The low-key FMV revival continues today in Dark Nights With Poe And Munro, a new FMV adventure from the gang behind vid ’em ups The Infectious Madness Of Doctor Dekker and The Shapeshifting Detective. I heard good things about Doctor Dekker in particular. Dark Nights also sounds interesting for picking a subject that fits well with the ‘earnest but unavoidably janky and cheesy’ nature of FMV games: local radio. Poe and Munro host a radio show about spooky mysteries, see.

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“Found my own body floating down the river today. Didn’t recognise myself for ages.” This may sound like the start of a magical realist detective story, rather than something you’d say in a meeting with colleagues. But in Red Dead Redemption 2, which is rapidly emerging as an unlikely competitor to Zoom and Skype in the world of conference calling, this is business as usual.

I’ve long been a fan of the way the Cowboy Game – especially its multiplayer mode – mixes obsessive realism with glitchiness and ultraviolence to create a sense of weird, unreal melancholy. But writer, illustrator and good tweeter Viv Schwarz, who related the above anecdote to me, has discovered that this recipe was missing a crucial third ingredient: corporate culture. They’ve been meeting with workmates in the uncanny environs of RDR2 for some time now, and while they can’t swear blind that it’s the most efficient place to do business, it is at least not Zoom. So grab yourself a seat by the fire and a rusty tin of hawk viscera, and let’s action some deliverables.

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There have been plenty of great laptop deals over the past couple of weeks, but this Asus TUF model is arguably one of the best yet. If you want the smug satisfaction of knowing you didn’t break the four-figure mark and> the laptop had one of AMD’s brand-new Ryzen 4000 laptop CPUs inside it, then this Asus TUF Gaming A15 deal at Currys is probably the best way of doing that right now.

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Recruiting people to your cause in Mount And Blade 2 Bannerlord is key to achieving your goals, whatever they may be. The most valuable people in your army will be companions, who are people that can be assigned roles and who can be upgraded in similar ways to your player controlled character.

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If a Netflix show and years of people going on about it have finally convinced you to consider giving The Witcher a go, good news: to celebrate the fifth birthday of The Witcher 3, the whole series is on sale. Both Steam and GOG have big Witcher sales, including the whole RPG series plus various spin-offs. £10 for The Witcher 3 and both expansions is a good price for so many grimaces and weary sighs, every one of them great.

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Until recently, Oculus Quest users looking to play a bit of PC VR via Oculus Link had to use a high-speed USB3 cable to connect it to their PCs. Thanks to a recent update, however, Quest owners can now start testing Oculus Link with regular USB2 cables, including the charging cable that comes in the box.

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I’m one of those people.

I love the idea of The Witcher 3. I enjoy playing the game, even. But I seem to be cursed. Every year or so I sit down to play it, full of resolve to see it through to the end. But every damn time, despite finding myself increasingly drawn in to its meticulously crafted fantasy world, and despite revelling in my role as a sort of ultra-violent Hagrid within it, I only ever manage a handful of hours before getting distracted and drifting away from the game. By the time I’ve got the urge to come back again, I’ve forgotten what was going on. And so I start again, like a gaming Sisyphus forever pushing a grumpy mutant up a hill.

I’ve played the start of The Witcher 3 five times now. And so, to commemorate its fifth anniversary and my impending, inevitable sixth attempt at playing it, I’ve decided to see how much of the game I can remember and synopsise here, without cheating and googling anything. I’m going to try and do this in one take, so I can’t second guess myself, and I’ve even done some illustrations, to help with your immersion in the tale. So, are you prepared? Let’s go!

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On my first night playing Kind Words, I sent out a paper aeroplane telling the helpers not to stay up all night. Not to worry about the people who might need them while they’re asleep.

We know this. We all know this. It doesn’t make it any easier.

Kind Words might be the most important game ever made. It might also be the most timely.

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Yer local RPG-watcher’s here to report some more RPG goings-on. This time it’s a new look at the character creator and combat in upcoming Solasta: Crown Of The Magister. I don’t know how the rest of the hairstyles hold up, but those beards are seriously luscious. Outside the character sheet, Solasta also shows off another look at its very vertical combat encounters in this new trailer.

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Forget review scores. The only true way to judge a game’s quality is the converted square kilometers of its virtual world. Or so you’d think, with how big a talking point it is during the marketing campaign for every big open-world adventure. For a minute there, it sounded like Assassin’s Creed Valhalla would actually be smaller that its enormous predecessor Odyssey. Not so, says a Valhalla producer. Surprising no one, it will in fact be larger.

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