Earlier this week, I asked you what’s your favourite gaming mouse? and you answered that call in your droves. Thank you! There were a lot of votes to tally, but having counted them all up I now come to you with another question. Five mice have emerged as your runaway favourites, but which one is truly the bestest best gaming mouse of all? Vote now.
When I told a friend of mine that I was reviewing the latest entry in Gust s long-running Atelier series, she remarked, wait, which one of those fanservice-y JRPG games is that? While I did assuage her fears that it was not, in fact, the boob game (that would be Senran Kagura), I can t exactly fault her for her confusion.
Atelier first came to Europe and North America along with a wave of other niche-leaning JRPG series, like Ar Tonelico and The Legend of Heroes, at the tail end of the PS2 era. But while I embarked on many melodramatic adventures starring amnesiac teenagers in preposterous outfits at the time, I never gave the Atelier series the time of day. Now, however, with Atelier Ryza kicking off a fresh trilogy in the franchise, I ve finally taken the chance to delve into its alchemical mysteries, and I ve found them far more alluring than expected.
After a two-year sentence, Prison Architect‘s Psych Ward DLC is out on PC, Mac and Linux today. The game’s first DLC pack came out on console back in 2017, before Paradox picked up Prison Architect and handed it over to current developers Double Eleven. Psych Ward brings a bit of medical mayhem to your prison, letting you build entire wings of unpredictable, mentally unstable inmates. The upgraded Warden Edition of Psych Ward even comes with some free goodies for PC players who’ve waited years to run their own virtual Arkham.
Wow, we’re really playing with fire here, huh guys.
The Samsung CRG9 is easily the most preposterous gaming monitor I’ve ever laid eyes on. It’s not the sheer size of it that boggles the mind. Oh no. A diagonal of 49in and an aspect ratio of 32:9 is nothing after last year’s equally large and equally wide CHG90 monitor. It’s the resolution of the damn thing, which stands at a mad 5120×1440. That’s the same amount of screen real estate as two normal 27in 2560×1440 monitors, which has been pretty much my dream setup since, well, forever. I like the single 4K Dell U2718Q monitor I normally have on my desk, I really do. But I’d swap it for two 1440p monitors in a heartbeat.
I love having two screens. It gives me all the space I need for having my emails open and all the different browser tabs I’m using, and there’s still room leftover for other things like iTunes or Spotify or my trusty Calculator on my desktop without it feeling too crowded. Is the Samsung CRG9 better than having two separate monitors, though? Or does bunging them both together actually make it less practical in the long run? Here’s wot I think.
Pearl Abyss s recently announced single- and multiplayer blended RPG Crimson Desert started life as a prequel to their similarly named MMO Black Desert Online. Since then, though, it s shimmered, mirage-like, into its own IP, still linked to the preexisting world, but more nebulously. Its lore connection isn t the only thing that remains indistinct on the horizon, but I spoke with lead producer Jason Jung to get a better look after the game s announcement at G Star in Korea.
Xbox have been doing rather well with accessibility lately. But as well-considered as things like the Adaptive Controller (and Logitech’s recently-launched suite of plug-in pads for the thing) are, getting into the game is only half the fight. This week, they released a set of accessibility guidelines which Microsoft say they formed “in partnership with industry experts and members of the gaming and disability community.
Dense with advice on everything from text display and UI navigation to input, the new resource aims to finish that fight getting game creators to consider all players, regardless of physical or cognitive capability, at all stages of development.
There’s a ticker at the top of Creators.TF project website. “0762 days since the last major update”, it reads, with the aim of inspiring people to join a homebrewed Team Fortress 2 update campaign. Someone has to, they reason.
Long-time Valve employee Greg Coomer has told Valve News Network host Tyler McVicker that “hardly anyone” is working on it, and they’re “just going to try and not shut it down or anything”. This isn’t surprising, but it’s still sad to see such stark confirmation. I’m glad to hear the community has something brewing under their many hats.
Frontier Developments have detailed the first of the promised Elite Dangerous patches focused on fixing bugs, and announced that a short public beta test of it will start next week. The sandbox space sim has accumulated a fair few bugs over the years, with some affecting the game for literal years, and Frontier are finally taking them seriously. They’ve put content updates on hold for a while and plan to focus the next few updates on fixing bugs before they get back to newness and add the delayed Fleet Carrier ship class.
This week’s Fortnite update is much like any other. A few bug fixes here, some rebalances there, clean the blood off the grass for another night’s mass-murder. But one of patch 11.20’s least noticeable updates may, in fact, be its most important. Epic Games have added DirectX 12 support to their massive battle royale, laying the groundwork for future graphical and technical flourishes while providing a nice little performance boost for players with the power to support it.
Oh, hey, and they brought back patch notes while they’re at it.
Local multiplayer’s always been a strange fit for PC. Desktops, shockingly, live on desks, often in cramped corners with sole-occupant seating. It’s rare indeed to find a PC setup with room for a sofa. Nevertheless, there are some absolute bangers on Steam, their tantalising multiplayer offerings locked away for those rare nights you can squeeze three mates into a bedroom.
Enter Steam Remote Play Together, a nifty piece of streaming tech that lets your pals join you on the sofa through the magic of the internet. They can even play through their phones. It’s out now, and there’s a great big sale on some of the best games to try it out with.