Category: Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Infinity Nikki has fallen from grace a touch, it seems. The dress-up RPG arrived on Steam last week, almost five months since it launched on the Epic Games Store, but it did so with quite a few caveats. For starters, the game’s latest update 1.5 arrived around the same time, leading to a plethora of issues with the game, quite notably frequent crashes. Then there’s also been a large number of Chinese players expressing their frustration with some of the changes on the game’s Steam forusm, namely the increase in cost of banners. This has led to the game hitting a Mixed rating on Steam, so the game’s dev has come out with a big ole apology literally asking for “one more chance.”

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Back in the decidedly less macabre context of a week ago, I played a few matches of Apex Legends‘ Season 25, which centres around new legend Sparrow. His debut is scheduled for May 6th, barely enough time for EA’s ink to dry on their mass laying-off of the people that made him (fifth most played game on Steam, y’know, maybe tells you something). He’s Space-Italian, has a folding bow on his arm, and – fittingly for how I feel about this game right now – is a massive bastard.

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Demon-swarmed fantasy ARPG Path Of Exile 2 got a patch today that should have, in theory, increased the rarity of loot dropped for players across all parts of the game. Instead, the game began deleting their Skill Gems – the extremely important stones that players use to perform all manner of attacks, spells, and defensive magicks. The developers quickly shut down the servers and rolled back the game, leading to a five-hour outage and a bunch of players who are now even more annoyed than they have been in recent weeks. And trust me, that is annoyed.

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In a year that has so far seen some demanding giants like Monster Hunter Wilds, Assassin’s Creed Shadows, and Oblivion Remastered, I have found myself routinely playing Car Mechanic Simulator 2021, a four-year-old sim that has you repeatedly changing the brake pads on busted vehicles and scavenging old engine parts from a nearby junkyard. So I feel a quiet delight to learn of the upcoming Car Dealer Simulator, due to release next month, which will let me not only fix up old bangers, but also sell the absolutely banjaxed pieces of trash to unsuspecting bozos. Heh heh heh. Yes. YES.

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Get ready to upgrade your gaming rigs, workflows, and storage setups because Amazon’s Lexar sale is packed with massive savings. We are talking huge price drops across fast SSDs, dependable RAM kits, and storage options that will keep your devices running smooth. If you have been waiting for a real deal to land, today is the day.

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EA have announced they’re “pausing” development of any future rally racers, including the filth-speckled WRC and Dirt series. Many rally games have historically been made by the now EA-owned studio Codemasters, a crowd of long-time motorsports specialists who’ve been soiling wheel arches as far back as Colin McCrae Rally for the first PlayStation. Well, no more, say the big wigs. The games have “reached the end of the road”, they say. Bad news for fans of muck and sand on wheels, but there is a splash of muddy hope just past the next hard right.

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Ubisoft today revealed the year one update roadmap for open world weather-appreciate-em-up Assassin’s Creed Shadows. It includes a steady drip feed of new quest and story updates, some fan requested features like NG+, and a few additional quality of life bits. However! None of this matters. Shoo, less important details. The real headline here is that the series built around making jumping between rooftops feel good is making jumping between rooftops feel even better. Excellent news.

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The recent round of layoffs at Respawn parent company EA reportedly lead to around 300 to 400 job losses, plus cancellations of two incubation projects. It’s since come out that one of those projects was likely an extraction FPS set in the Titanfall universe, codenamed ‘R7’. This joins an unannounced single player Titanfall game cancelled in 2023, alongside the perpetually rumoured but yet-to-materialise Titanfall 3. It has, in brief, been a rough forever to be a fan of Respawn’s exciting mix of parkour shooting and mech piloting combat.

But what’s this? Nestled in the replies to this good Bluesky post lies the promise of a mechful consolation prize. “Oopsie I dropped this legally distinct fan project,” writes Diesel Knights developer Xavier B. Johnson, alongside one of those Steam links I know you all enjoy. “Diesel Knights is a 6-v-6, Mech/Movement Shooter set in a pulp-inspired, dieselpunk world”, and you can request access to the upcoming playtest right now.

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Ding ding, it is AI-slop-alypse-O-Clock. Time for another helping of doom-ridden commentary upon the technologies that are busily scraping and remaking all the wit, lore and gibberish accumulated over 30 blessed years of the internet. Here’s a cut from a Mustard Plays interview with Fortnite product management director Dan Walsh, in which he comments upon the issue of Fortnite players using latter-day generative AI tools to conjure up thumbnail images for their profiles.

While Epic aren’t, Walsh says, about to use any genAI when creating their own assets such as character models for Fortnite, they don’t really care if players do, as long as the resulting images don’t break any rules around graphic violence or similar. Beyond that, Walsh argues that generated images are becoming so tricky to spot that the idea of banning their usage in a game like Fortnite is impractical. Hmmm.

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“A beautifully made retro-inspired RPG that will instantly transport you back to the 16-bit golden years, for better or worse,” was how Katherine Castle (RPS in peace) summarised Sea Of Stars, a Chrono Trigger-style pixelart sojourn down memory lane from Sabotage Studios, creators of The Messenger. I imagine it’s better rather than worse for the addition of some sizeable, circus-themed free DLC, Throes Of The Watchmaker.

Out 20th May, the expansion adds a new playable character, Arty, together with an estimated eight hours of new areas, music, dungeons, minigames, enemies, bosses, puzzles, and playable classes for original protagonists Valere and Zale. Run your rose-tinted retinas over this trailer.

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