If your friend asked you a question – innocuous or not – they wouldn’t just sit there, quietly, waiting for you to answer. They’d continue the conversation with a follow-up query or statement, or they’d change the topic.

The point is: they wouldn’t just… wait. But that’s what video game characters regularly do when players are given dialogue options. NPCs shut their traps, eagerly awaiting the cue line that allows them to open their mouths again.

The teenagers of Oxenfree don’t do that. Their chats are interruption-filled messes. And it’s pure magic.

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Hey, did you know Final Fantasy XIV has a housing shortage? I was not aware Final Fantasy XIV could have a housing shortage, but here we are! Having already announced plans to shore up the shortage last month, Square Enix have now cemented the motion – building 720 new plots of land and erecting a new block of flats in each server when patch 5.35 arrives later this month.

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You called a spaceship The Invincible? Rookie mistake, lads. That’s just asking for a wreckage. Fortunately, retrofuturist space disasters make for bloody gorgeous videogames, the latest being a first-person thriller from new studio Starward Industries. Formed of folks with The Witcher, Cyberpunk, Dying Light and more, the devs are now shooting for an atompunk space horror with the dinkiest little moon-rover I’ve ever seen.

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Super-powered heroes? Nefarious evil organisations? Dubious allegories to real-world oppression? Overwatch is already basically a comic book series, so why not lean all the way into that? This month, Blizzard are doing just that. Tracer’s Comic Challenge is a graphic two-week event for picking up some themed cosmetics, running alongside the release of a new webcomic starring everyone’s favourite spatially-unbound Londoner.

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Rocket League

is almost, finally free. A little over 5 years after its debut, videogames’ favourite vehicular footy match is going free-to-play and moving to a new home on the Epic Games Store next Wednesday, September 23rd. It’s leaving Steam to do so, sadly – but if you pick up the keys within a month of its Epic debut, you’ll snag a free $10 to spend on Sweeney’s storefront.

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I’ve been banging my head against the PAX X EGX demo for No Place For Bravery for a while now. It’s a very stylish action RPG where you, a warrior with adorable stick-thin legs holding up a big meaty-boi body, are out to rescue your daughter Leaf from grim monsters. You get to execute your enemies after defeating them, and lots of blood gets splashed all over the place. I like almost everything about it: the music is great, the animations are slick and cool, the art and design on the world is grim and gorgeous.

I like everything about it apart from the combat. Which is a bit of a problem for a game focused on combat, I suppose. And yet the rest of it is so good, I keep going back for more.

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Sid Meier, that legendary game dev whose name sits before the names of Civilization games, had a lovely chat with our very own Nate Crowley this weekend, as part of PAX Online X EGX Digital. The pair talked all about some of the most notable parts of Meier’s career – including, Railroad Tycoon, Pirates!, and Civilization – as well as chat about his upcoming book, Sid Meier’s Memoir!: A Life In Computer Games. And thanks to computers, you can watch their whole chat in full below.

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Spelunky 2 is as tricky to survive as the original game, and poses plenty of challenges for even seasoned players of the series. In this beginner’s guide, we’ll give you some tips for passing enemies old and new and getting to the end of world one.

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It’s been all quiet on the Twin Mirror front for some time now – but after a good deal of introspection, Dontnod reckon their upcoming mental mystery is just about ready. As the studio’s next narrative thriller (and the first one they’re publishing themselves), Twin Mirror’s mind palace opens its doors to a supernatural investigation this December.

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If it feels like your PC is constantly running out of storage space, then it might be time to buy another SSD, and to help you get the best deals on today’s best SSDs for gaming, we’ve rounded up all the cheapest prices going on in the UK and US. This week, there have been some pretty good deals on various WD drives, including the 1TB version of their Blue 3D NAND SSD in the US, and their Blue and Black NVMe SSDs here in the UK, as well as a decent $10 drop on the 1TB Samsung 870 Qvo in the US. Whether you’re looking for a cheap SATA drive or a brand-new NVMe SSD, these are the cheapest SSD deals of the week.

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