Get the 1TB WD SN850x w/ heatsink for $109.99 (was $179.99) Here’s what Head Hardware Boffin James had to say about the drive in his write-up: James’ write-up tells most of the story, including its blazing-fast game load times, so let’s focus on this deal in particular. First of all, you’re getting the more expensive heatsink version of the drive, which helps keep the drive’s thermals under control and therefore ensures higher speeds over a longer period than the non-heatsink version....

Set in a sci-fi modern day alternate history of Earth, the main opposing factions here are known as the Global Defence Forces and the Tempest Dynasty, the later of whom are a mishmash of European and Asian nations united against the GDF. Each faction will have their own single-player campaign to dig into when Tempest Rising launches in 2023, but you’ll only come across the game’s third faction in multiplayer, the devs told me during a presentation earlier this week....

Grounded is a 1980’s themed “Honey, I Shrunk The Kids” survival scenario that puts you in the very tiny shoes of four shrunken kids. Only, those shoes actually look normal size from your new perspective, and everything else looks huge. That means the wolf spider that I mentioned earlier is big enough to elicit the loudest of screams, as you probably already know. If you stopped playing upon first meeting that spider back in 2020, then it’s time to jump back in....

Six years of active development seems like a pretty good run, to be fair. The news comes from the vid above, where game director Vladimir Tortsov and senior communication manager Pawel Burza discuss their plans. They start with summing up what they did this year, then run through their 2023 roadmap before moving on to what’s in store for ‘24 at around 31:30. They do still plan on releasing 72 new cards across next year, dropping bundles in April, July and September....

Supergiant isn’t one for sequels which was why this is such a surprise. Hades 2 will stay firmly in the Underworld of Greek myth and will follow the same structure as its predecessor. You’ll receive boons from fully voice-acted Gods (new and old Supergiant says, so look out for some familiar faces) and fight your way through monster-filled dungeons. There are no major story details yet, but from the trailer, it looks like the princess of the Underworld has a major chip on her shoulder, probably because of her father’s current imprisonment, and so sets off to put an end to Kronos and presumably free her old man....

The December 8th date leak was shared on Twitter, from what looks to be a Microsoft Store page listing. According to the poster, the listing “has been live since August 26, 2020, with a placeholder release date. [Microsoft] updated the entire store listing a few hours ago, with the new release date.” The date has since been confirmed by The Verge who cite “a source familiar with Microsoft’s plans” saying the date is legit....

In Firewatch you spend the summer working in a national park watching for fires. Sitting and living in your big weird one room home on stilts. Walking around finding turtles. Looking at your map and exploring. That kind of thing. There’s a weird mystery subplot and whatever, but for the purposes of this short post I’m going to hand wave that away. Anyway, in Firewatch you get a disposable camera, which you can use to take pictures of the beautiful forest and nature, and so on....

I’ve been doing Hearthstone guides for over a year at this point, but somehow this game and its developers just keep on bringing new ideas which fit seamlessly into the mechanics that already exist. The world they’ve built is extremely charming, too. Those of you familiar with the Warcraft universe will have some familiarity with it, but Hearthstone takes Warcraft’s characters and locations, and slathers them in silly slapstick fun....

It’s also entirely in rhyme. This by itself will have turned a lot of you off, which is fair enough. I myself hate poetry, having been forced to study boring bastards like Ted Hughes and William Wordsworth. Wandered lonely as a cloud, eh? If you’re that lonely why are you here bothering me about it. But I beg you to reconsider, because Milkmaid Of The Milky Way is actually well fun, and sweet, and charming....

At the centre of it all is Maddy, who’s recently taken over the lush, book-filled interior of The Terminal, a sleepy cafe in the backstreets of Melbourne where the recently deceased come to spend their final 24 hours on Earth before heading over to the other side. Having learned the tricks of both the coffee and necromancy trade from her former boss and mentor Chay, this largely linear visual novel catches her at an awkward moment....

Best played with a controller, Old School Musical tickles those retro bones like no tomorrow. After seeing their own world get corrupted by glitches and buggy code, Tib and Rob find themselves jumping from game world to game world as they try and find the source of it. By the time you hit the end credits, you’ll have travelled through everything from the Pokemon GameBoy games to a village full of Fez people, all of them rife with meme-filled dialogue and gaming in-jokes....

Matt sadly hated this cold war thriller. In his review that it has “badly delivered conspiracy natter”, and I agree with that. Phantom Doctrine also has a fair few balancing issues, not helped by some dreadful tutorials. But, and stay with me now, it’s an unpredictable game where anything could happen, and that’s why it’s exciting. You use your spy network to compromise enemy operations, through decisions made on a world map and XCOM-style battles....

Even though the series started off as a humdrum GTA clone, the OTT Saints Row: Gat Out Of Hell might very well be the least interesting game with Johnny Gat and friends. I loved Saints Row: The Third and Saints Row IV, so I remember being gutted about how unimaginative the missions felt in this standalone expansion. The series went from a Streets Of Rage homage and a boss fight with a text adventure to boring side activities masquerading as main quests Now, to be fair, there is some enjoyment to be had here if you have any attachment to the series, and in particular Saints Row IV....

The randomly generated caves of Hoxxes IV – which span numerous biome types and mix up claustrophobic, ambush-ripe tunnels with gigantic underground chasms – help stave off feelings of repetition, the natural enemy of co-op PvE shooters like this. But making your characters a bunch of hard-drinking, blunt-talking dwarves was the real masterstroke: the framing, of it being an honest day’s work if it’s spent squelching through waist-high piles of crawler remains to retrieve a blue rock, does a surprising amount of heavy tone lifting....

That counts as a Beast, right? you think to yourself, anxiously, as a faceless figure in riot gear bursts into the shipping container you’re obliged to refer to as “the shop”, and hauls you back out into the sunlight. You are, in the same metaphorical fashion as in this post from last week, playing Hearthstone’s Battlegrounds mode. In the yard outside, seven more bewildered contestants are being cajoled out of seven other shipping containers, where they have each conducted their own rushed, grubby deals....

Heaven’s Vault made Rock Paper Shotgun’s best PC games of 2019 so it’s grand to hear Inkle are jumping off to something new already. In the archaeological science fiction game, you learn the ins and outs of a fictional language. Katharine says “the meanings and interpretations of this strange, mysterious dialect occupied my thoughts day and night.” Alice B and Brendy both kept physical notebooks to track their theories and discoveries about different words....

The open beta goes live today at 8pm BST (12pm PT), and you can download it on Steam and the Epic Games Store, as well as PlayStation and Xbox. The beta will end on August 16th at 8pm BST (12pm PT), so you have a nice few days over the weekend to get stuck in. I’ve really enjoyed my time with Back 4 Blood so far. I forgot how nice it was to have a more chilled PvE game to hop on with my pals, usually we just play Valorant and stress each other out....

Where to buy an RX 6700 XT: The AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT launches worldwide on March 18th (that’s today) at 9am ET / 1pm GMT, and prices are meant to start at $479 in the US. Whether we’ll see anyone selling cards at that price remains to be seen, however. At time of writing, most retailers haven’t put their holding pages live yet, and the ongoing hardware stock shortages will no doubt push prices up higher than normal pretty fast....

To make amends, Io Interactive are giving anyone who buys Hitman 3 on Steam before February 19th a free upgrade. If you buy the standard edition (£50/$60), you’ll be bumped up to the Deluxe Edition (£75/$90). If you bought the Deluxe Edition, you’ll get a free upgrade to the Seven Deadly Sins Collection (which on its own costs £23.73 with its 15% launch discount). In either instance, you’re getting an upgrade to a version of the game that costs roughly £25/$30 more than what you paid....

Two different illicit gig economy experiences are yours for free this week on the Epic Games Store, which is currently giving away 2016’s stealth assassination game Hitman and a collection of the Shadowrun cyberpunk fantasy RPGs. Sure, basically you’re being paid to kill and rob people in both, but you’ll go about it in different ways. Hitman is here and the Shadowrun Collection is here. Grab ’em on an Epic account now and they’re yours for keepsies....