Space trucking and exploring in Elite: Dangerous. Dogfighting in Star Citizen. For the first time since the glory days of 1990s space sims, the flightstick is a must-have peripheral. An Xbox controller just can't compare to the feel of a flight stick and throttle, and you'll want every one of those buttons and switches for controlling a space ship or dogfighting above a Battlefield ground skirmish. We've tested out seven sticks to help you decide which to buy. If you're on a budget, never fear—one of our favorite sticks is a mere $50/ 40.

The best joystick

Were it not for the Thrustmaster Warthog (listed below) I would be holding the Saitek X-55 Rhino up as the pinnacle of flightstick creation. It's an update to the popular X-52, but bears less resemblance to that futuristic-looking peripheral than it does to its rival. That's no bad thing: not only does it look more like a modern fighter-stick-and-throttle combo than the X-52, it's also more usable.

The stick layout is almost identical to the Warthog, although with three hat-switches rather than four. It also has interchangeable coil springs, enabling you to tailor the resistance to your taste. But the star of the show is that throttle: the action is beautiful and it too has the option to alter its resistance on the fly—and to a greater degree than the Warthog. It's also covered in mini-joysticks, hat switches, flick switches and rotary switches, giving you full rein over your game.

The downside is that the X-55 is made out of plastic, not the metal of the Warthog. The stick feels lighter, the buttons less robust. But that's comparing it to a device a good deal more expensive—you'd hope to be able to tell the difference. The X-55 is still miles ahead of the rest of the devices in this test.

Verdict: The Saitek X-55 Rhino is an excellent controller combo, only suffering by comparison to the flightstick/throttle big boy from Thrustmaster.

The best high-end joystick

This has been my toughest challenge yet in trying to figure out an overall supertest winner. Usually I've got benchmark metrics to back up any value assessment I make, but with the top two controllers in these pages—the Thrustmaster Warthog and Saitek X-55 Rhino—it's entirely subjective and agonizingly close.

The Warthog is by far the more expensive, but as soon as you start the glorious unboxing process you know you haven't been short-changed. The sheer weight of the device is incredible, mostly because Thrustmaster has used a metal casing for everything from the throttle base to the stick itself. And that stick weighs over a kilogram on its own. The weight not only adds a certain air of robustness, but also means you're not going to be wrenching it off your desk in the heat of battle.

The design matches the build quality, although Thrustmaster cannot take all the credit there as the Warthog is an almost perfect recreation of the controls of the real-life A-10C Thunderbolt II fighter-bomber. That legacy leaves it with more buttons than you have fingers, but also makes it one of the most beautiful controllers you'll ever plug into your PC. Both stick and throttle have an abundance of hat-switches and the throttle base is festooned with flick-switches too.

Sadly that devotion to perfect replication means there's no Z-axis rotation on the stick, one of the very few minus points. With all those additional controls though, it's easy to map rudder control to any number of them.

The action on both flightstick and throttle is impeccable. The stick moves smoothly in all directions and the translation in-game is excellent too. There's enough resistance to stop it feeling loose, but it never feels overly stiff either. The throttle unit gives you the option to change its resistance on the fly if you want, enabling you to create more or less friction to its travel. There isn't a huge amount of difference, but for my tastes it already moves quite beautifully and the distance it can shift adds granularity to speed—perfect for docking in those tricky space stations.

It might seem crazy to be recommending such an expensive item, but if you're serious about sims—or Elite: Dangerous—this stick is the very best money can buy.

Verdict: An incredible device with an equally incredible price tag—but you won't feel ripped off once you get the Thrustmaster Warthog out of its box. It's our pick for a top-of-the-line flightstick.

The best budget joystick

The Thrustmaster T.Flight HOTAS X is testament to the fact that you don't have to spend a fortune to get a good stick. It's of a much cheaper build and design than the Warthog, but for a tenth of the ticket price you can forgive the use of plastic and lack of buttons and hats.

The key elements are there. The detachable throttle is probably the neatest feature: given that you're going to need easy access to your keyboard for its extra buttons, being able to split these components around it is a definite advantage.

It's also got the much-needed Z-axis rotation for rudder control, although the press of a switch will enable you to operate the rudder via a rocker on the front of the throttle grip. You get plenty of programmable buttons too, but they feel very much the sort you'd expect to find on a budget controller.

The action on the stick and throttle aren't great either, and you'll likely notice some grunching plastic noises as you push and pull the controller around. But it's still robust and feels solid on the desk. If you can't convince yourself an X-55 or Warthog is a sensible purchase, then this extremely good-value offering from Thrustmaster is not a bad option at all.

Verdict: Definitely a step down from the big boys, but the Thrustmaster T.Flight HOTAS X represents great value and offers a pretty decent feature-set as well. It's our favorite affordable flightstick.

Joystick FAQ and other competitors

Just a few short years ago, there wasn't much reason to own a PC joystick. Realistic flight sims were rare, and exciting space dogfighting sims were even rarer. But now you don't have to be an elite Battlefield helicopter pilot or a diehard sim addict to need a flightstick. With space games like Star Citizen and Elite Dangerous around, X-Wing and TIE Fighter available for download on GOG, and more space sims on the horizon, it's time for a new stick to take its rightful place on your desk.

FAQ

Aren't they hideously expensive?

You can spend the sort of money generally reserved for a new graphics card on Thrustmaster's Warthog. But you can get an experience that's very close for a fraction of the price. Check out the broad selection of controllers below.

For serious simulation you're going to need throttle control. This is the biggest thing that separates the joypad from a flightstick setup, and the granularity of speed it delivers when dogfighting can mean the difference between virtual life and virtual death. So that's number one: make sure your stick comes with a decent throttle.

Does that mean I need a separate throttle controller?

No, but the best and most respected flight controllers do come with an entirely separate control for the throttle, with extra toggle switches and LEDs. Others, such as the AV8R, have the throttle control built onto the base of the stick itself. So long as there's a decent amount of travel in the throttle you'll have a good level of control in-game.

How many buttons do I need?

Some of the controllers in this test have gone overboard on that front. But sims do demand a lot of different controls and having them all directly to hand can be incredibly useful. Just don't forget that your trusty keyboard can make up for any buttons lacking on your controller. You will need at least four buttons arrayed around the stick itself and ideally a hat-switch on the top of it.

Anything else I should look out for?

Maybe it's time we spoke about the Z-axis. Traditional joysticks just have pitch and roll control—forward, back, left and right—but some are configured for 3D movement. That means as well as controlling the X and Y axis you can also twist the stick clockwise or anti-clockwise to control the Z-axis. Generally this is used to control yaw and replicate the rudder controls of an aircraft.

In space that three dimensional control can be vital for accuracy, especially when you're zeroing-in behind an escaping Sidewinder in an Elite dogfight. On a stick with other controls which can mimic the rudder that's not such an issue, but on budget sticks which allow no such added control it is sorely missed.

Terms to know

HOTAS: This exciting acronym stands for the rather mundane-sounding 'Hands-On Throttle And Stick' and denotes a dual controller where one hand rests permanently on the throttle and the other remains on the stick.

Hat switch: A multi-directional button akin to the d-pad on a modern controller. On a flightstick, however, the d-pad has a hat on top which the thumb can easily push to activate the switches. They come in 4-way or 8-way flavors.

Other competitors

CH Products Fighterstick and Pro Throttle

CH Products may not be a familiar name to most of us, but search through Google Image and you'll find a host of old-school beige controllers as well as serious simulators. The company mainly makes that serious sim stuff now, including mock Cessner cockpits, and their designs are far more about function than form.

By that I mean they're pretty damn ugly. Naturally, you're likely to be more concerned with staying alive mid-dogfight than what the chunky controller you're clinging to looks like, but when you're paying this much cash for the privilege you at least want something that looks like it was torn out of real-life jet-fighter and not from Toys R Us.

The Fighterstick remains a serious device and has the most extensive flightstick travel of all the controllers in this test. That enables very accurate fine-grain control, and the classic X/Y axis style lets you quickly wrench the stick in all directions too.

The Pro Throttle (you can buy each part individually if you wish) is a bit of a disappointment. The grip itself is fine, with a selection of hat switches and programmable buttons, but the linear movement feels underwhelming. Where the Saitek and Thrustmaster throttles move in a satisfying arc the Pro Throttle moves along a flat axis. It's also got a short travel compared to the other devices.

Considering that this is more expensive than the X-55 Rhino (in some outlets by quite a long way) it's not a pairing that I can particularly recommend. You'll feel far more satisfied having pulled the X-55 from its packaging and installed it on your desktop than the retro-styled Fighterstick and Pro Throttle. In operation it's not bad, but it can't justify its incredibly high price.

Verdict: A very expensive, ugly-looking gaming peripheral that struggles to justify itself in a tough market.

Speedlink Black Widow

Speedlink's Black Widow is another good value flightstick. Its problem is that the HOTAS X above occupies almost exactly the same space on the price list.

On first slipping this device from its packaging, those fat tiddlywink buttons on the base had me worried about its overall quality. But in-game it's actually very usable. The throttle, although not detachable, is still able to deliver a decent level of control, especially when compared with the flightsticks that simply offer a little lever in their base.

The best thing about the Black Widow, however, is its chunky stick; it feels comfortable in the hand and you can easily access the various buttons. Because of the old-school X/Y axis setup you also get a decent degree of travel from the stick, giving you a fair amount of control as you traverse the heavens. The only problem is that the trigger seems to have been forced onto the Atkins diet—that skinny button just doesn't feel satisfying to pull at.

The Black Widow also lacks the Z-axis rotation I've come to rely on in Elite: Dangerous. It does offer the same rocker axis on the front of the throttle as the HOTAS X to control your rudder, but that isn't as easy to access mid-dogfight.

Thrustmaster's HOTAS X simply offers a better level of control for around the same amount of cash. The extra buttons and the added Z-axis rotation make things a lot easier to control, but it's the X's detachable throttle that really makes the difference. The Black Widow remains a decent budget alternative to the expensive flightsticks, despite its chunky basic layout, but sadly for Speedlink Thrustmaster seems to have got both the top and bottom of the market all sewn up.

Verdict: A surprisingly effective stick and throttle combo, and good value for the money, but lacking some of the finer points.

Saitek AV8R Pacific

Although long in the tooth, the Saitek AV8R Pacific is still a pretty effective flightstick. The tall shaft allows you to really throw it around and the relatively wide base means that it doesn't fly off your desk when you do. Unfortunately it isn't that comfortable for long sessions; it doesn't have the ergonomic design of the others and puts a lot of pressure on your wrist after a while.

Still, the buttons on the head of the flightstick are easily accessible, and while the solitary hat- switch at the top may be small, the way it sits proud makes it easy to get at too.

Where AV8R falls down is that throttle control. Its placing on the front of the base may be good for left-handers—to be fair this is the only stick in the test to even consider them—but having to operate it with your fingertips is fiddly.

When you've got the HOTAS X at such a tantalizingly price, this isn't much competition.

Logitech Extreme 3D Pro

Don't ask me what's so extreme or professional about any of the Logitech Extreme 3D Pro's three dimensions. The only extreme is the angle of the stick itself, and that's my biggest gripe, as whenever I found myself trying to engage in a steep dive, throwing the stick forward, it made the hand-rest dig into my wrist.

My other issue is with that afterthought of a throttle added to the base, seemingly just because someone at the end of the design process figured they ought to jam one in for another tick on the feature list. It's designed to be operated with the thumb while your left hand controls the six extra buttons tightly crammed onto the base. This is an ideal situation for neither set of controls. The 90-degree rotation of the throttle affords little fine-grain control and the base buttons are too cramped to be usable without looking directly at them.

The head of the stick is better laid out, with a thumb button and trigger as well as four other buttons arrayed around the single hat switch at the top of the shaft. Just the same, the hat switch is still a little awkward to reach and its dimpled top makes it a bit of a struggle to pull down with any accuracy or speed.

The short travel of the stick and the wide base make it very stable, but the rest of the extreme, professional design is a let-down.

THE HIGHS

Samuel Roberts: Mirror s Edge returnsWe ve known about a new Mirror s Edge game for two years now, and this week we finally got a name for this prequel/sequel thing (Mirror s Edge: Catalyst), as well as indication of a full reveal at E3. I loved the original Mirror s Edge. I think it was uneven, and maybe that s one of the things they re trying to address in what sounds a lot like a reboot: I hope for a better storyline, improved combat, maybe more reasons to keep playing. I can t believe it s been two years since they first unveiled it. They said it would be out when it s ready—hopefully that ll be later this year. Excited to see more next week.

Tom Senior: Street Fighter 5Every time a new Street Fighter comes out I wonder: 'could THIS be the one I finally get into?'. We share an office with some massive SF fans who sometimes battle at lunchtimes with expensive sticks. They shout and jump up and down and generally have an amazing time. I've played fighting games before (if only Soul Calibur had made it to PC!) but there's no way I can crawl up to a half-decent standard in a competitive scene that's been maturing for years. I welcome Street Fighter 5's changes, not for their specific merits, but for the fact they'll reset the competitive scene and give me an opportunity find a niche as players old and new race to master the V-Guage. I m interested in the PC/PS4 cross-play features as well, as long as the netcode stays strong.

Chris Thursten: The Rift stares also into youI m intrigued by Edge of Nowhere. It s the Oculus Rift-exclusive VR adventure game being developed by Insomniac, and while the trailer doesn t confirm that it s an adaptation of Lovecraft s At The Mountains of Madness, it really really looks like an adaptation of Lovecraft s At The Mountains of Madness.

That s what I want from my VR experiences. I want cosmic nonsense. I want gigantic spaceships to exit hyperspace as I gawp stupidly up at them, drooling into the knotted cabling of my virtual reality hat (as light as a baseball cap) until I electrocute myself and die. I want to experience cosmic horror as Lovecraft envisaged it. I want to look at a distant mountain range and consider: the crawling vegetable horrors of Yith were us all along! Then I want to write all of this down in an old-timey notebook, wander off into the snow, and vanish.

Alright, it s probably a game where you tumble about in Antarctica while a Cthuloid the size of a car showroom stomps about in your peripheral vision. That s fine too. I admire this general direction for VR; accepting the fact that it makes some people feel a bit sick and running with it, appending shitting yourself inside-out to the list of immersive videogame experiences we might have with a pair of hi-res, low-latency displays strapped to our faces.

Wes Fenlon: For a good time, make it computer timesI m both happy and sad to be back in the US after my trip to Computex in Taipei; sad because it was a great time, happy because I get to sleep in my own bed for three whole days before heading off to E3. My favorite thing about Computex was just how PC-focused the event was, compared to any consumer electronics show I ve been to in the US. That focus really manifested in the way every booth at Computex used a collection of awesome case mods to draw in crowds. It didn t matter if they were selling RAM or cases or watercooling parts: there was a cool computer there on display. It was worth the trip just to see all of these amazing rigs on display.

Chris Livingston: Something old, something newAn interesting thing about professional baseball (I'm sure some would say the only interesting thing) is that despite each team playing 162 games per season, and 2430 games occurring each year, and detailed records having been kept for over a century for a couple hundred thousand different games, something that has never happened in a game before can still happen, and seems to on a regular basis.

For example, on June 9, Chris Heston of the San Francisco Giants threw a no-hitter (against my Mets, of course). While there have been almost 300 no-hitters (even the Mets have one now!), this was the first in which a pitcher hit three batsmen while allowing no actual hits. I even spent $2 to register at baseball-reference.com for a day in order to double-check. Cool! Except for the part where it was the Giants. The Giants are a butt.

It makes me wish gaming could somehow keep such detailed records, because something happened this week that hasn't happened before. 19 years after Final Doom was released, speedrunner Zero Master beat The Plutonia Experiment in a single life on Nightmare difficulty. You can watch it on YouTube, but things happen so fast it's as puzzling to me as the baseball rule that says you can run to first if the catcher drops the third strike (but why?). When you consider how ridiculously difficult Plutonia is, and how many attempts there must have been by who even knows how many players over the years (stats on this would be awesome to know), it's somehow both amazing that it hadn't happened yet and that it ever happened at all.

Tyler Wilde: Palmer LuckeySomeone tell Chris to stop editing my entry to say I m a butt. Go Giants. I am a butt. Anyway, this week has been great for lots of reasons, but one thing I enjoyed a lot was watching Palmer Luckey get too excited about Oculus Touch to remember he was supposed to announce when it s releasing. I don t know how well the custom controllers (which, by the way, are releasing after the Oculus Rift) will work—as with VR headsets, you really have to try this stuff to know if it s any good—I just enjoy Luckey s enthusiasm. Whatever misgivings we may have about Facebook or Oculus partnership with Microsoft, at the heart of it all there s still a guy it s hard to be cynical about. Luckey loves VR. He made his way with genuine passion, and now he wanders around conventions in sandals (and once some stunning American flag pants), still beaming about VR. I poke fun, like when I called it Oculus Gift To All Mankind on Twitter (VR developers can get very this is going to change the world about it all), but I think that excitement comes from a genuine place.

THE LOWS

Wes Fenlon: Why, Oculus?Valve isn t coming to E3, which means now is the time for Oculus to show exactly how much they get it, that they re the ones we should be putting our faith in. Yesterday s press conference was an opportunity for Oculus to do that, and they completely whiffed it. They stuck to their ambiguous Q1 2016 release window instead of announcing a date. That would ve been okay, if they d finally announced a price. That didn t happen, either. And Oculus executives themselves seem to be regressing in presentation skills. They were once casual and calm, but it seems like the weight and pressure of their endeavor has caught up to them, leading to stilted stage PR-speak about the incredibleness of VR. And Oculus knows, better than anyone, that you have to experience VR to feel the magic. Why, then, did Oculus roll demo footage of a dozen games on a 2D screen?

On top of the event s awkwardness and missed opportunities, I was disappointed that exclusive games seemed to be such a major selling point. There was a time, just six months ago, where it seemed like there was a decent chance the VR market would remain as open as the PC itself: that VR would be a platform, with Oculus s headset being one subset of that platform. Now it looks like SteamVR and Oculus will be very separate platforms, with very separate games, and I think that ll make things just a little bit worse for everyone.

But I suppose it s not all bad news. The Oculus Touch could be an amazing controller, and I m excited to check it out at E3 next week.

Tom Senior: Dark Souls 3Can sequels dilute the impact of a near-perfect original? That's the question that comes to mind when I think about the heavily-rumoured Dark Souls 3. I completed and greatly enjoyed Dark Souls 2, largely because DS1's port and performance problems were excised in the sequel. However, there's no denying the first game's superiority. Dark Souls is special because its mechanics are extensions of its narrative themes—which explore death, rebirth, power and the nature of humanity, no less. When Dark Souls 2 replaced 'Humanity' with 'Human Effigies' the systems/story link was lost, along with the significance of bonfires in a world without Gwyn and the other gods of the age of fire. The elegant design of Dark Souls has been distilled into a structural blueprint. The formula can still entertain of course—Dark Souls 2 proves that—but the framework now carries none of the significance it was designed to impart. If Dark Souls 3 is real, I think we'll get another fairly decent action RPG, but it won't be a work of art.

Chris Thursten: I SHED THE BLOOD OF THE SAXON MENMy low point of this week is probably that I can t tell you about my secret high of this week, a subject with a Non Disclosure Agreement so robust that I can taste copper just for having got this far into this sentence. No, it s not Half-Life 3.

I m also sad about the passing of Sir Christopher Lee, but his legacy was never really represented by his list of gaming credits. We should all watch this and remember him, mind, and think about how we might live to our nineties and retain such a low quantity of fucks-given-over-time. If Sir Christopher Lee gave any fucks, modern science was not able to detect them. He gave a homeopathic quantity of fucks. He was one of the very best.

Let s go with this instead: Rockstar s attitude to the Steam Sale. Did you hear? GTA V s on sale! 25% off! Except it s suddenly about 125% as expensive as it used to be, so in order to take advantage of this fine offer you should be willing to spend about the same amount as you d have spent last week.

This is a clever trick, in the same way that taking a chainsaw to a pinata is a clever trick. Congratulations! You solved the puzzle. Yet you ve also violated something integral to the event itself. If a pinata represents human submission to absolute fairness through the violent death of a paper mache donkey, then a Steam Sale represents the notion that no developer is too big to offer players a better deal from time to time. Except Rockstar, apparently, who have just wandered into your garden party, bellowed FUCK THIS PINATA , and started revving.

This wasn t a very good analogy. Have a great weekend.

Chris Livingston: SkybraryBethesda announced they'll be selling The Skyrim Library, Volume 1: The Histories, a physical book containing game lore. This sounds like a nice idea, but I strongly suggest you don't buy this book for the following reasons:

1. It says it's 232 pages, but you know it'll actually be about six pages written in a large, ugly font.
2. Opening the cover might increase your skills, but most likely won't.
3. While trying to put it on your bookshelf, you'll accidentally knock everything else over.
4. If it's on your desk, you'll often pick it up accidentally while reaching for something else.
5. If you carry it around, you'll probably find something more valuable and have to drop the book so you can keep sprinting.
6. If you decide to sell it, you'll get a lot less than you originally paid.
7. Reading it might result in a quest being added to your to-do list that you'll never complete.
8. If you don't store it in a Vault-Tec vault, it'll wind up burned and useless when the apocalypse happens.
9. You'll just wind up waiting for a modder to make a better cover.
10. You already have 36 copies of The Lusty Argonian Maid.

Tyler Wilde: I stole a slice of pizzaEvan Lahti—you know, US editor-in-chief Evan Lahti—was in a meeting and he left half a pizza on his desk. So I took a slice of that pizza and ate it. I was hungry and I ate his pizza and I did not ask. I blame this terribly sinful act on E3 planning, which has consumed my schedule and requires me to consume pizza. I ll probably eat a lot of pizza next week, too.

But seriously, the past couple weeks have been really busy: first a Doom teaser, then a Fallout 4 trailer, then an Oculus pre-E3 press conference. We ve had previews of Street Fighter V, Hellblade, MGS 5, Fortnite, and lots of other stuff I m forgetting. None of this is bad (I m probably the only person in my circle of friends who isn t infinitely cynical about E3), it s just a bit overwhelming—for you, too, I imagine. Let s take a moment, then, to put all that aside and have some quiet time. Think about how cool Adr1ft looks, maybe. Watch it on the monitor facing your pizza box, maybe.

Samuel Roberts: Time is running outI love procrastinating before I buy anything, because I always believe in getting value for money. That s why I m torn on whether to pre-order the Steam controller, which according to Valve are now through 35% of their initial stock. I think I ve got just days left to decide if I want to put my money down and get one in October—but even though I liked the feel of trying one in The Talos Principle briefly at GDC earlier this year, I d really like to see someone else from the team try it before I put my money down. Are you buying one, or waiting to see what the verdict is first?

At the start of the 2014 LCS series, Riot Games said it would donate all fines collected over the course of the season to a worthwhile charity. Today it announced that those fines totaled $31,850, all of which has been donated to The Trevor Project, a charity that provides crisis intervention and suicide prevention services for LGBTQ youth.

"For the first major donation, we wanted to see the money collected from the 2014 make a difference to one cause," Riot said in the announcement. "When we sat down and thought about what was meaningful to us as a community, one cause resonated with most of us—the fight against harassment and discrimination."

And while the fines are the result of bad behavior among League of Legend players, Riot emphasized that the majority of the LoL community is firmly against abuse: Games in which players used homophobic slurs and exhortations to suicide were reported a significantly higher rate than those that included simple F-bombs.

"As a community, you find these words hurtful and unacceptable and so do we," Riot wrote. "We know that harassment and its consequences goes beyond just words in a game—and that s why the work of organizations like The Trevor Project is so important. We hope that this money will be able to boost their work creating a safe and inclusive environment for all of us, regardless of sexual orientation."

Riot has rolled out a number of measures to combat "extreme toxicity" in League of Legends over the past year, most recently an automated system of punishment for players who engage in abusive in-game behavior.

Black Friday is no longer just a day. It's not longer just a week. It's a state of mind: a day of deals stretched into an entire holiday season of sales, discounts, and special offers. Black Friday means weeks of deals on PC components like SSDs and cheap games on Steam. But it also means a whole lot of junk going on sale at prices that look great, until you realize you're saving money on something you shouldn't be buying in the first place.

When Black Friday 2015 rolls around and the shopping season officially begins on November 27, take some time to think before you buy. Here are our tips on what you should be buying this holiday season, and how to make sure you're getting a good deal.

Save big game purchases for the Steam Winter Sale

The holidays are the time for big AAA releases. They're also the time for Valve's annual winter sale on Steam, which slashes prices on thousands of games across the Steam library. Brand new big games rarely see big discounts, but you still might be able to save a few bucks. More importantly, games you've been waiting patiently to buy from spring and summer should see some heavy discounts. The longer you can wait to buy, the better the savings.

Also keep an eye on the sales on Amazon, GOG, and EA's Origin stores. You'll find deals there, too!

Storage and memory may be your chance for big savings

When it comes to PC components, there are some parts that rarely see big discounts. You're likely not going to score a price drop on an Intel processor, and that new graphics card you've been eying probably won't drop in price, either. But hard drives and SSDs? Those are going to have some great deals.

If you want bulk storage, keep an eye on Western Digital hard drives. Green drives aren't that fast, but they're perfectly fine for holding thousands of photos and other files. Speeds on SATA SSDs are pretty similar across the board, so as long as you buy one that's reliable, a Black Friday deal would be a good time to buy an SSD dedicated to your game library.

You may also see some good deals on RAM and power supplies. Again, make sure what you're buying is well-rated for reliability. If it has no reviews on sites like Amazon and Newegg, you may want to steer clear.

Check our buying guides for the best components

Black Friday deals usually aren't about getting the best. They're about getting the cheapest. Still, sometimes you get lucky. If you spot something from our hardware buying guides on sale, you know that it's both a good deal and a good product. And, of course, we'll be highlighting the best deals we find when the time comes. You'll also be able to find Black Friday tech deals at one of our sister sites.

Check Amazon prices on CamelCamelCamel

Sometimes a Black Friday deal isn't actually a deal, because it's a crappy product that you shouldn't buy at any price. And sometimes a Black Friday deal isn't actually a deal, because it's not even a discount over that product's typical price! Prices on Amazon.com tend to fluctuate all the time, and a Black Friday discount could still see that price substantially above a typical Amazon dip. To make sure you're actually getting a good deal, price check your buy on CamelCamelCamel. If it regularly hits a lower price, save that purchase for later.

It took half an hour to find and kill the first boss in Chasm. It was pleasantly simple. I d stumbled onto a cache of magic knives and there was a fountain outside the boss room doling out armor buffs. Shortly after killing the boss I was rewarded with a new ability: I could traverse crawl spaces with a fancy new power slide. Think Metroid s ball formation, except less bally and more kicky.

In Metroid—actually, in most successful Metroidvania platformers—obstacles in branching levels serve as clues that you need to search out a corresponding power-up or item. In Chasm, which is procedurally generated, I wasn t so lucky. It took me half hour to find a non-tutorial crawl space to slide through, only to find that I d also need an ability to grab ledges (or so I found out later). In the end, it turned out I was barking up the wrong tree anyway: there was a broken elevator that needed fixing. 

I tell this anticlimactic story to illustrate the differences between Chasm and other procedurally generated platformers. Next to the two big ones—Spelunky and Rogue Legacy—it errs strongly in the latter s direction but plays out at a much slower pace, at least in the beginning. The difficulty curve is unusually mild, and staying alive wasn t a problem unless I was playing in the game s permadeath hardcore mode. On the other hand, finding my way around was confusing, but rarely taxing. The mines in Chasm feel like locations to be explored and memorised. In this way, it s kinda reminiscent of Steamworld: Dig, without the digging. It's not a game to snack on: it's an adventure.

As soldier Daltyn you re tasked with exploring mysterious mines in order to discover—and hopefully ward off—malevolent, supernatural forces. Exploration rewards with gold, power ups and the usual RPG adornments such as rings, armors, and helms. It s basically a sidescrolling dungeon crawler. Push deeper into the mines and there are shortcuts to higher levels, as well as bonfires to save progress.

I explored two of six major areas. Expect to spend a lot of time in Chasm retracing your steps, poring over the in-game map for unexplored avenues, and grinding for gold in order to better equip for high HP bearing bosses. In the alpha build I played Chasm didn t seem to be a platformer demanding superhuman dexterity, and its slow, considered pace is a refreshing departure from the nerve-wracking reflex-driven games it ll be lumped in with. Sometimes you ll encounter a boss so juiced up on HP that grinding will be essential, and that s the point: this is an RPG. When you encounter a seemingly insurmountable challenge, there s always another route to take, or a better piece of armor to work towards.

The procedural generation lends itself to repeated playthroughs, but it doesn t feel necessary unless played in hardcore mode. Applying random systems to a genre traditionally reliant on deliberate level design is risky, but after a while the layouts become familiar—sometimes even intimate—if not especially exciting. The random sprawls are fun to navigate on a moment-to-moment basis though, and the snappiness of the platforming and combat somewhat compensates for the interminable environments.

That s not to say Chasm isn t beautiful, because it is. Especially the overground hub area, and especially the sparse, melancholy music. Chasm manages to avoid the identikit whimsy common in pixel art platformers, opting for a strange, understated dreaminess. After a couple of hours spent in the mines, I m eager to discover what lay at the bottom, but I m also hopeful that the final game will offer more incentive to explore every nook and cranny on the way. Based on my time with it, I'm fairly confident it will. Chasm will release on Steam later this year.

It was a little over three years ago that Grim Dawn, the action-RPG that sprung forth from the ruins of Titan Quest, finished its Kickstarter campaign with nearly double its $280,000 goal. And it was actually two years before that—well before Kickstarter became a "thing" in the videogame business—that developer Crate Entertainment began its own "crowd contributed" funding campaign. Work on the game has been going on for a long time, in other words. But it's just about done.

Grim Dawn has been playable in beta for quite awhile, and Crate announced today that the final section of Act Three is now complete and released. "You may now venture beyond Homestead's north gate into the heart of the Cult of Ch'thon's territory," Crate founder Arthur Bruno wrote in the latest Kickstarter update. "Fight through the Blood Grove, experience the horror of the Ashen Waste and climb your way up through Darkvale to one of the Cult's largest strongholds. Along the way, you may forge an alliance and make a foe between the Order of Death's Vigil and Kymon's Chosen. For the intrepid and observant explorer, many secrets lie hidden along the way."

The latest build increases the level cap to 50, adds a bunch of new epic items, and works in various fixes, tweaks, and balance changes, all of which are memorialized in this changelog. It also brings the game closer to completion, which Bruno said remains on target for late this year.

"Coming up in the next few months we will release a yet unannounced 6th class, the new skill devotion system, legendary items and Act 4, in which you will face the final confrontation with the Aetherials and Chthonians," he wrote. "Thanks for sticking with us on this long journey!"

And a long journey it certainly has been: Grim Dawn was originally expected to come out sometime in 2011. It's available in three different editions at GrimDawn.com, or as an Early Access release on Steam, where it's currently 35 percent off as part of the ongoing Steam Summer Sale.

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A case for clean looking builds

Building PCs isn't particularly difficult. Where the real challenge comes in is when you try to tidy up the joint for a clean looking interior. Not only is it pleasing to the eye and easier to work in, a clean layout also promotes better airflow. Many of today's cases offer conveniences that can help you build a clutter-free system, including Lian Li's new PC-O8.

The PC-O8 is a dual-compartment aluminum enclosure that separates the power supply and storage drives from the main motherboard area. Whereas most cases allow you to hide cables behind the motherboard tray where they sit squished between the back panel, that area in the PC-O8 is an entirely separate compartment dubbed Zone 2. Zone 1 is on the flip side and is where the motherboard sits.

Rubber lined cable cutouts along the interior allow users to snake cables from the PSU and storage drive to the motherboard and PCI/PCI-E components. There's still a bit of cable management that will be required for a clean looking build, but one thing users shouldn't lack is space.

Zone 1 can also house a 240mm radiator for liquid cooling setups, or you can plop a 360mm radiator in Zone 2's front intake.

Other features include edge-to-edge side panel windows, tool-less installation, slide-in dust filters, clamps for holding cables, and a top I/O panel with four USB 3.0 ports and HD audio connections.

Ready for the deal killer? Lian Li's pricing the PC-O8 at $395. If you don't mind dropping that kind of cash on a computer case, you'll be able to bring one home at the end of this month from Micro Center.

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YouTube is launching a new website dedicated to livestreamed and on-demand gaming content called—brace yourselves—YouTube Gaming. The site will have dedicated pages for more than 25,000 games, "from Asteroids to Zelda," as well as channels featuring content created by both game publishers and the YouTube community.

As livestreams will be "front and center" on the new site, YouTube plans to launch "an improved live experience that makes it simpler to broadcast your gameplay to YouTube," Product Manager Alan Joyce wrote in a blog post. "On top of existing features like high frame rate streaming at 60fps, DVR, and automatically converting your stream into a YouTube video, we re redesigning our system so that you no longer need to schedule a live event ahead of time. We re also creating [a] single link you can share for all your streams."

YouTube Gaming users will be able to add games on the site to their virtual collection, and channel subscriptions will provide notifications whenever a new livestream begins. "And when you want something specific, you can search with confidence, knowing that typing 'call' will show you 'Call of Duty' and not 'Call Me Maybe'," Joyce added.

YouTube Gaming was initially hinted at back in March, when an anonymous source said the company was preparing to relaunch YouTube Live following its failure to acquire Twitch, which eventually ended up in the hands of Amazon, in 2014. It's expected to go live sometime this summer, and until it does you can sign up to be notified of future happenings at Gaming.YouTube.com. I would also recommend you take a moment to enjoy this tweet from Twitch, welcoming YouTube Gaming to the scene. Burn.