King Beef wakes with a roar of incomprehension, amidst a huge stack of hay. That hay has saved his life. When his ramshackle barnship broke deep and came apart on the void reefs of the Diogenes cluster, its wreck crashed down on an arid nearby moon, and the King would have been obliterated, had he not been having a rage-nap in the feed store for his spaceborne cattle ranch. Looking around him, the King sees that only one breeding pair of his herd have survived the impact, along with his sole possessions - the solid uranium armour and matching mace which, in his eyes at least, proclaim the divine legitimacy of his rule....

But that’s not all Netflix are cooking. We also got a first look at The Witcher: Nightmare Of The Wolf, an animated prequel film following Geralt’s mentor, Vesemir. You’re probably familiar with Vesemir as an old man in The Witcher 3, but the film is about his younger, hotter years. It’s being produced by Korean animation studio Studio Mir, who previously worked on The Legend Of Korra and more recently other Netflix series such as Dota: Dragon’s Blood....

And Japan’s showing hasn’t only brought emotional sporting moments to our screens, oh no. Athletes stormed into the opening ceremony to orchestral versions of video game classics, and now I’ve discovered that the world flags have been reimagined as samurai. This, in particular, is excellent and having had a good look at many of them, I’d say there’s a few that would make some good video game protagonists.

I am being facetious. There Is No Game is smart and funny and surprising, but the thing is that it’s very much “a video gamer’s video game”, if you will. I think maybe it is a small bit too much that. (Note: spoilers follow, I suppose, as this is arguably one of those “if you explain it, it’s not as fun” games). There Is No Game has existed in a form for a while, having won a game jam back in 2015....

The principle makes sense. After all, E3 is a sort of watering hole, as much as it is game announcement show. To give attendees a customisable avatar, in that context, feels like a smart move. A way to attach faces to names, and tease some vestige of humanity from an otherwise forbidding noodle-soup of schedules, ads, and embedded media players. Nevertheless, somehow, the E3 avatar system manages to give the sense of an alternate telling of The Matrix, in which humanity is being battery farmed by a massive Nintendo Wii....

Currently, he’s earning £46,663 a month to make Minecraft look pretty. That’s a staggering amount that spiked between the end of 2018 and 2020, and he’s maintained that level of income for the past year. Rather sweetly, his goals at the time of launching were £360 for the first tier, and then £730 for the second tier. That surge coincides with his work on “SEUS PTGI”, a very experimental version of his shaders that implements ray tracing on non-RTX graphics cards....

On Valentine’s morning, your farmer will receive letters in their mailbox from friends and love interests each with their own message. Maybe even a gift. They seem to have the silly puns and themed jokes that I remember from handing out actual boxed Valentine cards as a child. A big factor in my mod choices lately is how quickly I’ll actually see what’s been changed in the game. Mods that add endgame content are neat, but there’s a huge risk that I’ll get distracted and wind up ditching my new playthrough before I see any of it....

Styx: Shards Of Darkness is a stealth action game about a rather crass goblin joking his way through big, puzzle-y levels full of guards and monsters. A pal and I played it in co-op earlier this year, taking a couple hours to scratch our heads through each of its levels and cackling over our failures. I fully expected speedrunners to put our pathetic efforts to shame, I just couldn’t have predicted they’d do it like this....

Dystopian dread aside, thanks to the ever reliable services of Google Translate, Bauhutte’s description of their gaming bed does, at least, make for some entertaining reading. I do love a bit of space merit, oh yes. Mind you, that’s just the description for the “standard” gaming bed, which comprises of the bed, headboard with additional phone grip lamp thing, and the desk at the end. The “ultimate” gaming bed, pictured up the top there, adds an “energy wagon” (presumably for your infinite supply of Red Bull and Monster cans), a “slim bottle rack” (in case you fancy a sip of water in between, I’m guessing) and a “long side table” to store your keyboard and other peripherals....

The one-armed protagonist means you’ll only need one hand to play the game, controlling everything with your mouse. This control scheme sounds like it would lead to a more easygoing experience. Less brain power, right? Well, your one arm means everything in the game is manual and deliberately inconvenient. If you want to move, you need to pull and drag yourself. If you want to reload, you’ll need to remove the empty shells one by one before replacing them....

The Division 2’s Steam page is live now, though there’s no information on it yet about what Steam connected features it might support. Ubisoft announced last month that their games would return to Steam beginning with Assassin’s Creed Valhalla on December 6th and following with Anno 1800 and Roller Champions shortly thereafter. At the time, a Ubisoft spokesperson said that the change was because they were “constantly evaluating how to bring our games to different audiences wherever they are....

Book Of Travels is an online RPG in a 2D world of natural magic. Might And Delight did a 30 minute video with a closer look at exploration and character creation last November. Today’s launch date trailer is more of a cross-section, giving a look at player interactions and exploration and a bit of combat too. Gosh, and the music is still so lovely. I’m a real sucker for strings in soundtracks....

The standard edition is currently 70% reduced, making it just £7.80 to grab it from Steam. Ubisoft announced that more of their games would return to Steam in November 2022, with Assassin’s Creed Valhalla the first of the bunch. Roller Champions and Anno 1800 followed, and The Division 2 is the first of a second wave. An Ubisoft spokesperson said during the announcement that they were “constantly evaluating how to bring our games to different audiences wherever they are....

Actually, haud on - looking at the site it seems Sum was also behind that dubstep-ridden frag video disaster parody wot was going around our Uni for a solid two months. Incredible. Anyway, his next game involves neither voxel jaywalkers nor Mountain Dew meme explosions. Instead, Tombstar is a top-down twin-stick roguelite that has your space cowboy saying “see ya” to all manner of aliens, outlaws, and death robots across a series of interstellar labyrinths....

And for this week’s theme, we consider the things that make up a good online shooter? Cue a solid chat about weighty guns and the sounds of footsteps. And also a bit more Deathloop chat. We’re actually both pretty passionate about the sound of footsteps in games, particularly if they’re varied. God, we love footsteps. Finally, it was my turn to surprise Imogen with some player names, all of which stemmed from my time in Splitgate....

Unreal might be one of the only games that exists in reality the same way it exists in my head. My memory of playing this in 1998 is exactly how it plays today, no idealised inventions being revealed as false as I charge around its enormous levels. And yet I feel like Unreal is bizarrely forgotten when it comes to reminiscing on the first-person shooter. Clearly the name Unreal is not forgotten....

So, this deathmatch mode will be released in beta for now, so Riot can work out all the kinks before it becomes a permanent fixture. Each match will have 10 players facing off against each other with unlimited money with which to purchase any weapons their hearts desire. You’ll also all start off with armour, but abilities are a no-go. There’ll be no sneaky business in these matches, either, because a radar sweeps the map every five seconds revealing everyone’s location....

Is it just me, or does she look a bit like an edgy, modern version of Artemis from Supergiant’s Hades? I think it’s the glowing green bird on her shoulder that’s giving me those vibes. The devs say they’re delaying the new agent to a slightly later patch due to how unstable the last few patches have been. “Not gonna lie, the Act III patch is a bit scary considering the high amount of content coming and potential instability,” they say....

I did not expect that I would ever Google something like “will Big Ben bong?” in service to an article for RPS, and yet here we are - and it turns out it will not. The big B day has arrived, not with a bong but a whimper. It’s a sore subject for a lot of us (stuff disappearing off of Netflix; my partner is European and won’t have to queue as long at airports), a genuinely frightening one for others (unknown economic impact; forced repatriation)....

There’s a bit of plague and fantastical weirdness going on somewhere in Wartales, but you don’t have to mess with it if you don’t wanna. Your one job is to lead a mercenary party, pay them, feed them, and turn them into whatever sort of squad tickles your fancy (be the goodies and take bounties on bandits, or be the bandits that folks advertise bounties for). “With Wartales, you’re free to do what you want,” game director Nicolas Cannasse told me during an interview in September....