I’m always glad to return to Off-Peak City, a strange place of giant statues and dancing skyscrapers, where obsessions are worn openly and shadowy conspiracy is around every corner (and sometimes the corner building itself has a giant face to chat with). While (mostly) solo dev Cosmo D has so far taken us there with first-person explore-o-gawpers and gentle adventure games, this time he’s made a third-person RPG. Inspired by indie zine RPGs, it’s more a one-shot adventure than a sprawling campaign....

That’s Robert Foster again, in new trouble in post-apocalyptic Australia, headed back to Union City to talk to people, solve puzzles, and do all that adventure game jazz. Our Alice Bee played a preview version earlier this year. She thought the characters were “fun and often genuinely funny” and the puzzles “hard enough to be satisfying and make me feel like a smarty pants, but logical enough that I didn’t need to use the walkthrough provided for thicky journalists,” which sounded promising....

Big Demon Hunter deck list and strategy Here’s the Big Demon Hunter deck we’ll be using for the Ashes of Outland expansion. We’ll keep you updated with any changes! Select and copy the long ID string below, then create a deck in Hearthstone to export this deck into your game. Deck Import ID: AAECAea5AwLtvgOGxwMOh7oDyboDvbsDnLwD4LwDjb0D5r4D98MDx8YD2cYDg8cD18gD2dMD3dMDAA== General strategy Big Demon Hunter looks to drag the game out and play a more controlly style of play than other archetypes of the class....

Since the Year of the Dragon, the Big Warrior archetype hasn’t seen a whole lot of love. That all changed with Scholomance Academy though - now we’ve got a bunch of big minions to chuck onto the board and terrorise your enemies with. In our guide to playing this deck in the new Scholomance Academy meta, we’ve got a solid deck list for you to start playing with during Scholomance....

Biomutant Googlide Engine upgrade: Googlide Wrekboxes explained To upgrade your Googlide Engine, you’ll need to find and crack open the various Googlide Wrekboxes scattered about the map. The loot contained in these boxes is always a Googlide part of soome sort. Most of them merely change the Googlide’s appearance, but some are level 2 or 3 engine parts. There’s no exact location for the level 2 and 3 engine upgrades, because the loot is randomised....

In a statement, Activision Blizzard called the Department Of Fair Employment And Housing which brought the suit “unaccountable State bureaucrats”, and said the allegations were “distorted, and in many cases false.” Some Activision Blizzard employees, including senior developers on World Of Warcraft, are reportedly “fuming” at the response. Yesterday, emails from Blizzard president J. Allen Brack and executive Fran Townsend were sent to staff, and shared with Bloomberg journalist Jason Schreier....

There are a few other restrictions: you have to play one of the new Dracthyr characters, and you can’t level above 63 or play beyond the “A Charge of Care” quest. That also means you’ll only be allowed to swoop around the Waking Shores zone, which is the first area in the expansion. The swooping does look nice. It’s less flying and more gliding, like Batman does in the Arkham games, diving to build momentum then spreading your wings and surging forward....

“I am told of rumors that Gearbox is ‘assisting’ or ‘co-developing’ another Borderlands game (or a new spin-off game),” Pitchford said on Twitter. “These rumors are NOT accurate. Gearbox is lead dev of any future games in the Borderlands franchise (or any Borderlands adjacent games) with no co-development.” In a follow-up, Pitchford added “We are definitely working on some amazing stuff that, I hope, will surprise and delight you. Plug: if anyone out there has Skills-To-Pay-Bills and wants to get in on some Borderlands action, we’re working on the big one”....

On Twitter, Brenda Romero said “I find it hard to believe that “Solution” is not inspired by my game Train”, and pointed out that “the only Romero in the book text is John,” her husband who’s best known for his work on Doom and Quake. An irony for a book that is, in part, about the work of women in the games industry going uncredited. The novel’s acknowledgments section is otherwise scrupulous, and gives credit to several games, game developers, and authors who inspired the book as a whole, or individual games within it....

Drox Operative was a spacefaring sibling to fantasy stabfest Din’s Curse, one of the best RPGs to this day. Personally, I prefer Drox. You pilot an immensely powerful ship around a random galaxy, changing the course of history for the AI-controlled civilisations that are doing their thing all around you. It’s been a long 7 years since then though, and a sequel would be very welcome. It’s hard to describe Drox without banging on a bit....

If you’re yet to unlock the gun, check out our page on how to unlock the Rytec AMR for info. Best Rytec AMR Loadout for Warzone The new sniper rifle will be an interesting one to try out, and it won’t be a hit with every player. However, if you can get used to the semi-automatic nature and recoil of this anti-material rifle, here’s the Warzone Rytec AMR loadout you should be using:...

Rovazzi met Bernardo Antoniazzi, principal tech artist at Infinity Ward, at the Lucca Comics Festival last year. They got to chatting about how Antoniazzi had used his own face as a bunch of NPCs in Modern Warfare’s campaign, which then led to an invite to get Rovazzi scanned in, too. Fast forward to this year, and Rovazzi has ended up with his own character in the game that he even helped write....

Raven Software’s lead visual effects artist Reed Shingledecker responded to an article from Dexerto, which reported that Warzone players were having problems with Verdansk’s severe lens flare. He tweeted, “I can easily tone it down if needed” and said that he was “happy to look and address any VFX concerns”. However, Shingledecker also said in the Twitter thread that he doesn’t “have the power to change the entire lighting of the map”, though....

Over the last few weeks it’s been FFAR and AUG central in Warzone. The former is a rapid-firing assault rifle that’s rendered the submachine gun category useless, while the latter is a burst-fire number with ridiculous damage at range. It’s proven to be an unbeatable combo. Raven Software’s latest patch targets both of these weapons. First up is the AUG, which they’ve confusingly referred to as the “Cold War Tactical Rifle Charlie” (literally no-one calls it this)....

Let’s start with how the show ended, namely with the AMD Ryzen 7000 series of desktop CPUs. No specs, pricing or benchmarks were shown, sadly, but CEO Dr Lisa Su did at least confirm that the Zen 4-powered chips are on track to launch in the second half of 2022. That’s hopefully reassuring news to anyone worried about pandemic-inflicted production problems causing delays, though note that you won’t be able to simply add these chips to your existing motherboard....

As per usual for a Monster Hunter demo it’s pretty hefty, with quite a variety of things to be getting on with. Four monsters of increasing difficulty are included for you to hunt down: Great Izuchi (beginner), Tetranodon (intermediate), Astalos (expert) and Malzeno (advanced). There aren’t any restrictions on what weapon you choose either, with Capcom letting you pick from any of the game’s 14 swords, hammers, bows and funky hunting horns....

Despite its toy-like aesthetic, Circuit Superstars sounds like it leans towards the simulation side of racing. “Learning the nuances of each car’s handling, and finding the best racing line through each corner of each track will be a challenge for a long time to come,” say Original Fire Games. “Not only that, but with the option of fuel usage, tire degradation and racing damage, even a good pit stop strategy could make the difference between hero and zero....

The BBC report that Clive Sinclair died on Thursday of cancer, aged 81. He started out selling radio kits, later getting into stylish pocket calculators, mini TVs, and wrist wratches with Sinclair Radionics before moving into computers. Sinclair Research’s growning glory was the ZX Spectrum in 1982, one of the systems which defined the early years of gaming in the UK. “Whirr. Click. Squawk. A tape plays, a screen flickers into life, a memory is born,” Old Man Alec Meer (RPS in peace) said in recalling The Hobbit on Speccy....

I haven’t played it, but I think Clone Drone is superior to Dead Space in several ways. One, I’m a wuss, and this isn’t a horror game. Two, it’s got a story, coop and multiplayer modes, so you can alternately lop the legs off a giant spiderbot in its campaign and the arms off your pal Frank in its Last Bot Standing mode. Three, Dead Space doesn’t have two sports commentary robots providing play-by-play analysis of your fights, while Clone Drone does....

“For many players, the most noteworthy additions in this pre-patch are reworked poisons and status effects,” says the patch notes post on Steam. The bad news, the devs say, is that these changes will break some mods - although they hope those mods’ creators will have a chance to fix things before 1.0. The changes to poisons do seem substantial, in that they can now be used on monsters and the effect of poisoning is more varied....