Gaming laptops are a funny old business. As we discovered with the frankly ludicrous MSI GT75VR Titan Pro, phenomenal cosmic graphics power you can (sort of) take on the move often comes with an equally planetary-sized price attached to it, making such laptops seem like indulgent extravagances compared to an identically-priced desktop. Even entry-level gaming laptops like Dell’s Inspiron 15 7000 Gaming series demand at least 899 of your hard-earned pounds, and even then you’re only getting one of Nvidia’s GTX 1050 chips for your trouble. With that kind of money, you could buy yourself a fully-fledged GTX 1070 desktop that will see you through many more years of high quality gaming and> give you the flexibility to upgrade in the future.

It all begs the question about whether gaming laptops are really worth it? Indeed, when Alec reviewed the GTX 1050 Ti version of this very Dell Inspiron 15 7000 Gaming laptop earlier in the year (the 7567 edition), he concluded that its sub-par screen and bulky chassis weren’t quite up to snuff for its 1000 asking price. It also lacked a Thunderbolt 3 port, effectively hampering any potential upgrade work if you wanted to add a more powerful external GPU at a later date. Today, I’m going to see if Dell’s latest refresh of its Inspiron 15 7000 Gaming series – the 7577, to be precise – is any better.

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You’ve gotta fight, for your right, to… fight? Door number twelve is open.

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You may have witnessed us trying difficult mountain climbing game Getting Over It With Bennett Foddy. Last week Matt attempted to scale part of the mountain, clambering over rocks, girders, concrete pipes and wooden barrels using nothing but the game’s jerky sledgehammer and terrifying upper body strength. He did well. But Matt lacks a deeper comprehension of summits and the ascent thereof – a philosophical understanding I myself possess. So I decided to pick up where he left off. Come and watch me Getting Over Matt. (more…)

Oh the weather outside is frightful but the fire is so delightful, and since we’ve no place to go: buy games low! Buy games low! Buy games low! Which you can now do DRM-free on GOG, as the cyberstore today launched their big winter sale. To start, they’re giving Grim Fandango Remastered away for free. Free!

Normally at this point I’d chase everyone around the RPS treehouse until they picked out some games, but GOG have already come by with a big stick so you can see our recommendations on their site. Try to guess who picked which games. (more…)

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

I’ve long possessed a fondness for Bohemia Interactive’s military simulators, ever since Operation Flashpoint invaded my hard-drive back in 2001. But ArmA 3 is the first Bohemia game since OpFlash to successfully modernise that that initial concept, striking a pleasing balance between ambition, accessibility, and stability of play. (more…)

I want> to be the type of person who plays and enjoys Stationeers, the Space Station 13-inspired construction and management game from Day Z creator Dean Hall’s studio Rocketwerkz. Unfortunately, I am> the type of person who initially gets excited at the prospect of managing complex interlocking systems, then finds it all too much and scampers back to Overwatch.

That won’t stop me trying mind, as I’ll get the chance to when the game launches on Steam Early Access later tonight.

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Gorogoa feels like a sort of magic that might fall apart in the understanding. It’s a beautiful story in which you solve puzzles more by instinct than deduction, and their solutions feel as magical as the process. Its impossibly overlapping world weaves a delicate fiction that stretches beyond the boundaries of its central conceit. (more…)

The wonderful Studio Oleomingus last night launched A Museum of Dubious Splendors, their latest Borgesian blast of hot explore-o-fiction. It’s another fragment of their mythical game Somewhere and, like many of the others, is itself made of fragments of stories and fictional histories built around stories. In short: you get to read some nice short stories and look at lovely little rooms. Oleomingus are making some of the prettiest dang video games around. (more…)

We all know graphics card software can be a tad hateful at times, but AMD is (hopefully) about to make the lives of its Radeon Software users just a teensy bit better. Say hello to the all-new Radeon Software Adrenalin Edition.

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The Curse of Osiris expansion for Destiny 2 is a mixed bag. I enjoyed the two hour campaign and a brief waddle around the piddly new area, but it’s a meagre offering for the money you have to put down. It’s understandable that some players might want to give it a miss, which makes it all the worse that people who didn’t buy the expansion found that they no longer had access to certain endgame activities.

The devs have written a blog post where they apologise for excluding those players, and promise to fix their mistakes in a hotfix later today. Their solutions, however, aren’t likely to please everyone.

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