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We get deep into the theoretical lore of the Need For Speed/FIFA expanded universe, engage in some even-more-intense-than-usual Sir Anthony Hopkins roleplay, and consider the potential benefits inherent in claiming to have invented Shrek. Matthew considers writing a magazine entirely about microtransactions and the Epic Games Store, and the podcast’s pantheon of troubling supernatural entitities is expanded to include a being known as the Alabaster Titan. You can listen above, or on on Spotify, iTunes, Stitcher, or Pocket Casts....

In the mix this week we also learn about how Matthew wasn’t allowed to watch any Australian Television as a child in case he started talking like an Aussie, and there is a special Matthew-centric Cavern Of Lies for everyone to enjoy. You can listen above, or on on Spotify, iTunes, Stitcher, or Pocket Casts. You can find the RSS feed here, and you can discuss the episode on our Discord channel, which has a dedicated room for podcast chat....

Digressions this week are a big discussion on Matthew’s tooth situation, and a semi-argument about what planetary circumstances would be enough for me to agree to go into space (e.g. planet covered in really nice soup). Also: is Elon Musk’s divorce the origin story for Warhammer 40k? You can listen above, or on on Spotify, iTunes, Stitcher, or Pocket Casts. You can find the RSS feed here, and you can discuss the episode on our Discord channel, which has a dedicated room for podcast chat....

Epic’s sale started last night, and will be live until November 30th. You can check out the full selection on their Black Friday store page, but I’ve rummaged for a few highlights to suggest here. First up, some new little gems. Daniel Mullins’ spooky roguelike Inscryption is 10% off, as is Red Hook’s latest gothic adventure Darkest Dungeon 2. Then you have Superbrothers’ new sci-fi game Jett: The Far Shore at 25% off, and (not-so new but still a gem) RPS fave Outer Wilds discounted by 40%....

What you’ve got here, by the admission of developers Wield Interactive, is a compact, cheerfully high-saturation love letter to the classic RTS games of two decades past. It’s the kind of game which uses the words “inspired by” a lot on its Steam page, and there’s no doubt that the chief inspiration behind it is 1997’s Age of Empires. Now, since Age of Empires 2 is one of my favourite games of all time, you might think I’m biased here....

Time to enjoy your lovely joke! Q. What is Long John Silver’s favourite open-world horror game? A. Ghostwire: Tokyo-ho-ho!

In his Deathloop review, Brendy described Colt as “playing it by ass”. I liked that line, but I didn’t yet understand its true gravitas. I am now enlightened. I have beheld the true ass of Colt, and I have grasped its magnitude: Colt’s ass is the antithesis to Dishonored’s heart. Blam. Boot. Blam. None of you are free of sin. Absent the spectral whispers of a murdered empress for guidance, or the crushing burden of a city teetering between ruin and hope, Colt allows his glute-instincts to scribble his itinerary through Murderparty Island....

Running from now until 11am PT on July 2nd, the Codemasters Humble Bundle is real treat for racing game fans. If you have no interest in brum-brums, then you can safely stick to the bottom tier: a donation of £1 / $1 will unlock four games, only half of them car based. They’ll let you shoot your way round the Sakhalin islands in Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising, send loyal but dim minions to their death in Overlord 2, and drive your tiny car off table tops in Toybox Turbos (Micro Machines minus the branding, in other words)....

Untitled Goose Game was up for Game Of The Year alongside Death Stranding, Control, Disco Elysium, and Outer Wilds (not worlds) which seems like a plenty diverse set of games, at least in terms of scope and budget. Like its namesake up against a village all chasing it down, the goose game outmaneuvered its fellow nominees to slip out victorious. The developers at House House are also taking home awards for “Outstanding Achievement For An Independent Game” and “Outstanding Achievement In Character” awarded to the goose itself of course....

Don’t even think about unionising. Just cut up that salvage, you Hardspace: Shipbreaker! Liam: I really like how Hardspace: Shipbreaker sounds. It’s full of fizzes and pops. Crispy crackles and crunchy clunks. At its heart, Shipbreaker is a game about work. The physical aspects of a labour intensive job that just so happens to take place in zero-g. Pulling apart hulking space crafts isn’t easy, which only helps make it feel satisfyingly honest in a way that your smooth games journalist hands have never experienced in the real world before....

“The Art Team’s vision was to complement and enhance these assets so Simmers have more choices and have more use out of them. Also, why not?” Maxis say. Why not, indeed. The charms of Live Mode are forever foreign to me, the person who just builds and builds forever. I am entirely unacquainted with the trials of wrangling a Sim’s mood but very, very in tune with the fact that sometimes you want to mix window styles and realize that you just can’t find a wood color swatch that matches....

Obviously, Headlines and Hot Takes is full of chat on all the Mass Effect: Legendary Edition news that’s come out in the last week, like the DLC they’ve included (and omitted), the fact Mass Effect 3 won’t have multiplayer, and the questionable framing shots that they’ve worked on sorting out. On top of that, we discuss Embracer Group’s plan to acquire every video game company they can, as news of their Gearbox acquisition broke in the past seven days....

Hit Steam and GOG for the sale pages. The Steam sale ends on June 1st, while GOG’s will end on Monday, May 25th. The Witcher 3, and only The Witcher 3, is also discounted on the Epic Games Store in its own sale. We’ve declared The Witcher 3 one of the best RPGs and the others are decent too but ah, I’m sure you’ve heard that by now. Are there many people who might be interested but haven’t gone for it in any of the squillion sales over the years?...

I’m not usually one to turn to mods, but just having a scroll through Valheim’s Nexus Mods page is really giving me the itch to do some work under the leather hood. If there’s one thing in Valheim that really grinds my gears, it’s the way armour I’ve equipped still takes up valuable inventory space. Well, the Equipment & Quick Slots mod by “RandyKnapp” solves this issue by adding separate slots for all your armour pieces, plus an additional three hotkey slots....

The Kioxia Exceria is one of those discounted SSDs, dropping to £55, but it’s actually a fairly high-end SSD with TLC NAND and a DRAM cache. This ensures that performance remains high even in scenarios where you’re writing data fairly continuously. Get the Kioxia Exceria 1TB NVMe SSD for £54.99 (was £83.99) Any downsides? Well, the drive is far from the fastest option available - at 1700MB/s sequential reads (and 1600MB/s writes) maximum, it’s a fraction of the speed of the fastest PCIe 3....

UK and Australian devs Great Ape Games credit classic survival horror series such as Capcom’s Resident Evil and, of course, Dino Crisis for their inspiration to make The Lost Wild. They also give a shout out to 1998’s pioneering FPS Jurassic Park: Trespasser, which seems to be back in the news a bit lately. The Lost Wild is set around a densely forested Japanese research facility, avoiding the various types of dinosaurs that have overrun it....

That’s pretty outstanding when you consider this is basically the same as two 27-in 1440p 120Hz DisplayHDR 1000 monitors, perfectly joined into a single unit with no distracting bezel in the centre as you’d get from traditional dual display setups. Get the Samsung CRG9 49-in ultrawide for £824 (was £1101, save £277) Katharine was wildly effusive in her review of the CRG9, praising the impact that such a wide curved screen could have in playing games like Red Dead Redemption 2, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, Forza Horizon 4 and Final Fantasy XV....

343 explain the details in a post laying out how players on different platforms can get in. Xbox players, the lucky folks, are all invited. Here on PC though, you’ll need to either be an Insider already and get your invite that way or get a Steam key from an Insider friend who’s redeemed one in Halo Waypoint. More details on redeeming those are over here if you’ve not done it before....

Evil penguins or not, all things seem possible with Immortal Empires, the combined landmass of the Total War: Warhammer trilogy into a single sandbox map, vast and varied in its climates, landmarks, and inhabitants. Creative Assembly have already dug deep into dusty stacks of White Dwarf to flesh out footnotes into full factions, and as the list of obvious additions dwindle, things can only get wilder and more creative. For now, we have one very big map stuffed with each faction and lord from three massive strategy games, creaking and occasionally buckling under the weight of its own promise....

On the one hand, this is a story about an individual YouTuber being jerked around by people who either don’t understand how the law works, or knew and went ahead anyway. On the other hand, it’s also reopened a whole can of worms about what streamers should be allowed to do with other people’s tournaments. You can see Coldfox’s side of the story here, along with a response from WePlay....