I love a great 1920×1080 gaming monitor as much as the next person, but personally, I’ve always been more of a 2560×1440 kinda gal. The problem is, my current best gaming monitor recommendation for 1440p is the increasingly scarce MSI Optix MPG27CQ, and I’ve been desperately trying to find a replacement for it all year. BenQ’s EX3203R came close, but was let down by its pants HDR, while AOC’s Agon AG322QC4 had good HDR but slightly underwhelming colour accuracy. I also liked AOC’s Agon AG273QCG, but for some reason AOC put a horrible grainy finish on its curved TN panel, which ending spoiling the whole thing.

Finally, though, I think my hunt has come to an end with AOC’s Agon AG273QX. This is the flat AMD FreeSync 2 HDR sibling of the curved, Nvidia G-Sync AG273QCG I just mentioned, and honestly, I feel like Christmas has come early. Not only does this 165Hz VA monitor have excellent colour accuracy, but there’s no grain, its HDR is pretty good and it plays nice with Nvidia graphics cards as well. What more could I possibly want?

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If you’ve not played The Wolf Among Us and so don’t quite get why folks are excited about last night’s news that the sequel is back in development, good news: you can now get the original for free. It’s the latest freebie offered by the Epic Games Store to overcome animosity, and it’s a good’un. We declared Telltale’s episodic urban fairytale detective story the best adventure of 2014, you know.

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It’s a grim old world out there this morning, but do not fear, intrepid deals hunters, for your ever faithful deals herald is here to help guide you through these oh so troubled times. On the game front today it’s all mince pies and festive cheer with loads of Christmas themed sales going on, while on the hardware side it’s all a bit, well, sack of coal-like. There are a couple of decent deals to be found here and there, but with Black Friday and Cyber Monday having already ripped a giant hole in everyone’s stockings this year, it’s all a bit leftover carrots and half-drunk glasses of sherry right now. Still, if you’re looking for a bit of virtual escapism this weekend (and by golly don’t we need it), your deals herald has got you covered, because there are more game deals than I can count. Here are all the best PC gaming deals going on this week.

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Like all the WWI grand strategy titles that came before it, Strategic Command: World War I isn’t awfully good at pathos. When a flurry of enemy assaults reduces one of your infantry corps from 10 to 3 in a single turn, your first thought is rarely That’s another 20,000 families who won’t be seeing their loved ones again . It’s generally Ouch. But it could have been worse. At least the hex is still mine. I’ll reinforce or replace the poor battered blighters next turn . One day a game in this field will dare to break ranks. Tucked amongst the battle reports glibly posted at the close of a turn will be tiny text Mills bombs like Your old chauffeur, Nobbs, perished at Passchendaele and Your son, David, was decapitated by machine gun fire on the first day of the Battle of the Somme . (more…)

The 25 pictures in a cluster foxer are arranged in 5 discretely/discreetly themed clusters. Pictures in a particular cluster must be cardinally contiguous to be valid. For example, A1, B1, C1, D1, D2 is a possible cluster, unlike A2, B2, C2, D2, E3. To fully defox today s enlargeable puzzle identify the themes and constituent images of all five clusters. (more…)

I like to think I’m not overly excited by shiny new technology but I must confess I am excited to see what seven years of technical progress will do for the skull-cracking, gut-unspooling, and kidney-tossing foolishness of Surgeon Simulator. Developers Bossa Studios announced Surgeon Simulator 2 last night at The Game Awards and I find myself idly daydreaming about just how wonderful and awful its wacky physics-simulated surgeries might be. Bossa haven’t said much about what’s actually new here but you need to let me dream. It does seem to be expanding the cooperative multiplayer, at least.

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Usually while playing a game for review, if a particular feeling or opinion grows large enough, I snip it off at the stem like a ripe courgette, and chuck it into the back of my head for safekeeping. As I continue, part of my brain keeps rifling through the growing pile of observation-veg, noting which ones stay fresh even as I see more of the garden, and which, though they looked good at first, turn out to be all full of bad-idea slugs. By the time I ve quit to desktop and it s time to write, I ve hopefully chucked out all the manky ones, and ended up with a crop of impressions worth structuring a review around.

That s the theory, anyway. In the case of Frog Detective 2: The Case of the Invisible Wizard, however, none of this happened. I simply booted up and played and, after about an hour, I finished. And what was stacked up in the cerebral pantry when I was done? Nothing but a frog with a jumper and a pleasantly vacant smile, offering me a perfectly formed, mayor s-rosette-winning beauty> of a courgette. And on the courgette, in pleasantly ropey handwriting, was written Frog Detective 2 is a lovely game. I m the Detective! .

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Remedy’s spooky-ooky sci-fi shooter Control last night added the promised Expeditions mode, launched in the middle of The Game Awards, sending Jesse to fight through challenging combat arenas. That’s the kind of trouble you’ll get into when you go touching a cursed magical jukebox. If you want more spooky places to explore, a new way to get loot, and a whole lot of new violence, this is for you. If you want more story, you’ll need to wait for the paid story expansions to start rolling. Remedy also announced that the first of those is coming on March 26th.

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Mech love, not war. That is the lesson we must learn from the futuristic prophecies of the MechWarrior games. Yes, it is very noble to slam your big steel shoes upon a separatist s bedroom, and to laser him in the head. But would it not bring greater valour, greater unity, greater enlightenment, if those same 65-ton brogues were used to dance!

No. Here is a list of the 9 stompiest mechs in PC games. The heaviest, most murderous machines we know and trust with our frail human bods. But are they are all good at squashing?

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I have a lot of clicky little games on my phone, and one of them is called Globesweeper, which I got after John (RPS in peace) raved about it at some length. It’s Minesweeper, right, but instead of squares there are hexagons, which tessellate into a 3D sphere. It is very good, and after a few games to get my eye in, I can play it on total autopilot, phased out and thinking about other things.

Now we have a sequel, in the form of Globesweeper: Hex Puzzler. It is more difficult. There’s no autopilot here. Indeed, to play it, I had to imagine I was some sort of a genius spy science wizard. A cross between Bond and M, but like, not one of the rubbish Bonds. Timothy Dalton in License To Kill. Corr, he was a savage, wunee? Oh, and a wizard. I dunno, Gandalf? [pls try harder at wizards Alice – Ed]> Anyway, when I played Hex Puzzler, I was Jams Bront, the ultracompetent spy who has a phD and also a flowing white beard.

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