In Noita, you can destroy every pixel. Walls, lakes of blood, rock mass, bodies, piles of gold, wooden piles, minecarts – if it s there, you can mess it up. But there s one place where you probably shouldn t do that.

The Holy Mountain is a moment of respite on your journey downwards in this very physical take on the dungeon-delver. It s somewhere where you can recoup your health, buy new wands and spells, and prepare yourself for the next area on your journey into the depths. But if this sanctified place should become damaged, you ve just angered the gods.

I d point out that angering the gods is probably one of the things that people don t like about the game, developer Petri Purho tells me. The problem, you see, is the worms. But there are many reasons why angering the gods exists in Noita, reasons which tap into the very bedrock of how the game works.

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The usually remote and mysterious Nate visited the RPS treehouse on Monday, and almost immediately work ground to a halt. Why? Because Nate challenged us with a question: what bits of modern technology could a person from the past figure out the workings of, just by observing and having a good think for a while? This immediately led to the counter-question “when and where in the past?”, which gobbled up another fifteen minutes. And then he asked how far back in history we, as modern people, would have to be sent before we could be confident of reaching the same understanding of all the technology that was around at the time. He asks a lot of questions, does Nate.

In terms of my own limits, I reckon most things invented after the late 1700s, when electricity and complex engines began creeping into play, would be beyond my capacity to intuit. Nate suggested his cut-off was around the mid-16th century, when most technology still worked via chunky mechanisms that human pattern recognition can decipher. Astrid initially suggested anything post-nuclear, but then climbed back as far as Nate, citing the barometer as a particular baffler. Matt thought a stone age knife would be beyond his ability to reproduce, slightly misunderstanding the exercise and dropping him to the bottom of the RPS post-apocalypse pecking order in the process (a knife>, Matt? A bit of knapped stone? Bloody hell. Don’t give Matt the rifle). All this of course led me to the inevitable PC games angle: which games have technology systems complex enough to confound new players who, let’s face it, might as well be time travellers?

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Now that players have had a few weeks to feel out the Set 2 changes, Ranked matchmaking returns to a Teamfight Tactics with patch 9.23. A new season brings a clean slate, resetting everyone’s ranks and bringing some significant changes to the way climbing the ranks works. More importantly: TFT added three adorable new Legends to its lineup with a banging new music video. Welcome to the battlefield, QiQi, Ossia and Melisma.

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Ahoy there, you salty sea dog! We ‘ear that ye want to be a filthy cutthroat pirate. All right, but you don’t become a pirate just by asking. You’ll ‘ave to play, the best pirate games! In each one, you’ll have to master the sword, the art of thievery, and the quest. What? That be treasure hunting, ye sea urchin!

So if ye want to prove yerself that yer pirate material, ‘ere be the ten best pirate games that we think are good trials. Aye, even being a pirate in space counts, because swashbucklin’ ain’t reserved for just the seven seas.

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Logitech’s G935 headset is quite possibly the most powerful gaming headset of all time. It’s so mighty, in fact, that I was able to push my keyboard to one side after I’d set it up, as its three rear-facing function buttons gave me all the tools I needed to control my entire PC from it. Okay, that’s maybe a slight exaggeration, but when said buttons can do everything from launching my favourite games, Alt-Tab-ing between different apps, perform macro commands, copy and paste and even change my mouse’s DPI speed, this is one gaming headset that really does feel like you’re ‘playing with power’.

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Update 5.2 hit Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds today, adding spike traps we can throw down to puncture tyres and overhauling a fair bit of the snowy map Vikendi. I can’t imagine I’ll often intelligently use a spike trap in an ambush, but you can be sure I’ll throw down every last one I see, just in the hope of ruining someone’s day. Probably my own when I immediately forgot about the trap and try to pull a three-point turn. And god help me if the laaads come across a cache of them. Long-overdue loot box changes start today too.

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The Tomb of Miktrull is one of my least favourite sections of Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. Mainly because I loath puzzles in these sorts of games. And if you’re here, I might wager I’m not alone in this regard. The good news is that this here Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order Tomb of Miktrull walkthrough will show you the fastest way to complete this Tomb, raise the Spire of Miktrull, and escape with your sanity intact.

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Once stalwart agents of counterterrorism, two of Rainbow Six Siege‘s elite operators have decided to ditch their day jobs for a week on the other side. From today through Monday the 25th, Hibana and Vigil are joining up with the crew of Netflix’s Money Heist for some crimson crime capers in Siege’s first crossover outside of loaning characters to other Ubisoft games. There’s no need to go nicking pennies to get in on the event, either. From Thursday through Monday the 25th, Rainbow Six Siege will be free to pick up and play, with a hefty discount for killers who want to keep it for good.

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If you’re anything like me, you absolutely hate environmental puzzle sections in adventure games – and the Tomb of Eilram in Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order is absolutely no exception. This infernal tomb has you manipulating air vents and using your newfound Force Push to force giant balls into the right sockets in order to escape… because puzzles. God, I hate puzzles. But the good news for you is that our Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order Tomb of Eilram walkthrough will walk you through how to complete and escape this place with ease.

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I’m a big fan of people who spend their time prodding AI into doing weird, interesting, and possibly even useful things. Seeds is an annual zine talking about just that, either in theory or practice. It’s a companion to Procjam, a low-pressure, week-long event where participants “make something that makes something”. Many of the submissions relate to what people got up to at Procjam, but Seeds is wider-ranging than that. This year’s crop includes further explorations of procedural dinosaurs, generating landscapes using crumpled up paper, and an AI art competition.

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