Summary
Hello all! Welcome to another week of feeding the Maw, the gluttonous cosmic sinkhole we must keep topped up with videogame news, lest it expand and masticate the entire universe. We’re up against it this week, because no less than two RPS writers are taking holiday, leaving the Maw’s thousand-ton dumbwaiters and condiment howitzers dangerously understaffed. Senior staff writer Mark is off on Friday - I can already hear the lamentation of various spouses in his on-going game of Crusader Kings 3. Even worse, Edwin, our breathtakingly insightful and ruggedly handsome news editor, is away from Wednesday (note to self: set this article’s author field to anonymous, before publishing). We’re all doomed. Doomed, I tell you! Fortunately, there’s a fair crop of promising PC releases in the offing, including a couple of Big Series instalments and a pinball game that professes to contain all of Western philosophy. Seems like the Maw will be a while digesting that one. Here’s the list – please add to or deface it as you please. Monday 21st September
- Finally, a Patrick Swayze simulator. Roadhouse Simulatorsees you pouring drinks, working the door and organising the, er, pig races at a Route 66 watering hole. Scirocco Thugsis a pipe-wielding mobster masher set in cursed lo-fi Southern Italy. Tuesday 22nd September
- Did you ever really treasure one of those finger skateboard keyrings, as a kid? Stuntboostis for you. Panzer Deckis a WW2 card/logic puzzler, and very much not a turn-based strategy 4X, whatever you might deduce from the screens and narrative premise.EbiTapesis a cosy-grungy adventure game in which you play a smiling doodle froggo, searching a music festival for notes to weave into mixtapes. Wednesday 23rd September
- In Nomoriyou are a plucky girl navigating a whimsical spirit archipelago by twisting the geography, flipping gravity and messing with time. - Was that last one too plucky and whimsical for you? Fine, be a smelly bastard war rig engineer in Apocalypter. Thursday 24th September Silent Hill: Townfallis the first Silent Hill from Stories Untold developers Screen Burn. I thought it wasgood, apart from all the time spent cowering in wardrobes.Control Resonant(pictured) is James’sfavouritest videogamein all the world. “If you love Resonant so much why don’t you bloody marry it,” I told him on Friday. He’s just informed us that the ceremony will take place a couple of hours before the launch, and none of us are invited.Alien Breed: 35th Anniversary Collectionis making me feel very old. Ah, they don’t breed aliens like these today. Friday 25th September Scorched Sunis kind of Darkwood but with first-person turn-based combat. You are tasked with getting to the bottom of an ominous monastery.Fallosophyis the aforesaid pinball game in which all of western philosophy has been combined into a single, extremely tall table. Bertrand Russell is spinning in his, er, Bally/Williams flipper solenoid coil. As for what the remaining members of RPS are up to this week: it’s all planes and trains in Julianville, while James-on-Sea is experiencing another Steam explosion. Over in Jeremyburg, they be Dawnwalking and Obscuring Clair (poor girl, she does have a habit of blocking people out in photos), while things are coming up Resonant in Callumtown. Have a good week, and let us know about the great games we’ve missed.