers Crystal Dynamics have announced their fourth round of layoffs in 12 months. A total of 20 staff across development and central operations roles have been let go this time, with Crystal Dynamics emphasising they're still "fully committed" to Tomb Raider: Catalyst and Tomb Raider: Legacy Of Atlantis.
In March last year, 17 Crystal Dynamics staffers were given their marching orders, with an unspecified number of others being let go in August, and "just under 30" following in November.
Bang. 29 bullets left. Bang, bang, bang, rattatata. 14 bullets left. I'd better reload, in case someone comes around that corner and I need a full clip on hand to empty into then. NO. THINK ABOUT THE BULLETS YOU'RE USING, Valve yell from their giant Steam-powered tower looming high above the battlefield. I look at my magazine and notice that following the latest Counter-Strike 2 update, it now bears a post-it note saying that if I reload early, the leftover ammo will be lost to the mists of time.
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Reviews of Crimson Desert, the new open world fantasy RPG from Black Desert Online studio Pearl Abyss, are surfacing across the internet as you read these words. Out on 19th March, it's the story of Kliff McDuff of the Greymanes, who is trying to rally his scattered comrades following a vicious attack by their rivals, the Black Bears. It's one of those Much-Anticipated games, possibly because it appears to have inhaled the entire third-person action genre, with mechanics that range from sorcerous air-hopping through momentum-based damage to Dynasty Warriors-style crowd control. Predictably, this glut of ideas can feel a smidge… inelegant and unwieldy.
As you're probably aware, Nvidia unveiled DLSS 5 earlier this week, showing off the tech via a slideshow of game characters' face being transformed by its neural rendering into the sort of unnervingly yassified visages you get in dodgy internet ads nowadays. Naturally, the overwhelming response from players the company and its partners had seemingly assumed would be wowed by the tech has landed on a scale capped by annoyed sighs and middle fingers.
It's ok, though. Nvidia boss Jensen Huang has now said those whose socks haven't been blown off are just "completely wrong" about what DLSS 5 is.
Welp, it's only been a day since we got wind that a judge has ordered Krafton to reinstate the former leads of Subnautica 2 developer Unknown Worlds into the same positions, but here we are with the news that the deep sea exploration survival game now has an early access release month.
Update: Arrowhead have just shared a graphic outlining what's coming in the next couple of months of Helldivers 2 updates. April's Terminid-themed update 6.2 will deliver two new biomes, fresh galactic war campaigns, and a new enemy variant. May's update 6.3, meanwhile, will come with a single new biome and its own fresh galactic war twists. Both months'll also boast the usual warbond and bug fixing patches.
Arrowhead have opted against sharing too much in terms of what the future holds in Helldivers 2 so far, ostensibly to avoid galactic war spoilers, but it looks like this sort of roadmap - which is deliberately short on specific details - will be commonplace going forwards.
RAMnarök, the ongoing memory shortage which keeps fuelling price hikes and has had us watching whether Steam Decks are out of stock like hawks, continues to cause headaches. MSI are reportedly planning to hike up the prices of their hardware by 15 to 30% as a result of the shortages.
Marathon's set to see how well it can cater to folks who only have one friend, with Bungie having announced plans to add an experimental duos mode to the extraction shooter. It'll stick around for two weeks or so, be "a bit jank", and hopefully give the studio a firm idea of whether they should put resources into developing a fully fleshed-out version of paired play going forwards.
Last week our resident novelty-guzzling elder god the Maw ate me, as Julian sorrowfully reported. Well, I'm back in the waking world, and not as smelly as I could be, all things considered. I've been eaten by the Maw a few times now, but this is the first time I've managed to escape via one of its mouths, rather than by way of… other orifices.
"ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED," I bellow, straightening heroically with my shoulders braced against the cyclopean gums, as chunks of rancid Call Of Duty DLC sluice between my ankles. "MY OTHER CAR'S A MOTHRA", I roar, as the other RPS staff hastily gather with a jump net. "HERE ARE SOME NEW PC GAMES," I add, throwing myself into the waiting arms of my brethren.
Warner Bros. Games Montréal, developers of Gotham Knights, look to have laid off an unspecified number of staff late last week. At least three former workers at the studio took to LinkedIn on Friday to post about their departures, with one explicitly mentioning that they'd been cut as part of a round of layoffs.
A chunky Fallout: New Vegas expansion mod which sees the courier set off east to the post-apocalyptic Illinois has released its first demo. No prizes for guessing where this mod - Fallout Chicago - is set. Though, you might want to brush up on your knowledge of Fallout Tactics' lore before you dive in.
The team behind Skyblivion, the massive mod remake of Oblivion in Skyrim's engine, have shown off a few late-stage Mages Guild quests in the project's first proper showcase livestream since its release was delayed to 2026 late last year. According to project lead Kyle 'Rebelzize' Rebel, Skyblivion's currently "in a great place" and its team are still aiming to release it "as soon as possible".
If you missed it, last year's Skyblivion delay followed an ex- level and world designer on the project alleging that the mod's previous 2025 release goal was "unachievable", in a post which also accused Rebel and Skyblivion implementation lead Heavy Burns of mismanaging communication within the mod's team. In response, Heavy Burns asserted that "many" of the claims in the ex-dev's post were "either misrepresented or just untrue".
Sundays are for lying in bed and thinking of ways to interfere with your downstairs neighbour's space as much as their loud music interferes with yours. Crucially the method cannot be one that can be immediately turned around and used back against you. Perhaps taking up the aim of walking up and down the creaking stairs 100 times a day or investing in a door bell with a very loud and long tune.
The biggest stain on Arc Raiders is easily the use of AI voice acting. It stinks! There's no soul to it, and it deprives actors from being able to perform their craft. But, based on some comments from CEO Patrick Söderlund, it sounds like Embark are finally starting to realise that, oh yeah, it is actually better to work with a real human being (though this doesn't mean they're not using AI any more).
"Popular game, but you do this instead," is a tale as old as time, birthing efforts that range from rote to deliciously fresh. Making comparisons like that is always a gamble, as you're immediately pointing towards the gold standard that your game has to at least be almost on par with, perhaps even better, to make any real headway. And while I haven't played Eye of the Match, it being billed as Papers, Please, but you're a virtual referee for football matches is certainly a pitch I can get behind.
You know, I wish there were more morally dubious protagonists in the world of video games. I know why there's not, many people want to identify with the characters they're embodying. But then I think about every other storytelling medium out there and how some of my favourite pieces feature people that aren't supposedly good or heroic, and long for the same in games. So, I'm quite interested in WITCHHUNTER.exe, a throwback text adventure game that actually has quite a lot of pretty pixel art where you play as a priest that must uncover witches in a rural town while the Devil tempts you astray.
Marathon has entered its second week of existence, even if it somehow feels like it's already been around forever (perhaps that's the discourse I'm remembering now that I think about it), and Bungie have been ticking away at updates bit by bit. Just this week an update was introduced that made UESC enemies a tad weaker, and now Bungie have outlined what you can expect from update 1.0.5 which is coming to the shooter next week.
Broadly speaking accessibility features still have a long way to go in most games, however, one that has been cropping up more and more are phobia-sensitive options. It cannot be understated how many don't like spiders! So the increase in such features is welcome as someone who perhaps doesn't have a phobia but would still like the option to not look at the eight-legged devils. And according to March's Slay the Spire 2 newsletter, sorry, neowsletter, a phobia accessibility mode is on the way.
Saturday. We meet again. I see you've brought your old friends Blustery Wind and Chill In The Air with you. I expected better of you, you know those two just bring you down. You've so much potential. What don't you hang out with T-Shirt Weather and Gosh, That's Bright anymore? They've got their personified heads screwed on right.
No? We're stuck with this chilly winter for one more weekend? Fine, I didn't want to go outside anyway. I'm happy to stay in and play videogames.
AP Thomson, developer of surreal strategy game Titanium Court, has expressed solidarity with those affected by the litany of "cruel and unnecessary" practices currently being employed by the Trump-led US government. Taking to the stage to give an acceptance speech after Titanium Court was awarded the Independent Game Festival (IGF)'s Seumas McNally Grand Prize for the Best Independent Game, Thomson shared a message that ended in hope future awards shows will be able to see everyone come together "safe and thriving".
The devs behind Moonlighter are already back with something new. While they're still tinkering away with the early access release of Moonlighter 2, at the Future Games Show Spring Showcase they revealed another roguelike entirely: ReVamp, a tower defence spin on the genre that pits you as Dracula himself protecting his castle.
Video games are such funny things, because I think if you were to tell someone unfamiliar with them that there is genuine enjoyment to be had in pushing some blocks around in a virtual space they'd look at you as if you'd told them there's genuine enjoyment to be hand in pushing some blocks around in a virtual space. And yet it's true! It's one of the classic puzzle game genres, going way back to 1982 with Sokoban. And here we are now, many years later, with a new entry to the genre in the form of Hazard Pay, a dystopian take that sees you cleaning up mysterious messes in secret labs.
The folks behind PEGI - the age rating system used for games in Europe outside of Germany - have announced plans to update their criteria so that games which feature likes of loot boxes, harbour NFTs or blockchain-related bollocks, or pressurise players into returning via daily quests will automatically be given specific age reccomendations to match.
Former Overwatch director Jeff Kaplan has said his 2021 departure from Blizzard followed an ultimatum about redundancies which "ultimately broke" his resolve and led him towards the exit door. The developer frames that moment as the culmination of a number of tough years working on the hero shooter, which included a 2018 push into esports with the Overwatch League serving as a drain on resources for a team who were also trying to get Overwatch 2 off the ground.
Microsoft have shared some more details about the hardware Xbox's next-gen console - the PC game-running Project Helix - will be packing. The new box is set to run on AMD-built tech with support for FSR upscaling, and should start to rock up on developers' desks as of 2027. That last bit means it'll likely release in 2028 at the very earliest.
In an unusual show of candour, Valve have spoken out publicly against a lawsuit filed in New York, USA that accuses them of "letting children and adults alike illegally gamble" via loot boxes in Counter-Strike 2, Dota 2, and Team Fortress 2.
With the caveat that I am no Atticus Finch-esque legal expert or even a Louis Tully-grade bumbler, I find Valve's rebuttal to be a mixture of whataboutery and tactical mitigation, with a couple of fair points. It basically sidesteps what I think is the lawsuit's most important argument – that lootbox mechanics are fundamentally manipulative. You can read the thing in full here, or you can read my slapdash summary-with-notes, below.
Intel have announced a handful of new gaming CPUs, the Core Ultra 200S Plus series, to release next month. After 2024’s original Core Ultra 200S family went for efficiency gains at the cost of frame-punching game power, these 200S Plus chips are once again tuned more for straight performance, which sounds good to me. I like lower electricity bills and heat generation as much as the next hardware editor, and was fairly optimistic about that initial batch of Core Ultras at first, but they ended up so slow and dull it essentially put me off writing about CPUs for a year and a half.
Say hello, then, to the Core Ultra 7 270K Plus and Core Ultra 250K Plus, which’ll be out on March 26th 2026 at $299 and $199 respectively. There’ll also be slightly cheaper KF variants, without integrated graphics, for each. Intel VP Robert Hallock says these will be the "fastest desktop gaming processors Intel has ever built," which they’ll need to be – while the blue team have been fiddling with efficiency, AMD’s 3D V-Cache tech has ran away with the gaming advantage, especially on the outstandingly quick Ryzen 7 9800X3D.
Never's End is the new strategy RPG from a former Destiny developer in which you lead a party of possessed villagers against a ravening (yet cuddly) tide of undead. At a glance, it's an elegantly muted Final Fantasy Tactics, with doll-sized characters on a spinnable grid-based map. In the hands, it's surprisingly reminiscent of Larian's Divinity: Original Sin games, with a nerdy application of thermodynamics that lets you transform each map into a vortex of mist, flame and increasingly naked skeletons.
It's no secret that those shadowy guys with all the money to fund games generally don't have much interest in narrative heavy, singleplayer games. And yet even still, games like Dispatch continue to do very well for themselves. Even still, for developer AdHoc Studio, the funding process doesn't sound like it was an easy one, but in their self-admitted "arrogance and stupidity," they went on to make it anyway.
I tend to take my videogame dwarves spacefaring, but there’s something inviting about the more classical, beards-and-barrel-chested adventuring being offered by Regions of Ruin: Runegate.
An expanded and prettified sequel to 2020’s Regions of Ruin, which I also knew nothing about until this morning, Runegate casts you as a lone dwarf charged with travelling the treacherous (but attractively pixel-arty) wilds to bring about the rejuvenation of your peoples' ruined subterranean home. Here’s the new release date trailer; not to spoil the ending, but it’s out on April 14th 2026.
Resident Evil Requiem is getting a story expansion and a new minigame, together with the already-promised photo mode, Capcom have announced. What the expansion and minigame involve remains unclear, but there is just the dimmest possibility that we'll finally be able to play the official Leon Kennedy Meet 'n' F*ck game of our wildest dreams.
Tis the season for taking Steam to court, apparently. A new class action lawsuit has been filed in Washington, USA accusing Valve of running an unlawful gambling operation through lootbox mechanics in Counter-Strike 2, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Dota 2, and Team Fortress 2.
"Jurassic parkour!" I bellowed to myself in pure delight, when first I read the trailer blurb for Terrible Lizards, announced yesterday. I can only applaud the immense willpower required to not make that the game's actual title. In this new first-person horror platformer from WDR Studios LLC, your car has broken down somewhere in the deserts of New Mexico.
It's 1992, so you can't just Whatsapp your mate who works at the garage to ask which cacti fluids make good engine oil. Instead, you must venture into a nearby abandoned roadside museum, Dalton's Dinos, which is full of gorgeous animatronic brontosaurs and suchlike. Oh, yeah - 'oooh, ahhh', that's how it always starts. Then later there's running and screaming.
Sadly, I must report that Edwin has once again been eaten by the Maw. I want to say it was through some devious ruse but, reader, it was not. As Edwin worked the gaps between the Maw's canines with the 8-foot toothpick, one of the Maw's smaller tentacles slipped behind our news editor and tapped him on the shoulder. Edwin turned his head. It was only for a moment, but it was all that was needed to gobble him up.
Not to worry, Edwin will surely have worked his way out of one of the Maw's orifices (orifici?) and be back on duty shortly.
In his stead, let me provide this week's delivery of games.
Slay The Spire 2 launched into early access last week to the tune of over half a million Steam concurrents, which isn't too shabby for a game with placeholder art that looks like it was knocked up in MS Paint. I played a couple runs of the roguelike deckbuilder this weekend, and experienced such positive emotions as Wait, Doesn't This Basically Break The Game? Delightfully Devilish, Seymour and Oh, I Forgot I Had That Potion.
I wouldn't say I'm bowled over, mind. The original Slay The Spire precipitated a Cambrian explosion of roguelite or roguelike deckbuilders. The sequel has to stand apart from both its predecessor and from all the games Spire has in-Spired, like Monster Train. While not without precedent, the co-op functionality could be its silver bullet. So it's just as well that the game's first round of patches are targetting problems with multiplayer.
Marvel Rivals developers NetEase have introduced new systems for detecting thrown matches. This follows a bizarre wave of people getting bribed to take a fall, instigated by a third-party website who are now advertising themselves as some kind of community advocacy initiative.
Sundays are for celebrating the 800th-est ever Sunday Papers. Happy big 8-0-0, Sunday Papers. Here are four fun facts about the number 800, followed by some quality writing from the past week.
To be cringe is to be free. I stand by this saying! The moment you unshackle yourself from the notion that something is embarrassing simply for existing, you will have a much easier time enjoying things. However. I do think I will be a bit embarrassed telling you about Rizz Dungeon: Skeleton Key to My Heart, a dungeon crawler where you are a useless failgirl who flirts with and subsequently recruits monster girls to do all her battles, because oh my gods why would you call a game Rizz Dungeon.
It's looking pretty likely that Gang of Dragon, the debut game from Yakuza/Like a Dragon creator Toshihiro Nagoshi's studio, won't be coming out at all. According to a report from Bloomberg, Nagoshi Studio employees were told by NetEase Inc. Friday, March 6th, that it would be pulling funding for the game from this coming May.
At the center of the labyrinth is a minotaur. He is bound with muscle. He is fearsome. He is… snoring. Asterion, bored with how long I am taking to place my traps, has gone to sleep. This is despite warriors armed with swords and bows lining up at the gates leading into the maze, itching for their chance to battle the bull-headed, human-bodied creature.
Still, even though he is in mortal danger, I, Daedalus, the labyrinth's designer, am happy for him to sleep. If I do my job in roguelite tower defense game Minos right, my minotaur won't have to lift a finger to defend himself.
Marathon is set in a cyberpunk future in which the air is thick with data and information. You play a runner, a human that's given up their body to become a being of bits and bytes whose consciousness can be transferred into whatever artificial shell they choose. We can't begin to perceive life in that world. A world where to see the data as it flew through the air it would be an onslaught to the senses, overwhelming and impossible to make sense of.
Scatch that. The experience of a tsunami of stimuli is easy to recreate: you simply need to try and follow Marathon's tutorial popups and story cinematics while also on a Discord server with your friends.
Oi, you! Yes, you, the sun. There's no hiding. I saw you creeping up over the hill at 6am and staying there for nearly a whole 12 hours yesterday. Stop looking sheepish, you're not in trouble. Why, in fact, I think I might spend this weekend outside and enjoy your almost springly warmth.
Whiskerwood has made it undeniable: I have the opposite of a speedrunning problem. Give me a stretch of land, a supply of loyal builders, and a free hand to go nuts building some impressive metropolis, and I will, within mere dozens of hours, produce a small, haphazard hamlet reluctantly beginning to flirt with ironmaking. Rome was not built in a day. If I'd had my way, it still wouldn't be.
Whiskerwood, to my pleasant surprise, does not hold this against me. It's most obviously reminiscent of Timberborn, and its premise recalls Colonization, of all things, as your "Whiskers" build a colony for the "Claws", who are largely absentee (there are no cats in America) but extract a regular toll of goods as taxation. You'd assume they quickly ramp up the pressure and force the issue because games are Like That. The real pressure, though, is a much more interesting model of colonialism, and how even absent of political context, that kind of economic arrangement can constrain and shape a town.
The entanglement of war with simulation continues with the discovery that a video of a US battleship shooting down an Iranian fighter jet is very likely a clip from videogame War Thunder, depicting ordnance from the World War 2 era. The clip in question has circulated on social media to the tune of millions of views. It has also been shared around by at least one sitting US Republican statesman, Texas governor Greg Abbott, who reposted it with the caption "Bye bye". The tweet in question has since been deleted.
