Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Brace yourself, Mr Bond: 007 First Light is getting some pirate king DLC alongside New Game+ and extra TacSim challenges

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Sat, 06 Jun 2026 00:39:39 +0000

Io Interactive's Hitmanly Bond adventure 007 First Light is getting some DLC, and the DLC involves PIRATES. Specifically, it involves pirate king Bawma, played by singer and actor Lenny Kravitz, who makes a fleeting appearance in the main game. In the upcoming DLC, players will travel to the pirate haven of Aleph to help Bawma out with a mysterious request.

What does it involve? Io aren't saying, just yet, but they have published a roadmap for the game's first year of updates. I've hitherto expressed violent objections to the unromantic term "roadmap" in game marketing, but I will let it slide here, because James Bond drives a lot of cars, and presumably consults a map now and then when he isn't dodging bullets. Anyway, let's dig in.

Square Enix reveal Final Fantasy 7: Revelation, the final part of the remake trilogy, coming to PC in 2027

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Sat, 06 Jun 2026 00:04:59 +0000

Square Enix have announced the third part of their Final Fantasy 7 action RPG remake trilogy. It's called Final Fantasy 7 Revelation, and it's out on all platforms including PC in spring 2027. Yep, there's no wait for a port this time. We get to live out the closing act of Cloud Strife's journey and participate in the associated Discourse at the same time as those console gremlins.

The publishers dropped a trailer for Revelation at this year's Summer Game Fest, revealing two additional/returning playable characters - Vincent Valentine and Cid Highwind. They'll join Cloud, Tifa, Barret, Red XIII, Yuffie and Cait Sith on a mission to avert an apocalyptic Meteor spell and defeat swishy bad boy Sephiroth, who is on the brink of godhood. They'll also jump out of airships a lot, in curious echo of the battle royale genre.

Assassin's Creed creator's forgotten fantasy game 1666: Amsterdam will finally release this year, over a decade after Ubisoft ripped it from his fingers

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 23:13:04 +0000

Original Assassin's Creed creative director Patrice Désilets and his team at Panache Digital Games have announced a new version of 1666: Amsterdam, the supernatural history game Désilets once worked on a lifetime ago at THQ Montreal. What's more, the game now has a 30 minute prologue on Steam and the Epic Games Store, with an early access release coming later this year.

"Overwhelming power": Fumito Ueda's giant robot game gets an official title and, wait a minute, is that a gun?

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 22:25:02 +0000

Friends, it is almost time to be very, very sad because a massive metal man fell over and died. Ico and Shadow of the Colossus creator Fumito Ueda has dropped the first proper footage of his forthcoming mech game project, announced back in 2024 with the codename Project Robot. The official title is Gen Atlas.

Ueda and development studio genDESIGN have also shared details of the game's plot and setting. It's described as "a single-player, open-world action-adventure game", and takes place on an abandoned, "living" planet full of derelict machines.

Tupac Shakur joins Snoop Dogg in Stranger Than Heaven, which also has a release date once you've finished getting over the whole dead rapper cameo business

Mark Warren — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 22:10:27 +0000

Right. So. Stranger Than Heaven, the Like A Dragon/Yakuza devs' hop through different decades of 20th century Japanese history? You're probably already aware that Snoop Dogg's in it. Well, a digitally resurrected version of fellow rapper Tupac Shakur's also in it. For reasons. Reasons that I'm sure will be readily apparent when Stranger Than Heaven comes out in January 2027.

"A new hunting ground for the ultimate apex predator" - Alien: Isolation 2 gets its first proper trailer

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 21:52:36 +0000

Creative Assembly and Sega have screened the first proper trailer for Alien: Isolation 2, confirming in the process that the new xenomorph horror game is set on a planet. A planet of windy trees, thick fog, and much wreckage. There is a cage with the bars cracked and bent outward. I'm pretty sure they weren't keeping spare fuel cells in there.

MIA action-adventure Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin resurfaces in the hands of noted katana enthusiasts Platinum Games

James Archer — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 21:40:00 +0000

Platinum Games, the game development studio that evidently are to edged weapon action games what Marks & Spencer are to inoffensive socks, are making a TMNT game. It’s called Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin, it’s being published by Paramount Games Studio, and it’s just been announced as part of Summer Game Fest 2026.

Keener fans of pizza-gnawing reptiles will remember that there was already a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin game in development at Destroy All Humans! remake studio Black Forest Games, to be published by THQ Nordic. Unfortunately, it seems that mass layoffs at the former have taken their toll, and Paramount – TMNT’s rights holders – have asked Platinum to have a go instead. Here’s the teaser trailer for the new version, which doesn’t show much, except that it's likely a close adaptation of the (unusually grim) Turtles comic of the same name.

Capcom announce Resident Evil: Code Veronica remake, a new first-person version of the 26-year-old Dreamcast hit

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 21:26:36 +0000

The zombies are eating well this summer. Capcom have revealed the much-rumoured remake of Resident Evil: Code Veronica, originally released on Dreamcast a billion centuries ago in 2000.

Summer Game Fest 2026 everything announced for PC

Julian Benson — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 17:20:03 +0000

And with that the Summer Game Fest is over. At least, the official Geoff Keighley showcase - there are still many more streams over the weekend. I wouldn't say there were many surprises, but it was excellent to get a first look at games like Alien Isolation 2, Fumito Ueda's genAtlas, and Guild Wars 3.

If you don't want to watch through the full two hours. Below you will find every everything announced for PC at Summer Game Fest 2026.

Guild Wars 3 announced, following some domain digging unearthing a recently updated website and a mysterious teaser from ArenaNet

Mark Warren — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 15:37:45 +0000

Update: Yep, Guild Wars 3's now been announced. No release date yet, but the Steam page is live if you fancy wishlisting. Check out the trailer below:

Is Microsoft's $69 billion Activision Blizzard deal paying off? Xbox boss Asha Sharma says it's "hard to say how to think about those decisions"

Mark Warren — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 12:09:29 +0000

Just under 1000 days ago, or about two and a half years ago if you measure time like a normal person, Microsoft completed their acquisition of Activision Blizzard following a lengthy legal process. It cost $68.7 billion and meant Xbox's parent company now lorded over the likes of Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, and Overwatch. Not a small thing for the corporate behemoth to have done, then. Looking back in 2026, was it a shrewd move? Well, amid some bigging up of the series I just mentioned, current Xbox CEO Asha Sharma has said it's "hard to say how to think about those decisions".

Summer Game Fest 2026 livestream: Join our liveblog for all the main show and Day of the Devs announcements

James Archer — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 10:55:19 +0000

Our annual Summer Game Fest liveblog returns this evening, June 5th, for another up-to-the-minute updatening of all the news, trailers, and announcements unveiled during the Summer of Geoff’s main showcase. And, since it follows straight after, we’re sticking around for the indie-focused Day of the Devs. That’s - hang on - two liveblogs in one. Unprecedented, except for those times we did it before.

Gothic's remake is out today, adding new detail and awfulness to the 2001 RPG's bustling prison world

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 09:50:33 +0000

Hey you! You're finally awake – oh, hang on, I'm thinking of the other fantasy yarn in which you start out as a shackled prisoner. Today is release day for Alkimia Interactive and THQ Nordic's remake of Gothic, the 2001 first-person RPG from Piranha Bytes. It'll be live on Steam in a matter of hours, with a demo still available as of writing.

While much plumped up with expanded questlines, more NPC routines, new traversal abilities and "modernized" combat, it's still broadly the same tale of a bunch of convicts trapped beneath a magic dome, quarrying ore to sell to a king who is waging an endless war against the orcs. That's the king in the intro cinematic, below, looking down at the orc's head in his fist like he can't quite remember how it got there. How long has he been carrying that head? Did he confuse it with his coffee mug at breakfast?

The Steam Machine and Steam Frame are shipping this summer, Valve confirm as the pair join the Verified program

Mark Warren — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 08:54:27 +0000

It's coming home. It's coming to your home (provided you've got the money and desire to buy it). The Steam Machine is coming to homes this summer, Valve have confirmed as they've added both the Machine and Steam Frame to their verified doodads program. Previously ushed back by ongoing RAM shortages, the pair are now following in the footsteps of the already released Steam Controller.

Lexispell is Balatro for people that love spelling bees and hate gambling

Oisin Kuhnke — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 21:54:53 +0000

Game gets popular, games gets clones, that's just how the cookie crumbles. Vampire Survivors, Buckshot Roulette, Lethal Company; as soon as those games blew up, derivatives were a guarantee. This is true of Balatro too of course, a game which has produced so many clones that wildly swing between dealing with gambling in a tactful manner and outright just saying that it's good, actually. So how about a Balatro-like that forgoes the gambling, and asks you to whip out a dictionary instead?

Rust's latest update asks you to say goodbye to your old outdated face and hello to your new, handsome one

Oisin Kuhnke — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 20:33:02 +0000

It's time to say hello to your new face! This would be a creepy as all hell a sentence in just about any other context (perhaps it still is), but I am not a plastic surgeon, I am a person that writes about video games and the things they do. This time, in things that video games are doing, is brought to you by Rust, as it's received an update that gives the player character model a bit of a glow-up.

Development on Prologue: Go Wayback is ending as PlayerUnknown Productions lays off an unspecified amount of staff

Oisin Kuhnke — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 17:56:57 +0000

I guess we're not going to find out what comes after the prologue after all. By that I mean, some bad news came out of PlayerUnknown Productions yesterday. The studio shared a statement on their Dwitter account to share that development on Prologue: Go Wayback is ending, as PlayerUnknown himself Brendan Greene says that he has "reached the limits of how far I can continue to fund this journey in its current form."

Unknown Worlds outline a bunch of incoming small Subnautica 2 updates including predator behaviour adjustments and proximity chat

Oisin Kuhnke — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 17:07:02 +0000

How about a little look ahead at what's apparently coming to Subnautica 2? Following the game's incredibly strong launch that is probably going to force Krafton to pay out that $250 million bonus after all, Unknown Worlds have released another dev log outlining a few details about future updates.

"We didn't have the content needed to do it justice at the time": Helldivers 2 is finally getting a roguelite system Arrowhead experimented with pre-launch

Mark Warren — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 14:45:27 +0000

Late last year, Helldivers 2 creative director Johan Pilestedt briefly teased on social media that Arrowhead had put together a prototype for a roguelite mode which would fundamentally change the shooter. Months on, the studio have properly pulled the cover off said system. It's dubbed Planet Warfronts and is coming as part of a raft of changes/additions to Helldivers 2's intergalactic perma-conflict.

Witcher devs' Project Hadar will make you feel all of the open-world emotions, a new job ad suggests, though sorry it still isn't a cosmic Japanese horror game

Mark Warren — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 12:04:40 +0000

They might have proven they deal in secret extra DLC for decade-old RPGs this year, but for my money, Project Hadar remains the most mysterious game CD Projekt have in the works. It's always there in their financial reports alongside The Witcher 4 and Cyberpunk 2, flaunting its sheer unknowableness. Its creators, meanwhile, have said precious little regarding what it looks like, aside from confirming that it's not one weirdly specific thing: a cosmic horror game set in feudal Japan.

That's left the curious to scour the likes of job listings for various roles on Project Hadar. Previous ones have suggested it'll be a bit action RPG-ish and have melee combat. The latest, spotted by GamesRadar, paints it as being open-world and keen on making you cry.

Star Wars Zero Company release date leaks ahead of Summer Game Fest, and its XCOM-ish star warring isn't too far, far away

Mark Warren — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 10:28:12 +0000

The release date for Bit Reactor and Respawn's XCOM-coded strategy game Star Wars Zero Company has leaked ahead of the Summer Geoffs. Those in the mood to order a squad around in the midst of the Clone Wars before the summer's out are in luck, as Zero Company's only a couple of months away.

Bond rights holders Amazon MGM have "a great relationship" with 007 First Light devs IO Interactive, but say it's "still too early to discuss future projects"

Mark Warren — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 09:33:09 +0000

Update: An Amazon spokesperson provided the following statement to RPS on the company's plans for Bondulence going forwards: "Amazon MGM holds the rights to any future James Bond video games but it’s still too early to discuss future projects. We have a great relationship with IO Interactive and are proud of what we've accomplished together on 007 First Light. Our partners at IO will reveal more about 007 First Light in the near future and we’re looking forward to sharing what’s next."

Original story follows:

"One discovers, one guides, and one strikes the final blow": Ikumi Nakamura's new yokai-hunting game Kemuri is turning co-op into a ritual, somehow

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 16:39:44 +0000

Our chums at PlayStation have shared more about Kemuri, the giddy new third-person action game from a team lead by former Tango Gameworks developer and E3 2019 scene-stealer Ikumi Nakamura. In case you missed the 2023 announcement, it casts you as an athletic yokai hunter swooping and flipping around a "sprawling vertical city". The obvious reference point is Ghostwire: Tokyo, Nakamura's previous and more ponderous yokai-hunting project for Tango. She left the studio before that game's completion, but she appears to have brought a lot of the same inspirations to Kemuri. Here's a video.

God of War Laufey and Wolverine are snubbing PC, as rumoured, but I bet they come crawling back sometime after the launch of PS6

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 15:19:16 +0000

In the recently announced God Of War Laufey, you will not step into the shoes of John Kratos's dearly departed wife Faye. You will not embark on a rollercoaster adventure through a syncretic, pick-and-mix "Everywhen" of dead mythological figures that sounds suspiciously like the backdrop for a future God Of War Smash Bros.

There will be no "intimate, brutal combat", combining the fluidity and juggle potential of God of War's Ancient Greek era with the camera perspective and architectural stylings of the Norse instalments. You will not get to punch people so hard they sneeze their souls out, or lacerate them with a flippity-dippity ribbon sword. You will not get to obliterate a Tibetan dharmapāla, or kick sand in the face of the Egyptian goddess of disease. You will not get to experience this famously masculine series through the eyes of a woman, and never ever shall you befriend a cube of cosmic jelly.

Forza Horizon 6 gets customisable interiors thanks to a modder who couldn't resist swapping the seats of their beemer

Mark Warren — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 14:37:32 +0000

Forza Horizon 6's car customisation, while packing plenty of under-the-hood tweaks and a decent amount of bodykits, isn't as in-depth as the likes of the Need For Speed series usually offer. The inability to mess around with your ride's interior is one of the most noticeable omissions, to the extent it's an area newly-announced racer Clutch is looking to get a leg up on Playground's juggernaut in. In the meantime, a Forza modder's managed to get some basic interior customision up and running on one of Horizon 6's ten million motors.

"The difference is not just that you can’t fight back, it’s that you feel like you shouldn’t": Alien Isolation's lead designer wants you to "respect" the dinos in The Lost Wild

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 12:20:00 +0000

Annapurna Interactive have shared a new trailer and fresh details for The Lost Wild, a survival horror game set on an island of wrecked scientific bases, where dinosaurs have somehow endured into the modern era – a kind of "jurassic park", if you will. Announced back in 2022, it's the work of Great Ape Games, a team of seasoned UK developers with credits at Rare, Hanger 13, The Chinese Room, and Supermassive. The creative director is Gary Napper, who joined in 2025 according to his LinkedIn. Inevitably, the latest press materials focus pretty heavily on Napper's previous experience working on Creative Assembly's Alien: Isolation. Like that game, The Lost Wild challenges you to outwit and evade some dynamic and adaptable enemy AI: you don't appear to have any weapons, so making use of distractions and the environment is key.

The major thematic break from Isolation, according to Napper, is that the developers want you to avoid killing the dinosaurs because they are fellow beings who are just trying to survive. Not like those awful Aliens, who are just metaphors for sex, capitalism and the Vietnam War.

Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis studio have used "AI-assisted tools" during development, but swear "any AI-assisted assets were either replaced or refined by humans"

Mark Warren — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 11:50:00 +0000

Tomb Raider: Legacy Of Atlantis's fresh trailer during last night's PlayStation showcase came with the news that its release has been pushed back to February 12th, 2027. Alongside that, the game's Steam page has been fleshed out a bit more, including the addition of an AI generated content disclosure notice.

Control Resonant release date? Yeah that's nice, now move aside so I can look at its system requirements and ohhh that's a lot of SSD space

James Archer — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 11:18:26 +0000

Control Resonant, Remedy’s first foray into hacky and slashy character action, has a release date: it’s September 24th 2026, and there’s a new story trailer to prove it. Another case of the games industry playing Dodge the GTA 6? Maybe, maybe not, though this September is getting awfully crowded, with Konami just announcing that Silent Hill: Townfall is out on the very same day.

Either way, dates are okay and everything, but I’m more concerned with Control Resonant’s system requirements, which have quietly appeared on the game’s Steam page with no apparent mention elsewhere. And, well, hope you’ve got 100GB of free SSD space.

Texturetown is a Frankenstein's MMO created by remixing Club Penguin, Pirates of the Caribbean Online and other dead MMOs

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 09:45:00 +0000

I've really been getting into videogame collages, lately – projects like Funi Racoon, a verminous cache of Windows 95 desktop materials and Easter Island sculpture, and Water Level/b.l.u.e. EXPLORATION, a "plunderludic" in which Dark Souls, Super Mario 64, and Kingdom Hearts swim through each other. To that short list add Texturetown, "an algorithmically remixed MMO created from assets of now-defunct mid-2000's children's MMOs", devised by LA-based academic Aidan Strong. It's an eerie, dysfunctional homage to an early noughties gold rush in online spaces for kids, a Backroom-style memorial to abandoned servers and the youthful experiences they once facilitated. God, I'm old.

Marathon season 2 launch plagued by anteaters, monkeys and weasels, with Bungie dishing out free gear to say sorry for the server issues

Mark Warren — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 09:12:49 +0000

Watch out! An unruly gang of animals have been accosting Marathon right as its season 2 update has gone live! Developers Bungie have been hard at work getting the creatures under control, and have promised to dish out some free gear to affected players as a make good.

Rayman Legends was a timeless 2D platformer with beautiful art, but I'll grudgingly admit that its remake is an improvement

Julian Benson — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 22:00:00 +0000

In my memory, Rayman Legends is a timeless classic. Released in 2013, it arrived at a moment when Ubisoft were becoming best known for po-faced games like Assassin's Creed and innumerable Tom Clancy spinoffs, yet Rayman Legends was a gorgeous 2D platformer brimming over with silliness and slapstick that showed off the publisher's creative talents and uniquely French humour.

So the news that Ubisoft is remaking it as Rayman Legends Retold, dropping its 2D art for 3D animation was not well received in the Benson household, I can tell you.

Silent Hill: Townfall wants you to "fear the truth behind the static" when it arrives in September

Oisin Kuhnke — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 21:59:09 +0000

Here's the thing. When Konami announced that Silent Hill was making a comeback with not only a remake of its most beloved entry, but two new games from different studios, I felt quite curmudgeonly about it. I still do about that Silent Hill 2 remake, to be honest. Unfortunately, I thought that Silent Hill f was actually quite good, so good that here I am almost a year later still thinking about it. All of this is to say that hearing Silent Hill: Townfall, the slightly Scottish take on the series, now has a release date is just that little bit tantalising.

Copy animals' movements to turn into them, or fuse them to travel further in Mimic Meadows

Oisin Kuhnke — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 20:43:05 +0000

I want you to look me dead in the eyes and tell me you've never copied the way an animal moves in your life. Just try to, I'll know you're lying. I know you've hopped like a frog, flapped your arms like a bird, ran on all fours like a dog. It's fun! How about a video game where you sort of do the same thing? Well, I've got one in my pouch called Mimic Meadows, a puzzle game in which you copy the movement of animals to transform into them.

Dungeon Lurker's crunchy, grimey pixel art hides a metatextual secret beneath its roguelike, dungeon crawling veneers

Oisin Kuhnke — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 18:07:34 +0000

Dungeon crawlers conceptually appeal to me as a genre, but I've never quite found one that I've entirely clicked with. I'm talking oldschool dungeon crawlers here, where you take each step as it comes. I want to crawl some dungeons! Perhaps just not like that. Hopefully, Dungeon Lurker, with its crunchy dark fantasy pixel art and muddy, deep sound effects, will be able to make the difference.

Pick your favourite Greek god and build a metropolis in their name in the strategy city-builder Theos: Cities of Myth

Oisin Kuhnke — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 17:03:16 +0000

Fancy devoting your entire existence to the whims and desires of a variety of Greek gods? Sure you do! At least in the safety of your digital blanket that is your Steam library. To do such a thing, you'll be wanting to check out Theos: Cities Of Myth, an upcoming city-builder where you do just that, all in service of pleasing those fickle deities.

Turn-based RPG Entropy offers up a world abandoned by the gods that looks like a PS1 game fished from a toilet

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 16:31:50 +0000

An hour into Entropy, the new turn-based RPG from Dread Delusion studio Lovely Hellplace, I stumbled on three randos frenziedly interrogating a severed head. In theory, the head belonged to a demon, one of the hellspawn who had recently laid the realm to waste, but the bystanders seemed… ambiguous on this front. I wasn't really in a position to judge: by this point in the demo, my party had already hacked a number of arms off, and in any case, many of Entropy's demons are rogue body parts to begin with. One of the early enemies is a walking pair of lungs, for example. You can shoot it in the windpipe to stop it casting spells.

Marathon season 2 kicks off with a "PvP-lite" mode that sounds more like a sidestep for those after PvE

Oisin Kuhnke — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 16:03:52 +0000

Marathon season 2 kicks off today, acting as a fresh start for every single person who's played so far with its complete wipe of all gear. For this first week of the season, it's also going to be free-to-play for anyone, clearly a big plea for those that haven't yet tried it out to give it a fair shake. To do that, Bungie will be doing their first test that eases up on the challenge by offering a "PvP-lite" mode called Sponsored Survival.

Silver Pines is a rotoscoped side-scrolling survival horror game that splices Silent Hill with Flashback, and it's out on October 8th

Julian Benson — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 15:31:00 +0000

Set in a town that's equal parts Silent Hill and Twin Peaks, Silver Pines puts you into the gumshoes of private investigator Red Walker as he tracks down missing musician Eddie Velvet. The investigation hits a slight hiccup when ravenous monsters that want to eat your flesh down to the bones start to impede your enquiries.

We've known about the sidescrolling metroidvania for a while, but it's now got a Steam demo you can play and a release date you can hunger for. October 8th, the creepiest 8th day of the month in the year.

"What the f*** do I pay you for if that’s your opinion?" Gabe Newell reportedly once shouted at one of Valve's Lionel Hutzes during Steam porn debate

Mark Warren — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 15:02:40 +0000

Valve boss Gabe Newell reportedly once yelled "What the f*** do I pay you for if that’s your opinion?" at the company's general counsel Karl Quackenbush during a debate over allowing pornographic media on Steam. Quackenbush is claimed to have been arguing in favour of more stringent content moderation on the platform.

Time to Wake Up is an eye-catching puzzle adventure where your surroundings shift with every blink

James Archer — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 15:00:59 +0000

I am intrigued by Farsight, a nervy (if trendily) liminal space explorer announced at Not E3’s Horror Game Awards Showcase. It tugs on a fear I’ve never had, but will probably start thinking about at every future Specsavers visit: being dragged into that distant red-roofed house shown in optometry exams, and hunted by the spooks within.

However, I’ve also recently been made aware of another first-person, eye-related psychological indie thriller, Time to Wake Up. And, well, this one has a Steam demo, so...

Mym's Sword is a delightfully ominous Zelda-style action platformer with magic rings and knife-wielding raccoons

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 14:30:31 +0000

In curious Zelda-flavoured action-platformer Mym's Sword, you are a blue dog who fell through a cavern roof into a temple containing a magic sword. The dog's name is Nora. Who is Mym, then? Possibly some kind of ancient evil, which you are on a quest to awaken, "for better or worse".

To unlock the sword's secrets, you'll need to visit three twisty ruins, scattered across five areas comprising around 300 single screen rooms. There are also magic rings that confer boosts such as greater odds of a health heart drop, but as a digit-deficient canine, you'll need to collect "helper's hands" before you can equip those rings. Gosh, that's a bit creepy. Bad dog?

After a week of playing on nothing but Panther Lake laptops, it's safe to say that Intel has its gaming mojo back

John Loeffler — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 12:30:24 +0000

Intel have had a bit of a wild ride as of late. In many ways, the past two years have been some of the roughest in the company's history: a massive, multi-billion dollar quarterly loss back in 2024 was enough to cost then-Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger his job, and their flagship Core Ultra 200S desktop chips have fallen flat in games, ceding even more ground to archrival AMD.

There are still some bright spots, however. After the relative success of Intel's Lunar Lake laptop processors in 2024, their successor family of Panther Lake CPUs - or to use the official name, Core Ultra Series 3 - is being heaped with praise from nearly all quarters. Not least thanks to the integrated Arc B390 GPU, which on paper, promises the same gaming power as a discrete Nvidia RTX 4050. Having a few of these laptops on hand, I decided to test Panther Lake's chops for myself by spending a full week with them as my everyday games machines.

Crimson Desert's forgettable story will undergo tweaks to "strengthen the narrative flow" in the coming months, as Pearl Abyss tease proper DLC

Mark Warren — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 11:46:45 +0000

Crimson Desert developers Pearl Abyss have outlined the tweaks they plan to make to their very wide open world game between June and September, as part of continued and relentless efforts to morph it into a shape which can please everybody. Notably, they say they'll be acting on feedback about Red Pudding's rather forgettable story with some changes designed to "strengthen the narrative flow" and stop people falling asleep mid-cutscene. They've also teased some more substantial DLC coming further down the line.

Former Forza Horizon devs reveal Clutch, an open-world racer that blends classic battles for first place with the gadget-infused spectacle of action movie car chases

Mark Warren — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 10:53:15 +0000

Maverick Games, the studio helmed by Forza Horizon 5 creative director Mike Brown, have revealed the story-led open-world driving game they've had in the works for a few years now and that's no longer being published by Amazon. It's called Clutch, and blends traditional Horizon-style road and street racing with a story that works in some action movie-esque chases with the police.

Subnautica 2 update kicks off creature tweaks by making Marrowbreaches and Nibblers more dangerous, but easier to outfox

Mark Warren — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 09:16:46 +0000

Last week, Subnautica 2 developers Unknown Worlds held their hands up and said that players seeking a means to kill dangerous fish was down to the survival game's tools for avoiding and outfoxing such creatures not feeling as effective as they should. Cue tweaks to creatures and their behaviour aimed at addressing the issue, which have started to arrive with Sub 2's latest hotfix.

"Flip the script": Capcom veteran casually pitches a Resident Evil 'creature collector' about curing the undead

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 16:43:30 +0000

Capcom director Kenji Oguro has been chatting to Very Gary Computing about new spin-off Monster Hunter Stories 3: Twisted Reflection, which he describes as “the JRPG the team always wanted to make”. It's an interesting chinwag, not least for how it maps out differences between expectations aimed at Capcom's role-playing efforts and the older Final Fantasy series (short version: older fans are more set in their ways).

There's also a fun segment where Oguro bandies around the idea of a comparable spin-off for Resident Evil. He envisages it as something of a creature collector, like Monster Hunter Stories, but instead of collecting monsters, you're curing them.

Former Dragon Age lead says product placements could help combat "overreliance on microtransactions" and I agree because every game should make you pick a watch colour

Mark Warren — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 16:23:26 +0000

Video games should investigate dabbling in product placement as heavily as some movies do, just in case it can help provide an alternative to live-service monetisation via microtransactions, former Dragon Age director has suggested. Yes! Yes, I say, because every single game should follow 007 First Light's lead and force you to choose between seven different colour variants of the same branded timepiece.

I'm serious, this is what the industry needs. The time is now. Everyone must pick a watch!

Minesweeper: Next-Gen adds layers of unholy tessellation and recursive sorcery to a blameless cult classic

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 15:10:00 +0000

Once upon a time, Minesweeper was a deceptively simple logic puzzler you'd find bundled on many Windows PCs, but "deceptive simplicity" ain't enough for today's Maximum Gamer, whose brain has been honed through years of multiple browser tab usage to operate in 10450302 dimensions at once. And so I give you Minesweeper: Next-Gen.

It's broadly the same process of trying to clear a board of hidden explosives, with numbers on cleared tiles indicating the number of bombs nearby. But these boards - they are decidedly eccentric.

Baldur's Gate 2 remake reportedly in development at Wizards of the Coast, possibly alongside a revamp of the first game

Mark Warren — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 14:38:29 +0000

Update: "We do not comment on speculation or rumour," Wizards of the Coast said in response to RPS' reachout.

Original story follows:

A remake of Baldur's Gate 2 is reportedly in the works at Wizards of the Coast, potentially as part of efforts to remake both of the first two entries in the classic RPG series.

"Make the past less permanent": Tattoo Removal Simulator is a surprisingly poignant take on the PowerWash clean-up genre

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 14:02:10 +0000

If you are constantly looking at folk with tattoos and thinking 'god, I wish I was charismatic and brave enough to get a tattoo – maybe then people would take me seriously/sleep with me more', please spend a few moments playing Tattoo Removal Simulator, a game of whimsical cosiness and regret.

Factorio's next major update will be a swansong, as Wube Software "shift the focus onto long term support" and new projects

Mark Warren — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 12:20:00 +0000

Clunk. Kachunk. Thunk. That's the sound of Factorio's last major update being smushed into shape, before the factory sim is left ticking away in the background while devs Wube Software turn their attention to new projects. Yep, following ages in early access and some chunky DLC following its full release in 2020, Factorio'll only recieve minor tweaks once this last big update arrives.

Nvidia unveil their first all-in-one laptop processor, with support for DLSS, ray tracing, frame gen, and all those other RTX features you love and hate

James Archer — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 11:48:39 +0000

After years of whispers around Nvidia maybe, possibly, perhaps getting into CPU-making, they’re making it official with RTX Spark: a fully integrated laptop SoC (System on a Chip), coming to thin 'n' lights in Autumn this year.

Unsurprisingly, given the source of Nvidia’s trillions, RTX Spark has a big focus on agentic AI work, the official descriptions of which are so inducive of malaise that I can’t even bring myself to copy them in from the press release. But there is plenty of note for those who’d use their lightweight laptop to play games, as the SoC’s graphics processor is based on the same Blackwell architecture as Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 50 series of standalone graphics cards. That means it’ll support DLSS 4.5 upscaling, Multi-Frame Generation, ray tracing, Reflex, and G-Sync, all hitherto unseen (or at least extremely rare) on what is essentially integrated graphics. Unless you count the Nintendo Switch 2. And round 'ere, we don’t.

Tekken 8 game director bids goodbye to Bandai Namco following series boss Katsuhiro Harada's exit last year, but doesn't do an hour-long DJ mix

Mark Warren — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 10:50:49 +0000

Tekken 8 game director Kohei Ikeda has left Bandai Namco, kicking his way through an exit door that had long-time series producer and general advocate for the virtual graps Katsuhiro Harada pass through it late last year. Harada's since set up a new studio, dubbed VS Studio, under Fatal Fury publishers SNK. All Ikeda's said about his future plans so far is that he'll "continue taking on new challenges as a game developer".

This week in PC games: Summer Game Fest, the Gothic remake, and the policing of furry Chicago

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 10:21:41 +0000

Last week, I blithely commented that the Maw was "taking a break", because we had too much else to do besides feeding our resident cosmic newsbeast. We have now paid a grievous price for my negligence. Friends, I am horrified to report that the Maw has broken containment and eaten Geoff Keighley, the face of Summer Games Fest. In the process, it may also have devoured the very concept of the future.

Time has lost its gradient, and the harvest may never come. Without Geoff, there will be no barrage of hundred-thousand-dollar game trailers and announcements on June 5th, to spin us through the shambles of another year. There can be no Highguard 2. There will be no surprise celebrity cameos, for surprise requires change. In vain shall the children of Gamers ask, "what precise ratio of smart-casual is Mads Mikkelsen favouring right now?" I offer the below list of new PC game releases largely in memoriam for a "this week" that may never truly unfold.

Fable's delay into 2027 is the right move, but it'll make looking through the window bars at GTA 6 on consoles slightly more painful

Mark Warren — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 09:30:44 +0000

Ah, the Fable reboot isn't coming out in 2026 after all, then. Rumours had suggested the wind was blowing in that direction and Xbox exec Matt Booty chose to interrupt last Friday's chill vibes to confirm that a delay to February 2027's now been set in stone, ripping the plaster off ahead of the impending Summer Geoff Fest. While almost certainly a shrewd move on Playground Games' part, Fable's slip from the autumn slate still sucks if you're, say, on the platform this November's flashiest arrival isn't hitting yet.

The Sunday Papers

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Sun, 31 May 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Sundays are for stumbling upon a ruined church, squirrelled away among the hawthorns behind a currently active church in the neighbourhood. I was flabbergasted – I've walked past that churchyard a thousand times without noticing. In this case, I just happened to take a different route around the cemetery. The old church is roofless and barred, but I managed to thrust my phone through a grill and take pictures of a peaked mausoleum, squat in the middle of the transept crossing, together with the coruscating beehive thumbed into the arch of one window. Magic. Anyway, here are some articles about mostly videogames.

007 First Light review - a flowing thriller that blends occasional sandboxy spying into an exotic rollercoaster ride

Mark Warren — Sat, 30 May 2026 09:00:00 +0000

007 First Light is built on the bones of IO Interactive’s Hitman, and makes no effort to hide that fact. But it’s far from just Agent 47 in a wig and doing his best posh English boarding school accent. The section that properly convinced me of this, ironically, is when First Light gets closest to resembling one of Hitman’s murder sandboxes.

What are we all playing this weekend?

James Archer — Sat, 30 May 2026 07:01:00 +0000

This weekend, I’m going to a not particularly good football stadium to watch assorted famous people play not particularly good football. No, not the average [team you don’t like] match, but Soccer Aid. Why isn’t there a Games Aid, huh? Oh, there is. And they do great work, from the looks of it. Maybe one day we’ll use our own games-playing powers for good, but for now, it's just the following:

Catch the scalpers who get rich flipping Pokémon TCG cards in this very vindictive shop management game

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Fri, 29 May 2026 17:14:02 +0000

You're A Scalper, Aren't You? is a collectible card shop management sim dedicated to punishing the terrible, awful, no-good people who buy up popular or hard-to-find cards, and sell them on at massively inflated prices. Certainly, it's one of the more vengeful job sims I've encountered lately. Think Papers, Please, but instead of weaselling out subversives, you're putting the squeeze on folks who are trying to make a killing from Pokémon's Prismatic Evolution packs.

"They have the biggest bullsh*t detectors on the planet": How the unlikely EVE Online x Google DeepMind AI partnership landed with players

James Archer — Fri, 29 May 2026 16:30:00 +0000

The impact of generative AI upon PC gaming has proven controversial, which is my balanced journalist way of saying it’s been horrible. Players are widely repulsed by genAI material, developers and even some publishers are increasingly wary of its temptations, and in a rush to build the requisite infrastructure, component shortages have ravaged the hardware market. Nonetheless, EVE Online devs Fenris Creations – formerly CCP Games – have become dead keen on robot brains, and what they might be might be able to think up for EVE itself.

Earlier this month, a newly independent Fenris announced a "research partnership" with Google DeepMind, the search giant’s AI research division, that would see DeepMind take a minority stake in the company while training its AI agents on a separate, offline version of the longstanding space MMO. Days later, Fenris CEO Hilmar Veigar Pétursson sat onstage with DeepMind co-founder Adrian Bolton at the annual EVE FanFest conference to discuss the partnership, in a presentation that left the concrete plans of what it means for EVE still broadly vague – yet seemingly against the run of wider sentiment, escaped any significant backlash from the game’s historically outspoken playerbase.

007 First Light's launch bugs and fixes prove disappointingly short on material for James Bond quips

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Fri, 29 May 2026 15:53:06 +0000

I fired up the launch patch notes for Io Interactive's 007 First Light hoping to find some rich material for James Bond quips. You know, like when James Bond beheads a villain with a skillet, then says something like "I always suspected you were… small fry." Or when James Bond murders somebody during an egg-and-spoon race, then says "You're cracking me up, my dear sir."

Alas, developers Io Interactive have let me down. The game's first hotfix is a bunch of routine but important-sounding fixes for various crash bugs. For example, it fixes a crash that occurs during a cutscene where Bond and Moneypenny enter an elevator. "Elevator crash bug" – what am I supposed to do with that? Hang on, do elevators also crash??? I need to stop using those things.

"Stay on target": Helldivers 2 gets a big performance patch with upscaler support, but it isn't working brilliantly for everybody

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Fri, 29 May 2026 14:48:15 +0000

Helldivers 2 has a new update that aims to improve the extraction shooter's performance, a source of some woe lately among Super Earth's democracy-managers. It introduces support for upscalers – specifically, FSR 3.1.5 (with FSR 4.0.3 for certain GPUs), DLSS 4.5 and XeSS 3.0 - together with variable rate shading and dynamic resolution scaling.

Sci-fi RTS ZeroSpace combines StarCraft with Mass Effect RPG choices and look, they've got a Homeworld guy doing the mechs

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Fri, 29 May 2026 14:04:24 +0000

If you have been hankering for a new scifi singleplayer real-time strategy game - specifically, one in which the charm of your human protagonist is inversely proportional to the quality of the mechs - spare a few moments for ZeroSpace. A collaboration between Starlance Studios and Ironward, it puts you in charge of a galactic "Protectorate" army made up of units from various species or factions, and invites you to splattergun swarms of grumpy arachnids, while navigating "through political turmoil in the Orion sector". It's out in early access on 20th July.

The Witcher 4 is the work of over twice as many CD Projekt staff as The Witcher 3, in a fresh display of how blockbluster team sizes have ballooned

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Fri, 29 May 2026 11:20:38 +0000

The Witcher 4 is the work of over twice as many CD Projekt developers as The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, the company's executives have revealed. That's approximately as many people as worked on Cyberpunk 2077, although naturally, the figure excludes a lot of external or infrequent contributors, such as voice actors.

Stop Killing Games-backed bill that'd bar publishers from switching off game servers without thinking of players passes California State Assembly vote

Mark Warren — Fri, 29 May 2026 10:00:00 +0000

A Californian bill backed by the Stop Killing Games campaign, which would see publishers shutting down servers for online games forced to provide full refunds or a version of the game players can keep on playing independently of said servers as part of the process, has hopped another hurdle. It's passed a full vote in California's State Assembly, paving the way for it to head to the state's senate as it inches closer to becoming a fully enacted law despite opposition from the Entertainment Software Association (ESA).

Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era is getting a roguelike mode, a Thieves Guild, and a sprawling underworld with unique terrain

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Fri, 29 May 2026 09:17:41 +0000

Before I tell you about the Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era early access roadmap, I fear I must finally have a tantrum about the terrible word, "roadmap". Videogame developers, I cannot think of a more flattening, soul-sapping way to describe the process of tinkering with the clockwork of make-believe.

In this case, Unfrozen are planning to add a persistent netherworld to their strategy RPG, stretching beneath every mountain and valley. They are also even now convening a Thieves Guild for surveillance purposes, and breeding unspecified monsters as powerful as lich dragons. If I were going to summarise all that, I would toy with words like Cornucopia or Manifestation or Eruption or Blight. I would go rooting around in the Epic of Gilgamesh for a line that sounds vaguely like a hotfix. Roadmap? You are cultivating a fantasy, Unfrozen, not paving one over. From now on, the only game developers who are allowed to use the word "roadmap" are people who are making games about actual infrastructure. Anyway, let's dig into the Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era early access cornucopia.

Amidst ongoing legal proceedings, Rockstar devs have publicly formed a union with the IWGB

Oisin Kuhnke — Thu, 28 May 2026 22:17:49 +0000

Last year, more than 30 Rockstar Games staff members were fired in an act of alleged union busting by the GTA 6 developer. Rockstar claimed that this firing was because said devs were leaking features from upcoming games. Following this, the UK's IWGB filed legal claims against the studio due to them supposedly refusing to negotiate over firings, a case which continues on to this day. Now, Rockstar devs have gone public with their union, calling themselves the Rockstar IWGB Game Workers Union.

Red Frame is a Witnessian puzzle game where every red frame you find has a conundrum for you to solve

Oisin Kuhnke — Thu, 28 May 2026 20:32:26 +0000

There are plenty of philosophical critiques to be had of The Witness (and its creator at large), but there was something still quite appealing about the idea of a world harbouring puzzles in unexpected places. Thankfully, there's a new one of those on the way that can knock The Witness off of its podium called Red Frame, a time manipulation game set in a buried mansion where if you can see something that might look like a red frame, you're certain to find a puzzle.

Here's a choose your own adventure RPG from a former Capcom dev who spent six years in a remote Japanese mountain village making it

Oisin Kuhnke — Thu, 28 May 2026 18:07:23 +0000

I wonder if enough thought has been put into where a game gets made. There is surely a special quality in other art forms like film where you might be whisked away to another country, or in theatre where you construct a world on a stage. Games mostly get made in office buildings, which isn't particularly magical sounding. What about a remote Japanese mountain village? Well, this is exactly what Yoshio Nishimura did, a former Capcom and Vanillaware devs with 30 years of experience. Enter stage left: Veritas Tales: Witch of the Dark Castle.

The Remake of the End of the Greatest RPG of All Time, out today, wants you to figure out what the greatest RPG of all time really is

Oisin Kuhnke — Thu, 28 May 2026 17:17:03 +0000

Have you played The Remake of the End of the Greatest RPG of All Time? I mean, you have to, right, it's The Remake of the End of the Greatest RPG of all Time! Or so the video game named The Remake of the End of the Greatest RPG of all Time (or TROTEOTGOAT as I'll refer to it henceforth) would present itself as, anyway, an investigative deluge of several genres that is out today.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, not to be confused with Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, sees North Korea invade South Korea

Julian Benson — Thu, 28 May 2026 16:24:36 +0000

By this point, I'm convinced the Call of Duty series is a sick experiment testing the limits of mass deja vu. Infinity Ward, the makers of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare have just announced their new game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4.

This new game has a linear campaign that sees North Korea bombard South Korean capital Seoul before launching a land invasion of the city. In one strand of the campaign you'll play as a South Korean soldier repelling the invasion, in another you'll play as a North Korean soldier on the other side of the battle, and in a third series regular Captain Price is off causing a ruckus.

Planet Zoo 2 is on the way later this year, adding in aquatic animals as a big win for mola mola lovers

Oisin Kuhnke — Thu, 28 May 2026 16:23:58 +0000

Truth be told, in the leadup to the proper reveal of Planet Zoo 2, with developer Frontier Developments not so subtly teasing it, my immediate thought was, "didn't that come out already?" Apparently not! For Planet Zoo 2 has in fact now been revealed, and is yet to be released. An announcement trailer shows it off a touch, though not in any mechanical detail, and to be honest my fight or flight is being set off by the human zoo visitors in a way I don't want to sit with.

Bungie are making it easy for you to try Marathon by launching its new season with a free week, right when veteran players lose all their best gear

Julian Benson — Thu, 28 May 2026 14:27:43 +0000

I hear that some of you aren't playing Marathon yet. Maybe extraction shooters aren't your jam, or there's not enough about Bungie's game to draw you away from your shooter of choice, or maybe you're just sick and tired of a certain portion of the internet yammering on about Marathon like it's the bee's-freaking-knees of multiplayer games. Now, if you fall into that latter camp, I have particularly good news for you. For one week only, you will be able to drop into Tau Ceti and wipe the smile of those yammerers' faces without buying the game.

Bungie are kicking off Marathon Season 2 with a free week. Importantly, that free week coincides with an account wipe for all players, so even though you will be going up against people who have had a couple of months in Marathon already, they won't be packing any of their best loot or top level skills.

(It's also a great chance to try a really very good shooter that you might have been interested in.)

Krafton have reportedly agreed to pay Subnautica 2's devs that $250 million bonus, following strong early sales

Mark Warren — Thu, 28 May 2026 10:29:05 +0000

Subnautica 2 publishers Krafton have reportedly agreed to pay the up to $250 million earnout to Unknown Worlds' devs, this being the bonus which was a major point of contention in the legal dispute between the former and the three Unknown Worlds bosses who were ousted last year. Unknown Worlds CEO Ted Gill was reinstated as a result of the ensuing legal action, paving the way for Sub 2's early access launch this month.

The Steam Deck OLED's price hikes have killed its status as the best deal in PC games hardware

James Archer — Thu, 28 May 2026 10:01:00 +0000

Ongoing memory chip shortages, caused by a proliferation of AI-huffing data centres, continue to make PC games hardware scarcer, less affordable, and generally miserable. The latest victim is the Steam Deck OLED, which returned to stock yesterday – and it’d be very nice to end the sentence there, but alas – with some barely believable price hikes.

Witcher 3 modders have already added Geralt's new sword from the Songs of the Past expansion to the base game

Mark Warren — Thu, 28 May 2026 09:09:35 +0000

Yesterday, May 27th, CD Projekt finally held their hands up and revealed that the extra DLC long-rumoured to be coming to The Witcher 3 is indeed a thing. It's called Songs of the Past and will arrive in 2027, they said, also lobbing out some promo art of Gerry from the River holding a sword in front of a spooky tree bloke. Cue a Witcher 3 modder cracking their knuckles and immediately getting to work re-creating the sword from the artwork and adding it to the RPG as a way for folks to celebrate the news.

The demand for weapons in Subnautica 2 reveals the difficulty of separating open worlds from conquest

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Wed, 27 May 2026 18:00:00 +0000

When I play Subnautica 2, I often feel as though I am swimming in two worlds simultaneously. On the one hand, there's the world that goes on without me, the world of wonky indigenous beings living out their lives, careless of my presence: shoals of unharvestable fish swizzing past like dropped fireworks, growth cycles half-deciphered in flooded laboratories, crested hammerheads idly circling their territories. On the other, there's the world that goes on for me, its rewards and hazards colour-coded and reasonably predictable, its flora and fauna gated-off and patterned according to their role within the crafting and progression systems.

Paralives is possibly the first ever videogame with a character editor that gives people motion sickness

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Wed, 27 May 2026 16:44:03 +0000

Cosy life sim Paralives launched into early access this week, sweetening the initial reception with a roadmap full of free goodies. I've been looking forward to the game, if only because there has been such disappointment of late on the life sim front – Paradox Tectonic's Life By You fell foul of funding cuts, Inzoi is a horrible haunted Botox catalogue, and EA's plans for The Sims 5 remain nebulous and live-servicey.

Paralives? It appears both throwback and forward-thinking, a game of rosy cheeks, antique shops and smaller mechanical touches like skill progression juddering to a halt if your character's needs aren't met. It's the champion this wayward genre needs. What could go wrong? Ah, it seems the character creator has been making people physically ill.

007 First Light's PC performance isn't quite martini-smooth, but it's a damn sight better than that stuttering reveal footage

James Archer — Wed, 27 May 2026 15:27:05 +0000

While Mark’s off doing the actual review and/or agonising over watch straps, I’ve spent my time with 007 First Light slowly moving a laser beam up between its legs, demanding it reveal its PC performance secrets. Which it did immediately and without protest, to be fair. But you know the saying: when you’re holding a laser, everything looks like James Bond’s crotch.

007 First Light is now out in full, and I hope the masses are ready to face the most difficult decision of their lives

Mark Warren — Wed, 27 May 2026 14:00:00 +0000

What took you so long, Bond? I asked you to meet me here, with the nuclear codes I politely requested, in good time. Instead, you've turned up right as I'm about to give this presentation on said codes, meaning I've had no time to grill you about them as part of my prep. You're right, you owe me nothing and at least you're here now. I'll order your signature tippl-wait, what's that you've got there? A box? What's in the box, Bond? This is what delayed you, is it? Ok, I'll take a look inside, if you insist.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeegggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Helldivers 2-esque war against a giant evil robo-eye beckons in No Man's Sky's The Swarm update, invading the galaxy right now

Mark Warren — Wed, 27 May 2026 13:00:00 +0000

It's the Death Star! Well, sort of. It's a big robo-eye invading the galaxy with a swarm of killer drones, as No Man's Sky goes a bit Helldivers 2-ish in its latest update. Dubbed The Swarm, it'll see folks filed away from their not quite Pokemon battles to join three factions who'll need to work together in ship battles to fend off a big Robo-eye with a space station-scorching laser.

After 10 years of work, modders have remade classic RPG Ultima Underworld in Unity with 3D models, new sound effects, and controller support

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Wed, 27 May 2026 12:06:25 +0000

Eyes up, dungeon delvers! Or down, rather. Some bright spark has remade Looking Glass classic Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss in the Unity engine with new 3D models and sound effects, plus controller support. Ultima Underworld, often cited as the original first-person 3D RPG! Ultima Underworld, also considered a primordial specimen of the immersive sim! Ultima Underworld, which has influenced everything from Bioshock to Tomb Raider! Ultima Underworld, which... some appropriately rousing fourth thing!

The Unity revival is an unofficial project, titled Unity Underground. I guess we must brace for the potential wrath of license holders EA, but it does require ownership of the old game files to work, so surely it's on the level? Anyway, here's the first ten minutes in video form.

Geralt's back for one last Roach ride in long-rumoured The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt expansion Songs of the Past

James Archer — Wed, 27 May 2026 11:34:58 +0000

Silver-haired fox of an RPG The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is officially getting a new expansion, ten years after Blood and Wine and over eleven since the base game launch. It’s called Songs of the Past, it’s being co-developed between CD Projekt Red and The Witcher 1 Remake devs Fool’s Theory, and its coming in 2027 – potentially the same trip round t’Sun as The Witcher 4.

Red Dead Online wasn't a missed opportunity in the eyes of Take-Two's boss, but I'd say it's proof that following the GTA train doesn't guarantee the world

Mark Warren — Wed, 27 May 2026 11:01:43 +0000

As Rockstar gear up to release GTA 6 (at least on consoles), spare a thought for Red Dead Online. The multiplayer element of Red Dead Redemption 2 had its steady flow of major update-carrying stagecoaches stopped all the way back in 2022, with its makers explicitly citing a desire to shift those development resources over to that next entry in the stealy wheels series.

There've been a few moments in the years since when Red Dead Online has looked a bit like it might bounce back to prominence, but nothing substantial in that vein has materialised. It essentially had a solid three year run, but failed to come close to grasping the reins from its older inspiration, GTA Online. In the eyes of Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick, however, that doesn't make it a missed opportunity.

There are a million ways to deliver ore in Starminer, a real-time space strategy sim with zero-G physics - just beware your greed doesn't attract the aliens

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Wed, 27 May 2026 09:34:19 +0000

Attention unidentified spacecraft, this is the USS Asteroid Paper Railgun. Please maintain your current heading and velocity. I am about to rotate 34 degrees and jettison a new early access space strategy game from my cargo hold. If my calculations are correct, the package should arrive in your airlock in precisely 14.7 seconds. If my calculations are incorrect – well, I'm not sure if Starminer simulates damage from loose storage modules, but it's probably better avoided.

The first, cinematic look at Marathon season 2 paints it as the horror game it always should have been

Oisin Kuhnke — Tue, 26 May 2026 21:56:20 +0000

Marathon is a horror game. Well, it should be, anyway (or I suppose in some ways it already is). The ever under-respected genre is not where Bungie's take on an extraction shooter currently sits, even if there are still qualities to be found in the likes of jump scares, a clingy, sticky tension, hints of something that went catastrophically wrong. I want more of these elements of horror, and oh lucky me, the first trailer for the game's second season looks like it will deliver on that front.

Yerba Buena, out today, is a Portal-esque puzzle platformer where your weapon of choice is copying and pasting physics

Oisin Kuhnke — Tue, 26 May 2026 20:41:17 +0000

The problem with Portal is that Valve only made two of them. Those are some dang good puzzle games! And they're not very long. I don't necessarily need more Portal exactly per se, I just want more of that style of puzzle platforming that's equal parts physical as it is clever. Hopefully, Yerba Buena, a puzzle platformer where you can copy and paste the physics and movement of one object to another, can deliver on that front.

Unsanctioned GTA Online modding platform Rage:MP is shutting down thanks to a cease and desist from Take-Two

Oisin Kuhnke — Tue, 26 May 2026 18:00:22 +0000

As it currently stands, it's a bit unclear how Rockstar are planning to approach multiplayer with GTA 6. It seems that GTA Online will continue to run even after the impending sequel launches, but beyond that who really knows. What is clear is that Rockstar and their publisher Take-Two are still pretty committed to GTA Online and its ecosystem, given that they've now apparently sent a cease and desist to the popular modding and roleplay platform Rage:MP.

Remedy's new CEO doesn't want to "change the DNA" of the Control studio, but he does still think their games "could give a lot more"

Oisin Kuhnke — Tue, 26 May 2026 17:06:49 +0000

Back in February, Remedy appointed Jean-Charles Gaudechon as its new CEO following last year's FBC: Firebreak flop. This quickly raised some eyebrows given Gaudechon's tenure at EA, a game studio that's had its fair share of controversies over the years thanks to its business practices. After all, Remedy are meant to be this quirky, Finnish game studio that does things their own, weird way, such an appointment felt out of step. But, in a recent interview, Gaudechon made it seem like he's not about to "change the DNA" of a place like Remedy (even if he does still want to bring more money in by expanding in other ways).

At long last, Dead by Daylight welcomes Friday the 13th's Jason Voorhees, and he's now available for some beta slashing

Oisin Kuhnke — Tue, 26 May 2026 16:09:18 +0000

With all of the iconic horror villains Dead by Daylight has featured over the years, the one character's absence has stuck out like a bit of a sore thumb: Jason Voorhees of Friday the 13th fame. That'll be in no small part due to the fact that the horror series was in licence limbo for many years, resulting in the amusing fact that Nicolas Cage (National Treasure, Ghost Rider) made it in before Jason did. But now, as we await his own game, Mr. Voorhees is coming to Debbie Daylight, and you can currently try him out on the beta branch version of the game.

Life Below sees you restoring a dying sea floor, yet it makes for a surprisingly cosy city builder filled with touches of vibrant life

Julian Benson — Tue, 26 May 2026 14:12:21 +0000

For people who don't play city builders, it may be easy to look at them as something mechanical and bureaucratic. Grids of streets, well-ordered manufacturing production lines, and carefully tailored catchment areas to ensure residential zones will efficiently staff nearby businesses, don't scream the stuff of life. Though, play enough of them and you will often see there can be a good deal of living going on at street level. Zoom in close on Cities: Skylines and you can follow people as they travel to work, hover over your town in Anno 1800 and you watch the carts take goods from the harbours to factories to markets to the doors of your townspeople.

Life Below may not be about constructing a city exactly, but this underwatcher cosy city builder still captures that sense of bustling life.

Skyblivion's gorgeously revamped Ayleid ruins are all done and dusted, the folks behind the Oblivion Remake mod have announced

Mark Warren — Tue, 26 May 2026 11:25:30 +0000

One of the bits of Oblivion remake mod Skyblivion I'm most keen to explore is all sorted and ready to go. The modders have announced that they've finished making and QA testing their revamped versions of The Elder Scrolls 4's Ayleid ruins, marking another key step forward in their journey, even if the mod's still without a final release date following its delay last year.

"It felt like we had needed couples therapy": Dishonored devs Arkane making Thief or Blade Runner games sounds ace, but might have sparked a creative director scrap

Mark Warren — Tue, 26 May 2026 10:07:08 +0000

Dishonored co-directors Raphael Colantonio and Harvey Smith seem like good mates. In a newly published YouTube let's play of their creation, they sit side by side, both dressed in black t-shirts like a married couple who've gone to great pains to coordinate their threads. Would that still be the case if their efforts to make Thief 4 and a Blade Runner game respectively hadn't ended up being mashed together to form 2012's sneaky holiday to Dunwall? Perhaps not, given Smith said it felt as though the pair needed couples therapy by the time they wrapped up a game which wasn't based on a single established work one director would have loved more than the other.

My memories of classic GTA have been gloriously smothered by this reasonably SFW giantess erotica game

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Tue, 26 May 2026 09:36:15 +0000

My intolerable efforts to become Rock Paper Shotgun's new Erotica Uncle proceed apace with Step 'n Smush, a free WIP browser game in which you play some extremely large women sexily stepping all over bustling 2D cities. You've got 70 seconds to squash as many buildings as you can, gaining size for every pedestrian you amorously flatten. It could be a mod for the original Grand Theft Auto; given a larger ~~butt~~ budget, it should be a mod for GTA 6.

After seven years of development, Paralives is out in early access

Oisin Kuhnke — Mon, 25 May 2026 15:53:55 +0000

The day has come. After first being announced all the way back in 2019 by then solo dev Alex Massé (a small studio has been formed since then), Paralives is now out in early access. Being an early access release, that means you shouldn't expect something as refined as its biggest source of inspiration, and now competitor, The Sims, but it does seem like there's plenty to get started with.

Most of Bungie's staff were reportedly unaware of the decision to end active development on Destiny 2 until it went public

Oisin Kuhnke — Mon, 25 May 2026 14:37:46 +0000

Last week, Bungie made a half surprising, half the writing was on the wall decision to end active development on Destiny 2. The long running live service shooter's final update has been set for June, with responses to the news generally oscillating between genuine upset and baffled disappointment. Worse still, a report suggested that the studio is facing "significant" layoffs as a result of this choice. Except the choice didn't come last week, but earlier in the year, a choice that another report now claims that many at Bungie weren't privy to until it was made public.

Hop aboard Running Train, a lush Japanese train sim that's out in early access now

Oisin Kuhnke — Mon, 25 May 2026 11:58:57 +0000

There is no abundance of train sims in this world, that's for sure. But I am a person that likes two cakes, so you won't find me complaining when a new one rocks up. Today, that new one is Running Train, a quite lush looking train sim that places a big emphasis on looking as realistic as possible, set in tourist's and gaming's current favourite destination, Japan.

The opening mission of 007 First Light leaked online, so IO have fought fire with fire by offering up the game's first 13 minutes

Oisin Kuhnke — Mon, 25 May 2026 10:46:15 +0000

As is the case with most big name games that people are desperate to get their hands on, over the weekend the opening mission of 007 First Light leaked online due to someone seemingly acquiring a disc copy a touch early. That video has since been taken down, to no one's surprise, but IO Interactive clearly decided to fight fire with fire, as they've shared the first 13 minutes of said opening mission themselves. Spoilers ahead obviously for those who want to go in knowing nothing!

Your first look at Unreal Engine 6 comes courtesy of a much shinier looking Rocket League teaser

Oisin Kuhnke — Mon, 25 May 2026 09:30:06 +0000

Epic Games have made no secret of the next release of Unreal Engine; they first shared some details about the follow-up back in 2024, namely that it's being built around the idea of "interoperable content" that can be switched between any game that uses the engine. Now, Unreal Engine 6 has been somewhat formally revealed through the lens of a "new era" of Rocket League during the game's Paris Majors semi-finals.

The Sunday Papers

Mark Warren — Sun, 24 May 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Sundays are for setting up a fan fiction writing group with your fellow RPG dungeon masters. You gather in a nice living room that often reminds visitors of the beloved previous tenants, and you write something. It's of indeterminate quality, at least until it's fully formed, mainly because you let it go where it wants as you go, rather than planning out a path ahead of time. It's a wild horse, and sometimes it bucks you off by, for example, having you roll into a metaphor you're unlikely to be able to maintain unless you suddenly write cowboy hats into existence for your gang of would-be masters. The words spill forth, occasionally dripping onto the carpet or being flung towards a metal spitoon in the corner, where they land with a satisfying ftannnggg sound. Sometimes you do just about manage to keep the metaphors going.