Not For Broadcast - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Lauren Morton)

I imagine that running the switchboards for a live television show is difficult but I must not have imagined hard enough because Not For Broadcast makes it look even more hectic. The silly dystopian setting of an alternate 1980s is made up of a bunch of fake live action news sequences that remind me of the full-motion game scenes of yore like Tim Curry in Red Alert 3.

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TEKKEN 7 - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Lauren Morton)

I’ll level with you. I don’t know a thing about Taekwondo and I know only slightly more things about fighting games. But I do know how health bars work in video games which is exactly what this particular martial arts match looks like. Even someone like me with no prior knowledge can track when to cheer, which is pretty neat.

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The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Imogen Beckhelling)

AGDQ is over for another year, leaving us with hundreds of hours of fantastic speedrunning VODs to keep us entertained for weeks. I’ve had a browse through some of the best (and also sat at home binging them because I love me a good speedrun), and found a few more essential runs that I’d be foolish not to point everyone to.

Before we get to that though, the real news: Awesome Games Done Quick 2020 raised $3,155,199.56 (about 2.3 million) for the Prevent Cancer Foundation!

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Rock, Paper, Shotgun - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Katharine Castle)

At the end of last year, you may have noticed I took quite a shine to the enormous Samsung CRG9 monitor. With its 49in screen and 5120×1440 resolution, it was an absolutely fantastic way to play Red Dead Redemption 2, as well as many of the other best ultrawide PC games available right now. Well, now AOC have one to rival it. Just like the CRG9, the Agon AG493UCX will have a 49in screen with a 5120×1440 resolution, as well as a 120Hz refresh rate and AMD FreeSync Premium Pro support (or FreeSync 2 HDR, for those of you that missed last week’s name change), but it won’t cost nearly as much as its Samsung rival.

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The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Alice Bell)

Corr, remember when we were all making fun of Henry Cavill’s wig? It seems only yesterday. And now we’re all humming that stupid song. Can’t get enough of that there The Witcher on Netflix. Recently, VidBud Astrid walked over and was like “We should have an analysis of the bathtubs in The Witcher TV show and The Witcher 3,” and for a moment it was like the grizzling clouds parted and the sun shone on Brighton again. We should> have that! And dammit, we shall.

The powerful memetic qualities of bathtub Geralt, originating from the opening cutscene of The Witcher 3, meant that a single screenshot ended up being referenced in episode five of the Netflix adaptation. But which bath is best? One must be, right? There must be a fair way that we can pit the two against one another, resulting in an ultimate champion. Well, at RPS we take baths and needless competition very seriously, so have come up with an exclusive and definitive rating for both bathtub Geralts.

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Disco Elysium - The Final Cut - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Lauren Morton)

Disco Elysium was by and far my own game of the year for 2019 and it made RPS’s list of best PC games of 2019 as well. Its gritty, ugly characters are memorable and its plot, despite quickly getting convoluted, is as hard to look away from as the latest original series from your TV subscription of choice. Rather than other text-heavy RPGs, though, lead writer Robert Kurvitz says that Twitter was what ZA/UM felt they were competing with for players’ attention.

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Rock, Paper, Shotgun - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Alice Bell)

You may recall that for some time now I have been quietly longing, lol, for The Longing, a “sad Tamagotchi” game where you, a small servant to a subterranean rock king, must hang about while he has a nap for 400 days. 400 real time days. This game takes over a year to finish. And it has multiple endings, which include reaching the surface, or just sitting in a sad, damp cave for the entire time.

This is, I suppose, technically a preview. The precise release date hasn’t been pinned down yet, but reviewing The Longing in a conventional way would be almost impossible in any case. Instead, I’m going to update you every month or so on my own progress in a diary. With the multiple endings in mind, our ultimate goal for this series will be… escape!

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Destiny 2 - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Imogen Beckhelling)

Bungie, Infinity Ward and Ubisoft are joining the list of developers donating money to help combat the bushfires devastating Australia. It’s been announced that Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare will be donating money from purchases of special “Outback Relief” packs, while Destiny 2 will get an exclusive t-shirt with profits going towards the country s firefighting efforts and animal rescue and conservation.

Ubisoft Australia aren’t creating incentives for players to donate however, instead they’ve simply donated $30,000 AUD (about 16,000) to the Australian Red Cross and Recovery Relief Fund.

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Rock, Paper, Shotgun - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Katharine Castle)

It’s been a busy 12 months in the race to become to next best graphics card, and 2020 doesn’t show any signs of it stopping, either. While we’ve had nearly all the best graphics cards we’re likely to see from Nvidia this generation, AMD are just getting started, and will be releasing their hotly anticipated 1080p best graphics card contender, the RX 5600 XT, next week.

Before that happens, though, these are my best graphics card recommendations for 1080p, 1440p and 4K gaming as things currently stand. For each category, you’ll find the best graphics card for playing games at a smooth 60fps on max settings at each resolution, followed by the best graphics card you should actually buy if you’d rather save a bit of money and aren’t that fussed about having the best graphics settings.

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Star Trekā„¢: Judgment Rites - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (John Walker)

The shock doesn’t wear off. Before you all departed for Christmas shore leave, I wrote about returning to the peculiarly named Star Trek: 25th Anniversary Edition, wherein I expressed the complete bizarreness that comes with hearing the original cast of the TV show reunited to voice, of all things, a point-and-click adventure game. Everything about that just seems so utterly anachronistic today, and yet in its June ’92 release it just made sense. It probably still made sense by November ’93 when the direct sequel, Judgment Rites, offered exactly same with prettier pictures.

It turns out, apart from the cancelled ’97 game Secret of Vulcan Fury, this was the last time the main cast were all together on one project. Which is kind of awesome, really. Kirk, Bones, and Spock, along with Scotty, Sulu, Chekov, and Uhura, all voiced by their proper actual actors (and Majel Barrett doing the computer this time!), in a bunch of new stories that feel like they could have been episodes of the original series. Hooray! I mean, with more idiosyncrasies than a conspicuously quirky people convention.

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