Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Interior design is great fun. It can be expensive and an awful lot of effort to do in real life, however, so I think I'll stick to doing it virtually for now. The latest Sims 4 pack should help with that, because it adds interior decorator as a new in-game career. Out now, the Dream Home Decorator expansion will have you picking out cool furniture for other sims, and prettying up their homes to satisfy their requests.

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It's been almost nine months since Nvidia kicked off their RTX 30 series with the RTX 3080, and longer still since anyone has actually been able to buy a graphics card at its normal price. Indeed, as the great graphics card shortage of 2020 rumbles on, the solution doesn't seem to be simply making more of what's already available out in the wild, but introducing newer, more expensive ones to stretch that GPU pool even further. Indeed, despite the RTX 3080 being plenty powerful enough for 60fps 4K gaming on max settings in pretty much every game going (and well into the 100s at 1440p and below), Nvidia now have a new flagship RTX card in town, the RTX 3080 Ti.

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To mark Pride Month, Dontnod have made the full three chapters of Tell Me Why free for keepsies for the whole month. If you enjoy their games like Life Is Strange, their latest story 'em up is a good'un. Instead of paying for their game, Dontnod suggest, you might instead support queer and trans people with your money or effort.

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Exploring backwater planets, recruiting pals and making important decisions that could come back to haunt you - I could be talking about Mass Effect, but I promise I'm not (this time). These are the sorts of things you can get up to in Klei Entertainment's Griftlands, which has now left early access. It's a brilliant deckbuilding roguelite that pits you against enemies in battles of the mind (to negotiate tough situations) or battles of the, uh, body (shooty shooty), as you follow the stories of three characters on a dingy sci-fi world.

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Stonefly has offered an ideal experience so far. The action game about piloting bug-sized mechs was announced via an exciting and stylish trailer and now, three months later, it's out. That's it. I wish all videogames were as instantly captivating and swiftly released.

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In a blog post published yesterday, Far Cry 6 narrative director Navid Khavari wrote that the game's story "is political." The post is a response to comments Khavari made in an interview last week, which were taken out of context to make it seem as if he was claiming otherwise.

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The official Battlefield Twitter account not-so-subtly hinted that the new Battlefield would be revealed in June. The same Twitter account has now confirmed that June 9th is the date to tune in for.

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Last week I wrote that it looked like a Crysis 2 Remaster was on the way. I was wrong - it turns out a Crysis Remastered Trilogy is coming, including both the second and third games. It's due to arrive this autumn.

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You may have noticed that certain PC parts have been pretty hard to find for a while now - graphics cards and processors have been the most prominent examples, but the crypto mining boom and supply shortages have also seen prices rise on high-wattage power supplies. That's why today's deal on an EVGA 750W power supply is so special - it's an 80+ Platinum unit that regularly retails for $190, now available for just $110.

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The WD Blue SN550 is one of our most highly recommended SSDs, thanks to its excellent price to performance ratio, and today it's even cheaper than usual. The 1TB model has been reduced from £89 to £80 on Ebay, thanks to today's PICKSAVE10 promotion.

Here's what you need to know about the drive - and a few other highlights that you can find using that same Ebay code.

So, the WD Blue SN550. Katharine was a massive fan when she reviewed the drive last year, and it even takes a place of pride in the best gaming SSD rankings as the best cheap SSD on the market.

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Many have tried to muscle in on the Nintendo-controlled market of video games, but smaller. And, if the rumours are to be believed, Valve are gearing up to be the latest to give it a go.

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Doom Eternal is finally getting its long-awaited ray tracing and DLSS update, Nvidia announced today, and they even released some lovely new ray traced footage of the game running in 4K. The shiny, realistic lighting tech has been teased and hinted at for absolutely ages, but in the run-up to the game's launch last March, it quickly became apparent that its ray tracing support would arrive much later than planned. Happily, the new footage looks lovely, what with all those plasma beam reflections bouncing off the glass walls and polished metal floors, but honestly, when you're ripping and tearing at such high speeds, is anyone going to have the time to stop and smell the ray traced space roses?

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Last Christmas, I spent hours and hours playing Capybara Games' grid-based puzzler Grindstone on my Switch, gobbling up level after level of this joyful monster masher like an unattended tub of Cadbury's Heroes. I'd played a teensy bit of it when it first came out on Apple Arcade in 2019, but it quickly became apparent that this was exactly the type of game I'd rather play on a handheld. It was a gamble - back then, Capy hadn't announced if it was ever going to come to other platforms - but luckily my patience paid off. When it arrived on Switch last December, I secretly hoped it would eventually come to PC, too (if only so I could have an excuse to play it for work), and last week my wish came true, with Grindstone arriving on the Epic Games Store alongside its new Fortune Grind update.

When I heard the news, I felt a quiet sense of elation. I was happy that more people would now finally be able to experience Grindstone's delicious delights of slicing through its hordes of cute creep monsters in ever-increasing chains of fleshy meat chunks, but part of me's still very much wedded to the progress I've made over on my Switch save. Then I learned that Grindstone's PC release would have, and I quote, a "super innovative and groundbreaking windowed mode", and man alive, I think I've become addicted to it all over again.

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After a year in early access, the new turn-based civilisation-building strategy game designed by Soren Johnson (lead designer of Civilization 4) is about done. Mohawk Games today announced that Old World will launch in full on the 1st of July, which somehow is only one month away? Mohawk also announced that Old World will have tunes from Christopher Tin, the composer behind Civ 4's award-winning theme, Baba Yetu.

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As you may know, I am often intrigued by the potential intersection of books and games. There are visual novels, of course, which are sort-of-but-not-really a game version of a book, and then there is the litRPG genre of books, which is an attempt to write playing a game as a book and I do not understand it. But just over a month ago a book called Sixteen Horses came out, and it was teased with an Itch game.

The teaser is an interactive adaptation of the first chapter of the book, co-developed by the author Greg Buchanan and game dev G.C. Baccaris, and featuring the work of artist Trevor Henderson. Here's the thing: I had already bought and finished the book before I knew the teaser existed, or that Buchanan was a game writer who has worked on No Man's Sky and Metro Exodus.

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The mayor steps to the podium, resplendent in silk pantaloons and a turquoise-embellished cuirass, and clears his throat. In the strip of face visible between his fancy Mesopotamian beard and his tricorner hat, the ancient dignitary’s eyes flicker over to a commotion in the East. the Huns are assaulting the city wall. Again. The Huns are always assaulting the city wall, so the mayor ignores the screams, and returns his attention to the mass of humankind gathered in the square before him.

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If you've got that need, that need for Need For Speed, you might be out of luck. EA are pulling several older games in their racing series from sale, and plan to shut down online services and end multiplayer for them too. These include NFS The Run and NFS Shift 2: Unleashed - games certainly more interesting than dross like 2017's NFS Payback. They're supposed to be gone from sale already but I still see 'em, so get in now if you hanker for momentum.

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AMD's answer to Nvidia's performance-boosting DLSS tech is arriving much sooner than expected, and it's going to be supported by an incredible range of graphics cards. Announced earlier today during AMD's Computex keynote presentation, their FidelityFX Super Resolution tech (also known as FSR) will be launching in just a couple of weeks time on June 22nd.

Even better, you won't even need a ray tracing capable graphics card to use it. In addition to AMD's new Radeon RX 6000 desktop GPUs (and their freshly announced Radeon RX 6000M laptop GPUs), FSR will also be available on all RX 5000 GPUs, RX 500 GPUs, RX Vega GPUs, and every AMD Ryzen processor with integrated Radeon graphics. Heck, even Nvidia GTX 10-series card owners will be able to take advantage of FSR, as AMD also showed a demo of it running on a GTX 1060. Excuse me a sec while I sit down and take that all in.

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When developers Tuque Games first announced Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance, they said it wouldn't have local co-op. Imagine! No local co-op in a spiritual successor to the Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance series, which, honestly, didn't have much beyond excellent local co-op. It seems the devs have listened to us fans of the old hack and slash RPGs however, as they now plan on adding two-player split-screen in a free content update this summer, after the game has launched.

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Back in April, AMD announced their Ryzen 5000 G-Series of APU were coming to pre-built PCs. Now, two of those accelerated processing units with integrated graphics - the Ryzen 5 5600G and Ryzen 7 5700G - are going to be available to DIY builders as well. Happy days.

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Yesterday, the developers of Space Hulk: Deathwing released their new first-person shooter set in the world of Warhammer 40k. Necromunda: Hired Gun has you running around as a mercenary in the grim dystopia of Necromunda, killing outlaws and mutants with lotsa guns. The most important bit to note, however, is that there's wallrunning, a grappling hook, and a cyber-dog - three things that should be in every game, if you ask me.

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Like the moons and worlds you have to drill down into to get to Deep Rock Galactic’s alien goodies, its modding system will have multiple levels. Developers Ghost Ship Games have spent a while pondering how to best create a modding setup that won’t mess up progression for players joining hosted games, and have come up with a tiered system of mods that’ll let players know what they’re getting into.

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There are two more Nvidia RTX 30 graphics cards on the way this month, the RTX 3080 Ti and RTX 3070 Ti. Announced earlier this week as part of Nvidia's Computex 2021 keynote (which is a bit like E3 for hardware nerds), the RTX 3080 Ti and RTX 3070 Ti take their place as Nvidia's new flagship gaming GPUs for 2021. Here's everything you need to know, including where you can buy one, what time they go on sale, their prices, specs and respective release dates.

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In the late 90s and early 2000s one of my gaming heroes was an oddly proportioned anthropomorphic royal blue erinaceinae. Sonic the Hedgehog, as he’s known to you and me, was largely popular in this time period, with a string of successful Sonic Adventure games being accompanied by a non-canon animated TV series Sonic Underground. 2003 saw the brand spanking new anime Sonic X (the opening episode’s Sonic vs Formula 1 car high speed chase is delightful) and later the platformer Sonic Heroes – one of my favourite games of all time.

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Sundays are for discovering in-shower moisturiser and feeling more powerful than ever. Before you pat yourself dry, let's read this week's best writing about games.

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Quick! You don't even really have time to read this post, depending on how fast a reader you are. Little Nightmares, classic creepy horror game, is free to keep if you grab it from Steam before 6pm on Sunday May 30th.

You can rush to the game's Steam page now to set it downloading, or you can read on first if you think you can finish this post within the next 20 hours.

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Back in February, a jury concluded that Valve's Steam controller had infringed patents owned by Ironburg Inventions, the parent company of SCUF Gaming. Valve were ordered to pay $4 million in damages (around £2.8 million).

This week, Valve failed in their attempt to have the jury's decision overturned.

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My default response when I see a Warhammer fantasy game is, "Oh, another Warhammer fantasy game." So it was with the release of Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Storm Ground a few days ago. Then a friend explained that it was a turn-based strategy game about combining your units' abilities in careful ways, to shove and ensnare your enemies. Like Into The Breach but with ghosts and chaos gods, maybe?

In any case, it's out now and I'm going to give it a go.

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It now takes less time to download a planet. That's because the latest Microsoft Flight Simulator update has optimised the game's initial download size, cutting it down to 83GB from over 170GB.

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You know what're great? These new chorizo-style veggie sausages from Morrisons. Absolutely cracking. Had 'em for tea last night; havin' 'em again tonight. You know what else is good? Video games, allegedly. Here's what we're up to this weekend.

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A fresh coloring book is a daunting enough challenge. Imagine an entire world just waiting for you to get a move on and start tackling all those empty spaces. Puzzle-y platforming adventure Chicory: A Colorful Tale has been drawn up by Greg Lobanov formerly of Wandersong, and has just filled in its own release date. Not to worry though, use whatever colors you like when it launches in June. The world is your coloring book.

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Ever-growing Genshin Impact is charting outs its next update and this one's island themed. Yup, the game that already nabbed Zelda's clothes has gone and pilfered from another Zelda game. Your Traveller will have their very own little boat to sail around the islands with while to battling baddies and hunting for treasures. Update 1.6 arrives in June and will add an island full of minigames and collectibles to explore along with a new dungeon too.

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Gather round, farmlife-sim likers. Another swell-looking indie game is planning a move to the village. The Garden Path is a laid-back slice-of-life sim with shades of Animal Crossing in its little painted world. You can spot it's lovely art style and sweet cute villagers down here in its new announcement trailer. We'll be able to dig in later this year when it launches.

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As promised, Ubisoft have shown off some proper running and gunning in their upcoming Far Cry 6. We got a lot of the grim side of the revolution in its reveal trailer but today's video shows off some of the levity—from a pet crocodile, to snarky one-liners to, yeah, that gun that shoots Macarena CDs. You'll have options beyond guns as well, with a bit of stealth and deception to engage in. You can spot all that, and an introduction to protagonist Dani Rojas down here in the new video.

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Sonic turns 30 this year, so Sega are showering their favorite little blue dude with what everyone wants when they turn 30: game cameos, remasters, an animated show, and a cryptic teaser trailer. During their Sonic celebration yesterday, Sega announced the remaster Sonic Colors: Ultimate for September, which is coming to us PC folks. They've also teased some new, unknown Sonic game coming next year, also on PC. We don't know much about it yet but don't worry, at this rate the rest of 2021 has gotta go fast.

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These past few weeks, I've felt myself to be in a bit of a creative funk, dear readers, but thankfully this doesn't seem to be the case for today's game developers. It seems they're still in full flow, as it were, and this week I've got a trio of nice things to play that'll hopefully kickstart your heart and get you in the mood to make something. They did for me, anyway.

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In Strangeland you, a man in a half-undone, old-timey straightjacket, wake up with no memory of who, what or where you are. The "where", it soon appears, is the titular land, a sort of grimdark carnival floating in a terrible void. It is rendered in lovely pixels that make everything look fleshy, even if the colours are all muted. As soon as you arrive, you see a woman throw herself down a well inside the welcome tent.

It is explained to you - by a raven, a head-in-a-box fortune teller, and a payphone caller who hates you - that she does this repeatedly, because death doesn't work the same here. You immediately fixate on saving this woman, and set about doing so in a point 'n' click puzzle fashion. And if you've seen any prestige horror films in the last few years, or even just engaged with any horror tropes before, you'll figure out what Strangeland's deal is in about 30 seconds.

Its whole vibe is like an episode of Twilight Zone via an episode of American Horror Story via if Tim Burton got trapped in a secret vore nightmare, and every second inhabitant tells the protagonist he's an idiot loser who makes everything he touches worse. Many conversations and visual metaphors end up being about the self, and self-image, and how to change oneself. Eyes and mirrors both come up a lot. There are several references to a black dog. Need I elaborate further?

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Despite being a self-professed wimp when it comes to horror games, it takes a fair amount to properly rattle me when I'm actually playing them. I tend to get more stressed than frightened when playing games like Resident Evil, and the only time I've ever been properly scared and actually screamed in my seat was when I was playing P.T, Kojima's short teaser game on PS4 for the now cancelled Silent Hills. I had the lights on, Matthew by my side, and yet when we turned a corner in that creepy, looping corridor house, a ghost suddenly rushed us out of nowhere. Both of us yelled in terror at the sight of it, and it took ages for us to calm down and work up the courage to carry on.

It's not like I've been chasing that feeling in the intervening years (I am, after all, an officially certified wimp), but playing Resident Evil Village's House Beneviento section this week put me right back in that tiny London flat where we both screamed ourselves silly. It's proper nightmare fuel that place, and of course I had the good foresight to play it just before I was about to go to bed. Well done, Katharine, bravo.

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A lot can happen in six years (I’d list stuff that has happened, but I don’t want to start crying), but one of the things that didn’t happen was any sort of follow-up to Samurai Warriors 4-II. The 2015 action adventure game, where a single sword swing can take down a sizable chunk of an army and a kick is basically a mini nuke, has been begging for a proper successor for a while now. And hark at what’s coming our way, bashing lines and lines of NPCs into the air and screaming! It’s Samurai Warriors 5.

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Microsoft are giving away a custom PC inspired by Microsoft Flight Simulator this weekend over on their Xbox UK Twitter account, and they really aren't kidding on where they've taken their design inspirations from. Yep, that's an actual turbine engine they've used for the case here - and you thought your PC fans kicked up a fuss...

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