Category: Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Civ 7 beefy update 1.2.5 arrives today, September 30th. Developers Firaxis have laid out its major tweaks and additions, which include new map types and city states, plus a revamp of the construction interface and a hefty helping of balancing.

The polarising 4X strategy nation-builder has gotten the likes of auto-explore and world wonder reworks in its last couple of monthly updates, with Firaxis having settled in for the long haul after an initial flurry of post-release tweaking. 1.2.5 is the first update the game’s gotten since an undisclosed number of workers – “dozens of people”, according to Game Developer sources – were laid off at Firaxis earlier this month, in what publishers 2K told RPS was a “staff reduction” as the studio “restructures and optimizes its development process for adaptability, collaboration, and creativity”.

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Your cuddly dinosaur aunties at Capcom have warned that they can’t “guarantee” various Monster Hunter games will run on Windows 10 PCs after uncle Microsoft end support for the operating system on October 14th this year.

When that fateful day comes to pass, Capcom “will no longer guarantee that Monster Hunter: World, Monster Hunter Rise and Monster Hunter Wilds will run on Windows 10 systems.” Which isn’t to say that these games will immediately become unplayable, but “future system updates or game title updates may make the game incompatible on Windows 10 systems”.

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In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War 4‘s latest trailer, in which an entire nerd cave’s worth of miniatures spanning all four in-game factions are gibbed, gutted and burned in about 90 seconds.

Somewhat to my surprise, this is the first time I’ve watched a Warhammer videogame and tried to calculate the bodycount in terms of tabletop figurine prices. My pen-and-paper estimates are profoundly upsetting, and that was before I looked at Games Workshop’s current catalogue – I think for the first time since 1999 – and adjusted my figures for inflation. Do any of you play physical Warhammer tabletop games right now? How does that balance out, exactly? Do you just sort of… not buy food?

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Based on time of day and year, global fertility rates, and our own secret, illegal research into RPS supporter breeding patterns, I calculate that there’s a 12% chance you are reading this while carrying or cradling a small child. If that’s the case, then: what on Earth are you doing here? We post all kinds of awful grown-up things on RPS. Mark is threatening to do another salacious mod article and just this very morning, I posted a picture of a xenomorph covered in blood.

This piece should be safe for kids, however, as long as you don’t explain what a xenomorph is or what “salacious” means. It’s about Messenger, a free browser-based game in which you run around a very small 3D watercolour planet, delivering post. I suspect you and your child will enjoy it, unless we’ve already corrupted them and you’re now playing Aliens: Fireteam Elite.

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Remember when you were young, and had your first crush? All of a sudden your hormones are going nuts, and here’s this person you can’t think about without your face contorting into a goofy smile, or talk about without bashfully giggling. Well, it seems that’s how part-time Gearbox exec and full-time social media poster Randall Steward Pitchford II feels about Borderlands 4‘s freshly revealed first DLC Vault Hunter.

It’s understandable to be fair. Which of us hasn’t found ourselves gazing longingly at a former casino robot dressed like a goth version of John Wayne, before volunteering to help animate its card-throwing? Sometimes, C4SH rules not just everything around you, but your very heart.

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May Horace save and protect you, my fellow Metamedia Sorcerers, for I come with bad tidings. We are entering a news-lull. While there are some curious, possibly even attention-worthy PC games out this week, none of them are Big. None of them have that triple, quadruple or possibly even quintuple-A bullshit frosting the Maw so delights to batten upon. Last week gave us Tokyo Game Show, a time of relative bounty, but this week, there is a dearth of obvious headline material, and the Creature is already showing signs of discontent.

Its guts stiffen and strain like paralysed icebreakers. Its eyes widen in every mirror. How could it get worse? Oh hell’s teeth, I’ve run out of coffee. We’re doomed! Rohan has deserted us! Theoden has betrayed me! Abandon your posts! Flee, flee for your lives!

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It’s been over half a year since Fallout: London developers Team FOLON announced that it’d be getting three bits of DLC adding new quests to post-apocalyptic Blighty. The folks behind the massive mod have been relatively quiet in that time, but they’ve now confirmed that the first of these DLCs, Rabbit and Pork, will require you to start a fresh save game.

Also, one reason it hasn’t arrived already is that the team have been working to ensure other quest add-ons won’t force you to go back to square one, whenever they drop.

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As has been the case with all of Hollow Knight: Silksong‘s sizeable updates this far, Team Cherry have put out some tweaks as a Steam beta shot to the upcoming patch three’s chaser. As of now, opting into playtesting this “interim update” offers some extra controller support and fixes, but the devs say more’ll be added before the full patch goes live to everyone.

In case you need a refesher, the metroidvania‘s first patch made a couple of its early bosses a bit easier. Meanwhile, its second patch didn’t do any balancing, but did bring handy fixes to problems like the Savage Beastfly boss cheekily hiding below some lava.

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Hello reader who is also a reader, and welcome back to Booked For The Week – our regular Sunday chat with a selection of cool industry folks about books! Having finally read The Epic Of Gilgamesh recently, I feel I should in be awe at how the proliferation of certain themes and dramatic modes throughout history speaks deeply to the truths of the human experience. However, gaming has taught me to recognise a dirty asset flip when I see one. For shame, much of storytelling.

This week, it’s Saltsea Chronicles, Mutazione, Thronglets, and much more‘s Hannah Nicklin! Cheers Hannah! Mind if we have a nose at your bookshelf?

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I think Q-UP might be gaslighting me. It most certainly is a real video game, I played it myself. And yet it presents an entirely different vision of reality where it is the coin flipping eSport of choice. The worst part is that it nearly convinced me that such a reality is a pretty good one. Perhaps even more than half!

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