Wot I Think: Just Cause 3

Avalanche’s Just Cause 3 is officially released Tuesday morning online and in something called “shops”. “Officially”, because it was apparently released early in a few naughty nations, prompting the developers to make a list of planned Day 0 fixes. Of course, that means the code we’ve been reviewing from for the last week also lacks that patch, making it tricky to know how many of the issues I encountered – in an otherwise stupendous game – will affect you. Bearing this in mind, here’s wot I think.

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Elite: Dangerous Horizons Beta Now Roaming Planets

Beta access opened tonight for the first phase of the planet-roaming Elite: Dangerous [official site] expansion Horizons, which I believe is for folks who pre-ordered.

“Aha! But Alice,” you say, in a snide tone of voice that you know makes people want to twat you in the nose but makes you feel so clever, “I thought you said never to pre-order? I distinctly recall you saying that several times.” Very good, clever clogs, so you get the biggest treat of all: watching Elite head honch David Braben prepare to die of asphyxiation on a lonely moon:

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Premature Evaluation: Sketch Tales

Each week Marsh Davies turfs through the crude doodles of Early Access and comes back with any masterpieces-in-the-making he can find and/or amends his discoveries with an enthusiastically rendered dick or two. This week there is ample opportunity to append such appendages in Sketch Tales, a firstperson hack-n-slash in which you’re encouraged to re-draw and animate everything on the island you inhabit. I’m guessing the name “Tales from Penis Island” didn’t make it past Steam’s terms of service.

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Why I Hate Fallout 4’s Stupid Dog

I’m not very far into Fallout 4. I’ve mostly been pottering around with it, trying to find useful things to report to you, YOU, my favourite reader. So I’ve yet to gain any other companions than Dogmeat, the stupid idiot Alsatian. I hate him.

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How To Make Sensible Soccer Interesting Again

Sensible Soccer was my favourite game when I was a kid. I still own an old Sensible World of Soccer Amiga disk, which I keep as a memento of childhood like a favoured cuddly toy. But I have no interest in playing that game, anymore. If I did, I could play the 2007 XBLA release, and if I wanted an indie attempt to recreate the experience I could play Natural Soccer, Active Soccer 2, Super Soccer Champs, Kopanito All-Stars Soccer, Super Arcade Football or a dozen others.

So let’s try to come up with something more interesting. Let’s come up with some tenets for redesigning Sensible Soccer.

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I Kind Of Miss The Tech War

The slow-down of PC tech has left a strange hollow in my life. If you’re older than a tiny baby, you’ll remember the days when your PC was perpetually on the verge of not being able to play the current crop of games no matter how frequently you upgraded it. Now, my PC insides are a couple of years old, and playing everything on maximum. This is, I think on balance, a good thing. But there are downsides to it too.

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What Makes A Videogame House A Videogame Home?

Oh boy, am I conflicted. Fallout 4’s main plotline requires that I do this thing and as far as things go, it’s a pretty major thing and a major thing that you’d expect someone with the maternal instinct of my character Halle to crack on with straight away. The trouble is, rather than doing this major thing, for at least an hour now, she, and when I say ‘she’, I mean ‘I’, have been poking around Sanctuary, scrapping anything that glows yellow so I can salvage enough materials to build a house big enough for me and my Minutemen companions. I had largely avoided Bethesda’s drip-feed of Fallout 4 pre-publicity but when I somehow found out that the game had settlement building, I think I might have involuntarily passed a little wind in joyous anticipation.

That’s because I’ve felt a similar rosy inner glow while hanging around other hubs and houses in many other games I’ve played. I think it’s easy to underestimate the value of having a ‘home’ base option, especially in open world games where there is a free-roaming element, but it’s a part of why I love certain games.

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Oodles Of Supporter Post Loveliness For EVERYONE!

In the backroom of RPS Towers we have a little corner. Each workday a different member of the team potters around in the corner, crafting a lovely Supporter post for members of the RPS Supporter Program. Some of those posts eventually make it out from behind the Supporter veil and into the wider world where everyone can read them. In case they passed you by we’ve scooped the latest batch up in our big net (it’s the net we usually reserve for capturing freelancers and/or going trick or treating) and collected them here for your delight!

You can find out more about the program or sign up here BUT FIRST, here’s a taster of what lurks within the program…

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Just Cause 3’s Launch Trailer Brings Explosions

‘Nerdcore’ is that thing where people make rap songs but they’re bad at rapping and their songs are bad but the lyrics are about video games and movies from when you were young so it must be cool, yeah? If Kieron were still around, he might drop some musical science from a great height here, by which I mean make such a brazen declaration and take disagreement as proof that he’s right. Instead, it falls to me to post the launch trailer for Just Cause 3 [official site], which features some bad rapping about a video game (out tomorrow!) and its explosions.

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Have You Played… Watch_Dogs?

Have You Played? is an endless stream of game recommendations. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.

I’d forgive you if you haven’t. My review of Watch underscore Dogs found plenty of reasons to criticise the game, from its action to its mission and level design and its piss poor characters. But then I kept playing it, because the multiplayer was really good.

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The RPG Scrollbars: Voices In The Air

There’s something oddly comforting about radio. Comforting because it’s so familiar, so natural. Odd because it’s a comfort that most of us don’t really use all that much these days, at least not in the ways that games just casually assume. It’s a little like the whole audio diaries thing – it makes a vague sense that everyone in a city like Rapture might record their daily crimes and schemes onto audio tapes, even though in reality that whole idea became obsolete when Facebook/Twitter added status updates.

But I do love in-game radio. It’s an amazing narrative tool, a great way of filling in the gaps the screen can’t show, a constant companion in the loneliest of situations, and not a bad way of making music diegetic – a term that translates to ‘let’s see who now sneakily Googles diegetic’. Forget Spotify. Never mind video. In RPGs, nothing can kill the radio star, unless of course you walk up to them and shoot ‘em in the face. Then, sometimes. Though usually nature still finds a way of keeping them on the air.

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Dreamfall Chapters: Book Four Coming Thursday

Devoted dreamers, have you finished replaying the first three episodes of Dreamfall Chapters [official site] since their upgrade to Unity 5? Oh for… you’ve had days, literally days. It’s almost like you don’t care about being the dreamiest, most dreamingest dreamer dreaming round these parts. For shame. Well, you’ve got another few days, as Book Four of Red Thread’s episodic adventure isn’t coming until ooooh Thursday. A new trailer reveals the release date, along with a wee bit of what you’ll get up to in the penultimate episode.

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The Pipwick Papers

[This edition was first published on 3 November, 2015]

I spent a month focusing almost entirely on keeping up with League of Legends for their World Championship, now it’s over and I’m doing that thing where you try and remember what life was like before a big project. Mostly emails, it seems. While I regroup I’ve been reading up on taxidermy, Reddit Star Wars theorising and a $180 maths book:

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