Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Comic book card battler Marvel Snap is adding a two-player battle mode by the close of the year. Developers Second Dinner told the Washington Post that an update to the free to play PC and mobile game that pits superpowered heroes and villains from the Marvel Universe against each other would be landing before 2023 begins. That’s cool and all, but if you’ve got thirty seconds then do yourself a favour and watch the virtually superhero-free Japanese trailer for Marvel Snap below, too.

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The composer behind Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2’s soundtrack is leaving her job, citing artistic differences with the military shooter’s audio director. In a statement posted to her Twitter account, Sarah Schachner expressed regret that work on the soundtrack by producer Mike Dean would not get to be heard by players. Dean collaborated with Schachner on the score for the previous Modern Warfare game.

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Vampire Survivors is morish. Pulsating lights stretch in a vertical column from the top to the bottom of my screen, scattering into deadly particles like notes played on an accordion of cosmic destruction. Fireworks burst in every corner, thanks to the evolved version of my diamond-spewing runetracer weapon that’s now called ‘NO FUTURE’. Monsters go pop by their thousands. Flaming meteors still abound.

Vampire Survivors is an arcade-style survivathon about weaving through fields of enemies as your weapons automatically obliterate the oncoming hordes. It’s still about collecting upgrades until you’re the locus of an unstoppable death machine, and now that it’s left early access that death machine comes in more colours and more flavours. There are new maps to conquer, new characters to conquer with, and new secrets to uncover. If you haven’t played since the early access launch then yes, it’s worth checking out the new stuff. If you haven’t played at all, then God yes, please check out all the stuff. Or like, most of it.

Vampire Survivors is still morish. Up to a point.

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The Samsung Odyssey G5 is a great value 1440p 144Hz gaming monitor, and today it's even better value than normal thanks to a price drop and discount code at Currys in the UK. This monitor costs £209 at Amazon UK right now, but it's a solid £30 less at Currys when you use code FNDDGAMING at the checkout - neat.

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AMD's Ryzen 5 5600X processor is the pick of the litter when it comes to value for money - perhaps excepting the slightly cheaper 5600 - and today it's down to £170, a full £110 off its UK RRP. While Ryzen 7000 offers better performance, it also comes with steeper requirements - like DDR5 RAM, a 600-series motherboard and a much bigger budget. Here's why we rate this particular CPU at this discounted price.

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Day Of The Devs is back for round two, with even more indie games for you to wishlist and ogle at. Back in June for Summer Game Fest, 15 games were given the showcase's coveted spotlight, and now a couple of months on Tim Schfer and his crew have given another group of indies the attention they deserve. That’s a lot of games! It’s also the showcase’s 10th anniversary so let's all pop our party poppers and jump right into the indie list.

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Rainy Season is a game that speaks to that universal feeling of having your plans scuppered by inclement weather. We've all been there at some point in our lives, painstakingly planning a grand day out only for it to absolutely tip it down on the day in question - and for the boy in Inasa Fujio's hour-long narrative game, it's a trip to the local theme park during his summer holidays that gets rained off.

Unfortunately, his mum (sensibly) decides against taking him and his brother out in the oncoming storm, so now he's got to face a day stuck inside his grandma's house instead. FUN. Turns out, though, that there are still plenty of memories to be made in this small, cluttered space. All you need is a little imagination.

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It’s fair to say that melee combat’s a crucial part of Bethesda’s ageing but beloved fantasy RPG The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Flailing wildly at enemies with a big sword, axe, or warhammer, jostling them about with your implement of doom like armour-clad sausages frying in a pan, never seems to get old. What if you could do that while being more ethically sound, in a non-lethal way? Hold onto your butts because vanilla Skyrim modder drumfire has come up with the solution. It’s a mace that’s, well, Mace.

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Following our Halloween special last week, The Electronic Wireless Show podcast today moves away from the monstrous to the relatable (which in our case does not preclude monstrosity). We talk about the characters that we relate to most, and also I find a way to mention Saturnalia again. Tune in next week to see if I can keep up my streak!

Matthew being away this week means that Nate takes on the role of the anti-Matthew, and we speculate about which games we think Matthew would probably find relatable. For myself and Nate the themes include sadness and drudgery. But there's good news, because Nate has remembered to make me a Cavern Of Lies this week! Hooray!

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Gaming mice love a Black Friday sale, they do. Every November there’s a glut of discounted peripherals, and not just the sad plastic lumps that retailers won’t be able to sell otherwise – we’re talking real quality desk rats. This guide to the best early Black Friday gaming mouse deals confirms as much, as even with the big day itself not until the 25th, loads of new and old favourites are available with substantial savings.

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I've been playing an awful lot of Overwatch 2 recently. As you'll know if you've played either of Blizzard's near-identical hero shooters, Overwatch 2 lets you queue up for a match as a particular hero role, which ensures balanced team compositions but also can mean a wait of several minutes before you get into a match. Cue me scouring my Steam Library a few days ago for a quick little time-waster to fill those gaps. And after a few failed attempts, I discovered it. Or, more accurately, rediscovered it.

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I don’t know about you, but I’m not very good at reading Ye Olde Ynglishe. The letters are all curly, and my vision’s already a bit rubbish to begin with. Like a lot of specialised fonts, I find calligraphy awkward to read at best and virtually illegible at worst. That’s why I always appreciate when games make an effort to make text as accessible as possible. Case in point: Obsidian’s upcoming medieval mystery, Pentiment, which has an option to swtich to easy to read fonts baked in. Verily, thou hast mine thanks.

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If our glowing Signalis review has you hungry for more retro-styled survival horror, do also check out the new demo for Heartworm. Inspired by classics like Resident Evil and Silent Hill, Heartworm is neat even before you learn it's almost entirely made by one person. It offers good times exploring a spooky house, bad times possibly trapped inside a neighbourhood in a VHS tape, and a very cosy time hanging out in the safe room. It is a lovely safe room.

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Only last week I was praising games that wanna be weird, and as such I must commend the weirdness of The Chant, a third-person action adventure where a retreat akin to Jared Leto's definitely-not-a-cult finds itself crashing into a weird nightmare realm akin to the Upside Down from Stranger Things. The thing is, if anything I don't think it's weird enough. If you're going to do a game where the main character uses flaming witchhazel sticks to lash energy-crystal monsters with vagina-flower faces, my view is that you go hard or go home.

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It’s been a minute since we last saw anything from Frogwares’ kitbashed remake of their 2007 mystery horror game Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened. Now though, a new trailer gives a proper glimpse of what Holmes and Watson will be getting up to when they take on H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos, once again for the very first time. Have a watch below, and try not to get lost in an ethereal netherworld inhabited by malevolent, sleeping gods.

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Internet jupiter-brains Google have popped another eight countries on the eligibility list for their Google Play Games beta for Windows. PC owners in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia, and Singapore can now play their Android games on their desktop or laptop. It’s not exactly a replacement for the Google Stadia streaming service that’s shutting down in January, but if you play a lot of Android games on your phone, tablet, or Chromebook then at least it’s an option.

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Good ol’ Ian Hitman is still assassinating away in Hitman 3’s second year of extra stuff to do, and he’s getting ready to huff, puff, and blow some targets away on November 10th. IO Interactive shared their roadmap for what’s ahead this month in Hitman 3, with a new escalation contract that takes its inspiration from one of my kids’ favourite stories, the Three Little Pigs. You can catch up on what’s in store for Ian this month by watching the video below.

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If you’ve finished Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2’s campaign and feel eager to work your way up the echelons of multiplayer then you’ll have to wait until 2023. That’s when Call Of Duty: Black Ops developers Treyarch will be delivering the military shooter’s ranked play, although there’s no more intel on when exactly we’ll be able to dolphin-dive in. The window for ranked play’s arrival was tweeted by Treyarch alongside some more things to expect from Modern Warfare 2’s multiplayer, such as competitive modes, a Top 250 leaderboard, and visible skill ratings.

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Ghost Song is a 2D Metroid-like that's always a feast for the eyes, but a frequent frustration for your head and hands. Its gorgeous art direction depicts a vibrant alien world that bubbles and throbs with bio-mechanical life, where spore clouds and fleshy organic tunnels live side by side with floating metal skulls and impenetrable thickets of wires and cables. It's a fascinating place that seems to morph and change with every passing map segment, calling to mind the animated techno gunge of Akira and Metropolis one minute, and the flowering brilliance of Alex Garland's Annihilation the next. Its roots sink deep, creating a world you'll want to explore every last nook and cranny of as you delve deeper into its underbelly to find out why you're here.

But Deadsuit, your android-like protagonist, makes for a slightly rusty-feeling companion at times, lacking the grace and elegance of Nintendo's Samus Aran, and the nimble dexterity of Team Cherry's nameless knight. It will tide you over until Silksong arrives, for sure, but it also never quite sings in the way you'd hope.

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When it comes to DDR4 RAM, the market has decided that 3200MT/s CL16 is the perfect spec: noticeably faster than early DDR4-2133, 2400 and 2666, while being significantly cheaper than higher-end 3400, 3600 and 4000 kits. Normally you'd expect to pay around £60 for a 16GB dual-channel kit of DDR4 RAM hitting this spec, but today you can get a Kingston Fury Beast 16GB kit for just £48.64 at CCL in the UK.

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The Radeon RX 6900 XT has continued to go down in price, and now we've reached a new low-water mark: £700. That's £50 below the last time we wrote up an RX 6900 XT, and some £300 below its UK price in Great British Pounds.

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Last time, you decided that parrying projectiles is better than a customisable horn honk, and I wholly agree. I adore my collections of GTA clown cars but it's no match. This week, we must choose between two slightly wistful things, one that's come and gone and one that's confined to a single game. And, ah, I cannot deny having been influenced by last week's vote for one of these options. What's better: feelies, or RULES OF NATURE? Vote now!

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Because I have. Maybe too much. 2816.6 hours of Dota 2, according to Steam, and that doesn’t count the days I’ve spent flying out to watch more talented people play it in arenas. It’s easy to get lost in, is Dota, and not just in the bad ways – even after a series of crap matches, it’s so easy to sink further into its incredible depth, its neverending wizard fight nuances, that it could be hour number 2820 before coming back up for air.

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The malevolent Lich King is returning to Blizzard’s free to play Warcraft-themed CCG Hearthstone again on December 6th, in the March Of The Lich King expansion. The update adds another 145 cards to the game and introduces the new Death Knight class. Cower from the Lich King’s icy wrath while you watch the trailer below.

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Without a doubt, Elden Ring has spent hours of this year floating around my mind, like a parasitic gargoyle making a nest out of my stringy brain matter. Many of my thoughts on Elden Ring have been positive, as I'm still awestruck by the quality and scope of its open world (among many other things). But I admitted I'd reached my exhaustion point, which abated briefly, then came back with full force by the end.

Honestly, as much as I admire the game and its brilliance, I reckon it might be a bit too much for me. And as FromSoftware set the Soulslike standard, I find myself hoping that future Soulslikes don't get too caught up in trying to mimick Elden Ring.

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I’ll confess to mostly being a dyed-in-the-wool desktop kind of guy, but there have been times when I’ve needed something more portable – and with more traditionally PC-esque inputs than the Steam Deck. If you’re thinking of picking up a notebook yourself, good timing: the best early Black Friday gaming laptop deals cover a nicely varied range of price points and specs combinations.

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A new month dawns with another Genshin Impact update, and the arrival of version 3.2 today brings a fresh character in the form of Dendro archon Nahida. Also known as Lesser Lord Kusanali, Nahida is the god of Sumeru, one of Genshin Impact’s seven kingdoms. She’s also the youngest living god, at a very sprightly 500 years old. There’s loads of info about Nahida and her abilities in the trailer below, so watch away.

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Canadian studio and developers of sci-fantasy, turn-based tactics RPG Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate - Daemonhunters, Complex Games, are joining UK-based publisher Frontier. Daemonhunters was released in May this year under the Frontier Foundry label, and we rather enjoyed it at the time. It seems as though, in the grand tradition of Remington shaver ads, Frontier liked the game so much that they bought the company.

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By far the best thing about the RTX 4090 – which is otherwise a bit of a GPU boondoggle – is that is supports DLSS 3. This next-gen version of Nvidia’s DLSS upscaler not only boosts performance with render resolution trickery but also adds entirely new, AI-generated frames of its own, smoothing out visuals even further. Fewer than 40 games are confirmed to implement it so far but that number is growing, with Nvidia today announcing that Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales will include DLSS 3 when it launches for PC on November 18th.

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Developers Munfish have finally announced that its bonkers Soviet shooter Atomic Heart will release on February 21st, 2023. The new trailer for shooty alternate universe action RPG Atomic Heart is a bit of a trip, frankly. Barrelling along at the speed of Sonic The Hedgehog, you can just about make out some weird looking Soviet robots, head-splitting mutants, and what seemed to be a truck plummeting towards towering futuristic architecture. Watch the eye-meltingly speedy trailer below, you’ll probably need some bugeye goggles afterwards to recuperate your peepers.

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The next instalment in the mysterious Rusty Lake puzzle series arrives today, and it takes things in a different direction than past games. A time-travelling conundrum that requires one person to play in the past and another in the future, The Past Within is the series’ first co-op puzzler. It’s also the only Rusty Lake game so far to include 3D environments. You can snag a glimpse of the timey-wimey, multidimensional eeriness by watching the trailer below.

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A return to the cyberpunk world of Deus Ex is coming courtesy of Human Revolution and Mankind Divided developers Eidos Montreal, it’s been claimed. The snippet of info that the new Deus Ex game is in the very, very early stages was reported by Bloomberg following yesterday’s revelation that sister studio Onoma is closing down. Eidos Montreal are also alleged to be working on a completely new game, as well as helping out with some co-development on some Microsoft-owned series, including the new Fable.

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As Replika Elster, Signalis will force you to untangle a mess of writhing flesh and malfunctioning memories to separate dream from lived experience. So, in keeping with dream logic: You’ve played Signalis before, and you’ve never played anything like it. It lovingly adopts the trappings of PS1-era survival horror, and more importantly, it fully understands why those systems, aesthetics, tropes, and technical limits are so engaging. But it also presents and explores love and loss, freedom and manipulation, fear and trauma, in its own cruelly captivating way. It’s strange and familiar, gorgeous and horrible. It’s an absolute banger of a videogame, made all the more impressive by its indiest of indies price tag and two-person dev team.

Fundamentally, it's a love story. Things go bad for space technician Elster, but she made a promise she intends to keep. We’ll get back to this later. First up: Signalis excels at capturing the essence of survival horror - those juxtaposed feelings of possibility and unease that hit you entering a long hallway, flanked by doors, only to find all but two locked or malfunctioning. You’ll be back here soon enough, you know that. Probably with a new key. Maybe with a new gun. But there’s also a good chance things will have…changed, by then. A floor tile might reveal new horrors. You might have spent your last bullet. So, left or right? Or maybe back? You can only carry six items, after all.

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Streaming service Netflix have acquired Spry Fox, the developers of Alphabear and Cozy Grove. Spry Fox say that all their existing games will remain available on their current platforms and the studio are continuing to work on Cozy Grove 2 and "a larger, non-violent MMO."

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Look, everyone needs a flash drive. These things used to be the new hotness, back before email and cloud storage made them a bit irrelevant, but it's still jolly useful to have one on hand to install (or recover) an OS, play (legally) downloaded videos on your TV or just bring your presentation in without worrying about something going wrong.

So: the SanDisk 32GB Ultra Flair flash drive is down to £5 on Amazon after a ~40% discount. If you've not got a good, fast USB drive, then why not pick this one up while it's on sale?

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Wanna know something cool? You can pick up Intel's cheapest 12th-gen Core processor for £105 after a discount at CCL, with the Core i3 12100F offering incredible performance for this kind of money.

It's able to outmatch some classic great value gaming CPUs, like the Ryzen 5 3600X and Core i5 11400F, and even comes close to the powerful (and more expensive) Core i5 11600K. All this with PCIe 5.0 and DDR5 support, given the right motherboard - and this is a surprisingly great way to jump on 12th-gen, while leaving plenty of space to upgrade to a higher tier CPU down the road.

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Hideo Kojima continues to tease his next project. This time it's with a new image showing actress Shioli Kutsuna with the words "Where am I?" written over it. It comes a month after a previous tease which confirmed the actress Elle Fanning was involved.

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Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 players have lost the ability to play the game via Steam's Family Sharing feature, just days after release. The feature was switched off in an update deployed yesterday without warning or communication from Activision.

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The developers of Hitman Go, Lara Croft Go and Deus Ex Go are shutting down. Onoma, previously known as Square Enix Montreal, were acquired by Embracer in August alongside Square Enix's other western development studios. Some staff will be transferred to another acquired studio, Eidos Montreal, sources told Bloomberg (registration required).

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Halloween might be over, but island farming sim Coral Island appears to have generated a doppelganger on social media that has a hankering for NFTs. Coral Island’s developers Stairway Games have brought attention to the scam account, which uses the real game’s logo and key art but adds an extra web3 cryptobro twist by linking itself to the GameFi blockchain gaming platform. Stairway, as you would, are calling shenanigans.

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