Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is gunning hard for Yakuza’s mini-game crown Your Gold Saucer date night just got way more interesting Image credit:Square Enix Square Enix showed off 20 more minutes of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth during a special State Of Play stream last night, and holy heck, they sure are bringing it with the mini-games in this one. There’s a whole Gwent-like card game called Queen’s Blood (watch out Triple Triad), dolphin ride obstacle courses, playing with Mooglets, the return of Intergrade’s Fort Condor battles, a strange bit of chicken wrangling, photographing Red XIII, frog jumping… and that’s before we even get to all the stuff at Gold Saucer....

Final Fantasy Tactics-like Trash Of The Titans dares you to be the garbage guzzling disaster mammal you always knew you were Garbountiful Image credit:Thayer and Back Again Many moons ago, premiere wordsman Nate Crowley reviewed shark ‘em up Maneater , decrying its incurious perpetuation of anti-shark propaganda, and calling it “an ecstatically violent simulation of being a fool’s idea of a shark.” My own frothing penchant for the plan-schemes of Warhammer’s Skaven ratboys has been documented in these pages to the point of rabidity, but I do feel broadly similarly about media that sullies rats - clean, smart and good folk that they are....

Final Fantasy XVI’s wobbly Steam Deck performance gets it a failing grade from Valve Harsh but fair Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun Having gone to bed last night with Final Fantasy XVI installed yet unplayed on a Steam Deck , I awoke to find Valve have slapped the moody RPG with Unsupported status for the handheld. Its crime: an inability to “run well” on the Steam Deck’s internals, regardless of settings changes....

Former Assassin’s Creed and Warhammer Online dev announces new fantasy game based on Welsh myth It’s written primarily in Welsh Image credit:Stevan Anastasoff Former Ubisoft and Eidos-Montréal developer Stevan Anastasoff has announced Tales from the Mabinogion , a third-person narrative game based on ancient Welsh folklore that’s written primarily in the Welsh language. The game puts you in charge of a wandering monarch, who is embarked on a quest to save the realm from a horrible fog....

FPS Quest turns the perpetual battle for a good frame-rate into an emergent shadow war between rival geeks “Optimising is risky” Image credit:Farlight Games Industry I’m a bit tantalised by FPS Quest, but I do worry that it has already defanged its most interesting ideas. Developed by Farlight Games Industry, it’s a dungeon crawler in which your frame-rate “is your health”, with mistakes and damage causing slowness and stuttering. To regain health/frame-rate, you must do what you do when running any game on a potato PC - fiddle with the settings like you’re bargaining with an especially recalcitrant devil....

Games only need fast travel when they make travel “boring”, says Dragon’s Dogma 2 director He’d prefer you walk or board an ox-drawn cart Image credit:Capcom Ahhh, fast travel: the opinion generator. Speaking to IGN , Dragon’s Dogma 2 director Hideaki Itsuno threw his own hat into the ring, saying that he’s keen to avoid fast travel in DD2 and would prefer that “players travel normally and experience the world around them”....

Going by its demo, Crystal Story: Dawn Of Dusk is a slick retro-modern RPG with many eerie touches Ask your mom Image credit:Fred Brown Crystal Story: Dawn of Dusk is a combination of words that screams “predatory mobile fantasy RPG” but that’s very much not my takeaway from the game’s demo. Out tomorrow on Steam for £10.23, $11.99 or €11.83 including the 20% launch discount, this first instalment in the Crystal Story series blends the cuddly feel of a 16-bit Zelda with the dream logic of a Yume Nikki ....

Going Torrent-less in Elden Ring: Shadow Of The Erdtree reminded my why it won’t beat old Souls No horsin’ around <img loading=“lazy” src=“https://assetsio.gnwcdn.com/erdtree-waits.jpg?width=690&quality=85&format=jpg&dpr=3&auto=webp" onerror=“this.onerror=null;this.src=‘https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhe7F7TRXHtjiKvHb5vS7DmnxvpHiDyoYyYvm1nHB3Qp2_w3BnM6A2eq4v7FYxCC9bfZt3a9vIMtAYEKUiaDQbHMg-ViyGmRIj39MLp0bGFfgfYw1Dc9q_H-T0wiTm3l0Uq42dETrN9eC8aGJ9_IORZsxST1AcLR7np1koOfcc7tnHa4S8Mwz_xD9d0=s16000';" alt=“A heavily armoured player turns to the camera as a message says “It waits inside” flashes above their head in Elden Ring: Shadow Of The Erdtree. - 1”> Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Bandai Namco I mentioned it briefly in my Shadow Of The Erdtree review , but there’s one area of the DLC where your steed Torrent is so scared they refuse to be summoned....

Hammer of the gods comes down on the weapons of Hades 2 in the roguelike’s latest patch, but in a good way Ding. Ding. Ding. Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Supergiant Witchy roguelike Hades 2 got a fresh update yesterday that sees a bunch of weapons getting stompier, thumpier, and, yes, whompier. It’s like the hammer of Hephaestus himself was put to work on the entire armory. The Moonstone Axe’s heavier attacks now channel faster, for one thing, which could make the most sluggish of the weapons a little more viable....

Hell Express is Death Stranding meets Helldivers meets Pacific Drive - aka, deliver letters to the dead in a combat truck Image credit:Arc Games Quick confession: every time I come up with an absolute Frankenstein’s cocktail of allusion-cobbling Google-bait like the headline for this article, a fairy dies. But that’s OK, because Hell Express is a top-down 3D extraction shooter about delivering letters to the dead. When I play it – there’s no release date yet – I will convey a note of apology to the soul of the fairy I’ve just slain with my appalling SEO practices....

Helldivers 2 rolls out the cyborgs as a barrage of bloodcurdling binary heralds the Machinery of Oppression update “01001000 01000101 01001100 01001100 01001111 00100000 01010111 01001111 01010010 01001100 01000100” Image credit:Arrowhead Grab your exploding hammer if you’ve invested in one, Helldivers 2 developers Arrowhead have revealed a trio of new cyborg enemies which’ll be deploying on the battlefield as the shooter’s forever war shifts into a battle to conquer Cyberstan. Well, I say new, these metal-augmented marauders will be plenty familiar if you’re a veteran of the first Helldivers ....

Here’s a demo for Dead By Daylight spin-off The Casting Of Frank Stone, from the makers of Until Dawn Beware, your progress won’t transfer to the full thing Image credit:Behaviour Interactive This morning I left my torpid flat in search of coffee, sniffed the restive wind, noted with approval the gloom gathering beneath the trees, and thought: at last, summer is over. At last, we quit the disgusting sunlit months. At last we leave all that is green and good behind, and return to the time of monsters....

Here’s a demo for Reka, the bewitching forest fantasy game with the chicken-legged house Check out all those lovely silverbirch Image credit:Fireshine Games As I have now casually mentioned in about 400 news posts, I’m moving flat soon. During the quest for a new flat - a quest I would slot somewhere between return to Ravenholm in Half-Life 2 and the Shalebridge Cradle in Thief: Deadly Shadows in terms of overall hopefulness and unpleasant surprises - I toyed briefly with the idea of living in a mobile home....

Here’s a free demo for Cleanfall, horrible “alchemic” lovechild of Spelunky, Noita and tower defence Also a very unconventional robot maid simulator Image credit:Humanyoyo Studios In Cleanfall you essentially play a Roomba that is trying to reverse the apocalypse because the apocalypse is messy . A Roomba capable of tunnelling through miles of procedurally generated, monster-infested crust so as to reorganise the Earth’s core and bring about its ultimate objective - a sparkling living room....

Hollow Knight Silksong walkthrough: Part 11 (Bellhart) Here’s how to free the Haunted town of Bellhart Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Team Cherry Wondering how to save Haunted Bellhart from its curse in Hollow Knight: Silksong? Previously in our walkthrough , we advised you to dip your toes into Bellhart just to rest at the Bench there. But in doing so, you’ll have been met with a very eerie sight - dozens of Pilgrims , strung up by threads of silk, seemingly entranced and immobile....

Hollow Knight Silksong walkthrough: Part 32 (Misc Quests 3) Here’s what to do before you finish Act 2 of Silksong Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Team Cherry What should you do before ascending the elevator at the end of Act 2 in Hollow Knight: Silksong? We’re nearing the end credits of Silksong at this point. Don’t worry, an entire (hidden) third Act is awaiting us afterwards, but it’s still a good time to go back over the world of Pharloom and tie off any loose ends before we play the Threefold Melody and reach Pharloom’s highest point for the finale....

Hollow Knight Silksong walkthrough: Part 33 (The Cradle) Two more bosses, and Act 2 is finished Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Team Cherry How do you defeat the final bosses of Act 2 in Hollow Knight: Silksong? Just two boss fights now stand between you and the end credits of Hollow Knight: Silksong - but don’t worry, there’s a whole extra hidden Act 3 to experience afterwards, as long as you do some prep work between the two bosses....

How Rockstar banning Cake Day helped launch a designer’s career in edible games Former L.A. Noire developer Jenn Sandercock on the overlap between feast and play Image credit:Jenn Sandercock Years before she worked on top-drawer point-and-clickers Return To Monkey Island and Thimbleweed Park , Australian game developer Jenn Sandercock was a junior designer on Team Bondi’s historical open world game L.A. Noire . Eventually published by Grand Theft Auto developers Rockstar in 2011, L....

How to complete Eyes in the Sky in Arc Raiders Find out exactly where to install each LiDAR Scanner in Eyes in the Sky Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Embark Studios Have you been running around in circles trying to find the tripods you need for the Eyes in the Sky quest in Arc Raiders? So were we! But we don’t want you to have to go through that and potentially lose your entire loadout trying to find them....

How to find the 3D printer in Sons Of The Forest Learn where to find the 3D printer in Sons Of The Forest Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Endnight Games Looking for the 3D printer in Sons Of The Forest? Sons Of The Forest is a tough survival game, but you can make it a little easier with the 3D printer. No, you won’t use it to make your own custom Warhammer miniatures!...