Rock Paper Shotgun – PC Game Reviews, Previews, Subjectivity

Get in the car, punk. Xbox Game Pass for PC is about to pick up three new games, cramming Final Fantasy XV, Wolfenstein: Youngblood and Death's Gambit into the back seat of its subscription bandwagon. That's one banger, one bust, and one "huh, seems alright" jumping onto Game Pass' growing catalogue, still available at £1/$1 for three months if you're a first-time subscriber.

But all that's firmly in "coming soon" territory. Before all that, we've got a brief detour to punch-town as Bleeding Edge, Ninja Theory's upcoming multiplayer basher, hops on for a two-day beta on Xbox Games Pass next week.

Board games don't belong on computers. They're a refuge from the screens that bore into our eyeballs and our lives, a chance to bask in the musky glow of fleshy humans. But sometimes those humans are far away, and sometimes stores give digitised board games away for free. The Epic Games Store is handing out the tile-laying town-planning sheep-appreciating Carcassonne, along with the railway-building Ticket To Ride. Ticket's fine, but Carcassonne is way better.

Epic were originally going to give Pandemic away too, but issued a press release saying they'd scrapped those plans until "a later date". Presumably someone rethought the optics of using a game about global infection to advertise their store during the ongoing coronavirus outbreak.

The prospect of the studio behind Endless Space and Endless Legend trying their hands at a Civilization-style 4X strategy game is an enticing one, enough for us to declare Humankind one of 2020's most exciting new games. Amplitude Studios aren't yet ready to tell us when exactly we'll get to play Humankind, but they are ready to starting telling us more about it. The first of a new series of video dev diary doodads hit today, with Amplidudes explaining their background and why they're now shouting "COME ON THEN!" while tearing up Sid Meier's geraniums and kicking over his bins.

Square Enix still have not announced a release for Final Fantasy VII Remake on any system other than PlayStation 4, but they're certainly staying up to date with what they're not saying. They've recently updated the JRPG's box art to echo its recent one-month delay, now saying that it's a PS4 exclusive until April 10th, 2021. What happens then? Ah, who knows. Could be anything. Don't think anything of it. They're just casually refreshing their exclusivity commitment, okay, just because they want to, not because they have any plans.

Rod Fergusson has worked on every Gears Of War game over the last 15 years, from starting the original Gears Of War with Epic, to helping establish The Coalition studio to work on the rest of the series. But now he's heading to pastures new, joining Blizzard to oversee all things Diablo.

"Leaving is bittersweet as I love our Gears family, the fans, and everyone at The Coalition and Xbox," he tweeted. "Thank you, it has been an honor and a privilege to work with you all."

After a bit of an information drought, we finally got to see some new footage of the alternate universe Soviet FPS Atomic Heart yesterday courtesy of a lengthy breakdown video. Today, there's a shorter but more concise official gameplay teaser in case you didn't feel like sifting through 45 minutes of talk to find the in game clips like Matt did.

As with last year, Valve have posted a look back at all of the changes to Steam in 2019 with a brief look ahead to 2020 squeezed in at the end. There are plenty of features you may or may not remember being added to Steam last year, among them changes to User Reviews. Valve claims they have utilized the new system for excluding anomalous barrages of negative reviews quite a chunk of times since implementing the new policy last year.

Last year, Mojang announced that a big overhaul was planned for the hellish Nether dimension in Minecraft. The first playable look at that update has landed today in a game snapshot that Java Edition players can access through their launcher. There's a lot to look through already, including spooky new trees, stronger armor, and creepy music.

How long has it been since I first saw gifs of Ooblets—those goofy critters trundling around town behind their awkwardly dancing human friend? RPS first posted about this cute little town sim three years ago. So probably about then, I'd say. I thought it might arrive in 2018. I had hope for 2019 too. According to Glumberland's development update for January, "2020 is the YEAR OF THE OOB." So this will be the year I jog around town with my little dancing monsters? I hope so.

On February 13th, the beautiful visual novel Florence is coming to PC from mobile. Created by the new studio of Monument Valley lead designer Ken Wong, it follows a young woman named Florence as she falls in love with a street performer. It'll have us play out some of the seemingly mundane parts of her life, from cleaning her teeth to answering phone calls from her mum, as it takes us through a touching story.

It's time for another one of those limited time Fortnite events and (if you hadn't heard) it's currently February so Epic have gone with a Valentine's sort of theme with the title Love And War. As it do with Fortnite events, there's a new game mode to try out and new themed costumes to buy as well. The new game mode is a decidedly Counter-Strike inspired attack and defense mode with teams of six.

Update: Hi there, it's me, the idiot who somehow thought we were in April. This month is, in fact, February. How is it only February. All this will happen on April 7th, not February 7th. Is it really still only February?

After fifteen months exclusive to Bethesda's own store on PC, Fallout 76 has now finalised a Steam launch date of April 7th - also the launch day for Wastelanders, the update adding factions of human NPCs. While I'm perfectly happy buying games away from Steam, I can't help but note that you often see a game launch in a far better state if you do wait for a Steam release. Fallout 76 has come a long way since its early days and, come April, Wastelanders will fill that weird human-shaped hole in the MMO's post-apocalyptic world.

The first ever detailed report on diversity in the UK games industry has been published, showing some pretty eye-opening statistics about the industry's inclusivity, as well as the mental health of people working in games.

Conducted by Ukie (the UK Interactive Entertainment trade body), the census revealed that female representation in the games industry "is significantly under the national average" - with 70% of people working in games being male, just 28% female, and 2% non-binary. On top of that, 31% of UK game workers that answered the survey said they live with anxiety and depression, nearly doubling the national average of 17%.

A French Sea Of Thieves outfit called L'Arche Du Grog eschewed the call of booty to host the first major fashion event of the season earlier this week.

Players joined together to showcase their outfits, but in terms of style and personality rather than price tag. They "had to walk and emote creatively according to the themes", as you can see in the below video.

After 21 years as a Rockstar Games big cheese, Dan Houser will leave the company in March. He's co-written almost every Rockstar game since 1999, including Grand Theft Auto from London through to V, Bully, Max Payne 3, and the Red Dead Redemptions. That's made him a big influence on the tone of Rockstar's games. I wonder how that might change once he's moved on. Where he's going and what he'll do next, we don't know. He can probably afford to eat pizza while watching Heat on loop the rest of his life, to be honest.

I have never enjoyed the actual act of moving out. All that packing and organising and cleaning, then the unpacking, ugh. Thankfully, Moving Out doesn't make you do any of the rubbish real life stuff - instead you run around as a wobbly little removal person throwing boxes and tables into your truck, without a care in the world about breaking some doors down or launching valuables into a pool.

I played Moving Out at EGX last year, and it's absolute mayhem - and you'll be able to experience it all for yourself when it comes out on April 28th.

The wheel of time has turned around World's Edge, bringing a new Season's worth of changes to Apex Legends. The frozen city has been cleft in twain. The Turbocharger attachment has been done away with. There's a new sniper rifle, and a new Legend called Revenent, skulking around with a button that turns other abilities off. I am not a fan of that button. The other stuff is cool.

Humble's Europa Universalis bundle has now returned to the game bundle depot, but the good news is that a brand-new bundle has just pulled into Humble Station to take its place. That's right. It's time to fast track your way into the locomotive world of Train Simulator 2020, where you can get the main game plus four add-on packs for a single US dollar (about 80p), or all that plus 12 more add-on packs for the top price of $12 / £10. So why delay? Here's what you get.