Hope everyone enjoyed the RPS Game Club returning with Cobalt Core, though personally, I’ve always found deckbuilders a bit short on the screaming slaughter of unclean heretics. Put down the cards and pick up a boltgun, then, as this month’s Game Club pledges eternal service (until April) to Warhammer 40,000: Darktide.
Your most commonly visible bones are your teeth, so what better way to worship at the fleshy altar of Doom than by polishing those bones with an electric toothbrush whose little LCD screen is running Id Software’s seminal satanic shooter? The latest delightfully weird device rising to the eternal question “Can it run Doom?” is a WiFi-enabled ‘smart toothbrush’, which is juuust powerful enough to run a version of Doom. You can even control it with your mouse. Here, check this out.
There are moments where Sons Of The Forest matches the sublime paranoia of Subnautica. There’s that same lurching, exquisite tension as you delve deeper and deeper into darkness where you are not welcome, supplies dwindling, footfall echoing, monstrosities skittering about in the black. On my most intense plunge into one cave, I groaned aloud as the path I was praying must be the exit twisted back on itself, sending me first down a rope, and then into a long slide down, down into the earth, back into the spindly clutches of pale, bifurcated mutants. When I finally saw the sun again, I could have cried.
It’s still a bit wonky, but the full 1.0 release makes the Forest a fuller, livelier and more inviting (or else alluringly off-putting) prospect for a wander – even, as in my case, a wholly solo one. Consider this your cue to peel open some skin pouches.
As the video games industry violently contracts to ensure shareholder satisfaction at the cost of making thousands upon thousands of people unemployed, Skylanders studio Toys For Bob have announced they’re splitting from Activision Blizzard and Microsoft to go independent. Good for them, but maybe too late for some. Earlier this month, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that it seemed Activision Blizzard were closing Toys For Bob’s California headquarters and laying off 86 people. Still, the new independent Toys For Bob say they’re working on something new and “exploring a possible partnership” with Microsoft.
It feels pretty appropriate that my last deal post for RPS is for my favourite PC peripheral: the humble mechanical keyboard. This mechanical keyboard is more humble than its peers too, with a $30 asking price that is absolutely exceptional for a name-brand keyboard that gets rave reviews: the Keychron C3 Pro.
If Helldivers 2 hasn’t quite scratched your itch for reducing robots into piles of scrap, upcoming physics-based brawler Mecha Mayhem might. Gang Beasts in a world of Gundam-like bots, the fighting game lets you literally tear your enemies into pieces before repurposing their dismembered parts on your own bot.
Smite 2 was revealed as a standalone sequel to the third-person god-battling MOBA last month, using Unreal Engine 5 for a visual overhaul on the front end while making a number of significant gameplay and balance changes behind the scenes. Ahead of its planned alpha test this spring, developers Titan Forge have now shown off how the game’s Conquest mode will be evolving.
The creators of Tomb Raider I-III Remastered have apologised to players for releasing an unfinished version of the game on the Epic Games Store, following a series of unflattering comparisons between versions on ye olde social media.
GTA 6 developer Rockstar Games are reportedly ending hybrid working and requiring employees to return to the office full-time, with a view to being in “the best position to deliver the next Grand Theft Auto at the level of quality and polish we know it requires, along with a publishing roadmap that matches the scale and ambition of the game.” That’s allegedly from an email to staff sent by head of publishing Jenn Kolbe.