It’s taken time to build up a decent collection of Half-Life: Alyx mods, but not as long as I thought it would. People were building them before Valve released the proper SDK, and now it’s out there are hundreds of levels, weapons and experiments. I had a great time sneaking through forgotten areas of City 17, or taking time out from Combine harvesting to toss a few bowling balls (and bullets) down a ten pin alley.

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With many of this year’s biggest games edging closer towards release, you may be thinking it’s finally time to upgrade your GPU with one of today’s best graphics cards. Before we dive into the best graphics card you can buy right now, though, I should warn you that not only are Nvidia prepping for the launching of their next-gen [cms-block] RTX 3000 graphics cards at the moment, but we’re also expecting the second generation of [cms-block] graphics cards to launch before the end of the year as well. Most of these big graphics card launches will be centred around Nvidia and AMD’s new flagship graphics cards, but if you’re after the best 4K graphics card money can buy right now then I’d strongly recommend waiting until these new ones come out.

Thankfully, it’s a much safer time to buy a new graphics card for 1080p or 1440p gaming, as we’re not likely to see next-gen versions of Nvidia and AMD’s lower-end graphics cards until a good few months after their big 4K offerings. As such, it’s still a good time to buy my current best graphics card recommendation, the AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT. Having tested all of today’s graphics cards, the RX 5600 XT is the one that, in my eyes, represents the best value for money, and you can find out more about why we’ve chosen the RX 5600 XT below. All prices are correct at time of writing, but you can also check our regularly updated [cms-block] hub for all the best prices.

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Microsoft Flight Simulator

has been cleared for takeoff. The giant simulated world of planes will launch on August 18th. Microsoft have released a new trailer and some information about what’s included in the three differently-priced versions of the game.

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I’ve only ever played bits and pieces of the Half-Life games, but it’s been a delight learning the ins and outs of their creation from Half-Life: Alyx – Final Hours. It’s a multimedia documentary on all things Valve – their (many) cancelled games, a close look at life during Alyx’s development, and the ups and downs the developers went through in making sure Half-Life returned in the best way possible. I’ve pulled out some of my favourite snippets of info from the doc, so read on to hear all about Alyx’s invisible headcrab, and why I now believe that G-Man’s actor might actually be G-Man in real life.

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If you’re looking to build a team to stop people hacking your game, why not reach out to the people who are trying to hack your game? That’s an idea Riot Games had with Valorant and League Of Legends, hiding a little recruitment message inside part of their anti-cheat system. If you’re poking around in their gameguts, they might be interested in your skills.

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Asus have shaved over £140 off some of their [cms-block]s in the UK at the moment, making it a good time to pick up one of their RGB-laden gaming screens. Indeed, there are four such gaming monitors on sale at various retailers at the moment, with two ultrawide mega screens and two of their 165Hz, 2560×1440 displays discounted to some of their lowest prices ever. The cheapest one can be had for as little as £319, too, which is really quite the bargain after months of stock shortages and inflated prices.

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There’s just four weeks to go now until Horizon Zero Dawn does a massive electric roar and charges towards us through our PC screens, and as RPS’ resident HZD obsessive, I’m excited. And to my own surprise, possibly the thing I’m most excited about is the chance to just drink in the look of the game again. In fact, no. I don’t want to drink it in at all. I want to chug it down as if it were a protein shake, and my eyes were a pair of totally shredded bros.

Possibly because I’ve spent most of my life with PCs some way behind the curve in terms of hardware, I’ve never been that bothered about how games look. But Horizon Zero Dawn is an exception. It looked a couple of years ahead of its time even in 2017 on PS4, and if Katharine’s experimentation with Death Stranding (which uses the same engine) are anything to go by, HZD’s PC port is going to absolutely batter us> aesthetically. With this in mind, then, I thought I’d take you on a little sightseeing trip through some of the things I’m most excited to behold with new, muscly eyes.

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Blizzard have released an Overwatch album, so now you can bop along to your favourite in-game tunes even when you’re not playing. Overwatch: Cities And Countries is a collection of soundtracks from the game, all based on the global locations of its maps. You know when you first load into a match, and it plays that short riff of music symbolic of the setting? These are basically just the full versions of those, and they’re actually really good.

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Where Assassin’s Creed Odyssey made players choose between playing as Kassandra or Alexios at the start and Syndicate missions often picked a Frye twin for you, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla will let players switch between the female and male versions of our lone hero Eivor whenever we please. That mostly sounds useful for double-checking which voice actor you prefer and not having to start over if you change your mind. Though Ubisoft do say this switcheroo hints at some in-universe explanation involving their magic computers and that.

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If you’re looking to take advantage of AMD’s free Assassin’s Creed Valhalla bundle with select Ryzen processors at the moment, then there are some great [cms-block] happening over at Newegg right now as part of their Fantastech sale (yes, I just did a big shudder as well). The best deal of the bunch is definitely the Ryzen 7 3700X, which can now be had for a new low of just $260, which is the cheapest price I’ve seen for this octa-core CPU ever since it launched last year.

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