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

SSDs are now more affordable than ever before, making it a great time to upgrade your old hard disk drive and treat yourself to one of our best gaming SSD recommendations for 2020. Not only will it dramatically improve the speed of your gaming PC, but your games will load faster, too.

To help you find the best gaming SSD for your PC, I’ve put together this list of all the best SSDs I’ve tested here at RPS. Our best gaming SSD list covers a wide range of prices and form factors, and you’ll find everything here from the best NVMe gaming SSDs to the best SATA SSDs, as well as the best external SSD for when you want to take your games out and about or when you hop between different systems.

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Rock, Paper, Shotgun - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Sin Vega)

You have a game or two like this, in your mind somewhere. It lurks. You wouldn’t necessarily say it’s a particularly good game, or even your favourite. You might even forget it exists for long periods. But occasionally, perhaps twice a year, or every two or three years, you get an unaccountable craving to play it again.

That’s what A Valley Without Wind is to me.

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Rock, Paper, Shotgun - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Natalie Clayton)

The organisers behind China’s League Of Legends Pro League have put the tourney on indefinite hold. The recent coronavirus outbreak, which has so far claimed 56 lives and infected 2,000 people in China and beyond, has scuppered plans to kick off week 2 of the LPL on February 5th. Instead, the esports season has been given a time-out until this outbreak blows over, and digital sports can be played without risk of potentially deadly infection.

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Black Mesa - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Natalie Clayton)

Fifteen years. Five UK Prime Ministers. Both my entire High School and University runs combined. Through it all, Black Mesa has been there, churning away, promising that one day it’d be done. After eight years, it was. Sort of. Released a Xen-less mod, it would take another eight years for the developers behind the notorious Half-Life remake, Crowbar Collective, to finally be done with it. Posting on Steam earlier today, the team announced that a full, final version of Black Mesa is imminent – with a 1.0 preview due for public testing any day now.

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Rock, Paper, Shotgun - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Natalie Clayton)

You snooze you lose, Twitch. Activision Blizzard this week announced a multi-year deal with Google to stream future esports events solely through a plucky little website called YouTube. By nicking exclusive rights to broadcast big-hitters like the Overwatch and Call Of Duty Leagues, Hearthstone and such, Google hope to kick-start their struggling attempts to kickstart streaming on YouTube and topple Twitch’s reign over the medium.

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Rock, Paper, Shotgun - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Natalie Clayton)

I’m not really sure I “get” Mooncharmer. Released last month by Paws Menu’s Michael Berto and artist Joost Eggermont, Mooncharmer is a self-described “visual moment” – collectively an interactive diorama, a Bandcamp EP and (if you pay up) a collection of media “arranged musically”, Mooncharmer isn’t even really something you play. Leave the game running and it’ll chug along of its own accord, strolling and resetting at a steady pace.

What I am sure about, however, is that Mooncharmer is a delight. A lovely little lunar dance to enjoy for five fleeting minutes.

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Duelyst - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Natalie Clayton)

Card-shuffling strategy Duelyst is powering down next month. Such is the way of free online games, sadly. Bidding farewell to Duelyst in an announcement on Friday, developers Counterplay Games are “saddened to announce” that all servers will officially close on February 27th at 11pm (3pm PST). If you’ve ever wanted to give it a shot – and from the reception it got in the RPS treehouse, you really should – that’s four weeks to give Duelyst one last bash.

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Jan 26, 2020
Rock, Paper, Shotgun - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Matt Cox)

Sundays are for starting violin lessons. Seriously. You should all be very glad you don’t live near me. Here’s the best writing about videogames from the past week.

For Vice, Cameron Kunzelman took a look at a book where an academic tries to figure out what indie games are. In this confusing and ever-changing world, it is easy to forget that indie games are the ones about geese.

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Rock, Paper, Shotgun - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Alice O'Connor)

This week, Rocket League announced plans to stop supporting Mac and Linux versions, we learned Stardew Valley has sold so very many copies, Lunar New Year sales kicked off, and it looks like support for unionising the games industry is growing. Read on for more of the week’s PC gaming goings-on in our News Digest, and do also check out the Weekly Updates Update for some of the week’s big patches.

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Rock, Paper, Shotgun - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Natalie Clayton)

You could’ve just called it Season 12. Instead, I have to report that – after being pushed back another two weeks – Fortnite Battle Royale: Chapter 2: Season 2 will finally launch on February 20th. As they say, though, good things come to those who wait. Those extra two weeks of Season 1 will come with new Overtime Challenges, an unannounced two-week long limited event, and allow Epic a little more time to bring the game over to their brand new physics engine, Chaos. Should be a banger.

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