Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Like any good strategy game, A Total War Saga: Troy is a battle of wits between two seasoned commanders. But ’til now, Creative Assembly’s Homeric army-smasher has only let you face the cold, calculating mind of its AI strategists. That changes with the commencement of Troy’s multiplayer beta this Thursday, finally letting you bash heads with friends for control of the ancient Greek archipelago – or join them in battle across a co-operative campaign.

(more…)

With just over two weeks to go until Cyberpunk 2077 hits shelves, CD Projekt have slip another ratty VHS tape of footage under our office doors. Okay, so this one has “PlayStation” written all over it, but let’s peel that sticker off and take this latest vid for what it is – a dusty, banged up showcase of the smuggling shenanigans, interrogations, and disorderly driving wot makes up a Nomad V’s first steps into Night City.

And this time, the footage didn’t fall off the back of a truck.

(more…)

For those who fancy the rootin’ tootin’ multiplayer shootin’ of Red Dead Online but aren’t too interested in the grudgin’ trudgin’ singleplayer buy-in of the full Red Dead Redemption 2 package, Rockstar have announced a standalone version of RDO. It’s launching next week with an introductory price of $5 for several months, which, sure, is a price that’d get my interest. Not least of all because I want to try doing conference calls inside Red Dead Online.

(more…)

Hack ‘n’ slash ‘n’ mine ‘n’ crafter Minecraft: Dungeons is all kitted out for a winter of mountain climbing. The blocky dungeon-diver’s next DLC, Howling Peaks, begins its expedition in just over two weeks – and with new baddies and bosses, it’s not just vertigo you’ll be watching out for. But Mojang have also stuffed a brand new season-pass into their backpack, for the square-headed adventurer who’s already looking beyond the ridgeline for DLC quests yet to come.

(more…)

2020 was a pretty good year for management games, but nothing released in the past 12 months has impressed us enough to squeeze its way into our best management games list. Don’t worry, though – it’s only because there are already so many classics to choose from. If you’re looking for something to sink into over the holidays, check out our picks below.

(more…)

No matter how intelligent a game’s AI is, how immersive the story turns out to be, or how believable the characters are, it can never actually simulate the thing that makes Dungeons & Dragons a great game: human shenanigans.

I’ve adored my time with (more…)

So, you’ve just bought World Of Warcraft: Shadowlands, a fresh new expansion filled with fantastical, wondrous new worlds to explore. Obviously, your first thought is to sod it all and burn through the levelling experience as quickly as possible. So it was for one plucky Warcraft player who sprinted through Shadowlands at a record pace, becoming the first person to hit level 60 by cleaning out the same dungeon over and over for three hours straight.

(more…)

Orlog! Orlog! Orlog! I have played a grand total of four hours of Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, and at least two of them have been playing this daft dice game. Much like The Witcher 3’s Gwent, players can stumble upon Orlog challengers throughout Valhalla, and partake in a weirdly engrossing minigame. I have good news for those of us who’ve got hooked on it – Ubisoft are making an actual physical version that’s set to arrive next year.

(more…)

Rain-drenched streets tinted pink by neon lights? No, Hitman 3 hasn’t gone all Cyberpunk on us just yet. Rather, developers IO Interactive have given us a peek at the stealthy sandbox threequel’s visual upgrades with a trip to new location Chongqing, a Chinese city whose rain-swept roads are perfect for showing us lots of close-up shots of raindrops splashing off Mr Hitman’s extra-shiny scalp.

(more…)

Attention, ultrawide monitor deals hunters in the US. Dell’s Alienware AW3420DW is currently down to a new all-time low of just $830 at the moment as part of Dell’s [cms-block] sale this week. That’s $70 lower than what you’ll find over on Amazon at the moment, but you’ll need to hurry, as this “door buster” deal is already 78% claimed.

(more…)

If your nieces and nephews are not yet pestering you with Christmas lists of page and item numbers from the Argos catalogue, here’s something else you’ll likely have demanded: a Fortnite subscription. Epic Games today announced the Fortnite Crew, a £10/month optional subscription service offering exclusive outfits plus pocket money for the item store. That’s launching alongside Chapter 2, Season 5 next Wednesday, the 2nd of December. After Galactus tries to eat the world.

(more…)

[cms-block] is often a great time for picking up gaming laptops on the cheap, and this year is no exception, with Ebuyer offering up some fantastic deals on two RTX 2060 models of one of our favourite Lenovo gaming laptops. It’s rare to see an RTX 2060-powered machine for under £1000, but both of these models can be had for £950 and £880 apiece, making them some of the best [cms-block] we’ve seen so far.

(more…)

“Lads, let’s wrap this up. I’ve got banana bread in the oven.” Words I foolishly typed into the text chat of my Valorant match to inform my teammates that I did not have time to mess about – I had baked goods at stake.

I made many mistakes on Sunday. The first was thinking I could get in a quick round of Riot’s tactical FPS while my loaf was baking. The recipe said 50 minutes, Valo matches usually last up to 40. Reader, my match did not last just 40 minutes.

(more…)

If you’ve been thinking about upgrading your PC with some new RAM recently, then you’ll be pleased to hear that Crucial are joining in the [cms-block] festivities with discounts on several fast-clocked Ballistix DDR4 RAM kits.

(more…)

Sports Interactive today released Football Manager 2021, their latest digital adaptation of your dad shouting at the telly. You too can have all the answers to lead a team to glory in leagues and competitions around the world. It’s been a strange year for football (and for everything) so FM2021 does reflect some of the pandemic’s effects on the beautiful game. However, the devs want to offer escapism so your seasons shouldn’t be interrupted by e.g. matches getting postponed after Aberdeen players break the rules to go on the lash then catch the virus, the chuffing idiots.

(more…)

It’s that time of year when loads of big games launch, and suddenly you realise you haven’t played half of the other big games that came out just a few months ago. But there’s no need to break the bank to catch up, because a bunch of [cms-block] sales have landed. Gamesplanet are calling their sale “Xmas Deals” but have rather conveniently scheduled it around the Black Friday madness. In any case, read on for some excellent Gamesplanet discounts – like Doom Eternal for 70% off, Star Wars Squadrons for 40% off, and loads more.

(more…)

What’s the point of conquering medieval Europe if you can’t do it as yourself, your mate, a minor television celebrity e.g. Noel Edmonds, or Shrek? Thankfully, Crusader Kings 3 today adds a ‘Ruler Designer’ in a free update, giving plenty of options to customise your starting character’s appearance, personality, skills, and such. It has some pretty in-depth and gruesome customisation options so I look forward to seeing truly hideous lords and ladies. I’m already dreading the inevitable Minions.

(more…)

I bloody love Hearthstone. Every time a collectible card game comes out, people come together to agree that this one, absolutely, definitely, is The Hearthstone Killer. But it never is. The ease with which you can pick up Hearthstone and understand the basic mechanics, win conditions, and strategies makes it the most welcoming CCG for those new to the genre. Honestly though, the potential depth the game has for extremely high level big brain plays is there for those of us who want to test the limits of our card playing and deckbuilding ability.

(more…)

Grab your best gear, folks. It’s expansion day. World Of Warcraft: Shadowlands is out now so it’s time to take a peek behind the veil. The global launch of the newest campaign has kicked off so you can get your grind on now if you’ve already committed to a trip to the afterlife.

(more…)

Plenty of us have been in online matches for any number of games where we just don’t see eye-to-eye with a teammate. If they’re particularly thorny, you might report them and hope the system serves them their just desserts. The scales of justice aren’t quite so balanced though when the other person has their finger on the ban button, which is what this Dota 2 player found out the hard way.

(more…)

Oldfangled is newfangled again and that goes double for this inevitable feat of hardware hackery. That’s right, it’s Doom. Of course it’s Doom. More specifically, it’s Doom running on one of Nintendo’s old-but-new Game & Watch handheld toys that was created to run Super Mario Bros. Throw Mario in the bin though because after rip and tearing into this retro-styled device someone has taken it on a tour of hell instead.

(more…)

In the PC gaming spirit of trying to run software on the daftest hardware you can put together, I present to you: a DOS boot disk that’s actually a vinyl record. With a record player hooked up to a PC and data encoded as a soundwave inscribed on custom-made 10″ vinyl, software developer Jozef Bogin has made a hip and wildly impractical storage medium to run DOS off. Why? Because he could, I guess. But now I need to know: can it run Doom?

(more…)

As they do, a group of developers with past experience at bigtime studios BioWare and Ubisoft have shrugged off the corporate chains and gotten together to create a new game studio. Mike Laidlaw, Jeff Skalski, Frédéric St-Laurent B., and Thomas Giroux have teamed up to create Yellow Brick Games, a new studio in Quebec City.

(more…)

Mmm, delicious leaks, with which we may make leak and potato soup. Physical copies of Cyberpunk 2077 have made it to retailers, which means leaks are now inevitable as disgruntled low-wage employees chance their arm and liberate copies from Bezos’s loving grasp. Once such maverick even streamed 20 minutes of it on their PS4. Now, I know that, perversely, the title of this post will just make some of you want to watch it, like a teenager being told they shouldn’t date the 21 year old that hangs around outside the OneStop, but I have watched it, and it is honestly a waste of 20 minutes. If you watch it, you will regret the use of that time.

Not because the game is rubbish, I hasten to add. It might be rubbish, it might be brilliant. I don’t work in an Amazon warehouse so I haven’t played it yet. No: it is just a bad stream that shows very little of the game. Seriously, a laughably small amount. And they talk over all the dialogue.

(more…)

The PlayStation 5 landed in the UK last week (and in the US the week before), bringing with it the shiny new DualSense controller. Steam was quick to implement initial support for it, too. Now, over the weekend, Valve have improved that support, meaning your Steam games will be able to use the DualSense’s fancy LED, trackpad, rumble and gyro features.

(more…)

If you can believe it, [cms-block] is almost upon us, and the deals are already hovering around just waiting for a chance to strike. Humble Bundle have launched a good’un today, offering a year’s subscription to their monthly gaming service for 45% off – a whole 5% more than what they offered back in summer. So, you can grab a year’s worth of Humble Choice Premium right now for just £82 / $99 a year, down from £143 / $180 a year.

(more…)

The Xbox Series X may have only just come out, but Best Buy have already shaved $20 off its new controller for [cms-block], bringing prices for Microsoft’s new game pad down to just $40. That’s great news for PC folk in the US, as it means you can now grab a new Series X controller to use with your PC for much less than its usual $60 asking price.

(more…)

Almost all of Razer’s current gaming mice line-up are present and correct in Amazon UK’s [cms-block] week sale today, with some – like the Razer Basilisk V2 and Razer Naga Trinity – dropping to half price or less, beating their previous Prime Day prices by quite some margin. If you’ve been thinking about getting a replacement mouse lately, here’s our pick of the bunch.

(more…)

If you’ve heard of Chasm: The Rift, I salute you. If you haven’t, I don’t blame you. Released way back in 1997, it’s a first person shooter which was meant to compete with Quake. Quite a tough ask, to be honest. But it does have one thing over id Software’s classic – jester monsters.

Specifically, lizard people, who are also jesters, but have saw blades for hands. These once entertaining folks are actually part of an alien faction called the Timestrikers who are attempting to overtake Earth. It is up to us – a burly, pixelated marine – to deal with the threat through the only way we know how. Guns, baby.

(more…)

Screenshot Saturday Sundays! Yes, the sound of jingling bells may be getting irrepressibly lounder on the horizon, but we can still take reprieve against the oncoming yuletide with a festive-free edition of lovely videogame screenshots. This week: interstellar suburbia, power-up sequences, turning out the lights and vibing to the beat.

(more…)

Along with a half-dozen planets and countless weapons and armour, Destiny 2: Beyond Light made us say goodbye to the game’s existing raids – so it’s about time it added a new one of its own. Thee Deep Stone Crypt opens its doors today, letting you put all that hard-earned Europan gear to the test in the expansion’s first real endgame challenge. Or, alternatively, get ready to watch Destiny’s smartest Guardians duke it out in the race to be the first to clear Bungie’s latest sci-fi puzzle-box.

(more…)

Think, for a moment, about how Call Of Duty: Black Ops Cold War‘s guns must feel in your digital soldier’s hands. Cold, hard and metallic, even through the stiff tactical nylon of your combat gloves. Now imagine it all oozing in greasy nacho flavouring powder. That, perhaps unsurprisingly, is the inescapably tactile sensation that’s stricken me since finding out you can slide into Mountain Dew’s DMs to stick a Dorito chip on your Call Of Duty rifle.

(more…)

When you’re dropping heavy machinery from orbit, a few dings and bangs are to be expected. Unfortunately, Titanfall‘s long-overdue arrival on Steam left it more than a little smashed up. Early reports from the mech battlefields suggest the 2014 game is pretty much unplayable, locking its fascinating experimental multiplayer campaign behind server issues and broken software.

(more…)

There’s an ephemeral, anxious mood I often find myself looking for in games. A sense of long, sleepless anxiety, the kind of anxious melancholy that hits after a few too many drinks in a town I don’t quite know too well. That, I think, is what I walked away from Taylor Swietanski’s That Night, Steeped By Blood River feeling, a short series of dreamless vignettes where nothing but the signature you scrawl on the hotel room door is certain.

Helps that it’s bloody gorgeous, mind.

(more…)

One of the smaller frustrations that come with writing for a living is that you really can’t listen to music with lyrics while working. So, for the past few years, I’ve listened to every “24/7 lo-fi jazz-hop beats to study and relax to” mix the that exists, a thousand variations of some Sisyphean student cursed to forever turn pages to the sound of chill, non-distinct tunes. Ahead of World Of Warcraft: Shadowlands‘ release next week, Blizzard have released their own spin on the form – commissioning four composers to create vibe-soaked remixes of the MMO’s underworld soundscapes.

(more…)

The race towards the end of the year continues, and we’ve started talking amongst ourselves about our favourite games from 2020. This is challenging both because there have been a lot of great games this year, and because none of us can remember anything that happened before August. We’ll do our research and name our favourites across December, just as Horace demands, but what about you. Do you already know what your favourite game of 2020 is?

More urgently, what are you playing this weekend? Here’s what we’re clicking on!

(more…)

That’s week one done in Call Of Duty: Black Ops Cold War and Treyarch have rounded up all the balance changes and bug fixes they’ve made so far. Guns have been adjusted and scorestreaks tweaked, all detailed in the list of first week patch notes. They’ve also published a new Trello board so players can keep an eye on known issues that Treyarch are working on.

(more…)

Earlier this year, 343 Industries announced that they were delaying Halo Infinite, originally planned as an Xbox Series X launch game, to 2021. They’ve been pretty quiet on Infinite since then, presumably adjusting to what the delay means for the game and the team. Now they say they’re planning an end of year update and hope to be more communicative in upcoming months.

(more…)

Rockstar have finally tipped their hand on the big, new heist they have planned for GTA Online, which they’ve previously said would take you crime lot to a whole new location. No, it’s not Vice City, but you will be leaving Los Santos. The Cayo Perico Heist will send you off to a drug lord’s private island and you can even fly solo if you like.

(more…)

If you’re planning to visit Night City next month when Cyberpunk 2077 launches, take a gander at the updated PC system requirements so you know what you can expect it to look like when you arrive. This time around, CD Projekt Red have detailed what you’ll need to play with ray-tracing enabled as well.

(more…)