Certain moments in Resident Evil 2 are imbued with a specific kind of awful. Moments when calculated slaughter gets drowned under a tide of undead flesh, all thought of eradication consumed by escape. There’s this deep, prolonged pull of fear, punctured by sharp desperation. Moments when a dozen zombies and worse lumber between you and presumed safety, grabbing and biting and clawing as they drag you to the floor over and over again. It’s messy. It’s grim. It’s kind of brilliant.

(more…)

Gaming’s best dad, Tokyo mobster Kazuma Kiryu, will return to PC in Yakuza Kiwami in less than one month, and Sega have now confirmed that it’ll cost the same as Yakuza 0: a paltry 15. Today’s formal announcement of the February 19th release date follows yesterday’s not-so-subtle tease, and brings word of the open-world brawl-o-RPG’s price. 15! Bargain. 15 to wrestle baddies, give fatherly advice to everyone you meet, go bowling, whip your shirt and jacket off in one single gesture, become best frenemies with a suave wiry psycho, sing karaoke… absolute bargain. Steal of the century.

(more…)

The Samsung 970 Evo has been my best gaming SSD recommendation under 200 for quite some time now. By far the fastest and best value for money NVMe SSD you can buy right now, it’s comfortably seen off competition from the new WD Black SN750, the old WD Black and Adata’s XPG SX6000 Pro. But what happens when you take all that 970 Evo goodness and make it even better>? No, you don’t get the Samsung 970 Pro. You get the newly-released 970 Evo Plus. Because everything sounds better with a plus on the end.

(more…)

Monster Hunter: World is going big (well, wide) with its first major update of 2019. As of today, players will be able to make the most of their flashy, Ultrawide monitors as the update adds 21:9 support, a push-to-talk function, and various other features and bug fixes.

(more…)

Welcome to Soundbyte! A podcast mini-series that stimulates your ears to explore hot topics in the games industry. In this episode, we ll be taking a look at accessibility in gaming, and talking to the studios making specialist hardware, the people who use it, and the activists and advocates trying to do even more to bring gaming to those unable to put two hands on a keyboard or a gamepad. This time, I speak to Rocky Stoutenburgh and Zoran, two quadriplegic Twitch streamers about their disabilities, how they got started on Twitch, and the difficulties they face as disabled gamers.

(more…)

I like a good sneak and bop. Especially when that sneaking is cyberpunk-flavoured, and people shout at me if my bopping turns to killing. Disjunction is an upcoming “cyberpunk stealth action RPG” where precisely that happened in its free alpha demo. I was lured in by the trailer below, which asks “what if Hotline Miami had abilities” and answers with “slightly more tactical murders”.

(more…)

Your desktop box of infinite delights today is this insta-spaceship builder, part of the ShapeWright project, a web page into which you may insert any name/vile oath of your choice and be blessed with a one-of-a-kind starship in response.

While there’s obvious delight in trying to etablish whether The Ainsley Harriot somehow resembles the joyful celeb chef, or if The HMS Peggle sparks odes to joy in you, what I love best is watching the construction process. Huge chunks of ship slamming together, like some wonderful 3D jigsaw of a Chris Foss illustration.

(more…)

Fortnite’s seventh season has more challenges coming in the coming week, but there’s not a lot longer left to complete all the previous challenges. On top of that, we’ve also had challenges appear to coincide with the Ice Storm event now going on. So in order to grab all the emotes, costumes, and everything else for the latest Battle Pass, this guide hub will have all the details for both free and Battle Pass challenges, as well as any extra challenges introduced later on.

(more…)

With Mortal Kombat 11 lurking around the corner, there’s no better time to look back at the previous game: Mortal Kombat X. It came just a few years after the rebooted timeline shook the series in more ways than one, the events of Mortal Kombat (9) setting a whole new future in stone.

(more…)

Narrowly missing my games-of-the-year shortlist, Synthetik: Legion Rising was one of my more pleasant surprises of 2018. A sci-fi roguelike shooter with an unusual focus on semi-realistic weapon handling. A bit like Nuclear Throne by way of Vanquish, it’s loud, fast, hard and great in co-op. Now you can try it free, as developers FlowFire Games have intriguingly made their wave-survival expansion – Synthetik: Arena – free and standalone. The dungeons may be gone, but the frantic combat and fumbling to reload mid-firefight are unchanged. Grab it here on Steam, and see the trailer below.

(more…)