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Sundays are for looking upon my DIY works and despairing. Strewn sawdust, spilled paint, and hunks of broken MDF litter my living room kingdom. When will it be over? When will I be free? When will I be able to reassemble my sofa, sit down with a cup of tea in hand, and admire my books, unpacked and arranged on perfectly fitted alcove bookshelves?

"Today?" I whisper hopefully in response to a paragraph of rhetorical questions. "Probably not," snaps back Reality. Especially if I don't get out of bed soon. Still, here in bed I can read the best writing about and not about games from the past week.

Like a tag team of oiled snakes that have entered a wrestling contest, theme is a difficult quality to pin down. A game can be well designed, but if it lacks a coherence between those mechanics and its appearance, narrative, and its framing, there is a dissonance that can be hard to ignore. I realise I've just stepped into an old argument by using the word 'dissonance', but Hocking was right, games that don't cohere can be jarring. A developer may desire that sensation of discomfort, but often it is accidental and unwanted.

(Much like opening an article with a simile about wrestling snakes when there is nothing connecting that image to a game about solitaire. It might be a good line, but it doesn't smoothly connect with the rest of the article to elevate its argument.)

Anyway, what does this all have to do with Forbidden Solitaire, a game in which you're delving deeper into a dungeon filled with horrors, progressing by clearing screens of cards? Well, it's an excellent example of how well-handled theming can raise a game into something more than its parts.

My scares should have been reserved for today, what with it being All Hallows' Eve and all, but my fright came on Thursday.

Warframe creators Digital Extremes have announced that their free-to-play fantasy RPG Soulframe will be available for everyone to download on 6th November, after two years in closed alpha. Finally, you serfs without "prelude" keys will be able to fire up Soulframe.com and make sense of my ranting about the sleeping animals on the lobby screen.

The new "open prelude" will land shortly before the game's 17th major update, Verse of the Veilands, which lets you grow your Omen wolfpup allies into rideable adult wolves by finding the ingredients for a special biscuit. More importantly, prelude 17 violently rearranges the game's wistful world, adding an Ubisoft-esque region purging system that is designed to guide new players a bit more emphatically towards the game's "votives". Aka, missions. Yes, Digital Extremes sort of have a bespoke term for every game feature in Soulframe. I find this can be either charming or maddening, depending on how much sleep I've had.

It would appear that Phantom Blade Zero (Phantom Blade 0? Zero? Let’s go with Zero) demanding more gigs than a mismanaged stadium is doing little to stop people playing the thing. It therefore stands to reason at least some folks will want to run S-Game Studio’s lightly Soulsy sword-em-up on the Steam Machine, so let us now examine how said GabeCube stands up to its effects-heavy martial artistry. With some settings proposals, natch.

The postmortem on BioWare, following their shuttering by EA this month, points to the publisher's preference to back Star Wars Battlefront 3 over Mass Effect 5 as the main factor in the demise of the beloved RPG developer. That's according to Bloomberg, who also report that a couple of other factors likely also had some influence.

Excellent apocalypse RPG World of Horror has just received a sizeable free update, As Below So Above, adding no less than two Old Godly invasions for you to identify and thwart. One of these additional cosmic disasters involves four cults summoning their fave abominations at the same time. I picture them forming a shaky barbershop quartet on the skyline, while stamping the streets to mush. Damn it, Ath-Yolazsth – you're leading again!

Also in As Below So Above: more "enemies, mysteries, characters, items, spells, curses, and injuries", together with "a large batch of quality-of-life features and bug fixes". I can only applaud the vicious disconnect of listing "injuries" alongside "quality-of-life". These will be the most polished and ergonomic grievous wounds you've ever had! The experience will flow like your gushing blood!

Thanks once again to everyone keeping our lights on, and our pantries full of Mini Cheddars, by being an RPS Supporter. The latest batch of subscription stats came in the other day and it’s been heartwarming, and more than a little humbling, to see new Supporters keep showing up. Rest assured that your backing does not go unappreciated, nor uninvested around the site.

To whit, we’ve been commissioning a particularly strong assortment of freelance-scribed pieces (for all readers), some of which – including Amity Gilmour’s fun history lesson on the MicroSoft SideWinder and Kaile 'No Escape' Hultner’s Control Resonant analysis – are already live. It’s been a pleasure to have Ashley Schofield joining us for Tuesday newshounding too, along with RPS regular Oisin. And, of course, we’re still bringing exclusive features to Premium Supporters twice every week. Like these ones, from throughout October:

As we've previously covered, a vote on recognition of a union made up of UK-based Rockstar Games devs is set to take place around GTA 6's console launch on November 19th. The Independent Workers of Great Britain (IWGB) union, whom the Rockstar staff are working with in their efforts to organise, have now revealed just how many workers the Rockstar could end up encompassing if the recognition vote is successful. It's not a small number.

Arrowhead's chief creative officer Johan Pilestedt can well imagine the Helldivers studio developing a videogame that satirises or parodies today's generative AI technology. The game in question wouldn't be a Helldivers project, however, and Pilestedt says it would need to be relatively upbeat, rather than an exercise in feverish despair. This seems like a tall order right now, at least while Tim Sweeney still has access to Twitter.

Update: The BBC report that Activision have issued a statement apologising to the victims of the Itaewon crowd crush and confirmed that the news footage from the disaster in Modern Warfare 4's intro cinematic will be removed. An update coming to the shooter on November 12th will do the deed.

The 10.29 Itaewon Disaster Bereaved Families Association have welcomed Activision's decision to pull the footage, according to the BBC, but also said they hadn't received a direct apology from the Call of Duty publishers.

Original story follows:

The intro cinematic of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, this year's Activision mil-shooter, has reportedly caused controversy in South Korea due to the use of some real world news footage from a 2022 crowd crush in Seoul's Itaewon district which killed around 150 people. Activision have now issued a response to the situation, in which they state the intro is "not intended to reference or trivialise the Itaewon disaster or any other real-world tragedy".

Ubisoft have announced that they aren't working on any more Assassin's Creed remakes for the moment, despite learning a "tremendous amount" from Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced. Instead, it's all shoulders to the wheel for a thrilling future that contains witches, a stronger sense of narrative cohesion, and possibly some kind of Assassin's Creed Smash Bros equivalent. In the shorter term, Ubisoft are still adding things to both Resynced and Assassin's Creed Valhalla.

The opening act of a Baldur's Gate 3 custom campaign mod which injects an adventure set in the World of Warcraft universe into Larian's RPG has been released. The mod, Forsaken, is another ambitious bit of work from a modder who recently expanded the second act of BG3's main story with a new region to explore before you head into the final chapter. This time, they've abandoned the D&Dverse for a tale of undead slaves rising up after being freed from serving a Lich King.

I quite liked that there video game Mouthwashing. It had a lot to say about how corporations take advantage of their workers, it played around with character perspective to let you in on certain narrative threads and withhold others until they're taut enough to snap, and was short enough so that its misery didn't outstay its welcome. What I wasn't so fond of was much of the fandom response that came afterwards, which is why I am quite scared to say that it's getting a movie from Sony.

If you've been hankering for some video gamey wuxia shenanigans, today seems like a good day for it, given that Phantom Blade Zero has now been released unto the world (with a 145GB install size that's technically actually 300GB but only for a bit). And like many big games before it, it comes not quite finished, as a day one patch attends to some of the action game's issues… I think, anyway, there's been a promise of a day one patch but no clear indicator if it's actually arrived or not. I don't own it either, so I can't check. At least I can tell you what's in it!

Like the repeating pattern effect afflicting its warped Manhattan, Control Resonant threw me for a loop. One minute I would be brutally slashing and smashing my way through hordes of inhuman enemies, enacting a never-ending chain combo of bellowing violence with my Aberrant, and the next minute I would be scanning nearby rooftops for signs of a squeaking purple dragon plushie to give to a very wiggly dog (who, I was pretty sure, could teleport). Combat often felt desperate and bloody; knockdown-and-drag-out brawls that had me limping away like John Wick after a particularly messy gunkata affair. Still, these fights all ended eventually, and in their place was not always more action-RPG battling but, more often, an odd sense of melancholic peace and quiet. It’s a strange dichotomy I’ve been thinking about nearly nonstop since I finished my first playthrough.

Spoilers/Revelations for Control Resonant ahead. Don’t say we didn’t warn/notify you.

Football Manager 27 is still a good week and ahead out from launch, but if you're quick you can already get to playing it. That's because developer Sports Interactive have released a Launch Preview version of the game that lets you take it for a kickabout before it comes out in earnest.

When Bungie announced that they would be ceasing to work on major updates for Destiny 2 earlier this year, it obviously felt like that was the end of that, and any future games were not guaranteed whatsoever. Then last month, they announced that they'll be bringing back all of the shooter's vaulted campaigns, which is obviously a lot of work! Now, in a blog post, the developer has outlined where they're at with this process, offering up a timeline of when to expect the unvaulted campaigns, what will be included with them, and light teases for whatever comes after that.

As Xbox's execs continue to pine for game-related announcements to fill in the gaps between their rounds of mass layoffs, The Elder Scrolls 6 is reportedly set to gain the subtitle Sentinel soon. That's according to a report which also includes some details of where the game that's long been a twinkle in the eye of Skyrim's dad will be set and what its plot will involve.

It's a good day to love Celeste! Earlier today it was discovered that Celeste had been removed from the Xbox Store while it remained on the PlayStation and Nintendo digital storefronts. Now, as shared by the game's co-creator Maddy Thorson, it's been confirmed that both Celeste and TowerFall were removed from store expressly in support of the BDS called boycott against Xbox over Microsoft providing support to the Israeli military as it enacts its genocide of the Palestinian people.

FromSoftware's elderly King's Field games aren't really celebrated for their feeling of agility. They are glorious first-person trudgefests, a treacle-thick waltz of swinging and spellcraft, with players wobbling in and out of attack range like British men who aren't sure whether the other man wants a hug. Unlike in the later Dark Souls action-RPGs, to which King's Field owes some of its retrospective popularity, there's no dodge-roll to grease the wheels.

Out this week on Steam, Queen's Domain is often as ponderous as King's Field, but it's also an exercise in steady, triumphant acceleration. Ultimately, it wants you to fly. To this end, it equips you - well, once you've boshed a huge skeleton sentinel - with a fancy windblade that lets you perform an aerial dash, speeding your manouevres while allowing you to reach new areas.

It has somehow been a year since I joined RPS. (Don't believe the date on my joining post, I'd been sneaking about in the back rooms for a couple of weeks before I announced myself.) In time's trickster way, it seems impossible because it feels both less than and longer than that.

Right, before you groan too hard, I promise that after I write this I'll take a break of indeterminate length from writing articles which amount to wondering aloud why a thing that's in GTA 6 is in GTA 6. Cars which need refuelling. It's not an addition there'd not been any hint was coming before today, as with the smell reaction system, leaks having hinted at fuel management all the way back in August.

Since that point, it's been confirmed as in the version of the game Rockstar will be shipping to consoles (boo) next month and PC at some point after that. Edge's GTA 6 long read notes the existence of fuel gauges and engine health readouts, but it also caveats them in what seems an insistence from Rockstar that the first of these features isn't designed to make filling up something the player necessarily has to do often or spend much time on when they do.

Oh hi there! Why yes, I am free to chat. Please excuse the wind noise, I'm currently tumbling to my doom in Atmosfar, after getting lost in a cloud bank and exhausting my fuel. This kind of thing happens to me regularly in Atmosfar - an open world survival game that plays out across clusters of floating islands, with players scooting about in adorable, propellor-powered airships.

Many of the islands are quite large, with proper landing pads and bases set up by NPC scavengers. Many of them teem with non-human life: rainforests full of nectar droplets and carnivorous plants, meadows of ponderous honking lizards, and mossy grottos where you'll find caches of batteries and possibly get eaten by mantids. It's important to make the most of these larger islands, gathering materials for crafting at your deployable campsite (which straps pleasingly to the back of your whirring fly-mobile). It's particularly important to mine hydrogen crystals you can refine into fuel.

1996 gave us two incredible gifts. The first was me. The second, arguably more impactful on the course of human civilisation, was the Microsoft SideWinder Game Pad 1.0.

Any reminder of Red Dead Redemption 2's temperature sensitive horse testicles brings a smile to my face. In truth, I can't say I've ever zoomed in close enough to properly take in the spectacle of Arthur Morgan's mount having its nuts dynamically expand and contract based on whether he's riding through snowy mountains or across baking plains, but I do always get a kick out of knowing such a thing's happening as I play. To this point, the horse balls have been the most infamous or meme-worthy example of Rockstar's obsession with going all-in on realistic detail to an arguably unnecessary degree, one that borders on overindulgence which players could conceivably never notice if they weren't expressly told about it.

That philosophy's gone nowhere, so GTA 6 was always going to have a feature that'd become as much of a metaphor for excess as those beloved balls. It may well be the smell reaction system revealed in Edge's long read on the game.

I have so far not been shivved, shanked, brain fried, hazed, wasted, ironed, short-circed, flat-lined or even complained at in Probably Stolen - Cyberpunk Shopkeeper Sim, but I'm sure it's just a matter of time.

In this neuromantic kiosk game from Questing Goose Studio, you're a new store owner aboard a backwater space station. Each day, you roll up the shutter and do business with a procession of shady types, ranging from janitors with unappetising beards to sexy cowled folk with Main Character tattoos. The basics are simple enough, for all the overwhelmingly menu-led presentation: buy what you can afford, according to your instinct for the wider market, sell what you can fit into the customer's budget. But things quickly get complicated.

Atten-shun! Company Of Heroes 3's got new single-player missions inbound via a DLC set during the Allies' 1942 invasion of North Africa. You'll take charge of American forces through a campaign steeped in second world war history that's designed to test your tactical nous and ability to upgrade fighting units to come out on top.It's out on November 25th.

Epic Games are, dunno if you've heard, on a bit of a genAI kick at the moment. It's been tough to notice unless you listen very hard. Tim Sweeney's lips have been sealed and no reports have spewed forth.

Sark aside, to this point Epic have had far more provocative soundbites and weird marketing lingo to offer than specific detail about how they're using genAI in different parts of their business.

Subnautica 2 creative director Anthony Gallegos has spoken about what Unknown Worlds have learned over their many years working in Steam early access, exhorting other devs to add new features "as soon as possible" and experiment with them right under the flared nostrils of players. Damn the torpedoes, etcetera.

The original Subnautica is one of the oldest Steam early access success stories, launching in 2014 a month or so after the program went live. Many of the final version's better qualities, including the pivot to horror epitomised by the spectacle of a Reaper grabbing your submarine's face, reflect observation of players and streamers in the wilds.