Rock Paper Shotgun

Hello! This is weird. Last time I was here, I predicted the future. I can't say I'm not proud of my clairvoyance, but sometimes it is a curse. In any case, I shall endeavour to continue Alice0's great work in finding endless excellent vintage illustrations to pop at the tops of these posts. And I'll also be hiding a little smiley face in each one, for giggles. Ooh, can you find it? What fun! Now then: here's how we'll all be dangerously blurring the lines between work and play this weekend.

The creators of Escape from Tarkov may be looking for their own escape at the moment, after enraging the extraction shooter’s community with a new top-tier edition of the game that’s come under fire for its extortionate cost, “pay-to-win” offerings and for U-turning on the promise of free DLC for buyers of a previous bundle.

It’s been barely a month since the reboot of horror classic Alone in the Dark arrived, but it looks like developers Pieces Interactive are now making a number of layoffs in the wake of its release.

A collection of five Phoenix Wright games - including some of the greatest visual novels of all time, in my opinion - is about to be discontinued on Steam, making it slightly less convenient to pick up the original Ace Attorney trilogy and its recent prequel games. That’s the bad news. The good news is you’ve got a month’s notice - and it’s on sale for the next week or so.

Sometimes there’s a game that’s just a delight to write about, however you slice it. That’s how I feel about getting to tell you about Oyster Wars, a platforming game that melds the fluid movement of Celeste with the puzzle dungeons and hookshot traversal of Zelda. Oh, and top of that it’s about rebelling against capitalism via oyster farming - and it’s made by a real-life oyster farmer. Let’s get into this package of joys.

Historical strategy sim Manor Lords - which budding feudal despot Nic Reuben has deemed "a sturdy and immersive builder that feels incomplete yet alive with promise" - is now available on Steam, the Epic Games Store, Microsoft Store and GOG. It was Steam's most wishlisted game before launch, and it's so popular right now that Steam's servers are struggling to keep up: there's an official developer post on the game's Steam forum warning that "the store is overwhelmed from all the people buying... Читать дальше...

Hurtling along on top of a train full of goons in Phantom Fury you will see another rushing train pulling up at matching speed, inviting you to hop from one to the other. A helicopter will soon join the fray. Many things will soon explode, and you will take a short break from the minigunning to calmly physics some boxes into a set of steps with a crane. This FPS is not so much writing a love letter to a bygone era of noughties shooters, as it is standing underneath the window of its respected... Читать дальше...

Although Corsair isn't included in our current best gaming SSDs guide, their compact form factor SSDs, including the MP600 Mini, are probably some of the best M.2 2230 SSDs on the market to pair with your Steam Deck gaming console.

While playing Manor Lords for review, I kept making mental notes to spend time watching the individual routes its villagers and beasts take each day. It’s one of those interestingly granular games that actually becomes more so by remaining a bit mysterious in ways I’m sure will annoy some, so I reasoned some people-watching would be illuminating. And by people, I mean oxen.

Tucked away in the corner of this year's Day Of The Devs at GDC I discovered a lavish, strangely unattended action-RPG, in which austerely beautiful young women in elaborate skirts kick the bejazus out of each other on fields of whirling flowers. That game was Aikode, the work of Spanish solo developer Ace.