Turbo Overkill is a bloody, fast-paced FPS where you play as a cyborg who has a knack for cleaning up mean cyberpunky streets with beefy guns, but also their “legsaw”. There’s not a whole lot of info out there on the game yet, but what we do have is a few strong gifs from the game’s Twitter account. Get a load of this one: Dual-wielding pistols, nice. Bit of wall-running, cool....

Developed in partnership with the rhythm game maestros over at Harmonix, Twitch Sings let you watch your favourite streamers belt out a few songs, take requests, and collaborate with friends on the virtual stage. This week, however, Twitch announced they’d be closing the karaoke bar on New Year’s Day - just in time to get in one last round of Auld Lang Syne. While Twitch don’t explain the reasoning behind broadening their focus, it may simply be that Twitch Sings wasn’t drawing in the crowds....

There’s quite a few tangents in this episode too, mainly surrounding Star Wars and the golden days of Xbox Live. I mean, it’s a nostalgia trip so it’s only natural we’re going to plumb the depths of our youth. And to round off the pod, we talk a bit about the games we’re playing right now. Namely the one with the cat (Stray), alongside Judgment on the PS5. Thanks as always for listening and stay tuned for our next episode which tackles some interesting weaponry in FPS land....

Utopias is the work of Berlin / Moscow arts collective AAA Software. Each of the game(?)’s nine worlds is a self-described personal utopia - a collaborative work designed to explore each member’s individual vision for a utopian game-space. They’re bloody bizarre spaces, too, with even that short glimpse in the trailer flashing through fluid pools; the launch bay for definitely-not-a-Gundam, a stock third-person Unity character controller sprinting through colours and noise, and a cryptic android that could’ve stepped out of the box art for any graphics card released pre-2010....

I’m duty-bound to investigate any potential hardware hitches, though since V Rising is only in early access, this isn’t going to be the usual appraisal of how it performs on various PC hardware. That can wait until it’s had more of the spit ‘n’ polish treatment that typically comes with the status of actually being finished. That said, I have done a full sweep of V Rising’s graphics settings and their performance impact, so if your FPS count is melting like a Nosferatu on an ill-considered Corfu holiday, have a look below to see if you can make some fruitful tweaks....

Among the changes are an increase in reinforced chest inventory space to 6x4, a tweak to make it easier to hit multiple enemies with a battle axe, and more buoyant boss drops so they’ll float on water. Those sound like helpful tweaks, but the campfire, bonfire and hearth will also now “take damage when dealing damage”, which will make it harder for players to build industrial-scale operations for farming certain enemies (and even bosses) by burning them to death....

It’ll be a while before all the horrors are ready, but a smaller update with clothes and haircuts is on the way soon. Iron Gate announced the Ashlands in a Steam post, where they do warn that they’re only in the pre-production phase. That means they’re doodling concept art while mulling over “the feeling” they want the new biome to have, though they have decided it will be “a large chunk of land at the far south of the map” rather than on one of many small islands like the other biomes....

Riot have also tweaked the maps a bit, changed lots of abilities, and adjusted the slowing effect when you get shot “in part to up your chances of escape if you’re near cover”. It’s a big old patch, even without ranked. The importance of surrendering bears repeating: not being able to do that has made me miserable, which is something Valorant does anyway even though I like it. I’m partly talking about the toxicity issues I highlighted in my Valorant review, but mainly about the times when I’ve been playing with friends and a randomer has abandoned the game....

Vikings On Trampolines lets up to four players team up in co-op to boing Scandinavians through the game’s story and versus modes, as well as minigames. It’s once again rendered in the pixel art style of D-Pad’s Simon S. Andersen. The story revolves around a bunch of Vikings who have to defeat the villainous Balloonie to rescue King VI. The whole game can be played on controller using just one thumbstick, which is nifty....

Ah, I don’t even need to say it, do I? We’re all thinking it. If only Call Of Duty: Warzone and its monstrous drive space demands would follow suit. In a forum post excellently titled “The Great Ensmallening”, the devs say they’ve “found some new technology” that will allow them to make the game smaller and load faster. The catch is that players will need to download some remastered content over the course of three smaller updates in the next couple of months....

There are a few different ways to get your hands on Battle Tokens in Warzone 2, and we’ll go over each of those options below. We’ll also explain how you can use those Battle Tokens to redeem rewards from the Battle Pass screen. How to get Battle Tokens in Warzone 2 Each reward in the Battle Pass costs 1 Battle Token, so to unlock everything you’ll need to earn a whopping 100 Battle Tokens....

You can watch Nvidia’s GeForce RTX Game On event right here below, or hop over to their Twitch channel if you prefer. Hosted by their senior vice president of GeForce, Jeff Fisher, this so-called “special broadcast event” will unveil Nvidia’s “latest innovations in gaming and graphics” according to the official blurb, which in all likelihood means lots of new hardware. RTX 30 GPUs coming to laptops is almost a dead cert, as it was back at CES 2019 that Nvidia announced that their RTX 20 series were coming to laptops....

Drake Hollow is The Molasses Flood’s new game, and it is currently out on Xbox but not yet out on PC. I do have an hexbawks, though, and since I also have Game Pass, and Drake Hollow is on Game Pass, and Drake Hollow is a Molasses Flood game, and I like Molasses Flood, I decided to spend an evening having a good ol’ go on it. I came away thoroughly confused....

Seasonal events At certain times of the year—Lunar New Year, the spring equinox, Halloween, Christmas, and so on—live service games kick back and chill out with special events themed for the season. Even serious games become keen to hand out silly hats, give levels a seasonal twist, and maybe introduce some party games. GTA Online has some of my favourite seasonal events. On the 4th of July, it rolls out firework launchers and patriotic monster trucks (I’ve had mixed success in starting Independence Day parties on servers)....

Ah, it used to be a great time, didn’t it? There were only three shows you had to care about, really: XBox, PlayStation and Ninty. How exciting, to look at the t-shirts Phil would be wearing under his blazer! The thrill of seeing what weird screen setup the stages would have! I remember the unveiling of the 3DS, which was like being told Miyamoto had successfully transmuted lead into gold, and it could be yours for a mere 250 bucks....

And yet, for whatever reason, I don’t consider them as candidates for the Bestest Best games of any year. I might pour hundreds, possibly thousands of hours into them and they won’t even make it into my personal list of absolute faves. That’s reserved for games, not games.

Wildfire Swap takes a simple action—swapping tiles—and complicates it with a bit of strategy. “Every time you make a move to contain the fire, it spreads more out of control,” developer Ryan Kubik explains. “Through well-planned and calculated movements you can prevent the flames from burning down homes. Each level challenges you to understand more deeply how fires spread so that you can adapt your fire prevention strategies.” Different tiles such as houses and moutains and trees all appear to have their own properties for you to consider when deciding how to best contain the blaze....

Wolcen guide Wolcen is a game about killing everything you see as you go spelunking through dungeons, so this Wolcen guide will give you tips and tricks for this new action RPG. Enemies in Wolcen will flood the screen, but with the use of some rather impressive skills and abilities, they can be swept aside. The key difference between this and a game like Diablo is that you aren’t locked to just one class....

In this guide, we’ve got three clues that you can use to solve the Wordle answer today. If you’d rather skip the puzzle for a day but don’t want to lose your streak, you can quickly scroll a little further to find the Wordle answer itself. Wrong day? Check out the Wordle answer for Tuesday 14 February instead! Wordle September 1 hints Whether you’re staring at an empty grid, or you’re scrambling for the answer with your final guess, a little help is sure to nudge you in the right direction....