The graphics launches have come thick and fast this year. What with GTXs and then the surprise Titan X from Nvidia, and AMD’s Polaris chips, there’s little chance of keeping up with the official embargo calendar. So think of this as part two of my leisurely stroll through the new GPU landscape. Last time around, it was the mighty Nvidia Geforce GTX 1080, which suddenly looks a lot less mighty thanks to the arrival of the aforementioned Titan X. This week, it’s the turn of Nvidia’s new mid-range contender, the GTX 1060. As before, I shall be spurning objectivity, benchmarks and frame-rate counters for a what-does-it-actually-feel-like approach. And yes, AMD coverage will follow in the fullness of time. Patience, Iago!

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The first ever world champions of Rocket League have been crowned after winning the grand finals of the Championship Series last weekend in Hollywood, taking home 27,000. The winning team, iBuyPower Cosmic, beat their European rivals Flipesid3 Tactics in the final, winning a best-of-seven series of games 4-2, among some very awkward celebrations. Meanwhile, the favourites to win the tournament had been thrown out on the first day.

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Reigns [official site] is a game of decision-making and courtly governance that was described by Adam as Crusader Kings meets Tinder. You get presented with card after card of choices and have to swipe left or right (or in our case, click) in order to say yes or no to your courtiers requests. It s also out today. I ve just played 20 minutes of it. One of my kings was abandoned to rule over a kingdom of pigeons, another was slaughtered and thrown to the dogs by the merchant class, and another went mad, kicked a dog and started hearing the Devil. It s good to be the king.

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Let me tell you about one of my favourite levels. It’s from a funny old game called Marathon Infinity, and it’s brilliant.

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Everybody stop what you’re doing. It s important. There’s this free game called Spaceplan, you see. Spaceplan will be the end of us all, just like Cookie Clicker devastated our forefathers, and Candy Box was the bane of their ancestors in turn. Spaceplan needs to be stopped. Now, before you click ‘read more’ I need to warn y– hey! Wait! You’re not ready! Don’t go in th–

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I know, you’re all off exploring the stars, but please don’t neglect the seas. ABZ [official site] is the most beautiful sight I’ve seen on my screen this year. I know it has its irritations – particularly, the controls leave my sense of tranquility battered and bruised – but nonetheless its explosion of undersea life and air of casual exploration pleases me enormously. I felt I should share some of the sights I saw with you. … [visit site to read more]

I am having a tremendously good time playing No Man’s Sky [official site], but I’m really getting annoyed by No Man’s Sky. Such is the dichotomy that’s central to this most peculiarly hyped of indie projects, that it is at once magnificent and mundane, breathtaking and benign. It is very much what everyone feared: a massive concept with no ideas to go in it. And yet it seems, from my first couple of days with the PS4 build, to be enough. I had to tear myself away to write this, what with a few quintillion stars I’ve still yet to explore.>

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Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.>

Every FPS with skills and characters is being caught up in the ineffectual backlash against MOBAs but heck, the idea’s hardly new. Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory from is a cracking class-o-XP-a-shooter and that came out 13 years ago. The first I remember enjoying, though, was Future vs. Fantasy [archived official site] for Quake in ’96, ’97.

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Much exciting Dota 2 [official site] occurred during the night, and now not only do we have our last eight teams left fighting at The International 2016, but we know two of the guaranteed top three finishers.

SPOILERS AND HEART-STOPPING COMEBACKS AHEAD!

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Time was I’d jump for joy at any Warhammer-related game announcement, but these days a fast-track to madness would be trying to name every 40K title that was released over the last couple of years. F’rinstance, this is my first time hearing of Eisenhorn: XENOS, a “fully 3D adventure game” based on the novel series of the same name by fondly-regarded ubiqui-scribe Dan Abnett. You play As Gregor Eisenhorn, one of the Empire of Man’s feared Inquisitors (Secret Judge Dredd but more so, basically) who has “agility, psychic powers and a selection of the Imperium s most iconic weaponry” on hand and is voiced by Kermodian chum Mark Strong.

All of which, you may note, reveals very little about what kind of game this actually is, so I gunned it up to try and find out. … [visit site to read more]