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This is the second company Tencent have bought this week, with them picking up Inflexion Games, the makers of survival game Nightingale. As a consequence of the acquisition, 1C Entertainment will change its name within six months. That’s to reflect that it is no longer associated with its previous parent, 1C Company, who create business software and cloud computing products. No fee was announced for the acquisition. I mostly know 1C for Men Of War, King’s Bounty, and several terrible press trips they took me on in the mid-00’s, but they employ over 400 people across several subsidiaries....

Get the Samsung Odyssey G7 (32-in) for £469 The Odyssey G7 is one of the most popular monitors to have been released in the last couple of years, with users and critics alike digging its curved 32-inch span, extremely good specs and deep contrast, courtesy of a QLED (VA) panel. This monitor really suits fast-paced titles like shooters and racing games, as you can take advantage of this model’s excellent motion handling, low input lag and deep blacks....

Sands Of Salzaar leapt into Early Access this January, its huge success in China prompting promises of an English translation soon. But 2020 did a lot of things to the word “soon”, so we’ll forgive them for delaying that translation. Besides, it was worth the wait. Sands is a superb game that blends the hack and slash chaos of Dynasty Warriors with the open world RPG skirmishes of Mount & Blade....

According to The Cub’s Steam page, it’s been inspired by classic Sega games from the 90s, such as The Jungle Book, Lion King and Aladdin, but with some more modern sensibilities thrown in, such as more parkour-oriented runnin’ and jumpin’, and environmental puzzles. From the looks of things, The Cub takes place in the same world as Golf Club Wasteland, where “after the Great Ecological Catastrophe, the ultrarich flee to Mars and leave the rest to perish....

Destroy All Humans! is a remake of the mid-2000s action game about wacky 1950s aliens who’ve come to Earth to harvest brains and blow everything up for kicks. Its release today is the first time it’ll appear on PC. You control one of the aliens in a third person action style, running a line of missions in which you brutalise cows, zap humans with cartoon weapons, and blow up towns with heat rays from your classic flying saucer....

Diversions this week are discussing classic UK subterranean tourist attractions Wookey Hole and Cheddar Gorge, and how Matthew’s life could have been different if only he’d been Wookey Hole’s witch mascot. Nate has bought a model kit for one of those massive excavation machines, which he says is “about as big as an Alsatian” and “basically a bin-bag full of girders”. So he is turning it into an Orc sewage treatment plant....

Once again, there are some seriously spooky looking games on offer. Chasing Static up top there, whose demo is also on Steam, is an adventure set in rural Wales. It’s got some solid voice acting to go with its lo-fi visuals as you use your anomaly detector to hunt down the mystery of the missing villagers of Hearth. The disc is practically a variety pack, with all sorts of different spooks....

Previously, Sony said the PC version of The Last Of Us Part 1 would simply be coming “very soon” after launch on PS5, although I’m not sure six months technically counts as “very soon”, but hey, at least we’ve got an actual date now. Unfortunately, we weren’t treated to a special PC trailer for the occasion - just more footage captured on PS5 - so you’ll have to make do with the original reveal trailer above....

“We really wanted to find an interesting mix of management and narrative in the gameplay,” Jauneaud tells me. “Our main inspirations were, of course, games like Theme Hospital and Dungeon Keeper. We also wanted to make something that had a bit more, let’s say, meaningful story to tell, like we did with Night Call, to share with players slices of life and have them meet characters that they’d never heard about....

Hangar 13 have also revealed that they’re working on the next game in the Mafia series. Speaking in a developer interview, which you can read in full here, general manager Roman Hladík said the game is still “a few years away”. The first Mafia was remade as the Definitive Edition two years ago, with vastly zhuzhed up graphics and an expanded story. I still remember when Mafia was released and having to steer that bloody racing car around....

This is a hugely ambitious game, covering something I’ve never seen before, with a scope that makes Europa Universalis seem limited. It is a complicated, huge, and ponderous alien invasion simulator that constantly threatens to drop the other boot on you the entire time. Anything you do could be the butterfly whose little wingflaps eventually result in the obliteration of the planet. It is not a game to be powered through, but to be played and contemplated exclusively for a solid month....

It’s taken a long time to get this far in the RPS Advent Calendar. We’ve conquered mountains, waded across rivers, we’ve even built some roads along the way. It’s been a journey, but at least we didn’t have to do it alone. So please get your holographic signature at the ready. It’s time to take delivery of door number 18. It’s Death Stranding! Katharine: Death Stranding was dealt a rough hand when it first came out on console last year....

If you want to open day nine of the RPS advent calendar, you’re going to need to light some fires first. Maybe push down some giant buttons, too. It’s Immortals Fenyx Rising! Alice Bee: For a while there I was having trouble figuring out who Immortals Fenyx Rising was aimed at, because while I had initially thought it was aimed at kids, it became clear that the combat, puzzles, and overall vibe was maybe a bit too complex in places....

Lunistice Possibly my most magical Christmas as a kid was in 1997, aged 12. I got a Saturn and an issue of the UK’s Official Sega Saturn Magazine that had a Christmas NiGHTS Into Dreams disc on the cover. I reckon that it was my favourite, most unabashedly fun time for gaming ever (outside my decades fiddling around on PC, obvs). Indie platformer Lunistice is a blatant love letter to the 32-bit era, and the kind of game that largely skipped the poor old Saturn....

Customising your Sims’ sexual orientation, gender identity, and pronouns is fairly straightforward, but understanding what all the options actually mean in terms of gameplay can be a little more complicated. On this page, I’ll explain both how to customise your Sims and what impact your choices will have on the way your game works. Before we proceed, it’s worth noting that The Sims 4 never uses real-world labels for gender and sexual identities....

Every character in the werewolf hometown of Moonwood Mill has a story to tell, but perhaps the most interesting — and certainly the most elusive — is Greg. No last name, just: Greg. This new NPC was teased heavily in promotional materials prior to the pack’s release, but although he does appear in the game itself, he’s a tricky wolfman to track down. There’s nothing like a mystery to get Sims players rallied around a pre-made character, so on this page we’ll be sharing all the good Greg gossip, including where to find him, details about how he behaves in the game, and why your Sim might want to make the effort to track him down....

Over the last few months, The Sinking City has been disappearing from digital storefronts. In an open letter published today, the game’s developers, Frogwares say they’ve been going through legal disputes with publishing company, Nacon (formerly Bigben Interactive), over funding and copyright issues with their Lovecraftian RPG. Frogwares allege that Nacon missed payments to the devs during the game’s production, and wrongly tried to claim copyright of it after its release....

But I digress. The point is that in PC gaming we don’t get shiny new stuff to get interested in very often. Sure, there are things like new graphics cards and ultrawide screens, but we get those all the time. But the Steam Deck is a thing! It’s going to shake up the industry! It’s like a Nintendo Switch, but for PC games! You can play all them fun games you like, that are PC exclusives, but in your hands!...

Yes, that one video game is quite a biggie, and it’s definitely the one most will be picking up this December, but that doesn’t mean everyone is champing at the bit to play it. Maybe you’re not interested in the Deus Extra RPG that is Cyberpunk 2077. Perhaps you want gangsters, underwater puzzles, two-headed dogs! So, if you’re one of those people, and you’re looking for a new game to play over the festive period, look no further than this list of the top 10 video games to play on PC this December....

And that’s before you consider the smaller, fumbling errors: accidentally dropping my only gun while shimmying up a drain pipe; filling my backpack with scavenged pillows instead of bandages and food; attempting to throw a bottle at a zombie, only to smash it at my feet and ring the dinner bell for every deadhead in the vicinity. Yes, in an actual zombie nightmare, I wouldn’t make it beyond the pilot episode....