Category: Rock, Paper, Shotgun

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Hollow Knight: Silksong is faster, prettier, and harder, yet still feels like a safe sequel

I woke up far too early this morning, to stand in a queue for far too long, all to play fan-vexing (and newly release-dated) soulsvania Hollow Knight: Silksong on the Gamescom show floor. No pre-release review codes? Pah – I couldn’t even get a demo appointment at the most demo appointment-centric games event of the year. How’s that for rejection.

Anyway, Team Cherry might just not be that into me, but I might well be into Silksong. It’s a little quicker, a little more dynamic, and to these fingers, a little more difficult than the first Hollow Knight. But it entirely preserves that tight-as-a-drum feel of the original’s sword swishing, and deploys it against insectoid baddies that challenge and frustrate in practically identical ways.

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There’s a new Platinum game hidden in the Metal Gear Solid 3 remake that’s actually a remake of a rework of a Zone of the Enders 3 prototype

Did you know that the original Metal Gear Solid 3 on PS2 had a reworked Zone of the Enders 3 prototype hidden in it? I didn’t. The secret minigame in question is “Guy Savage”, a barebones hack-and-slasher featuring hook swords, bestial transformations and zombie coppers. It’s framed as a dream of Naked Snake’s – triggered by a combination of torture and an unhelpful reference to Dracula from radio contact Para-Medic during a codec conversation before saving.

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Shovel Game combines Minecraft, Mozart and hell

I did not expect to meet Mozart in Shovel Game, nor did I expect him to ask me to mine a pyramid of shit, with the helpful advice that I start at the top to avoid any floating shitbricks. Mozart is probably the least interesting thing about Shovel Game, actually.

It’s a shortform first-person oddity with Minecraft-style destructible voxels (yes I know Minecraft doesn’t really use voxels) and a touch of AHL_5am. The idea is to tunnel through “a sequence of strange and unfamiliar spaces”. Here’s a trailer.

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Silksong will get DLC and “some of the plans for that stuff are kind of ambitious as well”

Hollow Knight: Silksong began life as a DLC expansion, but then developers Team Cherry decided the concept was “too large and too unique“, and upgraded it into a full game. They spent six years working on the thing in almost total silence, while fulminating legions of the terminally online quietly drove themselves bonkers hunting for release date clues. We now have a Silksong release date – it’s just two weeks away – so in theory, the nightmare is over. Except, oh dear – Team Cherry are planning post-launch content for Silksong, and they’re already calling it “ambitious”.

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The first hours of Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 uncloak a slick action game, but a limited RPG

I feel for Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2. If it was named something like Fang Bastard: The Punching Of The Many, the trailers wouldn’t have so many views, but those who’d watched them would probably be quite jazzed for that new bitey-talky game that looks a bit like Dishonored with more story branching. It isn’t, and they aren’t. Instead, it’s called Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2, a name packed with some of the weightiest words in RPGdom.

I don’t pity it, though. Three hours and change into Bloodlines 2, I’ve determined that I’d quite enjoy a Dishonored with more story branching, actually. Not as much as if I could express my roleplaying chops outside of very specific dialogue menus, or if I cared more about the fellow nightcrawlers on the other side of those conversations. But for all the tricky development and heavy heritage, I’d be lying if I said I haven’t enjoyed being The Chinese Room’s version of a souped-up vampire prowling a snowy, bisexual-lit Seattle.

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