Bit of a different look, that, going from bright and kinda cartoony style to something a bit grittier but not quite ‘realistic’. Curious. What I’m most interested in is something that’s hard to judge in the trailer: the action. Even for its time, the original’s combat felt rough compared to its peers, so I hope that’s a bit fancier. I still remember the original fondly. Our boy Brendy recently declared the original Sands Of Time one of the best games with time travel....

Before we head through door 22 on the RPS Advent Calendar, do check you’ve put fresh batteries in your camera. And you’ve got all your lenses? And you’re sure the mech battle is over? Alright, let’s go. It’s Umurangi Generation! Alice0: Umurangi Generation is a first-person hidden object game, really. Your mission: go to these places, find these things, and photograph them. You’ll have to get creative for some objects, finding the right position and photographic trickery to get them together....

Go forth, brave knight! It’s Chivalry 2! Matt Cox: A sword fight gets so much more intimate than a shootout. I’ve lost count of the multiplayer FPSes where death comes instantly and often, and usually at the hand of whoever happens to spot the other first. Swords aren’t like that. They’re personal, they require an exchange. Every blow has to be fought for, every victory earned - and there’s so much more to it than clicking in the right place quickly....

No word of a lie, I would probably be here all day if I laid out my entire long list of honourable mentions for 2022 (additional shoutouts to Railbound, Cursed To Golf, God Of War, Weird West, Jack Move, Hard West 2 and The Kids We Were), but for the sake of all involved (and poor Alice Bee’s editing pencil), I’ve narrowed it down to a shortlist of three. (Do still go and check out those other games, though....

It feels like damning with vagueness to say that Legacy Of The Moonspell is more Vampire Survivors, but that’s what it is, and that’s great. I do just want more Vampire Survivors, and this is some decent Vampire Survivors. The new map is the prettiest and most interesting yet, an open mountain landscape with snowy forest, icy crevasses and treacherous winding paths, a giant abandoned castle, temperate lowlands with fields, temples with cherry trees and labyrinths, and other pretty bits....

Don’t worry though, because below we’ve compiled our best Witcher 3 combat tips to help you achieve the former and steer clear of the latter! The Witcher 3 combat tips Understanding The Witcher 3 HUD Take care of your weapons Synergise your talents and your mutagens Dodge, Roll, and Parry How to prepare yourself for battle Use your crossbow for flying/underwater enemies Prioritise upgrading your Fast Attack Know when you’re outmatched When to Quen When to Axii When to Igni When to Aard When to Yrden...

AWD MB520 (Ryzen 5600X, 360mm AiO, Palit 3070 Ti) - £1399 AWD Lancool 215 (Ryzen 5600X, MSI 3070 Ti Gaming X Trio) - £1499 There are two systems on offer here, both of which are quite similar as they’re based around a Ryzen 5600X six-core processor on an MSI B550M Bazooka motherboard - a great configuration that should hold you in good stead for years, including support for PCIe 4.0 and much more powerful Ryzen 5000 processors if you fancy an upgrade in a few year’s time....

For a sense of what the expect, the run begins with the player exploiting a bug to bring up the inventory menu during a cutscene, so they can throw away their farming tools. Although arguably it starts even before that, with the protagonist being named after a long string of item codes. You can watch the full run in the Twitch stream below if you skip to around 26:11:00: There are glitch and no-glitch speedrunners, but I tend to prefer the former....

ASMR is an effect where certain types of noises trip something weird in some people’s bodies, creating a pleasant tingly sensation running down the scalp and neck. It’s a huge genre on YouTube. To other people, it might do nothing (though many still find the intimate scenarios of ASMR videos pleasant). Me, sadly I do get the tingle and I do not find it remotely pleasant (as I’ve mentioned before)....

Indiepocalypse is composed of 10 games every month, one of which has been commissioned by Editor in Chief Andrew Baillie personally. Started in February 2020, the zine has already managed to rack up 22 issues, as well as one bonus issue. You never know what you’re going to get from one issue to the next, each one platforming small games that likely wouldn’t succeed elsewhere. There’s no exclusivity clause either, meaning developers are free to do what they want with their games outside of the zine....

Things start off well enough for speedrunner “Worldlyy” with a clean escape from the prison island that Divinity: Original Sin 2 begins on. He manages to slip out of Fort Joy undetected and without drama but things descend into disaster not long after. You can watch from the beginning of the run, but here’s Worldlyy’s first encounter with unintended explosions.  To see this content please enable targeting cookies. Manage cookie settings In act two of the game, Worldlyy suddenly finds himself set on fire by panicking pigs....

First announced around six years ago, Twelve Minutes follows a couple stuck in a time loop, reliving the same day in their dimly-lit apartment over and over again. It’s not a nice normal day, however, it’s a day where their home is invaded by a policeman voiced by Willem Dafoe. Twelve minutes seems a little darker than your usual Groundhog Day-style story. Sure, lots of these sort of stories have lots of murder and trauma, but Alice Bee reckons there’s a bit more horror to this one....

Night School thanked people for their patience, and explained the delay was due to the team wanting to make Oxenfree II “the best game it can possibly be”. The devs said they were also aiming to create more localisations for the game. Oxenfree II was revealed in April 2021, and is set five years after the events of the first game. It follows researcher Riley and her pal Jacob, as they muck about with time and encounter a weird cult....

It also means that if you could run Borderlands 3 back in 2019, you’ll probably be able to run Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands today. The minimum GPU requirements have risen slightly, but a lot of older and lower-spec hardware will still suffice for 1080p, with only 4K resolution needing a truly hench GPU from the ranks of today’s best graphics cards. And if your PC does struggle, some precision targeted settings tweaks can produce big FPS gains, without necessarily resorting to the lowest quality options....

You can catch the full schedule over on the Tokyo Game Show website. Here are some of the big ones to watch for: Xbox: Thursday, September 30 at 10am BST Capcom: Thursday, September 30 at 2pm BST 505 Games: Friday, October 1 at 10am BST Square Enix: Friday, October 1 at 11am BST Bandai Namco: Friday, October 1 at 12pm BST Sega/Atlus: Friday, October 1 at 2pm BST As ever, it’s hard not to look at the lineup for a big event and wish for major publishers to show up with announcements we’d been hoping to see back at E3....

Troy is the second Total War Saga, following 2018’s Thrones Of Britannia. They’re smaller and cheaper side-games, focused on a more specific time and place. In this case, it’s the mythic Trojan War. As Alice Bee explained when she took a look at Troy last year, it’s trying to imagine a realistic-ish possible history for the epic events. So no, Achilles probably won’t try to give a river a kicking....

We’ve been watching the 12-player raid hype and are glad you’re enjoying yourselves," Bungie community manager “Cozmo” said in the the This Week At Bungie post. “We aren’t rushing out a fix for this and it’s totally fine if you want to try it out and have some fun. Just keep in mind that we didn’t create these activities expecting a clown car of Guardians to roll up, so you may experience some weirdness....

Of course, it’s not quite so simple as hitting your ball forward and relying on the videogame gods to deem your ball worthy of reaching the goal before everybody else’s. There are 30 courses of varying length and complexity, and none of them are a simple drag race to the end. There are ramps, twists, turns, and plenty of obstacles. While the very shortest courses are pretty frictionless (I’ve won a few in under 20 seconds), the longest ones are practically begging you to make agonising mistakes....

“We have learned that some data was exposed to the internet due to an error in a Twitch server configuration change that was subsequently accessed by a malicious third party,” the company said in a statement posted overnight. “Our teams are working with urgency to investigate the incident.” “At this time, we have no indication that login credentials have been exposed. We are continuing to investigate,” Twitch said in their new statement....

“In light of [the] shocking attack on the Capitol, we have disabled President Trump’s Twitch channel,” said a Twitch spokesperson (thanks, Kotaku). “Given the current extraordinary circumstances and the President’s incendiary rhetoric, we believe this is a necessary step to protect our community and prevent Twitch from being used to incite further violence.” How brave of Twitch to take this stance a whole 12 days before his presidency comes to an end....