Bad hours, shady bosses. The gig economy’s tough enough as-is, without the risk of dropping a package off the side of a ten-mile-high balcony. Released today, Cloudpunk lets you traipse around a stunning voxel cityscape, making deliveries and solving mysteries like some sorta flying Deliveroo driver-turned-detective. Let’s just hope you’re getting a bonus for all this sleuthing.
When HTC first announced that their new Vive Cosmos headset had a modular faceplate design that would let you update it for “different VR needs in the future“, it wasn’t entirely clear what those needs would actually entail. Would it be the faceplate equivalent of their Vive Tracker doodad for bringing real-world objects in VR? Or would it somehow introduce eye-tracking like their Vive Pro Eye headset?
Finally, we have an answer in the recently released Vive Cosmos Elite and the upcoming Vive Cosmos Play. Fundamentally, both the Play and the Elite are exactly the same headset as the regular Cosmos. The only real difference is how their respective faceplates track your virtual movements. With the Elite, HTC have ditched the (relatively) hassle-free inside-out tracking of the standard Cosmos and opted for external SteamVR base station tracking instead. It’s effectively a newer incarnation of the original Vive and Vive Pro, and even comes with the old Vive wand controllers and SteamVR 1.0 base stations in the box if you buy it as a complete headset bundle. You can also buy the Elite faceplate separately if you’re an existing Cosmos owner, too, but is it really worth the upgrade when the Valve Index only costs a little bit more? The answer is: it’s complicated.
I know I won’t shut up about it, but Sea Of Thieves got cats for pets yesterday. And as if they weren’t brilliant enough, pirates are now welcoming these furry friends aboard their ships to remind them of their real-life kitties. For some players, the four-legged crewmates are a sort of memorial, too, naming their in-game cats after pets that have passed on, so they can sail with them on the seas forever. The image above is of one these newly immortalised cats. It belongs to Twitter user “Nanobreak“, and reminds them of a beloved pet from their childhood.
It is very hard for me not to think about XCOM: Chimera Squad as a warped and watered down version of XCOM proper. We’re still in the same universe, fighting many of the same enemies. We’re still alternating between squad-based missions and a boardgamey over-structure, researching new weapons and gadgets while unlocking new abilities for our troops. This is still, fundamentally, a game about devising well-coordinated attacks between increasingly fancy super-soldiers.
It’s also fundamentally very different, because now your enemy’s turns are all muddled up with yours. I’m still agonising over whether that makes it fundamentally worse.
If you’re into Arthurian myths, you might be interested in Pendragon. It’s an upcoming “narrative strategy game” about chatting and turn-based whacking from the creators of 80 Days and Heaven’s Vault. If you’re really> into Arthurian myths, you might want to take a stab at writing one.
Developers Inkle are after short, lightly-interactive campfire stories for their heroes to natter to each other. They’re paying £40 a pop for any that make it into the game.
As you’ve likely noticed on Discord or Zoom by now, some of your pals live in frustratingly noisy situations. Or if you’ve not noticed, maybe you’re the one that everyone else cusses out for all the doors slamming, keyboards clacking, washing machines rumbling, neighbours clunking, and bass pumping around you. Friends, be calm: technology is here to help us. Over the past fortnight, Discord and Nvidia have separately rolled out handy new tech to reduce background noise picked up by your microphone. Nvidia’s is particularly impressive. Really, I didn’t believe demonstrations of that there ‘Nvidia RTX Voice’ were real at first. Come see.
I frequent a Counter-Strike level design forum called Mapcore. There, a Dutch teenager who goes by “RD” (“RealDespair”) has long claimed to have been the original author of fy_iceworld. His now defunct portfolio site went on a lengthy rant about it:
“Yes, you read it right. I am the creator of this unholy monster. When i created this map i had absolutely no idea how popular it would become. It is sad that there are many txt files in rotation from kids that claim to have made this map, but you have now stumbled upon the true author…”
Was RD actually responsible for making one of the most influential and popular game maps of all time? I began a forensic investigation to verify its authorship, digging through the ancient detritus of dead Geocities pages, Angelfire websites, and Romanian file servers. I even datamined the fy_iceworld file for clues. I now know what “fy_” actually meant, and it wasn’t “fight yard.” Originally, it wasn’t even called fy_iceworld either! But let’s start from the beginning.
The next time you come across a Radstag in Fallout 76, have a quick check of its name before you start pelting it with bullets. The Wastelanders update brought with it many new and wondrous things, and one of those was the Observant Radstag. These albino versions of Fallout’s radioactive deer are a bit different to their regular Radstag brothers and sisters – some say, if you save them, they’ll become your ally and help kill any enemies in your path. Others claim the animal took them to big stashes of loot in hollowed out trees.
Your gaming mouse is probably one of the most personal bits of kit you’ll ever buy for your PC, so replacing your favourite and best gaming mouse when it finally bites the dust can be right old chore sometimes, especially if it’s an old model you can’t buy anymore. The good news is that there are loads of great gaming mice around today that will (hopefully) fill that mouse-shaped hole in your life, and to help you in your quest to find your new best gaming mouse, I’ve put together this list of my top recommendations that you can buy right now.
Every gaming mouse on my best gaming mouse list has been tried and tested right here at RPS, and you’ll find everything here from the best cheap gaming mouse and the best ambidextrous gaming mice right up to my top wireless gaming mouse picks as well. I’ve also got gaming mice for different hand sizes, too, as some of us prefer lightweight mice to great big chunkers. Whether you’re looking for, I guarantee there’s a best gaming mouse pick waiting for you below.
I see you PC gamers looking longingly at your Nintendo Switch wishing it was a tiny, miniature gaming PC. I know I do, and that’s partly why I’m hopeful / excited / vaguely optimistic about Dell’s Alienware UFO doodad, which they unveiled earlier in the year. But while the UFO was just a ‘concept’ device, the mad folk over at GamePad Digital, or GPD, have actually gone and made a proper 8in handheld gaming laptop. Sure, the GPD Win Max looks like one of those jumbo Nokia Communicator phones from the mid-90s, but inside it packs one of Intel’s new 10th Gen Comet Lake CPUs, Intel’s Iris Plus graphics, 16GB of RAM, a 512GB SSD, an 8in display and the disembowelled remains of an Xbox 360 controller. It’s absolutely nutty, but I also kind of dig it.