When the WD Blue SN500 came out last year, it went straight into my best gaming SSD list thanks to its low price and great read and write speeds. It was the perfect SSD for those on a budget, but the one thing it lacked was a cheap 1TB model. Thankfully, WD have rectified this for the latest version of its budget-friendly gaming SSD, the Blue SN550.

Available in 250GB, 500GB and 1TB sizes, the Blue SN550 is even better than its predecessor, improving on its already nippy random write speeds and strengthening its ability to deal with heavy workloads. It’s such good value, in fact, that you’re probably better off buying this than literally every other SSD on the planet right now – including cheap SATA drives. Here’s wot I think.

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Matt and Nate have been playing Ancient Enemy, a singleplayer card battler that looks a lot like a murderous version of Majhong, with a dash of Slay The Spire. It’s made by Shadowhand developers Grey Alien Games, and also RPS founder Jim Rossignol, but let’s not talk about him.

Nate: “Uno, but the Banner Saga”. That’s my take. It’s a game about knocking cards off a big pile, based on which ones have numbers one lower or higher than the one you’re holding. But you’re a depressed, tired wizard.

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I booted up the preview build of Old World expecting a game much like something from the Civilization series. Probably not unreasonably, given that lead designer Soren Johnson is well known as having been co-designer on Civ III, and then lead designer on Civ IV, before starting his own studio, Mohawk Games, in 2013. And for sure, this game, which is about founding and growing an ancient empire, certainly looks the part. There’s hexes, and cities, and goats and crabs and the like scattered around the map, along with groups of spearmen towering above the trees.

But by the end of my first turn, I realised Old World was not a Civilization game at all, despite its looks. Which left a pretty major question: what was it? Scratching my head over the next hour, I saw elements of Crusader Kings-style “grand roleplaying”, resource-based cost/benefit calculations familiar from economic strategy games, and choice-based narrative elements familiar from interactive fiction games, all built onto a familiar 4X structure. In the end, after a few more hours of “one more turn” (it’s taken that much from Civ, at least), I could only conclude that Old World is entirely its own thing. And I like it very much.

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The lack of an SDK hasn’t stopped people from working on mods for Half-Life: Alyx. We’ve already had one this week that sort of lets you play the game without VR. Today, I discovered XenThug, a horde mode map that throws an ever-growing number of Half-Life enemies at your face. I’d be playing it right now if I weren’t writing this.

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Fancy a follow-up game to XCOM 2? Well you’re in luck, because there’s one coming out next Friday. 2K Games surprised everyone today by announcing a new spin-off, XCOM: Chimera Squad – it’s not a proper sequel, but a shorter standalone story set after the events of XCOM 2.

It’s bringing a bunch of new and improved features to the series – like letting you select your squad from 11 agents each with their own personalities, and an update to the turn-based combat to make encounters more “intense and unpredictable”.

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I’ve spent countless hours fiddling with Minecraft’s player-made shaders, trying to illuminate my builds with blinding lights to distract from their overall shonkiness. Mojang’s first step into making that sort of rendering official is coming this Thursday, bringing global illumination, shiny reflections, and more. There are a couple of requirements, however.

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Appalachia is still a lovely place to pitch up a tent, but after the bombs fell in Fallout 76, it’s not at its best. Still, you have to make do and rebuild where possible. Your handy tool for all your building needs is the “C.A.M.P.” or the “Construction and Assembly Mobile Platform” (henceforth abbreviated to CAMP).

This allows you to make your base of operations, as long as it’s on a flat surface and not anywhere near established buildings, and gives you the best place to make items, repair items, and even store all that junk you’ve picked up all around Appalachia. (more…)

Sometimes I worry that open world survival sims are romanticising the very real challenges involved in carving out a nomadic existence on a planet that’s stopped rotating by constructing elaborate wooden spider-cars and captaining them across vast deserts, forming clans and trading limited resources to take control of the world’s remaining oases.

When the world eventually does stop turning, I fear that this generation, spoon-fed by games that promised delightful escapism to survivalist playgrounds, will in fact be ill-equipped for the harsh reality of repeatedly punching cactuses until their pockets fill up with cactus flesh.

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“Your mileage may vary” is a term writers use a lot because it does a lot of heavy lifting. It can helpfully mean either “I liked it but I can see why others would not”, or exactly the inverse of that. I can’t help but feel, though, that it was a phrase invented for weirdo Renaissance painting point-and-click adventure The Procession To Calvary, because I think both things about this game simultaneously. (And yes, I know the phrase was clearly invented for cars. But you take my point, please do not darken my door with your pedantry).

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One of the more drastic changes in Fallout 76 is in it’s revamp of how perks work. Instead of choosing one permanent skill at every level, you get perk cards that can be equipped at any time, upgraded to increase their effectiveness, and even shared with your buddies at any point provided you have the Charisma. There are a ton of these in the game, some requiring an increase in rank to get more out of them. (more…)