Category: Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Palia, a cute-looking life sim MMO inspired by e.g. Stardew Valley, has been in beta since last year, but now it’s officially out on Steam, where many more people can download and play it. With this launch comes a pretty substantial update – Patch 0.178, full notes here – which adds a new questline and Temple to explore, new furniture, and a bunch of new spring flowers and trees to grow in your garden. There is also a giant plushi frog, listed under ‘Adjustments’. The patch notes say simply “What does he want? Does he come in peace?” which makes him sound way more sinister than I think he is, but as you can see from the screenshot, he isn’t not sinister.

Read more

Remember when Ark: Survival Evolved was announced to be getting an animated series with a star-studded cast including the likes of Michelle Yeoh, Russell Crowe, Elliot Page, David Tennant and Malcolm-bloody-McDowell? I sure didn’t! That was over three years ago during the heights of a worldwide pandemic, though, so I think we can forgive ourselves a little. Anyway, Ark: The Animated Series has now arrived out of the blue, dropping its first six episodes on streaming service Paramount+.

Read more

Generative AI is one of the biggest debates raging across not just video games, but art and culture as a whole at the moment. Into that debate has waded the CEO of graphics card giants Nvidia to drop a prediction that can only be described as searingly flammable: we’ll see games where everything seen on-screen is fully generated by AI, in real-time, within the next 10 years.

Read more

Everyone likes Dragon’s Dogma 2, it seems. Except everyone also seems to dislike one specific part of Dragon’s Dogma 2: the fantasy sequel’s microtransactions. But that one dull spot has already been polished out by modders, who are offering more convenient (and less expensive) ways to pick up items that you’ll either need to potentially grind or cough up real money for.

Read more

It’s been nearly eight years since the launch of Civilization VI, which is the longest gap between mainline Civ entries the series has seen since the first game appeared way back in 1991. It’s the perfect time for a new contender to rise and claim the historical 4X throne, and indeed, many have tried, and some have even come close. Soren Johnson and the gang at Mohawk Games struck gold in Old World by zeroing in on the ancient era and opening up the personal lives of rulers and generals as fields of play. Humankind let you fuse and blend cultures over the arc of time like a world-historic Doctor Moreau.

Millennia is perhaps the Civ-like that’s clung most tightly to the genre’s apron strings. It has a few new ideas that sound interesting on paper, but even as back-of-the-box features, they’re clearly not meant to significantly disrupt the established order. This is a strategy game that very much wants to be like Civilization, and has a lot of enthusiasm for the subject matter. Unfortunately, it isn’t a particularly good student.

Read more

If ever there were a game not to play on a Monday when you’ve had minimal sleep and basically want to crawl under the table and eat three-day-old pizza, that game – or rather, “tech demo” – is Fractal Sailor. The work of Struct9 founder Matej Vanco, it hands you a distressingly unwieldy and roofless hovership and cuts you adrift in a vast ocean of malevolent mathematics.

Read more

On top of announcing the release date for Final Fantasy 14‘s next expansion, Dawntrail, at PAX East over the weekend, producer Yoshi-P set Final Fantasy tongues wagging even further by mentioning the words “Final Fantasy 9” and “secret” in the same sentence. Many of the pre-order and special edition bonus items players can get with the upcoming Dawntrail expansion are suspiciously FF9-themed, you see, but when pointing this out to PAX-goers, Yoshi-P said “the reason is a secret” for now, sparking fresh rumours about Square Enix’s supposed Final Fantasy IX remake/remaster.

Read more

It’s Monday and I’m tired, so do I really have to write out hundreds of words telling you who Nic Reuben is? You already know Nic! He’s been writing here as a freelancer loads. He threw a rock through the treehouse window and were preparing to sacrifice him to appease Horace’s great coils, but the endless bear spake and instead commanded us to hire him, after a rigorous interview process. Say hello to Nic in his new and official capacity here on the site! My enthusiasm has woken me up again!

Read more

Fantasy action-RPG Dragon’s Dogma 2 has had a tumultuous launch week: praised by reviewers, slated for its performance issues, and berated for its (pretty inconsequential) microtransactions. Now begins the labour of patching the game. Capcom have released a few hints about forthcoming Dragon’s Dogma 2 updates. Their plans for the PC version include letting players acquire dwellings earlier on in the story, improving quality when DLSS super resolution is enabled, and adding the option to start a new game when save data already exists.

Read more

It’s a brand new week in Computer Game Land, and right now, I am playing a nasty little survival sim called “Beating Jetlag”. I landed back in the UK from GDC on Saturday afternoon, and my brain and eyeballs still feel as though they’re being gently sautéed in a medicinal blend of oil and vinegar. The sun and sky bear down with a terrible, holy light and I can’t seem to conjure any warmth into my elbows. In the street outside, a small dog is barking. Soon, very soon, I will catch that dog, place it in a box and FedEx it to China.

Read more