Matt makes twenty slices of toast. Josh is still fighting sewer rat six. Kelley's dog is NOT a baby. And Chris saves E3 with the power of...no...he can't do it. No GEX allowed.

The post RPG Cast – Episode 684: “Remember What I Said at the Fazoli’s Drive Thru?” appeared first on RPGamer.

Chris launches his new brand, Elsa coffee. Kelley's Pokémon demand she finds a caramel apple and a teacup. Ryan apparently got left in Seattle and is still at PAX West.

The post RPG Cast – Episode 693: “The Brew Never Bothered Me Anyways” appeared first on RPGamer.

Josh explains that all Genesis music is bad. Robert only has sub-standards for video games. Chris arm-chair quarterbacks the Persona 3 remake. Not the ramp!

The post RPG Cast – Episode 696: “Have You Met Video Game Fans?” appeared first on RPGamer.

Chris wonders if they serve tea at British rock concerts. Kelley gets smashed in the face with a chicken. Josh learns about alliance diaper gnomes. Do not google "diaper gnomes."

The post RPG Cast – Episode 699: “Contained Pizza Mess” appeared first on RPGamer.

Chris puts on his tummy control sumo pants and gets uploaded into a big booby robot girl. Kelley married a Lego elitist who won't pirate a pirate ship. Robert stares into catfinity, and the bunny stares back.

The post RPG Cast – Episode 700: “Come Here, Barney!” appeared first on RPGamer.

Josh enjoys the important things, like a hot springs mini-game. Kelley purchased Legos; sacrifices were made. Bethesda tells Chris it's his fault for not enjoying Starfield. Meanwhile, we just can't quit Kiryu.

The post RPG Cast – Episode 701: “Allergic to Good Games” appeared first on RPGamer.

Kelley got WHAM'd and ran out of a hair salon. Chris can afford boat loads of ramen for his Path of Exile sessions now. Tam gives birth to a baby space ship. Oh, hi Mark.

The post RPG Cast – Episode 704: “She’s Lying, I Did Not Hit the Ornaments” appeared first on RPGamer.

Ryan, Ryan, Ryan, and Kelley Ryan join Pascal and Chris as they go through the best and worst of 2023. See how many categories Baldur's Gate 3 wins and Diablo 4 loses.

The post RPG Cast – Episode 713: “Game Awards 2023” appeared first on RPGamer.

Chris is hunting bears, because of course that's what you do. Kelley hangs out with Chadley and the massively annoying individual. Robert is all about that exquisite fraisier cake.

The post RPG Cast – Episode 716: “Canadian Telephone Game” appeared first on RPGamer.

Chris force feeds people desserts to make people like each other. Ryan likes bad games, just like Chris. Kelley has a penchant for losing pendants. Matt throws some garbage in the pot and suddenly it's pizza. Now let's grow old and lose stats together.

The post RPG Cast – Episode 721: “Skyrim Helmet Sleep Mask” appeared first on RPGamer.

Chris realizes WoW is the new Diablo. Phil bakes a potato into two. Kelley becomes a cat in a frog suit. And we're dressing beds with old t-shirts.

The post RPG Cast – Episode 726: “Princes of the Mew-niverse” appeared first on RPGamer.

Kelley builds a fan mod alternate LEGO Sonic build. Josh learns not to read the wiki...any wiki. Matt digs through Infinity's trash to find out when the money ran out. Chris is watching the anime...but it's not good either.

The post RPG Cast – Episode 733: “You Don’t Have to Go Home but You Can’t Fish Here” appeared first on RPGamer.

Chris warns about goblins and bugbears living together. Josh learns he's the most likely to be loaded into the soul cannon first. Kelley only watches the bottom half of Looney Tunes. And Robert has 99 problems but an EVA waifu ain't one.

The post RPG Cast – Episode 736: “Meowsable Pile of Secrets” appeared first on RPGamer.

REVERB features 17 audiovisual installations including new works by Es Devlin and Theaster Gates, plus Devon Turnbull's Listening Room.

The post The Vinyl Factory celebrates art and sound with immersive exhibition at 180 Studios appeared first on Fact Magazine.

A 10-year analysis of air accidents reveals good news for most passengers but worrying trends in training and drones.

IMAGINE if you’d spent a grand on a single Berkshire Hathaway share 31 years ago. That stock just passed $US200,000 and is still climbing.

JOHN Akers, who led IBM as its longtime dominance of the computer industry began to wane, has died, aged 79.

When I was reviewing Final Fantasy VII Rebirth a few months ago, it looked set to be my Game of the Year. Metaphor: ReFantazio was still a distant concept and, I thought, communication of that concept was anything great. It turns out that I was really underestimating Atlus at the time. It's been eight years since Persona 5, and maybe I had begun to forget its magic, because as a JRPG from the creators of Persona 5, the magic is undoubtedly there in Metaphor: ReFantazio.

When I was younger, I used to watch the Columbo series, where you know the culprit's identity right away at the start. Metaphor: ReFantazio is a bit like that, because the introduction shows the King of Euchronia (Metaphor's fantasy world) being murdered in his sleep by an ambitious aristocrat named Louis, which throws the whole country into turmoil. From there, the protagonist and the comrades he meets all have different reasons for sharing the same goal: to prevent the wicked Louis from seizing the throne.

As simple as it seems, the narrative has its fair share of surprises. This has to do with the tremendous wealth of characters in the game. Due to a certain magic, the race for the throne is turned into an election, in which the protagonists gets to runs. Adding to the eight playable characters, you meet several competitors and followers who back you. All of them have personal stories and strange personalities that make Metaphor's adventure strikingly vivid.

The sub-stories are quite interesting for most part, for they convey a range of different emotions: sometime are heart-breaking, sometime heart-warming or just purely fun, and they'll keep you engaged for hours. They often leave you in suspense, since the structure of the game has you experiencing them little by little. And, just like in Persona, you can spend extensive time with your allies in a whole lot of mini sequences that play a great part in making the cast truly unforgettable.

But that doesn't mean you'll forget about the main story. Metaphor: ReFantazio offers some fascinating chapters. Take for instance the Opera house one, it's a breathtaking chapter very reminiscent of the great Final Fantasy VI, absolutely loaded with memorable sequences, grandiose fights, and striking reveals. And in the end, the whole game is like that. The thirst for more is real, as Atlus always drops a little something to make you eager to progress and feel engaged - a new character, intense combat, a shocking truth, stunning landscapes, etc. Even the most common NPCs sometimes tell a tale that blows your mind. Metaphor: ReFantazio has so much to offer in terms of characters, creativity, and storytelling that I couldn't help feeling overwhelmed at times.

The incongruity of an election in a kingdom ruled by Royals for ages is in reality an occasion for the story to develop elaborate thoughts about democracy and society. The protagonist always carries with him a strange book about an ideal world, where people have equal chances, decide their own fates, and live in harmony. It's a dream-like realm wholly different from Euchronia, which is a medieval regime plagued by injustice, greed, and poverty.

But there are whispers of a past, of a very advanced civilisation that ultimately failed, creating a scenario that raises the question of the relationship between democracy and freedom. There are also different tribes in the game, and it's worth noticing that the protagonist's party has one representative of each tribe, like a call for tolerance in a kingdom known for its inequality. The narrative therefore has powerful philosophic elements - something that only the greatest works in JRPG history possess.

Metaphor: ReFantazio boasts world design like you seldom see, starting with the giant flying rock that has symbolized it since reveal. Here again Atlus' creativity is absolutely inspired. The designers left their comfort zone and came up with an innovative take on characters, meaning that they ditched the classical human hero or heroine. You befriend an elf-like girl, a bat-like character or a maiden with a third eye, but no real typical human. The result is a party that literally breathes fantasy, a bit like Final Fantasy Tactics Advance did in its time. Humans exist, though, but on the opposite side of the divide.

These so-called Humans are twisted and awfully misshapen creatures roaming Euchronia as dangerous enemies. Atlus went beyond the boundaries of the bizarre with these designs and the result is amazing. I could also mention the funny Runner, a land vessel with legs that the party owns. Just travelling with it feels incredible. There are numerous examples like this, but in short the world is packed with wonders that I've never seen in a game before.

As for combat, Metaphor: ReFantazio is a good old turn-based JRPG, where strategy and careful planning matter. Characters wield the power of Archetypes, abstract figures that party members turn into when attacking. Archetypes are essentially jobs, hence my mention of Final Fantasy Tactics above. You can equip a character with an archetype, and they then acquire attack and passive skills specific to that archetype. For example, the Gunner can deal what is called "pierce" damage from behind, the Warrior heavy "slash" damage with its greatsword, and the Mage masters the natural elements.

There are also very complex Archetypes like the Masked Dancer, which can wear different masks to mimic other Archetypes, or the all-powerful Summoner, who masters absolutely ever type of damage once you acquire the corresponding stones (needless to say, these are incredibly difficult to come by). Unlike Persona 5, every character can equip any archetype, so you can choose the allies you like the most. Besides that, the currently-equipped Archetype can also inherit a couple of skills or spells from another, allowing for very elaborate lineups.

Combat isn't simplistic or easy; basic skills won't do much against bosses or even the relatively big enemies within dungeons. For these, the player must analyze how Archetypes can cooperate. Two Healers can, for example, cast a light spell on all opponents, while a single healer only targets one. Three magic-type archetypes lets the Mage unleash the mightiest fire spell available, which comes in handy at times. Such cooperation skills take more than one turn crystal (as turns are represented in game), but you can save turn crystals by exploiting the enemy's weakness, like you can in Shin Megami Tensei and its spin-offs.

The possibilities offered by Archetypes are fantastic and their complexity goes well beyond anything I've experienced from Atlus thus far. You have several types of Archetypes that work against a set weakness (three Archetype lineages have fire spells, for example). So you can choose the ones that fit your current goal or preferences. Boss fights are no joke and it's a renewed pleasure to overcome the various (tough) challenges after devising the right strategy. Metaphor: ReFantazio also lives up to Persona 5 in two particular aspects: main dungeons are never short of surprises, and the presentation of the battle menu is once again fantastic.

Like in Persona, Metaphor: ReFantazio is played in limited time. There's an in-game calendar with deadlines set to clear the main dungeons. So you can't have everyone master every archetype - you need to choose and use every day wisely. Unlike Persona 5, which gives you fixed Personas that you have to figure out how to use optimally, building characters and Archetypes in Metaphor: ReFantazio must be planned well ahead of time. This a fundamental difference between the two and the reason why this new IP elevates Atlus' core gameplay conceits, which were already very good. Exploration is important and quite entertaining too: you can tackle tricky secondary dungeons, discover special shops, or visit your followers. 

The latter provide perks, like increased slots for inherited skills, greater experience gain and, most importantly, the ability to unlock advanced Archetypes. The Healer can become the Cleric, for instance, with far superior healing capabilities, and you can become a General after being a Commander, gaining powerful ice skills in addition to the potent fire skills the latter had.

The whole game must be seen as a wide array of possibilities, with the player finding their own way to victory with their choices and favorite characters. As far as I'm concerned, this feels rewarding beyond anything I expected. Overflowing with content, the game is very long (around 70 hours), even with Atlus allowing you save time (any low-level enemy on the map can be beaten instantly without entering a turn-based battle, and you'll still gain experience and materials). 

The visuals are Metaphor's clear weakness. The game modeling isn't what you'd expect from a PS5 game in 2024, and I'd say it's fairly underwhelming for PS4 too. The backgrounds aren't very sharp and you see aliasing here and there. Secondary dungeons look very common; actually, they don't look like much of anything really. And there are several towers to explore across Euchronia, but the interior of each tower looks the exact same everytime. This kind of reuse of assets is fairly disappointing for a game of this magnitude. I shiver at the thought of what Metaphor: ReFantazio could have looked like with a Final Fantasy-sized budget. I expect it would have been my first perfect score, but it looks like I'll need to withhold that one once again.

One aspect that does score perfect marks is the original music score. Here again, I was pretty sure that Final Fantasy VII Rebirth would be my soundtrack of the year, but Metaphor's music blows it away completely. Atlus' sound team has crafted vibrant choruses befitting the heroic fantasy genre, but with such unorthodox compositions that it felt fresh to my ears. Other vocals and melodies are bewitching to the point they lift your spirit in battle or dungeons. And there's the strange theme of Virga island, with its weird vocals and hypnotic murmurs. It sounds like a tribal chant from afar, a bit like what Genshin Impact achieved with the Natlan soundtrack two months ago. The music is a splendid journey in itself.   

Metaphor: ReFantazio is the type of game you feel was made to achieve something greater than just sales. It's a completely new world, boasting an immense wealth of gameplay, characters, locations, and music, redefining heroic fantasy like no JRPG has done for decades. Atlus' latest title is also a fantastic challenge for turn-based combat and strategy lovers, with highly enjoyable and rewarding dungeons. Put another way, Metaphor: ReFantazio is the golden age of fantasy JRPGs, revived from the ashes in all its majesty, no less.

During the day, Thomas is a normal account manager. But at night he becomes Ryuzaki57, an extreme otaku gamer hungry for Japanese games (preferably with pretty girls in the main role). He spends a lot of time on F2P RPGs, but never misses the lastest interesting releases. Feel free to contact on twitter at @Ryuz4ki57

Full Article - https://www.vgchartz.com/article/463032/metaphor-refantazio-ps5/

ublisher Bethesda Softworks and developer MachineGames have released a gameplay deep dive video for Indiana Jones and the Great Circle that is nearly 15 minutes in length.

"From locations and puzzles to gear and combat, MachineGames Audio Director, Pete Ward, takes us on a whirlwind journey through the world of The Great Circle," reads the description to the video. "Get ready for launch with this look at Indy’s grand adventure."

View the gameplay deep dive below:

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle will launch for the Xbox Series X|S, PC via Steam and Microsoft Store, and Xbox Game Pass on December 9.

A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.

Full Article - https://www.vgchartz.com/article/463033/indiana-jones-and-the-great-circle-gets-gameplay-deep-dive/

Following a tease, Microsoft and Activision Blizzard have announced Spyro Reignited Trilogy will release for Xbox Game Pass tomorrow, November 12.

VGChartz staff gave Spyro Reignited Trilogy an 8 out of 10 and stated, "it was wise to steer away from marketing the collection as a remaster because that label undercuts the developers’ level of dedication and investment in revitalizing these games."

Read details on the trilogy below:

Remade from the ground up, the Spyro Reignited Trilogy features all three of the original games that started it all – Spyro the Dragon, Spyro 2: Ripto’s Rage, and Spyro: Year of the Dragon, amazing for the original fans and new players alike.

Spyro the Dragon

Our new favorite little purple dragon starts on a quest to rescue his dragon friends who have been turned into crystal by the villain Gnasty Gnorc (what an unfortunate and yet apt name!). Spyro explores vibrant Dragon Realms, collects gems, and flambés his enemies, all while learning to how breathe fire and glide.

Spyro 2: Ripto’s Rage!

Spyro finds himself in the magical land of Avalar where he is trying to save the realm from the evil sorcerer Ripto and his minions. Along the way, he befriends new entirely new allies, overcomes challenges, complete tasks, and unlocks even more powers to take down Ripto and restore peace.

Spyro: Year of the Dragon

In Spyro: Year of the Dragon, Spyro finds out that the Dragon Eggs have been stolen by the devious Sorceress, sending him on a new mission to recover the eggs and save the dragon population. Our favorite purple dragon meets new friends, learns new abilities, all while exploring more vibrant realms with challenges (and treasures!).

Xbox players have been able to explore the Dragon Realms with Spyro since 2018 with the release of the Reignited Trilogy, and now we’re excited to invite our community to jump into these incredible adventures once again and relive the fun and nostalgia that only Spyro can bring.

Available on Game Pass Standard, Game Pass Ultimate, and PC Game Pass, for cloud, console and PC, it’s sure to ignite some serious fun. Let’s go save the Dragon Realms!

A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.

Full Article - https://www.vgchartz.com/article/463034/spyro-reignited-trilogy-headed-to-xbox-game-pass-tomorrow-november-12/

Nintendo today hosted a Super Nintendo World Direct livestream that featured Shigeru Miyamoto giving a deep dive look into the Donkey Kong Country-themed land.

The new land will feature a family roller coaster, called Mine-Cart Madness, congas you can hit to a rhythm, letters that can found throughout the land that can be scanned on the new Donkey Kong Power-Up Band, character meet and greets, and new food options.

Donkey Kong Country will open at Universal Studios Japan on December 11, 2024, and will also be a part of Super Nintendo World at Epic Universe in Florida when the theme park opens in May 2025.

View the Direct below:

A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.

Full Article - https://www.vgchartz.com/article/463038/super-nintendo-world-direct-dives-into-the-donkey-kong-country-themed-land/

Publisher Xbox Game Studios and developer Compulsion Games have released a 30-minute long documentary on for South of Midnight titled "Weaving Hazel's Journey."

The video share a behind-the-scenes look at the upcoming third-person action-adventure game. It explores the development and world building, as well as providing a look at new gameplay.

View the documentary below:

South of Midnight will launch for the Xbox Series X|S, PC via Steam and Microsoft Store, and Xbox Game Pass in 2025.

A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.

Full Article - https://www.vgchartz.com/article/463044/south-of-midnight-gets-30-minute-weaving-hazels-journey-documentary/

A collective gasp echoed like a thunderclap in a valley in our Daily Beast newsroom late Wednesday afternoon at the news that singer Liam Payne, who became famous as a member of the group One Direction, died at age 31.

TMZ reports that Payne fell from a hotel balcony in Argentina, where he had reunited with bandmates at 1D-er Niall Horan’s concert. He had, according to the site, been behaving “erratically,” earlier in the day, and was spotted smashing a laptop in the hotel lobby and having to be carried back to his room. He had been in headlines on gossip blogs over tension with his ex-fiancée Maya Henry, who, TMZ says, alleged “he'd left her after asking her to get an abortion.”

In the shock of his death, fans couldn’t ignore the eerie nature that Payne had just connected with his One Direction bandmates. Dark questions emerge when a celebrity dies so young: What role did the often horrific toll of fame have on a person like Payne, who has been open about addiction and suicidal ideation? But there’s also an impulse to go back to the roots of a person’s talent, to revisit what it was that we all fell in love with—and was their passion—in the first place.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

It doesn’t matter how long a play is: sometimes 75 minutes can feel like 3 hours if the play is bad, while a three-hour play may first elicit an inner groan, then flow pleasurably by if the writing and performances are in well-oiled tandem.

Kenneth Lonergan’s Hold on to Me Darling (Lucille Lortel Theatre, to Dec. 22) belongs, mostly, to the latter category: it is long, and it feels long, but that’s OK; not gold-standard wow, but far more than pleasant. This is down to Lonergan’s engaging writing and a collection of differently distinctive, carefully drawn performances, led by Adam Driver as a famous country star called Strings (real name Clarence), wondering if he could/should give up all the trappings of fame for a simpler life after his mother’s death.

It is an off-Broadway treat to see Driver, most recently seen on the big screen as the star of Francis Ford Coppola’s polarizing epic Megalopolis, here bestriding—he is so tall, he is really bestriding—the compact Lucille Lortel stage. Theater fans last saw him on Broadway in Burn This, for which he was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play. He is renowned for playing powder-keg personas. With characters like Adam in Girls, Charlie in Marriage Story, and Pale in Burn This, the question, the bubbling menace, was when will Adam Driver go off? Those characters memorably combusted—thrashing, shouting, snarling and occupying spaces that could barely contain them—and Driver made it so that you recoiled from their crackling fury.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

In his monologue Wednesday, Jimmy Kimmel played a montage of Fox News anchors praising Bret Baier for his interview with Kamala Harris, where they described Baier’s performance as “incredible” and “a masterful job.”

Kimmel responded, “Alright, save it for the post-show orgy, everybody! Come on now.”

The late night host was skeptical that the Fox News pundits’ praise came from a genuine place of journalistic integrity. “They all sit there in fear, imagining Donald Trump on the toilet watching them,” he said.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Online interactions are based on trust, since there are few definitive ways to certify the identity of the person with whom one is communicating. Naturally, this situation can lead to deception and manipulation, as it has—to tormenting effect—for Tegan and Sara, the popular indie rock duo whose lives have been turned upside down by a mysterious bad faith actor who, for more than a decade, has impersonated Tegan with fans, friends, and business partners.

Fanatical: The Catfishing of Tegan and Sara is an investigation into the myriad means by which the internet can be wielded to nefarious ends. More than that, though, it’s an anatomy of a crime and the complicated wreckage wrought by it, not just for the famous artists but also for the innocent admirers who were tricked into believing that fiction was reality.

Premiering on Hulu on Oct. 18, following its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, Erin Lee Carr’s documentary is a chilling snapshot of the unholy marriage of corrosive fandom and online duplicity. At its center are Tegan and Sara, the identical twin songstresses who began making a name for themselves in the early 2000s both for their talent and for being openly gay. This earned them a loyal fanbase of queer women and men who saw themselves reflected in Tegan and Sara, and that bond was strengthened by the siblings’ active interest in interacting with fans in person—Tegan would chat with show attendees in line and at the merch table—and on LiveJournal and other budding message-board platforms that afforded a previously unavailable degree of contact.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Relatives of Lyle and Erik Menendez spoke in an interview Wednesday about their long-running fears that the brothers had been abused for years before they killed their parents.

After a press conference in which they’d called for the imprisoned siblings’ freedom, the family members told Chris Cuomo on NewsNation about how their suspicions only deepened as time passed.

“Over the years we really did know that there was abuse at gut-level. But as time goes on and we all talked to each other more and more, it validates the fears and the gut-level reactions that we had,” the brothers’ cousin Karen VanderMolen-Copley told Cuomo. “That solidified the knowledge that the sexual abuse actually did occur, because that’s not something you want to believe, and then once you talk to each other it becomes more and more obvious.”

Read more at The Daily Beast.

One of my favourite satires is the Screwtape Letters, an epistolary novel by Narnia scribe C.S. Lewis. It consists of messages from an oily elder demon to his nephew about how to correctly groom the soul of an unsuspecting human being. It's a claustrophobic send-up of managerial politics and nepotism, with World War 1 unfolding in the background. A real pick-me-up. Sintopia is the Two Point incarnation of that premise - in other words, brighter and breezier and definitely more slapstick than Christian. It puts you in charge of a world divided between Earth and hell, and challenges you to ensure a steady movement of optimally sinful souls between one and the other. Say your prayers and watch the trailer.

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You remember Lucas Pope, right? He who casually dropped two of the most influential puzzle games ever then got distracted by yellow cranks for six years, occasionally popping up to drop a demake of Papers Please? Well, Pope has ceased hogging that crank, for now at least, and just released Haloween-y adventure game Moida Mansion. It’s on Itch here, and it’s completely free to play in your browser.

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The Steam Deck is something of a talisman for gaming on Linux, its popularity and penguin-powered SteamOS having almost singlehandedly dragged it past MacOS as the second-most-used operating system among Steam users. Sadly, this also means the Valve handheld is the primary casualty when developers decide to stop bothering with Linux support, as Respawn Entertainment have decided to do for Apex Legends.

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Some days, I wonder if every word written before a trailer is actually superfluous. It’s a visual medium, after all. What can a description achieve save to clumsily gesture at the true shape of something; a dog-eared tour brochure for a thrilling weekend spelunking in Plato’s cave? I can usually shake this feeling, but gory zombie action game Showa American Story is my breaking point. There is nothing I can impart about this thing that will not be conveyed better by allowing its new trailer to wash over you like a tide of sheer videogame. Here’s it:

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Remedy's Alan Wake 2 has now "recouped most of its development and marketing expenses", CEO Tero Virtala has announced in a business review for January-September 2024. Speaking as somebody who would quite like there to be more Alan Wake games - or at least, moderately weird and pretty decent blockbuster singleplayer horror games - I am both pleased by this news and a little troubled that Remedy's eldritch forest fable (which came out in October 2023) has yet to break even.

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Typing Of The Dead released in arcades 25 years ago remains a masterpiece - funny, absurd, tense, and novel. I am keen on any game that aims to follow in its footsteps, and there are a few. The latest is Blood Typers, a horror game where you tippity-tap on your keyboard to fight montsters in a spooky mansion, but this isn't a rail shooter, so you'll be typing to explore and navigate, too.

It's now got a release of February 2025, and there's a demo you can play now.

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The Elder Scrolls: Legends, the free-to-play card game set in Bethesda's fantasy world, has been removed from sale on Steam. Its servers will shut down for good on January 30th, 2025, after which it will no longer be playable. The closure comes five years after the game was last updated.

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Sunday is cancelled. Book for now!

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SCENE. A Video Game Website At Sunrise.

Enter A Reader Of News

A Reader Of News I wonder whither there be'est any new PC games on sale this week, perchance?

Enter A News Editor, With Alarums And Excursions

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One of my lesser quality tests for an RPG is whether the shopkeepers complain at you for not buying anything. Grumpy shopkeepers, good RPG. This most specific of litmus tests has served me well, although I must admit that I’d happily upgrade it to ‘shopkeepers you can attack’, would that not disqualify 99% of games. But not turn based dungeon crawler Thysiastery, it turns out. This “dungeon crawler RPG featuring traditional roguelike and turn-based gameplay” apparently trusts you enough to let you recklessly batter its friendly wandering lizard merchants. You’d be a monster for it, of course, but it’s nice to have options.

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Twitch have introduced a new "Politics and Sensitive Social Issues" label for streams that "focus" on topics like "elections, civic integrity, and war or military conflict". As with the streaming giant's existing labels for M-rated material, sexual themes or depictions of gambling, the idea is that viewers can filter out such streams in advance by altering their settings.

Advertisers, similarly, can "make better choices about the content they want to advertise next to" - in other words, pull their ads from a whole swathe of material if they don't want to be associated with anything controversial. Twitch's hope is that "the labels will allow advertisers to have more context to inform which types of streams they show their ads alongside, which we expect to increase brands’ confidence in running ads on Twitch, and could bring new advertisers to our service."

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Minor spoilers for the first few hours of Veilguard and heavy spoilers for Baldur’s Gate 3

For all the things I ended up enjoying about Dragon Age: The Veilguard, it isn’t much of an RPG. What little roleplaying it does offer revolves around what flavour of supportive hero you prefer, and you can count the number of impactful dialogue decisions on a three-fingered hand. This might sound utterly damning in the wake of Baldur's Gate 3’s incredible reactivity, and if I approached games as some sort of tedious comparative intellectual exercise rather than just, y’know, seeing how I felt about them, then I suppose it would be. Weirdly, though, the recent memory of Baldur’s Gate 3 didn’t diminish my time with Veilguard at all. It was actually the opposite: it freed Dragon Age from having to carry the torch for a certain period in Bioware’s history, and let me enjoy Veilguard for what it was.

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Beloved roguelike traumatic-childhood-em-up The Binding Of Issac: Rebirth turned 10 yesterday, and it’s half off on Steam to celebrate. What’s more, maker Edmund McMillen has announced that the foretold online co-op update is due on the 18th of this month, alongside a “considerable” balance update. Consider me considering the considerability of said considerable update!

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I have zero archaeology experience or knowledge, but I bet archaeologists really love their jobs (for the most part). They get to analyse and discover cool artefacts and educate us on the histories of forgotten civilisations. That's dreamy stuff, that is. But I do wonder what it's like for archaeologists to discover and study something they shouldn't have; something with a disturbing secret - a curse, maybe. Bite-sized horror game The Children Of Clay explores this idea and I'd like more of it, please.

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The trailer for Bambas! starts off innocently enough. It's an "innovative urban walking simulator" in which you play a disembodied pair of shoes, individually moved with a controller's analog sticks and trigger buttons. The first half of the trailer is all whimsy and playground fun - kicking a football, standing on a climbing frame, riding a skateboard. But then a note of darkness creeps in, as the player begins to channel the sheer nihilistic inconsequentiality of a world in which shoes have no thinking human bodies to restrain them.

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As a yearly blockbuster, Call of Duty, through sheer expense and effort, would like you to think it is the Die Hard of video games. Or, depending on the setting, the Saving Private Ryan of video games. But it is barely Black Hawk Down. This latest campaign in Call Of Duty: Black Ops 6 reminds me more of the forgettable Netflix shootfests that thumbnail their way across your TV screen as you try to find some gritty nothing to aid you in zoning out of life. Still, there is an anecdotal contingent of casual sofa sitters for whom Call Of Duty is the game. A balls-to-the-wall shooter to return to every winter and rinse through in a weekend. Ed has already gestured at its multiplayer, announcing: "yup, it's COD", like a deeply tired Captain Birdseye inspecting the day's catch, wondering when his life will change. But never mind that. How does the single player story mode hold up? Some are calling it the best campaign in years. And I guess that's true, in the sense that it is the least worst.

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Ogres, Orcs, and Khorne are all on the way in the upcoming expansion for strategy game Total War: Warhammer 3, and Creative Assembly have just released their latest dev vlog with a few more details on what to expect. There’s still no word on the exact title, although given the established naming convention (Shadows Of Change, Thrones Of Decay), I’m tentatively calling it “Sniffers Of Glue” in honour of the No Think, Only Krump faction selection.

You’ll find the vlog in its full glory below. What’s interesting about this one is that vlog mainstay director Rich Alridge has brought along some new faces: battle designer Josh King and audio director Chris Goldsmith. And, yes, so no-one can accuse me of burying the lede: that audio design involved the enthusiastic, deeply disgusting slurping of porridge and yoghurt, and the jangling of real bones. The source of the bones is not revealed.

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Steam's built-in game recording feature has been usable in beta since the summer, but it has now been properly launched for every user, following a client update to Steam yesterday. It's basically another method of capturing funny ragdoll glitches and posting them on the "lol-games-are-dumb" channel of your friend's Discord. Or for posting that flukey knife throw in Call Of Duty to Twitter, as if you really meant to kill the man from across the map all along. Or saving a clip for your personal records, like the footage of that time you yeeted an innocent citizen off the 50-foot wall of a castle town in Dragon's Dogma 2. We all do that, right? Right?

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"Never read the comments," is a truth much-rehearsed by senior games journalists, but I have long since levelled-up past this axiom and entered into a new world of benevolent narcissism. I always read the comments, for all commenters are my children. They exist to glorify and preserve me in my dotage. True, occasionally my children say things like "I think your writing and opinions are appalling, and that you deserve to be repeatedly run over by a herd of deer", but it is the nature of children to rebel.

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I would never have predicted there'd be an isometric tactics game based on run-and-gun series Metal Slug, yet here Metal Slug Tactics is, and I am here for it. We've been following its development for a while but it's out now on Steam, and seemingly as strong as its demo suggested.

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We'll have a review of Planet Coaster 2 soon, but I keep making Brendy do other tasks so he's not had enough time yet to ride the rails. That means it falls to me to at least let you know that Frontier's theme park builder is out now.

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Foxhole is one of my favourite games to read about, even if I don't play it. It's a massively multiplayer World War 2 game, viewed from above, where battlefield logistics matters as much as aiming and flanking. Its developers have just announced a major new update coming next summer, Foxhole: Airborne, which adds planes to the game for the first time.

Planes, in a topdown MMO? It makes a little more sense if you watch the trailer.

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