Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Eurovision is always held in May, so it’s a bit random that Baldur’s Gate 3 developers Larian decided to theme today’s Panel From Hell stream after the popular-yet-cringeworthy song contest. From another angle, it makes total sense when you consider that the outcome of it all was info about BG3’s musically-tinged eighth patch, arriving later today. We’re finally getting those gnome bards, fam. You can check out the stream for yourselves below.

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Year Two of RPS' relaunched supporter program is well and truly underway, and to celebrate, we've got another free game key giveaway lined up for our premium supporters. That game is Have A Nice Death, the gorgeous 2D action roguelite from Magic Design Studios where you step into the robes of the Grim Reaper himself - and it's just received a big chunky update today to boot. Here's how to claim your free copy.

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Activision Blizzard employee group A Better ABK have called for a new staff walkout. The employee-led Committee Against Sex And Gender Discrimination are demanding Activision Blizzard take action to support employees in the wake of the US Supreme Court's ruling to overturn Roe vs. Wade.

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Dell's excellent Alienware AW2521H 360Hz monitor is going cheap on Ebay thanks to a 20% off discount code, bringing the monitor from its regular price of $380 to just $303.

That's among the cheapest we've ever seen a monitor of this spec, and a great deal for anyone that plays games like Counter-Strike or Valorant that really benefit from the increased responsiveness and decreased input lag of 360Hz.

To get the 20% discount, use code SUMMER20SAVE at the checkout, where you'll see the reduction reflected at the final step.

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The first unusual thing about Symphony Of War Colon The Nephilim Saga is that it's a strategy game made in RPG Maker. That's not particularly unusual, but it leads into the second unusual thing: that it's also a good strategy game. The third unusual thing is one I didn't even appreciate until I was a fair bit in: it's not only a good strategy game "for an RPG Maker game", but one of the best games I've played this year.

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With DDR5 RAM the current standard - even if it remains incredibly poor value at the moment - DDR4 RAM is getting cheaper and cheaper, making it a good time to upgrade your PC or build a new one at a fraction of the price it would have cost you just a year or two ago. Today we spotted two great deals on DDR4-3600 and DDR4-3200 RAM on Amazon US, where you can get 32GB kits for $120 and $85, respectively.

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SK Hynix are one of the biggest memory and flash storage manufacturers in the world, and after many years of mostly supplying the 'raw materials' like NAND and controllers to other people, they're now starting to make their own SSDs under their own brand name. Consequently, their stuff is often very competitive on price, and today we have a new low water mark for their P41 SSD thanks to a 15% off coupon at Amazon US.

The massive 2TB model is now going for $221, down from $260, which is the lowest price we can find on a ~7000MB/s NVMe SSD of this capacity.

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The Lenovo Legion 5 is one of the best value mid-range gaming laptops, and today you can pick up a model with an RTX 3070 and a Core i7 11800H processor for £999 - an awesome value for this specification and £445 below its UK RRP.

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Come with us now on a journey to our childhoods, as we on the Electronic Wireless Show podcast talk about the games that make us feel the most nostalgic. The games we played as kids, or spent all-nighters on as teens. It's a surprisingly diverse list, and Matthew has one anecdote in particular involving the music of Danny Elfman that I think makes this a genuine must-listen episode. Do you have the same nostalgia games? Which ones instantly transport you to the past?

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As we reported last month, E3 will be back as a digital and in-person event for 2023 - and today we can announce that it will be produced by our corporate dad ReedPop, in partnership with the Entertainment Software Association. Let the tidal wave of disclosures commence.

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A modder working to overhaul GTA V, Red Dead Redemption 2 and Mafia: Definitive Edition with VR support says he’s received an unexplained DMCA takedown notice from publisher Take-Two Interactive. Known as LukeRoss, he says the DMCA will force him to remove all content relating to games produced by Take-Two's subsidiaries such as Rockstar and 2K, including his VR mods. However, he also states the notice provides no clarification from Take-Two about how he's actually breaching their copyright.

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After starting my Tour De Jeux with the official Tour De France game, stage 2 takes me to Knights And Bikes. Foam Sword's 2019 game evokes childhood joys of zooming around with your pal and tricking out your bicycle with reflectors and Spokey Dokeys. That might seem far from the Tour De France but grown-up cyclists are just as keen on customising their bikes for coolness, and even some Tour bikes are rocking garish decoration this year.

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The UK government’s competition regulator is to investigate Microsoft’s $68.7 billion (£57 billion) buyout of Activision Blizzard, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) announced yesterday. A provisional deadline to decide whether the merger will be referred for a more in-depth investigation has been set for September 1st, and the CMA has invited “any interested party” to comment on the merger up until July 20th.

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Last time, you decided that secrets behind waterfalls are better than boss battles as skill checks. I'm not sure I agree but I can't disagree. We're doing difficult work here. This week, it's a question of a helping hand when you're stuck versus something so unsubtle that it'll take your face off and you'll be glad for it and even be miffed if it doesn't happen. What's better: hints, or explosive barrels?

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Mythological mash-up action RPG Valkyrie Elysium will hit PC on November 11th, Square Enix have announced, six weeks after its initial release on current-gen PlayStations. Alas, while buyers of the PlayStation deluxe digital edition will also get to enjoy a brand-new port of PSP game Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth (an enhanced version of the very first Valkyrie game), Square Enix have decided not to include it in the equivalent PC edition. No, instead we’re being offered three desktop wallpapers, and a special in-game sword. Don your horned helmet and take a deep breath before you watch the trailer below.

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You might count yourself among those who thought the collectible card game Gwent was one of the best parts of The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt. If so, CD Projekt Red have just made your day by revealing the existence of a single-player standalone expansion for their Gwent game, dubbed Rogue Mage. Not only that, but the fantasy roguelike deckbuilder will be out tomorrow, July 7th.

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You might recall that not too long ago, I hit the Elden Ring exhaustion point. Pre-heating the oven and a rigorous badminton schedule didn't mingle too well with an open world that demanded every ounce of my concentration. I went MIA from the Lands Between for three months, spending my time watching cushy reality TV like Below Deck Mediterranean and lying in my bed, hoping its springs would somehow channel electricity into my bones and recharge my weary mind.

Over the past few days I've returned to the Lands Between with renewed vigor. I've taken a dustpan and brush to the map, sweeping up optional bosses and forts and quests with the wild energy of a cleaner who mustn't stop for even a second. In doing everything it takes to finish this game before I burn out again, I've learned the importance of investment and why spending is good, actually.

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Square Enix have announced another delay for their open-world action-adventure game Forspoken by three months. It was due out on 11th October later this year, but has now been pushed back to the 24th January 2023. They say it just needs a bit more polishing up before it arrives, which is fine by me. I mean, no point rushing something out before it's ready is there?

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The remake of Grindhouse-meets-Sailor-Moon chop ‘em up Lollipop Chainsaw won’t see the involvement of original creative director Goichi ‘Suda51’ Suda and his team at Grasshopper Manufacture. The game’s co-writer, Guardians Of The Galaxy and The Suicide Squad director James Gunn, isn’t returning either. You can kind of understand Gunn not being involved, considering the game’s already been written. I’m gonna share the launch trailer again below just for the autotuned zombie boss bit that's so on point for 2012.

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Dragon Age is one of my favourite game series. I replayed Dragon Age: Origins recently not for this column, but for fun. That's the kind of wild gal I am. Origins was one of the reasons I got into PC gaming, because my dinky laptop wasn't good enough to run it and I was desperate to play it after seeing the trailers. I spaffed some of my student loan on a new desktop and spent four months eating nothing but cheese sandwiches. At the time it felt worth it. Watching those trailers now is like opening a time capsule full of fantasy tropes and, for some reason, an incongruous chugging guitar song by someone we don't need to mention ever again.

Replaying it now is a different experience. It's still a really cool RPG, notable for very good world-building and a cast of interesting characters (that you can have sex with in a cold tent), and it continues to hold a dear place in my heart. On the other hand, there's a whole section that's such a mind-numbing slog to get through that everyone hates it and there's a mod specifically to remove it from the entire game. Origins is a game I very much like, yet sometimes struggle to explain why it is good. But I'm not alone in thinking so, 'cos in 2009 this was RPS's Game Of The Year. Can't blame me for that. I didn't even work here then.

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In the 100 or so hours I've spent playing Death Stranding in the last couple of years, I've often wondered about the state of Sam Bridges' limbs. Specifically, the strain they must be under carrying those preposterously high columns of metal cased packages up and down the slopes of post-apocalyptic America. If I were in his hiking boots, I'm not sure all the reinforced skeletons in the world would help me reach the same kind of porter-ing skills as he does gambolling about the place, at least not based on how sore and tired my dinky little wrists are after a couple of hours of playing Strange Scaffold's new Strand-type game, Witch Strandings. Yes, that's right. Someone other than Hideo Kojima has made a so-called Strand-like, and it's quite possibly the strangest game you'll play all year.

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It’s not usually good news when an emperor decides to directly involve themselves in your business, but sci-fi 4X RTS Dune: Spice Wars certainly thinks it is. House Corrino will be landing their Sardaukar warriors on the desert planet of Arrakis this summer to challenge the Atreides, Harkonnens, Smugglers and Fremen as part of the game’s next major update. The new playable faction is the second of Spice Wars’ Early Access roadmap milestones.

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This week, far too much of my brainspace has been occupied by the JiuShark M.2-Three: a tower-style cooler for NVMe SSDs that’s just launched in China. Honestly, look at it. For days I’ve been absorbing these images of a baby CPU air cooler, yoked to the dinkiest of PC storage, and I still can’t decide if it’s brilliant or just sheer crawling madness.

Except, in the not-so-distant future, there’s a chance that active SSD cooling won’t seem so excessive at all. That’s because PCIe 5.0 drives are coming and, while they’re set to outpace even the best SSDs that use the current-gen PCIe 4.0 interface, it sounds like such speed will come at the cost of higher temperatures. And, in turn, a higher risk of throttling.

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Can you believe it’s already been twenty years since CD Projekt Red started making games? No? Well, let’s have a quick refresher of what else happened in 2002 for some perspective: Queen’s Golden Jubilee, check, last confirmed sighting of the Yangtze river dolphin, righto, SARS starts spreading… okay, let’s just stick to tipping our hats at one of Poland’s best known games developers for now. You can start doing that when the CDPR 20th anniversary livestream kicks off at 3pm BST/4pm CEST/7am PDT today.

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The Ryzen 5 5500 is one of AMD's latest Ryzen 5000 processors, but a strong competing Intel lineup means it's already gotten a 33% reduction on Amazon, dropping from £176 to £113. This six-core twelve-thread chip is a solid upgrade over the likes of the Ryzen 5 3600 from the previous generation, but mostly makes sense in a new budget gaming build or as an upgrade for an older Ryzen 1000 or Ryzen 2000 system.

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The AMD Ryzen 7 5800X has hit $275 at Amazon, an incredible price for an eight-core sixteen-thread CPU that ranks among the best for gaming and content creation. That's nearly a $100 less than the same CPU cost last year, when we trumpeted that the processor had reached $369 in a one-off sale and $175 below the chip's US MSRP.

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Ubisoft Forward is returning this September. Ubisoft's very own not-E3 livestream will "reveal updates and news on multiple games and projects", Ubisoft say. Before that - on this Thursday July 7th, even - the publisher are going to broadcast an in-depth look on their lost-at-sea live service pirate 'em up Skull And Bones.

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Rockstar have reportedly shelved plans for remasters of Red Dead Redemption and GTAIV after the poor reception of Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - The Definitive Edition. The trilogy, which released late last year, was a technical disaster and heavily criticised despite high sales.

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It's been a while since we've written about Smite, so if you've forgotten: it's a third-person MOBA about duelling gods in which players control the likes of Anubis and Zeus. That makes it a slightly odd fit for new characters like Invader Zim or Rocko from Rocko's Modern Life, but well, that's what is coming later this month, alongside a handful of other Nickelodeon characters.

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Silent Hill 2 fans have been slowly working away at an Enhanced Edition PC mod for years now, and its latest update introduces some substantial new features. Those additions include an installer and launcher which make it easier to get started, better AI-upscaled full-motion videos, and a fix for a crash and stutter bug that has plagued the horror classic since it first released on PC in 2001.

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The bombastic hack-and-slasher Lollipop Chainsaw is making a return, ten years after the original’s release. Yoshimi Yasuda, former CEO of Kadokawa Games (the original publishers of Lollipop Chainsaw) vaguely teased the game's return last month during its 10-year anniversary, but it's now been confirmed that the remake is definitely happening and that Yusada will be returning to the series alongside his new studio, Dragami Games.

If you never had the pleasure of playing Lollipop Chainsaw, watch the trailer below for a taste of the chaos.

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In the dead of night I've been hearing things. At first, I thought it was the neighbours next door enjoying a bit of karaoke. Maybe some twigs banging off a discarded Tesco trolley, creating a beautiful tune. No, I'm convinced it was the dulcet tones of Kiryu singing "Dame da ne dame yo dame na no yo!", as a signal from the nether that Yakuza 0, Yakuza Kiwami, and Yakuza Kiwami 2 would be back on Game Pass having been removed last year. And by God, they're there! They're live! That's rad!

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The most prolific indie studio of the last decade are preparing to bow out, with today bringing the early access launch of "the last game from Zachtronics", Last Call BBS. It's a puzzle-o-rama firing up a mysterious old computer to download pirated software from a BBS, letting us play everything from logic puzzles of circuits and flesh to a model kit-building simulation. I've played a wee bit and am keen to explore more, even as someone who is the absolute worst at Zachlikes.

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Anyone who's played one of Firaxis' XCOM games in the last ten years will have a story about missed shots. Shots that, even with a 90% chance of hitting their target, still end up going wide and punching a hole in your carefully laid plans. In the moment, they induce feelings of white hot injustice, but for many, they're an integral part of what makes XCOM, well, XCOM. Looking back on his time making XCOM 2, however, Firaxis' creative director Jake Solomon tells me that he, too, now feels the pain players have felt for close to a decade.

"It was really interesting for me to return back and play XCOM a couple of years ago, and man, when I missed shots, I was unbelievably frustrated. I felt the ghosts of everybody everywhere looking over my shoulder," he says.

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After an FPS game that's not all about which assault rifle has the best vertical foregrip? Well, Snow War looks to fill that gap. As a modern revamp of an 18-year-old Half-Life mod by the same name, it's an FPS where bullets are spheres of snow and guns are human arms... and snowball-launching crossbows. Not to mention it's set in the 80's with a synthwave backing track. I'm sold.

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Liam and I thought Overwatch 2's first PVP beta was fine! It was just hard to say just how much of that came down to the "2" in its title. We jumped back into its ongoing second beta, in the hopes that we'd finally wrap our heads around the game. Maybe we'd got it all wrong the first time around? It's the sequel to the biggest hero shooter out there! This time, this time we'd feel the "2" part come alive beneath our fingertips as we insta-locked Torbjorn on attack.

Dear reader, Liam and I emerged from our Overwatch 2 session having had a marvellous chat. We caught up on life, talked about Monster Hunter Rise, and how nice it is that the RPS Treehouse is complete again. Everything except Overwatch 2 itself was discussed... Which says it all, really.

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I like anime, but I possibly like anime intros even more. At their best they're a rush of style and energy, they often feature better animation than the show that follows, and they are regularly scored by first rate Japanese jazz, rock or blues tracks.

Netflix just posted the intro to the upcoming Cyberpunk anime, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, and it's got a Franz Ferdinand track over the top - but hey, it's still pretty good.

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Earlier today we posted about a bundle on Itch.io raising money for reproductive rights. Well, it's not the only one. The Indie Bundle For Abortion Funds is offering over 750 items, most of them games, for a minimum donation of $10. All the money raised will go directly to National Network for Abortion Fund's Collective Power Fund.

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Genshin Impact's 2.8 update will launch on July 13th, and a new trailer has introduced the characters and locations that will be added, re-added or refreshed. That includes a makeover for the Golden Apple Archipelago, and a new character called Shikanoin Heizou, who is a young detective.

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Mary DeMarle, narrative designer and lead writer on Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Mankind Divided, and on the more recent Guardians Of The Galaxy, is now senior narrative director at BioWare. The switch comes just a couple of months after Embracer Group bought Eidos Montreal and said they saw potential for Deus Ex spin-offs, sequels and remakes.

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