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If that is you, then good news: they’re coming to Steam on March 29th, with some spit and polish. The Gold Box games are enormously influential, being based on classic D&D settings like Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance, and Dark Sun and helping to establish the early template for CRPGs. They are honestly hard to return to now, but these releases will be enhanced by companion apps, a unified launcher, improved DOSBox support, and a tool for transfering parties of characters between games....

Some staggering moustaches and British accents are on display there. There are at least three characters whose surnames are assorted English towns too. I particularly enjoy Waltaquin Redditch, but Iscarion Colchester is a close second. Classic Squeenix. This lot are all members of the Blue Fox mercenary group, who are trying to stop rival generically monikered powers the Empire and the Alliance from pillaging DioField Island for its natural resources....

This looming dread, growing increasingly loom as the game goes on, is one of the most effective weapons in Hob’s Barrows’ arsenal of horror. Thomasina, a barrow-digger and proto-feminist trouser-wearer in a time when trousers were worn by men, is a practical and mostly cheerful woman. She approaches all the puzzles she has to solve in the robust, roll-your-sleeves up manner of an old-timey governess who doesn’t care if you hate learning French verbs....

Time to enjoy your lovely joke! Q: Why does Santa keep falling asleep while playing games? A: He has Norco-lepsy

Ryan is currently putting the finishing touches to Rogue State: Revolution, a souk-lively Middle Eastern nation-building sim happy to tackle issues most games wouldn’t touch with a ten foot barge-pole. As I discovered during an absorbing morning with the eighteen-turn/month press demo, there are few easy answers, few win-win situations, in post-revolution democratic Basenji. RPS: Before we talk about Rogue State: Revolution, would you describe your unusual route into game development?...

Yeah, The Flash really doesn’t have a very good time in that trailer, does he? I mean, he didn’t have a good time in the first gameplay reveal for Suicide Squad at last year’s Game Awards either, to be fair. Not sure what that’s all about. Maybe they just don’t want to reveal any of the other Justice League members you’ll presumably be maiming / killing in the rest of the game yet?...

Now, time to enjoy your nice joke! Q: What do all shapes consider to be their father figure? A: The Paternal Cylinder

You might even say that’s the optimal way to play Elden Ring. The non-linear open world design means if you’re up against a boss that’s just too powerful, well, just go explore somewhere else and come back when you’ve gotten stronger along with some new gear or spells. And if you want to farm for hours on end until you’re Level 100 before you’ve even faced Rennala, then that’s your prerogative....

“In this OpenDev scenario, you will have up to 150 turns to guide your civilization from the Neolithic Era to the end of the Early Modern Era,” Amplitude say. “This one features many improvements, a brand new map and a heavier focus on naval gameplay.” Since their last demo, Amplitude say they’re improved the interfaces for diplomacy and district placement. They’ve rebalanced the game’s pacing, economy, and cultures. They’ve also added new unit classes, including anti-cavalry....

I’d have given up on the game if it weren’t so interesting. For one thing, none of those deaths were final. He died as a child and came back. He died as a teenager and came back. These were not saved games, but ordinary occurrences. It’s an interesting world made infuriating by awkward design choices.

Our Alice Bee has the Legendary Edition downloaded on Origin, where her update is about 9GB, while Steam users are reporting patches at 11GB or less. Check out the patch notes for this whopper below, these tweaks are live across PC and consoles now. Surprisingly small notes for such a large patch, right? I will say that I’ve already noticed the improved iris shaders. I didn’t actually realise that my Shep’s eyes reflecting light weirdly was a bug, and only noticed how much better it was after the tweak....

Here’s the original announcement trailer: The page also clarifies that they have no plans to remake any other games in the Prince Of Persia series, which is surely a disappointment to some edgy Warrior Within fans. Plus, since Sands Of Time currently has no release date, pre-orders “have been cancelled and refunded where applicable,” Ubisoft says. The Sands Of Time remake was originally Ubisoft’s first game to be led by their studios in India, but with the most recent indefinite delay lead development duties were transferred to Ubisoft Montréal....

Hope we tricked at least one of you there, because it’s Neon White time, baby! Alice0: Neon White is a speedrunning FPS set across vaporwave Heaven, where a gang of anime idiot criminals have been raised to defeat demons. Playing as an embarrassing anime idiot, we’re trying to climb the leaderboards of Heaven’s demon-killers by dashing and shooting through levels as fast as we can. All of the weapons we find scattered about levels offer bonus movement abilities, ranging from air-dashes and double-jumps to rocketing around and high-speed stomps....

The Sims 4 usually gives you a few different paths towards occult transformation, and becoming a werewolf is no exception. Below we’ll outline all the different methods you can use to make your playable Sims into werewolves. How to become a werewolf in The Sims 4: all the ways There are three legitimate routes to becoming a werewolf in The Sims 4, as well as one way of cheating to get there....

“As we work on expanding skin tone variety, in this first step, we’ll be improving the blotchy artifacts and ashy appearance of darker skin tones on mid and high spec machines,” Maxis say, noting that the changes will, at that time, only be visible to those with “Uncompressed Sim Textures” enabled in their game options. A bigger change for Create-A-Sim is coming in December. Maxis will be adding “at least a hundred new skin tone swatches in cool, neutral, and warm tones with a particular emphasis on darker skin tones,” they say....

Here’s the complete list of winners: Game Of The Year: Elden Ring VR Game Of The Year: Hitman 3 Labor Of Love: Cyberpunk 2077 Better With Friends: Raft Outstanding Visual Style: Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales Most Innovative Gameplay: Stray Best Game You Suck At: Elden Ring Best Soundtrack: Final Fantasy VII Remake Entergrade Outstanding Story-Rich Game: God Of War Sit Back And Relax: Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga Best Game On The Go: Death Stranding Director’s Cut...

As ever, Steam’s yearly deals-a-thon is a bit overwhelming. I haven’t made proper use of my wishlist in ages so where the heck am I supposed to start deciding on what I might like to grab on discount? If you’re in the same pickle, the RPS folks have picked out some Steam Summer Sale recommendations as a cheat sheet to some particularly good deals on particularly good games. Personally, I used the sale to buy a copy of Yakuza 0 for my younger sister while it’s 75% off for £3....

Each of these remasters has a rearranged soundtrack, new pixel art, and updated menus, although it looks like people aren’t too happy with the reworked fonts. I’m not that picky when it comes to this stuff, but yeah, it’s an interesting design choice, to say the least. Squeenix made a bunch of ugly versions of classic Final Fantasy games for mobile, which then they brought to PC. When Katharine and Brendan ranked the best Final Fantasy games on PC, Brendan called FF6’s port “horrible-looking”, while Katharine wasn’t a fan of its “ickily prettified sprites and nasty fonts”....

“What we fear might be affected is creativity, as a lot of what defines Bossa stems from impromptu chats, quick discussions, serendipity between team members. We’ll have to offset these with more organised structure around online meetings, which invariably will change things a bit,” said Henrique Olifiers, co-founder of Bossa, creators of Surgeon Simulator and I Am Bread. On the other side of the coin, Failbetter Games, the makers of Sunless Skies, aren’t too concerned about remote working as most of them usually only work one day in the office a week anyway....

First, I must thank the the Yakuza board on Reddit for bringing my attention to Takaya Kuroda’s sterling tunes. Without them, I don’t think Christmas would’ve happened. Cheers for making Christmas happen, folks. The Christmas tune in question is titled “My little sweet honey”. It’s largely in Japanese but the chorus is home to Kuroda belting out, “Please, pleasee, marryyyy me”. Soon after there’s mention of a “present”, which is undeniably merry....