Category: Rock, Paper, Shotgun

It’s been a long time since the last major Manor Lords update and it’ll likely be a while till the next. This might strike you as dismal news, if you adhere to the “death by a thousand patches” school of Steam early access, but you have to remember that Manor Lords is a city builder set in late 14th-century Franconia, when technology lolled along at the pace of a dying ox. Also, the developers Slavic Magic are carrying out a “full rework” of the game, rather than dolling things out in smaller patches. In particular, there’s a new building affinity system in development that may please fans of pollination. Any flowers reading this? The next update is for you, I guess.

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The Perfect Dark reboot looked like an excellent addition to the immersive sim genre. Based on Microsoft’s previous shuttering of Arkane Austin, I can only assume that this made Phil Spencer very angry. “Why can I lift massive crates but only fit one rifle in my inventory!”, roared Spencer. Subsequently, both the reboot and studio The Initiative were axed this week by Microsoft as part of their ongoing efforts to ensure their legacy going forward is one of destroying livelihoods, participating in what a UN rapporteur describes as an “economy of genocide”, and forcing Copilot inside that little plastic bit at the end of your shoelaces.

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Three former higher-ups at Ubisoft have been found guilty of sexually and psychologically harassing the women who worked for them at the company’s Paris studio. A French court handed out suspended sentences to the three executives, as well as fines, the highest of which was €45,000. It’s the final ruling in a sordid trial that has seen the men accused of forcefully trying to kiss female employees, ordering them to do handstands in skirts, and angrily throwing equipment across the office.

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Hey, deez two. Sorry, Hades 2 has just gotten a fresh patch following on from its beefy Unseen update last month. The big news? Supergiant say this latest batch of tweaks “will likely be our final patch before our v1.0 launch”.

Damn, maybe it’s time for me to dive back in and get some extra practice taking down those pesky sirens that try to smite you mid-gig like they’re aquatic Van Halen. Ok, maybe I actually mean fire the game back up to stare at Narcissus. Sue me.

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Edwin gave Ostrich Farm header honours in this week’s Maw, and with good reason I think. “Breed vibrant ostriches”, he wrote. I misread it as “breed violent ostriches” and got excited. I still liked the concept even after realising my mistake. I pinned the Steam page tab (aka “The Coward’s Wishlist”), and forgot about it for a couple of days.

This morning, I clicked on the tab again while browser tidying. “I wonder how Steam likes the ostrich game?”, I mused. One review. A single, negative review. “The performance tanked for me once I had around 70 ostriches and made the game totally unplayable”.

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As you’ll know if you’ve been around RPS for a while, we love the Steam Deck. Valve’s system blends the library and options of a PC with the portability and ease of use of a console, and a big part of that is Steam OS.

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Microsoft have cancelled their Perfect Dark reboot and closed its development studio The Initiative in the course of this week’s scything sacrifices to their actually rather healthy bottom line. In a statement, head of Xbox Matt Booty also confirmed the cancellation of Rare’s Everwild, alongside “several unannounced projects”.

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The current custodians of the World of Darkness tabletop RPG universe are bang up for doing more video game adaptations like the troubled Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2, according to White Wolf brand marketing manager Jason Carl. In fact, they may be working on a few already, with Carl naming Mage: The Ascension, Changeling: The Dreaming and the Dark Ages setting as deserving of “the Bloodlines treatment”.

People who’ve been keeping up with the vamps and their video game misadventures may find that last phrase a bit rich. For clarity, I assume that by “Bloodlines treatment” Carl means “we’re going to make a big 3D RPG with a lot of lore”. Rather than “we’re going to delay it so often it becomes a running joke, fire the original narrative director, hand it to a different studio with no real track record for RPGs, then tell people it’s more spiritual successor than sequel“.

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As a faction, the strength of Total War: Warhammer 3‘s Bretonnia lies in their knightly calvary. The peasant infantry is basically just there to squishily hold the enemy in place for charges. However, I’m feeling revolutionary today, so we’re staging a serf uprising. Let’s see how long we last. Pretty simple rules here, then. No knights. No horses. Conquer the entirety of Bretonnia. Defeat every horse I see in one-on-one combat.

Indeed, the serfs of Carcassonne had suffered too long under feudalism’s gussied-up protection racket, and the battle fought for their freedom had been long and bloody. Bretonnia’s knightly class were better armed and better trained, their bodies nourished and strong. The bones of the common folk creaked from years of tireless field work. Their frames were frail from a diet of nettles, bruised turnips, and a wide selection of delectable artisanal French pastries which they all refused to eat, French being the language of their oppressors.

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Y’know what, I think we’ve lived long enough in the post-Steam Deck world that it bears weighing up what the current best handheld PCs are. A few years ago this would have just been a vaguely-ranked list of whatever portables were available, but after Valve demonstrated that the palm-resting format could not just work, but actually be good, handhelds have arguably become the most interesting and rapidly-changing thing in all of PC hardware. Even Microsoft are having a go, slapping their branding on the upcoming Asus ROG Xbox Ally – though here, I’m sticking strictly to the finest handhelds that I’ve tested and that you can buy.

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