Rock Paper Shotgun – PC Game Reviews, Previews, Subjectivity

Beach farm! Beach farm! Beach farm! I might just be overexcited because I'm playing a lot of Stardew Valley at the moment, but developer ConcernedApe has revealed the game's next update will come with a brand new farmstead - the beach! It might sound like a nice little seaside getaway, but this farm seems like a tough one to get started with - mostly because sprinklers won't work on that pesky sand.

If you fancy even more of a challenge, ConcernedApe says update 1.5 is bringing some "Advanced Game Options" too, making community centre bundles and mine rewards a little more interesting.

A second post-launch patch is hitting Cyberpunk 2077, fixing more bugs causing crashes and halting quests, among other issues. Hotfix 1.05 launched on consoles overnight, with the devs saying it would "follow soon" on PC. I'm not seeing yet, though. CDPR also offer a tantalising note about wanting to support people who make mods, though I imagine they have a lot of other tasks to tick off before they reach mod support.

Wattam, the silly puzzler about combining strange sentient objects, originally came out a year ago. It's been scloosies with the Epic Games Store for the year, but hey you can now find it over on Steam. It's currently 50% off on both stores, so now's as good a time as any to snatch up this cute pile of poop, flowers, and balloons.

The year 2021 is fast approaching, but rather than confront the horrors of the unknown just yet, Rainbow Six Siege is taking a step back into its past. Ubisoft have summoned up R6 Siege: Classic, if you will. The Legacy Arcade is a version of Siege from its early days that you can play from now until January 5th.

As I'm sure most have gathered by now, it's been a challenging week for Cyberpunk 2077. The techy RPG launched with quite a lot of bugs for PC players, prompting both players and investors to pepper CD Projekt Red with questions about how the game wound up launching in this state and what their plans for the future would be. Even the staff themselves have questions, according to a new report about a company meeting in which developers confronted the studio's board about the conditions under which the game was developed and launched.

December's well on its way, which means that games all across the land are releasing a dusting of snow and limited-time holiday-themed events. That includes Ubisoft's viking 'em up Assassin's Creed Valhalla, which is kicking off a Yule Festival with an expanded settlement, some new armor to don, and a couple new holiday missions.

One of the big new multiplayer games of the year is out, but inevitably some of your pals won't have dropped the cash for it just yet. Well not to worry, you can show them the ropes from now until next Thursday for free in Call Of Duty: Black Ops Cold War's multiplayer. You can download Cold War to play holiday playlists, standard Deathmatch, Prop Hunt, and other modes for free this week.

Yesterday, Xbox Game Pass for PC got a couple of tasty additions to it's already very good lineup of games. Everyone's favourite new smash-hit murder 'em up Among Us has joined the party, along with RPS faves Monster Train and Wilmot's Warehouse.

There's a bunch more too, including The Dark Pictures Anthology: Man of Medan. Plenty to keep us all busy over the winter holidays then. (Or rather, plenty to distract me from playing the two giant new RPGs I don't think I'll ever finish.)

Toxicity in games is no fun, and in this year of our lord 2020, there seems to be a growing trend of using artificial intelligence to find and deal with toxic players. I don't just mean in text chat either; the companies Modulate and FaceIt have both created AI that can supposedly detect toxicity in voice chat from the way that someone says something.

Part of me that feels like this is a good idea. Having a way of quickly and easily getting rid of them is great. However, I've heard one too many stories about AI learning to be racist, so I do wonder if it's the best sort of tech to put in video games.

While Cyberpunk 2077 is a mess, especially on consoles, I was not expecting Sony to straight-up remove the game from their download store. While folks who bought it there can still play it, Sony have pulled Cyberpunk from sale on the PlayStation Store as they introduced an open refund policy. Others can still buy the game on the vintage tech known as 'a disc'. But while the situation was certainly sparked by the state of the game, this particular move seems ultimately to be about refunds.

Last night, my Twitter feed was all abuzz about Riot Games announcing a League Of Legends MMO. However, this excitement didn't come from the reveal itself, but more the way it was it was revealed. There was no big marketing ploy or tantalising teaser trailer, nope - a Riot executive just casually tweeted it out.

I bet their PR department are having a field day.

Epic Games are the Fortnite company, sure. But on the developer side of things, they're the Unreal Engine company - and while Fortnite is obviously made using that base, the two rarely overlapped if you weren't actively employed to work on the battle royale. Next year, however, Fortnite players will be able to spice up their creative maps with custom models, bespoke scripts and editable maps using Unreal's toolset.

I'm sure we all have our fond memories of playing through Left 4 Dead and its brilliant sequel. But fun as they are, there's no hiding the pair are getting on a bit, and it's time enough something stepped in to carry on that co-op carnage*. Fortunately, Turtle Rock's own Back 4 Blood entered closed alpha today, and while it's not Left 4 Dead 3 by name, early reports suggest the devs have delivered a rock-solid successor to Bill and the gang's zombie-smashing classic.

Wait, what? Epic have made some rather bold moves since setting up their own storefront - chasing exclusives by the dozen, firing at Steam with aggressively dev-friendly revenue shares, using Fortnite to take trillion-dollar tech companies to court. Now, they're branching out of the games bubble, adding monolithic music streaming service Spotify to their platform earlier today.

No, really. It's right there, just below Hyper Scape.

Microsoft Flight Simulator features some absolutely stunning weather. But as far as the ground's concerned it's always the height of summer, with even the northernmost parts of Scandinavia left remarkably snow-free. That changes with next Tuesday's free update, which adds a sprinkling of snow, ice, and virtual reality goggles to the planet-sized flight 'em up.

While Mojang continue to work on Minecraft's massive Caves & Cliffs update, the latest Java snapshot build has introduced its very best feature: axolotls. These adorable aquatic amphibians won't be live in the main game until the update's full launch in mid-2021, but folks on the bleeding edge can now befriend them. More like amfriendians.

They might make a mess of tramlines and festivals, but at least I don't have to trust Edinburgh City Council with keeping the town from falling out of the sky. Spare a thought, then, for the citizens of Airborne Kingdom's skyward metropolis, who have you to thank for keeping their livelihoods safe above the clouds. The Wandering Band's lofty city-builder took flight today, a floating management sim that dares you not to create a town-shaped hole in the ground below.

There's just over a week to go 'til giftsmas day - and while I'm sure we're all panicking over what to get our friends, loved ones and recurring villains, what's the harm in picking up a little treat for yourself? The Epic Games Store's holiday sale begins today, giving away a new free game for the next 15 days alongside the usual slew of store-wide deals. Your first gift is Cities: Skylines, with plenty more to come over the next two weeks.