Halloo, gentle reader. Since we’re half way through the entire year of 2020 (yet somehow it is also still March?), we decided to run down, lasso and tie up some of our favourite games from the last six months, and force them into a nice list for you.

2020 still has plenty of new PC games to come, of course, but these are the ones closest to our little hearts so far. We’ve got strategy, we’ve got card games, we’ve got systematic reclamation of scraped spaceships. And, since Nate Crowley is one of the contributors to this list, we’ve got fish. Statistically speaking, there’s bound to be at least one game on here that you’ll ruddy bloody love too!

(more…)

The sci-fi vision of No Man’s Sky is mostly exploration and excitement, about seeing what procedurally-generated wonders might be on the other side of the next jump. The ‘Desolation’ update, released today, adds a touch more sci-fi horror as it sends players into derelict and alien-infested spaceships. These procedurally-generated freighter wrecks adrift in space have new loot to salvage, a bit like Space Hulk but without the fascists. Here, watch this trailer to see some of the spookies you’ll potentially meet.

(more…)

Henry Cavill, everyone’s favourite Super-Witcher-Warhammer-miniatures-painter-man, has recently built himself a new gaming PC, and he’s documented the whole thing in a lovely, if very occasionally heart-stopping video post on Instagram. His choice of components is actually pretty sound, ranging from a top of the line Ryzen 9 CPU to an RTX 2080 Ti graphics card, but it turns out that even his Geralt Witcher sense isn’t strong enough to tell him which way round his CPU is meant to go on his tiny motherboard.

(more…)

The PC version of Death Stranding is finally here. To make up for the long wait, there is some Half-Life stuff that has been added to the game. To get the items, you’ll need to find companion cubes with clues to their locations hidden in emails.

While the most intriguing inclusion is the gravity glove thanks to its ability to drag in items from a short distance away from Sam, it’s not the only item available and we will be showing off how to get all of them.

(more…)

Just ahead of its cardboard launch, Magic: The Gathering Arena today debuts the new Jumpstart game type in digital form. Jumpstart’s an interesting one, giving both players two curated 20-card packs each containing half a deck to smash together into one. Jumpstart has 46 different pack themes too (including angels, devils, dogs, dragons, cats, pirates, unicorns, dinosaurs, minotaurs, and minions), so you end up with something a bit weird but not wholly random. You have to pay for enter, but do get to keep the cards.

(more…)

It can be tricky finding a decent gaming laptop for under $1000 these days, but if you’ve been scouring the web for the best [cms-block] around, then this new one from Best Buy is a real steal. Normally $900, the HP Pavilion 16-a0023dx is now down to just $750, which gets you a GTX 1660 Ti graphics chip, a brand-new Core i5 processor and a generous 512GB SSD with a 32GB Intel Optane drive to boot.

(more…)

The physical edition of Microsoft Flight Simulator will ship on 10 disks, and in 2020 this is a very easy thing to mock. I do honestly believe it has been literal years since I have even seen a single disk, and the idea of faffing about with 10 outdated retro-wheels makes me shudder. But it makes total sense! Flight Simulator models a huge portion of the earth, so the game’s going to be biggo – and there are people who don’t have great internet connections, so providing them with their preferred route to fiddly airborne zen times is a good thing. Plus, yunno, some people like boxes.

Still. 10 disks lol. It’s probably a record.

(more…)

If you’re looking for the best budget gaming laptop deals under £1000 / $1000, you’re in the right place, as we’ve rounded up all the cheapest gaming laptop deals with dedicated graphics chips from around the web that don’t require you to break that dreaded four-figure mark. Naturally, the more you spend, the more you’ll get out of your gaming laptop, as more expensive models have more powerful components. But there are still some surprisingly good budget gaming laptop deals you can get for under £1000 / $1000, including a couple with Nvidia RTX 2060 graphics chips in them. So read on for all of this week’s best budget gaming laptop deals happening in the UK and US.

(more…)

Privately, with friends, I have referred to Assassin’s Creed Valhalla as Assassin’s Creed: Big Gay Blondes, which up until now was basically more cosmic ordering than it was based on any actual facts. However, having now had a three hour hands on with the game, I can confirm that on at least one occasion you can have drunk sex with a man, up against a wall at a wedding. And you can do it with both male and female Eivor.

In fairness, this might be the only instance of romance in the entire game, but it’d be pretty weird if it was. I do not, alas, have any confirmation of other people that you might be able to do the Norse naughty with, but given that you can switch between versions of Eivor whenever you’d like, it seems clear that anyone available for tender romancin’ will be susceptible to Eivor’s charms no matter what.

(more…)

I Fell In Love With The Majesty Of Colors

made, relatively speaking, a bit of a splash when it came out in 2008. It’s a short pixel art game about being a big sea monster, and how you choose to interact (or not interact) with the weird wriggly creatures you see floating or steering machines on the surface.

It has multiple endings, depending on your choices (and some reflexes, although it’s not very demanding). I was always fond of picking up all the humans, pulling them around a bit, then plopping them safely back down again. If you go swimming here the beast might wave you around a bit. It’s just a thing that happens, don’t worry about it.

(more…)