The good news. My week was crash-less and dotted with diverting engagements. I’m pleased I can no longer deploy tanks directly into houses. The frustrating stand-offs in which AFVs refused to fire at each other because of imaginary “steep angles” seem to be a thing of the past. I’ve not seen a tank gun barrel jutting from a turret at an unnatural angle. Mortars happily target halftracks now. Illumination rounds actually illuminate....
“Excited to be back to our full-scale show—that means The Game Awards Orchestra live on stage once again,” Keighley announced over on Twitter along with the show date. As Keighley points out, that is only ten weeks away which gives me one of those involuntary “oh gosh, the year sure went fast, huh?” moments. That’s about all there is to know so far this year until the TGAs announce which award categories and nominees we’ll be voting on this year....
I have always had a deep affinity for games with excellent guns. From modern military shooters to fantastical sci-fi space operas, if there is a gun to be shooting, I am all in. And clearly, I am not alone. But of course, in the real world, guns aren’t as simple as holding right-click and spamming left. Real guns come with responsibility, unreliability and enormous consequences (which of course may all be reasons why we enjoy the fake ones)....
So much fun stuff is hidden on those random little planets. From colonies of space monkeys that have stolen a data module, to a Prothean orb that makes Shepard relive the memories of a primitive human species. Some of the things you can find are so weird, so interesting and completely missable if you just mainline the game. “Hey Joker, where should we go next? Wrex wants to beat people up on that planet, but this other one has space cows!...
The trailer below is a quickie and doesn’t let on with anything that looks like gameplay, but Daedalic have shared some other new details. For one thing, Gollum is definitely a stealth game moreso than a combat one. “The game mixes stealth with vertical climbing parkour,” lead game designer Martin Wilkes tells IGN. “If you want a reference you might think of it as similar to Prince of Persia. It is mostly a non-combat game, but Gollum will be able to stealthily take out enemies....
To open this door, you’re going to need a little electronic fob clicker thing. You’ve not got one to hand, but you can make one easily enough, right? You proceed to do just that, and learn a valuable lesson about the dizzying hidden complexity of technological civilization along the way. By the time you stride out of the continent-spanning purgatory of machines that proved necessary to assemble the fob, it is February....
The presentation about the new modding platform starts at the 12m 20s mark: Traditionally to download The Sims 4 cc meant heading to fan-created repositories and forums, or to the websites of individual creators. Maxis say they want to create a platform where creators can “host their incredible creations”, with “an additional level of security” for those downloading and installing the mods. Importantly, this is described as “supplementary”, and Maxis say they won’t force modders “to move to or use the CurseForge platform....
UK deal: It’s still not downright cheap by wider PC headset standards, but there’s little question of getting your money’s worth. Katharine even called the Arctis 7 “the best gaming headset ever made” when she reviewed it back in 2017, and since headsets are not CPUs, this is the the kind of hardware upgrade that still stands up five years later. It’s got a great mic, very capable (and customisable) sound output, and practically latency-free wireless connectivity, all in a relatively tactful and mature design....
For Kotaku, Siddhartha Bajracharya wrote about his experiences working as a doctor during the current crisis, and the strangeness of devoting his evenings to The Division 2. It’s a heavy read, but packed with valuable insight into what life is like for those working inside hospitals. For The Washington Post, Stacey Henley spoke to various women about the widespread lack of pregnancy support within the games industry. As you might imagine, this manifests in many ways....
But, before we get onto BioWare, you can hear us chat about Ubisoft’s plan to make moves in the free-to-play market, and we also discuss the price of the Vive Pro 2 and whether we’ve spent upwards of £1300 on anything in our lives. But, yes, this is a Show and Tell-heavy podcast this week. Mass Effect isn’t the only remaster we talk about on this episode, though. Matthew’s played the PC port of Shin Megami Tensei 3: Nocturne, and he’s come away pleased with the game but underwhelmed with the remastering....
There’s also £15 off the Adata XPG SX8200 Pro today, too, bringing this great value drive down to £100. This is actually the same as its Black Friday price, making it a great time to pick it up. The SX8200 Pro isn’t quite as fast as the WD Black SN750 when it comes to random write speeds - it’s around 12% slower by my benchmark figures - but its random read speeds are exceptional....
Get the Acer Nitro XV252QZ for £180 (was £375) The Acer Nitro XV252QZ is a 24.5-inch model with an IPS screen, offering wide viewing angles and good colour reproduction alongside the excellent motion handling you’d expect from a 280Hz screen. The 1920x1080 resolution is a good fit for this screen size, and allows you to run esports titles at hundreds of fps even with a mid-range PC. Elsewhere, the XV252QZ ticks all the boxes....
Get the Crucial P5 1TB for £78 at Ebuyer (was £100) First up, let’s talk about the speed of this drive. While it costs a tiny bit more than the truly budget NVMe SSDs - the likes of the WD Blue SN550 and Crucial P1 or P2 - it’s also significantly faster. Read speeds are significantly faster, at 3400MB/s vs 2400MB/s, but write speeds are on another level - 3000MB/s vs 1800MB/s....
In classic romantic dramedy fashion, Beth is just about to become a high-powered CEO who’s nearly ready to check off all those popular life milestones of kids and career. She’s made a return visit to the countryside, as one does, where she’ll dig up some local mysteries with her old pal Adam. That’s you, the one with the metal detector. Thunkd say that you’ll spend time exploring the old farm as Adam, digging up old junk while you send photos of your finds over to Beth....
The long and short of Cris Tales is that it’s a self-professed love letter to classic JRPGs. It’s got turn-based combat, an overworld, and a party full of characters with their own stories. You can check out the new overview trailer below which gets you a good look at its colorful, cartoon style and some of the wild characters you’ll meet. Modus Games have also spelled out some extra info on their site that digs into some of the bits you can quickly see represented in the video....
The update adds a slack handful of new stuff to Darktide, which launched at the end of November. One of the main additions is the Comms-Plex 154/2f map, which tasks you and your not-so-merry band to access the Comms Plex and make it to the roof of the HL-19-24 Archivum. There, you’ll have to send a message out to allies in the Imperium. Zealots can pick up the Indignatus Mk IVe Crusher two-hande power maul, while Ogryns can wield the Achlys Mk I in one of their massive mitts....
How do we feel about that? It was announced long ago that Overwatch would effectively be replaced by its sequel, and the timings for the server switch-over were announced two weeks ago, so this isn’t news. It simply felt worth noting now that it’s imminent. Blizzard’s team shooter launched in 2016, which means you’ve had six years to play with its maps, modes and hero characters. Many of those things will carry over to the sequel - perhaps too many, given Ed and Liam found the followup too familiar during public beta....
The sharpshooter starts off with plenty of skills you’d expect to see in an action dungeon crawler. She’s got arrows that knock enemies backwards to help maintain her distance. She has a bow shot that simultaneously fires a cone of a dozen arrows. There are explosive shots, a hail of arrows area of effect attack. You know the stuff. What’s a little more interesting is her ability to summon spirits, turning her into more of a druid type of class....
First teased earlier this month, the Dune Reavers must still protect their central keep during an orc invasion, but instead of slapping down castle wall cards to shelter it from the oncoming hordes, you’ll be building a barracks and feeding it with a steady supply of houses. Each house recruits one squad of soldiers to your cause, and you’ll be able to assign them to certain tiles to defend your settlement....
“At time of writing, I remain mostly baffled by this game, and consequently am a fan of it,” Alice said in April. We then sent Steve Hogarty in with a brush for an early access review and he was weirdly charmed too, coming away calling it “a tempting trapdoor for a tired mind, a long slide into the comforting numbness of routine, a tiny sample of the void served to you on a cocktail stick by a smiling lady at the end of a supermarket aisle....
