Category: Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Sequels! More often than not, they’re completely unnecessary, but until we’re at a point where we don’t have to bow to the whims of the free market, studios of all sizes will likely continue to push them out. Right now people like familiarity, there’s a risk in paying for something new. What if the thing you’re buying is a waste of what little money you have? Ah, but a sequel to a thing I already like, more of the thing I know enjoy, that’s the stuff. So it’s quite refreshing to see Dead Cells developer Motion Twin completely ignore that, and put their heart into making something new, a topic the studio spoke about their feelings on in a recent interview.

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Let’s get this over with early: Bloodlines 2 probably should not have been called Bloodlines 2. Shared setting and a couple brief, questionable cameos (plus one utterly rubbish bit of cosmetic DLC) aside, there is little tying this game to Troika’s original janky cult hit FPS/RPG hybrid. This is not an RPG with deep mechanics, a wide variety of character builds or dialogue that reacts to mechanical choices. If that is what you need out of a game bearing this most hallowed of names, then you will be disappointed and frustrated.

But if you are willing to lay decades of dreams to rest and approach it purely on its own terms, you might find an entertaining if flawed romp through the World Of Darkness. A brawl-heavy, linear action game punctuated with Telltale-esque reactive dialogue and held together by a surprisingly compelling, century-spanning undead detective mystery.

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GT-Abe gateway drug The Simpsons Hit & Run‘s status a thing people my age remember from their childhoods has earned it a strong modding community, and the latest export to come out of it is a Futurama total conversion designed to mirror an official expansion. It’s predictably called Futurama: Hit & Run and has a demo out now.

For free, of course, so attempts to deploy the ‘shut up and take my money’ meme here are thoroughly misplaced. If you’ve already said it while reading that first paragraph, please submit to death by snu-snu. No wait, that makes it sound like I’m going to be the one doing the-

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Skyblivion might have bagged more headlines, but it’s far from the only ambitious modding project being worked on for a Bethesda game with the goal of putting a fresh spin on a classic. Fallout 4: Project Arroyo arguably has an even tougher task, with its team aiming to reimagine the turn-based and isometric Fallout 2 through Fallout 4’s 3D action lens.

In a fresh interview with YouTuber AVV Gaming that also sheds light on how the team are hoping to incorporate aspects of an original Fallout remake mod that was mothballed last year, Project Arroyo lead Damion Daponte has discussed how they’ve approached the difficult task of deciding how much to tweak as they reinterpret the 90s RPG.

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Fortnite, Roblox, Clash Royale and various other games and gaming services have been struck down by an “operational issue” with Amazon’s web services today, though Amazon themselves promise that they’re already seeing “significant signs of recovery”.

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It’s a busy week for union organisers at Activision Blizzard. Yesterday, in conjunction with the Communications Workers of America (CWA), a group of over 100 developers that work on Hearthstone and the mobile only strategy game Warcraft Rumble voted “strongly in favor of wall-to-wall union representation.” This comes after around 400 Blizzard platform and technology workers voted to unionise, also with the CWA.

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I think if you were to travel back in time to around the 14th century to wherever Dante Alighieri was at the time, and showed him Hell Maiden, a roguelike, bullet hell, deckbuilding, ’90s anime-esque, essentially fan fiction sequel to his Divine Comedy, he’d probably say something like “Mama mia” and die on the spot in fear of what his own creation spawn hundreds of years later. Yet as ridiculous a concept as it is – and it is ridiculous – the demo for it is quite good.

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It’s been a while since we’ve last seen anything FIFA in the world of video games, namely because EA took a gamble on saying goodbye to the sports association’s official licence back in 2022. Whether that has paid off, literally, is neither here nor there right now though, as FIFA announced this week that it has signed a “multi-year partnership” with Football Manager, once again bringing its recognisable (if potentially tainted) name back to video games.

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Like whatever genres you like, but for me personally, I find platformers to be the quintessential video game genre. Even with the most challenging entries, there are very few other genres that (when done well) are as easy and quick to pick up, play, and have fun with. I think that’s why so many of them have such longevity, one such game being N++, a tough but fair platformer that’s celebrating its 10th anniversary with a new update.

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Cult of the Lamb is honestly not a game I expected to still be going for as long as and as strongly as it has. It came out in 2022! That was practically a decade ago, at least in games industry years, and yet here is developer Massive Monster showing off the roguelike’s next big expansion, Woolhaven. There’s no release date other than an early 2026 release window, but a new trailer did at least show off all of that farming you’ll get to do. Or, I guess get your cult to do.

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