Phoenix occupies a special place in the Valorant characters roster. Armed with his Curveball flashes and damage-over-time abilities, he’s a spectacular agent for flushing enemies out of hiding and countering players who hold angles in wait for your attack. But as with all Valorant agents, there’s even more to him than just the surface detail – and our Valorant Phoenix guide will ensure you’re up to the challenge of using all four of his abilities as effectively as possible.

(more…)

If you want to claim the next three weeks of freebies on the Epic Games Store, you’ll first need to enable two-factor authentication on your account to strengthen its security. Two-factor authentication is easy to set up and use so it’s not a bother, though it is curious that they’re only requiring this until May 21st, not permanently. “We are making this change in an effort to encourage our players to take steps to strengthen their Epic account security,” Epic explain, not really explaining.

(more…)

“So how are you doing, Matt?” asks Brendy (RPS in peace). We’re foraging together, well out of earshot from the other survivors. “I mean outside the game”, he says. “How’s your shoulder? Is your collarbone healing OK?”. It’s been a while since we chatted, and I genuinely appreciate his concern. It’s a nice moment. I tell him I’m doing just fine, while simultaneously raising my sickle.

“Feels a bit weird to do this now, though” I said, as I brought it down on him.

Project Winter is a survival game about escaping a frozen wilderness, except really it’s about luring your friends into the wilderness so you can murder them. We played it nonstop for most of last weekend, and I have rarely laughed so hard at a videogame.

(more…)

I really wanted to write a Have You Played about The Movies, and then realised Graham had done one already, way back in 2015. (I’m really annoyed I didn’t get there first, but I was still in school in 2015.)

And, of course, Graham has also written one of these about the first Black & White, so I’m hoping this counts as Fresh New #Content. Black & White 2 was my introduction to the series, anyway. I was definitely too young to buy it myself, so I asked my mum to buy me a copy of it from WHSmith and pretend it was for her, not the 12 year old child standing next to her. A fool proof plan. (more…)

Unlike the Oculus Rift S, the Oculus Quest doesn’t technically need a PC in order to play VR games. Instead, it’s a standalone VR headset that you can play completely wire-free without having a great big gaming PC at your disposal. Naturally, this means it’s not quite as powerful as a PC-based headset, and the games you can play on it are limited to what’s available on Oculus’ dedicated Quest store. You’ve still got a lot of the best VR games in there, such as Beat Saber, Pistol Whip and Superhot VR, but they’re separate versions of the ones you can play on the Rift and Rift S. If you own Beat Saber on Steam or the Rift store, for example, that doesn’t mean you can play it on the Oculus Quest.

However, thanks to the recent beta release of Oculus Link, you can in fact use your Quest to play Oculus Rift games now, as well as every other type of PC VR game that was previously out of reach. You’ll need to sacrifice its wireless capabilities and plug it into your PC via a high-speed USB-C to USB-A cable in order to do so, but it definitely beats buying a whole new headset just to play the hot new VR game on Steam, for example, such as Half-Life: Alyx. Is it worth buying over the similarly-priced Oculus Rift S, though? Let’s find out.

(more…)

Drugs. Satan’s mustard. The devil’s garlic. Hummus from below. Whatever you call the good gravy that police hate, we can all agree that it’s incredibly fun to have a crazy drugs party, right? In fact, all this talk of drugs reminds me! Last night I found an entire bong’s worth of marijuana in a wheelie bin behind my local Tesco Express. Would you like a toke? Please have as much as you like, I’ve already doobied myself up to the rafters. I’m absolutely stuffed.

(more…)

Mohawk Games, the studio led by Civilization IV designer Soren Johnson, today announced an early access release date for Old World. Next Tuesday, May 5th is when we’ll get to try the historical 4X strategy game they’ve been working on since Offworld Trading Company. If you too first thought “Wait, is this not Amazon’s MMORPG?” then you too have confused Old World with New World. No, this is the game formerly known as 10 Crowns. And as our Nate found when he recently had a play, Old World is “not a Civilization game at all, despite its looks.”

(more…)

Grab your friends and start throwing boxes out the window because Moving Out is here. It’s a couch co-op game in which you will literally have to cooperatively carry couches (amongst many other items of furniture) and chuck them on your moving van as fast as you can. It’s a fun and frantic Overcooked-like with some adorable character design to boot. When I played it at EGX last year, I took control of a little dude with a toaster for a head, and if he carried something that was too heavy for him burnt toast would start popping out. It’s all in the details.

(more…)

Ahead of its launch on June 5th, I’ve been able to see the Command & Conquer Remastered Collection in action, and it certainly looks the part. The quarter-century-old RTS, as well as comrade Red Alert and their squad of three expansion packs, have been sent over the top of their pixellated trench, and into the high-res carnage of no-man’s-land. Malaysian art house Lemon Sky Studios have armed them with visual assets suitable for the rigours of combat in 4k resolution, and they’re entering the fray to a remade soundtrack by original series composer Frank Klepacki. Their FMV cutscene artillery has been digitally embiggened through a combination of digital archaeology and machine sorcery, while their archaic multiplayer setup (I guess it can be a metaphorical tank), has been scrapped in favour of a much more robust new system.

I’ve no doubt that fans of these two grizzled soldiers will be delighted that they’ve been commanded back onto the battlefield of PC games. But as faithful as their rearming has been, they’re still working to a set of mechanics that are old enough to join the army themselves. The question, and the reason for this whole tortured allegory, remains: will these very old games have what it takes to conquer new hearts? (more…)

XCOM Chimera Squad takes place in City 31, a colony that is always at risk of becoming unsettled. Enemy factions are stirring up unrest in each of the districts and it’s up to you to keep the peace. You can recruit field teams to assist with this, as field team abilities can be used to reduce anarchy or freeze unrest from building up in a particular district. (more…)