Firewatch 
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One of the best indie games of the last decade is less than $2Jan 9, 2024 - PCGamesNBetween Resident Evil, Silent Hill, and smaller, independent hits like The Mortuary Assistant, some of the most terrifying moments in videogames are also the most subtle. The Licker crawling past the window in RE2. The steady swell of static on James Sunderland's radio. The little smile on the cadaver's face. You don't need big jumps and loud music cues - it's the excruciating psychological moments that really get to you. Mixing a smart story, unique visual style, and fine-drawn moments of pure terror, one of the best indie games of the last decade is now available at a historical low of less than $2. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Steam needs more than graphs to fix its review bombing problem PewDiePie says he doesn't agree with Campo Santo's DMCA, almost has another "slip up" The best games of 2016: Firewatch Firewatch Update December 21, 2021Dec 21, 2021 - Community Announcements* Fix issue where some third party software would capture mouse input and block it from reaching the game. Also allow simultaneous gamepad and mouselook input without fully switching between keyboard and gamepad controls. * Fix issue preventing some users from launching the game.Firewatch Update, December 15, 2021:Dec 15, 2021 - Community AnnouncementsSony DualShock 3, DualShock 4, DualSense, Microsoft Xbox 360, Xbox One, and Xbox Series controllers will now be auto-detected (without need of any third party software). Nintendo Switch Pro controllers are also supported (wireless only). Pressing buttons on an input device will automatically switch in-game controller icons to match. Pickup items such as turtles and beer cans should no longer fall through the world. Several rare save/load bugs have been addressed. Graphics performance improvements. Rendering, performance, and battery-life improvements when running on a Metal-supported device. Music Week: Someone should make a game about: Frank Ocean's Channel OrangeMar 10, 2021 - EurogamerHello! Welcome to a Someone Should... with a Music Week twist. A classic album tangled with a classic piece of hardware. We all have a sound which reminds us of our gaming childhood. For me, it's the Artisans theme in Spyro The Dragon. For Frank Ocean, evidently, it's the Street Fighter 2 opening beep. It's this sound which opens his debut album Channel Orange, a narrative album about a conflicted adolescence whose only constant was video games. This beep follows the distinctive start up sound of the original PlayStation, before Ocean takes us on a journey of unrequited love, drug addiction, coming out, religion, Hurricane Katrina, and existential dread. We might associate the PS1 with Final Fantasy 7, Tekken 3, and Crash Bandicoot, but the truth is we all associate the console with something deeper. The sounds, the look, and the feel of the machine reminds us of the time we were enthralled by the PS1. Channel Orange, bookended by the PS1 start up and the fuzz of a CRT TV switching off, wraps up Ocean's songs in the era and the memories of the PS1. Read more Firewatch is taking another stab at a film adaptationAug 17, 2020 - EurogamerFirewatch, developer Campo Santo's acclaimed 2014 first-person narrative mystery, is getting a second chance at getting the movie adaptation treatment. Word of a Firewatch film adaptation first broke in 2016, when it was reported that Campo Santo had signed a deal with production company Good Universe. However, the movie rights zipped back to the developer when Good Universe became a subsidiary of Lionsgate in 2017. The celluloid dream never died, though, and The Hollywood reporter now writes that indie production company Snoot Entertainment - responsible for the likes of Blindspotting and Little Monsters - has taken on the mantle, with Keith Calder and Jess Wu Calder set to produce. Read more Have You Played Firewatch?Apr 8, 2020 - Rock, Paper, Shotgun Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day, perhaps for all time. One of my favourite game-related anecdotes to tell – y’know, to get out at the fancy dinner parties we have where games journalists get together to collude and decide which games will be reviewed well over the coming months – is about Firewatch. (more…) The 32 best PC games that demand to be played in ultrawideDec 19, 2019 - Rock, Paper, Shotgun There’s an old saying in gaming monitor circles that once you’ve gone ultrawide, there’s no going back. Indeed, having had the vast Samsung CRG9 hogging my desk for a bit last month, I’m inclined to agree. But what do games actually look like on a screen this wide? It’s one thing looking at lovely wallpapers, but another thing entirely to have a game occupy your entire field of vision. To find out, and more importantly show you, I’ve rounded up all the very best ultrawide PC games, complete with pictures of what they actually look like in the flesh, plus oodles of lovely GIFs so you can see how it works in action. If you thought playing Red Dead Redemption 2 in 5120×1440 was impressive, you ain’t seen nothing yet. (more…) Firewatch devs put In The Valley Of Gods on holdDec 4, 2019 - Rock, Paper, ShotgunIt is a sad day for pretend archaeology. Firewatch developers Campo Santo have placed In The Valley Of Gods on hold, instead choosing to work on Half-Life: Alyx, Dota Underlords, and other Valve projects. This follows their move to Valve last year, which John (RPS in peace) quizzed them on at length in 2018. That means we’ve got a weird, melancholy portal into when Campo were excited about what the move would mean for their new game. Half-Life with a sprinkling of Firewatch sounds neat and all, but I was looking forward to filming pyramids. (more…) Little Libraries: Firewatch built a community one cache at a timeJul 9, 2019 - EurogamerAt the moment I live on the border of two councils, which means I have two sets of library systems and two library cards. Both library systems are a delight. The Jubilee Library in Brighton is a vast airy place with three light wells in the roof and an upper floor that seems to almost float, unattached to the nearby walls. Then there's the library on the Lewes side - not Lewes itself because it's a bit of a slog, but just ten minutes away on the bus. Small and clean with a lovely sort of reading tube for my daughter to sit in. This tube's padded surfaces and close curves remind me of the future of space travel as envisioned by Stanley Kubrick. All that's missing is a Monolith at the check-out desk. If there was a Monolith I would be in trouble, because if I have a secret talent it's for running up accidentally gigantic fines at libraries. Now I can run up two fines at once. When I go, every few months, to pay them off, such are the baroque flourishes of the fines I run up, the people I meet at the payment desks seem almost impressed. Here's the thing, though. There's a third library nearby. I heard about it a month ago, via a blurry photograph on my wife's Facebook post. A "Little Library" as the name has it. I instantly knew I had to visit. But I also felt I had visited before. Hmm. Read more How YouTube let's plays are preserving video game historyMay 6, 2019 - Rock, Paper, Shotgun It s a long-observed fact that the phenomenon of the YouTube let s play has benefits beyond just entertaining viewers and gradually introducing teenagers to neo-Nazism via YouTube’s algorithm. For developers, for example, getting a popular YouTuber to play their latest title can be a significant boost to sales. Ryan Clark, developer of roguelike rhythm game Crypt of the Necrodancer told the New York Times that he had seen a $60,000 boost in sales after PewDiePie showcased his game. What gets overlooked is the (perhaps unwitting) contribution these YouTubers are making to the preservation of video games. (more…) Firewatch s walkie-talkie friendship is what made it stand outDec 20, 2018 - Rock, Paper, Shotgun First-person walking simulators can be pretty low-budget. That isn t to say that they can t look beautiful, as the Hebrides does in Dear Esther, which pioneered the ‘walking here for a bit of story there’ sub-genre. Making super detailed character models and animations? That s complicated and resource-heavy. It s no surprise that an indie developer doing a walking sim might eschew giving their characters actual walk-on parts. You often find yourself exploring a world where the story has already finished and you re putting the pieces together, or following what feels like a very elaborate walking audio tour of a museum. It s not that these elements are badly designed, but they can feel a bit disjointed or archaic, especially if you accidentally experience them in the wrong order. Firewatch was different. Instead of triggering monologues or mini radio plays, what we got actually emulated a straight-up, naturalistic conversation between fire lookouts Henry and Delilah. Two lonely strangers bonding over the summer of 89, with nothing more than a walkie-talkie. (more…) Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2018: Best PC gaming dealsNov 26, 2018 - Rock, Paper, Shotgun Is… is it over yet? Are the Black Friday and Cyber Monday PC gaming deals finally finished? Just a couple more hours to go now, you can do it deals herald, you can get through this. You’ve got a week and a half holiday coming up soon, just get through the afternoon and then you can go and lie in a dark room and not dream about Cyber Monday graphics card deals you might have missed for the seventh night running. Ahem. Sorry, I don’t know what came over me there. Probably the Cyber Monday PC gaming deals fatigue settling in, or the Black Friday fever dream I seem to have been living this past fortnight. But your deals herald is stronger than that. Nay, THE DEALER is stronger than that, and with a renewed sense of vigor that may in fact be frenzied despair, I thus present to you the final monolithic installment of our Black Friday and Cyber Monday PC deals bonanza. Gone are the deals swept away by the ever-grabbing hands of internet shoppers. All that’s left is the best of the best that are still up for grabs, from graphics cards and monitors to SSDs, gaming headsets, CPUs and mice and keyboards and more. If you’ve yet to do your Cyber Monday shopping, act fast, as these PC gaming deals won’t be around for long. (more…) Our picks from the Steam autumn Sale discountapaloozaNov 25, 2018 - Rock, Paper, ShotgunHurry, hurry. There are only 37 Steam sales each year – miss a bargain now and you’ll regret it for the rest of your days. (Until the next one). As always, the latest Steam Autumn sale is a sensory overload of cut-price delights. We’re here to guide you through the white noise and make a few informed choices. (more…) Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2018: Best PC gaming dealsNov 25, 2018 - Rock, Paper, Shotgun I’m sure everyone’s feeling a bit of Black Friday fatigue by now (trust me, I want this all to be over just as much as you do), but in the interests of those after that one, last, final deal to end all deals, I present to you our newly refreshed Black Friday and Cyber Monday PC gaming deals hub. I’ve cleared away all the deals that have been swept into oblivion by the almighty wave of discount-grabbers, leaving you with the best of the best PC gaming deals that are still available. Whether you’re after a new graphics card, monitor, SSD, gaming headset or even a new CPU, mouse and keyboard, your deals herald will provide. Here are all the best Black Friday and Cyber Monday PC gaming deals you can grab right now. (more…) Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2018: Best PC gaming dealsNov 23, 2018 - Rock, Paper, Shotgun Black Friday is almost over here in the UK, but the deals train is still going strong for all you folk over in the US. It seems like forever ago that I boarded at Deals Station Central, but there’s still a fair old time before we all reach our final destination that is the culmination of November’s online deals frenzy, Cyber Monday. Thus, it falls to me, your ever faithful deals herald to continue striving away at the deals-based coal face to bring you the best Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals around. Now, I’m not saying you should just spend a load of money for the sake of it. Indeed, you should only really partake of Black Friday / Cyber Monday deals madness if you really need to upgrade to something. I ended up buying a laptop today, not because it was cheap (although that was certainly a factor), but because the battery on my current workhorse is practically bursting out from beneath my touchpad. Or at least I think it’s my battery. Either way, it’s getting on a bit and I could do with a new one. So, if you are thinking about upgrading your PC, Black Friday and its accompanying deals jamboree Cyber Monday can be a great time to pick up some deals on the cheap, whether it’s a new graphics card, CPU, SSD, headset, or mouse and keyboard. So let’s dive straight in and see what bargains this year’s Black Friday has to offer. (more…) Black Friday 2018: Best PC gaming deals on graphics cards, monitors, SSDs and moreNov 22, 2018 - Rock, Paper, Shotgun Can you taste the Black Friday deals turkey yet? (Happy Thanksgiving, by the way, to those celebrating) Can you smell those sweet, sweet discounts wafting through the cracks in your screen that tell you, yes, it is time to buy a new gaming monitor, and maybe find a deal on a new graphics card, CPU, SSD and literally every other PC component under the sun? Yes, you say? Me too! And have I got the best PC gaming deals for you this fine Black Friday eve. For I, your trusted deals herald, have been beavering away this past week (month, year, it seems so long ago) to bring you the best Black Friday deals the internet has to offer. You’ll find everything here for building a new PC, including all the best Black Friday graphics card deals, monitor deals, SSD deals, gaming laptop deals, CPU deals, headset deals and please send help because I actually can’t stop saying the word ‘deals’ (DEALS). (more…) Black Friday 2018: Best PC gaming deals on graphics cards, monitors, SSDs and moreNov 21, 2018 - Rock, Paper, Shotgun Despite it being only Wednesday, the Black Friday deals jamboree is well and truly under way. With more deals than you can shake a stick of RAM at, now is the time to get some tasty PC gaming deals on the cheap, especially if you’re after some nice new hardware. To help you make sense of all the deals madness, I’m here to help, as I’ve gone and gathered up all the best PC gaming Black Friday deals I can find, including deals on graphics cards, gaming monitors, SSDs, laptops and more. Yes, my soul is now nothing more than a withered husk, but at least it saves you the trouble of trawling through the internet yourself in search of the best savings. On that note, let’s get down to the business of all them deals, shall we? Here are the best Black Friday deals the internet has to offer. (more…) GOG celebrates its tenth anniversary with a makeover, sale and giveaway to vote onOct 1, 2018 - Rock, Paper, ShotgunThe store formerly known as Good Old Games is ten years old, and GOG is celebrating by slashing prices on a bunch of games, as you do. The site has also been revamped with a new, wider and roomier design, and there’s a vote happening now to decide what game they’ll be giving away on October 4th – Shadow Warrior 2, Superhot or Firewatch? Take your pick. GOG invited RPS’s crew to pick a few showcase games. While not all of them are discounted, we think that our list of Good Games For Better People is a nice look at the softer side of videogames. Romance and relationships get top billing, although if you like to mix in a little violence, half of Dragon Age: Origins’s best dialogue happens while everyone’s dripping with fresh demon blood. (more…) Games set in the 1980s don t need to be painted in neonSep 13, 2018 - Rock, Paper, Shotgun I ve never been myself, but if games have taught me anything about the 80s, it s that they were wild. Big hair, big clothes, big music it was all there. If you were to use Grand Theft Auto: Vice City as a sole reference for the period, you d assume that everyone was constantly walking around to the beat of their own pulsing, synth-infused soundtrack. When 80s-inspired games come to mind, you re probably reminded of excessive action, neon-laced landscapes, and other stylised sensibilities. The games industry seems to be obsessed with this flashy, bitchin decade or, at least, a version of it. Point being: it doesn t have to be like this. (more…) Steam Summer Sale recommendations: 2018 edition!Jun 26, 2018 - Rock, Paper, ShotgunThe old quote is wrong: neither death nor taxes are, it seems to me, as terrifyingly certain as the Steam Summer Sale. Yes, once more we can add to the heap that is our backlog by buying games for, what, five quid, on average? But there are so many to choose from that it’s easy to get flustered, so who better than the staff of RPS to hand-pick the best ones for your consideration (rhetorical question; do not answer)? Check out the full list below for a mix of games that should suit all pockets and tastes. (more…)
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