Rock Paper Shotgun – PC Game Reviews, Previews, Subjectivity

If you don't know it, Shelter 3 is the in development sequel to Might And Delight's series of animal mom games. Shelter 1 started out with a mother badger protecting her babies. Shelter 2 featured a mother lynx and her cubs. Shelter 3 will have you play as a mother elephant shepherding whatever their babies are called. Calves? I'll go with calves. News on Shelter 3 was light while Might And Delight worked to crowdfund their other project Book Of Travels. They've returned with a new teaser trailer and revised release schedule for the mother-tusking sequel.

Players started (figuratively) falling out of the sky in Eve Online late last month. Many couldn't log in to the space faring MMO at all. Of those that could, plenty were unable to use the in game chat to coordinate with other pilots, which I'm given to understand is quite important for a space fleet. CCP Games say that stability is returning, but there are still players who are unable to log in over a week later.

On Wednesday, EA raised the prices for a large portion of their game catalog on Steam. The increases seem to have affected most regional currencies outside the United States. Price changes are inconsistent, with some regions seeing small increases and others being slapped with 300% price hikes on certain games.

The developers of Mutant Year Zero: Road To Eden have lined up a stealth attack aiming for a critical hit. Or that's just the squad of sneaky augmented future soldiers you'll command in their new game. Or both—it's both. After their quite good first strategy game from 2018, The Bearded Ladies have just announced another called Corruption 2029 and a release date in less than two weeks. Came out of nowhere, didn't it, soldier?

Honor's boss is dead and she's the primary suspect for foul play, meaning it's time to roll up her sleeves and catch the real murderer. Unfortunately, Honor's no detective, she just plays one on TV. Therein's the setup for Murder By Numbers but it's nowhere near as grim as it sounds because it also has a healthy coat of neon 90s paint. Folks wear pumps and watch CRT televisions, and squad cars have actual cord phones as depicted in the new last century-style animated trailer for the mystery puzzle game.

The launch of Warcraft 3: Reforged has not gone down well as one might expect for a revamp of a widely-adored RTS. The changes are less than advertised, it's been buggy, and it's missing some features from the original. Blizzard say they stand by "the quality of our products and our services" but acknowledge some might feel Reforged "does not provide the experience they wanted." And so, they're going beyond their purchase policies to give Reforged refunds to anyone who might want one.

This year's lineup for the Leftfield Collection at EGX Rezzed has been revealed. The carefully curated showcase of indie games is always popular, and this year's list is as promising as ever.

Children Of Morta got its first free content update yesterday, the Shrine Of Challenge, introducing a hard mode to challenge the most veteran of players, as well as some new enemies and items to shake up the game even more.

The first of the new baddies is the Dark Blade, they're the purple guys in the trailer below doing what seems like some scratchy spinning attacks. The other new enemy is the Mech Constructor that looks like it floated straight out of some Dwemer ruins.

It takes two to war-tango. Turn-based tactics 'em up Wargroove has popped out its free Double Trouble DLC, whisking you and friend away for a big fantasy heist. You can still play by yourself if you don't have a partner in crime, though it has been designed with friendship in mind. It'd be like rocking up to a Ferris wheel by yourself, the experience diminished despite that being a perfectly respectable life choice.

The new campaign features two new units, three new Commanders, and volcanoes. Come watch this horseman get chucked into lava.

After a year of being exclusive to the Epic Games Store, Metro Exodus is hitting Steam next week. The third game in the post-apocalyptic FPS series is pretty decent, and by the time it's out on Steam it'll have two expansions to play through too. So, it's a good time to get hold of it, and if you've been waiting for it to be free of its Epic chains, you best set your alarm for 5am GMT on Saturday 15th February.

Last year's Below was a stunner. A beautiful subterranean puzzle-box. A real shame, then, that for so many explorers it was also brutally, unforgivingly difficult. But while developers Capy one stood firmly by the belief that a cursed hole in the ground should be a torturous experience, they've since changed their tune. Below will soon receive a new Explore mode, cutting back on more obtuse mechanics and survival timers to make its lovely caves less frustrating to traverse.

Now that NieR: Automata has come and gone from Final Fantasy XIV, it's time to get back to business. Patch 5.2: Echoes Of A Fallen Star arrives later this month, driving forwards the main story and returning focus squarely to gods, empires and high-fantasy politicking. Naturally, that means it's time to fight a Gundam.

What do you mean we don't get to pilot it?

Darkness falls across the land, the midnight hour is close at hand. An unseasonable scare has descended upon Monster Hunter: World. Yes, this month's free Iceborne update adds a honking great new monster to slay, the beefy horned Rajang. But it also heralds the arrival of an undead plague upon the land. The Raccoon City Collaboration has commenced, bringing Resident Evil 2's hordes and heroes to the deadly safari until March 6th.

Halfway through writing this post, I realised ScourgeBringer might be my entire jam. Developers Flying Oak Games' slashing, dashing roguelike just hit Steam Early Access, and it looks killer. A meticulous mash-up of some of the best side-scrolling bloodbaths, offering bite-sized brawls in labyrinthine dungeons. Just thinking about the rhythm of smashing up room after room, an ever-ticking combat multiplier, bullet-hell bosses and freeze-frames that light up the whole room has given me the shakes. Readers, I might need this one.

One game I keep telling people to go play is Little Party, the lovely pottering story about a mum doting on her daughter's sleepover. Developers Turnfollow this week launched their latest, Wide Ocean Big Jacket, and hey it's really nice too, okay. Play it now or suffer me going on about it. Wide Ocean Big Jacket is another familial tale, this time about a camping trip to a national park with aunt, uncle, their quick-witted tweenage niece, and her, ah, friend? It's warm, it's funny, and I really like its vignettey scenes are cut together.

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.