Hot god encyclopaedia by way of hack ‘n’ slash roguelike Hades was basically already game of the year when it released into early access in 2018. Its core components were all in place. You fight through a constantly randomised hell filled with monsters and bosses as Zagreus, sarcastic and perpetually titty-out son of Hades. Along the way, you can pick up abilities bestowed by gods from across the Greek pantheon. And it’s all set to an obviously perfect Darren Korb soundtrack.

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What does Fortnite need ray-tracing for, anyway? Epic’s blockbuster murderfest isn’t exactly gunning for hard realism, after all. Regardless, RTX ray tracing brings high-fidelity reflections, shadows and ambient occlusion to Fortnite today, alongside support for DLSS 2.0 to run those high-res rays at an agreeable frame rate. Fine, you’ve got me – I’ll admit it does look quite nice after all.

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Amazons arrive in A Total War Saga: Troy next week with its first DLC, which will be given away free for keepsies for the first fortnight. Penthesilea and Hippolyta will join the fight against the Achaeans, bringing all-female armies and new focuses. Penthesilea wants to run around with a giant army, while Hippolyta is out to shore up influence by controlling sacred regions and treasures. Meet ’em in the new trailer below.

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Spelunky 2 will test your skill and patience, equipping you with nothing more than a whip, a few ropes, and a couple bombs. You’ll have the opportunity to pick up much more though, and some items are more useful than others.

Here’s all the items in Spelunky 2 and where to find them.

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For a brief, beautiful moment last night, Sony were good to PC gaming. Their PlayStation 5 Showcase focused on their new console, sure, but they did let the Final Fantasy XVI announcement confirm a PC release, and they did reveal the Demon’s Souls remaster is coming to PC too. For a company cagey about even acknowledging the existence of other platforms, this was delightful. Then Square Enix and Sony both said ‘lol whoops typo, didn’t mean to say that lmao’ and walked back the PC announcements. Which was disappointing.

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I have only reached the void while drunk. I had been too conscious before then. I didn’t yet understand.

Post Void, I had thought, was about being fast. I was probably too old to ever be good at it. That never mattered even when I thought it was true, but it isn’t. Post Void is about letting the game take you.

Its hypnotic rhythms, its lurid colours, its cacophony of violence and strangled, somehow endlessly escalating guitars. There is a space in your mind between reflex and conscious decision, between panic and triumph. That is where Post Void is set, I think. It’s certainly where it takes me.

If not for The Bundle, this game would have been the best deal of the year. You should play it.

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If you fancy rocking out to a little bit of Quake, the game’s original soundtrack by Nine Inch Nails is available to buy on vinyl now. It’s the hot record for 2020, featuring aptly named tracks like “Life”, “Damnation” and “Aftermath”. Oh and “Quake Theme”, I guess.

When the listing for the record went up yesterday, a cheeky note said that it was supposed to come with essays from former Id Software devs John Carmack and American McGee. Alas, an “unnamed video game publisher made it impossible to include this in the package”. I wonder who it could be?

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The RTX 3090 is the new king of Nvidia’s next-gen RTX 3000 series. Dubbed the “BFGPU” of the [cms-block] family (that’s a reference to Doom’s BFG, in case you’re wondering), the RTX 3090 is not only the world’s fastest graphics card, but it’s also the first one to play and capture games in 8K, too (although the number of 8K displays around at the moment is practically zero).

No one really needs an RTX 3090, but people with more money than sense will want it anyway because it’s set to be one of the best graphics cards you can buy for the foreseeable future – and we finally know how much this colossal GPU is going to cost, where you can buy one, when it’s coming out and what its specs are.

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For the week that’s in it, and this week has huge gaming digi-vent PAX-X-EGX in it, Gamedec has a free demo for you to try. Which I have, in several times. Gamedec is, y’see, a) a detective game that is b) a text heavy RPG without combat and c) offers multiple routes to solutions. As a Venn diagram of my interests, it’s almost a perfect circle (although it does have a futuristic Blade Runner-y cyberpunk setting. I can’t have everything).

In Gamedec’s world, people spend most of their time inside very advanced video games called virtualiums, in expensive chairs and suits that give you all over haptic feedback and suck all your wee out so you can stay in for days. The ideal! Except obviously, other aspects of life have moved online as well, including crime>. That’s where you, a gamedec, come in. You’re a game detective. You solve cybercrime. And in this case cyber>crime. Eyebrows eyebrows.

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Myst

on Android! Myst on PS4! Myst on Nintendo DS! Myst on Switch! And now, Myst on the Oculus Quest! Jeez, we get it Cyan Worlds, you like re-releasing Myst. Yesterday’s Facebook Connect revealed the freshly “reimagined” version of the 1993 adventure game, which is set to arrive sometime this December. While the focus is on the fact it’s being made for VR, the new Myst will be available for “flatscreen PC”, too.

Sorry to all you folks who invested in curved monitors, I guess.

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