Category: Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Ian Proulx, the CEO of Splitgate 2 developers 1047 Games, has apologised for wearing a ‘Make FPS Great Again’ cap while talking about the game’s battle royale mode on stage at Summer Game Fest. As you might have guessed, the hat drew unfavourable comparisons to US president Donald Trump’s MAGA hats.

It’d have been a pretty dumb, controversy-baiting stunt for a games company CEO to pull at any point in recent history, but especially hasn’t gone over well given the timing. As the SGF show happened, a large number of anti-ICE protests also began in response to violent immigration raids, and later that weekend Trump deployed the National Guard onto the streets.”

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One minute you’re flicking through Steam’s Next Fest demos, and finding one that looks to be included despite having come out in May. The next, you’re desperately firing missiles into the rear end of giant monster truck, a sole red light glaring out from its metallic behind, as though it’s mega-pissed that it seems to have gotten stuck in a cluster of trees. Given that, it should be easy prey for the ordnance strapped to the bonnet of my very Mad Max-ish muscle car coated in enough sheets of metal to fence off several allotments.

This is Mad Metal, though, an indie game whose murderous enemy cars have minds of their own and move more like automotive animals than simple machines.

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Herdling is an odd little game. How do you begin to sell the idea that a (presumably emotional) herding simulator might be quite interesting? Yes, people love their farming sims as a band aid form of escapism, but a lot of those games are in the first instance much more about farming and not farm animals, nor the way you interact with said animals. Herdling is all about that, as the whole goal is to guide a group of strange horned beasties up a mountain.

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We don’t really get to write about Playdate, that bespoke games console with a built in crank, here on RPS very much because it is very much not a computer (though former EIC Katharine did review it back when it launched). Well, not in the way we need it to be for our purposes. But I have an excuse to do so today! Over the weekend at the PC Gaming Show, a trailer for the Panic-published, faux-streaming service Blippo+ was shown off, one that captured my attention quite quickly.

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When you have a game that is so run focused like Elden Ring Nightreign, balance is the key to not getting someone to throw their controller at a wall, cursing their own birth as they do so. Up until now, there were parts of Elden Ring Nightreign that certainly weren’t balanced, though that mostly came down to a few bugs. As of today though, there’s a new update you can download for the roguelike which brings in some much needed fixes.

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Finding Lies of P: Overture a bit too hard? Don’t worry, I’m not going to tell you just “get good” like those randos you see littered all over Twitter. I’m actually here to say that you’re not alone on this one. The story expansion for the conceptually weirdest Soulslike in town dropped during Geoff’s Onslaught Of Generally OK Announcements (aka, Summer Game Fest) as a surprise release, and it seems like the general feedback so far has been “please make it a bit easier so Twinkocchio doesn’t get battered so hard.”

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Helldivers 2 developers Arrowhead have unleashed the latest twist in the game’s Galactic War, with urban battles against the Terminids now on the cards. Rather than defending cities on Super Earth, this time the task is swatting bug invasions of population centres across multiple planets.

A tough assignment, but to be fair, successfully protecting their home planet against the still-at-large Illuminate should have given players plenty experience of street fighting (not the Ryu and Chun-Li kind).

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Wizards of the Coast knows the people thirst for more more Baldur’s Gate 3-ish CRPGs, and the company’s president has made it clear they still plan on making those kinds of things, even if the D&D action game they recently announced will be a different kettle of magic frogs

“Don’t get me wrong,” said President John Hight when speaking to Polygon about the different possibilities making a D&D game offers being a factor in going that route with this latest game, “we are going to do CRPGs that are going to be as serious as BG3.”

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Video game voice actor union SAG-AFTRA say they’ve reached a “tentative agreement” with a group of games companies that could bring an end to the latest voice actor strike, providing it gets approved by the union’s National Board and members.

This tentative deal “puts in place the necessary AI guardrails that defend performers’ livelihoods in the A.I. age, alongside other important gains,” say SAG-AFTRA. That’s been the key issue at the heart of this strike, with the union citing a desire to push for protections against VAs being replaced or imitated by AI, though it has previously faced some criticism for how it’s handled striking deals with companies that use AI.

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Some game demos, you write up after the expo because they need a bit of reflection; some game demos, you write up immediately because they are easy to digest, even through a droning fugue of jetlag; and some game demos, you write up immediately because they synchronise perfectly with your swivel-eyed, hyper-caffeinated delirium.

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