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The tenkeyless Vulcan, dubbed the Vulcan TKL, will be available in both Roccat’s existing Titan Tactile and Titan Speed switches for £119 when it launches on October 30th, but you’ll have to shell out a little bit extra for the Vulcan TKL Pro if you want those newly-announced Titan Optical switches. This will cost £140 when it launches alongside the regular Vulcan TKL at the end of next month, offering speeds up to 40% faster than your typical mechanical switch, according to Roccat....

It all started on Thursday, after what seemed to be a regular maintenance update to PsyNet (the network that connects players across platforms in Rocket League). This update had broken something somehow, as the Rocket League devs took to Twitter on Friday to inform players they were investigating “server access issues” - then a short while later players were informed it was all fixed. Except it wasn’t properly fixed, because this continued to happen multiple times on Saturday and Sunday....

With Rogue Legacy 2 possibly coming this summer, it seemed good timing to return to the 2013 original and explore what still makes it stand out from the crowd of rogues. Gosh it’s so infuriatingly tempting to begin every write-up about a roguelike/lite with some sort of family tree of the genre. The title has become so splendidly meaningless at this point, blurring the RPGness of Rogue with the platforming of Spelunky with the tactics of deck-builders, we may as well call each what it is....

As is tradition at the RPS Treehouse, we’ll be assailing you with our usual clutch of Christmas cracker jokes over the holidays, but we’re also trying something new this year. Introducing, the RPS Selection Box, where the team will crack open their own personal highlight tubs from the year to celebrate the games they loved (also known as “hon. menchies” in this treat-based universe) that didn’t make it into the Advent Calendar....

Saints Row: The Third debuted in 2011, then scored a remaster in 2020. Yeah, it wasn’t really old enough that it needed a remaster, but it was touched up and did wham in all the expansions and DLC packs and bits. That’s a whole lot of crimes. I do like SR3 fair enough, I’m just less keen in the context of the series. Saints Row 2 was a decent daft take on GTA, then The Third veered too far into wacky for me while removing a load of thigs I liked in 2, before 4 steered hard into wacky and kept on going until it punched other side as full-on delightful superhero nonsense....

Today saw the dashing and blasting and slashing roguelite reach its 1.0 release. As with most games escaping their early access shackles, ScourgeBringer got a big update today, too, adding in a new realm with new bosses and enemies to take on. ScourgeBringer takes place in a post-apocalyptic world where you play as a young lass trying to figure out her past. With today’s 1.0 patch, she can explore a new realm while doing so: it’s called The Beyond, and there you’ll find two new bosses and a bunch of new enemies....

Castlehold is a multiplayer strategy game where you’ll march your army across a hex-based field to capture your enemy’s castle. Deploying troops requires cash though, which you’ll get by capturing and holding villages on the map. 5Th Cell call it their “active resource control” system. “Controlling or denying enemy gold-generating villages on the battlefield is the key to victory,” they explain. “You must decide when to hold onto your villages, enabling you to deploy stronger, more expensive troops, when to advance taking the enemy’s villages, and when to strategically retreat....

Clearly the most important part of this update is the new pup pals. Like the cat companions that were recently added, it looks like you’ll be able to cradle your mutts in your big pirate mitts and give them some nice ear scratches as well. I’m dying to know what it will look like when you hold them up though. Showing items to my pals around the ship by holding them out still gives me giggles to this day and I was not disappointed when I got a cat....

Get the Sennheiser HD 599 SE for £87 (RRP £180) Amazingly I’ve not yet written about these headphones for RPS, although I’ve covered them a few times for RPS sister site Eurogamer and I’ve owned and used a pair of (near-identical) HD 598 SE cans for the past seven years. The reason I keep coming back to these headphones is that their open back design is ideal for my work. My home office is relatively quiet during the day, but I need to be able to listen out for delivery folks, so having a set of open back headphones is perfect - I get a lovely wide sound stage and good imaging that suits competitive gaming and critical listening, but I also can hear a knock on my door in time to not miss a package....

Alice Bee took the new expansion for a spin in her Snowy Escape preview and spent time digging into the new Sentiments system that has Sims actually remember events in their relationships with others. Her Sim named Glen somehow ended up in an argument with a child, who then apparently developed a “festering grudge” against him. Seems like Glen deserved it though. “This is clearly the first step on a road to destruction,” she says....

The files contain multiple references to of “PSNAccountLinked” and “PSNLinkingEntitlements”, which were found by players poking around in game files yesterday. The reference to a “PlayStation PC launcher” was found later. References in code don’t mean something is definitely happening, and a “launcher” could take many forms, from a thin verification layer that runs when games are booted via other storefronts like Steam or Epic, to a completely separate platform with a storefront and friends list and other trimmings....

Here’s all the items in Spelunky 2 and where to find them. All Spelunky 2 items and locations Most items can be purchased from the various shops throughout the world, but you can also find them in wooden boxes, hidden in walls, and earn them through sacrificing unconscious or dead enemies/allies on altars. Here’s our in-progress list of all the items in Spelunky 2: Rope pile - a stack of 3 ropes Bomb bag - a stack of 3 bombs Bomb box - a stack of 12 bombs Paste - makes your bombs stick to surfaces Spectacles - shows you gems within walls Climbing Gloves - allows you to grab onto and climb walls Pitcher’s Mitt - makes your throwing more powerful, letting everything travel in a straight line unaffected by gravity Spring Shoes - increases your maximum jump height by one tile Spike Shoes - kills all normal enemies when you jump on them once Compass - shows you the direction of the exit Parachute - automatically saves you from fall damage one time Udjat Eye - same as spectacles, with probable bonus uses Skeleton Key - opens all locks and doesn’t break after use Cape - a multi-use parachute, the cape breaks your fall and allows you to control your descent with the jump button Jetpack - it’s pretty simple, you fly in the direction of your choosing by pressing the jump button in midair Telepack - lets you teleport without you having to carry it in your hands Hoverpack - allows you to hover indefinitely Powerpack - beefs up your weapons, including making your bombs enormous and your whip flaming Webgun - fires spider webs which stall enemies significantly Shotgun - shopkeepers are brutal with this, and you can be too....

Splitgate looks to be pretty much exactly what you’d imagine of a portal-shooting FPS. Players can shoot portals and bullets both, competing on teams in 15 different game types across 20 maps. You can spot all the action down here in its announcement trailer from June. If that sounds like a good time, especially being free-to-play, yeah you aren’t the only one who thought so. Splitgate kicked off its cross-platform open beta on July 13th and has had quite an explosion of concurrent players since....

To fight the Covid-19 pandemic, in February Square Enix started measures including working from home and staggered hours. Come June, they say, a survey of employees found 80% “had a positive view of work from home”. So they’ve decided to make it a permanent part of their working practices from December 1st. Squeenix say in the announcement that they hope “not only to create a flexible and diverse working environment, but also to further bolster productivity and help employees achieve the optimal work-life balance....

Now there’s a soundless gameplay trailer of Stargate in action, and ooh, it looks a lot like Commandos. Is Commandos still the reference to use? It’s also like Desperados or, as the title says, Shadow Tactics. Stargate: Timekeepers is a real-time tactical stealth game about sneaking around the woods, distracting guards, and choking-out those you can’t avoid. “Stargate: Timekeepers is a real-time tactics game where you lead a team of specialists through a story-driven campaign set in the SG-1 universe”, says Timekeepers Steam page....

The store page for Steam China is live now. It’s nothing too special - it basically looks like a slightly simplified version of the Steam we’re used to. At the moment, it has around 40 games, including Valve’s big’uns, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Dota 2. According to the Chinese CS:GO and Dota 2 sites, players will be able to log in to Steam China and both games with their usual Steam details....

Valve are touting the nu-pdated app as the most secure way to sign into your Steam account. That’s because it uses two-factor authentication. You can now generate a QR code on your computer to scan using the app for almost instant sign-in, too, and approve or deny regular sign-ins from notifications in the app. It also gives you a list of authorised devices, so you know who’s got access to your account....

Among the most interesting deals are: American Truck Simulator at 75% off (£3.74/€5), Two Point Hospital likewise 75% off (£6.24/€8.74) and Potion Craft for 20% off (£9.11/€10). There are dozens of others, however. Of those three, Potion Craft is maybe the most interesting just because it’s newer. When writing about it six months ago, Alice B said it was better than meditation. It’s a game where crunch up ingredients to make potions to serve to adventurers....

In case you had any doubt, Outriders did indeed claim a spot, as did Nier: Replicant. For further remaster wins, Total War: Rome Remastered and SaGa Frontier Remastered made the list too. Those all fall pretty well into what I’d have expected for last month. What’s more interesting, by my mind, are some of the lesser known games that have managed to claw a spot on the list. If the oh so many big game delays from last year that trended into this year have one definite positive side effect, it’s leaving room for smaller games that would have otherwise gotten pushed out....

One of the study’s authors posted about the results over on Reddit. Titled “The educational value of virtual ecologies in Red Dead Redemption 2,” the study used an online survey of 586 participants, asking them to identify 15 different species that appear in RDR2 based on photographs of real animals. Participants were first asked to name the animal by typing an answer unprompted in a text box and, if they chose to leave that blank, choose the species from a multiple choice list of similar species....