Halo 3 - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Nate Crowley)

halo 3 PC 1

The PC remaster of Halo 3 is another beautiful, robust polish job that shows just how well Bungie’s bombastic shooter series has aged. I recommend it heartily. Yes, it’s marred with some baffling narrative choices, bungled ally AI, and a few instances of phoned-in level design, of course. But then, in the immortal words of that astronaut meme, “always has been”. And at this point, the whole Halo experience is so firmly bound up in nostalgia, at least for me, that its flaws have long since become endearing quirks.

But as much as this is a good moment to talk about Halo 3, what with it being out today and all, I’ve realised this post is just as much about the Master Chief Collection, the compilation/launcher… thing which now contains the whole of the classic Halo trilogy, plus Reach. I’d assumed the MCC was basically an electric version of a cardboard box with games in it. But now my four favourite Haloes are in it, the MCC seems to have reached a critical mass, and I’ve had something of a revelation.

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Halo 3 - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Alice O'Connor)

13 years after its Xbox 360 debut, Halo 3 is finally out on PC. While the first two games came over from Xbox, the conclusion to Bungie’s first-person shooter trilogy stayed home. After 13 years, you’ll finally be able to see what became of Master Ian Chief. Did he, as he vowed at the end of Halo 2, finish this fight? You’ll have to play it to find out.

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Rock, Paper, Shotgun - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Lauren Morton)

Social distancing simulator Death Stranding launches on PC tomorrow but Kojima Productions have delivered a launch trailer today. If you’ve been waiting to get your postman parkour on in full 4K resolutions, the time has nearly arrived. Bridge man Sam is all packed up and ready to cart that cargo all over post apocalyptic America starting tomorrow, July 14th.

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Rock, Paper, Shotgun - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Lauren Morton)

In all this talk about Assassin’s Creed Valhalla’s viking blokes in boats, I’d almost forgotten about Ubisoft’s other boats game. Ships, pardon me. Skull & Bones is the pirate-themed naval combat game they announced yonks back in 2017. It’s not scuttled yet, apparently, but may be changing course to a live service game.

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We Know the Devil - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Lauren Morton)

If you missed the giant Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality on Itch last month, you’ve got yet another shot at good games for a good cause. The Visual Novel Romance Collection for Black Trans Lives is precisely what it says on the tin: fourteen romantic games (several of which the RPS crew have quite liked) in support of The Okra Project.

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Rock, Paper, Shotgun - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Lauren Morton)

A Steam user review for Divinity Original Sin 2 that reads "Teleporting 30 corpses into the boss room, then casting "mass corpse explosion" to instantly kill the boss is a perfectly valid way to play the game."

Valve have been down in the Steam Labs workshop for a year now brewing up ways for folks to more efficiently spend money in their store. Some experiments have been bust, others have gotten the stamp of approval and been shipped off as fully-fledged features. The Community Recommendations whereby you can see user reviews by all sorts of folks you don’t know, is graduating today. Valve are far from done though, with more experiments planned for the next year of Labs.

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Yakuza Kiwami 2 - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Alice O'Connor)

Yakuza Kiwami 2 screenshot

Earlier in the RPS treehouse, I was explaining to Nate that the Yakuza games are wonderful and kindhearted, not just serious crime drama (though they are also serious crime drama). Then as if my love of gaming’s best dads is able to shape reality, mere hours later Sega have announced that Yakuza Kiwami 2 will come to Windows 10 and Xbox Game Pass on July 30th. So more people will soon be able to spend more time with my two wrestledads. I’m so happy for you.

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Rock, Paper, Shotgun - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Craig Pearson)

Best Half Life Alyx mods

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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Rock, Paper, Shotgun - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Katharine Castle)

Best graphics card 2020

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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Rock, Paper, Shotgun - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Lauren Morton)

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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