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The Rogue Prince of Persia celebrated its 1.0 release yesterday with a remarkably honest behind-the-scenes video from developers Evil Empire, detailing the ups and downs of a year-long Early Access period, including the decision to completely overhaul the game’s art style and redesign its purple-skinned protagonist.
I feel for Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2. If it was named something like Fang Bastard: The Punching Of The Many, the trailers wouldn’t have so many views, but those who’d watched them would probably be quite jazzed for that new bitey-talky game that looks a bit like Dishonored with more story branching. It isn’t, and they aren’t. Instead, it’s called Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2, a name packed with some of the weightiest words in RPGdom.
I don’t pity it, though. Three hours and change into Bloodlines 2, I’ve determined that I’d quite enjoy a Dishonored with more story branching, actually. Not as much as if I could express my roleplaying chops outside of very specific dialogue menus, or if I cared more about the fellow nightcrawlers on the other side of those conversations. But for all the tricky development and heavy heritage, I’d be lying if I said I haven’t enjoyed being The Chinese Room’s version of a souped-up vampire prowling a snowy, bisexual-lit Seattle.
NVIDIA’s 50-series GPUs had a strange old rollout. From missing cores to marked-up prices, there’s also some disappointment about the push to use AI to push things further, rather than good, old-fashioned power.
There’s a beautiful, wordless moment about ten minutes in to The Dark Queen Of Mortholme. As the titular queen, you’ve just casually mace-flattened the same plucky interloper for the Nth time, then snapped their corpse out of existence in a wreath of electric purple fire with all the ceremony of clearing toast crumbs from a bench.
Look, given the choice between buying storage and a shiny new game, we’re always more likely to go for the latter, but buying SSDs is getting much easier with prices dropping.
Oi oi, where my Janeway fans at? Where my Parisians and my Torresians? Can I get a whoop, whoop for Chakotay? A high five for Seven of Nine? Daedalic have announced Star Trek: Voyager – Across the Unknown, a “story-based survival strategy game” adaptation of the loneliest of the classic Treks. Created by developers gameXcite, who I may yet forgive for capitalising their name that way, it asks you to “manage systems and crew, engage in diplomacy, navigate difficult moral decisions, and face the unknown”. It’s got a cutaway dollhouse spaceship and a HUD made up to resemble a Star Trek bridge display. Also, Ensign Harry Kim is here! He wants orders. Kim, your orders are to roll that trailer.
You really have to hand it to the publishers of Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2. They are the absolute masters of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, the doyens of stepping on rakes, even as they near the checkered flag. The long-awaited RPG got a new trailer and what may actually prove to be the final release date at Gamescom Opening Night Live this week. The trailer was a feisty show of Dishonored-esque mayhem, and the hands-on verdicts I’ve read (save for stinky uncle Eurogamer) have been positive. Ours is forthcoming.
But then came the revelation that this much-delayed sequel to a quintessentially faction-led RPG from a company famous for downloadable add-ons would sell two of its vampire clans as day-one DLC. How we laughed! How we clutched our faces and chittered like gerbils! How we ran outside, begging for the moon to fall on our heads! Despair springs anew.
If you’re looking for a solid PC build but don’t want to spend a fortune, you could do a lot worse than this iBuyPower option at Walmart.
I drop the house into the great maw (not that one). It screams as it falls away from the clutches of my mouse clicker. It disappears from view, but there’s a sickeningly wet crunching that betrays its fate. Oh and the fact that the entity’s jaws immediately flare open once more, teeth and tongue dripping with anguish to cram vegetation, trees, towerblocks into its gullet.
This is In Full Bloom, a game that scores the full 10/10 in the wonderfully ironic naming category. Set in a greyscale universe sucked free of all hope and colour, it tasks you with accomplishing an impossible task. You’ve got to keep the infernal child of constant consumption happy by tossing an unending stream of junk into its mouth.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2‘s forthcoming Legacy of the Forge expansion introduces a new home customisation system, as part of a story about restoring a legendary burnt-down blacksmith’s joint where your dad once worked as an apprentice.
Out September 9th, the expansion takes Henry of Skalitz back to Kuttenberg to climb the ranks of the blacksmith guild, with unique armour and weapon blueprints. Expect “quirky” requests from clients, but above all, expect a nagging sense of failure, because the aforesaid customisation system “supports over 136 million combinations”, and always, always at the back of your mind, the creeping suspicion that yours is the very worst.
