Maps are brilliant. Turning complex landscapes into a flat series of sharp lines and abstract symbols is an art, and I’ve come to love poring over a good atlas as much as slapping together a fictional world map of my own. David King’s free map-maker Tiny Islands is a delightful little toy for penning your own coastline, using simple puzzling to help build a rustic island chain with maximum efficiency.

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Having weapons is cool and all and most of them deal more damage than the science weapons, but The Outer Worlds has some unique gadgets and gizmos that are worth seeking out. They’re the most bizarre items, capable of shrinking foes, or making them fight each other.

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We’ve all seen our fair share of amusing hardware names over the years, but Corsair’s Nightsword RGB mouse is quite possibly the best one yet. I just love it, particularly because there’s nothing remotely sword-like about it at all. There is, I’ll admit, a reasonably fine point on the end of its two main clicker buttons, but the patterned, soft-touch chassis and grippy left-facing thumb wing make it look and feel distinctly beetle-like to my eyes, especially when you catch a glimpse of its glowing hexagon-encrusted eyes down the front. A Nightscarab, perhaps?

Still, regardless of whether you fall on the blade or beetle side of this frankly ridiculous fence, both metaphors fall apart when you turn the Nightsword over and flip open its black, plastic belly. For inside are six small recesses for six tiny weights, allowing you to beef up the weight of the Nightsword from 119g to a chunky 141g. Yep, this is definitely a gaming mouse, all right. But is it worthy of joining our best gaming mouse rankings? Here’s wot I think.

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If Rainbow Six Siege‘s next Season leaked last week, then Ubisoft tipped the whole bucket right over last night. Shifting Tides was officially announced during the Pro League Finals in Tokyo, bringing two Operators into the special forces deathmatch. Hit the Siege test server later today to try next season’s new gunslingers, devastating new rifle, physics-breaking toys and a reworked Theme Park.

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The Arma series has a bit of a double identity. On one hand, you’ve got a hard-as-nails military sim shooter, pitting the fallibility of human senses up against a world populated by laser-accurate AI. On the other hand, you’ve got the ultra-moddable sandbox that spawned DayZ and (in turn) the battle royale genre as we know it. The Apelegs are connected to the Arma bone, apparently.

Arma 3, with its Steam Workshop integration and flexible tools has given players the means to create whole new worlds of conflict. With Bohemia Interactive finally focusing on future games, leaving the game in its player’s hands, here’s some of the biggest and best mods that Arma 3‘s community are field testing today.

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Now that our console cousins are traipsing all over Death Stranding, the mystery of what it even is has lifted: it’s mostly a game about having a nice hike, trying to keep your balance and not to stack it down a hill because of your comically large backpack. I’m well up for a careful walk. The PC release of the first game from Hideo Kojima’s now-independent Kojima Productions is due to follow in summer 2020, and publishers 505 Games on Friday solved the mystery of whether it’d be another of those there Epic exclusives: no, it will not.

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Roblox has a lot of ways to show off creativity, but there are occasions where promotional items can be redeemed in-game for players to use. It’s not immediately obvious how to redeem them, or indeed how to equip them once they’ve been redeemed.

Don’t worry, we’ll get you up to speed with how to deck out your avatar with all the items obtained from Roblox codes, which now include the brand new promo item that has been released as of November 2019.

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The first proper obstacle in amnesiac police RPG Disco Elysium, if you don t count your ceiling fan, is a small child who has taken a lot of speed. He stands outside your hotel, chucking stones at your corpse. Your case s corpse. The one you need to investigate. This won t do.

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If you search “Agatha Christie hidden object game” you can find these, available to buy apparently legitimately, from a few places. Most of them have their own slightly shady launcher.

The premise is that you, playing as a version of fussy detective Hercule Poirot who looks like if someone drew David Suchet on a thumb, play through his most famous mysteries, but in hidden object form. You can do Death On The Nile, Murder On The Orient Express, Peril At End House. Fill yer murder boots. Enjoy the stretched images, because the games weren’t made for modern aspect ratios. Honestly, I love them. Although I sort of want to call them shovelware, even though they’re not exactly that.

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Sundays are for relaxing into your week off, potentially with a huge RPG or three. I’ll be busy playing cowboy, space cowboy or detective, but there’s always room to read the best writing about videogames from the past week.

For Vice, Matthew Gault wrote about how Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare blurs distinctions between the wars it’s based on, rewriting history for the benefit of people who can’t countenance their country being in the wrong.

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