Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Desktop and handheld prices going out of control means PC bargain hunts lead to my old enemy: gaming laptops

James Archer — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 16:15:00 +0000

I don’t know if memory shortages have permanently killed off the concept of 'cheap' gaming PCs, but they have at least beat it into a coma. On the desktop side, inflated RAM, SSDs and graphics card prices continue to inflict karmic pain for our years of "It's cheaper to build it yourself" smugness, while formerly affordable handheld PCs are either suffering 40%-plus jackups or launching above £1K from the off. And the Steam Machine! The poor, square Steam Machine.

Every few weeks, possibly in denial, I’ll skim through the shops to see what budget games kit actually looks like in this day and age. Across the last five or six rounds, little has changed: the entry point into decent, more-or-less current-spec 1080p play remains stuck in the low quadruple figures, particularly if you’re fully new to PC ownership and need to factor in a monitor and peripherals. There is one exception, assuming you don’t fancy your luck on the secondhand market, but giving it a hands-on appraisal means confronting an ancient hardware foe of mine. And you all know how little I like to have my prejudices challenged.

Still, research suggests that yes, this truly is the most gaming PC you can get for under £999. So, um. Here it goes. May...maybe gaming laptops aren’t so bad.

"Support modders, not AI": Total War: Warhammer 3 mod "deliberately corrupted" by its own creator in protest of AI-infused unauthorised reuploads

Mark Warren — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 15:37:33 +0000

Cheesed off with unauthorised reuploads of their Total War: Warhammer 3 overhaul which make use of AI, the main modder behind SFO: Grimhammer 3 has opted to purposefully corrupt the mod. The aim is to ensure that the modders maintain more control over where and when the latest version of Grimhammer 3 can be grabbed, with creator Venris threatening to make the mod private if the situation doesn't improve.

RAM shortages are only getting worse and will last until at least 2028, Micron boss declares from atop a mountain of money

Mark Warren — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 14:09:50 +0000

Another day, another company declaring that the current memory crisis driving RAM prices through the roof is far from over. This time it's Micron, one of three firms - Samsung and SK Hynix are the others - which have been accused of worsening the RAM crisis via price fixing by a US lawsuit.

AI-generated Fallout: New York browser game full of utterly cursed faces slapped with Bethesda cease and desist, its slop prompter claims

Mark Warren — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 11:45:53 +0000

In perhaps the least surprising Fallout news since Raul from New Vegas confirmed that ghouls with dodgy knees don't enjoy sneaking, the person behind an AI-generated browser game dubbed Fallout: New York has claimed to have recieved a cease and desist message from Bethesda parent company ZeniMax. Their creation, if such a term fits, was generated using Anthropic's Claude Opus 5.5 tech.

PUBG extraction shooter Black Budget canned less than a year from reveal, after Krafton decide it won't "deliver an experience players could enjoy over the long term"

Mark Warren — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 09:26:02 +0000

PUBG: Black Budget, an extraction shooter spin-off of Krafton's battle royale, has been cancelled after just under a year of closed alpha testing. Krafton cited a lack of faith that Black Budget's "current direction" would lead to "an experience players could enjoy over the long term" as the reasoning behind their call to end development. Though, they insisted PUBG Studios have learned valuable lessons that'll serve future games.

If game developers steal one thing from No Law, I hope it's the open-world game's ridiculously detailed and realistic corner shops

Julian Benson — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 08:30:00 +0000

After seeing open-world imm-sim No Law last month, I'm sure the developers would hope I was gripped by memories of missions you can approach stealthily or in all-out action, the sci-fi combat where you wield slow-time grenades and cyberpunk implants, or even the powerful kick you can use to boot open locked doors. But, no, what I keep thinking about is the corner shop where protagonist Grey Harker, an ex-soldier on a murderous rampage to take down Port Desire's four corrupt mayors, stopped to pick up some batteries.

Reigns and Card Shark developers Nerial are closing down, laying staff off while the founders go "back to our roots"

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Thu, 01 Oct 2026 16:27:23 +0000

Reigns and Card Shark developers Nerial have announced that they're shutting down or at least, "entering hibernation mode", following discussion with their parent company Devolver Digital. By the sound of things, the entire team are now "seeking new opportunities", as is the parlance of studio closures.

RetroSpace offers a huge sci-fi playground for inquisitive space janitors, but I'm not that System Shocked by the tools at your disposal

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Thu, 01 Oct 2026 15:29:29 +0000

In my time as a videogame partaker, I have crawled through approximately three billion airvents. I may well have crawled through more vents than you've had hot dinners. As such, any videogame that can get me excited about loosening a barred hatch and hauling my heavy ass into a square tunnel is doing something right.

The Wild Gentlemen's new sci-fi immersive sim RetroSpace gives pretty fair vent. It hides them all over. You'll walk along a dilapidated, meandering corridor and your eye will be caught by a certain combination of shadows, flirtatiously screened by pipes. 'Can I fit behind there?' You ask yourself, and lo, you have revealed a shortcut to the head engineer's office. Elsewhere, switches peek from behind stacks of luggable crates, and bent guard-rails draw your eye to a footwide ledge leading around the next pillar.

In general, RetroSpace does a nice job of squirrelling secrets into even the smallest chambers, and if the secret is very often a "rocket doughnut" or other inventory-clogging flotsam, sensing the prize and snuffling after it is a thrill. I hope the thrill will intensify as RetroSpace goes on, perhaps leaving a few of its obvious influences behind.

Control Resonant's New Game++ update also squashes some of my least favourite bugs, including the one where magic doors change my trousers

James Archer — Thu, 01 Oct 2026 14:22:50 +0000

Trippy hack 'n' slash sequel (and, for the benefit of anyone planning for this year’s Advent Calendar guessing game in the RPS Discord, my current second-favouritest game of 2026) Control Resonant has a big old update out today. As declassified by Remedy, it not only adds the pledged New Game++ mode for plus-deficient game replayers, but makes absolutely bloody loads of smaller bug fixes and quality of life tweaks.

I'm not sure the "AI" in my chair's lumbar support actually counts as AI, but it has been smart enough to help my posture

Jon Martindale — Thu, 01 Oct 2026 13:30:14 +0000

Note from James, 02/10: We've heard your complaints that some of the wording in this piece - a lot of which, if I'm honest, was added/changed by me in the edit - overstates the chair's potential health benefits. The HBADA’s X7 chair may reduce back pain during long periods of sitting at your desk but it will not literally fix your spine. While it is and will remain the RPS way to indulge in some occasional hyperbole, we don't want to suggest that swivel chairs cure physical conditions, so I've clarified these bits to avoid confusion.

AI is everywhere, exhausting to keep up with, and increasingly perceived as harmful to games. But that’s mostly generative AI; the more limited, less media-scraping and energy-hungry breeds of artificial intelligence can still play a harmless, maybe even useful role, especially on the hardware side. Even if it finds itself in some unexpected places, as is the case with HBADA’s X7 chair.

While AI-powered lumbar support sounds like the kind of gimmicky nonsense that’s become all too common in 2026, I’ve been using an X7 for a week, and it’s... surprisingly effective? Definitely for straightening up my posture, which I'm hopeful will help with my recurring back pain issues. It’s been a very pleasant surprise.

Capcom aren't just running out of Resident Evil games to remake - they're banking on it, with a mysterious "crossover" planned when the timelines collide

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Thu, 01 Oct 2026 12:40:00 +0000

Capcom have done a brisk trade in Resident Evil remakes this past decade. They've gone back to formula with Resident Evil 2, Resident Evil 3, and Resident Evil 4, not just bumping up the resolution and revarnishing the cutscenes, but writing new variations on the old survival horror fables. There's a Resident Evil: Code Veronica regurgitation due in 2027, and a Resident Evil 0 resurrection allegedly to follow in 2028.

The problems with this strategy are perhaps expressed by my previous sentence's struggle to come up with extra synonyms for "remake": sooner or later, Capcom are going to run out of original games they can credibly overhaul. Including the forthcoming or rumoured projects, they've only got Resident Evils 5 and 6 left now before they hit the "modern era" inaugurated by Resident Evil 7, the game that introduced the fancy RE Engine used by the remakes.

The Witcher 3: Songs of the Past's setting "felt like a really natural way to go", CD Projekt Red story director says, while parrying my attempts to breach the DLC's guard

Mark Warren — Thu, 01 Oct 2026 12:03:02 +0000

Ever since The Witcher 3's decade-on expansion Songs of the Past was revealed not to be a windup nor a case of empthy rumourmongering, I've been eating up as many details about its story as CD Projekt Red have offered. The truth is that, outside of showing off the setting and a few of the characters Gerry'll chat to, they've kept their lips pretty tight. On one hand, I get wanting to keep narrative surprises intact, but on the other, it'd be nice to see the studio be less vague about this extra chapter of a story folks assumed they'd already seen through to a satisfying end a decade ago.

So, in addition to scouring other interviews about the DLC, I flung my own questions at CD Projekt Red story director Marcin Blacha, who worked in that role and as a lead writer on TW3 back in the day.

"We want people to try and outsmart the game": No Law aims for Arkane-style reactivity within a dangerous walled city

Julian Benson — Thu, 01 Oct 2026 11:20:00 +0000

Port Desire, the hemmed-in city setting of immersive sim No Law, is hard to place. At points, it reminds me of walking around Lisbon. It shares that Portuguese city's verticality, where hill-straddling streets shouldered by colourful houses and corner shops can feel like tiers on a wedding cake. The strong sunlight and bursts of foliage reinforce the mediterranean vibes. Yet, the port city's structure and history is much closer to Kowloon Walled City, the ungoverned Chinese enclave that existed within British-owned Hong Kong.

Through the 1900s, with the British government taking a hands-off policy to the tiny district and the Chinese government exercising no control over its citizens, Kowloon became the most densely populated city on earth, with 33,000 citizens living in just 2.6-hectare borders. With virtually no official police presence, the city attracted anyone looking for a less-observed, less-regulated life – gangs, refugees, and a surprising number of unlicensed dentists.

As one of No Law's creative directors, Tor Frick, tells it, Port Desire is very similar. Not specifically the dentists bit, more the general, isolated lawlessness.

"Xbox is not for sale" despite all of the layoffs and neat repackaging of studios within Microsoft's corporate structure, CEO Asha Sharma says

Mark Warren — Thu, 01 Oct 2026 10:30:00 +0000

Despite recently having overseen the laying off of 268 staff in the second of multiple rounds of cuts planned for this financial year, Xbox CEO Asha Sharma has denied that their are plans to sell Microsoft's gaming division. The bloodletting at Xbox in recent months has not only seen workers let go, but the place of studios within the company's structure being altered. Rather than lots of studios with their own degree of independence, Xbox have been parting ways with many studios and consolidating what remains under a small number of arms led by the bosses of the likes of Activision and Bethesda.

The Division developers Massive are now "the global brand" in charge of Splinter Cell and Ghost Recon, alongside a new Ubisoft dieselpunk MOBA

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Thu, 01 Oct 2026 10:03:48 +0000

Tom Clancy's The Division and Star Wars Outlaws studio Massive Entertainment just got, er, massiver. Parent company Ubisoft have announced that they're now "the global label" for several other series, including Ghost Recon and Splinter Cell alongside at least one original game, World War fantasy MOBA March of Giants.

First-person RPG Queen's Domain pitches you against an island of gorgeous freaks with naught but a flying sword and infinite throwing daggers

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 16:07:02 +0000

Fantasy RPG Queen's Domain is frequently likened by certain other websites to From Software's King's Field games and The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind, so I'm going to put my nose in the air and forcibly compare it to something else. Looks like, errrrrr, a first-person Ico with Mayan architectural influences, maybe a touch of Final Fantasy's Ivalice period here and there. It's set on an island with shorelines you could compare to Halo's Silent Cartographer level, if you rubbed your eyes with breakfast cereal. Have I thoroughly confused you? Don't worry, here is a trailer.

"NO GAME NO LIFE": Grasshopper Manufacture have leapt from the jaws of NetEase and gone indie again

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 15:30:00 +0000

No More Heroes and Killer7 developers Grasshopper Manufacture have split from erstwhile parent company NetEase, founder Goichi "Suda51" Suda has announced. NetEase bought them back in 2021, as part of the acquisition of Gungho Online Entertainment. Now, they're going indie. According to Suda, the change reflects "a strong desire to deliver titles in an even wider variety of styles to video game lovers everywhere".

The importance of being earnest: How Marvel Tōkon's Deadpool trades ridicule for fighting game reverence

Ashley Schofield — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 15:00:12 +0000

Deadpool’s a weird character. Like fellow mutant Wolverine, Wade Wilson is a trained killer whose primary superpower is a healing factor that lets him recover and reform from any wound, even if bisected or decapitated. Unlike Wolverine, Wade knows he’s in a fictional medium, be it a comic book, movie, or game, and physically can’t stop quipping about that fact and referencing things in and out of his world. It’s up to the writer whether this is sheer coincidence (as in, he’s genuinely just psychotic and his insane ramblings happen to be the truth), or a true meta awareness granting him power over narrative itself.

This is a trait that Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls handles smartly, which in a way is surprising, because it usually makes him quite annoying. In most appearances, Deadpool references everything — nothing is safe. Marvel editorial, art of all mediums new and old, assorted real-life celebrity drama, specific stories from comics’ past (not just Marvel, either), and more I can’t think of right now; all of it ripe fruit for Wade to riff on in one of the many jokes-per-minute spouting from his scarred mouth. This became true of the vast majority of his comic runs, once the meta awareness, fourth-wall-breaking became a central part of his character identity, and defined non-comic appearances like High Moon’s 2013 Deadpool game and Ryan Reynolds' (admittedly, kinda perfect) portrayal from the 2016 film onwards. No, X-Men Origins: Wolverine does not count.

Crimson Desert's first expansion, Charting the Unknown, delayed so Pearl Abyss get more time to polish and stabilise the red pudding

Mark Warren — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 14:30:00 +0000

A little bit of extra waiting is in order for Crimson Desert's first proper expansion, Charting the Unknown. Originally set to arrive midway through October, it's now been moved back by a couple of weeks to allow for some extra fine-tuning of the thousand or so funky open world activities devs Pearl Abyss have jammed into it.

Come play the flute and reshape the very earth in Songs of Glimmerwick, a magic school RPG from the creators of Eastshade

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 14:00:00 +0000

It has perhaps never been easier to join a witch or wizard school without being a Guy Who Rhymes With Bally Trotter. Academies of the occult abound in videogames. True, there has yet to be an amazing Little Witch Academia adaptation, and I'm still waiting for that Arbitrary Metric take on Naomi Novik's A Deadly Education, to say nothing of Failbetter's take on Terry Pratchett's Equal Rites, but in the short term, I've been enjoying the demo for Songs of Glimmerwick, which goes on sale today.

Crusader Kings 3's By God Alone expansion offers plenty of holy hijinks, even if your polyamorous Pope doesn't get divorced three times in one day

Mark Warren — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 13:27:57 +0000

My very soul has been cleft into pieces on this day. January 3rd, 902 AD. First, my Christian faith fractured in twain. I stand in Rome, head of the Roman Rite and now the leader of the Catholic world. My neighbours to the east have chosen to walk a different path, transforming their Greek Rite into a new Orthodoxy followed by the Byzantine Empire.

It’s a brave new world in Crusader Kings 3’s By God Alone expansion, made even tougher to face by the three additional wounds I gained right at the moment of the split. All three of my wives have divorced me, serving their papers within seconds of each other. Taken alongside the betrothal that my fourth wife-to-be broke not too long before the schism, it really stings. Sure, I’m the Pope and thus should be celibately devoting myself to God, but a breakup’s a breakup. It’s not all consecrated bread and wine when you’ve managed to end up on Wikipedia’s list of sexually active popes thanks to an utterly hilarious bug.

"Ultimately, we asked 'why are we doing this?'": the creators of Arc Raiders wildly underestimated how hard it is to make a live service game

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 12:15:00 +0000

Arc Raiders developers Embark heavily underestimated the challenges of creating a full-blown live service game, executive producer Aleksander Grøndal has conceded in a new interview. The extraction shooter launched with an ambition for monthly post-release updates that ultimately proved untenable, resulting in an exhausted and unhappy team who were "constantly overshooting our capacity".

All the RPS Supporter rewards for September 2026: Model ships, maze cities, and the tyranny of content

James Archer — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 11:48:52 +0000

In case you missed it, September happened. Technically it’s still happening, and we have one more exclusive post for RPS Premium Supporters coming this week, but this time I fancy doing the monthly rewards roundup within the month being rounded up. Lest armoured date pedants infiltrate my flat with breaching charges, and start hitting my shins with their pernickety sticks.

Thanks again to all our Supporters, preem or otherwise, and turbo double-thanks to anyone who filled in our Supporters survey. This has granted us some immensely helpful guidance on how to steer Supp rewards in the future, as well as some important feedback on the site more generally. You’re all, and I don’t say this about a lot of people, da best.

"I always see it kind of like a triangle": The surprising challenge of making the perfectly-sized cave in Satisfactory expansion Core Values

Julian Benson — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 11:15:00 +0000

When I first learned about Core Values, the upcoming expansion to factory automation game Satisfactory, I didn't grasp the scale of the challenge developer Coffee Stain had set themselves. 'So, the game is set underground now?' I thought. 'I'll just stick up some more lights and make the same factory I always have.' Yet, as I covered yesterday, that won't be possible. For a start because you'll need to use new logistics tools to connect your factory buildings – conveyor belts aren't gone, but they're nowhere near as useful as they once were.

Another major difference, though, is a design problem for the developers: how to make a perfectly-sized cave.

"Getting sidetracked doesn’t feel too unnatural": Baldur's Gate 3 Act Two Expansion modder on how they seamlessly fit a "detour" to fight an army into the RPG's plot

Mark Warren — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 10:09:42 +0000

Midway through September, modder SquallyDaBeanz released a solo-developed custom campaign for Baldur's Gate 3 in beta, adding an extra chapter to the RPG's main story. Neatly nestled between the RPG's second and third acts, the mod sends you and your party on a trip through The Chionthar Wilds while the Absolute's Army marches on towards the city the series is named after. SquallyDaBeanz has now offered a bit more explanation as to why they reckon the second section of BG3's established story benefits from having a few more forks in the road before the serious business of the final act begins.

GTA 6 will simulate hurricanes, rainbows and persistent, dynamic clouds, among other efforts to make you stop doing crime and become a weather nerd

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 09:30:00 +0000

Grand Theft Auto 6 features a re-engineered, "more localized and persistent" weather system that ranges in intensity from physically credible rainbows to full-bore hurricanes, according to Rockstar vice president of art for lighting and rendering Owen Shepherd. As ever with GTA, the question is to what extent this will materially affect your doings in the new open world game, but at the very least, it seems like there's scope to pack in the core Bonnie & Clyde routine and become an amateur weather watcher for hours at a time.

With Deadlock's latest updating promising six new heroes, over 10,000 new voice lines and too much more to mention, it's clear Valve are still pretty committed to it

Oisin Kuhnke — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 21:52:15 +0000

It feels weird that Deadlock is technically a game that isn't out yet, doesn't it? You can't even just play it as someone that's never done so, you have to have someone that's already got access to send you an invite. Valve didn't even really acknowledge its existence publicly, and they still sort of treat it as this little secret that everyone's in on. Two years on, though, it's still getting updates, and the latest one arrived today changing… well, a lot.

Sometimes the thing you need is a wonderfully ethereal physics platformer jam game where you are a little round guy with very stretchy arms called Big Stretch

Oisin Kuhnke — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 20:31:51 +0000

I have a working theory that above all other aspects, the Vibe (with a capital V) of a game is the most important thing to enrapture a hypothetical audience. A strong Vibe is not a guarantee of such a thing, this algorithmic world we live in denies us such luxuries, it's just the most important starting point. The Vibe does not look like any one thing, the only rule is that it must elicit a response along the lines of, "now what's this, then?" Big Stretch, a game jam physics-based platformer that features hardly a semblance of assets, feels like it proves that theory to me.

Valve is changing Steam's homepage discounts and events section to go the way of the algorithm to get you to look at, and buy, obviously, more games

Oisin Kuhnke — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 19:09:06 +0000

Go ahead and boot up Steam for me. Underneath the ad banner for whoever paid to be there for that day and the featured and recommended sections, you'll find a section titled discounts and events. As it currently stands, this section is hand curated by Valve to highlight some site-wide relevant sales. But Valve have been changing Steam up a lot in recent years, namely a widening of every aspect of it, and now this discount and events section will move away from being curated to being "more dynamic and personalized for each customer."

"You will not be using belts": Satisfactory's first expansion isn't the same game set underground - there's a whole new set of resource-moving toys to master

Julian Benson — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 18:30:00 +0000

When you start factory automation game Satisfactory you awake in a drop pod plunging towards the surface of an alien world. In its first expansion you'll be heading a little deeper. Set entirely in an underground biome, Core Values sees you trying to build a thriving mining operation in a world that is limited in space and light, where even navigating its tunnels can become a challenge.

Though, the team are keen to emphasise that Core Values isn't just Satisfactory with the lights turned off. It will be bringing a whole new set of logistics tools (and new challenges with them), so getting resources from mining point A to refining point B won't always be as straightforward as just sending them down a conveyor belt.

After trading space babies and running people over with a truck, Strange Scaffold want you to organise a haunted library in Something is Wrong with the Library

Oisin Kuhnke — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 17:02:37 +0000

"At the time, I didn't immediately think my boss was filling the walls of our place of business with corpses," so opens the reveal trailer for Something is Wrong with the Library, the latest game from the studio that is most hard to pin down genre-wise, Strange Scaffold. Though, considering they've made games about isekaing people, trading space babies on the stock market, and cuck-, I mean, Clickolding, perhaps the way you pin them down is "games for freaks and weirdos."

Set up your own ramen bar and explore a voxel cyberpunk city in the slice-of-lifey Nivalis Nights, out now

Oisin Kuhnke — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 16:08:50 +0000

Has the pre-GTA 6 autumn exhaustion hit you yet? There's already been a lot of games this month, but this train stops for no one, especially with Rockstar's behemoth looming over it all. Today is no different, as after a long wait and several delays, Nivalis Nights is finally out, bringing you back to the cyberpunk world of Cloudpunk once again, only with a restaurant managing slant to it all.

The Witcher 3 Songs of the Past sounds like it's mirroring Blood and Wine in being "a lot dreamier" than a "bread-and-butter Witcher story"

Mark Warren — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 15:30:00 +0000

While the cover's flown off The Witcher 3 Remastered today, September 29th, the wait for the RPGs elusive extra expansion goes on until next year. I've had rather mixed feelings on the decision to extend Gerry from the River's tale beyond the execellent ending offered by the Blood and Wine DLC thus far, something that CD Projekt Red's general tight-lippedness when it comes to dicussing story details hasn't helped. They have at least now dropped some crumbs as to how the new expansion will stack up tonally compared to its peers and what it provides space for that the existing game didn't.

I perished in the flesh pipes of Darktide's Depths of the Damned update, and you will too

James Archer — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 15:01:48 +0000

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide continues to cling tightly, perhaps even aggressively, to my Steam installations, my occasionally waning interest repeatedly re-sparked by the addition of akimbo-autopistolling chem fiends or haughty toasterpeople. A live service sucker, it makes me. Today's Depths of the Damned update, the grimdark co-op shooter's biggest since the Skitarii rocked up, continues the trend: it's centered around a massive new mission that's as revolting as it is compelling.

The Tower of Zeldaga is a free retro mash-up of Zelda and Druaga in which you rescue Ganondorf from some evil blonde queen

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 12:40:37 +0000

The recent screening of Nintendo's The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake has proven a thing of existential horror for many grey-haired Zeldenthusiasts. Is that you, Link? What have they done to you, boy? Why do you look like a possessed doll? Where have all your sharp edges gone? Eek, I can see individual divots on Epona's neck.

Rest easy, traveller. Let us play the titular Ocarina and warp back to the good old days. No, not the heyday of the N64 – that three-pronged controller was an instrument of the Devil. I mean the real good old days, when Link looked like a cockroach and hills hadn't been invented yet. But oh, what's this? We have played the Ocarina wrong and messed up the spacetime continuum. We have somehow generated a version of NES-era Zelda that overlaps with another long-lost game, Namco's 60-floor maze RPG The Tower of Druaga - itself a huge influence on the original Zelda games. It appears that Prince Ganondorf has been abducted by the evil queen Zeldaga. That harridan! Time to go questing for some keys.

"A quite beautiful compromise": The LEGO Skylines devs did consider brick by brick building, but decided it was too much fuss for players

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 11:06:25 +0000

LEGO Skylines is the new plastic city-builder from Cities: Skylines 2 and Surviving the Aftermath developers Iceflake Studios, published by Paradox Interactive. I've played an hour or so of a preview build, just long enough to devise a circular highway of coffee shops, glass-fronted houses, unaccountably cheerful farms, and playgrounds poking up haphazardly like fungus. Kind of like the M25, but more rustickal. There's a park in the middle that can't work out which century it's in, with an ornamental fountain every ten paces to baffle the casual stroller.

The Witcher 3 Remastered has scuppered an ambitious cut plague quest restoration mod, but there'll be "something extra" in the update that gets it working again

Mark Warren — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 09:24:20 +0000

Today, September 29th, The Witcher 3 is back on the path in Remastered form. With that remaster bringing a host of tweaks to the decade-old RPG, there was always going to be an adjustment period for the RPG's established mods. One that won't work right out of the gate is the WAR Project - an ongoing effort to restore a plague-themed questline CD Projekt Red abandoned prior to release.

However, the modders behind it have made clear this is just a temporary bump in the trail and promised "something extra" for the update that brings their demo up to remastered spec.

CD Projekt release full updated Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Remastered system specs, including ray-tracing and path-tracing requirements

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Mon, 28 Sep 2026 16:09:49 +0000

CD Projekt have released the full list of PC system requirements for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Remastered, a free upgrade for the base edition of the grizzled and cantankerous fantasy action-RPG. This covers both the previously announced minimum PC specs and the recommended, ultra, ray-tracing minimum, ray-tracing recommended, and path tracing configurations.

Fright Train is the best Call of Duty Zombies alternative I've played in ages, despite starring a dog

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Mon, 28 Sep 2026 15:11:08 +0000

There's been a wave of furry horror games with surprisingly elaborate tactical simulation elements, and when I say "wave", I mean that I'm aware of two. One is Casualties: Unknown, a 2D misericore spelunking experience with an injury system so byzantine it took Oisin multiple paragraphs to work out how to die. The other, somewhat nicer game is Fright Train, a swish B-movie survival shooter in which you are a literal dog soldier, the magnificent Doug Barker.

"We didn't want to demonise fetish or BDSM": People aren't dying in horror game Clive Barker's Hellraiser: Revival because of what they do in the bedroom

Julian Benson — Mon, 28 Sep 2026 12:40:00 +0000

Early in horror game Clive Barker's Hellraiser: Revival, the character you play, Aidan, and his partner Sunny, are pushing the bounds of the sex they enjoy together. Already into BDSM, they discover a puzzle box that, when solved, will allow them to explore a new extreme of their fetish play. However, when they unlock the box it summons a set of torture demons called Cenobites and Sunny is torn to fleshy pieces and sent to hell. From that violent beginning, Aidan bargains with one of the demons of torture to find a way to bring Sunny back to life and be made whole.

Not your average walk in the park – or, if it is, I am deeply sorry for you. (My park is great. There is a duck pond). Nonetheless, it is a good starting point for a horror game based on Clive Barker's horror series.

Still, when I spoke to Hellraiser: Revival's developers I wanted to know if Sunny was being punished for enjoying her fetish.

This week in PC games: new Ace Combat, Transport Fever 3, and a System Shock-alike set on a disco space station

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Mon, 28 Sep 2026 11:41:22 +0000

Happy this week all! ...Ugh, you are all still here. When I went on holiday last week, I was hoping that I'd return to find that the whole "videogame journalism career" thing was just a fleeting delusion brought on by excess consumption of unripe pears. Perhaps I've actually been a wealthy gentleman gadabout this whole time, free of any need to keep the hellmouth topped up with layoff reports in order to stave off deprivation and disaster.

The one consolation - other than EIC Julian's many encouraging facial expressions and hand gestures – is that people are still making new PC games, and a few of them are actually quite interesting! Here's the latest list of new releases.

"We clearly handled that responsibility poorly": Paradox ban Discord profile pics of historical figures born after 1800, after bust-up with Hearts of Iron 4 players over Atatürk banning

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Mon, 28 Sep 2026 09:34:25 +0000

Hearts of Iron 4 developers Paradox Interactive have prohibited the use of Discord profile pictures of historical figures born after 1st January 1800, save for official in-game portraits, amid an uproar caused by a moderator banning somebody for using a photograph of Republic of Turkey founder Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.

Discord server members are still free to "use any official Hearts of Iron IV in-game portraits, including those from after 1800, with the exception of prominent leaders of Nazi Germany," according to a Discord post attributed to game director Laszlo "Batya" Pieper (copied to Reddit). In the same post, Pieper notes that "Paradox never aims to review history or take positions on political figures, and we clearly handled that responsibility poorly."

The Sunday Papers

James Archer — Sun, 27 Sep 2026 11:00:00 +0000

Sundays are for recovering from the friend-of-a-spouse’s wedding you attended on Saturday while suffering from an acute case of Old Person’s Back. Unfortunately, the time for recovery has in fact passed, as you have already moved to the more immediately satisfying phase of assigning blame. Possible suspects: your swivel chair, your mattress, the PC monitor you had to laboriously re-box for transit, your sofa, and that most connviving, spine-bending bastard of all, light walking. Spoiled for choice, you sit down in your untrustworthy chair and begin to read some of the week’s writing highlights instead.

TALON TOWERS is a Fumito Ueda-coded parkour platformer about hopping around massive structures while avoiding falling to your foggy doom

Oisin Kuhnke — Sat, 26 Sep 2026 21:55:08 +0000

If your game immediately makes me think of any of Fumito Ueda's in any sort of way, the likelihood is that I am to play it. There are only so many Ueda games (three, by my count) and there will only be so many (hopefully more that upcoming fourth one isn't the last), so when something rocks up that fits into that vibe like TALON TOWERS, a parkour platformer set on dilapidated structures that stand high above an infinitely stretching fog, I'm going to be pulled in.

Suplex and shatter glass enemies after being in prison for committing a cardinal crime in the psychological horror beat 'em up Brokensides

Oisin Kuhnke — Sat, 26 Sep 2026 20:28:05 +0000

Just hearing that a game has mashed two genres together does not generally excite me. It's a useful shorthand, maybe, but there's only so many roguelike deckbuilders I can take. Once in a while, however, a mashup comes along that makes me think, "well that doesn't seem right," and my ears perk up like a dog that's learned how to spell walk. Today, that mashup comes in the form of Brokensides, a psychological horror beat 'em up where you play as a violent sea bunny recently freed from imprisonment after committing a Cardinal Crime.

Video Game Menu: The Game is all about everyone's favourite gaming pastime: pressing random buttons in the menus and seeing what they change

Oisin Kuhnke — Sat, 26 Sep 2026 17:51:31 +0000

Tense platforming? Riveting, punchy action combat? Complex, thought provoking puzzles? Is this what we come to video games for? Of course not! It's for the menus, those sweet, sweet collections of pixels that let us tailor our experience and commit crimes like turning off the music so you can listen to a podcast you'll only half pay attention to. Well, that's at least what Video Game Menu: The Game will have you believe, a video game about video game menus (perhaps I didn't need to explain it to you, it's kind of in there in the name).

Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty's Chimera tank boss fight was apparently so complex it took two years of "reiterating over and over" to get it right

Oisin Kuhnke — Sat, 26 Sep 2026 16:56:58 +0000

My first thought when I played through the Chimera tank boss fight in Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty was probably something along the lines of, "wow, this sure looks expensive!" It's incredibly flashy to start off with, this Ghost in the Shell-esque tank chasing after you in a big set piece moment that ultimately culminates in it unwillingly hunkering down in one spot for your killing convenience. And as it turns out, such a big, boisterous boss fight takes a lot of work; two whole years, in fact.

"Do 665 runs if you want!": Control Resonant is getting a new game++ mode next month, and don't worry you happy snappers, a photo mode is on the way too

Oisin Kuhnke — Sat, 26 Sep 2026 15:57:33 +0000

A developer's work is never done! On the very same day it launched, Control Resonant received a hotfix that tackled various complaints that were levied against the game's combat, making it slightly more manageable for those having a tougher time. While a fuller update won't be coming until next month, developer Remedy have outlined their plans for the next couple of updates, namely a New Game++ mode, and a photo mode.

What are we all playing this weekend?

Julian Benson — Sat, 26 Sep 2026 07:00:00 +0000

I'm sure I had at least three more sets of Saturdays and Sundays in my September box. That thief time has snuck in again and picked up all the unattended days. If you see him, give him a whack on the back and see if he'll cough them back up again, I'm not quite ready to crack the wax seal on October 2026.

Microsoft's failure to find a home for Ninja Theory voids the one, very tenuous upside to Senua's SGF reveal

James Archer — Fri, 25 Sep 2026 14:04:10 +0000

There’s plenty to dislike about this latest round of corporate-mandated Xbox misery. The hundreds more human beings losing their livelihoods. The embracing of risk-averse factory line development. The fact that nobody, still, knows what on earth is happening with Arkane.

Hytale's Chapter 1 update is all about them goblins, adding its first proper boss and "handcrafted" dungeon in October

James Archer — Fri, 25 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000

After months of smaller patches, Hytale’s early access phase is getting its inaugural Chapter update, confirmed release date and all. Chapter 1 is out on October 12th, and it’s a bundle of (mostly goblin-related) firsts: chiefly the game’s first "handcrafted" dungeon, a gruesome underground lair, and Hytale’s first bonefide boss fight, against a flamethrowing gob-king.

I got whomped by an Ork horde in Total War: Warhammer 40,000, definitely on purpose, to teach you a lesson about positioning

Julian Benson — Fri, 25 Sep 2026 11:05:00 +0000

Demo sessions are often terrible ways to see a game, doubly so at conferences. You want to sink into a game at your own pace (and with unbroken access to fresh cups of tea), not get dropped into the middle of the action, hoisted up again 20 minutes later and plonked into another section of a game. However, that's the nature of these things sometimes and it suits some games more than others.

Total War: Warhammer absolutely does not suit it.

Grand strategy games are built for armchair generals. Not just any armchair, either, a wingback one where the leather on the arms is nearly worn through where said general has rested their elbows in deep contemplation. They're not games made to be played in short bursts. As such, I can't really speak to Total War: Warhammer 40,000's end quality from its Gamescom demo, but perhaps it says something that after an hour where I played 20 minutes of the battle tutorial, 20 minutes of the campaign tutorial, and 20 minutes in a scenario where my Space Marine army faced an overwhelming assault from an ork horde, I still came away keen as the baked beans found in an Astra Militarium ration pack to play the full game.

Colourful JRPG Armed Fantasia has been cancelled, four years after a successful Kickstarter campaign descended into delays and lawsuits

James Archer — Fri, 25 Sep 2026 10:12:53 +0000

Armed Fantasia, a JRPG pitched as a spiritual successor the PS2-era roleplaying series Wild Arms – and led by former Wild Arms producer Akifumi Kaneko – has been cancelled. Digital Bros, the parent company of Armed Fantasia publishers 505 Games, announced in a financial statement that it was one of several games for which "The Group decided to discontinue development," the others being a sequel to F2P strategy game Battle Islands and action RPG Directorate Novitiate, which had already revealed its own demise in May.

Arc Raiders is testing a PvE mode because "a large and growing group" refuse to hunt each other

Julian Benson — Fri, 25 Sep 2026 09:01:56 +0000

Arc Raiders developer Embark Studios is bowing to the pacifists and trialing a PvE mode in their extraction shooter. If you play between October 13th and 20th, you'll be able to flick a toggle that means you load either into the traditional world of Arc Raiders, where human players vie for the valuable scraps left behind in a ruined world watched over by killer robots, or a slightly safer version where the machines are still deadly but the humans can't hurt you.

"We’re seeing a large and growing group of Raiders who come to the Rust Belt for the co-op and the ARC, not fighting with other Raiders," Embark say in the post announcing the trial. "That group has become a core part of our community, so it’s important we learn how to support them properly rather than leave them working around the game."

LOVE alt delete is a Y2K horror visual novel where you use one AI chatbot to help you date another that, don't worry, doesn't use the nasty generative stuff

Oisin Kuhnke — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 21:59:13 +0000

I would hope that for most of you it would not be a controversial thing to hear me say I hate generative AI. It stinks! It is rotting everyone's brains, and the people shilling it don't even care (see Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang saying he doesn't think it matters that kids aren't actually learning things like basic math when they use AI). But - please don't leave yet - it sure does make for some primo storytelling. Like, for example, in the upcoming LOVE alt delete, a psychological horror visual novel where you are beta testing a chatbot that you're trying to date.

I definitely suck at Iron Bramble's metroidvania grappling hook platforming, but its cyber-gothic megastructure world has me hungry for more

Oisin Kuhnke — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 20:34:50 +0000

If it ain't broke, why fix it? That seems to be the thought process behind Iron Bramble, the next game from the devs behind Rusted Moss. Like its predecessor, Iron Bramble is a pixel art metroidvania, one where you have a grappling hook that lets you swing about the place at rapid pace, only this time the setting is a "cyber-gothic megastructure" and you play a story-eating demon (?) woman in a world where humanity's flesh bodies have all died out and their souls now reside in metal, robotic husks.

The future of Marathon includes a fungus-filled Perimeter, a social hub, and a shift "beyond extraction"

Oisin Kuhnke — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 19:07:06 +0000

Marathon will be "growing beyond extraction." That's what Bungie say in a new blog post outlining the future of the shooter, after announcing earlier this week that they'll be bringing back vaulted Destiny 2 campaigns. "Marathon launched as a cutthroat, winner-takes-all PvEvP experience," they explain. "We want to preserve that thrill for the players who enjoy it, while creating more ways for others to experience the world and find the level of challenge that works for them."

Once upon a time The Blood of Dawnwalker's timer mechanic was a lot tougher, and it's because of all those pre-release complaints that it was made easier

Oisin Kuhnke — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 17:57:15 +0000

Right, I need you lot to pipe down for a minute because you're making games less interesting. Last week, The Blood of Dawnwalker director Konrad Tomaszkiewicz shared that the game's timer mechanics may be dropped in future installments of the vampire (eventual) series. This sounds like a boring decision to make if you ask me, as it's the thing that most interests me about the RPG. And now, according to Tomaszkiewicz in a new interview, the timer mechanic was actually toned down based on its early reception.

Control: Resonant is only just out of the door, and Remedy have already put out a hotfix with some stun-buffing combat tweaks and more

Oisin Kuhnke — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 17:36:53 +0000

Control: Resonant is out today, and wouldn't you know it, there's already a hotfix. Though, day one updates aren't exactly new in this day and age now, are they? This particular patch looks like it's laser targeted at comments made in reviews about the game and how dang tough some of its enemies are, to which James would like you to know he says, "Pfft, wimps." Save your snark for him, not me!

Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader's final DLC is now coming in December, with an "unsanctioned psyker" companion who cries tears of blood

Mark Warren — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 15:25:28 +0000

Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader's story-concluding final DLC has been pushed back to December, developers Owlcat have announced. At the same time, they've introduced the companion around which this last expansion, Processional of the Damned, will revolve. Her name's Stella. She's an "unsanctioned psyker", a "miracle sent by the Emperor himself", and is prone to shedding tears of blood.

Discord roll out revised age verification following delay due to pushback, pledging to be "safer for teens, same Discord for Adults"

Mark Warren — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000

Discord have rolled out a revised global age verification system, having delayed deploying one earlier this year following largely privacy-based backlash.

Steam Frame-ready VR rhythm game Beat Saber is adding hand-tracking and a punchy new mode in its "biggest update ever"

James Archer — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 11:32:32 +0000

I’m not saying that the reveal of Beat Saber’s "biggest update ever" was timed to coincide with a swell of VR interest induced by the new Steam Frame. But I am going to infer it, without evidence, before immediately moving on to what the sweaty sword-slashing rhythm game can expect when said update lands in Spring of 2027.

First and foremost is an entire new mode, Flux. This sees Beat Saber ditch the sabers and dial up the beating, demanding your own bare hands punch, prod, and slap their way through notes. A Beat Saber Unarmed build, basically. Looks fun! If probably no less tiring.

Bethesda say new underlings Obsidian will retain their "distinct" creative identity, despite no longer being as free to work on their own creatively distinct series

Mark Warren — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 11:00:00 +0000

Obsidian will remain a "distinct" Obsidian with their own "creative identity and strengths", despite no longer operating independently of fellow Xbox-owned RPG makers Bethesda. That's according to Jill Braff, president of Bethesda and Microsoft's casual games division, in a memo sent to staff at the former following this week's layoffs and reorganising of studios at Xbox.

After eighteen years of jaggedy bowling, a new mod bestows GTA 4 with DLSS and FSR support

James Archer — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 10:30:09 +0000

Rockstar’s modding guidelines, recently updated in advance of GTA 6, say much about how you can’t dream up unofficial story missions, or give the upcoming instalment a cheeky unofficial PC port. But they don’t say a goddamn thing about crowbarring DLSS, DLAA, and FSR into 2008’s Grand Theft Auto IV, which is exactly what ChunkLeChuck’s DLSS IV mod has gone and done.

Following id layoffs, Quake Champions drops free-to-play nonsense and becomes a £9 game on Steam

Julian Benson — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 09:19:58 +0000

After nearly a decade as a free-to-play game, Quake Champions is dropping all that nonsense in favour of being a nice and simple premium release on Steam. That means no more battle passes, no more loot boxes, no more premium currencies. They've even got rid of the store.

If you've played the game through any free events on Steam in the past, then you will be upgraded to a full version of the game automatically. And if you've bought any premium currencies in the past two months will be refunded.

However, while this is a welcome change, it should be seen in the context of Xbox's mission to fire 3200 developers.

The Steam Machine handles Control Resonant capably, but the promised Steam Deck support is a letdown

James Archer — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 15:45:39 +0000

Control Resonant is almost everything I wanted from a Remedy-flavoured character action game, including several sub-things I didn’t initially believe it would pull off. However, one particular ambition has failed to come good: the ability for me to play it in bed. Despite previously expressed plans for Steam Deck support, alas, Resonant needs to render just a bit too much paranturally skew-wiff Manhattan for it to comfortably run on Valve's handheld.

The bigger, beefier Steam Machine is a different story, which is good, because otherwise this would be a very short article. But with Control Resonant lacking any public SteamOS hardware compatibility ratings just a day before release, consider this a warning: it’s a damn fine game, on almost any modern PC that isn’t a Deck.

"This one is especially bad": Steam game about mistreating ragdolls suffers second bout of mod-based malware this year

Mark Warren — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 15:09:11 +0000

People Playground, a Steam sandbox game about torturing or otherwise messing with innocent ragdolls that work like crash test dummies, has had its Steam Workshop disabled over a "malicious mod" peddling malware. That's according to the game's developer Mestiez, who's urging anyone who played the game with mods on September 21st to run virus scans and has told everyone not to fire People Playground up until they've announced it's safe to do so.

Microsoft want to record your face and feed it to a generative AI, telling it to go off and design a game from your frown

Julian Benson — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 12:17:21 +0000

A new patent from Microsoft shows how they want to record your facial expressions, show them to an AI, and have it redesign the game you're playing. It's not only your face they want, but also any words you might be muttering, growls you might be making, or, dare I say, even purrs.

The broader technology described in the patent is a process for game designers to prompt an AI to build out the narrative elements of a game, including objectives, sidequests, NPCs, dialogue, and items. Rather than stop at that first pass, the process would continue when players are in the game, analysing how they're playing to then generate new content based on their actions and reactions.

A quick peek behind the curtain: I, too, am using this technology and the rest of this article has been rewritten to match exactly the facial expression you are making right… now.

Dark Souls 2 seamless co-op mod is out now in alpha form, paving the way for more boss battering with mates

Mark Warren — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 10:52:24 +0000

The latest FromSoft game multiplayer mod is here, with Dark Souls 2 seamless co-op finally out in the wild. Modder Yui, maker of similar and very popular mods for Elden Ring, Nightreign, and the original Dark Souls, has poured a year and a bit of work into their latest creation.

State of Decay 3 studio Undead Labs lay off "a significant number" of "exceptionally talented developers" after gaining independence from Xbox

Mark Warren — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 09:45:00 +0000

Less than 24 hours after confirming they've managed to secure a future outside of Xbox by going independent, State of Decay 3 studio Undead Labs have announced that they've had to lay off "a significant number" of staff as part of that transition. The news follows a second round of mass layoffs this year at the studios still under Microsoft's thumb. Undead Labs were one of the five studios Microsoft announced plans to split with during an initial round of layoffs in July.

Age of Empires studio World's Edge reportedly lose nearly half their staff and a new game project in mass Xbox layoffs

James Archer — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 09:13:14 +0000

Further details have emerged of the impact that Microsoft’s Xbox consolidation and job cuts programme is having on affected workers. World’s Edge, the studio that effectively manages strategy megaseries Age of Empires, has allegedly been hit hard, with an unnamed but verified creative director posting on industry forum ResetEra that "just under half" of all staff had been let go in the process of moving from Xbox’s direct control to Activision’s.

Stuntboost is a Tech Dech, skateboarding platformer all about doing sick flips on cardboard constructs in your bedroom, and it's out now

Oisin Kuhnke — Tue, 22 Sep 2026 21:50:59 +0000

I was not a child that was built for skateboarding. Child me was a tad too wimpy to ever do anything so wicked cool as that. What if I scuffed my knee a little bit, or worse, embarrassed myself? So I did what any skateboarding curious child would do and bought a Tech Deck. And then I never learned how to get good at it. I am only slightly bitter about this adolescent failure of mine, yet all is not lost, for there is an entire video game out today that can let me experience such a feat digitally: Stuntboost.

Furries, magical girls and slick hack 'n' slash combat blend promisingly together in the late 2000s inspired Break The Night

Oisin Kuhnke — Tue, 22 Sep 2026 20:32:44 +0000

Despite not being one myself, I do seem to write about furry-adjacent games for this ole webbed site, don't I? And I've got another one for you today! It's called Break The Night, a hack 'n' slash with slick movement, roguelike elements, and magical girls inspired by aesthetics from the late 2000s, and while it's still quite early days yet, I've been quite charmed by it.

Packed Lair, out today, is a Tetris-adjacent base builder about cramming as much as you can into a tiny evil lair to aid your army in conquering the world

Oisin Kuhnke — Tue, 22 Sep 2026 18:49:01 +0000

Real estate these days! No matter where you look, there's never enough space any more. I imagine this was the impetus for designing Packed Lair, a dungeony fusion of base building, auto battling, roguelikes and Tetris where you play as an evil lord who is trying to cram an entire empire into an incredibly cramped lair that's out today.

Love 'em or hate 'em, if it weren't for the Sonic the Hedgehog films, the blue blur might have been canned entirely, so says series boss Takashi Iizuka

Oisin Kuhnke — Tue, 22 Sep 2026 17:15:10 +0000

I like Sonic. He charms me! But that doesn't mean I'm a fool. I know there are very few of his games that could actually be called "good," whatever that word might mean, I just don't care. Except making not good games, and having a reputation for doing so, will obviously result in waning returns financially. So it isn't a surprise to hear from Sonic boss Takashi Iizuka that, once upon a time, the entire series was at risk of cancellation. Which is where those of you that like the games but hate the movies need to say some thank yous.

Prebuilt Steam Machine faceplate screens are here, delivering decent, surprisingly cheaper alternatives to Valve-approved DIY builds

James Archer — Tue, 22 Sep 2026 17:03:16 +0000

If you own a Steam Machine, and still cling to the misconception that my budget faceplate ideas aren’t good enough for you, you basically have three options for front panel customisation. The first is to grab something off Etsy or suchlike. The second is take advantage of Valve’s open-source Inkterface project to build yourself an E-Ink display, onto which you can electronically daub performance monitoring info. The third is to end up with more or less the same panel as option two, but have someone else make it for you. That’s what arch accessory makers JSAUX are proposing with their Steam Machine E-Ink and Pixel Matrix faceplates, which go on sale today after a few weeks of preening around the case mod scene.

I’ve been using both on my Machine at home, and they’re quite good fun. The E-Ink faceplate, for which I sense the greater internet buzz, is a crisp, tidy little black-and-white panel, while the PixelMatrix trades detail density for colour and retro charm. Both have a few different display modes, switchable in SteamOS’s quick settings menu (via some clever integration with the Decky Loader plugin tool), and while I had to set this up manually, JSAUX say the requisite software will be downloadable via Steam itself from early October. Truly, it’s all the results of a DIY mod and more, conveniently pre-prepared for people who don’t own soldering irons.

Following a strong start, Rebel Wolves line up The Blood of Dawnwalker's first big patch for next month, adding in a new, easier difficulty mode and more

Oisin Kuhnke — Tue, 22 Sep 2026 16:32:13 +0000

After a rip-roaring start for The Blood of Dawnwalker (one that has seen a bit of pushback against its timer mechanic, and an apparent confirmation of a sequel being in the works), developer Rebel Wolves are gearing up for the game's first big update, one that'll introduce a new difficult mode and a suite of improvement, most likely arriving early October.

"I'm still blown away by the amount of talent": Hellblade devs Ninja Theory face closure after Microsoft fail to reach a deal with buyers

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Tue, 22 Sep 2026 16:18:22 +0000

Earlier this year, Microsoft announced that they were trying to sell UK-based Hellblade creators Ninja Theory as part of their steady efforts to siphon larger, shinier doubloons from the Xbox gaming business by laying off thousands of people. Today, they are proposing to close Ninja Theory, having ultimately failed to reach an agreement with buyers, though they're still holding out hope of a happier outcome. The news comes as part of the latest round of Microsoft cuts, which have seen Xbox lay off 268 people and merge several of their best-known studios.

"Good luck today, Halo friends": After years of rivalry, Call of Duty's creators have taken charge of Xbox's defining FPS series amid yet more layoffs

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Tue, 22 Sep 2026 15:18:58 +0000

For decades, Halo developers have resisted the influence of the vastly better-selling Call of Duty shooters. Now, the makers of Call of Duty own Halo. As part of Microsoft's on-going axing-down of their Xbox gaming business, the company have placed Bungie's old FPS in the hands of Activision, while making layoffs at erstwhile series custodian Halo Studios and demoting the latter to a support studio for existing Halo games.

Today's changes might get Xbox a new Halo sooner, but history shows production line development makes for boring games

Julian Benson — Tue, 22 Sep 2026 15:00:00 +0000

When I was younger, I loved Chewits. Each parcel of chewy sugar threatened to tear out a tooth, but their punch of strawberry, blackcurrent, and orange flavour was hard to resist. Left to my own devices, I would take packs of Chewits, unwrap all the sweets, and press them together in the palm of my hand until they formed a single Chewit boulder. The different colours and flavours became indistinguishable but the sheer size and density of the thing was attractive to my inner glutton. The first time I did this, I put the whole thing into my mouth and when I tried to bite down on the sweet mass my jaw became almost glued together by the sugary morass. Panicking, I tried to swallow it down and almost choked, as the formless Chewitts filled my oesophagus. Before I turned completely blue, I was able to cough it back up.

I want to say I only did this once, but it took a good three or four times before I realised squashing things together, while it seems could only multiply each Chewits' amazingness, can actually make a formless mass that will choke you.

So, onto Xbox's plans to consolidate their studios.

Xbox lay off 268 people as Activision take over Halo and Rare, while Obsidian become part of Bethesda, plus Forza and Fable studios merge

Mark Warren — Tue, 22 Sep 2026 14:53:12 +0000

Update, 23/09 at 9:00AM BST: A spokesperson for the Communications Workers of America (CWA) union has provided RPS with the following statement on this round of Xbox layoffs.

I taught an old man new tunes in rhythm-action shopkeeper sim Mr. Records, and now you can try the demo yourself

James Archer — Tue, 22 Sep 2026 13:01:39 +0000

One of the bright spots of a miserably grey Summer Game Fest 2026 was Mr. Records, a mashup of rhythm-action autorunner and casual vinyl shop management by music game specialists Glee-Cheese Studio. I’ve since played a demo – which you can now try yourself on Steam – and was pleased by the apparent confirmation that it can induce that head-nodding, foot-tapping thing that rhythm games should. Big fan, usually, of games that force me into involuntary body movements.

Bungie decide their destiny is to do more Destiny after all, pledging to bring back vaulted Destiny 2 campaigns while declaring that Marathon "needs to evolve"

Mark Warren — Tue, 22 Sep 2026 10:58:45 +0000

Not long after announcing changes to how they'll handle majorly updating Marathon going forwards, Bungie have reversed course on their decision to stop developing Destiny 2 - a move they followed with layoffs. Promising to bring back vaulted bits of Destiny 2 and declaring that the series is "foundational" to their future. A future which they've kicked off with a lot of grovelling for forgiveness.

Xbox reportedly set to lay off hundreds more staff and "consolidate" several game studios in second round of major cuts this year

Mark Warren — Tue, 22 Sep 2026 09:34:07 +0000

After laying off around 1600 people and parting ways with a number of studios back in July, Microsoft-owned Xbox are reportedly set for another round of job cuts and internal upheaval this week.

Nighthawks review – a series of vignettes that sometimes excel but more often falter

Jay Castello — Tue, 22 Sep 2026 08:33:05 +0000

Nighthawks, the 1942 painting by Edward Hopper, is generally described as portraying loneliness. The four people at the diner counter are dwarfed by the empty, cold openness of the street. But the inside of the diner looks warm. One man sits apart, but the other two patrons might be a couple, their hands close. The worker seems to be watching them, perhaps thinking of somebody he’ll return to after his shift. Nighthawks, the 2026 vampire RPG, takes this same sensation, connection in the middle of isolation, and plays it much less subtly. When it works, it manages to tell sub-stories that will stick with me like the glow of a friendly building late at night.

But it doesn’t always work.

"It wasn't a planned thing": Breaking Benjamin singer on his mid-gig Fallout 4 mod promo being down to a broken drum and his love of VR

Mark Warren — Mon, 21 Sep 2026 16:15:21 +0000

Remember when, a couple of weeks ago, the singer of American band Breaking Benjamin was filmed promoting a Fallout 4 first person he'd made via a mid-gig speech about modding community drama? Well, according to Benjamin Burnley, that wasn't some planned tirade, but rather an instance of ad-libbing to fill the dead air caused by a snare drum giving up the ghost. As for why it exists, the answer's largely just that the bloke loves him some VR wandering around Tamriel and The Commonwealth.

Microsoft file patent for a machine learning system that would "train" itself on your playtime to work out when you'll be least annoyed by in-game ads

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Mon, 21 Sep 2026 15:42:51 +0000

Uncle Microsoft's efforts to keep inventing the Torment Nexus proceed apace with a patent application for an in-game advertising system that might use machine learning to read your activities, and work out when you'll be least apoplectic about being suddenly served a giant MacDonalds pop-up.

Virtue and a Sledgehammer will begin battering down the walls and android ghosts of a hometown filled with emotional memories this October

Mark Warren — Mon, 21 Sep 2026 14:47:23 +0000

I dug The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood. It's a game about a fortune-telling witch on an asteroid who designs tarot cards and eventually gets sucked into politics. It also has its own special dildo. The devs behind it, Deconstructeam, are set to release their next game on October 27th. It's called Virtue and a Sledgehammer, and it's about revisiting your hometown to do a bit of trauma-laced DIY - if levelling the place counts as DIY.

Fly between radio outposts inside a murky megastructure in The Hollowing, a follow-up to the brilliant spelunking sim Lorn's Lure

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Mon, 21 Sep 2026 14:00:00 +0000

I loved 2024's Lorn's Lure, the megastructure exploration game with the handsome climbing axes, but it took me a while to get the better of the whole "repeatedly falling and dying" element. I imagine a few megastructure lovers were deterred by this. Fine, says developer Rubeki, here's The Hollowing - another megastructure game set in the same narrative universe, but this time, with an airplane.

"I thought people would leave": Hideo Kojima offers his account of Physint's switch from PlayStation to Xbox, as his studio insist they're in a "healthy, profitable state"

Mark Warren — Mon, 21 Sep 2026 13:28:30 +0000

Hideo Koijima and his studio Kojima Productions have offered a more in-depth version of their side of the story after action espionage game Physint switched publishers from PlayStation to Xbox earlier this month. Kojima claimed PlayStation had tried to cancel the game, with a subsequent report from Bloomberg alleging that an exceeded budget, missed deadlines, and Death Stranding series sales not being as strong as Sony hoped were among the factors which led the console makers to get cold feet.

Now, Kojima Productions have urged people to take those claims "with a dose of scepticism", as Kojima has gone through his version of the events around the jump between publishers.

The Steam Frame’s first post-launch update speeds up charging and ungarbles a mic bug

James Archer — Mon, 21 Sep 2026 12:53:27 +0000

Having launched though the same system of reservations and waitlists as the Steam Machine, the Steam Frame is still navigating that inscrutable void betixt "on sale" and "actually out." Nevertheless, it’s had its first software update, SteamOS 0.3.0, which brings – among other technical tidbits – a microphone bug fix, smoother controller tracking, and "substantially faster" charging to the VR headset. Yeah, nice one Valve. Would have been useful to have that last one when reviewing the thing on a deadline but whatever.

This week in PC games: Control: Resonant, Silent Hill: Townfall, and the history of Western philosophy as a pinball table

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Mon, 21 Sep 2026 11:18:36 +0000

Hello all! Welcome to another week of feeding the Maw, the gluttonous cosmic sinkhole we must keep topped up with videogame news, lest it expand and masticate the entire universe. We're up against it this week, because no less than two RPS writers are taking holiday, leaving the Maw's thousand-ton dumbwaiters and condiment howitzers dangerously understaffed. Senior staff writer Mark is off on Friday - I can already hear the lamentation of various spouses in his on-going game of Crusader Kings 3. Even worse, Edwin, our breathtakingly insightful and ruggedly handsome news editor, is away from Wednesday (note to self: set this article's author field to anonymous, before publishing).

Ahead of GTA 6, Rockstar warn modders against making unofficial main story expansions, unauthorised ports and mods that combine GTA maps

Mark Warren — Mon, 21 Sep 2026 10:46:53 +0000

There still might not yet be a release date for GTA 6's PC port, but Rockstar appear to be preparing for the massive uptick in mods for their games that'll inevitably accompany it. In new modding guidelines posted this month, the studio have expressly warned against a bunch of things modders could do, including building on established storylines from the base game, pulling over bits of older GTAs, and porting the game to platforms it's not hit yet.

Silent Hill: Townfall review - an often inspired, if slightly lumbering trek into the fog

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Mon, 21 Sep 2026 08:26:38 +0000

Once a fictional town in Maine, Silent Hill has broken containment and become a transferable oral history mechanism, offered to videogame developers worldwide as a way of investigating, even celebrating local culture. I'm still in two minds about whether this licensing outreach project, begun with Silent Hill f, is more inspired than it is vampiric. I picture Konami's invitation being pushed under the door of potential collaborators like Mary's letter to James in Silent Hill 2: "in our restless dreams, we see that town... let's touch base there sometime, expand our concepts further."

There's opportunity and peril for any studio who answers the letter: opportunity, because Silent Hill is an uncommonly rich way of thinking about the past, with its parallel realities, monster metaphors, and woozy grounding in both mysticism and psychoanalysis. And peril, because licenses have a way of engulfing licensees, forcing them into a straitjacket of tropes: fog, sirens, antagonists with geometric heads. Thankfully, Silent Hill: Townfall's creators Screen Burn (previously No Code) haven't gotten lost in the murk, though I don't think Townfall is their finest creation, not least because it's overreliant on stealth. Like the makers of Silent Hill f, they've taken what they need from Silent Hill to tell a story of their own.

The Sunday Papers

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Sun, 20 Sep 2026 09:00:00 +0000

Sundays - well, very early Sunday mornings - are for watching a whole queue of hungry wild animals pass your kitchen window, because a neighbour has decided to leave a bollard-sized catfood dispenser outside the block entrance while they're away on holiday. I'm pretty sure the neighbour's cat wouldn't eat from the dispenser even if there wasn't a badger wedged eagerly inside it. She's an aloof and disdainful creature, who hates going near the front door because that's where those stinky humans come from.

Will I try to feed the poor moggy, denied her dinner by a bunch of Farthing Wood rejects? No I will not, because I'm too busy reading articles about videogames, and things that are vaguely in the orbit of videogames. Here are a few of those articles. Look, please stop fretting about the cat. She's perfectly plump and glossy, whereas that badger looks like he hasn't had a square meal since August.

What are we all playing this weekend?

Julian Benson — Sat, 19 Sep 2026 07:00:00 +0000

It's well and truly not summer now. I'm writing this with the lights on because the screen's backlight is suddenly too bright for these eyes grown weak and lazy by the abundance of natural illumination.

In the absence of a new Deus Ex, indie imsim Tokyo Walled City may scratch that stealth 'n' stolen passwords itch

James Archer — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 16:43:02 +0000

From the buzzing tube lights of TGS 2026 emerges Tokyo Walled City, a (deep breath) "stealth action retro-cyberpunk immersive sim with survival horror and RPG elements" in development at indie outfit Grim Ronin. Hey, I like most of those things, and I like rainy, neon Japanese streets, so let’s have a crack at covering an independent imsim without mentioning Gloomwood. Ah, dammit.

Tractor-battling teenage road trip RPG Keep Driving is getting official mod support via Steam Workshop later this month

Mark Warren — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 16:04:09 +0000

Brendy (RPS in peace) liked Keep Driving. Nic (RPS in peace) liked Keep Driving. I (RPS still alive) liked Keep Driving. Julian (RPS currently boss) liked Keep Driving. You, reader, should play road trip RPG Keep Driving if you haven't already. A good excuse to do so is the fact that it's getting official mod support via the Steam Workshop on September 28th.

Single player games might require age verification if they use Steam under EU Kids Act's current draft, according to MEP's senior policy adviser

Mark Warren — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 15:30:00 +0000

The European Commission proposed new rules around how under-15s access the likes of social media, AI chatbots, and online video games earlier this week. The draft legislation is called the EU Kids Act and calls for the setting up of a tiered system governing the types of accounts children under 15 can create to access such services, enforced by mandatory age verification for all users.

The documents laying out the proposal have been officially released, and based on the current wording the Commission have used to define what they class as an online game, it seems single player games that rely on online platforms like Steam for updates, distribution, or even a one-time authentication could be caught in the crossfire. That is, unless the definition is tightened up before the law is set in stone, if it indeed it makes it that far.

Roman Sands RE:Build review: A unique and obliterating blend of resort sim, engineering horror and alchemic ritual

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 15:00:00 +0000

I completed Roman Sands RE:Build late last night, and haven't had nearly enough time to digest it, but I'm keen to help get the word out and energise whatever algorithmic chicanery might contribute to this gorgeous, ugly thing making money. So! Roman Sands RE:Build is two exquisitely grim games locked in a collapsing binary orbit. You should play it, preferably before reading the rest of this review, which is only going to spoil and dilute its squalid magic.