Category: Rock, Paper, Shotgun

After a decade face-down in a dusty digital gulch with the buzzards fighting the lizards for its gizzards, the Desperados series will return to life next year. Publishers THQ Nordic today announced Desperados III, resuming the real-time tactical action, and excitingly it’s being made by Mimimi. They’re the studio who made 2016’s Desperados/Commandos homage Shadow Tactics: Blades Of The Shotgun, which was great – a fine match. Here, have a look at Desperados III in this preview video from our Matthew.

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Now that Willennials have killed arcade games with our cold, dead hands, Nex Machina developers Housemarque have confirmed that their first steps outside their home genre in 25-odd years are indeed into the valley of battle royale. After cryptically announcing Stormdivers in April, Housemarque have now opened up and started shouting about it. Stormdivers is a third-person multiplayer battle royale ’em up, right, but also has arcade fanciness including invisibility, jetpacks, dash moves, a honking great tornado sucking people up into the sky, and flashy special effects. Wouldn’t be a Housemarque game without particles sparking all over, would it?

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Draculas are notoriously fond of a lie-in, rarely even opening the curtains before dusk, so it’s no surprised that the launch of Bloodstained: Ritual Of The Night is delayed again. The vampiric new metroidvania from Koji Igarashi, who’s best known as assistant director of the seminal Castlevania: Symphony Of The Night, and his gang at ArtPlay is now expected to launch in 2019. Responses from folks who backed its crowdfunding campaign and got to play a recent private beta demo suggest it needed more time, so more time it shall have.

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Good gravy, don’t Nvidia’s Turing RTX 2080 cards look nice, eh? Yes, they’re just a teensy bit hideously expensive, but make no mistake. All three cards announced this evening, from the RTX 2070 right up to the RTX 2080Ti, have all been described to me as 4K, 60fps+ pixel pushers that are almost certainly going to be massive overkill for anyone still playing games at 1920×1080 or 2560×1440.

But enough about the graphics cards – there’s a whole article for you to read about those if you haven’t already. Here, I’m talking games. Specifically, every game confirmed so far that will be benefiting from Nvidia’s oh-so-lovely ray-tracing tech that will hopefully make your RTX 20-series card feel like a worthwhile purchase. Here we go!

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It was a fun ride while it lasted, but Amazon have decided that ad-free streaming on Twitch was a step too far for Twitch Prime. Cheekily announced in a Twitch blog post while everyone was getting excited over Gamescom’s first day, the streaming network say they’re changing the deal on what the Twitch Prime subscription (part of the broader Amazon Prime package) includes. While most current perks will stay, ad-free streams are no longer on the cards as of September 14th, and a 20% discount on physical pre-ordered games at Amazon is being replaced by $10 store credit.

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The Life Is Strange series isn’t known for telling the happiest of stories, but the Gamescom reveal trailer for Dontnod’s sequel Life Is Strange 2 wastes no time in letting you know that this one is going to be a downer. The video below gives us a brief introduction to the young Diaz brothers – Sean and Daniel – and gives us some hints as to why they’re on the road, living rough and apparently trying to stay ahead of the police on a long journey south. Don’t quote me on this, but I’m pretty sure that superpowers are involved.

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The Touhou shared universe is now pouring onto Steam. Spinoffs and fan-games aplenty have popped up recently, but Metroidvania Touhou Luna Nights seems a cut above. Licensed from original Touhou studio Team Shanghai Alice and developed by Team Ladybug (the crew behind that excellent free Shin Megami Tensei Metroidvania and others), it launched into early access today. While the cast of characters are familiar to fans of the series, after trying a bit of it over the weekend, I reckon it’s polished and creative enough to be worth a look for any Metroidvania fan.

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FromSoftware’s next third-person hack n’ slasher – Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice – now has a release date for PC. Due to launch on March 22nd, 2019, Sekiro looks like a blend of some of the long-running Japanese studio’s greatest hits. It’s hard not to see equal inspiration taken from both Bloodborne and the Tenchu series in there, complete with grappling hooks, rooftop navigation and lots of very sharp swords. Plus a few giant monsters, of course – can’t have a proper ninja game without them.

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Windjammers for the Neo Geo was a lovely little thing – a bright and summery frisbee-sport hybrid of tennis, volleyball and a fighting game. While it wasn’t a huge hit in its own time, Dotemu have announced that they’re working on Windjammers 2, likely due a resurgence of interest making Windjammers a recent favourite in the fighting game scene. It’s due out in 2019 and headed to PC.

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Hello, I’m Curt, and I am the editor of a space newspaper. New Eden Report covers events and conflicts from the Icelandic space MMO Eve Online, known for its player-run universe (or the time $300,000 worth of spaceships died). Many non-Eve players may be aware of these large fights, the ones that make it to mainstream gaming media. For instance, the recent rout where hundreds of supercapitals (the largest and most expensive ships in the game) were forced to stay logged off while they were “hellcamped”. But we cover even more than that. Whether it’s roundups of the galaxy’s conflicts, in-depth battle reports, video updates, or interviews with space warlords, we provide news on events that might otherwise fall into obscurity. This isn’t always easy in a secretive meta-game known for its back-stabbing and propaganda.
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