The new Collectron variant is available in Fallout 76’s Atom Store, the microtransaction shop, along with some other new communism-themed items. At first, Communist Collectron is funny. It’s an ungainly Fallout robot that clunks around spitting out such kernels of wisdom as “break free from your chains” and “long live the revolution.” After you’ve had a kick out of its voice lines, you can send your new Collectron out to do its job: bringing back food, water, and weapons to your camp....

It’s a space colony city builder with a puzzle game mentality - and set on Mars to make things even more enticing. The best part of Farlanders is its story, and while it’s not quite a full-blown commentary on colonialism, it examines what you’re doing and why you’re doing it with a self-awareness that I did not expect at all. That being said, annoying difficulty curves, awkward terraforming, and frustrating progression systems stop this space colony sim from really taking off....

We don’t know much beyond that. Its website blurb explains: “Welcome to the world of Random, a dark kingdom where every citizen’s future is determined by the roll of a dice. Will you be defeated by your fate or embrace chaos and learn to make it work in your favour? Embark on a journey with Even and her sidekick Dicey to play the odds and break the curse of Random....

Square Enix calls FFIV a “timeless story of love and betrayal” in which airship fleet captain Cecil turns against the tyrannical Kingdom of Baron. By RPS’s reckoning, FFIV comes in seventh on the extremely correct ranking of best Final Fantasy games on PC. To that end, I’ll let Katharine tell you what’s good about it. “Final Fantasy IV was the first one in the series to do a proper story with proper characters you actually liked and loathed, with relationships and personalities often reflected in their job class and character skills,” she says....

OnceLost Games say they’re creating what they believe will be “a new open-world fantasy RPG where choice, consequence, scope and role-playing will be experienced like never before in a realistically-scaled open world in a new class of game: The Grand RPG.” The trailer is, admittedly, not much more than we’ve seen of TES6, really. You’ll get a quick look at a knight on a white horse following a tiny ball of light through a dark forest before emerging into—ah yes, a grand vista to demonstrate the scale of the world....

The well-known gnome is being manufactured by Weta Workshop in New Zealand, where Newell has been hanging out during the covid-19 pandemic. “The tiny astronaut will be manufactured from titanium and printed in the shape of Half-Life gaming icon Gnome Chompski,” Valve say. “The 150 mm gnome will be integrated with Electron’s Kick Stage, designed to deliver small satellites into precise orbits, and launched as part of a rideshare mission from Launch Complex 1 in Mahia, New Zealand”....

Many of GDC’s planned talks have now been pre-recorded by presenters and are being shared on the official GDC Twitch channel. Not every presenter was able to provide a recording of their talk, but there’s still an impressive lineup of topics. Gearbox are presenting a talk on accessibility in Borderlands 3. Adam Robinson-Yu is giving a post-mortem talk on his delightful indie game A Short Hike. 343 Industries will be sharing their approach to using machine learning for online matchmaking....

How to unlock Bennett’s Hangout Event Bennett’s Hangout Event, Act I: Fantastic Voyage, can be unlocked as soon as you’ve completed a few prerequisites. First, you’ll need to make sure you’re at Adventure Rank 26 or higher. If you’re falling behind, no worries — we’ve compiled the best ways to boost your level in our Adventure Rank guide. You’ll also need to complete Prologue Act III: Song of the Dragon and Freedom, so make sure to check your progress through the Quests menu....

Genshin’s two new characters include Nadiha, the Physic of Purity, and Layla, the Evening Star. Nadiha is a five-star Dendro character who can trigger elemental reactions, helping her fit into different team compositions. Nadiha has been part of Genshin’s main story for a while, so fans will be pleased to hear that she’ll be playable soon. On the other hand, Layla is a four-star Cryo character who wields a sword in battle....

Normally £399, the Rift S now costs exactly the same as the Oculus Quest 2 at a wide variety of retailers, making it the cheapest this PC-based VR headset has ever been. Before the Quest 2 arrived in October earlier this year, the Rift S was my top VR headset recommendation for the masses, as its excellent display, comfortable design and built-in tracking were head and shoulders above what you get on the HTC Vive Cosmos....

First, let’s check out the ‘PC and Video Games’ section. As you might expect, there are a lot of more console-adjacent things - game controllers, an Xbox Series S, a Switch - but also some greaT PC options, including a Logitech G Pro X headset (£29.61) and G Pro Wireless mouse (£43.42). Similarly, you can pick up the legendary HyperX Cloud 2 gaming headset for £37.91 or the recently-released (and critically acclaimed) Arctis Nova Pro Wireless for £233....

Get a Core i7 11700K for £279 at Ebay (was £340, RRP £404) Core i7 CPUs have had a weird few years. Initially, they were the fastest possible CPUs compared to the slower and fewer-cored Core i3 and Core i5 classes, but that changed with the ninth generation as Intel added the Core i9 9900K - likely as a way to push back against what was then a rapidly-improving competitor in AMD’s Ryzen....

Get a Gigabyte RTX 3060 graphics cards for £330 (was £390) So why the RTX 3060? In Katharine’s review from last year, she noted that the card delivers double the performance of the GTX 1060 or RX 580, making it a ‘highly capable graphics card for those after a top notch 1080p experience’. She continues: Since that review, the RTX 3050 has been released, but it doesn’t offer quite the same level of price versus performance than the RTX 3060....

Lenovo make some of the best gaming laptops in the business, where their clean design, solid build quality and reliability have set them apart from other brands that tend to be a little plasticky at the sub-£1000 price points where most laptops are sold. Get the Lenovo Legion 5i for £800 (RRP £1000) We’ve not tested this particular spec ourselves - although I’ve personally trialled one of its predecessors - so it’s worth having a look at some reviews....

Get the Razer Iskur chair for £345 (was £500) with free Razer peripherals So: the freebies first. You’re getting a Razer Kraken X headset in white and the Razer Deathadder Essential mouse in black. The headset has an RRP of £50 but normally retails for £30, while the mouse also has an RRP of £50 but tends to go for around £20. So you’ve got at least £20 of free Razer gear to go along with your gaming chair, which seems like a pretty decent sweetener....

Get the Asus Tuf A15 RTX 3070 for £1250 (was £1400) Asus has long been one of the doyens of gaming laptops, and the A15 shows a typically modern design with relatively narrow bezels surrounding a 15.6-inch 1080p 144Hz display. The Ryzen 7 5800H processor inside provides great battery life and strong gaming performance, especially with a 95W RTX 3070 onboard. The A15 comes with a sizeable 90Wh battery which helps its longevity, while a reinforced chassis allows the laptop to survive MIL-STD-810H tests of shock, vibration, temperature, humidity, altitude and solar radiation… we’re guessing the first two are probably the most relevant dangers there!...

I should note that there’s a small caveat to the length of GOG’s French game sale. While the main sale does indeed run until 1pm UTC on July 20th, all Focus Home Interactive deals are ending a little earlier on July 17th. That still gives you a good few days to take advantage of the sale, though, and you can see some of our selected highlights below. You can, of course, just browse the entire sale if you prefer....

The blue being at the end reminds me far, far too much of the creepy folks in Gonner creator Ditto’s Utsvulten, where you can feed yourself to a friend. Brr. “Gonner is this year’s Downwell – a neat, short-form action game that has found the perfect visual style to communicate its near-misses and big hits,” our former Adam said in 2016’s Gonner review. “Whether you want to show off by pushing its systems to the limits or play at a more relaxed and careful pace, basking in the gorgeous music, it’s an absolute delight....

The Stadia team referred to the release as a “humble thanks” to players of the service: “Play the game that came to Stadia before Stadia came to the world,” says the description on its Stadia page. “‘Worm Game’ is a humble title we used to test many of Stadia’s features, starting well before our 2019 public launch, right through 2022. It won’t win Game of the Year, but the Stadia team spent a LOT of time playing it, and we thought we’d share it with you....