But then I met Hearthstone’s ‘Sweating Panda’ emote, and now everything has changed. Blizzard, it turns out, knew me better than I knew myself all along. Sweaty P, as I shall now call him, is one of the six emotes in Hearthstone’s autochessy Battlegrounds mode, now so popular there’s a case for calling it the electric card game’s main format. For the uninitiated: a game of Battlegrounds has eight players, who clash with each other using gradually upgraded sets of cards chosen from a central pool....

The earliest portions of the demo saw Gollum take part in a classic platforming tutorial. He jumped across large gaps, sprung onto ledges, shimmied, and dropped down. Vines helped him clamber up walls and acted as springboards for more parkour. While we couldn’t get our mitts on the controllers, it seemed like Gollum handled well! And most importantly he moved like Gollum, in his wiry, scrabbly way. Later, Gollum has an internal battle with his alter-ego Smeagol: does he eat a beetle or let it go?...

Paralives is a life sim game that may even have the chops to topple The Sims’ supremacy when it launches. This video of the character creation is the beefiest look at Paralives we’ve had for a while. Marvel as the Paras change musculature, fat distribution and weight before your eyes. Importantly, you can give your Paras some sick tattoos and amazing patterned jackets, because what’s the point making a tiny puppet to play with if they’re not well cool?...

It is time to declare War On The Sea. And thus it is that I gave the order to dive to crush depth with oh wait, no this is a destroyer what have I done. Killerfish Games may not be a household name, but they established a solid pedigree in marine warfare games with Cold Waters and Atlantic Fleet. War On The Sea is their latest, and it’s something of a sideways step in terms of design....

Now, time to enjoy your nice joke! Q: What roguelite takes place solely within the confines of a French archipelago in the Caribbean? A: Guadeloupe Hero

Look, there are 7 billion of us at this point, which means the most specific interests are catered for somewhere. And since the pools of people who like true crime and people who like The Sims 4 are both massive, and probably overlap a lot, this was bound to happen at some point. This weekend, then, a YouTube series that combines “talking about horrific serial killers” with “beautiful speedbuilds of said murderers’ houses in The Sims 4” marched into my smokey office like a dame with a secret and legs all way up to her thighs, and instantly made me fall in love....

The Sims 4’s Blooming Rooms kit feels designed for me. It’s one of Maxis’s new micro-DLCs, and it lets you pack rooms with flora without the need to keep the alive through knowledge or effort. Kits have had some stick because in many ways they offer the sort of item bundles that modders have been creating for years. In fairness, however, many of the best Sims modders also charge for their work, so it doesn’t feel too rough that Maxis do the same....

You can find more details on these below, along with a guide to how quickly specific games will sap the Deck’s charge. You can get involved directly here: I want your suggestions on which games I should test next, so this page can be a better resource for RPS readers in particular. Got game in mind? Let me know in the comments. It doesn’t have to be a Valve-Verified game, or one of the outright best games to play on the Steam Deck – anything that’s simply compatible is on the table....

Collectively two raids (the Temple of Ahn’Qiraj and Ruins of Ahn’Qiraj), today’s update brings back one of WoW’s earliest and biggest world events. Forcing entire realms to come together under one goal, the Ahn’Qiraj War Effort was a landmark moment in World Of Warcraft’s early life. Now, locking new raids behind lengthy, complex quest chains was something Blizzard were quite keen on early in WoW’s life, but Ahn’Qiraj took the cake....

Another enjoyable thing is that news happened over the last week. Great for anyone that does a podcast that revolves around current events in video games. While Volition haven’t officially announced it yet, Geoff Keighley appears to be gearing up to reveal a Saints Row reboot at Gamescom, so we go into what we imagine that might look like. And Sledgehammer Games is going to World War II with Call Of Duty: Vanguard, but it sounds like they haven’t totally concerned themselves with historical accuracy....

Update: They’ve now dropped the proper trailer down here as well. After a bit of panel chat with several of season 2’s actors, Netflix went ahead and showed off the premiere date for season 2. Geralt and Ciri are finally continuing their adventures—together now—on December 17th. After leading up to WitcherCon with those tiny teasers for Geralt and for Ciri, Netflix have now shared a full trailer for season 2....

Get the EVGA SuperNova 650 80+ Gold - $60 (was $130) That’s an outstanding price at any time, and in the current climate it’s almost unbelievable. With 750W of power on tap, you’ll be able to use this PSU with graphics cards up to the RTX 3080 or RX 6800 XT. The power supply is from EVGA’s SuperNova P2 range, with critically-acclaimed PSU vendor Superflower listed as the original equipment manufacturer for EVGA....

I’d like to wax lyrical about a good boss in Elden Ring, if you don’t mind. He’s a beastman, of sorts, who awaits you at the end of a castle. But more than that, he’s an optional challenge that both leaves a lasting impression and doesn’t at the same time.

We’ve written about Gloomhonk’s creative Trombone Champ mod videos before, but I felt this one deserved special mention. Just look at Cloud, Barret and Tifa parping away on their little trombones! And the surprise at 2.15? Just perfect. Gloomhonk’s employed several mods to help bring this version of Final Fantasy VII’s battle theme together. There’s NyxTheShield’s Midi2TromboneChamp mod, which lets you create custom charts from your own MIDI files, and legoandmars’ TrombLoaderBackgroundProject, which lets you create custom backgrounds....

Honestly, don’t watch this trailer, okay. Just skip down unless you really need convincing, in which case you’re only spoiling your own fun. The Looker has us solving puzzles by drawing lines between start and end points. They start as simple as the maze puzzles on a restaurant’s kids activity sheet then grow more complex. Like in J.Blo’s Puzzle Island, some puzzles require looking at the environment in new ways and from new perspectives....

Created by “bleeptrack” and “blinry”, Oh My Git! tries to teach beginners how to use Git with levels laying out increasingly complex tasks, getting into multiple people using the same repository and recovering from mistakes. It visualises the structure of Git repositories in real time with command cards and arrows, updating as you fiddle. If you want to flex, you can input commands directly into the console. God, even with a friendly little owl-squirrel mascot illustrating cards, it still horrifies me....

The press release I have wants me to tell you that you’ll recognise Daisy Ridley from the new Star Wars films, James McAvoy from films like Split and the new X-Men, and Willem Dafoe from The Lighthouse and The Florida Project. But truthfully, I know the best way to get you to recognise Willem Dafoe is to say he was the Green Goblin in the 2002 Spider-Man movie. Aside from the very cool news about the voice acting, we don’t see much else in this trailer other than what we already know....

Bethesda’s sci-fi RPG Starfield is their first new IP in decades, and was delayed last month until 2023 along with Arkane’s vampire slaying co-op FPS Redfall. Work began on Starfield towards the end of 2015 after Fallout 4 shipped. That means it’ll have been more than seven years in the oven by the time that game is released next year. Fallout 5 in 2040, maybe? Howard told IGN: ““I wish they came out faster, I really do, we’re trying as hard as we can....

At first, Twitch streamer SivHD wasn’t sure why his character model didn’t look quite right. “I don’t know what’s causing it. One of my weapon animations, maybe, I don’t know,” he said. Eventually he figured out that it was likely sitting inside his turret gun that was making the avatar get slightly thinner each time. After spamming the move, his character became basically two-dimensional. Maybe my favourite part of it is that the gun isn’t affected while holstered, just hanging out as chunky as ever on the back of a wisp....