Arriving to fill that info void are, inevitably, leaks. If you don’t regularly hang out in PC hardware circles, know that there’s a veritable cottage industry of in-the-know insiders: anonymous but widely known tipsters like Greymon55 and kopite7kimi, who’ve shared enough accurate details on previous GPU and CPU launches that at least some of their sources are solid. Recently, unannounced Nvidia cards like the RTX 4070, RTX 4080 and especially the RTX 4090 have become this industry’s hottest commodities, meaning leakers are also the primary source of GeForce details for the gaming tech world at large....

It’s the first of two narrative expansions, and set in an asteroid colony where Science has done a Bad. It also brings a couple of new weapons and armour sets, some new music, new perks and flaws, and an increased level cap to Obsidian’s not-Fallout Fallout game. “A severed arm and a mysterious message” hook the player in to its story, in which the eponymous colony has apparently fallen prey to a case of the bad drugs wot make you turn....

I can’t say the PC version has changed the way I think about Days Gone the game, admittedly - to me, it’s still a rather bland and very bloated take on open-world zombie-ing - but I can say its settings menu is probably one of the best I’ve seen in a long time. It’s properly great, and more games should adopt its approach to real-time graphics changes and in-menu performance meters going forward....

There are rumours that robo-dinosaur hunting adventure Horizon: Zero Dawn is coming to PC soon, which would be the first time a game produced by a Sony-owned studio has shaken loose from its console shackles. We’ve also seen other former PlayStation exclusives developed by third-party studios make the leap to PC in the past year, such as Journey and Detroit: Become Human, and 2020 will see the release of Death Stranding....

The way it works is pretty simple - you need to get your total basket over £250 for the AFF15 code to work. So, pick anything on the store that’s more than £5.51, like this Micro SD card, add it to your basket alongside the 5800X, then use the AFF15 code to bring the price down to the £235 we quoted. The game code will come with your order, no opt-in necessary, from what we understand....

It’s out now. Check out the trailer below. Zachlikes typically look completely incomprehensible in screenshots, and yep - check. In The Signal State, you’re altering inputs by deploying modules - panels of buttons, knobs and conectors - and then wiring them together in different ways. You’re trying to create a particular kind of output in order to solve the puzzle, but also like in a Zachlike, there are different routes towards success....

Of course, the main reason behind the new toggle feature is to help aid players who find it difficult to hold down buttons for extended periods of time, rather than accommodate lazy bones like myself. Still, I’m a big fan of auto-walk/run features in general, especially when you’re traversing big, wide open maps when you’re on foot, or on the back of the horse in an RPG, say. Sure, you sometimes run the risk of running straight into a tree (or in Ultra Deluxe’s case, probably a photocopier or edge of a desk, oww) every now and again because your mind is elsewhere, probably focused on that weird-looking rock formation in the distance, but I do appreciate just being able to drink in the scenery a bit more instead of always having my camera trained on where I’m heading....

Headline & Hot Takes is full of chat on Grand Theft Auto VI: Vice City. Nothing’s set in stone – expect confirmation of what GTA VI actually is somewhere between now and whenever – so listen to this to hear some juicy, totally unfounded speculation. One thing we can be a little more sure on is Assassin’s Creed Infinity. Well… we can talk with a little more confidence when it comes to Ubi’s live-service stabbing, because we know it’s actually happening....

So, instead of talking to myself for an hour and a half, I drafted in two lovely guests: Josh Wise of VideoGamer and Rich Walker of Xbox Achievements. It’s good I was able to call on some old pals, too, because a surprising number of things happened between last week’s episode and recording this one. Headlines & Hot Takes is full of Cyberpunk 2077 (remember that?) and Witcher chat, as CD Projekt Red published a big strategy presentation video, last week....

We’re thankful for the Outer Wilds DLC, because it sure was a quiet news week. There’s a bit of chatter on the Deathloop stuttering issues, and whether Titanfall 3 will be a thing or not, but it’s all a bit muted until the Donkey Konga bongos are brought up, really. So, Matthew’s put a decent few hours into the Echoes Of The Eye DLC, and as already referenced, is able to tell me what he thought of it without telling me much about the game....

Anyway, at the tail end of last week I returned to the office, which it turns out is still almost entirely empty. It’s like working from home except I have to wear trousers (also Graham is here too so I can kick his chair and throw stuff at him). I spent a few hours on the first day creeping about looking at everything that had been left here for 18 months, and concluded that if our office were a level in a post-apocalyptic game, or a scene in 28 Days later, it would be pretty embarrassing....

So, the CosmOS 9 is a fictional console found floating in space. It contained nine games, which offer a fair range of typical puzzle experiences: Sokoban block-pushing, giving machines instructions to follow, tinkering with the unexplained interface of a strange computer to figure out what anything even does, a puzzle-platformer, a simple city-builder, and more. “Puzzle games are still quite a niche genre, an alien experience to most players out there....

Made by Jean-Paul Software (aka our very own RPS commenter, “Godwhacker”), The Jean-Paul Software Screen Explosion launched this week after a few months in early access. It packs 11 screensavers including a swirling shoal of fish, procedural models of housing estates coming together and breaking apart, a clockwork countdown to your estimated time of death, a vast warehouse run by Father Christmas and his reindeer, and a wild warpspeed starfield....

I’m an extreme liker of Stardew ’em ups and Animal Crossing-likes and all manner of other crafting and creating games. Even I’m known to lament that they often have an undertone of taking away from a place you love and imposing your own vision on it. That’s not all bad, maybe, but I’d been loosely hoping for an experience that lets me cultivate a place to care for it instead of changing it to suit me own needs....

In Monster Harvest, you’re naturally given your own farm in Planimal Point where you’ll grow both normal plants and Planimals. “Develop your own farm, build, and customise your own house, craft your own furniture, make some delicious jams and mutate your crops to create loyal and fierce companions you can take into battle,” developers Maple Powered Games say. With their help, you’re asked to save the town from SlimeCo. You can catch all of that, and the turn-based Planimal battles, in the new trailer right here....

The big hurdle first: I find Tiny Tina hard to stomach. She’s redeemable in the few scenes in which she softens, where it becomes clear she’s a lonely and over-excitable kid. But most of the time she’s a noxious slang abuser growling the word “babaaayyy” over and over. It takes patience to get past how baseline annoying she can be. She’s less a character and more a joke deliverer, and her relentlessly manic nature is emblematic of the script as a whole....

The series has so far been one of the best strategy games so yes, more please. For the third, the grand campaign revolves around “saving or exploiting the power of a dying god.” Today’s announcement says “Each race offers a unique journey through the nightmarish Chaos Realm, culminating in an endgame that will determine the fate of the world.” Seems irresponsible to put that in my hands. Total Warhammer 3 will come to Epic as well as Steam, and they plan to bring the first two over too....

Nate knows his Totalwarring better than I do, and already had some thoughts about Kislev getting some attention when he explained the Total War faction roster. “The bear-riding boys and girls of Kislev have been in the Twarhammer melting pot for a good while now, but only as a subfaction of the Empire, without much personality of their own,” he says. “Fleshing them out as a full faction with their own set of units is a smart move, as they’ve punched considerably above their weight as a consistent fan favourite....

“Like any escape game, it’s a question of puzzles and co-operating with your teammates,” says Deborah Papiernik, Ubisoft senior VP new business and strategic alliances, to Variety. “The idea is to make your way through the cathedral to find relics and to fight the fire, because you have to save Notre Dame [before the clock runs out].” This isn’t the first Notre-Dame project for Ubisoft, who recreated the cathedral for Assassin’s Creed Unity in 2014, and in 2020 released Notre-Dame de Paris: Journey Back in Time, a VR ’experience’ that recreates a visit to the cathedral....

A Better Ubisoft was formed in the aftermath of abuse allegations made by several current and former Ubisoft employees, including against senior staff at the publisher. At the time, Ubisoft committed to “fundamental changes”, but in the open letter last year, A Better Ubisoft said those changes did not do enough. “It is one year to the day that we signed our open letter to Ubisoft management calling for FAR more action to tackle abuse and setting out our four key demands,” begins today’s A Better Ubisoft update on Twitter....