Of grimoires and glyphs: the history behind RPG magic

Imagine you’re on a quest for a powerful artefact in Divinity: Original Sin 2. Perhaps you conversed with a ghost who pointed you in the right direction. Now you see demons close by. You cast Chameleon Cloak to try to sneak by, but alas! you are spotted. The fight begins. You draw your weapons, inscribed with runes. You weave protective spells. You summon your cat familiar to enter the fray and confound your enemies. A fireball scroll sets a puddle of oil ablaze, but you misjudged and now you’re on fire as well! But a potion you concocted earlier heals your wounds just in time.

It’s a typical scenario for D:OS2 and similar fantasy RPGs. Magic is everywhere, and you could barely swing your cat familiar by the tail without hitting a fellow Sorcerer (don’t do that though, it’s cruel). But where do these spells, demons and artefacts come from? Games have so inundated us with magic that it’s easy to forget that even the most outlandish, videogamey spectacles have their Source-drenched roots in historical beliefs and practices. (more…)

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How Slay the Spire was tested on Netrunner pros

Roguelike card game Slay the Spire has swept through the RPS dungeons like a powerful disease, covering us in tiny, number-shaped pustules. In search of a cure, we spoke to its designers, Anthony Giovannetti and Casey Yano of Mega Crit Games. Read on to learn some of their methods and future plans. We’ve already told you they’ll “almost certainly” be adding more characters. But did you know they tested the game on expert Netrunner players? (more…)

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AMD’s taking it one step at a time with its new Vega M Intel chips

When Intel and AMD said they were teaming up for a new kind of 8th Gen Core processor with onboard AMD Radeon RX Vega M graphics, many assumed (myself included) that this would be the start of a new, if slightly weird and wonderful relationship between the once bitter rivals.

However, it would appear that the future of Intel’s AMD Vega CPUs will rest very much on the success of its initial launch this spring, according to AMD CEO Lisa Su, suggesting the partnership may be a one-time-only deal if it doesn’t take off.

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In Carrion you play a horrible bag of meaty tendrils

“What’s it called in movies,” I asked my collegues this evening, “when a scientist sees a big alien or a monster, and all they can do is say how beautiful it is before they are eaten to bits?”

“That’s admiring the abomination,” explained Adam.

Well, you see this disgusting crimson abomination of bloody tendrils in monster videogame Carrion? I admire it. (more…)

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Philips 349X7FJEW review: A great 21:9 ultra-wide monitor for Final Fantasy XII

If there are two things I love in life, it’s Final Fantasy and 21:9 monitors. It’s a select group of interests, I’ll admit, but when I heard that Final Fantasy XII was finally coming to PC (tomorrow, no less) with both 21:9 and multi-monitor support, I knew what I had to do. Yep, today marks the start of my 21:9 ultra-wide monitor group test to find the perfect display for playing Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age on PC, and the first monitor on the gambit table is the Philips 349X7FJEW.

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Classic IF horror Anchorhead revised and illustrated

You might think you’re made of stern stuff after beating Cuphead, but have you the bottle for Anchorhead? The Lovecraftian interactive fiction from 1998 “has been pretty consistently considered one of the greats of the noncommercial IF canon ever since”, Emily Short told us, and now it’s fancier than ever. Creator Michael Gentry has launched an ‘Illustrated Edition’ which, obviously, includes a whole load of illustrations to go along with the text parser action. This seems a fine time to visit a Massachusetts coastal town and get caught up in something terrible. (more…)

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Wolfenstein 2’s DLC so far is characterful but perfunctory

Note – this piece presumes familiarity with Wolfenstein 2’s entire plot, and as such contains some spoilers, though no specific character fates are discussed.

Out this week is part two of ‘The Freedom Chronicles’, a triptych of story-led DLC for last year’s pretty decent singleplayer shooter Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus, giving us a pretty clear sense of what’s on offer from the season pass. (You can buy the episodes separately, but it ends up being 30% more expensive if you end up getting all of ’em that way). To whit, is it worth forking out for? In short: ehhhhhhhh.
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‘ave you heard? Vintage RPG remake Avernum 3 released, with free demo too

Back, back, back when we are all a lot clearer on what ‘indie game’ really meant, there was a series of roleplaying games from Jeff Vogel’s teeny-tiny studio Spiderweb Software. They were 2D, they were resolutely singleplayer, they offered massive freedom of movement and skill tree and… well, I keep using the past tense, but Spider Web have kept on fighting their good fight since 1995. In fact, this week they’re capping up a spit’n’polished’n’ground-up redone remake of their early-noughties Avernum series. Which was itself a spit’n’polished’n’ground-up redone remake of their mid-90s Exile series.

Which might all sound horribly complicated, but they’re billing today’s quasi-new Avernum 3: Ruined World as a clean entry-point for anyone who’s never been down this particular rabbit hole before.
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World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth out this summer

You can tell Blizzard are based in California because they see summer as something to escape from, a cruel and terrible season where people need something big to occupy themselves in the air-conditioned indoors. We can tell this because Blizzard have announced plans to release the next World of Warcraft expansion, Battle for Azeroth, sometime this summer. O dreaded summer, when temperatures in Irvine, California can reach temperatures of 29C and it does not rain a t a l l. A perilous season to avoid however possible. Best to retreat to cyberspace and wage virtuawar. (more…)

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The Joy Of Subnautica’s Sea Treaders

Subnautica is remarkable for a great many reasons, and one of them is a particular creature discovered at about 300m deep, stomping their way in long processions across a well worn path of the seabed. The Sea Treaders. These titanic crustaceans(?) are a herd of complete joy. (more…)

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Have You Played… Tom Clancy’s The Division?

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

If I had infinite lives, I’d waste at least one of them playing Tom Clancy’s The Division. (more…)

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Murderous Pursuits is the next multiplayer assassination game from The Ship: Remasted devs

Oooh, now this is intriguing – The Ship: Remasted devs Blazing Griffin are taking another stab at their ‘murder party’ formula. Today they announced Murderous Pursuits, a game about hunting (and being hunted by) other players. You have to sneak up on your quarry by pretending to be one of the AI characters milling around, just like in the old Assassin’s Creed multiplayer modes but without all that silly jumping. It’ll be out in March.

What’s new this time round? Well for starters, you’re on a flying boat that’s packed with alternate reality Victorian time travellers.

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Mysterious next Battlefield game out this year from Dice

Electronic Arts quietly notannounced a new Battlefield game during their conference call last night, alongside notdelaying BioWare’s Anthem. They said very little about it, because they acknowledge its existence but haven’t formally announced it, see. Will it be set in the past, near-past, present, near-future, or future? Battlefield 5? Bad Company 3? Hardline 2? 1944? 2143? Hut hut! It’s all a big mystery for now. Assuming EA follow their traditional Battlefield behaviour, they’ll likely formally announce the game in May or June then release it in mid-to-late October. (more…)

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