Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Welcome again, dear listener, to the Electronic Wireless Show, the best and most solidly on-topic PC gaming podcast the world has ever seen. This week, we invite you to be our guest, take a seat at our dinner table, and prepare for a hearty helping of chat. About food. Because this week the topic is all the best food in games, you see. I hope I laboured that point enough.

We cover all manner of games, with only a brief mention of Skyrim, and a more extended chat about Final Fantasy XV and Monster Hunter. But to be honest we spend most of our time talking about actual food. Conversational diversions this week include how dead bodies are transported around cruise ships, and our death row meals. Death comes up a lot, actually. It gets kind of dark. But in a fun way!

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Cheaters getting banned: you love to see it. Respawn recently got rid of hundreds of the scoundrels for abusing a glitch in Apex Legends which allowed top-ranked players to get into lower rank lobbies for easier wins.

“To the 419 Diamond+ ranked players who abused an exploit allowing you to get into and farm bronze lobbies for RP, enjoy watching Season 7 from the sidelines,” Tweeted Connor Ford, a member of the battle royale’s security team.

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Spoilers abound for the post-game of Watch Dogs: Legion, so don’t read on if you’re yet to complete the main story. After the final climax of the game, you’ll be shunted back into the open world of London with a surprisingly small number of material differences despite the fact that you’ve #resisted the oppressive powers that be. Maybe it’s saying something about society. Maybe oppressive fascism can’t be stopped. Maybe they just wanted you to carry on running about the open world without any significant changes. Anyway, here’s where to find Bagley’s corrupted memories in Watch Dogs: Legion.

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Let’s just pretend that Halloween is this weekend and we were very timely when choosing the theme for this week’s Mystery Steam Reviews, okay?

Okay…

GHOSTS! GOBLINS! SCARY THINGS! Yes, because it’s that time of the year again, we decided to test each other’s horror game knowledge (via Steam reviews) on this week’s episode of The PC Gaming Weekspot.

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Today might be the launch of AMD’s new Ryzen 5000 CPUs (and you can read my Ryzen 5 5600X review and Ryzen 9 5900X review if you missed them earlier), but the company already have their sights set on what’s coming next, and that’s ray tracing capable processors. Speaking during a behind-closed-doors Zen 3 engineering panel before today’s launch, AMD’s Joe Macri told RPS that the realistic lighting technology “will happen” on AMD’s APUs (that’s their accelerated processing units with integrated graphics, rather than their Ryzen central processing units, or CPUs) – it’s just a matter of time.

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Remember, remember the fifth of November: gunpowder, treason, and plot. I myself see no reason why gunpowder treason should ever be forgot. But while we commemorate gunpowder treason with fireworks on Bonfire Night, can you honestly tell me you remember with complete certainty whether we’re celebrating the fact that the plot was foiled, or that someone at least tried to detonate a king? You can’t. Don’t pretend. But seeing as this is a day of joyous explosions, I must know: what’s your favourite video game explosion?

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I’ve always been sceptical about the need for high-powered processors like AMD’s Ryzen 9s and Intel’s Core i9s in ordinary gaming PCs. It’s all very well if you use your PC for work editing videos, animating 3D models or running virtual machines and the like, as the extra processing power afforded by their considerable number of cores and threads is no doubt exceedingly useful in these sorts of cases. But if all you want is a fast CPU for gaming, they’ve rarely been better value than their cheaper Ryzen 7 / Core i7 counterparts.

When AMD first unveiled their Ryzen 5000 CPUs at the beginning of October, their new Zen 3 architecture hinted at several tantalising performance boosts, both in terms of power efficiency and overall gaming speeds. Alas, they’re also coming at much higher than expected prices, with their mid-range Ryzen 5 5600X starting at a decidedly not-mid-range £280 / $299. It had me worried.

You’re naked, in the desert, with a grubby carrier bag at your feet. “What’s inside?” reads a note taped to it, in jaunty comic sans beneath a Hearthstone logo. You are just crouching to look, when you hear rustling. Ten paces away, an emaciated, dog-eyed wreck of a man is rummaging through a bag of his own, and you are struck with the sudden, brutal understanding that one of you must die here. You search the bag for a weapon, but find only nonsense: a broken tin opener, an onion on a string, a faded novelty telephone that looks just legally distinct from Garfield. And now, your opponent is advancing. He has a half-blunted Stanley knife in his hand, and a cringe of desperate, feral hope on his face. You are going to die.

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Horizon has some of the flashiest abilities we’ve seen of any Apex Legends character. With her custom spacesuit and gravity-defying abilities, she has mastered the art of repositioning both her team and the enemy team to her advantage. Learn how to use each of her abilities to win fights with our Apex Legends Horizon guide below.

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Good news, US gaming mouse hunters, the excellent Logitech G502 Hero is back down to its all-time low price of just $35 over at Best Buy right now, matching the price it was over Amazon Prime Day. Voted the RPS readers’ favourite gaming mouse of all time back in 2019, the G502 is a great all-round gaming mouse for the money, offering loads of customisable buttons and different weight options. It’s not the only bit of Logitech kit on sale, either, as their brilliant G203 Lightsync mouse is also down to a ridiculous $15, and their brilliant G432 headset is also a bargain $40 as well.

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If you’ve pre-ordered Call Of Duty: Black Ops Cold War digitally, you’ll be able to preload the game before it launches next Friday. While consoles can preload from today, for us PC folk it will begin on Tuesday the 10th at 6pm GMT (10am Pacific).

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Apex Legends

has a cute new character, a lush new map and a cool vehicle now. Oh, and it’s on Steam, too. The battle royale’s seventh season, Ascension, launched last night, dropping players on Olympus. It’s a gorgeous city in the sky with wide open spaces that are ripe for chasing down enemy squads in Apex’s first vehicle, the Trident.

As well as all this, the Season 7 update brought with it the new Legend Horizon, a Club system, and a load of changes to the way the battle pass works – not good changes, unfortunately, because now it’s even grindier than it was before.

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Commander, it’s once again time to save the Earth – but this time you can do it from the comfort of your toilet seat. XCOM 2 today launched on iPhones, iPads, I don’t know anymore. The iOS release comes with all the DLC too, enough game to occupy your attention for potentially thousands of bowel movements. And I think technically you’re allowed to play phone games in other places too?

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Those early [cms-block] deals just keep on coming over at Amazon UK, and today you can nab a 250GB Crucial MX500 SSD for just £30. 250GB may not be large enough to hold many games, but it’s a great size for having as your main Windows drive, and the Crucial MX500 is one of the best budget SATA SSDs you can buy today, too. It’s the perfect combination – especially when this matches the cheapest price the 250GB MX500 has ever been, too.

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The third ever Apex Legends map, the floating island of Olympus, features quite a few differences from the previous two locations of Kings Canyon and World’s Edge. From its brand new array of loot-filled locations to its long sightlines and fast travel times, there’s a lot to learn about this place – and our Apex Legends Olympus map guide will get you off to the best possible start with a close look at the map and all its major locations.

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One week after a job listing said Motive were hiring for “an upcoming Star Wars action game”, the Star Wars: Squadrons studio have said oops nope, not true, no Star War here. It was “human error”, they say. Typical humans. No, whatever it is they are making next (and they do hint they’re “working on something pretty special”), apparently we will not see a single Galaxy-class starship or Ferengi.

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I used to play in an under 10s football squad once upon a time. I was pretty good, but I was easily distracted. I distinctly remember, during one important match against a rival town’s squad, my football coach (whose name was Graham, funnily enough) shouting at me to focus on the game and stop picking up conkers on the side of the pitch.

But I was fixated on a far more glorious sport. The most extreme sport of all, according to certain chestnut seeds. That sport is Conkers.

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This summer, folks spotted a new playtesting button on the Steam store page for Total War: Elysium, that hadn’t been mentioned by Valve. Well, now they’ve officially released details about the new playtesting feature that developers can use as a new way to run limited-time testing periods without juggling special Steam keys. The feature is still in beta, they say, so it may yet change before they officially release it. Total War: Elysium is indeed running that playtest though, if it suits your fancy.

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Minecraft

has another big update planned for next summer, but you don’t need to wait nearly that long to try out the Caves & Cliffs update. As Mojang do with Minecraft, a “snapshot” build has been released today containing some of the features and new blocks planned for next year. You can load up the Java Edition of the game and swap over if you’d like to try your hand at building with copper or take a peep through a spyglass. (more…)

Ah yes, a tale as old as time—or at least as old as old-school MMO players. You’ve got multiple World Of Warcraft accounts, for one reason or another, and are “multiboxing” to sign in to both accounts simultaneously. Blizzard have updated their policy on multiboxing to clarify that multiple instances of the game are fine, but they’ll be issuing warnings and bans to players using third-party software to automate playing them.

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Star Wars: Squadrons

is leveling the flying field, as it were, with a new update that addresses lobbies and matchmaking with changes to match forfeiting in its spaceflight battles. Update 2.0 brings plenty of other bug fixes and AI tweaks, including one for swatting pesky pilots taking down big Capital Ships in a sneaky fashion.

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Ubisoft’s Greek mythology romp Immortals Fenyx Rising is being launched into a pretty long shadow and no, it isn’t Zeus’s. Between the climbing and gliding and puzzles and oh so many other things, it has a more than passing resemblance to Breath Of The Wild. One thing it won’t share, though, is your ability to say peanuts to the grand quest and immediately go knock on the final boss’s door. Ubisoft say that they really want you to see the game’s story. Typhon will wait.

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The shortest point between two points is a straight line. “As the crow flies,” they say. But in Teardown, I can’t fly. Instead, I am more like a worm. I eat my way forward, creating straight lines of travel by smashing, crashing, and bombing through warehouses and mansions. I will emerge from one building then dive through a self-made entrance into another – and I will do it all so I can rapidly steal or destroy the contents inside.

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While the maker of Phasmophobia did once hint at plans to add a PvP mode to the smash-hit cooperative ghost-hunting game, they’ve now said naw that’s off. Didn’t fit what the game is. Makes sense. Phasmophobia’s a game of terse and unpredictable encounters with entities who behave in inhuman ways, and even the most murderous spirit is often inscrutable. A human opponent playing to win objectives sounds boring in comparison. And with only one person making the game, sure, it’s best to focus on the good stuff rather than get lost in modes people didn’t buy it for.

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It’s no secret that Spelunky 2 is pretty difficult – heck, just read one of Graham’s many Daily Deaths to get an idea of why. It’s good, then, that the roguelike platformer’s latest patch has made it so players die a little less frequently, by making it harder for physics to crush you. Not everything in this update is designed to help you out, though, because the biggest tweaks might actually make the Olmec boss fight a bit harder.

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Spoilers coming for The Face Of The Enemy, a mission close to the end of Watch Dogs: Legion. In this mission, you’ll need to infiltrate Zero Day’s military bunker. Here’s how to get into Zero Day’s bunker in Watch Dogs: Legion and solve the puzzle.

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I’m playing bombastic action RPG Yakuza: Like A Dragon for review, and I’ve not spent quite as much time as I’d like with it to give you the full lowdown. But I wanted to give you some of my first impressions – a little rib in the chest before the big sucker punch.

One thing I’m absolutely certain of already is that Like A Dragon is the most expressive Yakuza of the lot. Not that the previous bunch weren’t comfortable in their own skin, it’s more like they were a little too comfortable. They stuck so rigidly to what they knew, it felt like they were afraid to shake things up. And that they featured a main protagonist who, as much as I adore him, approached all problems in one of only three ways (frown, punch, or deliver life lesson) held them back a bit too.

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Ahead of its release on PC next month, the horrifically long-named Dragon Quest XI S: Echoes Of An Elusive Age – Definitive Edition has a free demo you can play right now. It lets you explore the first 10 hours of the turn-based RPG, and all your progress will carry over into the full game if you end up buying it after.

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I’ve been looking forward to Yakuza: Like A Dragon ever since the RPG combat was first shown off. Sure, I thought it was an April Fool’s at first, too, but the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. There needed to be a clean break between the old protagonist and coolest dad in the world, Kazuma Kiryu, and the new boy in town, with the coolest hair in the world, Ichican Kasuga. And what better way to do that then with a couple of absolutely massive changes.

If you’re unfamiliar with Yakuza, all you need to know is it’s the perfect mix of melodrama and karaoke. And it makes me a very happy boy. And, for that reason alone, I thought it would be nice – given the hell year that refuses to end – to share that joy with you.

So, welcome to LollaYakuza. Obviously the name was the first thing I thought of.

Hackers have leaked the source code for Watch Dogs: Legion, several reports claim, though it’s not yet clear what is actually out there. A ransomware group claimed last month that they’d breached both Ubisoft and Crytek’s security, and threatened to leak Legion’s source. “Guys, if the goal of the last mission in your game about hackers was the hack of your company, we’ve done it,” the group had taunted. Ubisoft tell us they’re aware of the claims and are investigating.

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Since the release of Apex Legends, Wraith has been considered by many the strongest all-round character in the game, and her strength is largely undiminished heading into Season 7. A high skill ceiling with abilities that can be used to great effect both offensively and defensively, and a hitbox so small it can often seem like she dances between your shots with ease. Our Apex Legends Wraith guide will walk you through everything you need to know to start racking up kills with the Interdimensional Skirmisher herself.

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Remember when Respawn said Apex Legends would launch on Steam on November 4th? Well, that’s not entirely true for folks here in the UK. For us, Apex lands on Steam alongside its seventh season at 4am GMT (a much more convenient time of 8pm PT for our US pals). Fortunately, the free-to-play battle royale is already available for preload on Valve’s store, so at least you’ll be able to have a go of all of Season 7’s exciting new things straight away in the early hours – I reckon the new map is definitely worth staying up for.

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When Apex Legends was first released, Gibraltar was a laughing stock, widely considered the least viable character to use in any match. Now, it’s a very different story, and every match will see several Gibraltars running around, throwing down Domes and Bombardments and making things very difficult for their enemies. Our Apex Legends Gibraltar guide will walk you through top tips and tricks for all his abilities, and much more.

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A lot of people have departed the RPS treehouse this year, but a handful of people have joined, too. Come join me for some very tardy hellos.

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I don’t know about you, but I always dreaded coming home from university for the holidays. After flying the proverbial nest, the walls I grew up in started to feel less and less familiar, and after the excitement and bustle of uni halls it always felt like stepping back into the past. I imagine most people who leave home experience this feeling at some point, an easy sense of guilt that you’re not quite as homesick as you should be.

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In fact, there’s a good argument to make that TikTok ColorPick is the act of watching paint get wetter. Inspired by the effortlessly daft “#guessthepaint” videos of TikTok artist Christian M Hull, Tiny Islands creator David King has created an interactive toy for guessing your own paint without shelling out a fortune at B&Q. Hey, if it’s free and passes the time this evening, it might just be worth a shot.

Take my advice, though – it almost always ends up beige.

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Destiny 2: Beyond Light

is almost here – and when it does, it’s throwing a whole lotta junk out of players’ inventories. Schematics, treasure maps, and even Expired Ramen Coupons are all on the chopping block, but it’s the last of those three that’s got some guardians all riled up. While I’m not even sure if Destiny’s gun-wizards can eat, there’s an apparent sentimental value to the game’s noodly food-tickets, with many players now petitioning Bungie to let them hold onto their tasty little keepsakes.

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Three years after its premiere, grindhouse 1v7 teen-smasher Friday The 13th: The Game has finally been defeated. This month, Gun Media are shutting down the multiplayer stab ’em up’s dedicated servers for good. But like any good movie monster, the game isn’t quite gone for good, and will shamble along for the foreseeable future through peer-to-peer matchmaking.

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Among Us

has had a bit of a hacking problem since its sudden explosion in popularity. Fortunately, developers Innersloth are on the case. While today’s update is a small one adding just a few small fixes and features, the patch notes have revealed plans to bring an accounts system into the game by the end of the year, along with a new map that’s set to be the game’s biggest yet.

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