Category: Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Sorry Australians, you can’t confront the horrifying psychological manifestations of your inner turmoil. It would be too much for you, according to the government. The country’s classification board recently refused to grant upcoming horror game Silent Hill f an age rating, essentially preventing it from being sold in the country unless certain elements of the game are toned down or altered by Konami. But it’s possible the developer will do just that, as the classification board has retracted their ruling. At least for the time being.

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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! As a reward for sticking with this column for so long, I’m delighted to announce that we’ll soon be rolling out the chance for you to write in with a detailed list of all your most subversive ideas and which books inspired you to hold them, and in return I’ll send you an email alerts if those books ever appear in this column. Cormac McCarthy’s The Road is widely considered a classic so I’ll just call it ‘McCarthyism’ for simplicity.

This week, it’s the co-founder of Finji – publisher of such luxury games as Tunic, Wilmot’s Warehouse, and Night In The Woods – Bekah Saltsman! Cheers Bekah! Mind if we have a nose at your bookshelf?

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There’s no better news than “game that hasn’t had an update in years just received one”, and this week that applies to Battle Brothers. Despite first releasing eight years ago – almost to the day, its eighth anniversary is in a couple of days time on March 24th – and not receiving a new update in two years, developer Overhype Studios has come back to the game not just with some fixes, but with some new content too.

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Everybody loves a good fairytale, but I’m sure you can agree that some kind of twist on a Brothers Grimm story is a bit overdone by now, so how about a game based on folklore from Normandy? Carimara: Beneath the forlorn limbs is exactly that, a self described “short and creepy fairytale” that has a look about it where I can easily imagine walking around its world and think “cripes, it smells a bit around here, ‘ey?”

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Minecraft is the best-selling game of all time, but it’s looked pretty much the same for the entirety of its almost 14 year run. There’s an argument to be made that it’s showing its age in places, an argument I won’t make because I don’t think so myself, but all the same, as revealed during today’s Minecraft Live, Mojang announced that the sandbox game is getting a pretty big visual overhaul update called Vibrant Visuals. Now, don’t worry, it’ll still be all blocks and squares ‘n’ that, but it will be changing up how lighting looks.

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Keita Takahashi is probably one of the most recognizable names in games, in no small part thanks to a game that needs no introduction, Katamari Damacy. That game was made at Namco, before it became the Bandai Namco we know today, and Takahashi actually left the studio back in 2006 around the time they merged, and in a recent interview with GameSpark (as translated by Automaton), the developer has shared the reason behind his departure.

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I’m going to let you in on a little secret: I love Silent Hill 4: The Room. It was actually the first game I played in the series, and when I did I wasn’t aware that it wasn’t universally loved or even liked at its release. Not that knowing other people’s opinions would have changed my mind about it, I’m the kind of person that will ardently defend a 6/10, but still, I think there’s a lot to love about it… unless you played the game on PC. For a long time, it was missing a few things that were featured in the PS2 version of the game, but GOG’s Preservation Program is adding them back in.

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Who can say what made Ubisoft change their minds on Steam Deck support for Assassin’s Creed Shadows, the pretty good samurai stealther that previously stated an intention to go without. Perhaps a high-ranking executive, visiting family to invite them to a trip on his spare yacht, had his frozen heart melted by the sight of a Naoe-cosplaying granddaughter clutching a Steam Deck OLED in her clearly-too-small-for-it hands. Perhaps.

It works, is the main thing. And works well – remarkably well, actually, considering not just the previous denial and 11th hour U-turn, but the game’s high PC system requirements and at least partially mandatory ray tracing. This does come at the cost of a severely stripped-down quality settings menu, and you’ll still need to sign into a Ubisoft Connect account even if you own Shadows on Steam, but there’s no doubt that its Steam Deck Verified status is deserved.

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The villagers of Wyndham are miserable. Stuck in a military cordon with little to do except look up at the exploded power plant that put them there, escape made even less feasible by the bandits and forest cultists on the other side, even the stiffest upper lips are starting to sag. One such fed-up chappie moans that it’s so bad, he’d rather be back in Swindon.

First off, way to disrespect our towering cultural contributions, philistine. He’d have a much better time if he actually did make a break for those big metal gates to the outside, because while Atomfall is an unexceptional FPS and only a decent survival game, its sheer openness and barrels upon barrels of on-tap intrigue make it worth poking your head in. If, that is, you’re able to go looking for answers unprompted.

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Six years ago Nightdive Studios announced they were doing a remaster of sci-fi sequel System Shock 2, which they were calling System Shock 2: Enhanced Edition. But back then they were also busy working on a full-blown remake of the original System Shock. Turns out that first outing to Citadel Station took priority. But now that they’re done with that, the studio has finally revealed a release date for the sequel’s remaster, which they’ve sneakily renamed System Shock 2: 25th Anniversary Remaster.

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