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Fantasy Strike left early access roughly this time last year - a little after I started writing news for this here videogame website. Christ, where’d the time go? The work of Chess 2 creator and (more appropriately) Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix tinkerer David Sirlin’s studio, Fantasy Strike was crowdfunded on the idea of creating a compelling fighting game without all that input guff. Now a year out from its Steam debut, the devs have decided to scrap that £25 entry fee....

Lost Between Worlds begins with Rojas finding a crashed alien ship powered by an alien AI called FAI. FAI’s ship is damaged and requires five crystals to be repaired, and those crystals are scattered across a remixed version of Yara. Familiar areas from the base game have been twisted into surreal landscapes, dunked underwater, or otherwise altered in ways that makes traversing them entirely new. Weapons and enemies have changed, too....

Taking flight on the Epic Games Store last year (and PlayStation a few months before that), Falcon Age’s aviary android-bashing adventure has finally perched itself on Steam’s shelves. Outerloop’s debut is a tactical bird befriender about using your feathered friends to fend off an invasion from colonial corporate robots - exploring the wilderness and solving most of your problems by hurling a massive falcon at ’em. While that may all sound quite self-serious, it’s also worth noting that Falcon Age is very much a game about dressing up a bird and making it dab....

In Fights In Tight Spaces, you play as an anonymous secret agent with the aim of assassinating bosses, while moving through the game’s multiple chapters. On the way to each boss are several smaller encounters, which act as opportunities for you to get some practice in. You take turns planning the best way to take out roomfuls of enemies, and eventually upgrade your skills and continue the cycle. The final release of Fights In Tight Spaces includes a new playable character to choose, as well as new levels to increase the variety for players....

I therefore turned to the makers and sellers of Etsy, where a kind of indie Steam Deck accessory market has emerged. Soon, I’d bought (with my own money, you’re welcome ReedPop) a selection of unique, handcrafted, sometimes questionable gadgets and appendages, and promptly packed them onto a train for independent appraisal by a newly minted Steam Deck owner. Specifically, RPS vid bud Liam. You can find out what Liam thought of my picks in the video above....

The last time I played Fortnite, the game’s only ‘vehicles’ were trollies, so I think it’s safe to say the game has come a pretty long way with this update. The vehicles wot can be found across the island in Fortnite today include the Prevalent city car, the Bear pickup truck, the Whiplash sporty car, and my personal favourite, the Mudflap, the beefy truck which looks like Optimus Prime with a paint job....

The trailer shows off all the basic moves Frey can use. The first of these is Flow, which automatically propels you forward at high speeds. There’s a stamina-restoring ability called Rush that gives Frey some awesome flaming legs. Then there’s Shimmy, which allows you to zip off surfaces at high speeds, jumping across rooftops in the trailer. That’s just the surface, though. The new trailer revealed some seriously impressive abilities at Frey’s disposal, including my favourite, Glide....

“The wasteland covered by snow’s quilt seems quiet, calm, asleep as if the wind was its lullaby,” the trailer’s description says. “Yet, the crimson scars mark the battleground for precious resources worth breaking up alliances over.” They added on Twitter, “Beyond snow-covered tracks, with wasteland upon wasteland, we go hoping against hope.” That’s about all they have to say, though they tag it #NewGame so hey, it’s their new game....

Galakrond’s Warlock incarnation summons random Demons upon play, upgrading from 1, to 2, and finally to 4. Galakrond, Azeroth’s End also equips you a 5/2 Claw as a weapon, effectively acting as a free Arcanite Reaper as well as those chunky Demons it summons. It’ll be an interesting card to try out, that’s for sure. Galakrond Warlock deck list and strategy Here’s the Galakrond Warlock deck we’re using for the beginning of Ashes of Outland....

Our Nate was dead impressed, declaring in his Gears Tactics review that “it’s good to the extent where, as risky as it is to say such a thing, I’d argue it sets the new gold standard for turn-based tactics.” Huh! Made by Splash Damage and The Coalition, Gears Tactics turns the third-person cover shooter into a top-down tactical squad game. The end result is enough like XCOM that I can skip a lot of explanation that it’s a lot like XCOM but with the chainsaws, cusses, and spectacle of Gears Of War (or just “Gears”, as it’s officially named these days?...

While you can do this free of charge on a standard membership, sessions are capped to one hour long, and you’ll be in a queue with all the other freeloaders price-sensitive consumers. The trouble is that the paid option – the £5 per month Founders membership – has been sold out since the service came out of beta. Well, today it’s back in stock, letting you sign up to the service at £5 per month for 12 months....

The Dragonspine area will introduce Genshin’s new “sheer cold” status effect. One you accumulate too much by staying out in the sub-zero climate of the mountain, you’ll start taking health damage. Walking through a snowstorm or swimming in the cold will speed up your sheer cold accumulation while heat sources like bonfires and torches will remove it. Prepare yourself for the cold, because Dragonspine is home to puzzles and quests that you’ll want to hunt down....

New characters coming with update 1.5 will be the five-star cryo claymore wielder Eula and four-star pyro character Yanfei. Mihoyo have dug into their abilities, along with details on new quests, domains, and weapons in their update 1.5 patch notes. The big ticket item looks to be that housing system though. You’ll access your house via a tiny teapot called the Serenitea Pot. It’s a gadget in your inventory that you’ll place on the ground and then interact with to dive in....

Like all Humble Bundles, the Humble VR bundle is split into three different price tiers, allowing you to pay as much or as little as you like depending on which games you’ve got your eye on. Pay £1 / $1, for example, and you’ll get space RTS game Cosmic Trip and the team-based action game Smashbox Arena. Not bad for a single quid. However, it’s the ‘pay more than the average’ tier that arguably has the best run of goods in this particular bundle, as this currently gets you gladiator sim Gorn, the sneaky stealth gem Budget Cuts and the shooty whizz-bang arcade delights of Space Pirate Trainer....

That’s some $145 below MSRP and way cheaper than similarly-specced 2TB PCIe 4.0 SSDs like the Samsung 980 Pro ($260) or Crucial P5 Plus ($244). Get an Adata Premium SSD for PS5 (and for PC) for $185 (was $330) As you might guess from the PS5 compatibility, the Adata Premium SSD for PS5 (gosh, this name) is a ‘second-gen’ PCIe 4.0 SSD, capable of delivering peak read speeds of 7400MB/s and write speeds of 6800MB/s....

Today, Teamgroup’s imaginatively-named T-Force Vulcan Z drive is down to $128 for a 2TB model, the lowest price we can find for this size at present. TeamGroup T-Force Vulcan Z 2TB - $128 (was $160) If you still have hard drives in your PC - especially if you have multiple small HDDs as I once did - I’d encourage you to consider the merest possibility of replacing them with solid state storage instead....

Get Northgard for free when you spend £3.50 at GamesPlanet with code NORSEGODS So - the highlights. As a hardcore strategy nerd I feel well equipped to say that there are a crazy number of heavily discounted games here, from remastered classics to bold new takes on the strategy and/or tactics genres. I’m a lifelong fan of Age of Empires and Company of Heroes (the latter of which today saw the announcement of a long-awaited sequel!...

Get the Corsair 4000D Airflow case for £52.98 (was £80) The reason the 4000D was so well received by the PC building community is based on how easy it is to build in and the much improved ventilation provided to internal components like the CPU and GPU. This case includes two fans placed in ‘channels’ that direct airflow towards these components, and up to six 120mm fans can be fitted throughout the case....

Dubbing Godzilla and Kong as ‘Titans’ of Universal Pictures’ Monsterverse, Call Of Duty is introducing the pair to the Caldera map in the time-limited Operation Monarch event beginning May 11th. According to the patch notes, Monarch is the name of the organisation that tracks down these cryptozoological Titans. Somehow there have been two movies starring the big ape-lad and the large dragon with bad breath now, one of which came out last year....

Today: colony building sim Going Medieval. Developer: Foxy Voxel Publisher: The Irregular Corporation Release: From: Steam (early access), GOG Price: £20/€23/$25 It is, in a word, the leading contender for the next Rimworld. I try not to be so reductive, but denying Rimworld’s influence here is pointless. It has a less colourful setting but aside from that it copies pretty much everything. And that’s okay. Going Medieval isn’t just a clone though....