Steam’s Autumn Sale has begun, and slashed prices litter the ground like so many soggy fallen leaves. It’s sales season from now until the middle of January, and our wallets are under siege. RPS is here to help pick out the best of the bunch, and without leaving your bank account completely> pillaged. You can find the official list of games on sale here, ranked by how well they’re selling. There’ll be more picks to come later, but for now, I’ve got a handful of personal recommendations for you all below, plus some tips on where to look outside of Steam.

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The next expansion for Europa Universalis 4 is taking the grand strategy game into a particularly high-stakes part of history. Golden Century is set to expand on the naval aspect of the game, building on the Spanish Reconquista and a broad focus on the Iberian peninsula. Where there’s mountains of stolen Aztec gold, there’s opportunity, and the chance to tussle with or even play as entire pirate nations. You’ve got until December 11th to whittle your perfect peg-leg or pick out the perfect plumage for your Spanish helm. The announcement trailer shines below.

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I will always be a sucker for a stylish, combo-heavy platform brawler, and Bladed Fury is reminding me pleasantly of Vanillaware’s Muramasa on the Wii and Vita. Set in ancient mythological China, a princess attempts to clear her name against accusations of murder by stabbing a lot of people, apparently. In amongst its lushly drawn human villains there’s demons and skellingtons to be battered, or apparently shot with an ancient Chinese anti-tank cannon. NEXT Studio’s hack n’ slasher is due out next month on December 18th – take a peek at the very swish trailer below.

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Black Friday monitor deals have been pretty scarce over in the US these past couple of days, but luckily most retailers seem to have got their act together now, meaning more sweet Black Friday discounts for all involved. Now freshly updated with more deals than ever, here are all the bestest best Black Friday deals on today’s bestest [cms-block]s.

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Whether you appreciated its fresh approach or loathed the concepts behind The Bard’s Tale 4, it’s hard to deny that the revival of the ancient RPG series needed a few more months in the oven. Today’s big ol’ patch, which developers inXile are calling the Second Sight Update, smooths over some of the bigger cracks in its pseudo-old-school facade. For the good of everyone, you can now save the game anywhere, but those wanting a more uncompromising retro experience can enable grid-based movement and even recruit the original six pre-made Bard’s Tale heroes.

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For England, James? No, for XP. 2000 XP, to be precise. That s how much Sean Bean s life is worth in the first of Hitman 2 s Elusive Targets. These are timed contracts that give you one shot at killing a special guest character – in this case, everyone s favourite Yorkshire thespian (okay, it s a toss up between Bean and fellow GoldenEye alumni Judi Dench).

Bean, of course, is famous for dying horribly in every film and show he s in (who could forget when Black Beauty kicked his face clean off?) and so it s a great opportunity to join the ever-growing club of Bean s executioners. The one and done approach makes it nerve wracking to document these runs in video form, but here s how I got on (more…)

Apart from a couple of good Amazon Black Friday deal of the day offers, it’s been pretty slim pickings on Black Friday SSD deals this year, both in the UK and the US. That may well change over the next couple of days as retailers start to ramp up their deals and discounts frenzy, but right now you’re looking at the same old drives for roughly the same old prices. But fear not, would-be storage hunters, because your deals herald is poised and ready to bring you the very best Black Friday SSD deals the internet has to offer.

So, if you’ve been looking for some tasty discounts on today’s [cms-block]s, this is the page for you. Whether you’re looking to jump start your PC with a fancy new drive, or have decided to finally ditch your old HDD for something a bit nippier, these are the best Black Friday SSD deals available right now.

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Robert Yang has whipped out his digital loofah to scrub, exfoliate, and polish Rinse And Repeat, his 2015 game about scrubbing the hunky stud you’re crushing on in the gym showers. Rinse And Repeat HD is updated with new graphical fanciness and gamepad support (though moving a mouse still seems a more fitting motion for a sponging). And yep, it’s still fascinating, still about returning to the digital shower following a real-time daily schedule of gym classes with names like ‘Pain Yoga’ and ‘Combat Pilates’, still as thought-provoking as it is funny.

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Divinity: Original Sin 2 is undoubtedly one of the best RPGs of the past two years running, but developers Larian still have some plans for it. Today they rolled out The Prison Of Shadows, a new campaign, based on Ulisses Spiele’s popular German pen-and-paper setting The Dark Eye to be played with friends in D:OS2’s tabletop-inspired Game Master mode. This also gave the studio an excuse to get into costume and ham it up in the oddly adorable live-action trailer below. They streamed the campaign debut live on Twitch, and we’ve embedded that below too.

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Obviously, obviously>, Human: Fall Flat is primed for multiplayer. It s a knockabout physics game in which you play as a wobbly non-Newtonian man. He s ungainly and awkward to control and, for heck s sake, Gang Beasts showed how funny that combination is when several players get together.

Yet developer Tomas Sakalauskas never really saw his game like that. Human Fall Flat was meant to be a singleplayer physics-based puzzle game, a meeting of Portal and Limbo. And besides, he was pretty sure that online multiplayer was impossible. But it s what players asked for, so what could he do?

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