Good lord. That run was 90 minutes? It felt like twenty, and also like six days. Highway Rampage is a small game, but after the way it's gripped me right from its beautifully cool intro, I can't not> bring it to your attention.
This is an arcade blasting game through and through, where conscious strategy and placed shots soon shrink into rearview atoms as the pull of the machine gunner takes you and you realise you've been screaming for the last eight seconds. You drive a selection of vehicles across an increasingly ludicrous desert while everything in the universe tries to stop you. But you have guns. Or flamethrowers. That are bristling with ramming spikes. Or possibly all of the above.
The next game in RGG Studio’s Yakuza/Like A Dragon series, Infinite Wealth, is a melting pot of old and new. As the bare buttocks of returning Yakuza: Like A Dragon hero Ichiban Kasuga indicated in the reveal trailer for Infinite Wealth, we’re not in Yokohama anymore, but Honolulu, Hawaii. He’s not alone on his journey either. As well as his mates from the first LAD, plus lots more newcomers, mainline Yakuza stablemate Kazuma Kiryu, now extra frosty with his silver hairdo, is also coming along for the ride as well.
Alas, the circumstances in which the two join forces wasn’t covered in my 30-minute demo at this year’s EGX. Rather, we pick up Ichiban, Kiryu and fresh faces Chitose and Tomizawa as they land in Honolulu, in search of a dodgy cop named Roman who's managed to wrong almost everyone in the group at some point in the past. 30 minutes isn’t long in a game like Yakuza, but hey, I still got to screech at restaurant goers in one of its sidequest stories, as well as terrorise the general public on Ichiban’s always-deployable segway, which I’d still call a pretty strong introduction to this latest LAD.
Despite the extremely upsetting news about what nate has been having for breakfast this year, we maintain our composure to deliver an episode of The Electronic Wireless Show podcast all about the Steam Next Fest, currently running until next Monday the 16th. You've got a whole weekend of free demos to try, and we've knocked back a few to regurgitate into your open mouths as suggestions for what to try first. Plus, we've been playing a few current games, and have some juicy recommendations of non-game things.
I've recommended the Logitech G305 Lightspeed a few times on RPS before, but I've also bought it myself multiple times - so I think that means I can mention it one more time at least. This wireless mouse is an all-time favourite for me, as it combines a simple and relatively lightweight design with bulletproof wireless and an incredible modding community that have turned this mouse into the basis for hundreds of other designs.
As you might have guessed from the category and the title of this post, the G305 Lightspeed normally costs $50, but today it's down to $35 at Amazon for Prime Big Deal Days.
Keychron makes some of the very best mechanical keyboards in the world, combining premium components, mature aesthetics and extremely aggressive pricing. Amazon's Prime Big Deal Days kicks that tendency into overdrive, with Keychron's V3 TKL keyboard dropping from $90 to $60.
That's a fantastic price for a keyboard that sports features normally seen on custom keyboards: hot-swappable switches, QMK/VIA programmable firmware and gorgeous double-shot PBT keycaps.
Whenever a friend asks for help in speccing out their upcoming PC build, I almost inevitably go to check if the Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo V2 is in stock. Because, for lower-end and mid-range builds especially, do you truly need any other CPU cooler? The Hyper 212 Evo V2 near-perfectly balances simplicity, effectiveness, and affordability; it’s like the PC component equivalent of Charles Eames’ museum-beloved leg splint, only less stackable. More to the point, it’s down to £33 in the Amazon Prime Big Deal Days sale, equalling its lowest price of 2023 thus far.
Ara: History Untold's headline gimmick is actually a couple of centuries old. In this deceptively Civilization-esque 4X strategy game, all player turns unfold simultaneously, once you've decided what to build or research, where to move your units, and so on. As Oxide Games design director Michelle Menard tells me over Zoom, this approach takes inspiration from an ancient military simulator, Kriegsspiel, which was devised by the Prussian army officer George Leopold von Reisswitz, aka the "father of wargaming", in the mid-1800s.
"It was to train their generals, it was a legit apparatus of war, it was not for funsies," says Menard. "And they basically created this massive table that had a modular terrain system. At first they used sand, but that was kind of messy, [and so] they developed a system where they had interchangeable tiles, like hills and valleys and plateaus.
"They would build out this table, literally drop a sheet down the middle, and it'd be like, OK, you guys on each side, you can't see what the other person's doing. There was an actual game master, who was the referee who you would report your moves to. He would then re-set up the board and basically call people back into the room and be like, tada! It's the next turn - let's see what people did. Was it what you expected?"
Ultrawide gaming monitors are undoubtedly a luxury, to say nothing of the powerful graphics card you’d need to power all their pixels. But cor, what a feast for the eyes these luxuries can be when they’re running a game that supports their full, wrap-around resolutions. The Amazon Prime Big Deal Days sale also just happens to be on hand to take some of the monetary sting out of an ultrawide upgrade, with several well-specced displays getting chunky discounts.
In terms of usefulness to the average PC owner, sales events like Amazon Prime Big Deal Days aren’t just for knocking hundreds off big-ticket hardware. They can also make already-affordable kit even more of a bargain, as is the case with the Logitech G413 SE mechanical keyboard: a snip at £60.
This has been on our best gaming keyboards list for a while now, specifically for delivering all the satisfying finger-feel (and durability) of a true mechanical board with a pricing that puts it closer to high-end membrane and hybrid switch models. The G413 SE employs the bumpy 'tactile' style of mech switches, so it’s good for accurate typing, and it’s easily fast and agile enough for gaming duty as well. I actually ended up using this as my main keyboard for a while, despite having more expensive linear-switch boards piled up in a nearby cupboard, and I’d extra-extra-recommend it at this price.
When I tried out the NZXT H5 Flow PC case, I liked it so much that I simply left all the components I’d installed inside it and declared it the new home of the RPS test rig. Now’s a good time for you to switch to this breezy, build-friendly chassis yourself, as its white version is up to 22% off as part of Amazon’s Prime Big Deal Days sale.