Saturdays are for actually remembering that it's a Bank Holiday weekend, rather than forgetting and coming in on Monday and getting viciously annoyed with Julian and Mark for seeming to ignore your Gchat messages. (They do that anyway, regardless of whether it's a day off.)
Nvidia's DLSS 5 neural rendering tech, AKA the AI filter which was widely criticised upon reveal earlier this year for creepily yassifying a bunch of game characters' faces, is reportedly up and running prior to its planned release later this year. The folks to thank or blame for this are modders, who've found the files needed to get the tech's neural rendering working in Control.
Being a pope is a stressful job. That's true today, but imagine heading up the Roman Catholic Church in the 11th century. Back then, the leader of the Catholic Church didn't have access to a bubble car or a social media team. The good news is, when Crusader Kings 3's next expansion, By God Alone, launches at the end of September, I know how to help my pope relax after a long day: polyamory.
It's finally here! The preview for that extended look at a crime sim currently without a PC release date! GTA 6, or in the immortal words of Jack Nance, "Grand Theft Auto" [6]. After a long drought of anything actual concrete, we've now been flooded with details, like how it's up to you as to whether protagonists Lucia and Jason stay together or not. But as it turns out, there's some changes coming to the series' namesake: stealing cars.
What's that coming through the hiss and crackle of static? It's a transmission from the Gamescom zone, where a trio of RPS survivalists are fighting to stay alive amid all manner of hazards. You don't want to know the things they've told us about the loos. One of them, James, has ended up hunkered down in the same room as Stalker 2 devs GSC Game World and had the chance to ask them what's in store for the game now its 2.0 update and Cost of Hope expansion are out. The answer is a "different" second DLC and a free multiplayer mode the studio insist won't just recycle mechanics seen elsewhere.
As revealed earlier this week alongside a look at next year's Songs of the Past expansion, The Witcher 3 is getting a free remastered update next month. As with 2022's next-gen update, some of its tweaks and additions are the work of modders, with the creator of The Witcher 3's HD Reworked Project having revealed that they got the call to collaborate with CD Projekt Red again.
If you think the protagonists of Grand Theft Auto 6 look dull as piping hot ditchwater then rejoice, friend, for the game will let you transform these gung-ho sex magnets into weary and despairing zombies, tottering along the shore of Leonida with eyes like sandy latrines and skin like forgotten cheese.
This week, RPS took the downright heroic step of declining to live report on the latest Geoff Keighley trailer bonanza at Gamescom 2026's Opening Night Live. Under the wise guidance of editor-in-chief Julian "Walks Away From Omelas" Benson – and with the honourable exception of Oisin "Looking At Omelas Through A Telescope" Kuhnke, who was on regular evening freelance newswriting duty - we experimented with viewing the showcase as you ordinary humans do, partly because we've recently found that the returns aren't worth the effort of staying at our desks. Some of us may have even streamed the showcase in bed! Like wild beasts!
Heroes of Might & Magic is having a moment. Not only are publishers Hooded Horse and Ubisoft backing the development of Unfrozen's Heroes of Might & Magic: Olden Era, the first new game in the series in more than a decade, but Ubisoft have revealed they're completely remaking the series' best-regarded entry: Heroes of Might & Magic 3.
While there are many quality of life improvements in the remake, Ubisoft aims to keep its spirit as close to the original as possible. There is a new three-mission prelude to get you into the story and teach you the game's systems but, after that, you're into the thick of the original campaign and its two expansions – Armageddon's Blade and The Shadow of Death. This also means you'll have all nine factions to play with.
I've played the remake for a few hours already and I'll get into my thoughts on that in a moment. But, the most telling thing about the remake is that it supports all the custom maps and campaigns players have made for the past 25 years. Ubisoft showed how you can import any original map file into Might & Magic 3 Remake's map creator and it will build a modern-looking level from the old data. It's a wonderful way to support the Heroes of Might & Magic 3 players who are still playing decades on from its release.
Since I’m apparently now RPS’ Radioactive Eastern Europe correspondent, I recently spent a couple of hours in Metro 2039, the gloom ‘n’ grit FPS sequel that Ukrainian developers 4A Games have explicitly styled as a return to the series’ roots. From what I’ve played, it is in fact as much of a hybrid as the mutated shrimp-insects that lurk in its Moscow sewers, reviving the claustrophobic tunnel dwelling of Metros 2033 and Last Light while keeping a few favoured twists from the more freely-roamable Metro Exodus.
Hey kid, you want a free remaster? It's totally not a scam! No, really. While everyone knew The Witcher 3's sort of surprise new expansion Songs of the Past would be getting a look-in at Geoff: German Edition, CD Projekt Red had another surprise up their sleeve in the form of a full-on remaster of The Witcher 3, which is coming as a free update next month.
Today, August 25th, Nvidia have released Ray Reconstruction for DLSS 4.5, with the aim of more swankily rendering ray-traced/path-traced shadows and lighting than was possible with previous Ray Reconstruction versions.
Alongside releasing Ray Reconstruction for DLSS 4.5, Nvidia have announced that their ACE tech best known for powering PUBG: Battlegrounds' generative AI team mates will be coming to another game early next year. Said game is Aniimo, a creature-catching open-world RPG from Chinese devs Pawprint Studio, which looks to be following the legally distict Pokemon-like formula established by the likes of Palworld. With help from the Nvidia tech, it'll also let players chat with their creatures.
Last week, Rockstar Games' parent company Take-Two were filed subpoenas asking for info from Microsoft and Discord to help uncover the identity of the hacker or hackers behind the ongoing GTA 6 leaks. With clips of the game continuing to hit the net and the potential threat of story spoilers starting to drop soon, it was an understandable request for the company to have made, even if questions could be raised about the amount of data it might give them access to.
One of the two companies subpoenaed, Discord, have now said that as of last night they've yet to be served with any subpoena from Take-Two, and that if/when they are, they'll not comply without first considering the ramifications of doing so.
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.
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.
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".
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.
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).
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.
