KOTOR Remake feared cancelled after Sony quietly pulls tweets and videos

Worrying signs on the horizon for fans of sci-fi stories told a long time ago in a galaxy far far away. Sony have quietly yanked posts and videos for Embracer’s Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic remake, in what could be the first indication that the publisher have finally cancelled the game, after shuffling developers and delaying release indefinitely last year.

Read more

Teardown is getting Wild West and destruction derby DLC, beginning this November

Delightful destructive heist sim Teardown is getting four paid DLCs, with the first to be released on November 15th. It’s called Time Campers and will transport players back in time with a caravan to tackle new heists with “old-timey tools and architecture” in the Wild West.

It’ll be followed by a second DLC, the destruction derby-focused Folkrace, and two more before the end of 2024.

Read more

Epic lay off 830 people thanks to “unrealistic” metaverse ambitions

Unreal Engine and Fortnite publisher Epic Games are making an absolutely enormous round of job cuts. As announced by founder and CEO Tim Sweeney in an email to staff today, the company will lay off approximately 830 people, totalling “around 16%” of their workforce, in order to achieve “financial sustainability” following a period of heavy investment and lower-than-hoped returns from Fortnite.

Read more

Lords of the Fallen trailer is eight minutes of very appealing hell

With release just a couple of weeks away on 13th October, Lords of the Fallen has a new gameplay overview trailer – a dripping cinematic layer cake of gore and gristle, which introduces you to the game’s god-blighted fantasy world and the many different ways you’ll expire within it, be it having a boss inconsiderately drop a load of golden swords on you, or getting mobbed by spooks in the underworld according to an escalating “dread” level, which is sort of GTA’s old heat system but with more Grim Reapers.

Read more

An ode to Hypnospace Outlaw’s virtual hamster April, and my long-dead Catz and Dogz petz

As a child of the early internet, games like Hypnospace Outlaw can’t help but resonate quite deeply with me. This was the internet as I remembered it, goddamnit, and the fact it mixed in a compelling corporate conspiracy story in between its pages was just the icing on an already fine cake (in GIF form, naturally, with a MIDI tune of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons blaring out from your internet browser for good measure). But in revisiting Hypnospace for this month’s RPS Game Club, there was one page in particular that really brought the rose-tinted shutters down on me. It was beautiful, lovely April, Hypnospace’s virtual pet hamster, who can live, snooze and poop on your desktop, and maybe turn a slightly sickly shade of green if you don’t pay enough attention to her.

As with most things in Hypnospace, I can only assume that April and her fellow gaggle of virtual pet friends are riffs on real-life virtual pet games Catz and Dogz from the late 90s, which, yes, as a ten-year-old girl at the time, I was absolutely obsessed with. Developed by the now defunct PF Magic, Catz and Dogz 3 were arguably two of my most formative PC games growing up, and cor, I miss those dumb beasts so very much.

Read more

Counter-Strike 2 launches without many of Global Offensive’s best features

Counter-Strike 2 released last night and has duly taken over from Counter-Strike: Global Offensive as Steam’s most-played game at the time of writing, but individual player reactions are a bit mixed. Valve’s new/revamped free-to-play FPS sports a range of exotic features and fixtures, from swirlier, reactive smoke to new server architecture, but it has launched without many of the modes, maps and functions Global Offensive diehards are accustomed to, after a decade of updates.

Read more

Sega cancel Hyenas and several unannounced games due to Covid-era losses

The Creative Assembly’s Hyenas – a sci-fi extraction shooter about robbing Martian billionaires, which Ed deemed “a surprising amount of fun” when he saw it at Gamescom – is no more. Sega have cancelled the forthcoming looter FPS together with several unannounced titles – a stripping-down of the publisher’s European business in response to financial losses Sega are blaming partly on Covid.

Read more

Dave the Diver studio’s next thing is a really grim zombie PvPvE “cost of living” sim

There’s been a certain amount of confusion and alarm over the announcement of Nakwon: Last Paradise, a dingy third-person zombie survival adventure with a big emphasis on stealth, from the creators of Dave the Diver, a bright, breezy uramaki roll of a game that mixes restaurant management with side-on undersea exploration. Is this kind of like when Prince of Persia went all edgelord with Two Thrones? Do I need to call Mintrocket’s parents and ask for an intervention?

Thing is, if you take a step back from each game they’re actually very similar. Both are fundamentally about scouring dangerous places for resources and ferrying them back to a safe area where you can sell them off. Both pit you, a mediocre human, against strange and unearthly creatures. Both are sort of about redeeming scenario concepts we all hate – in Dave the Diver’s case, the water level, and in Nakwon’s case, the stealth mission. See, this is practically a remake! Let’s have a look at the trailer.

Read more