Author: Nic Reuben

Oh, Dope Wars ’98, let me count the ways you moulded me into the man I am today, buying extra large trench coats in which to store my 100 units of acid. Military Incremental Complex riffs off that game’s unmistakably ’98 interface, but instead of playing a cool and aspirational heroin entrepreneur, you play a dastardly bullet merchant. Begin crafting artisan handmade farm-fresh shotgun shells, work your way up to nukes. Typical woke renewable energy propaganda. Can’t even sell massive bundles of dynamite with ‘TNT’ written on them anymore in case it offends the coyotes.
You’ll “produce multiple different weapons, research upgrades, manipulate the stock market, and lobby the government for favours”. It’s from Space Kraken, makers of Squeebing Up The Tower Of Friendship, a game I have not played but enjoy saying the name of aloud. Squeebing. Squeeeebing. “6 hours in the demo and another hour in the released game, I still have no idea what squeebing is,” reads one review. UrbanDictionary defines ‘squeebing’ as … actually, I’m not repeating what UrbanDictionary defines squeebing as. Here’s a trailer with wholesome god-fearing guns in it instead.

“What if Resident Evil and Frogger had a boomer shooter baby?,” teases the trailer blurb for FPS Frog Legs. Stop, stop. You had me at Frog. Then you had me again when I saw the frog using a super shotgun, and then once again when they used a BFG. Then, inconceivably, you had me twice more reading the Steam page. Once when I learned the game was about 40 minutes long, and then again when I noticed it costs two quid. Trailer? Yes. I already said there was. Please, keep up.

Now we’re cooking with asbestos: Warhammer Skulls, the yearly power armoured excite-o-thon hosted by Boltgun actor Rahul Kohli, returns this Thursday. It’s traditionally a time of reveals and revelry, with the Mechanicus sequel a likely contender for the spotlight this year. You can watch it live on TwitchHam at 17:00 BST/12:00 EST/9:00 PST. Here’s a teasytrailyhypeyshouty in the meantime.

Sending my trading vessel to sail the seas of Anno 117: Pax Romana offers up a cornucopia of dangers and discoveries. Dastardly pirates. Lush islands. New leaders to barter and play diplomacy with. Most of all though, it allows me to discover hitherto unknown depths of petty jealously, as I realise how much nicer everyone else’s city layout is compared to mine. Time to go demolish several family’s houses and rearrange them in a slightly more aesthetically pleasing manner it is, then.

If internet videos with titles like “Supersonic Golf Ball to the Forehead” have taught us anything, it’s that a slow motion chthonic mace to the dome is a weighty chthonic mace to the dome. So goes the thinking being Doom: The Dark Ages liberal dolloping of slow motion effects all over its melee attacks and parries. The FPS does away with the series’ canned glory kills, so it’s nice to take a split second of mud time to catch your bearings where you can. Still, the game isn’t exactly shy about its application.
I was watching a Doom 3 retrospective last night that talked about how the original copies of the game came with a note explaining that “Doom 3 is not for cowards!”. By contrast, the amount of accessibility options and sliders in The Dark Ages, alongside Id saying that it was ” a game for all Slayers!” is, you know, at least one nice reminder that games are far less twattish than they used to be. In some ways, at least. One thing those sliders don’t allow for, however, is removing the abundance of slow motion effects. Once again, modders have our backs. Thank you, modders. That’s my favourite back and I’d strongly dislike having to replace it.

The mod in question is DOOM The Dark Ages SlowMoBREAK by SkallEdit. Despite the name’s casing giving me several slow motion aneurysms at once, it looks to do the job nicely. You’ll need Cheat Engine to use it, and you won’t be able to use the game speed slider with it installed. “No more slow mo during melee or parry!”, reads the description, and a fine description it is. Here’s a clip of the game in action with the mod, via Reddit.
I reviewed The Dark Ages here. I liked but didn’t love it. Some people don’t like black olives and ruin their coffee with sugar and milk. That’s fine! If you enjoy a video game more than me, you automatically win. Coffee should taste like dirt though. Anything else is cowardice.

Pro tip: if you send RPS an email of your game with the hook “I know you like goofy stuff…” then, yes, there’s a decent chance I’ll take the bait, mirth-parched wanderer in the endless dessert left by a goofphagic modernity as I am. Titanic Re-Christened: Maiden Vengeance is almost unplayable in my browser – it can’t seem to decide whether I’m clicking on the game on the itch.io page itself – but I’m writing about it anyway because it made my morning coffee a couple of mild chuckles better than it would have been otherwise.

Booked For The Week is our weekly chat with industry folk about the books they love, have loved, and are hoping to love in the future.

Hello reader who is also a reader, and welcome back to Booked For The Week – our regular Sunday chat with a selection of cool industry folks about books! No cool industry person this week (I’d like requests though. No Classical Gas), but I want to get back into the habit of posting the column regularly regardless, since the comments are always a medium good time, which is the maximum amount of good time allowed on a Sunday.