Latest News Politics , Business , Finance , Technology , World News & Opinion & Tracking & Analysis.
Rock Paper Shotgun
Primary focus: Gaming
Samsung have become the latest company to declare that the ongoing memory crisis isn't going away or getting better any time soon. The chip makers think the RAM shortage will only get worse in 2027 and supply of the tech won't stop being squeezed until 2028 at the earliest. Read more
Big Hops is the cool 3D platform game with the frog who can use their tongue as a grappling hook. Despite much questing and fervent prayer, I have yet to encounter a frog that can do this in reality. Real-life frogs are a slothful, unimaginative bunch, content to use their tongues purely to catch food with. Some frogs, like the African dwarf frog, don't even have tongues at all. What foul sorcery is here! It's just as well, then, that we have Big Hops, which is being updated with the ability to play through the whole campaign in eight player co-op. With eight frogs in the field, the tactical applications of tongues multiply exponentially. You can tongue items right out of your friend's backpack! You can tether yourself to another frog like in Chained Together, but with the option of letting go before your mate walks you into a laser! The developers, Luckshot Games, are calling the update Big Hops Together. It's available right now in beta, with the official release coming 9th August. Read more
I know full well that pally RPG Dragon’s Dogma 2 has its Dark Arisen expansion out this year. Still, two years and one megalo-DLC announcement after release, what I still find most fascinating about it is the Dragonsplague: an insidious affliction that quietly infects your mates (or Pawns, whatever) and heightens their fighting prowess, but if left untreated, can induce a bescaled hissy fit that will kill the entire population of your favourite NPC village. Overtuned, ill-communicated bullshit, or laudably bold application of arrogance-punishing friction? These days I lean the latter, but still, what an interesting mechanic that I can think about it on and off since 2024. Capcom, meanwhile, always seemed to play the hedging game, patching in various tweaks and tunings to Dragonsplague in an attempt to placate both camps. The game’s Title Update 3.2, due in late August (ahead of Dark Arisen on October 9th), appears to come down further on the 'Angry fire virus can be fun, actually' side - though according to a QA with producer Naoto Oyama and expansion director Kento Kinoshita, these upcoming changes will bring Dragonsplague more in line with Capcom’s original vision for it. Read more
My workers in Flow of War are tireless and uncomplaining, labouring away silently in the face of all adversity. Nonetheless, I can feel their seething irritation when I plant my fortress layout awry. Flow of War is a classic RTS with an economic element that mostly runs itself. You conjure a bunch of minions from your town hall, pop down templates for cropfields, forges, wells, and suchlike, and watch as your drudges get on with the building and resource-gathering. Where you can contribute is in laying out those structures in an efficient way, so that your serfs accomplish as much as possible before the timer runs down and you have to fend off a fresh wave of attackers, emerging from hellportals around the map. After 30 minutes with the demo, I have mostly learned what not to do. Read more
Yep, RAMnarök ain't going away. The ongoing memory crisis isn't getting better. It's far too busy continuing to fuel hikes in the prices of memory-dependent hardware like graphics cards with AMD reportedly having joined Nvidia on the list of firms raising how much they're charging for GPUs. Read more
Sometimes I have to remind myself that I’m a cliché, a person first compelled to write about games because I slew Dark Souls’ Gwynn, Lord Of Cinder and sat quietly for a moment before thinking to myself, “Hit me, come on, hit me!”. No, I was not okay. But my understanding of games shifted in that tiny university room: they could be overcome, not just completed. FromSoftware’s dark fantasy lands, with their puzzle-box intricacy and dribbly residents, ushered in the Soulslike as other developers sought to cash in on masochists like me. Here I am, still a masochist, still someone who adores a Souls and/or ‘like, but who stares at the offerings nowadays and thinks, Please, someone hit me. These games have stagnated, to the point where it feels like we’re all waiting for FromSoftware to emerge from the fog and beat our asses in a way we’ve not quite seen before. Read more
I'm not saying you've got to be making a vaguely Mass Effecty RPG starting with Ex to be considered as a successor to Larian on the Baldur's Gate series, but it certainly doesn't seem to hurt. Exodus devs Archetype Entertainment were offered such a chance according to former studio head James Ohlen, and while The Expanse: Osiris Reborn devs Owlcat might not have been yet, their co-founder has said it would be a great honour if they were. Read more
Ugh, morning has come again. The sultry undergrowth of night has yielded to the obnoxious leaf blower of wakefulness. Another week tumbles pendulously from the unzipped flies of the future. My bed beseeches me: Son of Man, do not waste your time in the upright world. Crawl back under the covers. Embrace your pillow. Forget the sun. But I can't do that, bed, because I have already checked my inbox in a fit of self-loathing, and would you believe there are new PC games to write about??? Read more
Fresh off a trip to Illinois back in May, American Truck Simulator devs SCS Software have revealed another expansion they've got in the works. North Dakota's on the way as the big rig roadtrip continues to gradually make its way eastwards. Read more
Don't even talk to me before I've had my coffee that restores my lost memories! This is a line I imagine that the general public would oft repeat in the world of Hips N Noses, a cafe management sim/Vampire Survivors-esque roguelike that's set in a world where no one but you can sleep, and everyone's suffering from a touch of amnesia. Read more
