Category: Rock, Paper, Shotgun

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I’m still strapped to a rolling office chair with a ticking timer in a huge scary building

Beware minor spoilers for Chairbound in this piece. I think they’re minor. I have no idea what’s truly significant in this dreary purgatory of flourescent lights and rippled glass facades. Only one thing seems guaranteed: I have to get out of here in 10 minutes or I’m doomed.

I met the weird little girl again. She was loitering in the shadow of a pillar on the eighth floor. I found her goblin-esque during our first meeting, but up close she seems relatively ordinary, a pale 10-year-old in a nightie with shoulder-length hair. At least, until she burbles distorted sounds at me and runs away into the darkness. I gather she is looking for her “toy”. I don’t think it’s the rubber duck I’m holding.

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After three deafening hours of its multiplayer, Battlefield 6 sure looks like a Battlefield game

Battlefield 6 releases on October 10th with the unenviable task of being both a quality combined arms FPS, and a successful apology letter to those burned by the series’ previous missteps. To try out its multiplayer ahead of yesterday’s big reveal event, I had to pass through two separate metal detectors at the venue’s doors, which I can only assume were there to prevent infiltration by disgruntled Battlefield 2042 players armed with tins of orange paint.

Still, try it out I did, with most signs pointing towards BF6 being genuine about its promised return to Battlefield staples. The classic four classes instead of specialists. Destruction that has a point beyond spectacle. And most importantly, large-scale multivehicular warfare that isn’t nearly as organised and cinematic as the choreographed trailer.

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In praise of one-job RPGs, the greatest antidote to FOMO

We have all known the profound sorrow of getting two hours into an RPG and deciding that actually, Mum, I don’t want to be an elven druid anymore. Being an elven druid sucks ass. There’s barely any plantlife in the opening dungeon, so half my support skills are useless, and the only animal companion I’m qualified to conjure right now is a cranky squirrel. I’d much rather be a rogue. Look at all these elevated paths and pickable locks hereabouts! Look at all these shadows I could be skulking in, these precarious chandeliers directly opposite crawlspaces with rusty grills! Ugh, if only I weren’t a stupid diluted floral wizard!

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I was a fool for skipping Widelands, the only game as good as The Settlers

Between fifty game releases a day, and among them official successors and open source remakes, most 90s games your grandma bangs on about have some modern equivalent that somewhat fills the gap.

But not The Settlers. There hasn’t been a Settlers game since 1996. Whether they were good or not, its many sequels, as early as 3, started missing the point of the design. It’s the roads, man. The roads!

This isn’t about iconography for its own sake. It’s a design thing, an ethos. The heart of The Settlers was that your towns lived or died based largely on how well you designed your transport logistics. It was all about the roads. It doesn’t even fit into a genre really, let alone the lopsided RTS the sequels collapsed into. It sounds like a typical town builder, especially today when there’s a wealth of games about placing a woodcutter and a farm, but I’m tempted to say it’s not even about gathering resources.

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Praise the Kiryu, Steam’s latest Client Beta update will finally let you sort Like A Dragons and Yakuza into the right order

Right, so. It’s supposed to go as follows: Yakuza 0, Yakuza Kiwami, Yakuza Kiwami 2, Yakuza 3 Remastered, Yakuza 4 Remastered, Yakuza 5 Remastered, Yakuza 6: The Song Of Life, Yakuza: Like A Dragon, then off into full-blown Like A Dragon land, and on to Like A Dragon: Pirate Yakuza. Easy. Except right now in my Steam library, it’s not. The Kiwamis are cheekily lurking behind Yakuza 6, and the LADs are before all of their more Japanese gangsterly-named siblings.

It’s chaos and anarchy. I can’t live like this. The good news is that thanks to the update Steam’s Client Beta has just gotten, it looks like I’ll no longer have to.

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Battlefield 6’s full multiplayer reveal sees EA trying to rebottle the lightning of Battlefield 3 and 4

EA have given us our first proper look at Battlefield 6‘s multiplayer, after revealing the game with a single player trailer last week. They’ve also confirmed the new shooter‘s release date – 10th October 2025 – and announced dates for a series of beta weekends in August.

The game they’re pitching is a return to the contemporary warring of Battlefield 3 and Battlefield 4, after the mildly futuristic disappointments of Battlefield 2042. It’s got four familiar classes, the old Battlefield mode trinity of conquest, breakthrough and rush, and maps that incline towards close quarters combat or wide-open vehicular blasting or some blasphemous hybrid of the twain. It seems fine. And loud.

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Baldur’s Gate 3 hotfix takes care of Dark Urge spoilers, and politely hangs up your gang’s buggy video calls

If you’ve ever fired up Baldur’s Gate 3 and wondering why the likes of Shadowheart or Lae’zel’s portrait shows them glaring at you like they’ve been summoned into some kind of video call, I bring good news. Larian’s rectified this and one other infamous issue as part of the game’s latest hotfix.

Don’t get too excited, though. The devs are so keen to make sure no one gets their hopes up for any more major additions to the RPG now that its final patch is out of the way that they’ve dubbed this a “room temperature fix”.

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