Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Let’s start our day with a little bit of hope, shall we? I’ll cuddle up with any rumour that suggests that PlayStation samurai sim Ghost Of Tsushima could be on its way to the PC, and the faint wisps of a rumour storm started to gather last night. The game’s official box art has dropped the "only on PlayStation" branding. Could it be? Is it possible? All signs point to mayyyyyyybe-ish-but-probably-not. Eh, I’ll take it.

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It was only a day or two ago that Call Of Duty: Warzone was home to a door with a vendetta. Anyone who touched it died instantly, such was its power. But now its heady days exacting pain on unsuspecting players is over, as the latest update has boarded it up for good. I'm a bit sad, actually.

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EA Play Live, Electronic Arts' NotE3 event, will take place next month on July 22nd. Last year's event was pretty disappointing, all we saw was a tiny glimpse at what we now know to be Battlefield 2042, and a couple of rocks from Dragon Age 4. Hopefully this time around we'll get some more detail on both of those (pls BioWare, I beg you), and it's rumoured the publisher might have a Dead Space remaster up their sleeves too.

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I don't get that urge to play Monster Hunter Stories 2: Wings Of Ruin, you know? I'm not scrabbling for my controller the moment I get home in a desperate bid to take my pet monster, Sandra, out for her daily fight.

I think it's because Monster Hunter Stories 2, the second in a new series of turn-based RPGs spun off from Monster Hunter prime, just feels like a watered down Monster Hunter. It takes the well known bits from the mainline series and packs them into a Pokémon mould - but only some of them stick, while the rest spill over the edge.

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During E3 week, Back 4 Blood developers Turtle Rock were asked via Twitter whether their spiritual successor to Left 4 Dead could be played offline with AI teammates. The Turtle Rock account responded to say that, at launch at least, you wil need an internet connection to play the game.

Do you care?

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Sea Of Thieves' new Pirates Of The Caribbean-themed expansion is out now. Nate already broke down all that it adds, but it's substantial stuff including five new story missions, ol' tentacle beard Davy Jones, and new enemies like Sirens and the ship-boarding Ocean Crawlers pictured above.

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Warpips is Command & Conquer flattened onto a horizontal plane. The result is a strategy game you can play in short bursts, with all of the decision-making about what to build and when to push and none of the fiddliness. I like it a lot, and its early access build has just received a new update adding new maps and units.

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Super Magbot is one of those platformers with a twist, where the twist is that you can't jump. Instead you draw yourself towards and propel yourself away from differently coloured platforms using magnets. I liked the demo when I played it in April, and the full game is out now.

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The Samsung 870 Qvo, the best value SATA SSD, is available in sizes up to 8TB, making it a great option for storing a huge amount of games and media on PC or consoles like the PS4 Pro. Today the 4TB model has been sharply discounted on Amazon, to just $323. That's 25% off the previous price of $430 and a new historic low.

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As we enter the final hours of Amazon Prime Day 2021, Amazon have discounted a selection of Razer laptops and peripherals to unseen levels, making the deals of yesterday seem like correspondingly less exciting bargains. Amongst the dozens of mice, keyboards, headsets and more, we've spotted a number of RPS-recommended items, which we'll share with you now.

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I’ll admit that if Lego Builder’s Journey wasn’t a surprising combination of a low-key puzzle game and modern graphics settings, I might have glossed over it. Yes, that’s a joke about ray-tracing, you’re very welcome. But I was surprised that a Lego game has taken the time to wrap itself in RTX goop, so when it popped up in Steam’s release section I grabbed it.

The game involves plucking and placing the remarkably detailed and clicky blocks around small dioramas. You could be completing a broken building, or gently encouraging a minifig to cross over a raging torrent of blocks. There’s nothing that I’ve encountered that makes me think I’ll need to look up a guide, but I did appreciate the relaxing atmosphere that they’ve crafted block-by-block.

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Valorant Episode 3 Act 1 arrives tonight, and it comes with tweaks to almost all the agents, as well as changes to gun and ability prices that will likely shake up the game's economy for the foreseeable future. Before we get to that, however, the biggest news is that the new ability-suppressing robot KAY/O is joining the roster. Apex Legends has a cool killer robot, Overwatch has a pretty floaty robot - it was about time Riot's tactical shooter joined the club.

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Nvidia’s DLSS tech is no longer the lone performance-boosting GPU magic out there. AMD’s FidelityFX Super Resolution (also known as FSR for short) has just been released, adding the resolution-enhancing frames spurter to seven games, with more to come later in the year. If you’re struggling for frame rates in Godfall, for example, you can now boost performance with a minimal hit to the visuals, and AMD claim you could more than double your frame rate across a number of its other supported games at 4K.

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Yesterday, I highlighted some great anti-Prime Day deals on some pre-built RTX 30 gaming PCs at Ebuyer, but today I've found an RTX 3070 PC over at custom building outfit AWD-IT that's had 20% shaved off its price, saving you just over £300 in the process. It's a pretty great build, too, with an Ryzen 5 5600X CPU in there, a tempered glass CoolerMaster case and that aforementioned RTX 3070 card all for £1279.

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Alright, all the big budget AAA games had their day with E3. Thanks to Steam Next Fest, it's now time to have a look at what indie games we'll be playing in the future. It's not just Sable.

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Last week, we made it easier to support RPS. Now, as promised, we've added a new benefit for premium supporters: a copy of Phantom Abyss, which released in Steam Early Access earlier today.

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There have been some great gaming mouse deals over the last 48 hours for this year's Prime Day, including some truly spectacular discounts on RPS reader favourite, the Logiteh G502 Hero. However, for the true bargain hunters out there, I've got one that's arguably even better, as Logitech's equally brilliant G203 Lightsync mouse is down to an even more scintillating price of just £17 / $20 at the moment - and you don't even have to shop at Amazon to get it that cheap, either.

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Valve’s plans to hold the finals of their Dota 2 championship The International in Stockholm seem dead after the Swedish Sports Federation voted against esports being accepted as an ‘elite sport’. The classification was vital to secure the same travel exemptions that other sports have during the Covid-19 pandemic. An appeal to the Swedish government was denied, which seems to shut the door on the event’s initial location. Valve have committed to holding the event somewhere “in Europe this year”.

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The best part about going to the zoo is seeing the meerkats. Sometimes you get to watch them play and hunt for food, plus both the babies and adults are exceptionally cute - there's always a gran making comments like "ooh I could take one home in my purse". But stop, gran! You can now have your own virtual meerkats in Planet Zoo, because they're included in the Africa Pack which came out today. You can also look after fennec foxes, African penguins, Southern white rhinos and sacred scarab beetles. What a delight.

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The new fantasy action-RPG Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance has arrived, but my excitement has turned into fear as the reviews start to roll in. The game is a spiritual successor to the old Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance games on console,though it swaps out the more basic hack and slash style to fancy ability-using action. Unfortunately, players have already reported a number of launch issues - from framerate drops and poor animations, to odd difficulty spikes and broken AI.

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Amazon Prime Day may be soaking up all the deals limelight this week, but there are still plenty of great PC gaming deals taking place at other retailers around the web if you want to avoid the big Bezos machine. To help you get the best prices without all the hassle of searching for them yourself, we've rounded up all the best PC gaming deals that are either just as good as Amazon or, in some cases, actually a little bit better in both the UK and US. Whether you're after a new monitor or fancy getting a new replacement mouse, keyboard or headset, we've got you covered.

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Phantom Abyss’ early access opened last night five minutes before my bedtime. Two hours later I was sleepily stumbling through the game’s procedurally generated temples, watching as the ghosts of those who played before me stumbled and fell. The ego-driven concept of only one player being able to complete a temple before it’s closed forever is surprisingly moreish, though I think they need to take another crack at the controls. I haven’t claimed a temple yet, but the temples have claimed me.

This is news and not a review, but indulge me a little. The structure and temple design are the highlights right now. Starting amidst the ghosts of previous players lets you grasp a little of what you’re up against. You can follow along, keeping track of where people perished when a floor flipped around, or where spikes sprung up and kneecapped them. You’re challenged by them, but you also learn from them. You can see long drops that looked impossible but some brave player nailed, and find secrets that you’d never have spotted if there wasn’t a dotted line leading you right there. And all this only gets you so far. Everyone that’s helping you right now has died, leaving the temple for you to try and claim.

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The original Hotline Miami is one of my favourite games of all time. Its pounding soundtrack and tense encounters spawned tons of clones, but few that ever captured the magic of the first top-down murderfest. While not a flawless sequel, Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number comes close enough to its predecessor's blood-soaked beauty.

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The next game from the folks behind tactical war sim Radio Commander looks like a wild ride. Whereas Serious Sim's last game pointedly kept you out of the action, coordinating from the tactical tent, Heading Out will put you in the driver's seat. Their upcoming cross-country adventure is about driving a muscle car through the American west like the anti-hero of an old movie. Serious Sim have just announced this one to hit the road sometime next year but its announcement trailer makes it look worth watching for.

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My favourite mouse of all time is the Logitech G Pro Wireless. I've owned one since it came out in 2018, I still use it almost every day and I recommend it wherever possible - but normally, I have to say "I know it's expensive, but it's worth it."

Today, I don't need to say the second part, as this legendary Logitech mouse has dropped from its normal retail price of £110 (!) to something a little more reasonable. It's now £62 at Currys PC World when you use the code FNDDGAMING at the checkout. That's the lowest price we've ever seen for this model, and a great deal for anyone looking for a high performance wireless mouse for work or gaming.

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The Crucial MX500 is one of the best SATA SSDs on the market, and today it's been discounted quite heavily over on Amazon. The roomy 2TB model has been dropped to £140, significantly below the £175 mark it's been offered at for the past three months - and nearly £25 less than the last time we highlighted it on sale!

• Get the 2TB Crucial MX500 SATA SSD for £140 (was £175)

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Metroidvania-y action RPG Ender Lilies: Quietus Of The Knights has defeated the early access beast in short order and emerged with a full launch today. Since its original early access state from January, the very pretty spirit combat game has added five new areas, new bosses, and more. You can spot some of the combat and lovely art style here in its launch day trailer.

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Space-based city-builder Industries Of Titan has has launched itself into early access. Again, that is. The micromanage-y space corp management game has been in early access for a bit over a year with a number of updates an improvements. It's now arrived on Steam, still in early access, with plans to stay there around another year. Today's new trailer highlights some of the flashy new bits that have been added to the game already.

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Here it is folks: the Sonic game you've all been waiting for. Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 – The Official Video Game™ is finally launching today. OGT2020 - TOVG™ has been out in Japan since 2019 and hey, it's having a worldwide launch today. The official Olympic party game has 18 different feats of sporting and athletics for Sonic to crush his human competition in. There are tons of other outfits but honestly, you're going to be Sonic, right? Sega want you to be Sonic and so do I.

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It's not just Amazon doing mega deals this Prime Day. Ebuyer are also getting in on the action, and right now they have some great RTX 30 desktops on sale that are both £150 off at the moment, with free next day delivery - and they're better than anything you'll currently find on Amazon, too. One is an RTX 3060 build, and the other is a powerful RTX 3080 PC.

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Raft is one of my favourite ways to spend an evening with my BFF Tom. We float, we scream at seagulls, we complain about the decor of our ocean-going besdsit. There’s only so much you can do with a shark’s head, and we have dozens of them. We need more stuff, which is what the next update brings. The Renovation Update is a complete overhaul of the decoration system, letting you strip away the shonky walls and craft something more akin to a floating Airbnb.

And what’s that I spy on the horizon? Could it be? Yes! Trailer-ho!

Everything now looks a lot more solid, perhaps a little bit too solid given how sturdy the stairs are, but that might just feel like a nice reward for all the tree chopping and plank fishing you have to do. And you have a further use for all those seagull feathers you end up with: you can make a paint brush to start decorating your skiff in more interesting colours and patterns. Haha, take that you crop eating sky rats. You are now a utility.

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A couple of months ago, Imogen asked if we need E3 anymore. And I have been thinking about this question a lot. It comes up pretty regularly, and has done basically since E3 started, along with whether E3 is going to last for much longer. It's been nearly 30 years now. But, as Alice0 pointed out to me as we surveyed the smoking wreckage of our desks after E3 2021, this industry is loathe to let things die if it can help it. Even if E3 did eventually end it would be repackaged as a spiritual successor a few years later, possibly called Two Point Expo or similar. So perhaps another question to think about is: will E3 ever be as fun as it used to be?

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Oceanarium is a seabound exploration game based on how little we know about the deepest darkest reaches of the sea. You'll swim, you'll relax, you'll discover alien-looking sea creatures, and help the ocean heal. There are lots of wiggly things and eyeballs, bright lights and lovely shades of blue, and it makes the scary bits of the sea look very pleasant indeed. It comes out on Steam later today.

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Salt And Sacrifice is a “soulslike”, which is a latin for “Can you do this bit for me?” The 2D slasher sequel to Salt And Sanctuary was only announced a few weeks ago, but there’s already more to see. Here's nearly 10 minutes of footage of the upcoming game, showing blocks, chops, and the cool power of friendship.

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Amazon US has some pretty decent CPU deals for Prime Day this year, but not all of them are as good value as they might first appear. Nabbing the Intel Core i7-9700K for $260 might seem like a great discount compared to its usual price of $317, for example, but when the just-as-fast Core i5-10600K can be had for just $179 today, would-be upgraders would be much better off choosing the latter if you're looking for a great CPU on the cheap.

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I picked up Phasmophobia again for the first time in a while this weekend, and man, I'm bad at it! I'm not up-to-speed on how to properly identify the current ghosties, and now there are already two more for me to run away from. On Friday, developers Kinetic Games added the Yokai and Hantu spectres, who both sound rather awkward to pin down - but hey, sometimes challenges are fun even if you know you're doomed to fail them. The devs have also hired a couple extra people to help out with production too.

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It was inevitable, really. The WD Blue SN550 might not be on a good Amazon Prime Day deal in the UK, but its 1TB model can now be snapped up for a new all-time low price of just $85 over in the US. That's a saving of $25 off its usual price.

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After watching this tour of Sherlock Holmes Chapter One, I have deduced the plot already. It’s elementary, really. As a young Sherlock, you’ll be wandering around an open-world full of crimes and clues, dressing up to interrogate and investigate. It makes the reveal painfully obvious to me: the end-game will be to unmask Hitman’s Agent 47 as the killer!

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I'm not going to name any names, but while I was trawling through the demos for the Steam Next Fest (countless many of which are excellent) I came across one game that had a genuinely amazing description. Imagine something like "A retro FPS inspired by Doom. Also, a deep story that delves into the Jungian understanding of the psyche." This made me laugh quite a lot - and also not play it.

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My top cheap gaming headset recommendation, the Roccat Elo X Stereo, is now an even more bargain-tastic £22 for Amazon Prime Day right now, saving you £18 compared to its usual price of £40. That's almost half price for one of today's best wired gaming headsets, and a great deal if ever I saw one.

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