If you’ve not been following PC games goings-on across the week, catch up on some of the big stories quick in our noncomprehensive Weekly News Digest. I’ve slipped in a few things we haven’t already posted about, and do also read The Updates Update for some of the week’s notable patches and updates. It’s been a short week for us here, thanks to the bank holiday Monday, but there sure is enough going on.
Dota Underlords patch notes tend to be pretty game-changing – as it should be, for a game still in early-access. But boy, does it make my life as a guides writer busy! Now they’ve gone and added two entirely new mechanics (Ace-Tier Heroes and Contraption items) amid a plethora of other balance changes and features.
So it’s time once again to sit down and have a read through what’s changed in our Dota Underlords patch notes analysis, exploring how each change may (or may not) shift the meta in a new direction.
In all the hubbub of the week, you might’ve missed some of the patches and updates rolled out to games. Presenting the Weekly Updates Update, a noncomprehensive roundup of new maps and characters and balance tweaks and fixes and such which caught my eye over the week – including a few we haven’t posted about.
Greetings, all! It’s the end of August, and so, these dog days are over. The temperatures might remain warm well into September, but do not be fooled: autumn is on its way.
It has been one year since I started writing Priceless Play, carrying the baton for Free Games of the Week. I love it! Bringing you weird writing on weird games week after week is a joy. So I hope you’ll indulge me for the next month as I take a brief step back. The break isn’t a glamourous drinks-in-a-coconut-with-tiny-umbrella variety, but rather a break to devote time to writing my comprehensive exams. Who said getting a PhD wasn’t glamourous? Everyone? C’est la vie!
Here are a handful of games to tide you over. Wish me luck!
Friends, you must listen. Some will try to convince you that today is the last day of summer and it’s all over. Do not listen. We have another three weeks until the end of summer. Cherish them. The memories we form now will need to carry us through the long, dark, cold winter. I made the mistake of looking it up this week and somehow I will lose seven hours of daylight over the next three months? Oh god.
What are you playing this weekend? Here’s what we’re clicking on!
After almost 16 years, oh me oh my Homeworld 3 is finally happening. Gearbox Publishing today announced the spaceship shoot-o-RTS will blast off again a full-on sequel. Homeworld 3 is being made by Blackbird Interactive, a studio who were founded by some of the folks who made the original Homeworld at Relic Entertainment then brought the series back with the recent spin-off Homeworld: Deserts Of Kharak. And it’s crowdfunding. Now. Already. The actual release is yet a long, long way away.
Somehow, bank holidays always sneak up on me. You’d think after years of working for councils and universities I’d have figured them out by now, but nope. I remain completely flummoxed by the concept of time this week. What year is it? What are mornings? Why is everything in Britain still open exclusively when you can’t bloody get to it?
Games, of course, do not recognise holidays. The tubes emit games, so many games, whether we’re here or not. It is time then, to wade through the stream, and pick out the very best under-covered new games on Steam. It’s Unknown Pleasures.
Upending chronology this week: ocean fights, penal flights, and Cornish knights.
Remedy’s eerie telekinetic shooter Control is without a doubt one of the biggest RTX ray tracing games you can play on PC right now. It’s also one of the most demanding. Indeed, while Remedy recently revised their Control PC requirements, saying you now only need an Nvidia RTX 2060 graphics card for playing with ray tracing switched on as opposed to the crazy expensive RTX 2080, I’ve found that even Nvidia’s new RTX 2080 Super card struggles to hit a consistent 60fps on High at 1920×1080 with all Control’s RTX bells and whistles turned on.
As such, I thought I’d put together this Control RTX ray tracing guide to tell you exactly what kind of performance you can expect from each of today’s Nvidia RTX cards, both with and without ray tracing, as well as what each ray tracing effect actually does and whether it’s actually worth keeping switched on – because we wouldn’t want anyone’s graphics cards throwing a big hissy fit now, would we?
The console release of the Monster Hunter World: Iceborne is almost upon us. While we have to wait forever for the same stuff to come to PC, we can at least see exactly what is coming to the PC version next year. We’ve updated our guide with just about everything you could possibly ever want to know about the latest expansion that we know so far, including the newest monster reveals.
“Inside does insert some big ideas into its slender and sinister frame, but that’s not why I loved it – it’s the execution of the big, broad, b-movie elements that I adored,” our former Adam (RPS in peace) said when we called Inside one of 2016’s best games.
“It’s a tricky platform game, with a beautifully melancholy story, and enough creativity on show to give me strength even when the going got so tough I almost lost hope,” Adam (again) said in our Celeste review in 2018.
Good pair of platformers, those, and quite different. Good news too: both are currently free for keepsies on the Epic Games Store.
Teamfight Tactics has had its latest weekly update. It’s now up to patch 9.17 and there’s been a bit of action on healing and nerfing Nobles. But it also saw the introduction of Pantheon – a Dragon/Guardian who has really shaken things up lately. Aside from the healing changes, items didn’t have a big change in the latest patch, but everything is dramatically different than when TFT launched into beta. Since there have been so many changes, be sure to check out our guides to see what’s changed.
Blair Witch, a movie about a man standing quietly in a corner, has been given the horror game treatment. The first-person spook ‘em up is out today, and it’s about you and a dog becoming victims of found-footage scariness. But let’s be real, the videogame industry’s hunger for bygone horror franchises will not be sated by one former cop and his dog. No. Luckily, we at the RPS treehouse know that there are many more horror movies which could be dipped in the gametank and covered in terrorjuice, ready for thumb-wobbling and jump scares. Here are some we’d like to see.
Two of Night In The Woods‘s creators have announced they are “cutting ties with” Alec Holowka, the third co-creator, following allegations of abusive behaviour and sexual assault made against him this week. “We take such allegations seriously as a team,” Scott Benson and Bethany Hockenberry said in Wednesday’s statement. They have now cancelled one unknown “current project” and are postponing NITW’s planned physical release.
