Blue Prince is already the very best shapeshifting videogame house Cellar door Image credit:Raw Fury I’m currently trying to find a new flat in London. This is not much fun, though it’s a great opportunity to meet and bond with other would-be tenants over a shared, grinding resentment of landlords who will literally stuff a bed in a toilet and call it a “studio apartment”. It’s also left me powerfully invested in the premise of Blue Prince , a first-person puzzler which looks like a graphic novel and starts with your character inheriting a huge, weird, isolated mansion, Mt....

Browse RPS ad-free with our new free monthly Standard subscription trial Available now until April 30th Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun Remember, this free trial is for our Monthly Standard subscription tier only . It won’t work on anything else. Normally, our Standard subscription costs £4/$5 a month, and gives you a glimpse of what RPS looks like without all the loud, shouty adverts and auto-playing videos. By becoming a supporter, you’re also doing your bit to help keep RPS weird, letting us create more of the writing you love best, such as Sin Vega’s indie recommendation column Scout Report ....

Call Of Duty: Black Ops 6 multiplayer review: it’s like Call Of Duty A good one Image credit:Activision Developer: Treyarch Publisher: Activision Release: October 25th, 2024 On: Windows From: Steam , Battlenet , Game Pass Price: £70/€70/$70 Reviewed on: Intel Core i7-12700F, Nvidia RTX 3080, 16GB RAM, Windows 11 People have asked me, a Call Of Duty liker, “How’s the new COD?” - such is the mass appeal of Call Of Duty that even a lot of my non-industry pals are invested in whether Black Ops 6 ’s shooty really does bang....

Counter-Strike 2 update plonks new crates on Dust 2, which could be game-changing Will it give the map a boost? Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Valve I’ve not played Counter- Strike 2 in yonks, but I know a big update when I see one. That’s right: Valve have added some new crates just outside of counter-terrorist spawn, near bombsite A. This means that players can now use these boxes to hop from CT up to catwalk with little fuss, where previously you’d need to use your teammates’ heads as a springboard....

Dead Cells developer’s new action-roguelike Windblown is getting a demo and Early Access release this month Progress will carry over from the demo, too Image credit:Kepler Ghost Windblown is an action roguelite much like Dead Cells , the previous game from developer Motion Twin, but it trades sidescrolling ‘vania vibes for a 3D and more colourful world, and adds co-op for up to three pals. That sounds plenty appealing, and it now has a release date: October 24th....

Deeply unusual gardening game Grunn’s shear snip deserves every award Geoff Keighley has ever invented Shear genius Image credit:Sokpop Collective I usually avoid writing sentences that could easily be quoted on a Steam page, but the exquisitely satisfying sound that Grunn ’s garden shears make is the exception. Please feel free to try any of these on for size: Grunn’s shear sound is the Wilhelm Scream of gardening equipment, sure to be referenced for decades to come....

Diablo 4 Pulverize Druid build and best skills Discover the best Pulverize Druid build in Diablo 4 Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Blizzard Entertainment Want the best Pulverize Druid build in Diablo 4? The Pulverize Druid has long been one of the best builds in Diablo 4 , and this tanky bruiser continues to excel in Season 1 . While Patch 1.1.0 made endgame content far less survivable, the Pulverize Druid is still more than capable of clearing high-tier Nightmare Dungeons....

Elden Ring: Nightreign tier list - Which is the best class to use? All 10 Nightfarers ranked, including The Forsaken Hollows DLC characters Image credit:Bandai Namco Which is the best of the 10 character classes in Elden Ring: Nightreign? The roster of Nightfarers at your disposal is a complex one, and the two new characters to join Nightreign in The Forsaken Hollows DLC only up the ante. Unlike base Elden Ring , where all that changes between each class is your starting stats and armour, in Nightreign each Nightfarer has their own unique abilities, passives, stories, and even quests....

Elder Scrolls 4 Oblivion’s rumoured Unreal Engine remake has a new take on stealth, stamina and blocking, say rumours It’s being “fully remade” Image credit:Microsoft A new report has thrown fuel on the fire labelled “Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion remake”. Don’t ask me why people have started labelling fires. It’s probably a rite to summon a Daedra, or something. Anyway, a new version of Bethesda’s somewhat scorned 2006 RPG is allegedly in the works at Singapore-based Virtuos....

Europa Universalis 5 is so complex its developers will let you automate half the game But should you? Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Paradox Interactive I am rewriting the history of Korea, and there are blotty ink stains everywhere. Europa Universalis 5 was announced yesterday , the official unveiling of a grand strategy game that has been an open secret since April last year, thanks to a long-running dev diary ....

Exterminator is what you’d get if Aldi sold their equivalent of Armored Core Shielded Center Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/SamanSpades Aldi and Lidl are two all time greats of the supermarket genre. I love their legally distinct take on many of the biggest brands, like the “Racer”, which is basically a Snickers bar. Except I actually prefer the Racer! I can’t remember if it’s Aldi or Lidl that do them, but the “Mini Delight” chocolate sticks are also exceptional....

Final Fantasy faces no “existential risk” despite lower-than-hoped PS5 sales, says FF16 director FF16 PC port release date arrives alongside demo Image credit:Square Enix Please lock your Chocobos to attack position and set your Phoenix Downs to stun: Square Enix have released fresh details of Final Fantasy 16’s PC port, which has now been dated for launch on 17th September. They’ve also shared a little about why it’s taken so long to arrive - the (generally decent) action- RPG hit PS5 over a year ago, back when I was still some filthy console-playing freelancer ....

Finally, GamesMaster’s second best 3DO game of 1996 gets the Nightdive treatment with Killing Time: Resurrected One place higher than Space Hulk Image credit:Nightdive/3D0 Following their remasters of Star Wars: Dark Forces and PO’ed , the sickos at Nightdive have done it again, this time with 1995 FPS Killing Time . Despite being one of the eight people in the world with a 3DO in the house, I missed this one the first time around....

First Total War: Warhammer 3 Thrones Of Decay trailer pits maggots against airships Latest expansion out in the spring Image credit:Sega Sega and Creative Assembly have released the first proper trailer for Total War: Warhammer 3 ’s forthcoming Thrones of Decay expansion, which pits the human Empire, Chaos Nurgle faction and industrious Dwarfs against each other in what the press release terms “a showdown of mohawks, maggots and machines”. Alliteration, is it?...

Forget humans, Palworld players are now capturing bosses thanks to new exploit Stuffing thugs into balls is so yesterday’s news Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Pocketpair As Palworld continues to set mad records on Steam, the players themselves (all 7m of them, man alive) also seem to be in a race to see just how fast they can break it. Case in point: over the weekend, it was discovered that humans, in addition to Pals, could also be stuffed into balls and set to work in your base camp, but now they’ve only gone and started capturing the in-game bosses, too, thanks to a surprisingly easy-to-achieve exploit involving my bestest of friends, the island police force ....

Former Activision CEO Bobby Kotick blasts “fake lawsuits against us and Riot Games”, claiming union workers used harassment claims to drum up members “I mean, think about it. I dated Sheryl Sandberg.” Image credit:Kleiner Perkins/Grit Kotick’s statements reference widely reported incidents alleging a company culture of harassment, intimidation, and pay inequity around the time - coinciding with a lawsuit against the company - and the petition referred to appears to be this one to remove him as CEO , which attracted over a thousand signatures....

Former Battlefield 6 developer slams EA for leaving himself and other Ridgeline staff out of the credits “These talented developers worked tirelessly for 1 to 2.5 years, building the foundation of the game” Image credit:EA Ridgeline were once pretty central to Battlefield 6. Back in 2022, they were unveiled as the creators of the next Battlefield singleplayer campaign , but EA shut them down in the course of mass layoffs over February 2024, with some Ridgeline staff being transferred to another Battlefield studio, Ripple Effect....

From the desk of the Editorial Director of Rock Paper Shotgun: “Ahoy hoy” Awfully nice treehouse you got here Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun Hello. My name is Julian Benson and, as you will have gathered from the headline, I am the new Editorial Director of Rock Paper Shotgun. While this is my announcement post, in truth, I’ve already been here a couple of weeks. However, I didn’t want to draw too much attention to myself as I worked through the treehouse, mapping out its dimensions on gridpaper....

Game dev challenges other devs to multiply something in their game by 1000, triggering landslide of chaotic videos Quantity always wins Image credit:Ryan Kamins I think most would agree that the artist formerly known as Twitter has never been in more need of a thermonuclear cleansing. The Musk era has transformed what was already fondly known as a hellsite into something at once more obnoxious and sadder, whether you’re talking about the web3 grifters or the resurgent debate-me cryptofascists or the recommendation algorithm’s perceptibly greater enthusiasm for quote-tweet flamebait....

Goblin Stone review: turn-based charm spells only last so long Goblin’ up my patience more like Image credit:Orc Chop Games Developer: Orc Chop Games Publisher: Orc Chop Games Release: Out now On: Windows From: Steam Price: £21/€25/$25 Reviewed on: Intel Core i5-8600K, 16GB RAM, Nvidia RTX 2070, Windows 10 In the world of strategy and management game Goblin Stone , the goblins are nearly extinct. Getting murdered in large numbers by adventurers hungry for a quick experience point and a slack handful of coin will do that....