If you’ve been thinking about building a new gaming PC recently, chances are you’ve probably put it off due to ongoing price hikes, stock shortages or simply not knowing which bits you should actually buy – which is why this year’s Black Friday shopping bonanza might finally be the time to jump in and bag yourself a sack load of deals.

To help you make the most of this fabled ‘day o’ discounts’, which these days is more a ‘week o’ discounts’ confusingly, I’ve gathered everything you need to know right here, including what deals to look out for, where to shop and whether that shiny new peripheral you’ve got your eye on is actually as much of a deal as it makes out to be. To the Black Friday skirmish!

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I hardly ever revisit singleplayer games, so the fact that I’ve snuck all the way through Mark Of The Ninja two and a half times should tell you something. One and a half of those times actually involved just as much stabbing and shuriken tossing as sneaking, but shh.

I say this because Mark Of The Ninja: Remastered has slunk out of the shadows, boasting prettier visuals, snazzier sound, and the extra items and level from the Special Edition DLC. If this one passed you by, I’d implore you to snap it up. It’s free if you already own the DLC, and discounted to 4 for owners of the non-fancy version.

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Crucial’s SSD line-up is in a bit of a funny place right now. As you may well have seen from our Best gaming SSD rankings, their mid-tier MX500 SSD is currently cheaper than their entry-level BX300 SSD in practically all size categories above 120GB, and their latest BX500 SSD on test today only muddies the waters further.

You would think, given its name, that the BX500 would be both faster and more expensive than the BX300, but it turns out the opposite is true. With a sequential read speed of up to 540MB/s and a sequential write speed of up to 500MB/s, the BX500’s top speeds are actually 10-15MB/s behind the BX300’s, which are rated up to 555MB/s read and 510MB/s write. The upside is that the BX500 is much cheaper, with prices for the smallest 120GB model starting at a mere 24 / $29 compared to the BX300’s 38 / $35. Is it a worthwhile trade-off? Let’s find out.

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Creaks has the look of an Amanita puzzler, with its lushly detailed, painterly subterranean world of strange monsters, but the studio say it’s a departure from their usual point-and-click style. Looking at the teaser trailer below, I can see why – there’s a more rigid, tactile kind of puzzling going on here. The mechanical kind with pressure plates, switches, doors and ladders as standard. Developed by a new team within the studio, there’s no release date for Creaks yet, but Amanita reckon it’ll be making its first delve into the underground next year. Take your first peek below.

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I’ve been doing a lot of tinkering recently. Endless iterations of death-dealing drones, flying factories, huge robotic worms and automated weapon platforms – I’ve lost count of all my experiments in destruction. Nimbatus drone editor is a complex, liberating tool where patient engineers can craft a bewildering array of exotic, inventive machines. Then a giant snake blows them up.

When my massive artillery drone – the better part of an hour of work – was smashed to bits in less than a minute, I was less than chuffed. It was bristling with missile launchers and surrounded by shields, but it got stuck on a barely-visible piece of scenery and then blown up by the aforementioned scaley menace, who, it turns out, is invincible. I ve become well acquainted with these setbacks, watching my glorious drones suffer inglorious ends, but I keep finding myself back in the workshop, slapping on new components and trying to figure out how the heck logic gates work. (more…)

The Ancient Greek world in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is honestly a colossally sized place. Set during the conflict between Athens and Sparta, there are a fair few returning features, such as sailing, but it also retains a fair few of the the big changes that were brought with Assassin’s Creed Origins. There’s plenty of new features as well, like romancing NPCs and dialogue choices. In this collection of guides, we will cover the basics of combat, which gameplay mode to choose, the multiple side quests, skills and sailing explained, and dealing with the mercenaries.

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Combat has definitely changed in drastic ways and while Assassin’s Creed Odyssey isn’t all that different to Assassin’s Creed Origins, there are certainly some techniques that you need to get a good grasp of to succeed. Parrying attacks from opponents requires sufficient timing, and knowing when to dodge instead can be the difference between victory and defeat. In this guide, there are tips for combat basics, as well as explain how gear in your inventory works.

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The art of seduction in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is significantly easier than that of real life, thanks to the Ancient Greeks’s obsession with pleasing the gods with their fornication, and the fact that both Alexios and Kassandra are just utterly charming people. None of these tips would work in real life, after all, several millennia have passed since the time of the Ancient Greeks, but in our guide to romancing the NPCs of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, I will suggest what you need to say and do in order to seduce the many characters that are open to seduction. That is, if you play your cards right.

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After finding a very important person in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, you are told of a place you need to visit. Tucked away and hidden from plain sight, there’s one other big thing that is just waiting to be discovered: Atlantis. Yes, that Atlantis. You can actually explore the fabled lost city and it is quite a striking place full of technology from the ancient civilisation. Accessing it is only the beginning though, as this part of your odyssey will ask you to defeat legendary monsters of Greek mythology, as well as discovering the truth behind Atlantis’s creation. So this guide will go over how to get into Atlantis, as well as give tips on how to kill the legendary monsters guarding certain artefacts you need to unlock the secrets within.

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The ancient Grecian world of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is vast and full of things to do. While you could ignore the side quests completely, there are some valuable rewards that can be obtained from pitching in and helping your fellow humans. Some deserve your help more than others, as there’s a surprising amount of lying from each of the quest givers, while some quests have long-standing This guide will take you through each of the side quests in the game and show you how to complete them.

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